Rockpile

The Rockies’ pets are so cute they might make you forget about the bad thing

Rockies news and links for Wednesday, April 15, 2020

By AJ Hendrickson@ProbablyAJ Apr 15, 2020, 6:00am MDT

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I’m going to be honest with you: If I hear or read the words “COVID” or “coronavirus” one more time, I might have to pull a Wayne Brady (NSFW).

So I thought, “Hey, what if we did a whole Rockpile without saying those words?”

And then I realized I’d have to say them each once to explain which words we weren’t going to say.

So I thought, “Hey, what if we did a whole Rockpile and only said each of those words once?”

Welcome to that Rockpile.

MLB players, team employees participating in coronavirus study | ESPN

[Darn] it, ESPN!

So then I thought, “Hey, what if we did a whole Rockpile and only said one of those words once and the other one twice?”

Welcome to that Rockpile.

Some science people have developed an antibody test so we can try to figure out how many people have already had that thing we weren’t going to talk about. The science people think if we can get a better idea of how many people have already had the thing, then we’ll know how many people have had it.

As Molly Knight of The Athletic reports ($), the 10,000-person study group includes people of various ages, genders, and socioeconomic backgrounds. Knowing how many people have had the thing will give us a better idea of how widespread it is and the true death rate, both of which are crucial when considering how to restart life.

Oh, and good news about that too:

MORE: Mavs owner Mark Cuban will also be part of this group.

“We need to get our sports back,” Trump says.
— Andy Slater (@AndySlater) April 14, 2020

MLB Player Contracts In A Shortened Or Canceled Season | MLB Trade Rumors

If you’ve been wondering how contracts will be affected by a short or nonexistent season, take a look at this article. If you don’t care, please move along.

For the rest of you, here’s a quick overview:

Players will receive a total of $170 million for the time they don’t play, whether this is two months or the entire season. If they play, salaries will be prorated based on the number of games played.
The players association took a hit in the salary category in order to secure a full year of service time for major league players regardless of the number of games played.
This year of service time will not apply to players who haven’t played a full season, such as Bo Bichette. It also won’t apply to players who may have made their major league debut in 2020, such as Jo Adell.
The service time will apply to free agency. So Mookie Betts may not play a single game for the Dodgers.
Arbitration raises will likely be lower in 2021, but MLB says they won’t use shortened-season stats to determine arbitration raises forever. No indication of what that actually means, but I’m sure if MLB says it, then it must be true.

All In Challenge: Sports icons donate experiences to fight hunger | ESPN.com

If you have lots of money and want to donate it to buy food for people who do not have lots of money, you have two choices:

1. Just donate the money or food.

2. Participate in the All In Challenge and bid on the chance to donate money in exchange for some definitely-not-weird experiences that sports stars and others have donated.

So if you’ve ever wanted to play 3-on-3 with Shaq (opening bid $5,000), go golfing with Peyton Manning (current bid $50,000), or have Justin Bieber come to your house and sing “One Less Lonely Girl” ($10 to enter the drawing), good news!

Complete guide to 2020 Jackie Robinson Day | MLB.com

Today is Jackie Robinson Day, which means that all players will be sitting at home in their no. 42 jerseys. You can watch a bunch of highlights from Jackie Robinson days past and some other Jackie Robinson-related programming on MLB’s various platforms (MLB Network, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc.).

★ ★ ★

Ugh. That was way too much stuff about those words we’re not going to say (except when we did). Let’s hit the fun stuff.

Last week’s awards were both landslide victories.

Best Vacant Stare: Kyle Freeland

Maybe he’s being hypnotized into returning to 2018 Kyle Freeland form.

Cutest Couple: Charlie Blackmon and Nolan Arenado

This entire photo shoot was awesome, but Nolan’s face in this picture just sells the whole thing.

Side note: I can’t believe I neglected to include Nolan and Hi-Chew as an option on this one. I should resign my post immediately. (Thank you, chickenfoof, for alerting me to this grievous error.)