Dick Allen

I am sure the players will all be vaccinated. CDC said late 2nd quarter early 3rd for some normalcy seems to be fair. What will be interesting is how many will get vaccinated. It’s going to take a while and many, I keep reading over 40% insist they wont get it. Who knows where we will be at. Go back 6 months and I doubt anyone really thought those fortunate enough to still be working would be working from home. It was 5 months ago POTUS was hoping for an Easter re open. The VP said the virus would be behind us by Memorial Day. Now it looks like it may get bad again. The other thing is the vaccine supposedly won’t give you full immunity. It will just make it more mild if you do catch it. I would suspect they will have some fans at the parks at the beginning, probably delaying opening day if that isn’t feasible in April.

According to POTUS at his rally, Covid 19 "affects virtually nobody".

ND football team has 4 positives. Keep on playing, maybe instead of just a messed up heart in a few of them the rest of their lives, you can get a couple of these players to die.

What good is protection when you swing at everything anyway? Once Luis establishes he won't consistently swing at pitches that cannot be hit hard, he will be good again.

He's already coming off of his idea to never seek more than a one year deal. He will be fine in a 5 man rotation. Let him pitch every 4th when the season is on the line and it matters, and tell him if Giolito or Keuchel or whoever is throwing well, and they were pitching on day 4, he will go on day 5. The guy is strange, a bit of a loose cannon, but can pitch. I doubt JR goes for him, but you never know.

4 automatic outs with Madrigal who should never have been drafted, and can’t hit the ball 250 next, and Abreu, who has no business batting 3rd in a major league line up, batting 3rd, he should be batting 7th, and Robert, now an automatic out should be batting 3rd, and Grandal catching.Why would Grandal be catching with James McCann on the team? I have learned a lot from gamethreads, all in a year when the Sox have been one of the best offenses in the game. Usually the more pre game complaining, the more runs are scored.

He missed the beginning of the season with what he is saying was strep throat, others believe it was Covid 19.

I think several have gone 108 AB without one. It is amazing how focused so many are during this great run on a guy who was sick and has not hit with any power since his return.

So you are an awful teammate if you opt out during a pandemic, comimg off of an injury, have mental heath issues, are expecting a child, and going through a divorce. A good high school or little league teammate, whatever level you are “coaching”, would never even miss a practice because the team comes before anything else. Let me be the first to write, I am glad I don’t have a kid on your team. And the WhiteSox making the playoffs for the first time in 12 years are making personnel moves to send Kopech a message. Can there be a hotter take than that?

What he did was fine and his teammates support his decision. Whatever the reason , Covid, his wife’s pregnancy, his marriage, his mental health, he wasn’t ready to go this year, and probably wouldn’t have contributed much anyway. It is no different than a star NCAA football player opting out of a bowl game. Are they quitters? It was the smart decision for Kopech and the White Sox, and I am no Kopech fanboy. He has some work to do to convince me, but in a way, his injury might be one of the better things that ever happened to him. I think he is going to be smarter both on and off the mound. One thing you don’t have to worry about is he will work his ass off.

Someone who went to the Chiefs game where they allowed limited fans, now has the virus. Everyone who was seated around him is in quarantine. Stupid to allow fans now.

Engel is being used correctly. Overexposed is bad. Nomar has to be the pick to click tonight.

McNeil was basically going to retire after the 2022Super Bowl. His plan was to do voiceovers and fill in work, buy an RV and Iive a simple lifestyle out west. In a way I feel for him, but the tweet was pretty stupid, and since he probably made some money and ad sales are probably near an all time low, firing and perhaps getting out of the contract probably trumps a long suspension.

That is my point. The randomness of it, and being slightly above average, if that, gets you to the dance, the incentive owners have for financial risk gets very small. Especially once a 7 or 8 seed gets to the World Series. It happens in hockey occassionally. Blackhawk fans couldn’t care less if the Hawks win their division. It’s making the playoffs. Hockey is fairly close to randomness as baseball. A cheap goal here, a shot off a post there, and it’s an entirely different result . But many say the NHL playoffs are the best of all, maybe because more teams have a legit shot than any other sport.

Say the Sox bow out in the first round this year. If 8 teams make the playoffs in 2021, what is JRs incentive to make a big financial commitment this winter know that , at best, he will have to win a 3 game series, which in baseball is pretty much a toss up most of the time? There has to be some way they don’t take away the incentive of winning the division . Obviously, it doesn’t happen all of the time, but math and logic would suggest the better team wins a best of 7 match up more often than a best of 3. The one and done,I can see why a lot of people hate it, but the best of 3 isn’t that much better to where you take almost all the advantages of winning a division over 162 games away. I always thought the one and done was genius because it added a playoff team and added one huge game. Those games were always fun to watch. The playoffs are such a crapshoot. The 2005 White Sox were 11-1, one of the most dominant postseason records ever, but they were one ball going through Tony Graffininos legs, a play he makes probably more than 99% of the time, and one improbable ElDuque performance from going out in round 1.