Matthew Lamar

For a dozen years, Royals Review hosted the annual SB Nation MLB Offseason Simulation, where 30 writers from the 30 team sites would get together digitally over the course of a weekend and, well, simulate the offseason. For five of those years, I ran the Royals, fake trading and signing free agents like a madman.

Yesterday, the results of the American League Most Valuable Player award were released to the public. As expected, Aaron Judge won, and as expected, Bobby Witt Jr. was the runner-up.

Thanksgiving is a holiday where we celebrate the basics in life: our family, our friends, our food, and our shared love of gigantic inflatable pop culture mascots floating through the streets of New York City.

About a year ago, Shohei Ohtani signed the biggest baseball contract in the history of whatever. It was a gigantic, 10-year contract with a total value of $700 million, demolishing the previous record held by Aaron Judge of $360 million.

Ah yes, the holiday season—capitalism at its finest. No matter how much stuff you have, there’s always room for more. Don’t have enough space? Amateur complaint. Go rent a storage unit and get more space already!

Superstar quarterback Aaron Jets signed with the New York Jets, one of the two National Football League teams in the largest media market in North America, two seasons ago. That it has not gone particularly well for either team has been a particularly lovely instance of schadenfreude, but that is a bit beside the point: outward observers might wonder how a team like the Kansas City Chiefs could compete against such a wealthy team in a big market.

Getting to the big leagues at all is an incredible accomplishment. Among the millions of college and professional baseball players who have stepped onto the diamond in the last century and a half, just barely 20,000 players achieved the status of Major League Baseball ballplayer.

This team is in win now mode

Power and speed generally exist on a spectrum. If you’re very strong or very fast, you likely don’t have the other end of the spectrum covered. Plenty of players are reasonably strong and reasonably fast, but it’s relatively rare to find a pure athlete who is extremely strong and extremely fast.

I remember exactly where I was when the Kansas City Royals traded Wil Myers. It was December of 2012, and I was in the midst of studying for my fall semester finals in my senior year of college. I remember having a conversation about the Myers trade with the only other Royals fanatic in my friend group. Neither of us liked it; Myers was the best prospect in baseball, the future of the Royals, and to see him traded along with Jake Odorizzi for a good-but-not-great starting pitcher with only two years of team control seemed silly. That the Royals were also getting some guy named Wade Davis in return was no consolation.