Balta1701

But there was one guy, I think Santana, whose contract was not guaranteed that year and I think we paid out only a tiny fraction of it. It was the difference between wasting $55 and $52 million in 2019 or something like that.

Wasn't that the one where he didn't get paid because he didn't make it to the big league team?

Was he hurt from May 1 of 2019 on? Because I'm trying to figure this out - he was equally dominant in April of 2019, and then had an ERA over 5 the rest of the year. Is his problem not one of performance but of pitching through a lot of lingering injuries?

Part of the trick in the numbers that person gave you is that Musgrove had a couple of excellent outings in April of 2019 and then put up an ERA of 5.20 from May 1 on, so the person who wrote that is deliberately excluding the month where he was exceptional and a couple good starts last year, but that said - that's literally a calendar year of starts with an ERA over 5. Is Musgrove a Javy Vazquez guy, where he seems like he should be doing way better than he actually is?

Oh once or twice in history has the New Yorker given its entire issue to one subject. We aren’t likely to ever get a 9/11 commission style summary of this because the Republicans won’t allow it, so this is all we will get. If you have the stomach and couple hours, to read a postmortem of the entire thing, here you go. It feels like a eulogy for America. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/01/04/the-plague-year (Fwiw, I believe the writer is very wrong on the issue of travel bans. Quarantine of new or returning arrivals yes, but bans are clearly counterproductive as people move rapidly to get around them and we saw how that spread things in Feb and March.)

He was a contract employee who also works at one of the local university teaching hospitals, so he's not a serviceperson.

Well, no, it did cause unemployment insurance to expire for anyone who was using the extended benefits, so they will all have to reapply, creating huge amounts of delays and paperwork for every state and costing most people who are on it a week or two of the coverage.

Well, if there ever was a sign that one guy didn't respect the work his teammates were putting in...

I mean, to be fair, is it really ok to say "Stiever hasn't had success above A ball" when he didn't get a chance to have success above A-ball and it wasn't his fault, it was due to a virus and due to the pathetic response of the US Government? This isn't like saying that he got stuck at A-ball because of an injury or because he struggled at AA, this is "AA didn't exist." One other point from this, Dane Dunning had 3/4 of the WAR of Lynn in 2021, that would be...one heck of a bad deal for the White Sox. Take on nearly 10 million, give up 6 years of control, get 1 or 1.25 extra WAR in 2021 in the process because the pitcher you gave up was that good as a rookie?

To be fair, I have watched one competitive sports competition on my television in the last week+, todays Steelers/Colts game. Every NFL game, every college game I put on has been uninteresting at the end. There have been a couple but nothing I've turned on.

He's got <2 years on his contract and frankly, the Bulls have a guy who can fill his position in Coby White who they want to develop. So yes, they absolutely need to be trying to move LaVine at the trade deadline this year, and the obvious answer to the 2nd is two first round picks, or a recently drafted player and a first round pick (no team is going to acquire Zach unless they think he helps them into the playoffs the next 2 years, which means that the picks are late, but still useful). If some competitive team is sitting there with a lottery pick from this year that you can swap for Lavine and another pick, probably a good move. But, when the Clippers can be down 50 at half time, it's hard to know how the standings will shape up in a couple months.

the new version with Dr. Strange as the Grinch was impressively entertaining, but 75% of that might be that they had perhaps the best ever version of an animated dog ever put in a movie. Seriously, they must have just brought in a dozen dog owners and told them to animate Max. It was beautiful.

So WW84 was entertaining but underwhelming.

I will say "This isn't enough for Chicago fans" is exactly right. The goal for the Bears should be regularly being in the playoffs. Being in the hunt this year is nice, it's an upgrade over last year. 2 playoff appearances in 3 years would be genuinely positive. But...if they don't make it this year...1 playoff appearance in "the entire decade"..."this isn't enough for Chicago Bears fans" is precisely correct. Prior to this year, 37.5% of the NFL teams made the playoffs every year, so 4 playoff appearances a decade should be basically an average NFL franchise.

Adults in this country change jobs and careers what, 3 or 4 times on average? And you go into a career and then the business collapses because of a housing bust or because of a leveraged buyout? But we need to do a better job of convincing high school students to plan for and choose a path to a permanent job, so that they can stay there for 30 years? Not in the world we’ve built.

He got vaccinated last week.

I would certainly do that in their spot, but I don’t know if they have better offers or if they have scouts that don’t like Stiever for whatever reason. He should have been roughly top 150 or so and borderline actually ranked in the top 100 last year by midseason if he had been good at AA, but AA didn’t happen and his velocity was down when he appeared in the big leagues so...? I’d do it easily for that deal, but maybe someone in their org is throwing up a big red flag.

I don't think Pitt will overvalue him or be inclined to keep him, they will want a tolerable return for him, but they absolutely know they're rebuilding. They had more of a tie to Josh Bell than to Musgrove, and their GM is fairly new and knows exactly the kind of mess he has to rebuild. They won't give him away for nothing, they could conceivably hold him to the trade deadline if the market remains cold, but I would seriously doubt they'd hold him through next offseason (and would be surprised and disappointed in their GM if he did). They will just want a fair deal, and that probably doesn't even mean a top 100 prospect, it means a decent prospect from some team and maybe a filler/gamble piece.

It’s not libel, but mercy is that ever a stretch to make Lozano look bad. “Why on Earth didn’t he give the white Sox a chance to counteroffer”? Well let’s review. 1. The White Sox had been negotiating with him for more than 2 months at that point. They knew exactly what it would take to sign him, so if they didn’t put that on the table why would you need to call back? 2. An hour after the signing was announced, Kenny Williams called into a radio show to rant about how his 8 year offer with 2 vesting options was a better deal than his 10 year guaranteed offer. If they’re going to launch that BS in public, do they need another call back? If they thought their contract was a better deal why would they edit it again? 3. Rick Hahn said he went to bed that night thinking he had less than a 50% chance of signing Machado. If he thought that, why didn’t he put his best offer on the table? 4. If the white Sox were convinced theirs was the best offer, and Lozano came back and said “we have a 10/$300 offer will you beat it”, The White Sox not only already made it clear they wouldn’t go to that level, they would assume Lozano is trying to make them bid against themselves. If the White Sox Somehow let him sign somewhere else, when $300 was his asking price the whole offseason, and they had a better offer they didn’t make, that’s on the white Sox, not on Lozano. They did everything possible to convince the Machado side that this was their best offer, and were clearly willing to miss if someone made a better one. So much so that their front office immediately screamed “our offer was still better!!!” At the top of their lungs right afterwards.

Obviously no, but even if there was news, good or bad, things could change by the start of the season with this stupid bug.

Dude you started this when you called Musgrove a “potential stud”. You haven’t even tried to support that statement. Are you going to?

And over those 2 years, Musgrove pitched 210 innings and put up 2.1 rWAR. More than 20 Pitchers did that in 2020 alone! That makes him a decent 4th or 5th starter if this is a playoff team. Now look, he’s better than Lopez, I don’t dispute that. But “better than a replacement level player” and “almost an average starter” is a long way from “a potential stud”. Anyone could be, we’ve seen crazier breakouts, Lopez could break out too, but come on, it’s not like Musgrove has no history here.