Royals Links: Ned Yost, Wilmington’s Prospects, TV Schedule, & More

Mandatory Credit: Rick Osentoski-USA TODAY Sports

Other than the start of spring training games, this last week wasn’t all that eventful. The Royals didn’t make any moves, and the biggest news out of camp was the retirement announcement of a guy who wasn’t going to make the big league roster anyway. Even with a lack of news, there are always neat things to read on the internet, so let’s do that now.

– Andy McCullough of the Kansas City Star wrote an excellent piece on Ned Yost, going into detail on Yost’s personality, his past failures, and how he’s had to adapt his managing style to fit this current crop of players. Yost takes a lot of heat from fans (probably too much), and I’m certainly not saying he’s without fault, but I did enjoy reading this to get a better understanding of who he is.

– FOX Sports Kansas City’s Jeffrey Flanagan outlined a handful of big-name prospects who will be playing at High-A Wilmington this season, including 5 of the team’s top 10 prospects. Needless to say, if you get a chance to head to Frawley Stadium this summer, do it.

– Speaking of Wilmington, another guy who will be playing there this season is Terrance Gore. Gore’s not a top prospect, because he can’t do too much with the bat. What he can do, however, is run really, really, ridiculously fast. See: this video, posted by Nathaniel Stoltz, who writes for Fangraphs. He goes from home to third on that triple in about 11 seconds. That’s what 80 speed looks like.

– Flanagan wrote another article at FSKC, but this one detailed the news that a franchise record 156 games would be televised on either FSKC or FOX Sports 1. Of the 6 non-televised games, none will come after August 14, meaning any potential push to the playoffs will be televised for Royals’ fans all over the region. I’m not that old, and I remember a time when less than 50 games were on TV, so the fact that I’ll get to watch nearly every single game this year makes me absolutely giddy. Plus, MLB Network could possibly pick up any of those games not currently on the television schedule. For a guy who lives three hours away from Kauffman Stadium, this is simply fantastic news.

– Some other fantastic news broke over the weekend regarding a new system MLB Advanced Media has developed for tracking individual plays. It won’t be fully operational in every ballpark until 2015, but they will be using technology to track things such as a fielder’s route to a fly ball, the batted ball’s arc, and the acceleration of the fielder. The full story, including a video of an example of this technology, can be found here. This is huge, and there are so many areas in which this advancement will be useful. I’m very excited to see if the data will be for public use, because if so, we’ll have access to even more information that can help in player evaluation. More information is always good.