Royals Rumblings - News for May 28, 2020

Cody Clark spent a long time in the Royals farm system, and a little time in the Majors. Now he’s an advance scout, reports Alexis Brudnicki at MLB.com:

“I hadn’t spent a whole lot of time in the big leagues as a player, and I got to spend three years doing that and seeing the best players in the world. It was an amazing time for the Royals obviously, going to two World Series. So that was cool, but totally unexpected. They knew me six years as a player in their system and my baseball career was over, and they just wanted to get me in the organization to coach or possibly manage down the line, and then it took a different turn.”

After the ’16 season, with Clark committed to return to the Kansas City bullpen the following year, he delved into another discussion with Sharp about the future. When Sharp mentioned to the former backstop that the organization was looking to add an advance scout and was wondering if he was interested, he said, “’Absolutely,’ and I jumped all over it.”

Sam Mellinger watched the Royals player evaluation process.

A trio of the prospect gurus at MLB.com took a look at the most hyped right-handed pitching prospects in each organization in the last 20 years. The guy they highlighted for the Royals has done OK for himself.

A good memory:

The public fight between MLB owners and the players’ union has spanned a couple months now, so Craig Edwards at FanGraphs made a handy timeline to keep it all sorted.

Kenny Kelly at Beyond the Box Score notes the creation of a two-tiered system among workers, which MLB’s latest proposal resembles, is a common union-busting technique.

MLB Trade Rumors is keeping a running log of teams’ decisions on paying minor leaguers following Oakland’s last-minute announcement that they won’t be doing so after June 1. At FanGraphs, friend of RR Dan Szymborski also has a comprehensive roundup of the minor league pay situation.

While it appears these players might be ineligible for unemployment since their contracts still exist, the More Than Baseball site (a resource for players) has a page encouraging them to apply for it, noting that the payments they’ve received are not wages but stipends.

Related to all of this, Sheryl Ring at BtBS spoke to labor lawyer Eugene Freedman about how difficult unionizing the Minors would be.

What will happen to the individual MLB players who opt out of playing this summer?

Baseball America’s latest 2020 mock draft ($).

Inside Roy Halladay’s addiction to pain pills.

The National Women’s Soccer League will play a compressed season in the form of a month-long, single-site tournament in Utah. It will begin June 27.

Golfer Phil Mickelson sees promise in the idea of doing ‘The Match’ every year, pulling entertainment value from the amateur golfers’ rivalries in their own sports.

An app that puts fans’ cheering and booing up on stadium video boards...what could go wrong?

Read along with J.K. Rowling’s newly-released chapter book The Ickabog, which is being released roughly a chapter at a time on this site to encourage people to read it aloud with their kids.

Photography lesson: How to spot a deceptive crowd photo. Telephoto lenses can be used to make public spaces look more crowded - so while the photos are real and undoctored, they can still be misleading.

Speaking of public spaces: Walt Disney World wants to begin reopening on July 11.

A baby koala was born in Australia, the first birth of the first season since so many koalas died in the brush fires. Her name is Ash. [cry emoji]

NASA and SpaceX will try again on Saturday to launch a craft to the International Space Station after threatening weather scrubbed yesterday’s attempt.

A fun question from Reddit: what movie would be better if it didn’t have a happy ending?

Programming note: I will be back on Wednesday Rumblings next week, provided the question “what day is it?” resumes having any sort of meaning.

MUSIC: The Killers - Spaceman