caulfield12

Researchers analyzed U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs data on more than 3,600 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 between Feb. 1 and June 17 of this year, and more than 12,600 hospitalized with the flu between Jan. 1, 2017 and Dec. 31, 2019. The average age of patients in both groups was 69. The death rate among COVID-19 patients was 18.5%, while it was 5.3% for those with the flu. Those with COVID were nearly five times more likely to die than flu patients, according to the study published online Dec. 15 in the BMJ. https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20201218/covid-19-is-far-more-lethal-damaging-than-flu-data-shows#1

When asked about top prospect Julio Rodríguez (#5 prospect in the system), rather than concentrating on his playing ability, Mather focused on his grasp of English. “Julio Rodríguez has got a personality bigger than all of you combined,” he said. “He is loud, his English is not tremendous.” He also repeatedly referred to catcher Luis Torrens as “Luis Torres”. https://www.radio.com/sports/mlb/ms-pres-under-fire-for-remarks-about-asian-latin-players

Good guys will ask you out on "real" dates in order to get to know you. Bad boys will tell you they don't believe in labels and then ask you over to Netflix and chill. Good guys will treat their waiters as well as they treat you. Bad boys will treat everyone like they're inferior. A good guy will tell you the truth, even when it's hard to hear. A bad boy will lie about his job, his hobbies, and his intentions. A good guy has goals for his future. A bad boy lives in the moment and doesn't care about what the future holds. A good guy knows that his personality is the most important thing. A bad boy will only care about his looks. https://love.allwomenstalk.com/how-to-tell-the-difference-between-a-good-guy-and-a-bad-boy/

3B has been one of the deepest positions in baseball. If Moncada returns to 2019 form, he's Top 4-6, but that's still far behind someone like Jose Ramirez. Madrigal, by fWAR, is never going to stand out. He will likely settle in at a 2.25-3.5 fWAR range but not a star. Abreu's going to hit his age decline, but Vaughn realistically could get there. Jimenez will also be limited by his defense and baserunning to a 2.75-4.25 fWAR range. Grandal's about to hit his decline as well. As far as Robert goes, he has a ways to go before he supplants Mike Trout.

1998-2001 Rauch, Buehrle, Kip Wells, Matt Ginter, Lorenzo Barcelo, Jason Stumm, Rocky Biddle, Josh Fogg, Danny Wright, Aaron Myette, Brian West...there was another whose name I can't remember who ended up with the Indians https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories/2000-organization-of-the-year-chicago-white-sox/ If Crochet can stick as a starter, and morph into Randy Johnson, and not get injured...but that's going to require hitting on either Cease or Kopech and AT LEAST one more starter out of the group you listed. Norge Vera could be added there as well.

The Grandal contract beats the Alex Gordon deal by ONE freakin' million, 4/$73 versus 4/$72. If you adjust for inflation, the Royals' deal was still "more expensive," technically.

When you're specifically going after at least two foreigners (one a Latin American pitcher, the other Iwakuma) for their English proficiency, or lack thereof, at best you're coming off as "tone deaf," at worst, ignorant/racist/____________ (fill in the blank with the appropriate adjective.) Not only that, but being upset about $75,000 in Seattle for an interpreter when the team has wasted millions and millions of dollars in the last 15+ years is a penny-wise, pound-foolish pettiness. It also has a bit of that "if you come to the US, you must speak 'Merican overtone to it. Just imagine how an American working for an MNC in Tokyo would react if his "boss" publicly criticized him for his inability to speak Japanese fluently, to the point where they had to hire an interpreter. They would lose face, it simply wouldn't happen. As mentioned, it's even more infuriating because of the team's relationship with the Japanese market and Nintendo, which still owns 10% of the team. It's like a White Sox or Cubs' management person going after deep dish pizza. You just don't do it. There's nothing good that will come out of it.

Yes, but you can't openly admit you're doing it...which the Cubs were smart enough to follow the party line about players needing "finishing touches" or working on XYZ weakness before they're finally ready to be recalled. There's never been a standard, nor will there ever be, about how to define "major league ready."

The most damaging is the blunt statement about service time manipulation with Kelenic and Logan Gilbert...that will have reverberations across the sport in challenges to the current system. From the local fanbase perspective, criticizing Seager as "overpaid" when he's been injured recently isn't doing him any favors. It's not like he went after Ichiro, but it's the equivalent of KW going after Adam Dunn during the 2011 season...you don't need to say anything, even if you are thinking it. It's not like they were going to give Kyle Lewis "extra money" for having a great rookie campaign. That's the system. Young players fight to get to arbitration and then free agency for that one big contract.

If they can produce at least one more ace internally to replace Giolito between now and the end of the 2023 season, because the odds of going after a TOR starter in free agency are slim and none.

Not to mention you’re basically announcing to the world your supposed franchise player’s future star power is being questioned...and the fact that they will eventually have to Lindor him because of all the ill-will created from publicly airing this and blaming the player for consulting with the MLBPA. Must have been a low-ball offer that for some reason they assumed he would accept.

Still, it's headline news in both the Seattle newspapers, the Times and Post-Intelligencer.

And one wonders why this organization has the longest playoff-less streak in baseball by far, with the Padres and White Sox both breaking theirs last season.

Mather addressed the team’s payroll and watching the financial bottom line. He said he believed top prospects Jarred Kelenic and Logan Gilbert likely will not start the season with the team as a way to manipulate their major league service time and keep them under club control longer. Mather said the club attempted to sign Kelenic to a long-term contract and was rebuffed in its efforts. “Jarred Kelenic, we’ve been talking about him for a year and a half now, he will be in left field in April,” Mather said. “He’s a 21-year-old player who is quite confident. We offered him a long-term deal — a six-year deal for substantial money with options to go farther. After pondering it for several days and talking to the union, he has turned us down. And in his words, he’s going to bet on himself. He thinks after six years he’s going to be such a star player that the seventh-, eighth-, ninth-year options will be undervalued. He might be right. We offered, and he turned us down.” https://www.seattlepi.com/sports/article/Mariners-president-Kevin-Mather-apologizes-for-15968549.php

He's a Michigan, Northwestern and Harvard Law grad. No less than a hedge fund, venture cap group or investment bank (see Billy Beane's plan if forced to give up A's as it looked due to conflict of interest with overlapping ownership groups.) Then again, I think Hahn would drive his Home Depot employees nuts. These days, that's arguably the much more demanding job. He would certainly never stand up to management for the benefit of low-level employees or risk his own position.

Yeah, that kind of ambiguous phrasing is what we've come to expect from Hector... whereas the likely result will be somewhere ranging from a 750-825 ops, the most trustworthy prediction range for the best collegiate hitter regardless of his debut season or 2020.

https://www.startribune.com/why-modern-baseball-is-unkind-to-thirty-somethings-like-brian-dozier-trevor-plouffe/600024936/?ref=nl&om_rid=48311239113&om_mid=2399915465

https://www.royalsreview.com/2020/12/29/22204730/royals-sign-ervin-santana-to-a-minor-league-deal

Go high with Cruz, or go value with Moreland....just stop going for the mid-tier declining veterans. Still think they should have signed Odorizzi, but whatever. If they had tried Collins/Mercedes, at least they would have some answers to their questions. Even going back to Semien, they never gave him a full season to prove himself before cutting bait. If Mercedes was left-handed, he would be more valued by the organization. Collins seems like the kind of hitter who could have had a decent career before the era of 95+ fireballers exposed his slider speed bat and hitch in his swing.

https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/mlb-offseason-grades-yankees-lack-urgency-mets-dodgers-padres-get-high-marks-cubs-red-sox-underwhelm/ B for White Sox, with puzzling TLR hire the main point. For some reason, poor Hector Rondon and Carlos Rodon keep getting their names mixed up by writers.

What would be interesting would be to crowd-fund with Sox fans and put together similar deals to BLA for someone like a Colas who aren’t peak of the market players but interesting nonetheless. They used to hold the Cubans captive basically until they signed similar deals to get off the island...which certainly adds to the unsavory/iffy ethics, but once stateside, they’re certainly freer to seek out financial propositions that are not using their own safety or family’s safety back home against them. Despaigne has accused Puig of helping Cuban authorities to arrest several human traffickers, in order to curry official favour while plotting his own flight. The claim is contained in a 10-page affidavit the boxer filed in Miami, as part of a lawsuit against Puig by one of the purported traffickers who is currently incarcerated in Cuba. Despaigne said he liaised between the baseball player and Raul Pacheco, a Miami-based air-conditioning repairman and recycling business owner who was allegedly part of a group that offered to extract Puig in exchange for 20% of all his future earnings. Pacheco reportedly has past arrests for burglary and credit card fraud, according to public records. After several failed attempts to escape from Cuba, smugglers spirited Puig, Despaigne, Puig’s then girlfriend and a santería priest to Isla Mujeres, a fishing village on Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula, near Cancún. According to the reports, the smugglers detained the group in a motel while they haggled with Pacheco over Puig's worth. A team allegedly sent by Pacheco and some of his associates ended the stand-off and, shortly thereafter, Puig entered the US. Despaigne said that eventually an envoy of a smuggler boss known as Leo confronted him in Miami, demanding payment. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/18/la-dodgers-yasiel-puig-kidnapping-gangster-drama

Well, maybe it feels like the equivalent of a “pre” reverse mortgage...and yeah, Tatis is paying off huge, but the majority of minor leaguers, 90%, never make it for a single pitch or at bat to the majors. So it’s all supposedly based on this algorithm which somehow identified his potential before Keith Law launched the bandwagon officially.

Whatever we say about the DR, it is pretty clear most or all of the father’s (Tatis) $17-18 million has been depleted...or he would never have signed with an agency like BLA (similar deals to extract Cubans with buscones, the Puig escape/kidnapping the most famous example of a “future earnings” loan shark approach). Big family spread across DR and Florida. That and the fact that he asked for another $10 million in more immediate signing bonus money, although endorsement money is already starting to roll in as well, like video game covers and regional SC promotional deals.

“When we signed him he wasn’t considered a Top 40 prospect,” Big League Advance CEO Michael Schwimer said about Tatis. “At the time, talking to investors, the amount of money we were offering him was a sizable portion of our bankroll. But we trusted the model (proprietary algorithm forecasting every single minor leaguer’s future MLB earnings.)” Tatis’s father also played professional baseball, tallying over $18 million in career earnings, according to contract data from Spotrac. Considering how difficult it is to make it to MLB from the minor leagues, the risk mitigation can be worth it for some athletes to take the quick money — only about 10% of minor leaguers make the big leagues, according to data from MotherJones. Big League Advance, which was founded by Schwimer in 2016, has investors including mutual-fund manager Bill Miller, former Goldman Sachs GS, +1.53% partner Steven Duncker, former President George W. Bush’s brother Marvin Bush, and Cleveland Browns executive Paul DePodesta (see Moneyball). Big League Advance gave a total of $26 million to 77 baseball players in 2017, including Tatis. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/fernando-tatis-jr-s-340-million-contract-will-be-shared-with-a-firm-that-invested-in-him-as-a-teenager-11613679240 Fwiw, Bill Miller’s Legg Mason Value Trust set the all-time record beating the S&P from 1991-2005, fifteen consecutive years, and made him an investing legend....then crashed so badly in 2007-08 that he basically lost most of his investors and eventually control of LMVTX and LMOPX. The Major League Baseball Players Association, however, made it clear in a January 2016 memo to player agents that it did not approve of BLA. The memo said the union “categorically” did not endorse or approve of BLA and its products and warned the future earnings the company sought from players were “significant.”