My Favorite Articles from 2021
It's a clip show!
Sometime toward the end of the 2020 season, as short as it was, I decided that I wanted to go back to writing for myself. I’ve told this story before, but I started writing on my own little blog mostly as an outlet. I had always wanted to be a sportswriter and while my career took me to the marketing side, I still had that passion. Then I got laid off back when everyone was getting laid off, so I decided to start writing.
From that first site, my “career” took me to Pine Tar Press, which was amazing. Following that, I was part of the group that started the Kansas City local page of Baseball Prospectus, which was very cool. Then when they closed up shop on the local sites, I wrote for BP proper some, started my own Medium account to keep Friday Notes going (I’ve literally written them every Friday since sometime in 2011) and eventually landed on Royals Review. All of it was fantastic. But ultimately, I wanted to write for myself. Seth Keysor, who writes the fantastic Chief in the North newsletter, said it best awhile ago in that he wanted to write without thinking about SEO or making a post quota or anything like that.
And so, I marinated on how I wanted to go about writing for myself. I could start a Wordpress site again, but that’s just so…drag. I could go back to Medium, but I don’t know, it just wasn’t doing it for me. Then I actually was thinking about Seth’s newsletter and how much I enjoyed it when I realized that writing a newsletter was absolutely perfect and everything I wanted to do. So I spent some time coming up with the name and then my uber-talented wife created the logo and site headers and all that and I was off to the races. My first post was ready to go for February 11. I was just going to welcome people to the site. I had some posts ready so I wasn’t launching blind.
And the Royals traded for Andrew Benintendi on February 10. Immediately, I felt like I was in my element again. So I wrote about the big trade that brought Benintendi to Kansas City. From there, I got to put up some of what I had already written and then I got to analyze spring training some and then ultimately regular season games. So far, the site has been free. I know I’ve said this before, but there will come a day when it does not remain free. I’m sorry about that, but I want to be able to do some cooler things and I hope when I do start charging sometime in 2022 that you’ll come along for the ride. But I digress.
The whole point was to tell the story of how Inside the Crown originated. I never even remotely expected how much fun it’s been or how amazing the support has been for this little newsletter. So thank you for an incredible 2021 here and once the game comes back from its lockout, I’m excited to bring more and hopefully even better analysis in the years to come.
But this is the dreaded clip show, my friends. I’ve always done this privately just to go through what I liked (and didn’t like from the previous year), but thought it would be fun to go back to look at some of what I’ve written here over the past year-ish and highlight my favorite articles. So I hope you’ll take this stroll down memory lane with me. Moreso, though, I hope you’ve all had an amazing holiday season and will have a happy new year and that your 2022 is even better than your 2021. You all mean the world to me.
You may or may not remember early in the season that I was so unbelievably sure that Jorge Soler was going to take off that I had filed away a bunch of gifs of him hitting the snot out of the ball and was just ready to fire away once he launched a home run. Early in the year, the weather was frigid and the wind was kind of crazy and I think it held up a ball maybe in the game before this one that frustrated me so much. But he finally got it against the Rays and I just knew he was back on track. I was also wrong, but I liked this article a lot.
I always had a very real fear of mailbags because what if I put out a call for questions and nobody asks one? That’s a rough look. But I bit the bullet on an early off-day and asked for questions from my amazing Twitter followers and readers and got some outstanding ones. It was fun answering some of these and the one about the bad outfield hurt because, oof, they were especially bad early in the season.
I don’t know if this is my best or my favorite, but I was struggling early to figure out what to write on Monday mornings. There was just so much to tackle since the last time I wrote on Friday and I wanted to hit everything. But I also didn’t want to go super in depth on every single game. So the Weekend in Review became a thing. It’s usually pretty long, but it could be much longer, so just deal with it. Anyway, when I do start charging, this will be a free feature every week.
Losing Makes Writing Less Fun…Usually
The Royals lost a lot of games in a row in May. You might remember. I at least got to have some fun with one morning’s newsletter.
Before they cracked down on the sticky stuff, there were a ton of no-hitters around the game and people were wondering what was going on. I wanted to tackle that, so I spent some time looking at why hitters can’t hit anymore. A lot of people want you to believe it’s because they’re focusing too much on launch angle or not caring if they strike out, but ultimately, it’s because pitchers are just insanely good.
In the end, Whit Merrifield had his worst offensive season since his rookie year. But at one point early, it was even worse than that. So I wanted to look at why he was struggling. I don’t want to take full credit for him turning things around, but I will. I just said I don’t want to. From the date of the article to the end of June, Merrifield hit .331/.356/.507. You’re welcome.
Kris Bubic’s Jekyll and Hyde Changeup
Bubic’s changeup is probably his best pitch, but it was also getting beaten around for much of the season. The problem on the surface was obviously location, but I wanted to look at why he was missing down the middle with that pitch so often, so I became a screenshot warrior to see what was different on good changeups and bad.
I wrote a bit about the upcoming 40-man roster decisions the Royals would need to make. I was not correct on some of their decisions and I didn’t even mention Nathan Webb or Collin Snider. Why are you even reading this?
The Royals were 38-35 after the break and generally looked competent. Many thought it was just them destroying their draft spot, but there’s definitely value in winning and I wanted to look at what that value was, including some teams that turned decent finishes into much better seasons the next year.
I polished the ol’ crystal ball to look at the 2022 pitching staff. Honestly looking back on it now, I’d write it differently, but that’s kind of the fun of the Royals pitching staff moving forward. There are a ton of directions it could go and any of them could be very good for them in future seasons.
And my most recent favorite thing I’ve written is about what it would look like to extend Bobby Witt Jr. RIGHT NOW. Is it going to happen? Probably not. But the Royals would do it in a heartbeat and there is something to be said for generational money. Of course, Witt already has generational money probably, so that’s part of why it wouldn’t happen. Or maybe why it could. But it won’t. Unless it does.
You know, looking back on things you’ve written really highlights how wrong you are. Or maybe that’s just me. Still, it was fun to look back on the year that was and now I’m ready to look ahead to the next year. Hopefully this lockout ends soon and we have some real news, but I remain quite confident that there won’t be any games impacted. I can’t wait for the first Weekend in Review of the season or the first mailbag and I’m thankful for all of you for sharing that with me. Happy New Year, everyone! We’ll see you in 2022!
Happy New Year, David! Looking forward to your coverage of the 2022 AL Central champs next summer!
I'm looking forward to reading about baseball again just as much as you are about writing about it. Here's to a happy 2022 for both of us.