While many of you are doing things which our society requires like providing medical care, stocking grocery shelves, trucking food and supplies, raising crops and livestock, and teaching your children, I am an elderly retired person with time to play the computer baseball simulation Out of the Park 21 since it looks like that I will not even be able to play very much golf for at least the next few months. For the benefit of Royals fans busy with more important things I have decided to play the entire 2020 Kansas City Royals season one day at a time according to the original schedule while having each contest on the pitch-by-pitch game action screen streamed and recorded at Twitch so that Royals followers may freely watch and listen to the Kansas City club simulate the campaign. I will not be doing a FanPost providing a link to each game of the 2020 season but I will instead try to add a link to my recorded Twitch game at the Royals Rumblings or Weekend Rumblings of the date the game was originally scheduled. For example, the date of this FanPost (April 7) has the Royals hosting the Tigers based upon what the 2020 season should have been and I will somewhere in the comment section of the April 7 Royals Rumblings add a Twitch link so one may freely watch and/or listen to the Royals play the Tigers on April 7. My health willing, I plan on doing the remaining 2020 Royals season one game and day at a time recorded to Twitch for fans of the Kansas City Royals.

Out of the Park Baseball 21 has made a number of improvements to previous editions of its franchise but OOTP21 is inferior in some cosmetic respects to the computer game The Show. While The Show has in-game graphics in super detail for things like player's faces, crowds, game action, and announcers, OOTP21 in-game does not have detailed player faces on the field, has the players move around mostly limited to what they need to do to attempt a play, has very little crowd detail, has no voice announcer by default, and even lacks umpires on the field and uniform numbers on the back of players' shirts. OOTP in my opinion is superior to The Show in other respects like the vast rosters of minor league players who can through only a few clicks join the major league team at a moment's notice and OOTP is great for running an entire season and even for projecting a franchise into the future.

My Royals on Twitch will be a little different in some respects than the OOTP21 game you will find if you purchase the game. The most important changes I made for the benefit of my 2020 Royals 162 game season follows.

1. I used Fangraphs for the organizational rosters of all thirty major league clubs as of March 25 and used the Commissioner Mode of OOTP21 to make the necessary changes so that each and every team has the correct 40 man rosters as OOTP right out of the box has errors with the larger 40 man rosters. After making those manual changes I pressed Backup Current Game in OOTP21 so that I could properly restart the 2020 season with complete rosters in case something crashed my campaign. The Kansas City Royals after those roster tweaks ended up with a full 40 man team and some roster decisions have to be made by the General Manager to for example find room for players like Greg Holland. Fangraphs Royals roster is at link: https://www.fangraphs.com/roster-resource/depth-charts/royals

2. I am playing as General Manager of the Kansas City Royals. One can optionally give duties to "Mike Matheny" and to "Dayton Moore" but I want my 2020 Royals season to use only players already in the Kansas City Royals organization so I am ruling out in advance all trades, all waiver claims, and all free agent signings by the Royals. I found that if I gave computer AI "Dayton Moore" some of the duties that he would not operate within the all-internal demands of this special simulation and so "Dayton" will make no GM decisions like the choice of adding or releasing Greg Holland. On the other hand I have decided not to interfere with computer "Mike Matheny." It is up to "Mike" to play or bench the players I provide him and it is up to "Matheny" to set lineups and to decide when to change pitchers, adjust defensive alignments, steal bases, and all other in-game decisions.

3. I did make a few roster changes as GM of the 2020 Kansas City Royals after having set the proper 40 man squad. I did want to add Greg Holland so Randy Rosario was DFAd, went unclaimed, and was assigned to Omaha. I was limited to only eight bullpen arms on the 26 man roster and after looking at how "Mike" wanted to use his staff I then decided that I would DFA Jesse Hahn but Hahn was claimed by the Los Angeles Angels. "Matheny" planned upon playing Hunter Dozier mainly at first base so now third-string first baseman Brian McBroom was optioned to Omaha. Since "Mike Matheny" intended to give more playing time to Nick Heath than to Bubba Starling, Heath was added to the 26 man roster and Bubba was DFAd and Starling was claimed by the Seattle Mariners. "Mike" preferred Matt Reynolds for pine-riding utilty guy, so room was made for Reynolds and he was promoted to both the 40 man and to the 26 man roster. Eric Skoglund cleared DFA and was assigned to Omaha. The rest of my final 26 man Royals roster looks quite like the Fangraphs depth chart although "Mike" for now has Glenn Sparkman as a starting pitcher and has Jorge Lopez in the pen. I expect that I will have to make roster changes as the season develops as the GM will have to deal with matters like unexpected injuries and sometimes fellows in the minor leagues start knocking on the door for a chance in the big leagues while some on the active roster go into extended performance slumps.

4. I did make several tweaks to the OOTP21 game concerning the visual and audio in-game action. I did click to add some crowd animation. My Royals games will now show a bit of limited movement by some in attendance compared to the default cardboard cut-outs of the default setting. I also added a voice announcer to supplement the roll-down visual text play-by-play screen but text-to-speech Microsoft David is no Denny Matthews. I figured that having some voice to my games for people interested in the Twitch season would be better than no announcer at all since those of you busy doing something else can just minimize the Twitch feed for another windows task while listening along like some radio broadcast. Sometimes my games will have game action not well synchronized with the audio announcer and the text feed but I guess some of you will get used to it after awhile like I have. The default game has one pitch per batter with "result of the play" so OOTP21 in-game can complete a contest in about twenty minutes. I chose the longer pitch-by-pitch mode since those watching can now see potential game-winning homeruns drift foul and those listening can now hear "Mick David" mention substitutions like pitching changes--both are typically lacking in the "result of play" mode. My resulting games take about one hour depending upon how many breaks I need to refill my coffee cup but do not expect batters adjusting their gloves or pitchers shaking off signs so three hour games condensed into about one hour seems like a good enough compromise.

5. The visual quality of my Twitch recorded games might not appeal to everyone. I use OBS Studio for my video software to stream to Twitch and I allowed OBS to adjust my settings based upon both my computer rig and my internet connection. While I get full HD while I play OOTP21 you will get from Twitch a bit less visually. It does look better if you do not maximize your screen.

I do not have all of the 2020 Royals games prior to today's contest listed under kcstengelsr at Twitch, but you can find the games of last Saturday, Sunday, and yesterday. Today April 7 is a new day and a new game. Brad Keller is slated to face Jordan Zimmerman and I will give a link to my game at Twitch with some comment in today's Royals Rumblings as long as OOTP21 determines that today's game is not rained out.

One more thing. The times I live stream my Royals complete season games will vary based upon my own personal schedule so do not go by "times the games were originally scheduled." If "Wilson" my cat wakes me up early enough I might have the live stream going on at five in the morning the day of the game but once the game is completed a full recorded game will be left at Twitch so those interested can watch and/or listen to the game on their own schedules.

Everyone try to be safe during this virus. I do thank all of you doing essential tasks and I hope that my modest effort at some Twitch 2020 Royals complete OOTP21 season helps with your morale.