ThirdGen

LaRussa was a cutting edge manager, consistently ahead of his peers when it came down to use of statistical analysis. In addition, he was always open to different methods of lineup construction and bullpen usage- far before anyone else was. He caught a lot of hell from the old school throughout his career, but a lot of what he first tested became the norm. He speaks Spanish, and was always known as a players' manager. He is a Hall of Fame manager with 3 World Championships behind him, one 9 years ago. Hinch won one World Series by cheating. If, and this is a big if, LaRussa is still physically and mentally sound, and if he is still open to and in love with stats as he was when he started, the Sox could do a lot worse.. The combination of him and Jirschele in the dugout for the next couple of years, with Jirschele taking over after learning from LaRussa could leave the Sox set for a decade or more.

The Sox magic number for the division is currently 11. If you assume Minnesota is the second place team winning two of the next three is huge, as it would give them the tiebreaker meaning they would only need to get the magic number down to 1 to clinch the division title.

I don't know all the details, but they did just this week fire all the employees who work at what used to be called the Bull Sox Academy on the baseball and softball side. Those are the same employees who work the Comcast Kids Zone deck, and were all direct employees of the team. Heard the shut down is permanent.

Bee Bee Richard, who was on the Sox until Veeck traded him shortly after buying the team, had a profile similar to that. No hit, no glove, but blazing speed, and was often used as a pinch runner. I think Claudell Washington was best known for the ridiculous contract Ted Turner gave him to go to Atlanta. We was at best a mid level outfielder, and Turner gave him one of the biggest contracts in history at the time. He gave him a five year contract, and it was said at the time the next best offer was a one year contract at half the annual salary of Turner's 5 year offer.

Until July 31, most people making less than $23/hour are as good as or better off on unemployment than they were working. After that, no.

Some people will still blame SportsVision and the White Flag Trade if the attendance is zero this year.

Couldn't agree more. I don't understand why the assumption is being made that playing baseball in empty stadiums under constant supervision and strong cleaning precautions is any more dangerous than wherever they would be if not at the ballpark. Its not like they are being held in vacuum chambers with no human interaction when not playing. I understand the fear of front line workers with constant interaction with the public (cashiers, health care workers, etc), but it seems like people are hijacking those reasonable fears into other lines of work like baseball where the public interaction just doesn't exist.

All Arizona games are now showing as "Cancelled" on the MLB site. Looks like they are letting Florida games finish.

Find it amusing that the Cubs, rather than cancelling their game today like everyone else, pushed the start time back six hours. Treat a meaningless spring training game like its a playoff game. Apparently don't have any alternative programming for Marquee? Wonder how Oakland felt about that?

The fact that this went on for three years before being detected is a pretty major indictment of the business/marketing/sales end of the organization. Not only did this screw the Sox to the tune of $1 million, it also screwed any legitimate season ticket holder or fan who needed to sell tickets on Stubhub, as they were able to significantly undercut other sellers and still make boatloads of money, driving down the value of tickets for everyone else.

IMO a lifetime ban should be exactly that, a lifetime ban. Once they are dead, the HOF can consider them. That way they are sufficiently punished, and baseball can eventually evaluate their career.

If they want to avoid the subject of Jackson and 1919, holding a game in a Iowa cornfield that hosted a movie based on the 1919 scandal is probably a bad idea. A season ticket email that I received from the Sox back in September stated that the full plan would only include 80 games, and ticket information about the Iowa game would be released "later". Nothing yet.

I believe the choice is between Collins getting lots of at bats and experience behind the plate at AAA (facing weaker pitching that we already know he can hit) or getting very limited and sporadic playing time in Chicago against MLB pitching. The problem is, if he hits poorly against MLB pitching we will have no idea if that is because he got a limited number of at bats and never found his groove, or if he just can't hit MLB pitching. In my opinion the lesser of two evils is to give him another year at Charlotte, and assume he replaces McCann in 2021 when his contract expires. I understand that we won't know if he can hit MLB pitching at that point, but don't think we'll know based on limited MLB playing time in 2020 anyway.

While I agree that he doesn't have enough history to have an automatic claim to a roster spot, don't use the ERA as the reason. He was absolutely dominating his first three starts with an ERA below 1. His ERA only went up to 5.02 because he attempted to pitch a game with a torn UCL in his fourth start, and obviously got shelled as a result.