It’s been another busy first couple of days of work, which explains why I haven’t been able to do much posting or Tweeting regarding Royals Spring Training. I hope to share some thoughts about what we have seen in Royals Cactus League games at the end of the week, as a lot is going on in Arizona to pay attention to and be encouraged about as Royals fans for the upcoming season.
With that said, I have been involved in a lot outside of “The Royals Reporter” over the past couple of weeks.
In this post, I highlight those items, which include a Royals Fantasy Draft with Cristian on “KC Chase to the Pennant,” my latest piece on Pitcher List, and a special announcement regarding myself and Farm to Fountains, an excellent Kansas City Royals-centered web site.
All-Time Royals Fantasy Draft on “KC Chase to the Pennant”
Cristian and I last week hunkered down and pursued a passion project of both of ours on “KC Chase to the Pennant”: an all-time Royals Fantasy Draft.
In a snake draft format, Cristian and I exchanged picks and deeply discussed our favorite Royals and why the ones we drafted fit on our “All-Time Royals” roster. It was fun to assemble our respective teams and bring up some names that probably have been forgotten by most Royals fans, especially after the World Series in 2015.
The full podcast can be found on our YouTube page and in the embedded video below.
We hope to get some kind of early Cactus League recap either later this week or on Monday of next week. In the meantime, enjoy this Royals fantasy draft, leave a comment, and subscribe if you haven’t already!
Five Shortstop Sleepers in Fantasy for 2024
As many of those who follow this blog know, I am a regular contributor to Pitcher List, where I still dive into baseball but more on a fantasy-centered end. My experience working with Pitcher List is why I refer to PLV and other rolling chart data from Kyle Bland, Pitcher List’s Director of Analytics, in many of my posts here on the Royals Reporter.
For the past two years, I have been a regular weekly contributor to the “Batter’s Box” column during the season and actively contributed to Pitcher List’s Fantasy section this offseason.
In my latest post for Pitcher List, I wrote about five shortstops to pay attention to in the later rounds of drafts. That includes shortstop Carlos Correa of the Twins, who had a rough second season in Minnesota in 2023. One can access the article about Correa and the other four shortstop “sleepers” in the embedded Tweet below.
If you play fantasy baseball in any capacity, Pitcher List and PL Pro should be a bookmarked site and regular subscription. While sites like Baseball Prospectus and Fangraphs get most of the love on the web from baseball diehards, the team at Pitcher List, led by founder Nick Pollack, features some of the brightest minds in baseball, and not just fantasy either (though fantasy is what Pitcher List does best).
Joining the “Farm to Fountains” Team
I’ve always hesitated to join other sites, especially the Royals variety.
I remember joining a site briefly after I had just started the Royals Reporter in 2019. While the site gave me a bigger audience, I disliked the writing and team experience, and the pay certainly wasn’t worth it. I only contributed one article for that site, and if you do find that article here, let me know because it’s an interesting one in retrospect.
Thus, the sour experience prompted me to continue to build Royals Reporter as an individual site, and after four years, I am happy that I pursued that route. This blog has been a labor of love and a place where I can focus on Royals baseball and not too much else around it (which isn’t easy to do with all the stadium tension between the Royals and the Crossroads community).
That said, I have recently been encouraged by much of the work from many Royals content creators. And nobody else sticks out more than “Farm to Fountains,” which was founded by Preston Farr, one of the best Royals prospects and Minor League experts.
Preston has created something special on “Farm to Fountains” and has helped the site grow incredibly in months. The site consists of a cadre of talented writers covering everything from the big league club in Kansas City to the Fireflies in Columbia (and even the Arizona Complex and Dominican Summer League in some cases). Jared Perkins, who also has worked for Just Baseball and Prospects Live, is also part of the “Farm to Fountains” team and is someone I tremendously respect as a baseball content creator and person in general.
After talking with those two over the weekend and discussing the vision for both of our sites, I felt it made sense to join the “Farm to Fountains” team before the start of the 2024 regular season, as Preston announced on Monday.
The positive feedback about the announcement has been amazing, and I can’t thank everyone enough for the kind words and positive encouragement. I will still be producing content for the Royals Reporter. It’s not like this blog is going away anytime soon. However, I expect to produce regular weekly content on “Farm to Fountains,” with my first piece hopefully published on Thursday.
This is an exciting time for Royals baseball fans…
Not just concerning the team but also in terms of content.
Kansas City baseball fans will have a lot of great places to find coverage of the team, and that should make the outlook of the 2024 season even more promising.
Photo Credit: Jayne Kamin-Oncea/USA TODAY Sports
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