Brad Hand is going to the Nationals for one year at $10.5 Million. The Nationals also re-signed Ryan Zimmerman to a one year deal. The Yankees acquired Jameson Taillon from the Pirates in exchange for four minor leaguers. Meanwhile, Pablo Sandoval has a one year minor league deal with the Braves. Left hander Derek Holland got a minor league deal with the Tigers with a spring training invitation.
Mike Trout tweeted a nice tribute to Hank Aaron. Garrett Richards and the Red Sox have agreed to a one year deal worth $10.5 Million. The Reds are showing interest in Andrelton Simmons. The Blue Jays have also been in touch with him. Finally, Kike Hernandez signed a two year deal with the Red Sox for $14 Million.
Cactus League cities are calling on MLB to delay the start of spring training due to high COVID infection rate in Arizona.
“In view of the current state of the pandemic in Maricopa County — with one of the nation’s highest infection rates — we believe it is wise to delay the start of spring training to allow for the COVID-19 situation to improve here”
I definitely understand AZ not wanting a hundreds of thousands of people dropping in right now. I also know how much money Spring Training brings to that area. They want to get that money. MLB can play those games with or without fans and wants a 162 game season.
Late March, the period specified in the letter as safer, is the earliest I would consider going out there. I highly doubt MLB moves their schedule to help Phoenix make more money.
Herd immunity not expected until September at the soonest. We maybe looking at 100-120 gm season. I believe Arizona’s Cactus League income is in trouble along with MLB.
Press conference today they said “late summer.” Funny how people are now accepting the reality of herd immunity. It was considered heartless to use that term last year.
I keep seeing we only really know of 1 in 8 to 1 in 10 cases. In that case, we’re getting close. We should at least see a dramatic slowdown in cases.
Hard to think having dinner tonight on a patio is OK but having that same dinner at a ballpark while separated by the same distance is all that much different. Temp checks at the gates, masks when not eating (or maybe no concessions to eliminate this loophole) and maybe we start at 20% seating and gradually move up to fuller stadiums. Best I got.
Pre vaccine thinking herd immunity was inhuman. People dying just so other people could die.
Now that we have a vaccine or three herd immunity is implied that people take the vaccine or have been sick will rise to the 90% plus needed to have some kind of herd immunity.
Same outcome, totally different philosophy.
Yeah, pre-vaccines the herd immunity strategy was basically the public health equivalent of the Soviet meatgrinder strategy in WWII.
I’m gonna go rewatch Enemy at the Gates now.
Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t hoping people would go do super spreaders, I just follow the math and knew herd immunity was coming one way or the other.
Had another buddy, 51, die of Covid yesterday. That makes 2 friends in a month. Sucks.
Totally sucks, and not to make light of losses at all, but having read a bunch of pandemic/plague related books of late, I am SO GRATEFUL it was just Covid. As we head toward vaccine/herd immunity I feel really lucky because the chances of a pandemic virus being far far worse than this are pretty good. Way may not have dodged a bullet, but we were spared the shotgun round.
Your spell check not working or just your spelling.
My spelling generally sucks, but I can’t see anything misspelled. No red squiggles (in case you’ve been wondering, that’s your desk robot trying to tell you something is spelled wrong. If you left click on it Bill Gates fixes it for you). Oh… looks like my phone put in Way instead of We. Which isn’t spelling, it’s grammar…. kind of like using a period instead of a question mark.
Though I’m not even sure that’s what you’re asking. Is it “Is your spell check not working or is your spelling just bad?” or “Is your spell check not working or did you spell that word that way on purpose?” or “Is your spell check working but your spelling is not?” or what? It was just one sentence. You typed one sentence out and it still reads like mud. I don’t even care if your spelling is bad, I just want to read what you type and not feel like I need a rest after I figure out WTF you’re saying.
Man, 51. COVID just grabs so many unexpectedly.
Stay safe everybody.
Sorry to hear, Jeff. And I get what you were saying. As someone forced to go to doctors and hospitals over the past year for some ongoing non-COVID medical issues, I’d like to get past this pandemic ASAP. It’d nice if everyone was on the same page.
I thought it was always a given that herd immunity would play a big role in tamping this thing down. Flatten the curve because you aren’t going stop it.
Math is math. I guess having the vaccine is better, but I always figured herd immunity would be kicking in about the time the vaccine was really rolled out. Getting 250 million plus vaccinated in a few months seemed like a pipe dream.
This is what the doctors in my work circle are saying. By the time most people get the jab most of them won’t need it. But we won’t let that stop us from spending billions on it. Most of them are also of the opinion that, like the common cold, we would have hit herd immunity in about the same amount of time as we do the common cold if we’d just let it go, and to a great extent the number of deaths would be about the same as we already have just much faster…. but without all the groovy inflation and death blows to people’s livelihood.
People don’t really have a good grasp of how the contagion works, how easily it spreads, or how useless most of the measures we take are in comparison to things we still do, such as using payment pads at every store we go to, not locking ourselves away from our kids, etc. Populations as a whole would generally have those who were gonna get it get it either way, those who would die will die, but we’ve made it take a long time. It was explained to me that, on a mass scale, the Hispanic population in California is an example of how the virus would have worked had we just let it do it’s thing…. hard hit in waves, then mellowing out.
If we hadn’t totally balloxed all the data from this pandemic we’d most likely find that the fastest way around this mess was to hide grandma and our health compromised friends away and bull strait through it.
It’s still herd immunity, but we will get there with the help of the vaccine. We just are not, or should not, have a bunch too many die getting to the 90 plus% we need to have herd immunity.
The original way, before the vaccine, them knuckleheads in charge of things were thinking. Was to kill off 14M, at least, to get to herd immunity. If we could ever get there.
Truly, the only way to get to herd immunity, is with the vaccine. If we lost 5% of the population, the nation would collapse.
14 million people? WTF? There are only 2.4 million reported deaths world wide, fewer than 500K here. Did the original plan involve shooting 13 million people? Whose plan was it? Are we saying stay at home orders saved 13.5 million US lives? 5% of the population is 17 million people give or take, where are we getting the idea that that many could die from a disease that kills fewer than 2% of the people who get it? Hell, the most boosted IFR we’ve seen was 1.5% and now it’s looking like it kills far fewer than 1%. Even if everyone in America got it and it really kills 1% that’s only 3.4 million people, am I misunderstanding something?
Source?
Sorry. Seen an extra zero. 1.4Million, but with untold suffering for those that have recovered from the illness, but not the after-effects.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02948-4
and I will stop
Good read. Thank you for sharing that.
I watch a lot of Bloomberg. Catch the European market close then follow ours. I’d seen something similar but not as in depth.
Gotcha. Even through the worst of it, losing 2 friends, watching 2 others lose their dads, I never lost sight of this as a math problem. I’ve always been able to detach from things a bit, for better or worse.
Interesting you keep citing 90%+ because the vaccine target was 76%+, I thought. Either way, if we truly only know 1 in 8 to 10 infections, herd immunity is within sight as were already between 60-70%.
If there’s one thing we should all agree on it’s the need to take better care of ourselves. We have loved ones who want us around. If that means dropping a few pounds, putting down the smokes, etc. all the stuff that normally kills you is magnified when something like this rolls around.
Jeez yah. As a fat man myself who gets piles of info on the virus at work I think perhaps the #1 take away from this whole thing that could be a real benefit is the sense that all of us fatties who got it and lived, or didn’t get it, dodged a bullet. Type 2 diabetes and heart attacks etc come up slowly, but the fact that totally survivable diseases are far less survivable if you have not taken care of yourself will hopefully snap more guys like me out of it and into the produce section more often.
But it is a total math problem…. with political expediency on either side moving two integers around as much as they can to muddy the data and make their fumy points stick so we may never actually know how deadly/undeadly the actual bug was. You’re probably right though, herd immunity is close most likely. But even that’s an example of how cackhanded we all are….
“It’s possible we only know of 1 in 8 to 10 cases! BE AFRAID!”
“Really? Then we must be closing in on herd immunity. We can ease up on all the fear and regulation then?”
“NO! It will be months and months until it’s safe to feel safe!”
All of those ideas are heartless….. wait, it’s after the election….. it probably makes sense to just do that stuff.
I could say very much more, but will be civil. You don’t know what you are talking about. Just stop.
I pretty much always know what I’m talking about.
Just be better than pretty much, when you don’t know what you are talking about.
So, please stop.
But I do know what I’m talking about. Covid was a very useful disease politically. Most big diseases are. It’s really worked out great for some people. Not so great for people who want to, you know, go watch a baseball game. Or run a small business. Or have a dollar that has more than the buying power of the ruble.
No Concessions? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlORWhsJjNM
Players association rejects universal DH and expanded playoffs. I’d prefer that they reject runner on 2b and 7 inning games.
At least this gives teams clarity on how to build their rosters. Should see roid boy Cruz and Ozuna’s markets shape up now.
But, yes, the latter two are garbage.
I’m surprised they rejected the universal DH.
MLB tied it to some other annoying stuff besides just expanded playoffs. It’ll be in the links tomorrow. I am pretty sure the MLBPA was not happy with the idea of a pitch clock, for example.
Man I wish the would institute a pitch clock. MiLB games go by so much faster.
They?
Yep, they. There it is! I totally understood what you were getting at! Victory is ours!
The umpires don’t pay attention to the pitch clock anyway.
Got to be more money in more pitching
Wow,
the RED Sux are bailing out The Yankees in their payroll issues.
https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2021/01/yankees-trade-adam-ottavino-red-sox.html
Trade ’em Pujols, throw in Upton as sweetener.
If we traded away 8 mil in salary what would be the reason? I think we’d immediately answer “Bauer”.
Around here? I think “Cheap Arte” would take the day.
714 tickets baibee
Yanks were only $1 million from the luxury tax threshold. The fact they’d rather depart with a prospect than go over is telling.
Sux bought a prospect and a potential trade piece for $11 million (there’s deferred signing bonus money.)
this is such a crazy system where one team can spend $210 million, another $175 million. That’s an additional $35 million that the Yankees have over us. And something like $155 million more than Pittsburgh.
The no true cap thing makes it fun. Like no limit hold ’em. And it provides big earning potential for players. But it needs modification.
I’d institute a hard floor of all revenue sharing money plus MLB direct payments must go to payroll. In this case Pittsburgh would have to bump theirs up. I’d rearrange the payroll tax, too. Have it phase in a little lower at a really low rate then ramp up proportionally.
I’m no Borras, but there needs to be a floor that prevents an owner from just grazing on rev sharing. I wish there was a hard cap too. It’s interesting to watch the off season in other sports where they have to shed payroll and some good players move around because of it, it makes the draft more important, and prospects and makes it so teams in Kansas City, Tampa, Cleveland, Buffalo, Pittsburgh etc can compete with New York…. which is anathema to MLB.
Yeah, there’s absolutely no reason why money teams get from other clubs and MLB directly is allowed to go into owners pockets. Maybe institute a “use it or lose it” clause.
I did the math for an article at the old place and it was close to $120 million per team. That’s your floor.
The Pirates opened last year expecting to spend $61 million. You know what, I think we just stumbled on the theme for weekend links.
And, as a semi-fan of the Pirates, can you imagine how great it would have been there if they could have kept guys like McCutchen and Cole, etc? Not that Cutch stayed good for long, but just so the fans there could keep an icon. It would really help baseball in towns like Pitt and Milwaukee if they could actually have some of their greats spend a career there.
Now they have money to sign Gardner.
I’m sure they’ll grab one of the other million relivers out there.
Can’t they mow their own lawn?
That is the way pro leagues work. Can’t have competitions without anyone to compete.
I don’t think we want Hand at $10.5m.
Agreed.
Aloha Mr. Hand.
Mr. Hand?
Who’s interested in a trade for Gray & Winker? Both fit a need plus are affordable and controlled for 3 more years (through 2024). Would Jo be on the table for such a package?
Can we include Arte in that package?
no he wouldn’t
Let’s use Upton’s first 6 years as a comp for Adell’s first 6. J-Up was worth 18.2 WAR during that timeframe (age 19-24). So let’s give Jo the benefit of doubt, round up and give him 20 WAR. Fair?
I think Winker is a safe 1 WAR/yr player over the next 3 years (pretty conservative) but his 2020 would project to 4.5 WAR over a full season. Gray has averaged 2.5 WAR/yr but has a 5 WAR ceiling that he’s reached twice.
Does it not make sense to consider trading one potential for the other? Which do you feel more confident with to meet those projections?
Jo Jo left his home in Tucson Arizona, for some California grass.
I’d love a trade for Gray. Most realistic shot at adding a true top of the rotation guy.
I just wonder if the Reds further tear down or not. The Central is weak sauce right now and they likely have the best 1-2 in it. Castellano and Moose were both putrid last year, but last year was crazy in itself. They add Simba and maybe Reddick and they are right there in this thing.
They would definitely want either Adell or Marsh straight up, which I wouldn’t do. If they could pull it off by offering a package of lower level/less-developed prospects (Paris, Jones, and Soto) I would be happy. I think people are over valuing Gray a little bit. While with Cincinnati, he has had a couple of years where he looks like an Ace but also had some years where he has looked less than stellar. I don’t trust that he is the same pitcher that he was in Oakland.
I’ve seen posts here that Bauer’s performance may have been bolstered by the weak division, but nobody ever seems to point out the same would be true for Gray.
Hand gave Angels’ offer the middle finger….
He waved it off.
He couldn’t grasp the benefits of playing in Anaheim.
I can’t shake the feeling that Hand would have been a good addition.
Oh, snap!
I heard he was all thumbs……
Maybe the offer didn’t have enough digits.
Man, we’ve been losing a lot of people lately. Kinda hard to take for me right now.
Definitely.
Kike for $7M a season, what a deal for the Sux. Smart move while he still has the skills.
Same AAV as Profar. I guess that’s the going rate for jack of all trades players now.
Is that vernon wells in the background behind Mike 👎
Possibly. That image is a few years old.
Vernone. *fixed*