Good morning Angels fans. Hope you enjoyed the rain yesterday, because it is here to stay for almost a week.
Angels News
Angels lost to the soggy Mariners yesterday. At least there were some impressive displays from the young guys on the farm. Like Martinez scoring the only run with his legs and Adams almost throwing out a mariner at the plate. Seriously, he was deep in CF and got it home on one bounce. Not bad.
ESPN has come out with their Top 100 Baseball Players for 2020 list and the Angels have 4 on it. Mike Trout(1), Anthony Rendon(13), Shohei Ohtani(34), and Andrelton Simmons(97).
Ohtani got a pay raise to 700K for 2020. Still way under paid in his final year before arbitration. Hopefully this year he can put together a true 2 way player season and sign long term.
New Sports Illustrated covers are out. Ohtani and Betts make the California cover. Ohtani has a lot to prove this season.
Viral Baseball News
The Baseball games may have empty stadiums to start the season. Evan Longaria is used to it and roasts the Rays in the process.
Which is all about keeping people healthy and as such, Reds players are refrained from interacting with fans for the rest of spring.
Every time someone is sick the fears will be there. Like with the Yankees Sanchez who has just the flu.
Harper doesn’t care about the virus and is up for hugging people. Remember, the virus is most deadly when you are old or otherwise have a weak immune system. Like a current player who does not have a spleen. David Dahl has been without one since 2015 and is more of a risk than others.
With Santa Clara banning large groups, games are in trouble. Pressure has mounted from the SF city officials to cancel NBA Warriors games. Giants may get the same treatment and Oakland is already not on good terms with the A’s.
No games are cancelled yet, but the expedition between the Yankees and the Blue Jays may be. Note that a decision has not been reached yet. Just that it may happen.
The same can’t be said for Japan. The NPB, Japan’s baseball league, already pushed back opening day for a month and will reduce the playoffs dramatically. Only the top team from the Pacific and Central Leagues will make it to the postseason. This was to save the regular season as the fans voted for keeping the regular season over the postseason games.
Non-Viral Baseball News
Barry Bonds is sad because everyone hates him. His ‘death sentence’ as he calls it, is due to being a cheat, leaving the union, and being an overall jackass to everyone. This sentiment was spurred due to Alex Rodriguez still being allowed in baseball and being liked much more than Bonds.
WBC games will be free on Youtube! Now if only the MLB can get MLB games online instead of having blackouts.
Fangraphs goes into detail on how the 3 batter minimum rule may change baseball.
Christian Yelich day may be a thing as he will get deferred money until 2042. They better hope to do better than the Mets.
Larry Walker: two sport player. He has managed to become the 3rd goaltender for Colorado when they play Vegas on Sunday.
Rain down in the comments for more news if I missed anything. It shall bring you upvotes.
Griffin Canning will be healthy by the time the MLB season actually starts
Ohtani may be able to start opening day.
I’m not at all scared of this virus but I’m near a panic attack about how it’s gonna affect my basic ass way of life.
Tried unsuccessfully to buy asswipe three days in a row now. Bought a bidet at Home Depot.
Yeah Vons was wiped clean this evening when I went
That’s the better option anyways, lol.
My company is gearing up for all of us to begin working from home soon. Should be fun…
My dogs are gonna love it.
NBA season suspended until further notice.
This is because a player tested positive.
Scooped me by 2 minutes.
4. See the reply to Mia above.
Saw it… so sad.
Was excited to finally see the Lakers back in the playoffs 🙁
You’d have to imagine MLB won’t be far behind here…
March Madness to be played in empty arenas…….
Just change the name to March Sadness
March Quietness
At this point it has to lead to baseball doing the same. After all, you can’t be the one sport not taking all of the same precautions as the others (I’m expecting NBA to announce the same soon).
Yup
Anyone heard anything from the NHL?
Let’s see if LeBron sticks by his claim that he won’t play to empty arenas.
@Mia looks like we have the answer NBA CLOSED
Warriors Thursday game will be played in SF with no crowd.
I guess we’ll have to call it March Sanity. Won’t be much madness without a crowd.
OH MAH GAWD WE ARE ALL GONNA…… most likely live and be fine. On the bright side, shortened baseball season, if it comes to that, means fewer chances for Angels players to get hurt.
BUT WHUT ABOWT THE THREE MILLYIN FANS THINGAMABOB FOR ARTE?
Crap, I just noticed no game tomorrow 🙁
Todays game canx
possibly a break for us. We haven’t looked all that good for a week now.
Does anyone know if todays game will be played as I have yet to see a lineup posted
The start of today’s game has been delayed due to rain. First pitch is now slated for 2pm.
I have figured out how to be able to read this site without my reading glasses. I just zoomed the page in to 250%. Added benefit is it takes out the member status so I don’t have to be reminded about how low on the totem pole I am. LOL
I now need reading glasses. In junior high I got contacts because I wanted to be cool and not wear glasses. After 30 years of contacts I finally got Lasik but my eyes were so bad they could only fix far or near. I chose far.
So now I’ve gone full circle and wear glasses again most of my day.
Jeff don’t feel bad, when I was 40 I went for an eye exam and the doctor asked me why I was there and I said I couldn’t read the menu. He said reading glasses and I said no shit. About 4 years ago I had eye surgery also choosing far and find myself back to using readers
Readers are a problem of arms being too short. We will evolve eventually to be knuckle draggers again so we can read our phones without reading glasses.
Same here. Funny thing was, before the surgery, the nearsightedness pretty much cancelled out the age related farsightedness for reading.
Now I need readers. I was given the choice of near, far, or one of each. Because I was playing on a softball team at the time, I went with far as well.
I’m severely nearsighted, A side effect of this is magnified close-up vision, like one inch from my eyes. Handy for painting tiny things like 1/48th scale ejection seats. My optometrist told me I would lose that if I got Lasik. Decided to keep the specs.
Planned this weekend’s spring training trip back in December, already spent over $1k between game tickets and the airbnb. On top of that, its looking like rain for Friday’s Halos game, and my daughter has a nasty cough that I’m sure everyone around us will give side eye to the whole trip. This f’n sucks
Here’s some indoor fun she’d probably love: https://butterflywonderland.com/
Thanks Jeff, it’s already on the agenda. I’m just hoping Friday’s night game isn’t rained out. Every time I check the weather the prognosis looks worse and worse. We’re going to the Dodger game on Saturday, and it’s supposed to be good weather, but that’ll really suck to go all the way out there and not get a Halos game in.
Been rearranging the book collection the last few days and found my copy of League of Denial, about BALCO and Bonds. No sympathy for Bonds whatsoever after reading that, even less now that he’s whining about how tough it is to be a jerk and a cheater.
Make sure you have two sets of glasses in the bomb shelter…..
surely Burgess could have found another pair that would work well enough. There must have been hundreds of thousands of pairs of glasses around. He’d have to stumble around until he found a store. If books survived then so would glasses. So when he said “it isn’t fair!” he might have been talking about the weather, or possibly remembering a baseball game he once watched. Maybe his point is that chalk would have been kicked up if the ball had hit the line.
Maybe I’m jaded because I’m not 80 and have a fully healthy immune system, but the panic over this virus is unprecedented in scope and over reaching.
I’ll be highly upset if MLB cuts fans out of games. I’d stay away, maybe, if I was in an at risk group, and will sanitize, but I don’t feel at risk any more than typical flu season.
The regular flu kills 1 person in a thousand.
COVID-19 kills 3 people out of 100.
it is spreading quickly (thanks globalization) and such measures can stall it long enough for detection/treatment not to overrun hospital capacity (keeping people with other illnesses treated, and not needing to use all hospital resources on just testing for this particular virus).
It should be taken seriously. Even thinking just about the sport, can MLB handle the additional scandal of being seen as a place where the disease spread?
It’s killed 31 of over 1000 here so that pencils out But death rates are very similar to the flu by age group If you’re over 80 they both kill you 18% of the time.
I’m not casually dismissing it, but unless you’re in an at risk group you will most likely have mild symptoms.
I just flew with my 2 year old to spring training and back. And I wouldn’t risk him over anything that was truly an immediate threat.
While that is true, I can also see not having large audiences at the games as a (sensible) precaution. You will be fine (in all likelihood) as will your son. But, if you catch it and inadvertently pass it on to someone more at risk (elderly, immunocompromised ….).
The MLB should take it seriously.
I’d definitely feel bad to pass it on. I’d go nuts if I was quarantined from my son for 2 weeks, too.
We actually don’t know how many people it’s killed, or how many are currently infected, because test rollouts have been slow and the number of available testing kits remains inadequate. The current US numbers are almost certainly a gross underestimate, and infection counts are going to increase as testing happens at scale.
Consider this: the number of cases in the US has multiplied ten-fold in a single week. That’s due to testing incidence more than real-time tracking of community spread. The spread is more advanced than our current apparatus for detection. In China, where containment measures are unprecedented (eg, 70,000+ movie theater have been shuttered for weeks), we’re still seeing one death for every 20 recoveries.
You’re young, and so is your kid, but both of you are still potential hosts and transmitters of a deadly disease that’s killed thousands in short order already. If you’re a lay person, I’d trust the doctors and scientists on this one. It’s the politicians who are underselling this epidemic, not the global health community overselling it.
I have it on good authority that the cases will be down to zero very soon. and anyone who wants a test can get one…and the tests are “beautiful”
this is all sarcasm, btw
I know, right? All the “beautiful tests!”
That’s what I’m doing. I looked at the best data available before my trip, weighed it, and went on. As the data changes, so will my outlook.
We know the numerator (number dead), but not the denominator (number infected). Using the number tested positive as substitute results in higher estimates.
Yeah, I really nerded out on the data from South Korea before we left. They had done, by far, the most extensive testing as of 2 weeks ago and their death rate was about 0.5% at that time. With more testing, we’ll get more confirmed cases and the death rate will likely drop.
I also looked at the death rate for children and people who are 40 and healthy. Didn’t see any risk worse than going to a Ducks game during flu season for my family.
Jeff, I am not 80 but I am over 60 and my concern would not be just getting sick and possibly dying from this disease but people (not picking on you directly) who feel as you do that they are healthy and young so chances of their getting sick is minimal, but would possibly thru contact become a carrier. Would you feel comfortable knowing that you may have been responsible for passing on this virus to a loved one?
I obviously have a concern for others and would feel bad if I passed the virus onto someone. Anyone. Not just a loved one.
That’s a valid concern and one I do respect.
Here’s something I saw:
https://twitter.com/rob_bennett/status/1237574130288844800
Yep, this shit is serious and a lot of people are going to die. Many more are going to die because health care will be over run and preventable deaths will not be able to be avoided. I’m thinking about pulling my kids out of school tomorrow to remove my family from this. Nothing will be done there until it’s too late, the CDC and our gov’t is inept and has learned nothing. We have grand parents in very poor health and I’d like to be able to see them before it is too late.
Getting back to baseball, I’m expecting the season to be cancelled or shortened. This thing is just getting started. It’s depressing.
I’m still waiting for the killer bee invasion.
I remember when that was supposed to happen in the Central Valley when I was a kid. The 80s.
Another 80s thing. Man I was crapping bricks over “the planets will align and bring about the end of days”. That was 86 or something. Turns out the “Donnie Moore game” was more stressful and world ending than planets aligning.
What do you think caused the Donnie Moore game?
It happened in 1999 but we were too busy prepping for Y2k to notice the killer bee invasion.
Y2K was avoided due to thousands (if not millions) of man-years of work by dedicated programmers.
I deal with doctors, nurses, and other healthcare professionals (mostly ER and trauma) every day. The overwhelming consensus in my corner of the world is that this is waaay overblown and that the hysterical coverage is creating more of a problem for the healthcare system than the virus itself. Hospitals and other healthcare providers are taking enormous steps to be ready for an influx of patients, most of which will not need hospital resources.
As someone else on this thread mentioned, we have no idea what the real denominator is, so fatality rates aren’t all that meaningful at this point. It’s a good sign that it’s in the low 1-3% range, as the majority of those that have already been tested are elderly and/or immunocompromised in some way.
Hmm – I also have medical professionals among friends and family (used to be in nursing myself) and their takeaway is the exact opposite. But I expect that ENTs, generalists and epidemiologists have a different POV on community spread than ER/trauma folks who are always exceedingly wary of trends that may cause uninsureds to swarm their wards and stress already undercapacity environments.
I work in pharmaceuticals and none of my contacts are actually afraid of the virus itself, they are far more scared of appearing to be unconcerned or unprepared. All of the hoarding of supplies and nonsense is far worse for everyday living than the actual sickness.
The reality is it’s a self selecting group that feels sick enough to seek medical attention that is forming our baseline. Most people who catch it are experiencing mild flu symptoms- fever and a cough, and probably wouldnt seek medical attention unless things got worse. If those cruise ships hadnt been quarantined the numbers would look really bad because most of the people who were positive tests never had anything resembling a serious symptom and wouldn’t have sought medical care.
The hoarding of supplies clearly puts an unnecessary stress in the community. Being over-prepared is recommended, but going prepper within a week with 80% of the population near you doing similarly in a panic makes no sense. Preppers actually are methodical in their approach and plan far ahead, which they cause no stress on the resources because no one else is doing it at that time.
The Coronavirus is real and here, but a panic maybe worse than the virus. People are thinking they may be isolated for years, when it’s probably month or so because it’s similar to the flu (but a bit worse b/c don’t know what COVID-19 is to combat medicinally at this moment). The older you are, the higher the chances of getting COVID-19. The death rate skyrocketed in the US because it was discovered late in Washington and hit an old folks living area.
Because we don’t know how to combat COVID-19 medicinally, doing a soft quarantine can help reduce the possible stress upon the medical field trying to heal everyone who may have a positive infection test. So shutting down mass gatherings for a month or so can help the medical field tend to those infected properly without sacrificing resources or hospital space.
Right now, we’re behind the rest of the world getting hit with COVID-19. Taking steps now to mitigate mass infection is the prudent move. Sacrificing a month or two of event entertainment to save thousands of lives seems more than worth it b/c you only got one life to live.
The true source was created and kept hidden by China. China put the world at risk trying to save face and not risk losing money in the work market. China could have been isolated sooner and given the rest of the world extra time to find a medicinal solution. It’s a race against time. We can help out the country by limiting the spread of the virus as well as not exhausting the resources to combat the virus. The virus situation is real, but creating panic will only exacerbate the stress on resources when poise and preparedness should be echoed.
Viruses are notoriously difficult to treat because they mutate constantly. We have a select few anti-viral medications (aside from things like acetaminophen, etc… that treat fevers, congestion, etc…) that can actually stop a viral infection.
I haven’t read anything about tamiflu even being tested to treat the sickness yet; Id suspect because most cases are too mild to warrant any treatment and the more serious ones are focused on treating the symptoms (particularly respiratory distress) rather than curing/ shortening the duration.
Here’s what makes me unsure about Wuhan Virus. So, when I look at all the stats from related viruses like MERS and SARS I see that there was far less panic, especially in America, when there was as much or greater actual infection and death than we know of now for Wuhan. There was also almost zero outrage over government inaction. So is the current virus somehow way worse in some way that I haven’t been able to find, or are people just more panicked now? I don’t know. All I know is, when SARS was at this same point a few years back old ladies weren’t fighting over hand sanitizer and stock markets weren’t crashing, but I don’t know if Wuhan’s somehow worse, bigger, or just a bigger opportunity to be outraged and scare up funding. From what I do know about this type of virus canceling baseball games in a world where we all share a single card reader pad with 1000 people a day at the grocery isn’t going to save us, and this type of virus is a months long problem, so canceling games in early April is likely a fart in the wind too.
Speaking of funding. If this keeps up more people are going to die from the effects of the panic than the disease. If the boats from China and all the other places we have make all our stuff for us so we can make apps and record podcasts for a living stop we won’t have things like batteries, IV bags, syringes and most drugs. So people with renal problems, heart disease, stroke issues, bad diabetes, and hundreds of other conditions, if the drugs you take are made in Asia (and they probably are) I’d be more concerned about how few boats are leaving Shanghai than a disease that kills, at worst, 4 of every 100 people who catch it.
We’d probably save more lives pouring money into “medical infrastructure” domestically than getting religious about doubling CDC funding. Sure the CDC and WHO are as good a pile of bureaucrats to fund as any, but the way they are getting pharaonicized now totally ignores that while they do important work, they are still bloated and politicized organizations who spend a lot of money doing a lot of stuff other than “tracking disease and finding cures”. There may be just as much value in making sure there is a huge warehouse of IV drips and Erythropoietin in every time zone.
Uh … I’m a pro influencer gitcho. Way above the ‘podcast’ pay grade.
You also could give a shit about not being able to get heart drugs and other things you refer to as “wussy pezz” because of your incredible toughness and Wolverine like healing powers.
I’m just curious about the world at large because the reasoning for most of the “shut down the world” that I hear the average leighperson spouting is that they themselves are not afraid, but they ARE afraid of an old person/sickly person they care about catching it from them, etc.
Things is, if everyone starts shutting down for the next month we know who’s going to die from everything from lack of catheters to Nitroglycerin pills…. the old and sickly. I’m just curious to see if more of them croak from a disruption like this than from Wuhan Virus itself.
The Athletic piece on Bonds was pathetic. Trying to garner sympathy for him. It’s true, not just because he cheated, but because he was/is an unrepentant asshole who treated his own teammates with contempt, for years so that is why he’s not in the Hall. So the PED cheating was just the push needed to keep the guy out of the Hall and let him suffer in retirement. Boo frickin hoo, Barry. You get everything you deserve.
I don’t think A-Rod or Ortiz belong in the Hall of Fame either, as fellow drug cheats… but the reason people are sympathetic toward those two now (at least in a relative sense, compared to Bonds) is that they are likable and have rebuilt their images as broadcasters on TV and as good teammates. Bonds remains a snarly, defiant prick.
Be an unlikeable asshole and people wind up not liking you?
I shale change mah ways
See Rose, Pete; Shilling, Curt.
As opposed to being a likable asshole…
I still don’t like A-Rod. I view Ortiz as sort of a lumbering goofball, kind of how I view Manny so I’m agnostic on them. A-Rod strikes me as a cold, calculating asshole that some PR rep coached up to act like a decent human.
ARod at least admits to his cheating. Papi acts like he’s clean as a whistle
ironically , The Athletics’s baseball 100 profile for today was no. 16 Alex Rodriguez. thought it was very frank regarding his accomplishments and transgressions. Although it did say he has repaired his image during his post baseball career though broadcasting.
Personally I disagree with the article’s current assessment and completely agree with you @Blackgoat .A-Rod seems extremely ingenuine and more a product of a PR campaign to get out the vote for the Hall of Fame. From everything I have heard and read about Pete Rose and -(to lessor extent; since he didn’t get banned from baseball or get caught cheating)-Curt Schilling, I actually find them more endearing than A-Fraud. They may have been assholes but they seemed to be genuine assholes, warts and all.
@Cowboy26 I don’t get why they even let a-rod into the booth, should be left to rot on the vine like Bonds. I can draw a slight distinction between Ortiz and a-rod/bonds/mcgwire/sosa in that Ortiz didn’t seriously impact the record books in the way that the others did. He got some rings and hit some dingers, ok whatever. I go back and forth on Pete Rose all the time, he seems like a somewhat good dude but obviously flawed as a human. His transgression is unforgivable and is more harmful to the game in the big picture than cheating to win so I understand his punishment even if I don’t HATE the man. Curt Schilling… I hate the man. Baseball doesn’t need Curt Schilling just like it doesn’t need Bonds or A-rod.
You are so right about Barroids!
Bonds worked for an MLB franchise for three years. Hardly a banishment.
To Hell with Barry Bonds.
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Sun-Bonds-Tells-Court-Barry-Beat-Her-Often-3018220.php
Ortiz is also unrepentant and unlikable outside of Boston.
Heard last night state of Washington has banned events with more than 250 attendees. So will Mariners start season in Arizona? I’m thinking we are getting closer to a delayed start.
Yazooo. 250. That would be counted as 50000 in Arte’s house. *Cough-Cough