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Just for the record, we just added a fire reaction for the post reacts. Enjoy.

You keep spreading these lies and misinformation. People that are making $100 a week in regular work don't even qualify for enhanced federal assistance right now, and when there was $600 they wouldn't have met MOST state minimum thresholds to get any benefits; therefore they weren't eligible for the additional $600 - WHICH AGIAN, HAS NOT EXISTED FOR WEEKS. Additionally, if you are being claimed as a dependent and your parents received the stimulus check for households, you were not eligible for the $600 in additional benefits*** (Unless very specific circumstances were met that I post below) You're also talking about a hostess at a restaurant that... has no indoor business during a pandemic. A hostess who seats people at tables that aren't available to be sat. Let's use Illinois as an example, in order to get this fictitious $200 you've thrown on top of the $600, you'd have to have made $11,000 in your two highest paid quarters from the year prior (That's $198/wk benefits). You said she was making $100 in 5/6 hours (which is obviously a lie, because the going rate for a high school hostess in a regular mom and pop restaurant is $12-$14 an hour depending on minimum wage in the county). We'll say she earns $100/wk for the sake of this argument and just assume you were wrong about the hours. In her two highest earning quarters, we'll say she made a little extra and made $3000. Here's the good news, that eclipses the state threshold in Illinois of $1600) so she will qualify. Ok, so what does she get in benefits for her $3000? $54/wk. So, if she qualified because she somehow wasn't claimed as a dependent and her parents didn't get a stimulus check for her (which likely is not true), she was making $654 wk for a couple months. That restaurant shouldn't have even needed her position in the first place, and there was never any reason for a kid to take on any risk for her or her family to make $3000 every six months. The restaurant should have been supported by the government due to a forced demand shock outside of industry control. But none of that happened. Instead we have people like you going around the internet lying about circumstances to complain that some already criminally underpaid people might actually be making a little extra money to eat 3 full meals a day with their kids for once... during a pandemic where they're choice was go to work and risk the health of your family for $12/hr, or be shamed for... doing what was best for there family. And the humor of all of this, is you're sitting here arguing about something that equates to $34,000 a year if it were worked full time. $654/wk is $34,000. The maximum benefit in Illinois is $478/wk. That's $24,856. You're worried about a couple people making $34,000 because you think they're worth less than that. It's truly remarkable to me. And again... a high school student whose parents claimed her was not eligible for the $600 assistance so your story is complete nonsense.

If they're not ready to sign a big one year deal then the rebuild never ended.

If it wasn't clear enough, the President asked for sedition, and got it. This is exactly how the civil war in Rwanda was fought. Radio broadcasts whipped Hutu people into a fury, terming the Tutsis as subhuman, as cockroaches, and that people should exterminate them. Eventually it worked. Enter Donald Trump playing from the same playbook, and couching it in COVID. The President is inciting sedition.

If no one delivered your packages, and no one stocked the shelves and organized the amazon warehouses, amazon literally COULD NOT operate. If Jeff Bezos died tomorrow, Amazon would continue on as a growing and expanding powerhouse. Don't believe me? How's Steve Jobs doing. Sorry for the duplicate posts; rant over. It's just been so exhausting reading so many misinformed takes and opinions that are merely the regurgitation of Wall Street propagated nonsense.

Tim Anderson already has the catching position locked up, sorry

Start the rebuild. Seriously. We all loved the last decade, but you are chasing ghosts at this point. Its over.

Chicago, Cook County, Illinois....Union Brotherhood runs deep until there is a cash job waiting Poor Frank Thomas

Kmet a wasted pick, much bigger needs

Oh snap! Time to get to work!!!

Covid is just a one-day flu thingy. You can even debate Joe Biden if you have it.

Gotta wait until year 16 of the rebuild to go all in.

I could see them stretching him out in the high minors, AA or AAA then bring him up to the bullpen for the end of the season.

They stretch him out at a low level in the minors. He has very few innings under his belt. The most he threw in college is 65 innings. I would guess he needs at least 2 years in the minors to stretch out and fine tune his repertoire.

They landed 3 pretty big ones 10 months ago

This is the most crucial offseason in the last 15 years TBH, I understand it’s Jerry Reinsdorf’s money and he’s gonna do what he wants with it but damnit if he limits the spending now I have no hope in the front office to actually finish the job.

Excellent post. From what I've read from afar and seen from Lightfoot, does she even care as long as she's comfortable and safe? I hope and pray Chicago remains a vibrant city. Just on a personal note, my relatives are fleeing the great city of Chicago, so far for Arizona and Tennessee.

I would 10000% be okay with Cease being the centerpiece for Conforto, I understand his ceiling is high but if you’re signing Stroman/Bauer Cease becomes easily expendable and really shouldn’t even be up for debate in the front office.

AND SADLY, Illinois is far from the worst state or system. 20 states don't even allow part-time workers to file for unemployment period. In Florida that MAXIMUM weekly benefit is $275/wk. Louisiana 247, Tennessee $275, Arizona $240, Alabama $275. Illinois is the middle of the pack in payouts and rules and the entire system is a disaster here. Imagine how bad it is in Florida. It's exhausting listening to a bunch of middle class people do mental gymnastics to explain why the 50 richest people in the country just eclipsed the wealth of 50% of the US all the while being angered over $600/wk for 8 weeks for people who have always been exploited. And Chappas, I was making $2300/wk and my company was forced closed. Wonder if you were out screaming about people like me who have been forced to accept lesser paying jobs - I just took a 27% haircut - now, outside of my control and no fault of my own, after taking a 56% haircut on unemployment for a couple months. Trickle down economics has expanded the wealth gap faster than any economic model in the history of this country; sans possibly the Gilded age following the Industrial Revolution. The fact that people are still out here preaching this corporate propogandist nonsense is maddening for me. You should be fighting for your neighbor, the little guy, the people like you... not pandering to a bunch of people who are literally stealing from you in broad daylight each and every day. Someone tell me what "skill" it took to work in a manufacturing plant. All full time work is skilled labor; regardless of profession. This notion of skilled and unskilled workers was a fallacy created to demean and discredit the work of those who literally run the country; started by a Corporate elite to drive down the price of labor within the market. Don't believe me? Go ask why the meat factory workers couldn't close because otherwise we'd all starve. Seems pretty IMPORTANT to me. Seems to be worth more than $10/hr to me.

Here are the requirements for a young person qualifying: https://wdr.doleta.gov/directives/attach/UIPL/UIPL_16-20_Change_1.pdf Basically, if your friends restaurant was open for business, and she refused to return to work she was not eligible. They did expand benefits to allow students who had a job lined up for the summer or spring that was pulled to receive some benefits; as well as students who had to quit their job to take care of an ill family member. Lastly, let me add that they take your previous 12 months. If you just started working, or hadn't met the threshold, you qualify for no benefits no matter what. So for a student or high school kid with very limited work experience or history, it's very possible she doesn't even have a previous 12 months or 2 quarters worth of hours.

I wanted Brantley 2 years ago. He didn't get much play around here 2 years ago when everyone was so sure one of Adolfo, Gonzalez or Rutherford might be ready. Now he would just be another DH. He got 19 starts in the OF this year. He's no good to the Sox if he can't competently play the field anymore. Astros don't seem to think he can. Sox might keep Mazara . Funny thing was no one wanted him for what he was, a consistently good hitter against RHP. That Mazara would've been super on the Sox. That's why I always stuck up for Mazara . Consistent hitter vs. RHP with a chance to break out . He would've been a vast improvement over 2019 RF but instead he turned into an exact copy of them. Get the old DH I expect a decline . Get the young RF in the prime of his career and he gets sick and plays like crap too ? That hurt. I can understand how this year sucked for him . But him sucking for the Sox just continued our strange ability lately to pick exactly the wrong guy.

I'm really not willing to bank on JBJ just because he had a good september. That said, sox have been linked to him so many times. Wouldn't be surprised.

I don't think LaStella is going to sign anywhere to be a bench player.

Cease+Adolfo+Stiever for Michael Conforto OR Cease+James Beard for Brandon Nimmo Sign Stroman + Keone Kela Sign Tommy La Stella Re-Sign Colome If Jerry is all in and open then go sign Michael Brantley too Decline Mazara’s option C - Grandal/Collins/Mercedes 1B - Abreu/Vaughn 2B - Madrigal/La Stella SS - TA/Mendick 3B - Moncada LF - Eloy/Brantley CF - Robert/Engel RF - Conforto/Nimmo DH - Brantley/Vaughn SP Giolito/Stroman/Kuechel/Dunning/Kopech

Stoney was on the WS Talk Podcast. Some notes: - again repeated Ricky is great before and after the game, but didn’t have much positive to say about him in-game - hated the production from EE - very critical of the performance from Mazara - doesn’t think Sox should sign Bauer - extremely critical of Grandal’s defense, and said that Frank and Ozzie hated his pitch selection

They just need to have a transition plan that leads to Vaughn being the full time first baseman come 2023. Whether it's a 80/20 or 70/30 split next year with Jose getting most of the reps that then transitions to perhaps the opposite in 2022, I think the goal is to have Vaughn the long term solution for first base during this exciting window of contention coming up these next several years.

There are no state income taxes so not certain how much of the state economy is linked to tourism and the fiscal impact of closing the tourism and entertainment industry. Put on the dog and pony show and then let the Federal government bail you out because you back the commander in chief. Unlike Illinois where we will spend $77M on a make shift hospital nobody will use and worry about paying the bills later. Illinois/Chicago need Biden to win and hope the federal government will come through on funding or the city and probably the state will most certainly have to declare bankruptcy.....the end of Chicago as a destination may not be too far off. I think what Florida is doing is stupid but they have a plan as poorly thought out as it may be....although I am not a fan of the state and expect nothing less.

I think you simply need to keep Eloy the OF because you have Vaughn and Jose. Just get a strong defensive RF and tell Eloy to let Robert and that guy do their job and only go for balls that are clearly to him so he doesn't hurt himself and others. That is imo why Vaughn to RF is stupid. Vaughn in a corner maybe would work if you had Robert and Heyward in the other corners but not with Eloy out there. And if you get another good OF why would you put an even slower guy than Eloy in the OF to DH Eloy? Vaughn can play 5 games a year in the OF but that's it.

Then why did she persist to negotiate and her and Mnuchin continued making progress and then the president shut it down, before flipping and Meadows confirming it’s not happening before the election?

Something that really cannot be argued is that the Sox, currently, are almost certainly either at the peak of their prospect depth / farm system quality right now, or will be between now and next year's offseason, likely depending on what we do in terms of trading between now and then. We will be: 1) picking lower, in the draft; 2) have less draft pool money; 3) have less INTL money; 4) will pick lower on the waiver wire; 5) pick lower in the Rule-5 order; 6) will be keeping 40-man roster spots open for AAAA/fringe MLBers and "win-now" veterans / bench and pen pieces instead of using them for prospects, so there is less room on the 40-man; 7) we will generally be attempting to trade prospects for vets instead of trading vets for prospects ... ...for probably the next 5+ seasons consecutively. We ***really*** need to manage our assets best, right now. If we don't, we will probably fuck up both our win-now window and fuck up our ability to transition from the coming win-now period to a Cardinals-like spot-patch contention period after (where we can make adjustments year to year but still play competitive baseball for several years after our extended young guys' contracts end). That transition is important because if we don't manage our assets well now then we will probably be looking at a need to fully rebuild when our Moncada/Robert/Eloy/etc. group gets to the end of their deals, ala the Cubs current situation. Right now, as I count it, we have Kopech, Crochet, Kelly, and Stiever all IMO as blue chipper SP prospects, regardless of where they are nationally ranked, and Dunning, Thompson, Dalquist, Lambert, and Vera as as very good SP prospects also who very likely have an MLB future and aren't just the kind of fringe guys that we're used to. Vaughn is an elite hitting prospect and the best 1B prospect in baseball, and one of if not the best pure hitting prospect in baseball. Then there is still maybe some life in other areas, like perhaps Collins, Rutherford, Burger, etc. We still have a good system that may actually be a bit underrated ATM. Let's not just piss it away. In all likelihood if we manage it very well it will gradually diminish to a bottom third system over the next 2 or 3 years, and after that, it will really be a struggle to keep it on the high side of the bottom third instead of the middle or lower portion of the bottom third.

A rebuilding team will almost certainly give him a cheap major league deal.

Listened to fg podcast today and Meg Rowley from fg hates bauer:). They also don't like Arod talking up small ball despite not having bunted a single time his last 10 Career years. https://blogs.fangraphs.com/effectively-wild-episode-1598-call-it-like-you-see-it/

If we would have just shut everything down back in March and had a concerted federal response to help get all those business through the 2 or 3 weeks they would've needed to have been shut down we could have had everything open at 100% a long time ago. That time is way past us now. The problem is that opening at 25% isn't working either for a multitude of reasons. At this point in time, I don't know if there is a good solution.

There wasn't a need. They were drafting BPA.

That’s because he doesn’t know anything

I grew up as a Cub fan towards the end of the 60's. I could watch the last inning of the game after school. My dad was a Yankees fan and we started watching Sox baseball at night. That's when my allegiance changed. I still love those red pinstripe unis.

In this case, it's more on McConnell than Trump.

because JBJ sucks

Fixed it for you. Pelosi actually got a bill passed.

Pelosi passed a stimulus bill.

There's only one side that doesn't want to give too much to poor people after giving trillions to banks who committed mass fraud, and it's not the side Pelosi is on. There's only one side that worries about poor people maybe getting a couple extra bucks.

The whole thing. If the person was making $100 a week, they wouldn't be making $200 a week on unemployment, even subtracting out the extra $600. They be making something like 50 to 60% of what they were making. Unemployment itself has all kinds of minimums for how many hours a person has to work and earn before they are even eligible for unemployment. Someone making 4 or 5 hours a weeks at a minimum wage kind of job (which isn't going to add up to $100 a week either) wouldn't make those thresholds. To hit those kind of numbers at a minimum wage type job, you are probably talking 15-20 hours a week. Also if you are working a part time job as a high school student that means you are most likely living at home and a dependent. This means you aren't able to collect unemployment anyway. The extra $600 ended 2 and a half months ago when the GOP refused to extend it.

This doesn't really pass the smell test.

You think the unemployment stimulus killed small business as much a virus that caused consumers to stay in for 8 weeks and heavy restrictions since? You'll always be able to find micro stories like that, but it wasn't borne out in the macro data: 70% of those that returned to work in june/july were making more at home than their replacement job. Why go back? Well, people aren't idiots and most get how time work. The stimulus ended in July, and yet the job market has not surged as a result of all this talent no longer making more at home. Why? Well, on the other side of that is a loss of support for a large amount of consumers, in addition to gov't hiring scaling back.

Its almost like we shouldn't have been running trillion dollar deficits during the "best economy ever!", so that when the next recession came along, we could actually do something about it.

Before you dislocate your shoulder patting yourself on the back. In case there was any confusion from Trump's tweets last night, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows today said: "The stimulus negotiations are off."

No way in hell would I trade Cease for Benintendi. I surely hope the Sox aren't trying to dump Cease off like he's garbage. Be patient. There's a lot of talent there. We will see what the Sox do, but technically, all they have to do is sign 2 of Bauer/Stroman/Paxton to make Cease a solid #5 with big upside with Dunning, Kopech, and Stiever behind him. That's a pretty awesome position to be in.

Even if they sign someone else, they should be. This is not the season to judge a guy to be a failure based on 10 starts, especially not the first 10-20 starts of their career. It should be: Person X Giolito Keuchel Dunning Cease Person Q/Lopez/Kopech/Steiver and others.

This obsession with James McCann - which starts with Steve Stone's absurd love affair with McCann, where he constantly excuses all McCann mistakes - is just nauseating. Yesterday, McCann struck out looking on a STRIKE in the 9th. Stone goes off for 2 minutes how it wasn't a strike and McCann never argues and blah blah blah. It was very clearly a strike. Then Stoney was critical of Grandal leaving his right hand exposed when catching after the injury; yet Stone never mentions that McCann doesn't even move his hand to the side, instead he keeps it right in front of his chest when catching which is much more dangerous than holding it off to the side. Stone clearly likes McCann and they bonded last year, and he has done everything to justify his mistakes by being overly critical of Grandal.