Royals Rumblings - News for October 27, 2021

At The Athletic, Alec Lewis expanded on the Facebook post in which Bubba Starling announced his retirement from baseball.

David Lesky plays roster musical chairs and includes these options:

If they trade either of Merrifield or Lopez, I still believe there’s no hole at shortstop or second. Adalberto Mondesi probably slides to third as the every day guy, but you can argue that they still need to have a backup plan, so that provides a hole at third base. Their options are:

Kris Bryant - It’d be a huge splash and won’t happen, but that would be a nice big bat to put in the middle of a lineup that’s starting to finally skew young.

Josh Harrison - He’s had an OPS above .330 four times in his career, but each of the last two seasons, so maybe he’s figured something out there? If you buy that and trade Merrifield, he could be the guy to hit at the top of the lineup.

Kyle Seager - I would pass, but he could provide some home runs at least. He’ll be 34 next season, though, and I just don’t see the point of giving someone in his mid-30s a deal that he’ll likely require coming off a season where he had a .285 OBP. Just let Mondesi play there when healthy.

Chris Taylor - He’s versatile and always gets on base at a good clip. I have a feeling he’ll have a ton of suitors based on the fact that you can feel pretty good about him everywhere, but he’d be a nice fit on a team playing musical chairs.

Alex Duvall may have talked himself into being OK with extending Andrew Benintendi? Kind of?

Over at Beyond the Box Score, here’s why the Braves will definitely win the World Series, and why the Astros will definitely win the World Series. The latter link has an amazing URL.

Atlanta outfielder Joc Pederson shared his perspective on being to the Braves, and everything that has happened to go from “shouldn’t these guys be sellers, too?” to the World Series.

World Series Game 1 started on a high for Atlanta with a dinger hit by Old Friend Jorge Soler. But the news swung to a downer note by the 4th inning, when the team announced that the injury that chased starting pitcher Charlie Morton from the game was a right fibula fracture. He kept pitching on it, recording three outs that included two strikeouts, before ultimately leaving the mound. Holy smokes.

14 different teams have won the World Series in the past 20 years. Atlanta is trying to join the parity party and become the 15th.

Shohei Ohtani was presented with the Historic Achievement Award, which MLB created after Cal Ripken, Jr.’s consecutive games streak for when baseball players do cool stuff.

The Padres interviewed Ozzie Guillén for their managerial job. Guillén has been working as one of the hosts of a studio postgame show for NBCSN White Sox broadcasts.

Kansas City’s NWSL team is getting a stadium - the first time a new stadium is being purpose-built for a women’s soccer team.

I don’t have kids, so I didn’t know that the safety testing that deems whether car seats are safe is done by...the car seat manufacturers themselves? And thus, those safety certifications are worth less than the stickers they’re printed on. Some new legislation is afoot that would change that.

Some advice on Halloween costume Don’ts and Dos from Lifehacker.

This letter writer for Ask a Manager is frustrated that their direct reports aren’t as psyched as they are to return to the office. And this letter writer may have caught her coworker, uhhh, working on himself at his desk. [headline at that link is NSFW] DO NOT DO THAT AT WORK.

Is this 19-year-old picky eater a jerk for having Burger King delivered to a restaurant their family was eating at?

I just got back from a brief family trip to Cape Cod that concluded with an even more brief stop in Boston. The only thing we really had time to do was a tour of Fenway Park, which I liked even more than I thought I would. So a question for the group today: do you enjoy guided tours of stuff?

A raw song about divorce by The Mountain Goats is viral on TikTok. Things make sense!

...and therefore, that is what today’s SOTD is.