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I am not really looking at this from the winning viewpoint. I would like to see young players get some time in, and it would be great to see baseball, if only on TV. I never thought 2020 was a championship year for the Sox. It was to be one more building block before everything went to hell.

It makes me happy to seriously discuss baseball division implications.

I would like it if you read my work too, but this is not my web site, and I can't directly promote myself. But you want to write again, I encourage you to do that because there are all kinds of benefits to it, even if it doesn't get published. I am working on something now, and I don't know if it will ever see the light of day, but it is helping on the emotional side. Reporting now is important. The public needs to be informed to protect itself, and the country needs to take this seriously. We don't need idiotic conspiracy theories. This isn't about Trump or Biden or either political party. The losses are going to run deep and some may never fully recover. The public should understand one thing: An honest media will have to report some bad news at times, and scapegoating does no good. And calls for opening the country up right now are beyond irresponsible. Some of these people have some serious issues.

Agree this is probably just a way to keep the baseball conversation going, which is fine. It’s a good way to stay optimistic until it’s too late to play in 2020. Hopefully the situation is a lot better by June and they can start gearing up for a shortened season. If it ends up being 60-80 games, so be it.

This is probably wrong but I’m of the opinion that playing in a tough division raises the competitiveness of your team if they are on edge and crushes them when they are far off. Sometimes just expecting to cruise in a bad division makes you worse.

Dude, come on. The mortality rate is clearly a function of what the hospitals can endure. If they are truly overwhelmed then the mortality rate skyrockets. better treatments and better usage of ventilators is happening, but only because we aren’t overwhelmed in most places right now. If there was no time to learn, if every country just let it burn through like New York, then even the best efforts would still have huge casualty rates. The Imperial study was explicitly what you said a few weeks ago you were thinking of...do nothing and see what happens until everyone is immune. Thanks to the Imperial study even the UK realized that was insane. So no, that study is still valid, because everyone chose a different path.

C - AJ Pierzynski 1B - Paul Konerko 2B - Tadahito Iguchi 3B - Joe Crede SS - Juan Uribe RF - Jermaine Dye CF - Aaron Rowand LF - Scott Podsednik SP - Mark Buehrle SP - Jose Contreras SP - Freddy Garcia SP - Jon Garland CL - Bobby Jenks

This thread is reserved to log a history of past drafts from our White Sox Interactive Dynasty League. We will be migrating that league over to Sox Talk over the course of the 2020 season. Thanks! 102605

The CVCL has a storied history. So you would have three games indoors and four outdoors. I think it's doable.

Also correct. But in a pandemic, the more populated countries will obviously have higher pure numbers, and that's my point. more people>more people getting sick>more people dying(just in pure numbers) which is why per capita is a better measuring stick.

Deaths per capita is a better statistic tbh. Of course the US leads in deaths, because we're the 2nd most populated country to be hit hard and you can't trust the numbers coming out of China.

Ozzie is one of my all time favorite players and managers both.

It'll also mean more chances to beat up on the cubs for more than 4 games a year with this temp realignment. Honestly, it would be kind of fun to play some teams more often that we don't traditionally play, get to see some new players and form new rivalries. There are a number of teams in the Cactus League that have intriguing young players like the Padres, A's, and Reds.

Yeah China can be effectively removed from this conversation. USA has third highest population in the world, removing China, they're the second highest. India is pretty interestign. I can't speak to the habits of the country but I am going to guess they're less transient or something leading to their proportionally low numbers. At work I work with a team over there and they just got put on lock down at the beginning of the month I believe. My main contact was pretty freaked out but said he doesn't know of anyone who's contracted it. I'd be interested to see the daily death rates of other natural leading killers (heart attack, flu, pneumonia, cancer, etc.) and see how their daily trends have gone over the past 6-8 weeks or so when the COVID deaths started coming in. I listened to one doctor on NPR who said the rates of those causes of death are falling in comparison to the pre-established norms. I don't know what data he was citing/using though but I cant definitely see that being the case. If someone is getting treatment for a cancer, their immune system is compromised as a result and then they contract COVID and die, what killed them? I'd imagine the credit would probably be given to COVID but if the person wasn't receiving treatment for cancer they'd in all likelihood be able to overcome COIVD.

I like it. A couple of games over .500 probably gets a playoff invitation. Also, great for development of young guys playing decent opponents every day. We also have exceptional depth at both starting pitching and catchers. Like our chances of making something interesting out of this crazy season.

At this point, there really is strong evidence worldwide that it's not 1 person per 1000. 50% asymptomatic still seems at the upper limit compared to what most who have studied it have said but I can't rule it out, but to get to 1 person in 1000 as a death rate, you need >90% of people to have it to be asymptomatic. The US is reporting 4% mortality rates right now, and mortality rates lag behind infection rates, but I'd believe we'd plausibly wind up with at 2-3% casualty rate assuming we still avoid the hospital overwhelming. There's just no way that the US actually has 5 to 10 million cases right now, for the numbers you're suggesting - and just to go back to where this conversation started, the tests in Colorado would have shown a much higher rate of antibodies present if the US did.

This Reds blog is worried about the Sox: https://blogredmachine.com/2020/04/10/cincinnati-reds-radical-realignment-big-challenge/ The Dodgers are the obvious kings of that division. The other four teams are all close, but have some fatal flaw. The Sox are uniquely built for this scenario, but will need their youth to perform. The Reds have improved their offense a lot, but their defense is...shaky at best. Angels may have the most top heavy team in the league. Indians are also top heavy, with a lot of industry previews having them just behind the White Sox due to this. Ultimately, I'd expect both Cactus League wild cards to come from the West, depending how they do the scheduling.

Detmers. Would be shocked if he's available at 11.

https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2020/04/11/andrew-yang-joe-biden-trump-attack-ad-gary-locke-ebof-bts-vpx.cnn Earlier in this thread, there was a worthwhile discussion of trying to take the high road, not politicizing things...but ads like this come directly out of the 1988 playbook. It’s beneath the office of the Presidency to resort to transforming an Asian-American into a nefarious “foreign agent.” While this type of crap happened after Pearl Harbor (concentration camps like Manzanar) ...that was almost 80 years ago now. There’s simply no excuse for it today. Worst of all, it’s simply another passing along of the buck in an interminable series of them, an attempted distraction, and shirking of any responsibility for the Federal government’s heretofore pathetic response to Covid-19.

Just off the top of my head, mainly favorites: 1B: Big Hurt. 2B: Durham. SS-Ozzie. 3B-Robin. LF-Zisk. CF-Lemon. RF-Dye. C-Fisk. P-Buehrle, Hoyt, Peters, Horlen, Jenks. DH-Dick Allen

I don't think you and I are saying the same thing. There are emerging views that with a larger portion of the population being asymptametic (potentially as high as 50%) and just general underst-estimating of the overall count (much more so than initial estimates), that the mortality rates may be massively elevated (still well in excess of the flu so I'm not doing some flu comparison here). Obviously...if you don't social distance, you have more infected, hospitals crash, and mortality skyrockets (but that is a different variable driving the mortality than the variable I am discussing). That said...basic math says if I think 1 person dies out of every 100 (if hospitals are safe) but instead, it is actually 1 person per 1000...you end up at a dramatically different point of the basic mortality curve. And from there, you tweak mortality based upon the stress & capacity of the hospitals, including relevant equipment, etc to treat and ventilate, etc. You have to look at all the independent factors and then when you run the model, you blend in the components to come up with new projections. Social distancing is the single biggest reason we have contained it and you can't lax very much. The widely held wisdom is you need 90% social distancing to shut this thing down in 3 months (doesn't mean you have killed it...but that is what you are probably talking about). If you are only at 80% of population doing Social Distancing...it is going to take 4 months. Anything 70% below and you just flat out won't contain it. That is why it will be paramount once we do knock this down that everyone is ready to rapidly identify and respond (including rapid shutdowns of borders, etc) until they actually have a cure and/or an effective way to treat this thing. Further, the R0 has been fundamentally lowered due to this measures (moving from 2.5+ to 0.6). R0 < 1 would indicate the virus will continue to dwindle and eventually die-out over time. To go a little deeper, there is also emerging research being done on select comorbidities and what is driving such the high rates of mortality within subsets of the population and an emerging UK study is believing the COVID virus is getting into the body by latching on to ACE2 receptors. Specifically patients with hypertension, diabetes, and other cardiovascular diseases tend to take groups of drugs which are known as Ace Inhibitors and/or angiotensin receptors, which cause an individual to put out more ACE2 receptors, which increase their susceptibility to the infection (and depth of the infection). This only explains these particular comorbidities, but obviously research is being done broadly and who knows whether any of this holds or not.

Welcome back. Hell of a memory you have. I hope you can say the same thing about logging on to ST 50 years from now Also as owner of Soxtalk, just want to tell the rest of you, welcome aboard. Make this place your home and feel free to venture to the other parts of the board too. Go Sox and stay safe during these unique times!

I see some are forgetting how legit the Reds look.

I would buy this but think about the numbers. If there were a few thousand infections over a month, the deaths would be in the dozens, and since California was smart and closed down early enough the late March spike was avoidable. Out of a state of what, 40 million, a few thousand infections is not any sort of widespread immunity. That was the idea challenged by this data - that somehow half the world would already be immune. A few thousand extra cases and a few dozen extra deaths changes the overall curves slightly but doesn’t change the evaluation of what worked and what didn’t. More worrisome is that it might mean there are more hard to identify clusters out there, and if we don’t give social distancing several months, then these hidden clusters will explode.

Chris Murray from UWash (the national model Trump admin has been relying on) just stated that if the social distancing doesn’t go at least through the end of May/early June...the peak numbers we are experiencing these four days will return again with a vengeance in July. CA, FL, TX, PA still to come...Detroit is nearing, along with New Orleans and Chicago, but then you have the DC area, Baltimore, Houston, Philly, etc. His model has blipped back up about 1,000 in the last 24-36 hours to 61500. Of course, that model is also based on the expectation of continued stay at home for the next two months. Going from 200-240,000 to 100k to 60k in the span of a week is now turning into a trap. Because it means that putting everyone back to work again May 1st makes it patently obvious we’ve made the decision to kill another 40,000-80,000 Americans in order for Trump to get his way with the economy...and he’s not going to be able to force every individual state or governor to relax their rules without creating one Constitutional showdown after another. I can just see the Fox headlines now. “Those scaredy-cat Dem governors and mayors don’t love their country. They’d all rather we don’t go back to work because they want to destroy the economy and prevent President Trump from being re-elected. The cure is worse than the illness itself blah blah blah.” US now only 183 deaths behind Italy...at least we’re not passing them on “Resurrection Sunday,” both those will be the headlines for every Easter newspaper carrying over from Saturday’s news.

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I have that view and there have been a lot of rumblings in California that some of the heavy flu cases may in fact have been early COVID cases in California. Stanford has some researchers digging into it.

I'm here. I can't believe I was still able to log into my old user name after 9 years.

Occasionally, the power structure has to let one through to keep the widespread corruption under wraps. When allowed to do so, reporting absolutely holds truth to power. The huge issue is that media companies are being bought up and controlled by those same power brokers, so they can control the narrative.

I don't think that. I think there are a lot of good people that aren't allowed to do their job properly and have to cave to those people in order to keep their paychecks. My comments were more geared toward management than the individual journalists themselves. It's a power play by upper management. Sorry for not being more clear on that. I think at the higher levels, there is a lot of manipulation going on. At the lower levels, I think there are lots of arguments about what gets published and what doesn't because sales and dollars. Sorry for the confusion. I believe that the press is the 4th branch of government, and being a slave to profits like every other company is dangerous.

Where you able to investigate Ted Cruz’s father?

I agree with at least some of what Jack Parkman says, or at least I think I do. It is very hard to be a real independent journalist within the corporate structure today. Many reporters do not get to report what they may want to report. I am a journalist and have done a great deal of historical writing on the JFK assassination. I will tell you that no one who has a prestigious journalism job will even speculate that there was a conspiracy to kill Kennedy. They won't have a career left if they do. I read an extensive biography of J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover played a large role in the investigation of the John Kennedy murder. Yet, this book only devoted one page to the Hoover investigation, and it said next to nothing. I found out from a friend of the author that the author would never have gotten his book published if he tried to delve into the Hoover investigation of the assassination. Then the media went ga-ga over Bernie Sanders and his socialism. Most don't even know what socialism is. I swore they treated Sanders as if he were Stalin and the rest of the Democratic field ran for the hills. I'd like to know one thing: If capitalism is so great, why do so many people not have good health care? Chris Matthews was a big part of the political and corporate structure. Won't miss him.

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Due to Covid-19, I wasn't able to be inside the vet's office when my cat was put down this week. It was painful enough having to say goodbye to her, but not being able to be with her when she passed is something I really regret. I completely understand the reasoning, it just sucks.

I believe that there are independent journalists that have a moral compass but they get fired or neutered fairly quickly. When was the last time a politician or CEO was actually held accountable by the media? Where's the investigative journalism that took down Nixon, gathering enough evidence that not even his own party could defend him? Where is that when it's needed now more than ever? It doesn't exist. Excuse Me for distrusting the media when a major newspaper like the Washington Post is owned by Gollum incarnate himself, Jeff Bezos. Until we start putting people and the truth over profit, nothing will change. Btw you might have misunderstood me, but I think a lot of it is intentionally misleading. It takes a brain to pick out the facts from the bullshit. I haven't posted in this thread for a while, Maybe I'll just continue to stay out.

Trump is not well informed by choice. He lacks intellectual curiosity and instead relies on the opinions of people who share a similar ideology. Trump has a very limited vocabulary..probably on par with a 7th grader. That indicates to me that his internal conversations are as shallow as a puddle. Trump is a narcissist , a know-it-all and a bully. I don't think he ever learned a lesson from bullying the wrong guy in the school yard or otherwise got his ass kicked for mouthing off. He was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, got every break in the book, cheated contractors out of getting paid, cheated on three wives, and now is trying to leverage a freaking pandemic for his own personal and political gain. So don't tell me that people want this dude gone because CNN or MSNBC do not treat him fairly. They want him outta there because now they know who he is.

In my defense, I told them DON'T stop...get it? Get it?!

These are all false. No Lyle Mouton mentions?

Hard to argue there. Hahaha. Nicely done.

I'm here... thanks Shaun for copying all this over. Looking forward to many more years of this league.

Yep.

I'm on here....Let's keep it going!

C- A.J. pierzynski 1b - paulie 2b - Eddie collins SS - Luke appling 3B - robin ventura LF - Minnie Minoso CF - joe Jackson RF - Harold baines dh - frank Thomas sp - ed walsh sp - chris sale sp - Mark Buehrle sp - billy pierce sp - ted Lyons cL - Keith foulke

Long time reader, don't post on here all that often. Lot of conjecture going on here right now! Which is cool, because this is a message board, where opinions can be thrown about without recourse. That said, I wish some of you would go back to talking about how tomorrow's weather 'would' have impacted the game. How inconsiderate the Sox are for not cancelling before people take the day off work, or how big of a dick move it would have been to allow 33,000+ people inside the stadium in to sell beer, etc. just to make money before cancelling it, which they could have done at 9:00am. Maybe, some of you can talk about how bad we look after low-balling Manny Machado. At least some of those topics, we all have minor knowledge on. TURN OFF CNN FOLKS! This isn't political at all! TURN IT ALL OFF! If some of you really don't think there will be a 2020-2021 basketball or hockey season, or a 2021 baseball season with fans, etc. you are doing exactly what the media wants you to do! Panic! This specific virus will never go away permanently. Just as H1N1 is still around, AIDS is still around, etc. The thousands of brilliant scientists in the world will come up with something to help with this. I'm worried that with the relentless negativity, along with the isolation we are experiencing, some of you might not be around to enjoy the 2022 World Series Championship (played in Chicago, with fans). Relax, wash your hands and watch Tiger King!