As you may have seen, I have not been able to write much in the past month. My last post was on July 27th, and I talked primarily about the Royals’ performance on the basepaths via Statcast data.
Since then, I missed out on covering the Trade Deadline, Bobby’s rise to stardom, and Cole Ragans suddenly becoming a possible “ace” for the Royals long-term, which is crazy to think since he got such a lukewarm response from most Royals fans after he came over in the Aroldis Chapman trade.
Quite frankly, I missed a lot on this blog over the past month. But it wasn’t because I wanted to by any means.
It wasn’t like I was starting a new blog or working primarily for another website, which has been the case for me with some other blog projects I have started in the past (my longest-tenured blogs have been a San Francisco Giants one and a Euroleague blog).
I still follow the Royals daily, even though it requires me to listen to more games or follow it on the Gameday app right now due to my professional schedule. Furthermore, I still love covering the Royals, even though they were officially eliminated from postseason contention yesterday after their Tuesday loss to the Pirates.
Unfortunately though, being a full-time blogger isn’t really a reality unless you’re hustling something else on the side.
I have a full-time professional job in education and I love serving my school and community in KCK. In fact, this is my 14th year in education, which is crazy to think about since I really didn’t think about going down that path out of high school or even initially in college (I was actually a business major at Gonzaga in undergrad).
That said, my professional life and personal life has to take priority, especially during this time of the year.
Usually, I am able to get through it, and still churn out a few posts here and there. However, professional and personal challenges this year required my full attention over the past 30 days. As a result, blog posts stopped here, and honestly, my coverage of the Royals on X (still feels weird saying that) and other avenues (i.e. Pitcher List, Discord, etc.) ceased as well.
I thought about shutting down the blog on a permanent end at times this month. In fact, a couple of weeks ago, I think I was nearly there, brainstorming a post that I would share here to thank everyone for following and for their support since this started in 2019.
But over the last week, as things have died down (barely) and with me seeing some hope on the horizon, I started to get back into following this team again. And today, I was greeted with this notification on X from the IBWAA.
It was an unexpected bit of positive news in what otherwise had been a rough professional day up to that point.
And it definitely was a sign to perhaps get this thing going again.
The Royals are not very good, but they are Kansas City’s baseball team. Thus, diving deep into what is going right (and what is not going well) is something that drives me and gives me a lot of joy not just as a baseball fan, but as a citizen of Kansas City which has been my home for now 10 years.
I’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback and encouragement from everyone on social media throughout this day. And I can’t thank everyone enough for their support, even with such a long layoff from my last post.
But the regular posts will be back soon. The deep dives will be coming. And be prepared for all those crazy types of data being brought up when talking about this Royals roster and organization as a whole, and the direction of the club for 2024 and beyond.
Thanks for sticking around, even amidst the break.
The Royals and Royals fanbase is special, even with things as low as they are in 2023.
And that special Royals story needs to continue to be told.
Mr. O’B. welcome back, my favorite deep diver. I was worried that you might have a serious health issue. So glad that’s not the case. Meanwhile, keep diving because our boys are so far under water only a really dedicated spelunker will find them.
[…] It’s funny because I was probably on pace to obliterate my 2022 total going into August. However, professional life caught up in a major way, and I was not able to attend as many games as I hoped to during August and early September (I had […]