caulfield12

Very few teams have ever successfully dealt with that issue of complacency and/or wear and tear on the pitching staff from postseason play. The Giants and Red Sox are perhaps the two most successful overall, but winning it all inevitably changes motivation and brings about a sense of malaise, a lot of times brought about by off-field distractions. (The Dodgers, too, but they have’t won it all....Astros’ grievances aside.) For whatever reasons, basketball and football teams have been more successful at mitigating these factors.

Seconded...Ms. Moss is becoming one of the most well-rounded actresses in the business. The whole movie basically revolves around her character and its attendant believability.

Slowed him down getting to first on a wild pitch...was at roughly the same speed as one of the Flying Molina Brothers.

Or Leury....seems Engel and Delmonico could both make it.

Well, when you haven’t been able to leave your apartment once in six whole weeks now, live 2 km from the epicenter ...and have witnessed this whole thing from ground zero, it’s pretty challenging to be optimistic. If the Chinese govn’t intervened a week earlier, there would only be +/- 25,000 global cases. If they delayed the lockdown another week, there would arguably be 250,000 global cases and around 9000 deaths. The reality is more or less 80,000 now. Doubling every six days or so now, the real numbers of people carrying the virus in the US asymptomatically has to be in the thousands if not tens of thousands. The CDC is just way behind catching up because they were originally only looking at travel-related and not community transmission.

How did they go from just a few hundred being tested to one million by this Friday? Any basis in reality? Really feel for those stuck in the political warfare in Texas between courts, local government and CDC...Bexar County/San Antonio. Saw another refugee from Wuhan and his daughter were charged around $2800 for ambulance costs upon arriving via airplane...luckily, his story got into the NY Times gofundme.com subsidized him with almost $20,000. He will probably spend most of the remaining money to pay for healthcare on the private market in the US, since he apparently left his job and health insurance back here in Wuhan. Can we really rely on gofundme to permanently subsidize health insurance issues in the US, especially with the S.C. posdibly undoing the entire ObamaCare framework in the middle of a global pandemic as early as October?

Tatis, Jr., definitely overachieved offensively, but was negative on most defensive metrics and missed half the season and still bested that. 2.5-3.5 seems to be a pretty accurate reading on what the majority of informed Sox fans were projecting for Robert. With Madrigal, maybe 1.75-2.5ish.

The Cubs have basically doubled their regional broadcasting rights revenue from $66 million to $132 million... That said, does potentially losing many of those fans on Comcast, YouTube.TV and Dish Network justify it? According to The Athletic, the “Cubs were looking at a year-to-year increase of less than 10 percent in rights fees in 2020 when you included their share of NBC Sports Chicago profits (and I assume all the costs of setting up the network) into the conversation.” So a 10% increase in profits to piss off, what, at least half of Chicago???...if you count Sox fans who don’t want to pay extra for the Cubs (since NBC Chicago is still charging the same as previously), Cubs’ fans themselves and then non-sports fans who also don’t want to pay an extra $4-8 per month.

Probably something in between...but it’s always better to be prepared, than to bury your head in the sand and hope/pray for the best outcome. https://multimedia.scmp.com/infographics/news/china/article/3052721/wuhan-killer/index.html?src=pm&fbclid=IwAR3BeSMW5c0cb7MVRLRQ2nHziAYiXgXyiXoWUvdX94YSY-rzKy2Zi5WB4lM If you really want to understand it, Greg, read this.

“Bloomberg Businessweek published a story Thursday about RSN woes and noted Marquee is paying the Cubs $132 million this season, about twice of what NBC Sports Chicago paid the Cubs last year, which piqued some interest around Chicagoland. What was unclear is how that money is divvied up between the Cubs and Sinclair and whether it’s just an accounting trick for the former. Last season, I was told the Cubs were looking at a year-to-year increase of less than 10 percent in rights fees in 2020 when you included their share of NBC Sports Chicago profits (and I assume all the costs of setting up the network) into the conversation.” This according to an Athletic piece...of course, it’s also without Comcast, Dish and YouTube.TV as part of the Marquee network, so it’s not clear if that $132 million is fixed or could be increased.

Fine, Pablo Sandoval or Domingo Santana.

Do we really need another Dayan Viciedo, a position-less player? It’s better to find five tool athletes and invest that money at a younger age that bid at the top of the market...it seemingly worked out well for Robert, but there have been just as many flops when you look at guys like Y.Tomas, Castillo and Olivera. The whole two-way thing is intriguing, sure, but it feels more like a marketing gimmick to compare him to Shohei Ohtani...whose stuff is a completely different league.

Sure, because it’s in his personal interest...and about protecting the stock market, which he directly correlates more than anything else to the positive/favorable ratings on handling of the economy. That said, what is needed now is science, coordination, a unified message and listening to experts instead of political appointees. Politics at the local vs. national level here is what allowed this whole thing to spin out of control. Attempting to muzzle the truth and weakening local/regional governments because all of the power/intimidation is in the hands of one person just doesn’t work in this new era of instant information connectivity. Tens of thousands of internet censors here couldn’t stop it...it would require millions, and those resources are best allocated to fighting the problem, like building two hospitals in 10-14 days. The US is so polarized right now, maybe this is the only way to unite the country again, because it’s hard to imagine a hospital getting built in even 2-3 years, let alone less than two weeks.

They just discovered the second community transmission in California. The CDC had two months to prepare, and they’re still having problems with the kits. There’s only something like 15 hospitals/medical centers around the country prepared to deal with this. How is it that South Korea can run 100,000 tests in a manner of 2-3 weeks and we can barely handle 500? We weren’t fully prepared for the cases coming from here in Wuhan or from the Diamond Princess...health care workers don’t have the necessary equipment and training. Japan and the US might have botched this up just as much as the Chinese government...when all is said and done. The rest of the world has another major problem, which is that democratic nations won’t easily acquiesce to forced quarantines of hundreds of thousands (northern Italy, Japan, South Korea) and eventually millions or tens of millions. As argued before, once it penetrates the poorer countries of Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin/Central America, it’s way too late and will decimate vulnerable populations. Perhaps this is the Earth’s way of fighting back to restore balance. Perhaps it’s also governmental and human competence combining to form a perfect storm or Black Swan or whatever you want to call it. By the end of all this, it’s not inconceivable that the very idea of globalization and free trade/travel will be called into question.

Thanks. Everyone seems to know someone who knows someone who died in a city of eleven million. Kind of puts everything in perspective, except the only trustworthy connection we have to reality is social media, and there’s no sense of loss or mourning (yet) because there aren't even funerals allowed for the dead...and the “recovered” are not even allowed a comforting return to loved ones. In fact, quite the opposite, as portrayed below quite accurately (the stadium pictured at Hongshan is roughly 1 km from where we live, along with the home of the whistleblower doctor, Dr. Li Wenliang.) https://www.wqad.com/article/news/nation-world/heathy-residents-in-wuhan-coronavirus-quarantine/526-bfa780f1-f333-41fb-ab71-99ae90ece347 Ironically, this was posted by one of my hometown’s news channels. As the story has moved on from China, this captures the surreal nature of things this week as well as any.

Adolfo absolutely crushed that ball in the 9th, hard to see how far foul it actually went. Kincannon looked great at the end, Hamilton rebounded. Lu Gonz, Zack, Yermin...had their offensive moments as well. Nice comeback victory.

My co-worker here bought one in January. Feel bad for him, as he and his wife have hardly been able to drive it. Fortunately, his wife’s family chipped in 180,000 rmb, but still on the hook for 180k over 36 months, or about $700/month and $25000 total remaining. Plus, he agreed to change his job next year to private consulting about China to US intl school admissions, which is looking iffier by the week with everything so uncertain.

Fortunately, that’s the least of my worries...even if I did have the ability to go outside, cash transactions are virtually non-existent, except for tipping delivery drivers. And they’re destroying most of the currency in Hubei Province because of virus prevention/fear.

Most of the major Chinese cities are getting back to work this week, but Shanghai also has the appearance of a ghost town as well...something like 18 million live there, as opposed to 11 million in Wuhan. One of the biggest issues has been loosening the travel restrictions so that the migrant/factory workers could return to their jobs after Chinese New Year. The most dangerous aspect of this whole thing is that it travels 10-20x faster than SARS/MERS...you can pass it without having any symptoms, it can remain in the body for 14-23 days and now even the “recovered” are not allowed to return home for fear they may still infect others or are susceptible to getting sick again. Whether we end up at 2% or 3% or 4%, the worry is these countries around the world....mostly in the Middle East, Southeast Asia and Africa...simply don't have the existing medical infrastructure in place to control outbreaks from becoming new Wuhans. We are looking at going back to work as early as March 10th, which is almost 7 weeks since the shutdown of the city. That said, Hong Kong has already pushed back their school restart to April 19th, and they have roughly 50 cases compared to the hundred thousand here in Hubei.

Now should be the best time in history to get cheap lobster. 90% from Maine and Australia usually ends up here...

Uh-oh. Glad I sold 20% of my mom’s mutual funds (she’s almost 91 and in assisted living with dementia/Alzheimer’s) when the market was around 27,000. Hard to imagine all those gains the last year, gone in almost two days. We’re fine still, all things considered. Can’t go outside to buy food anymore, so it’s basically staple goods like rice, eggs, noodles and dumplings. Our school didn’t or couldn’t pay our FEB salaries..which is causing a lot of angst. That said, there’s likely no way to get physical money from an ATM machine, as the country continues to go electronic with financial transactions. Many small and medium sized industries are just days or weeks from bankruptcy. Large state-owned businesses will be saved, but those are the most inefficient levers in the Chinese economy to push.

You realize how much Jon Jay got last year?

How would they allocate the "posting fee deal" to JPN in terms of the full cost? That wouldn't be considered part of the team's yearly limit? So the White Sox could give SoftBank $15-25 million, theoretically?

Good luck with all those planned player-friendly extensions for Moncada, Giolito, Madrigal, etc.

Donaldson and Maeda really stopped the momentum dead in its tracks...maybe CLE not dealing Lindor as well.