<\/p>\n
Can I interest you in an embedded Bluesky post to set the mood?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
The Royals are back in action this afternoon, hosting the San Diego Padres in Surprise. They\u2019ll face off against MLB The Show stud but real-life underperformer Matt Waldron, the last known (to me, at least) knuckleballer in MLB. Here\u2019s the lineup they\u2019ll be using:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Kyle Isbel gets to bat fifth in today\u2019s contest, likely to give him a third plate appearance before letting him head off to the golf courses. And don\u2019t worry, that\u2019s not the nearly-87-year-old Cookie Rojas (His birthday is March 6. Happy early birthday, Cookie!) but instead former White Sox infielder Josh Rojas getting the start at third as he tries to reclaim the success from his time with the Diamondbacks of three and four years ago. Bobby Witt Jr., Vinnie Pasquantino, and Salvador Perez are the only Royals to start a second game in a row. That\u2019s fitting as they are the heart of both the lineup and the team in general.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Ryan Bergert will be taking the mound in a semi-competitive game for the first time since he exited a start against the Cleveland Guardians early in September with forearm tightness. He\u2019s someone we\u2019ll be watching closely to make sure he\u2019s healthy heading into the season. He might not even make the opening day rotation, but he\u2019s likely to be very important as the year goes on.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
They announced who all would be pitching after him during yesterday\u2019s broadcast, but like a rookie, I chose not to write it down, assuming I\u2019d be able to find it easily somewhere today. Don\u2019t worry, I\u2019ll have that cleaned up by Opening Day. The Royals do have the following pitchers listed on their game roster for today, and I imagine most of them are going to get an opportunity to pitch:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Of that batch, I\u2019m most interested in Morgan and Black as they both seem to have outside shots at making the bullpen out of Spring Training. I had forgotten Heasley had returned on a minor league deal last August, and even if I had remembered, I wouldn\u2019t have realized he was still in the organization this spring. Colleran is another guy to watch closely, even if he\u2019s unlikely to make the Opening Day roster. He had a 1.83 ERA in A+ ball last year, though with a FIP over 4.00 and not nearly enough strikeouts.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
(EDIT: Anne Rogers came through!)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
The outfield situation should be interesting as well; the Royals have Tyler Gentry, Gavin Cross, Kameron Misner, and Carson Roccaforte on the game roster outside the starters, and all of those guys have something to prove to the team, though only Misner seems remotely likely to break camp with the big club.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Today\u2019s game will only be broadcast in online audio, but it\u2019s free through either the Royals\u2019 site or the MLB App. In the past, during such broadcasts, they haven\u2019t played commercials but have instead allowed us to soak in the sounds of the ballpark between innings. Hopefully, we\u2019ll get to enjoy that again this year.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.royalsreview.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Can I interest you in an embedded Bluesky post to set the mood? The Royals are back in action this afternoon, hosting the San Diego Padres in Surprise. They\u2019ll face off against MLB The Show stud but real-life underperformer Matt Waldron, the last known (to me, at least) knuckleballer in MLB. Here\u2019s the lineup they\u2019ll […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2293010,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[341711,440907],"class_list":["post-2293009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-royalty","tag-game-threads","tag-royals-spring-training"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Spring-Training-Game-Thread-II.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2293009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2293009"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2293009\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2293011,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2293009\/revisions\/2293011"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2293010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2293009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2293009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2293009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}