Royals Rumblings - News for November 24, 2021

A big honor for Salvy:

Salvador Perez was voted the best catcher in baseball with his selection to the All-MLB First Team on Tuesday night, Major League Baseball announced on MLB Network.

Perez beat out San Francisco’s Buster Posey for a spot on the All-MLB First Team, a comprehensive honor that covers the full breadth of a big league season with no distinction between leagues, complementing the All-Star Game selections that are awarded just past the season’s halfway point. Fifty percent of the vote came from fans, with the other 50 percent coming from a panel of experts.

Perez was the American League’s starting catcher in the All-Star Game, and this All-MLB honor — Perez’s second in as many years — is another nod to his historic season at the plate. The 31-year-old appeared in a career-high 161 games in 2021, won his fourth Silver Slugger as the best offensive player at his position and finished seventh in American League MVP voting.

Pitching coach Cal Eldred talked to Alec Lewis at The Athletic, including this on Jackson Kowar:

What I’m about to tell you is a huge deal: The jump from Triple A to the big leagues is as big as I’ve ever seen it. That’s for everybody. For hitters, for pitchers, it doesn’t matter. It’s as big as it’s ever been. You get game-planned at a level these guys have never experienced before. And there’s a lot of information they take in.

Jackson knows he has good stuff. He needed to come up, get his feet wet and find out how they were going to attack him. He has three plus pitches. That’s what’s amazing about the kid. A really good fastball. An off-the-charts changeup. And his slider played well; it had some really good numbers on it. And he has a plus curveball at times.

Down the road, he’s probably going to have all four. But he came up. He experienced starting in the big leagues. A lot of that unknown is now gone. He didn’t have dominating games, but he had innings where he put good stuff together, and that’s what he needs to build on.

Also at The Athletic, Jim Bowden took a look at trade and free agent matches for every AL team, and had this to say about the Royals:

The Royals are committed to building their team through player development and scouting, and prefer to promote from within, a formula that led to their last World Series championship in 2015. However, they are targeting three positions outside the organization this winter: a left-handed reliever, a veteran starter to help guide the youngest rotation in MLB and a hitter who can play all over the field. In terms of the lefty reliever, the free-agent market is flooded with options, with Jake Diekman perhaps offering the most upside; if the Royals think he can have a bounce-back year, he’s a good gamble. In terms of a veteran starter, Rich Hill would be a good mentor for their young starters while providing quality innings. In terms of a versatile bat, I don’t think they’ll pay the price for Chris Taylor or Eduardo Escobar, so perhaps a player like Leury García or Josh Harrison would make sense.

Royals owner John Sherman was named Kansas Citian of the Year by the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce.

The Royals gave us powder blue uniform pants! ....in Photoshop form!

The Tampa Bay Rays signed Wander Franco to an 11-year deal worth up to $223 million. Franco has played 70 MLB games, and this deal is similar in spirit to the one the same team did for Evan Longoria when he was a young’in. Franco is still just 20 years old.

Following our own Max Rieper’s piece here about trading for Sonny Gray, here’s a news item noting that the Reds are open to trading Sonny Gray.

This headline about Klay Thompson caught my eye - he’s “not afraid” of getting injured again, despite having a torn ACL and ruptured Achilles in the last two years. My last shoulder surgery was over a decade ago and I still have a fear it’s going to pop again. What’s Klay’s secret?!

The safety and whereabouts of tennis player Peng Shuai remain uncertain.

Alison at Ask a Manager is rounding up stories of office holidays gone wrong. I don’t have any coworkers at my day job, so I will live vicariously through everyone else’s tales.

I’m not sure if “Dollar-And-A-Quarter Tree” will fit on a sign, but Dollar Tree is raising prices to $1.25 on all items that are currently $1. Life tip - that store has an amazing selection of glassware and small vases.

Apparently you don’t need to chill your pie crust? (Related: do not make pies in the air fryer.)

Today’s Reddit question: What is an overly romanticized job that’s actually not that great?

Adele requested that Spotify stop defaulting to ‘shuffle’ when her album is queued up, and they obliged. Do you listen to albums in order?

Speaking of music streams:

I am responsible for some large number of both.

With tomorrow being Thanksgiving, I just want to take an opportunity to express my gratitude for this community. I’m glad each of you has decided to spend some time here today.

SOTD: “Crowded Table” by The Highwomen.