Kansas City Royals players as memes from the Surreal Meme Bot Twitter account

Look, I’ll be honest here: I am this close to being out of ideas. Pitchers and catchers were supposed to report and Spring Training was supposed to have sprung. And yet, here we are. Still a lockout. Plus, the offseason hasn’t yet concluded. The 2022 Royals roster is still in flux. Will Carlos Santana be there? Will anybody? Eat Arby’s.

I sat down and thought for a very long time about what to write for this post. Sure, I could fire off a hot take about the lockout negotiations, but I just did that. I have done most things. See, by mid February, we are all losing our minds over here, secretly, and the arrival of baseball is water in the desert of content.

Therefore, if you want some solid Royals coverage right now, go elsewhere on our masthead. I have no more to give at the moment. Please take a trip down this “Royals players as” piece, but this time with Tweets from my favorite stupid Twitter account, the Surreal Memes Bot. Nothing is real. Welcome to Royals Review.

Who had the most nuanced performance in 2021? Who relies on an absolute elite set of skills that shore up starkly below average skills in other areas? Whose 2021 performance made people wake up the most? There’s only one answer. This is Nicky Lopez.

Ok I’m going off script here a little: this was totally the entire 2009 Royals season. Zack Greinke was good enough to distract from the background initially—the koala in a tree, so to speak—but that backdrop of profound disappointment and suffering through four out of every five games was brutal. Just brutal. The Chiefs were just coming off a 2-14 season, too. Terrible time for KC sports fans.

There’s an awful lot going on here and none of it makes sense, which is a sentence that you could easily apply to Jackson Kowar’s mystifying 2021 MLB debut. Kowar was nails in Triple-A Omaha and seemingly forgot how to pitch in ways that went well beyond simply doing poorly in the big leagues. Kowar’s outings certainly seemed like looking into the void.

This is Carlos Santana. After years and years of producing at a high level, Carlos turned into a pumpkin in his age-35 season. He hasn’t been an above average hitter since pre-pandemmy. Tym always wins.

“Oh no” is precisely what I said when I saw Bucket Boy Tyler Zuber every time he jogged onto the field from the bullpen. Zuber has pitched in two Royals seasons and has a career FIP of 5.96 in almost 50 innings. Please let me run away from another Zuber inning.

Who among the Royals is most likely to be a cat owner? We know it’s not Josh Staumont, whose prominent work with the Kansas City Pet Project was mostly dog-related. I think I’ll go with Brady Singer here. Like many cats, you never knew what you were going to get with Brady. When his two pitches were working, he did well. When they weren’t, uh, he didn’t. Plus, which animal radiates the most “I don’t need a changeup” energy if not for the cat?

Whit Merrifield led the American League in steals with 40. If anybody be stepping in 2021, it be him. This is Whit Merrifield.

I can’t believe I actually opened Fangraphs or Baseball-Reference for this stupid piece that I can’t believe you’re reading right now, but this frog meme got me thinking: who was the Royals’ best night hitter in 2021? Back in the day, “Day Banny” was a thing, when former Royal Brian Bannister would do very well in the day and very poorly at night. Anyway, the answer here is Hunter Dozier, whose .735 OPS at night was, well, night and day from his .588 OPS in the day.

This is Hunter Dozier, who may be a vampire.

Can you believe that Billy Butler started five career games in left field? Billy, whose nickname was “Country Breakfast” and whose Baseball-Reference page lists him at 260 pounds at only 6 feet tall? This happened in 2007, back apparently before eyes were invented. This is Billy Butler.

This is Ryan O’Hearn, who is most certainly cabbage.