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I wish I believed in sports conspiracy theories so I could imagine the league twisting the arm of seattle to trade him to Chicago so the nfl can put them in primetime and have them not be awful to watch in exchange for quashing some longtime investigation into seattle supplying players with steroids for a decade.

I think it's hard to feel too confident in even the models or gut this year. At the very least, I'd expect everyone to have a much wider distribution of outcomes than previous years. I think going into 2019 any one of us would say "that's a 94-96 win team". This year it's more like "That's an 85+ win team probably". I believe the dodgers have enough depth to overcome any regular season weirdness. The padres probably do. Braves. So I feel confident that 3 NL teams are 92+ win teams. In the AL? For Yankees, their rotation seems a particularly poor set-up for a season that may whip through a large number of arms due to the short innings last year plus number of guys returning from injury. And Clarke Schmidt now down. But the yanks also self-scout really well, and i'd say plus offense and plus bullpen is a better position than incredible rotation + weak offense/bullpen. I assume I should believe in the Rays because they do it so often but man it's hard to look at that and think it's guaranteed playoffs this year. Sox seem very confident in their pitching plan, and I'm hoping they are right. Last year it was hard to believe in their bullpen, but those guys were ready, who knows. Twins may sign odorizzi and mash again, but they also could have bad pitching and their attempt to even out their offense just ends up producing less with an aging cruz. Maybe Nate Pearson is an ace, and the blue jays just mash and destroy the AL East and go 95+ wins. I could see that. I could also see that rotation still being too raw, the terrible circumstances with location wear them down adn it underperforms this year. Right now people are expecting there to be less home runs, and pitching to wear down. But what if pitching is fine? What if home runs increase because the mlb is idiots that don't actually know how to control their ball? Gonna be a fun year, unless the sox are awful.

The good thing about wilson is he can play behind terrible offensive lines. It would be incredible. Wilson would be idolized here. He could open up a steakhouse that only sold hot dogs with ketchup and fans would lineup around the block.

hello santa

Speaking of, vax rates in IL have been pretty meh since the snowstorm for real reasons, but looks like there was a big catch-up in reporting today with 130k! that puts the 7-day at 66k, which is great for what happened last week. I wonder if we can hit 100k/day soon in march, that would put us at around 45% of population vaccinated heading into April.

march is gonna be big, and it has to be. So yeah, the country publich health websites saying 1C may not start for months...full of shit.

It's hard to believe he's only 10 lbs lighter than where he was at draft. Looks new. That's really, really impressive to go through the last three years and keep his mental edge like this to throw it all in. Same with Sheets. I was annoyed by the "makeup is what sets you apart" stuff from Hostetler, because so does athleticism and talent, but you can't listen to sheets and not come away impressed. Either through his dad or whatever, he knew what it would take to become a big leaguer. But his production wasn't close to there. Now this outfield possibility and noise about his exit velos starting to catch up to loft, and it's all what you'd like to see from picks I'd pretty much written off. It's not like zombie courtney hawkins last years, refusing to change.

speaking of wilsons, try harder bears. Get ciara a residency at the chicago theatre. Promise to light up the prudential building with wilsons terrible motivational tweets.

I dont' know, sox have a bunch of athletic guys with great arms and no polish, tigers have some super polished pitchers. I think a pitching coach would have more fun with the former.

Pretty cool seeing the relationship developing with Donovan and Lavine. It's been so nice this year. Definitely never hit that promise they showed when OPJ first came over and looked great his first 10 games. He just doesn't give a crap, but it's probably good for Bulls long-term. But one of my big problems with what bulls were doing post butler is they specifically traded him for a young core, but instead of supplementing smart vets around them, they seemed to get just a bunch of really basketball-dumb one way players. That fed into zach's worst instincts since he already flies fairly fast and loose but now there are players who are where they are supposed to be, not being idiots. Like how much did zach's maturity lose out on when you surrounded him with cam payne, justin holiday, blakeney and fat jabari parker? They kept dime-a-dozen guys like blakeney around for scoring ability constantly instead of just getting some limited but smart guys to help their lavine/lauri/wcj group they said was the future. Just a dumb group. And having seeing that, and sort of even seeing how the sixers have popped up and twolves just can't seem to, it just really seems like bulls drafting seemed better when putting rookies in a well-coached, smart, vet team than when they put them with a bunch of idiots. The sixers seem lucky that embiid was injured during those types of teams, and then when simmons gets there, getting the reddicks, etc to let those guys play competitively. Meanwhile, the twolves are just always worse than the sum of their parts.

lauri for ball has been a pretty consistent rumor.

Wilson looks incredible. I’d be somewhat nervous on the “mahomes is best qb now and he does mahomes stuff” but maybe the josh Allen/mahomes and maybe even kyler Murray takeaway is it’s worth it to take the QBs that can do crazy stuff in field. But then, was Mitch that? And then my brain breaks.

I'm saying the issues affecting stretching out pitchers may mean a lot of lower quality pitchers this year, leading to more home runs. I just don't put a lot of value in these predictions.

I find this stuff dumb. I could easily see worse pitching quality over course of year negating the dead ball.

Just side commentary but BA was really high on thompson in the instructionals and I know the FS podcast with Norris he mentioned this. I think Dalquist's command and repertoire make him a board favorite, but sounds like Thompson's athleticism and shown stuff recently has helped him start to change minds on whether he can become a starter.

Hope he's competent at 3rd. Injuries for us at 3rd or SS are stuff of nightmares.

I feel like this could cut the other way though. Look at what happened to Herbert last year, he had been a top QB for so long, didn't blow away his last year, and people started to claim he was more milquetoast. Then he gets to NFL and is throwing deep dimes and looks dynamic. I'd also point to Watson. I'd still take Lawrence. He's had incredible pressure on him, every d coordinator is scheming against him, is playing the top programs in the country and he's still great. I think there is a tendency to overthink it (and same with Jones). Jones isn't very mobile or have a lot of arm talent. But discounting him for the talent around him seems like a bit too much, his efficiency was eyepopping. Maybe he's philip rivers or Ryan, maybe he sucks.

Yes and more importantly they said 20 mill by end of march was good to go which was kinda touch and go how much they had early. I also read an interesting article about Novavax, which was just one of too many firms to keep track of. Their data was fantastic so I was confused why they were never mentioned, but I guess this was their hail mary to save the company, and prior had to basically sell off all of their manufacturing and distribution parts of the company so they have like no inventory and are relying a lot on partnerships. But it may very well be the one that we take as a booster next year or after that.

Zack seems worse under 2 minutes because we don't have another decent ball handler. He'd look a lot better with a real threat next to him.

PFF just put Jones getting picked above Fields, so. His Senior Bowl seems to have done a lot for him.

When phase 1b started for instance, our town health dept was still in 1a, but the vaccination sites through businesses (jewel/etc) had moved to the state guidance. This could be out of date, but it may make sense if the state is distributing to the companies first who then distribute it to stores. Not sure how it works.

I really am excited for almost every guy on this list except for Yolbert. Excited = want to follow. New car smell type excitement for Krogman/Horn. Continue to be probably too pumped for the mid-90s throwing McClure.

Feel free to start your cubs threads, pads threads, etc etc, and we can go back to PHT being PHO (pale hose only)

More NBA thoughts: It is incredible to me how bad the timberwolves continue to be. I'm here for the Thibs revival. That team was trash before him despite talent, trash after him despite talent. with him, they got to the playoffs. Now the Knicks despite a roster I'd call worse than the Hawks, Hornets, and Bulls are ahead of them in the standings. It really is a benefit to the west though that these pretty decent teams like the pels and grizz will get pushed into the lottery, and then if they get lucky they end up stocked with talent, while teams like the bulls tried hard as hell to tank, were out tanked by a bunch of tankers, got unlucky multiple years, and were picking in the same range as a borderline playoff western conference teams.

OK I'm finally in the majority with Bailey Went with McClure, but I thought it would be Horn, and it was tyler johnson by a mile (wtf) Thought it would easily be gladney and it was bush. I'm just not on the pulse at all lol