igor67

While there is some value in getting to 3rd, my super hazy recollection is that even a .100 chance by swinging away for a pitcher is going to be worth more. No double play worries certainly helps. And the pitch count. Cueto being a veteran might be allowed to rack up the pitch count more, but it does look like it would be difficult for him to go more than 6 innings today.

I'm sure the hits did feel nice for Tyrone, but during his cold streak of games he went hitless over 20 ABs he still walked 3 times and only struckout 4. For as clutch as he generally has been this season he had some high profile ABs that didn't go well that made it seem worse than it was.

Adames, Tellez, and Escobar staying as hot as they have been might finally balance the karma scales of how bad that post trade swoon from Schoop was.

Post season counting stats might be the least translatable across baseball eras. More teams in the post-season and more rounds inflate those stats pretty badly compared to prior eras. I haven't worked through how many more playoff appearances the Brewers would have had, but the Molitor-Yount teams had quite a few low to mid 90's win totals that didn't finish first, but are almost always good enough for a wild card now.

In terms of roster impact, there are enough unknowns that I won't give a false sense by running a calculation, but with the large size of the roster that has been used so far this year and that published 66% number a person could very reasonably expect quite a few more cases yet. So far everyone seems to be having minimal stays on the DL which is a pretty big plus.

More of that Ashby would be amazing.

A big reason for the discrepancy is how one frames the question. There are a lot of historical examples to find, because when we look back we are seeing the chances of a team losing a big lead to the entire field. Keeping in mind throughout most of Brewers history they played in a much larger division (7 teams in the old AL East) means 6 different teams have a chance to get hot enough and/or the contending team to fall off enough. More divisions with smaller teams collectively has made the phenomena MORE likely (since now 6 different teams might end up with a big lead), but with fewer teams in a division it is actually somewhat less likely to have a big lead now than years ago.

To an extent the high number of remaining games helps suggest that the Cards can 'control' their destiny more. In practice it makes for quite the statistical tight rope they would have to walk to comeback. The spreadsheet helps bring that into focus. at just under .500 the Cards would need to win 38 and lose 17 to overtake the Crew. But with that same record you would expect the Brewers to have forced 6 losses on the Cards, and given up 7 wins. Meaning against everyone else they need to go 31-11 or a .738 win%. Under the same number of Brewer wins Cincy probably takes 2 out of 3 from the Crew and would need 32-19 against everyone else or .627.

Listening to the chants for him Monday night on TV was both fantastic, and also seemed straight out of Major League.

One consequence is that Dan Plesac is still the all time career saves leader at only 133. Hader currently just has 84 hurt undoubtedly by the shortened 2020 or he would have to be pretty much a shoo-in to take the mark next year. He still could get there by next year, but it will take a good full year in all likelihood.

Felt pretty good I got 2 of the 3 you mentioned.

I think that ground rule double just robbed Adames of an inside the park HR. The way Gamel had to lay out for that any bounce off the wall and I don't think he gets until Adames is rounding 3rd.

Arguably that post could have been in the Optimism thread.

There was a fun element to all of this, but Stearns isn't exactly having a tough time selling tickets and in need of gimmicks like say Dean Taylor. The sheer number of transactions this season is enough to keep him busy with real work and not looking for fanbase distractions.

Only if you add the Badgers playing an unbeaten team outside the Power 5 in the college championship game.

I'd actually be curious to see how big of an impact that is having on our World Series odds calculations. Being number 2 and getting homefield for the first round, and realistically with such strong wildcards it becomes a coinflip if we'd have homefield in round 2.

There's something to that, but he is a vet and I'm sure the plan going in was not to use him unless there is a blowout. It can get tricky too if you wait to long to use a new player. I did enjoy watching the crowd reaction, which is about the loudest I've ever heard in a 6-0 game in the 9th inning.

I'll risk the jinx, but without Frazier the current Pirates line-up seems very no-hittable. I'm sure Gamel will single handedly prevent the Brewers from pulling it off. But between the defense and high strikeout pitchers we are due to get one at some point.

We shouldn't underestimate the impact of adding a man with grade 80 facial hair to the roster.

I checked the the calendar twice to make sure it wasn't April 1st...

It's important to note that many of the symptoms of "long-haul COVID" (headaches, insomnia, fatigue, muscle pain, difficulty concentrating) are also symptoms of depression and anxiety. Given that it's well established that social isolation (which occurs with quarantine) can increase chances of developing depression or anxiety one would need a study with a control group and a plausible mechanism to determine a true rate of long-haul COVID. Do you know of a study that includes a control group or looks into a plausible mechanism? I have not gone through and reviewed any of those papers methodologies closely so I am unfortunately unsure.

Point of clarification the article I had seen indicated that younger people were more likely to be symptomatic with delta (which could be called more serious), but wasn't definitive on whether or not severe disease was more likely. I wasn't able to track it down again. But I did find this one on the prevalence of Long Covid in youth which I tend to worry about the most since I've already seen it torpedo an honor student. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01935-7 We don't have to get to 100% for it to fade into the background, I'm not thrilled about having to teach with a mask on again this fall, but since I'm going to be in a building with a large currently unvaccinateable population I get it. Certainly the case rates in higher vaccine areas provide reason for some optimism that we are in the range where every shot does help. And many regions are again seeing some increasing rates of vaccination after tapering off dramatically.

Dhonks, turborickey, and I (and any other teachers I can't think of right now) care about a lot more than deaths. A run of the mill 2 week bout with normal covid already gets students past the halfway point to the number of absences from school that increase the risk of failing a grade. In a year when all of us are going to be trying to make-up lost ground from last year students might be even more sensitive to absences than normal. Delta is affecting younger persons much more harshly than prior variants, so cases are a concern before we even get into the fact that deaths are going back-up, some states hospitals are being overwhelmed again, and more cases is more risk for yet another variant. And the earlier research on Long Covid showed both mild and severe cases were at risk for developing it, so more cases is bad on that front.

The CDC has not been communicating publicly like they are talking only to research scientists. They've been trying to 'message' from the beginning. Which as you identified is about the best one can hope for from the public. The possibility of something like delta has been talked about from relatively early in the process. I will admit that as time went on and the infection number got so high without seeing a really gaming changing mutant arise I thought we were going to be clear of that problem. Other countries certainly managed to keep their death totals lower, but by the same token many countries seem to have struggled with a populace unhappy with restrictions and anti-vaccine sentiment, and rampant promotion of quack treatments, so I tend to grade on a little bit of a curve. Most of those are deep seated human problems. Focusing for the moment on the communication difficulty that delta is causing, it quite simply has managed to find a sweet spot of faulty human reasoning. In this case it is the difference between population type thinking and individual perspectives (lots of science ed articles on why this is tough for people to learn) on the individual level the vaccine effectiveness is both lower against delta and still very high. But on the population level since well over 100 million people have been vaccinated the breakthroughs are suddenly a meaningful add on to the problem because the data is showing that with delta specifically they can still have some level of transmission to others. Despite data showing it is difficult for people to grapple with the distinction I don't think it is unreasonable to try and break it down, nor do I consider it remotely unreasonable to expect citizens to try and understand. Rights come with responsibilities.

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