Royals Rumblings - News for January 8, 2021

I was kindof tempted to just leave the year as “2020” up above since it feels like this is all just one big continuation of it.

AND NOW FOR THE BIG NEWS OF THE ROYALS DAY! “Former Royals manager Ned Yost spent first summer of retirement canning vegetables”. No, seriously, that link is not a rick roll (but this one is).

“Well, we planted for the first time a bunch of tomatoes,” Yost said. “We planted okra, we planted cucumbers, we planted bell peppers. We planted jalapeno peppers. We planted corn in the garden. We planted squash. You know, I didn’t know, I was like, ‘Why are we planting squash,’ and then you figure out how to make the squash casserole and you figure it out. It was great.

“I learned how to can this summer. So we made our own salsa from the tomatoes. You know, we probably ate bacon and tomato sandwiches four days a week, because the tomatoes were so good. My daughter loves okra and she likes pickled okra. So we pickled okra, we make pickles, we, you know, we did the whole gamut. I’m telling you what, I’m looking forward to doing it again this year.“

You know what? After 2020 and after this past week, this is the lead news story we need.

Who is planting what in their garden this year? Anybody? Farmhand, I know you have something to share.

Royals Farm Report doesn’t have any new articles but they did tweet about bringing back the black and blue jerseys so they get a mention.

I’m so glad Fansided fixed whatever on their website wasn’t working with my setup because they’re getting the most linked articles today.

• At KC Kingdom, Leigh Oleszczak states “Kansas City Royals are one of the busiest teams this offseason”
• She also suggests “Hunter Dozier has opportunity to bounce back in 2021”
• At Kings of Kauffman, Mike Gillespie (slideshow) asks “Should the KC Royals look outside for ideal lefty bat?”
• And he also does a little midweek news and notes column

Unfortunately, Royals Reporter, Royals Blue, and Bleeding Royal Blue don’t have any articles from the last couple of days but they get a shameless links to bulk up the word coun— I mean, to help promote Royals blogging!

Max already stole the only big story in baseball yesterday, creating a front page article about the Francisco Lindor trade.

I suppose I can still link to Ben Clemens at Fangraphs breaking it down.

Cleveland started this offseason by waiving Brad Hand in a futile attempt to save $1 million. That followed their pre-season trade of Corey Kluber and in-season trade of Mike Clevinger. They shopped Lindor all season rather than sign him to an extension. At every turn, they’ve looked to economize, and this is merely more of the same.

While shedding Lindor will feel disappointing to fans expecting the team to compete for the AL Central crown in 2021, trading Carrasco is in some ways even harder to digest. He was the longest-tenured member of the team, and clearly a team leader. He’s on a team-friendly contract; he’d command far more than his current salary in free agency. With another 25 days of service time, he would have hit 10 years of major league service time, which would grant him 10/5 rights and the ability to veto any trade.

In theory, Carrasco would be just as tradable then. There’s a small chance, however, that he would have refused a trade and that Cleveland would be stuck with the salary. Again, that shouldn’t be a problem. Carrasco is a bargain at that rate. There’s just one sticking point: Cleveland frequently behaves as though they’re unwilling to accept any chance of being forced to pay a player’s salary...

At the beginning of this offseason, we already knew that the Mets would look to spend and Cleveland would look to scrimp. In this trade, both teams are what we thought they were. For New York, it’s a portent of how the team will behave under new management — we now project them for the third-highest WAR total in baseball, behind only the Dodgers and Padres. For Cleveland, it’s less portent than confirmation. We now estimate their 2021 payroll at $40 million, the lowest mark in the game, and shedding talent in exchange for payroll relief has been their aim for years now. Which of those two is preferable is in the eye of the beholder, though I know where I fall – on the side of winning baseball.

If I were a Cleveland fan, this can’t have me very happy.

Hey remember that raging COVID pandemic (Houston detected its first case of the more contagious strain yesterday)?

There’s also a couple of COVID-related baseball stories:

Home run king (I said what I said) Hank Aaron got his COVID vaccine this week.

Hall of Famer Hank Aaron was vaccinated against the coronavirus (COVID-19) at the Morehouse School of Medicine health clinic in Atlanta on Tuesday. Aaron, 86, hopes that his willingness to receive the COVID-19 vaccine will inspire Black Americans to do the same, he told The Associated Press.

Yesterday, Max linked to a story about Tommy John getting COVID. But there’s another oddball twist to the story.

Former pitching legend Tommy John is in the midst of a three-week long battle with COVID-19. After reports surfaced that he is a coronavirus denier, John disputed the claims in an interview with The Associated Press. “I’m not a denier. I’ve had it, baby,” John told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

While John is not denying the existence of the coronavirus, his son, Tommy John III, has been spreading misinformation about the virus and global pandemic on social media.

We’re going to be doing a rerun this week. Fortunately, it’s a new year but that just means I can reuse any game from the past and not break my “each game can be used just once per year”. This is one of my favorite tracks from Xenoblade Chronicles. While the others are energy rock songs or ballads, Snowy Mt. Valac is a quiet, relaxing tune. A couple of times, playing the game late at night, I stopped to listen to the music and fell asleep