Crown Gems: Saturday Link Potpourri

After spending the last 5 days pulling together the 5 part Royals Instructional League Primer, another edition of Crown Gems is long overdue.  Included in this edition is a collection of links that I found interesting enough to flag throughout the week.  Enjoy your Saturday Link Potpourri!

The Hardball Times:  Alex Pedicini examines the run scoring environments in the minor leagues in a two part series.  Part 1 covers Triple-A and Double-A while part 2 covers the lower levels.

Beyond the Box Score:  Total MLB Home Runs This Century – Graph of the Day

Big League Stew:  Walk Toward the Light: Your 2009 Kansas City Royals

FanGraphs:  Posey on the Pine.  Good to know that the Royals are not the only team in MLB that makes questionable personnel decisions.

MLB Trade Rumors:  The Cubs DFA’d 26 year old RHP-Thomas Diamond for assignment on Monday.  He was not claimed and the Cubs outrighted him to Triple-A Iowa on Thursday.  I’m not saying the Royals should have acquired him, but I sure hope they did their due diligance and gave it some serious thought.

The Hardball Times:  Gil Meche’s fastball

Royals Authority:  The Monsters Crush a Nation.  I don’t get the concern over Olivo returning to the Royals for the 2010 season.  At $3.3 million he would be a solid option to pair with Brayan Pena.  I’d sure rather pay Olivo $3.3 million than to keep Buck around who is making $2.9 million this year and is arbitration eligible this winter.  For what it’s worth, according to FanGraphs.com, Olivo has a WAR value of 2.3 which converts to a $10.4 million value on the FA market.  It’s hard to imagine any team paying Miguel anything close to that this offseason, but based on the other FA catching options he almost certainly could make more playing elsewhere next season.  With that in mind, he will probably decline his side of the mutual option and take his chances.  Then again, he seems like a good family guy who values loyalty so I wouldn’t be shocked or upset if he returned for 2010.  Olivo’s low OBP is not the problem.  The problem is that in addition to Olivo, the DH (Jacobs), C (Buck), OF (Anderson), SS (Betancourt), U (Bloomquist) all have an OBP of 0.310 or below and get a fair amount of playing time.  I just had a depressing realization that all of those guys could be back for 2010.

Disco Hayes:  Getting Defensive.  Disco goes outside the box and produces a thoroughly enjoyable piece of work in the process.

Baseball America:  Cardinals Void Wagner Mateo’s Contract and More on Cardinals Voiding Mateo Deal.  This could get real messy as the Mateo camp is preparing a potential lawsuit against the Cardinals.

Baseball America:  Organizational Standings, Plus Short-Season Best And Worst

Here is an update on Lucas Holko

FanGraphs:  The Unclutch.  Yeah, it is about the Yankees and A-Rod, but it is interesting none the less.

Royally Speaking:  Mike & Mike should probably rename their show Dumb & Dumber.  This is priceless.  I don’t mind Golic all that much, but Greeny is one of the many things truly wrong with ESPN these days.  The only thing worse than his proposed lifetime achievement Cy Young award for Mariano Rivera?  His work in the broadcast of the Chargers and Raiders MNF game the opening weekend of the NFL season.  The only thing keeping Mike & Mike from being the most worthless programming on ESPN is Sports Nation, and both make me long for another ESPN original movie.  Thankfully I have MLB Network.

Big League Stew:  Baseball’s regular season and postseason are just fine, thank you.  I agree …

Big League Stew:  Judge allows inmate to see beloved Red Sox play in Kansas City.  In defense of our legal system, watching the Royals play defense could be considered a form of punishment.

Joe Posnanski:  What Our Eyes See

Kansas City Star:  Royals’ veteran trainer to retire.  Nick Swartz will be gone after the season which begs the question; will this be enough to get Rany out of his self-imposed exile/hibernation?  If not I hope he did a little fist pump when he heard the news.

Big League Stew:  Answer Man: Denard Span talks beaning, OBP, Target and Spam

TampaBay.com:  Where writing and baseball get tangled.