I really thought I wasn’t going to write again until September at the earliest.

It was really going to take something big to force me to write.

David Glass selling the Kansas City Royals falls into the ‘big’ category.

Also, being on vacation makes it easier.

And yet here we are.

KC #Royals owner David Glass has agreed to a deal for $1 billion with KC businessman John Sherman, a Cleveland #Indians minority owner, which will become official in November when ratified by the #MLB owners.

— Bob Nightengale (@BNightengale) August 30, 2019

Here’s the thing: I wrote a whole big article about Sherman buying the Royals. 1500 words were spilled, easily one of the longest articles I have written in a long time. But then the auto-save feature here shit the bed.

All of it was gone. All but 172 words. I haven’t felt this kind of frustration in quite awhile. It was soul crushing for someone who hadn’t written in two months.

So you won’t get my in-depth look at the move. I just don’t have the energy or time to re-write my thoughts. It was a good article too. It made me feel better about the fact I hardly write anymore. I can still do this, which I was starting to question.

So instead, here is the abbreviated version: I like the move. Sherman seems like a good fit, even if it feels almost too good. Yes, that is probably the worry of a Royals fan from before 2014. Trust me, it never completely goes away.

Back to Sherman. The move feels as good as we could expect. Honestly, I feel better about the new ownership than I would have if Dan Glass took over for his dad. While I’m thankful for the Glass’ keeping the team in Kansas City and making moves to put together a championship team, even this year ‘Good ol’ Dave’ couldn’t bear to eat money in a move that would have helped the future of the organization.

It always felt like Glass was more concerned about his bottom line than the product that was presented on the field. It’s unfortunate, but when I can point to numerous times he wouldn’t eat money in a trade (and I covered all this in the lost article. Zobrist, Cueto, Soria, and even a possible Kennedy trade just a month ago) than there is proof that Glass never believed in the saying ‘to make money in baseball, you have to spend money’. Hopefully that is not lost on the new ownership.

What does this mean for GM Dayton Moore or Manager Ned Yost? There is no way to know for sure, but a new owner might want his own people. Or he might want to stay with the old guard that went to back to back World Series’ and won a world championship. All we know for sure is that once we hit November and the sale officially goes through, it could turn out to be a wild winter. You can’t run from it, changes are comin’.

So that is the short version of what I wrote. Since we are only at 500 words, lets run through a few things since I haven’t written in months. It’s been a long time since I wrote anything on this blog. In fact, it’s been so long that I look like this now:

Okay, maybe I don’t look that old. But it feels like it. Also, that is Gandalf from the ‘Lord of the Rings’ movies. I’m not as cool as him. Or talented. I’m quite a bit shorter and not nearly as thin. What was I talking about again?

Oh yeah. I was going to bring up a few other items related to the Royals. Let’s start with Jorge Soler.

Soler currently sits at 38 home runs (as of this writing), which ties him with the Royals single season record that Mike Moustakas set back in 2017. So once Soler hits #39, he will be the new Moose. Who was the new Balboni. Who was the new Mayberry. 

The unfortunate part of all of this is that Kansas City is the only team to never have a 40-home run season from one of their hitters. Never. With Soler just two away, that record could go bye-bye as well. It’s amazing to think we are witnessing the greatest individual home run season in team history and it feels like a blip because balls are flying out of parks all across America at an alarming rate. And to think, just a couple seasons ago fans were ready to give up on Soler.

Looks like the Royals won this Wade Davis trade as well.   

Since this whole article is about change, it’s nice to see the team go and finally embrace the young talent and give them an opportunity in what has otherwise been a lost season. It was depressing as hell to see the team trot out the likes of Wily Peralta, Billy Hamilton and Lucas Duda for as long as they did. I get what the front office was thinking but it also felt like a colossal waste of time.

Look, this is a team that needs to know what they have with some of their fringe talent. Guys like Brett Phillips and Bubba Starling just need the opportunity to go out and get some experience at the major league level. Whether they sink or swim is undetermined, but at least give them a fighting chance. Putting out replacement level veterans (at best) to fill holes until some one is “ready” is so 2018. We all predicted what Hamilton would do. Most knew Peralta was going to be a dumpster fire.

If I’m going to watch my team go out and lose 100 games, at least give me the decency of doing it with players that may or may not be a part of the future. Penciling Lucas Duda’s name into the lineup from the beginning should have been a no-go. Instead, we got to see 119 plate appearances from a guy who wasn’t a league average hitter a year ago when he was in Kansas City and was even worse this year.

I know, it sounds like I am dumping on the front office and to some degree I am. They wanted to put up the illusion of contending (or at least flirting with .500), thinking the vets would perform better than expected and then they could turn around and flip them at the trade deadline. Problem was, most of them (if not all) regressed. Homer Bailey was the one true find and his pull from the trade with Oakland wasn’t much. 

The problem was that most of us as fans could tell it wasn’t working by mid-May at the latest. Instead of something being done soon after, we were forced to sit through two more months with these players that were just taking up space. I have no clue whether or not the Royals would have won a bunch more games if they would have sped up this process. For all we know, they would still be sitting with the same record they are at now, looking at another ‘Top 5′ draft pick. The point is that some of us would have preferred seeing the Phillips’ and Starling’s and Lovelady’s more than we have. Let the kids play, as they say.

Whew. Sorry about that. I’ve had months of that built up. Just needed to vent.  

So a month is left in the season. I want to see if these kids will flourish. Last year at this time was a fun time to watch Royals baseball, as they looked like a spry team looking to knock off some Goliath’s. That might not happen this year but a good ending to the season could be just the positive this team needs.

Maybe Bubba will start knocking the baseball around and Jorge Lopez will look like a competent reliever. Maybe Brett Phillips will make us forget about Moose and Richard Lovelady will look like the dominant reliever he was in the minors. Or we can just relish in the fact that we aren’t the Tigers. I’m game for that.

Also, maybe Dish Network and Fox Sports can settle their differences here soon. Sean would like to watch his Royals again before the season is over. Please?