Royals Rumblings - News for April 17, 2021

Song of the Day

“Annie Pardami” by The Hollow Ends

Full disclosure here, the singer is a friend of mine and I think he’s extremely talented. Give it a go!

I hope everyone had a great #NationalHornyDay. I hope each and every one of your (consensual and respectful) wishes came true.

We didn’t get any Friday night baseball, but the good news is that we get 156% the Saturday baseball we were originally thinking we were getting this weekend!

I am all in on posting the Singer freak out in UF when a game is postponed due to rain.

This team is loose and I love it.

On Friday, semi-retired beat writer, Flanny, took to Twitter to air a strong opinion about the 2019 Nicky Lopez callup.

Lynn Worthy at The KC Star writes about Hunter Dozier’s return to the lineup while dealing with his thumb injury.

“You never want to start off the season going 0-for-whatever. It’s part of it,” Dozier said on Thursday. “I feel like I never really got into a routine or anything. I had the weird injury with the thumb Opening Day and took a couple days off, then we had the off day, rainout. Stuff like that.

“It was in the back of my mind. I tried not to think about it. I was less than 20 at-bats into the season, where hopefully I’ll get 600 at-bats. So I was trying to think of a bigger picture instead of just the little 0-for-15, 16, whatever it was.”

With Dozier batting in the bottom third of the order and producing, it gives the Royals’ lineup added heft.

After all, that’s 25-30 home run power in the No. 7 hole. In his most recent full season in 2019, Dozier batted .279 with a .522 slugging percentage, 26 homers and 84 RBIs.

Sticking with the The Star, in this week’s Mellinger’s minutes (now in audio form!) he spotlighted the change in Greg Holland this season, Mike Matheny’s managerial style, and a pet peeve of his.

Megan Garcia with mlb.com writes about how the Royals are celebrating each win and savoring them.

“Every game you can win in a big league stadium, in a big league season, it should be celebrated,” third baseman Hunter Dozier said. “Years in the past, we’ve done celebrations, but nothing to this extent. I love it. I was definitely one of [the players] who was pushing to get all that stuff.”

A championship belt will soon be incorporated into postgame celebrations that already consist of a fog machine and blaring music in the clubhouse. However, the belt will also be used to celebrate any feat a player accomplishes, whether the team wins or loses.

The Royals Reporter aka Kevin O’Brien took a long look at Junis’s’s’s resurgence.

Leigh Oleszczak at KC Kingdom writes that Jakob Junis’s’s’s’s’s success might keep Kris Bubic out of the rotation.

The Negro League Baseball Museum has designed a new bobblehead.

For those that have the desire to workout in a Chiefs themed gym...

SpaceX and NASA have combined powers and are headed to the moon!

I got a big time chuckle out of this.

Adrenaline Rush of the Week

Using a VPN to watch the Royals

I have a friend, let’s call his Kosh Jeiser and he’s a cord cutter. He, like many of you, made the leap a few years ago after being sick of being tethered to a cable contract for so long. Now instead of paying $100/month for a bunch of channels he doesn’t watch, he spends $98.99/month for a bunch of shows he doesn’t watch. It’s a lot different. He’s sticking it to the man AND saving $12.12 annually. What’s not to like?

Well, having to overcome a ridiculous amount of obstacles in order to watch his favorite baseball team is certainly one thing to dislike.

Cord cutting has been relatively easy for him. He doesn’t watch live TV much anymore outside of sports. Everything he watches is on demand and that’s where this was always headed. And I think that (shoutout to Drew Magary) Big Sports is figuring it out. They know that they are part of an exclusive club where people aren’t willing to wait to watch their content and, thus, likely to throw a bunch of their money at in order to watch in a timely manner. As a society, I think we’re less and less likely to wait for what we want, but that’s another article for another website.

I bring all this up because he’s been experimenting with the MLB.tv/VPN situation over the last few weeks and it has been quite frustrating and adrenaline inducing. He has his devices bogged down with the VPNs. Every time he sits down and turns the game on, he approves of the MLB to locate him, and await to see if they’ve discovered that he’s not actually a Royals fan in the heart of Lithuania.

From what he’s experienced, there are three outcomes:

“An error has occurred”

“Blackout Restrictions”

“Play Ball”

If you get either of the first two, he’s learned to try a different server, usually a US server location that isn’t in the blackout area, and start the whole process over.

He has said that it’s quite an adrenaline rush. I’m not recommending to try Kosh Jeiser’s method of partaking Royals baseball, just sharing his experience.

Good luck to Kosh moving forward.

Have a Saturday everyone!