Royals Rumblings - News for February 14, 2020

I really don’t like Valentine’s Day. It’s awful for single people and still bad for people in relationships, more crassly commercial than Christmas. My wife and I don’t celebrate it. However, that was overcome by my desire to ham it up for Rumblings... the sacrifices I make for my “craft”.

Ready for some Spring Training position battle- pillow fights? Fifth starter: GO!

“Part of the question is using a potential opener,” Matheny said. “Who can be behind that fifth guy to get some innings? There’s a whole lot of openings here. We may have to get creative with that spot. We won’t need him until [early April]. But you have to have guys stretched out, so we’re aware of that.”

The Royals haven’t ruled out using a newcomer for that fifth spot, making this an important camp for prospects like Singer, Kowar or Lynch. But Kansas City general manager Dayton Moore, while not putting limitations on his up-and-coming pitchers, said he expects most to be ticketed for the Minor Leagues.

Meanwhile, Royals Farm Report got to whisper sweet nothings with Royals 1B prospect Vinnie Pasquantino on their podcast.

Show some commitment! Opening Day tickets still available!

Even in the 00s, you couldn’t get tickets for Opening Day without paying an arm and a leg. Then again, it’s not a true Opening Day but a home opener, but there are still lots of tickets still available in the upper deck. At worst, the Royals will only be 0-5 going into the game!

With stories about no love being lost between old and young players in St. Louis during his tenure, Mike Matheny is against hazing with this Royals team:

How about something uplifting? MLB and MLBPA combined to give $1 million to the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum yesterday. This was part of the Negro Leagues’ 100th anniversary celebration yesterday.

Other details:

Of course, most of you are aware of my affection for other blogs that talk about the Royals. Let’s start with Fansided’s set from yesterday:

• KC Kingdom’s John McCarty argues “Not all proposed playoff changes are bad”
• Cody Rickman slideshows “Way too early 2020 MLB amateur draft predictions”
• Not to be out-slideshowed, at KOK, Michael Huckins listed “3 most overlooked players for the 2020 season”
• Tyler Dierking suggest the “Team should consider trading for Joc Pederson”
• Mike Gillespie ponders “The uncertainty of the new 3-batter rule”
• Jordan Foote publishes “2020 KC Royals player season preview: Alex Gordon”

Finally, we have 3 stories from other blogs:

• Kevin O’Brien at Royals Reporter highlights (not slideshow!) “Four ‘out-of-options’ Royals pitchers to watch in Spring Training”
• In another upset, Kellen Stevens’s story at Royals Blue is also not a slideshow: “5 Things To Watch In Spring Training”
• He also reminds us, with the correct amount of exclamation points, that “Baseball is Back!!!”

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We at the Best of Royals Review (TM) wanted to keep with the theme today so we’re going to go with an unofficial edition today. This feels a bit similar to the Spring Training picture post last week, but it’s the best holiday-related story I could find: Royals Review wishes you a Happy Valentine’s Day.

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We’re just skipping the MLB section of news today (more Astros PR blundering and former Royals Jarrod Dyson and Brad Boxberger sign with the Pirates and Marlins, respectively).

Instead, we’re going to do bring something much more important: Valentine’s Day themed stories. Oh, no, not those normal vanilla ones - other bizarre stuff loosely tied to Valentine’s Day.

You know what? You asked for it, so we’ll throw out one quirky one about the history of the holiday. It’s filled with fun facts like:

Side note: The meaning of the name, Valentine, comes from the Roman family Valentinus. The Catholic Church recognized at least three different saints with the same Roman name, all of whom were later martyred.

Let’s mix baseball, Valentine’s Day, and song. Frankly, the rankings are pretty awful, but I’ll give Twinkie Town credit for ranking songs from every team like “Deep in the Heart of Texas” and “Sweet Caroline”.

This article from the Washington Post shows just the kind of thorns and/or creative solutions that come from complicated foreign policy. When I was in Colombia about a decade ago, we drove around a region that was covered with greenhouses. We asked what they were growing and our guide mentioned it went from cocaine to roses back in the 90s because the US wanted to replace the drug trade. In 1991, the US passed the “Andean Trade Preference Act” to remove tarriffs on a number of imported goods like roses and asparagus. However, the downside was that it decimated the US rose industry: it was 1/3rd of its previous size within a decade, unable to compete with the cheaper imports.

If you’re looking for things to do to celebrate on a limited budget, I stumbled across this story while virtual dumpster diving for recently discounted Galaxy S10s we present to you: Valentine’s Day 2020: Gift ideas for a limited budget. Because when you think romance, you think CNET.

Of course, when two people love each other very much, they might have kids. Apparently, Field of Dreams-hating Craig Calcaterra’s daughter does not fall far from the lunatic tree. She drew some crazy map of the US that went viral after he tweeted it, and ended up on the front page of CNN (do better, CNN). Ohio 2, comparing Wyoming to Hogwarts, and the Chilean-American War are just a sample of this demented mind. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Finally, a story all of us can take to heart. Remember last year’s study that said “hey, red meat isn’t so bad”? Which, of course, it didn’t actually say that but we’re really bad at communicating science. Every drive time radio dolt and local news flunkie did their worst Morbo and Linda impersonation, following up shoddy reporting with some joke about “Haha! I’m going to go eat a steak now”.

Side note: Of course, what didn’t get nearly as many headlines were all the conflict of interest reports that started flying not long after. That study was published by a guy who shills for industry and was partially funded by the beef industry? No way!

Last week, the New York Times published a story that revealed Johnston had not disclosed a conflict of interest on a similar study in 2016 in the Annals of Internal Medicine that aimed to debunk sugar consumption’s association with health risks. The study had been paid for by the International Life Sciences Institute, which has been financially supported by companies such as McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and Cargill.

Want to know what really reduces heart risk, per a recently published study? Being able to do 40 push-ups. This brought to you by the medical journal “Duh” (not really; it was JAMA):

Participants able to complete more than 40 push-ups were associated with a significantly lower risk of incident CVD event risk compared with those completing fewer than 10 push-up

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If you thought this would be anything other than Kingdom Hearts, you’re sorely mistaken.

Below is the introduction video to Kingdom Hearts II (that kindof catches you up on KH1 and KH:CoM). The song is Passion (or Sanctuary, depending on translation) from Utada Hikaru: