sveumrules

The only NL teams I don't view as "contenders" with this short season are MIA, PIT, COL & SF - which inevitably means one of them will make the postseason.

Gio Gonzalez is no longer here, but I thought this FG article was pretty interesting & is another possible data point to help explain why the whole of our pitching staff has typically ended up better than the perceived value of the individual names during Stearns & company's tenure... https://blogs.fangraphs.com/was-gio-gonzalez-falling-behind-on-purpose/

So it took us a little over four months, but we hit 100 pages on the first C19 thread. Really though, that's nothing compared to the 91 pages we generated in less than 20 hours for Game 4 of the 2018 NLCS... viewtopic.php?f=65&t=37735 Anyway, it doesn't seem like this whole thing is going anywhere anytime soon, so let's start a new thread & hopefully in another four months/one hundred pages (whichever comes first) we'll have a better handle on it all.

The best part is that the 22-3 game was at Miller Park Whoops, totally misread the series as being in Colorado. Guess I need to slow my scroll. In that case, I'll go for the "even in a simulation we can't close out a sweep on a Sunday home game" joke.

July 9 - Brewers 5, Rockies 4 July 10 - Brewers 4, Rockies 3 July 11 - Brewers 4, Rockies 0 (wow, looks like we could pull off the rare four game road sweep in Colorado) (scrolls down...) July 12 - Rockies 22, Brewers 3 (is this a simulation or real life?)

Back when there was going to be a regular old fashioned 162 game baseball season, most of the projection systems had the Brewers, Cardinals, Cubs & Reds projected within a few games of each other with the only real certainty being the Pirates in last. Now that we're down to maybe hopefully 60 games the odds for chaos increase pretty drastically. Going off of ZiPS the Pirates went from 0.7% to make the playoffs over 162 to 6.7% over 60. The spread for playoff odds over 162 was Cubs (39.7%), Brewers (23.0%), Cardinals (18.8%), Reds (17.8%) vs Cubs (27.6%), Brewers (23.4%), Cardinals (21.9%) & Reds (20.4%) over 60 games.

If anyone here has dug into the new episodes of Unsolved Mysteries on NetFlix, I would love to hear what you think about the Rey Rivera case.

DC Comics...because the franchise is a joke.

Think you might be looking for OrioleFan.net (or, maybe TrollCave.org)?

I have no idea where you are quoting that from, but it costs $500M to $1B to develop a drug and bring it to market. $72M is a drop in the bucket when it comes to drug development costs, probably about 10% of the total development cost, and they have discounted remdesivir well over 10% for $3200/treatment. Now, if you're referring to funding a study, that's a different story, as you haven't provided a link to whatever you are quoting that from. But drug development is damn expensive, and remdesivir wasn't developed to treat COVID-19. The italicized quote is from here...https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/remdesivir-coronavirus-gilead-charge-thousands-treatment-u-s-n1232385 Public Citizen's Remdesivir position is published on their website...https://www.citizen.org/news/gileads-remdesivir-price-is-offensive/ This StatNews article offers a range of "expert" opinions on what an appropriate price might possibly be...https://www.statnews.com/2020/05/15/gilead-remdesivir-pricing-coronavirus/ I figured Gilead was named after the totalitarian state in The Handmaid's Tale, but it turns out they actually drew their inspiration from the ancient Balm of Gilead. This passage from Reverend Becca Stevens book Snake Oil: The Art of Healing and Truth-Telling seems somewhat relevant..."I believe it's more of an idea, like Eden, than a geographic location. Gilead represents the place that holds the hope of healing. For everyone who has been wounded, hurt, or abused, Gilead represents the sacred place where borders fade and balms are poured out lavishly." The only thing lavish about Remdesivir seems to be the price point & Gilead is actively working to put up borders (https://www.citizen.org/news/remdesivir-should-be-in-the-public-domain-gileads-licensing-deal-picks-winners-and-losers/) so it appears they have a different interpretation of their namesake than does the Reverend.

No, you're not following this correctly. Remdesivir was developed more than a decade ago as a Hepatitis-C treatment (didn't work well), and then studied as an Ebola treatment. It takes years to develop a drug, so they are testing available drugs already on the market that have anti-viral or anti-inflammatory effects with the potential to counteract some of the known or hypothesized pathways of the disease. As a FYI, the "cost" (before rebates, discounts, etc.) of an average Hepatitis-C drug is over $50K for about 8-12 weeks of treatment. Peter Maybarduk, a lawyer at the consumer group Public Citizen, called the price “an outrage.” “This is a drug that received at least $70 million in public funding” toward its development, he said. “Remdesivir should be in the public domain.” “The price puts to rest any notion that drug companies will ‘do the right thing’ because it is a pandemic,” Dr. Peter Bach, a health policy expert at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York said in an email. “The price might have been fine if the company had demonstrated that the treatment saved lives. It didn’t.”

But the authors of the trial wrote that the drug did not prevent all deaths. "Given high mortality despite the use of remdesivir, it is clear that treatment with an anti-viral drug alone is not likely to be sufficient," they said. About 7.1 percent of patients given remdesivir in the trial group died within 14 days—compared with 11.9 percent in the placebo group. However, the result is just below the statistical reliability threshold, meaning it could be down to chance rather than the capability of the drug. So if I'm following this all correctly (very possible I'm not), 70 million in taxpayer funds were used to develop a treatment of questionable efficacy which the US goverment subsequently ordered almost the entire supply of to sell back to infected taxpayers at 3,200 a pop...and it might even kind of work.

From my admittedly little understanding, hydroxychloroquine is already out in the world for anyone to incorporate into a treatment if they so choose. If it is actually helpful, it would then presumably be much cheaper (& maybe even more effective) than the $3,200 Gilead Remdesivir treatment course. Though I can't imagine the government or the health care industry would ever chase profit over the best interests of public health.

Looks like Scott Boras is his agent, so they're almost certainly going for & will probably get just about every last dollar.

Sweden currently at 521.45 deaths per million, 5th highest worldwde behind Belgium, UK, Italy & Spain. Whatever Finland (59.44 deaths per million) & Norway (46.85 deaths per million) did definitely seems to have saved more lives. USA currently at 385.05 deaths per million, 7th highest... https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deaths-worldwide-per-million-inhabitants/

Zimms is on his last legs, Desmond has posted -3.2 WAR the last three years, Joe Ross has an ERA+ of 87 & 0.7 WAR the last three years. None of them will be missed by anyone. Leake is probably the only one who projected for any value in 2020 & even that is as a nondescript innings eater, which is much less valuable in a 60 game (if we even make it that far) season.

I understood that all the teams had to have their lists into the league office on Sunday afternoon. I wonder why most other team have their lists in (& announced) but the Brewers do not.. Maybe Stearns & company are trying to swing a deal to upgrade that 60th spot.

I would imagine Giannis is smart enough to not want anything to do with Kidd ever again.

Of the top 30 starting pitchers by fWAR in 2019 only two were international signees, Luis Castillo (23rd, 4.1 fWAR) & Eduardo Rodriguez (27th, 3.7 fWAR). If you zoom out to the last five years there are still only two international signees among the top 30 starting pitchers by fWAR, Carlos Carrasco (11th, 18.8 fWAR) & Jose Quintana (12th, 18.4 fWAR). It does look like international signees are a little more prevalent on the reliever leaderboards though, with around 10 guys in the top 30 by fWAR both last year & over the last five seasons.

With starting pitchers going fewer & fewer innings to avoid the 3rd time through the order, these situations are becoming increasingly rare already. Last year NL pinch hitters batted 224/310/397 (84 wRC+), essentially the same as Manny Pina 228/313/411 (87 wRC+). Sure, that's worlds better than almost every pitcher, but still a a pretty easy out in most instances.

Really? With soon to be 32 year old Jedd Gyroko (.174/.248/.250 in 2019) as the starting 3B? You're right, will probably have to settle for 69-1.

Sounds to me more like Manfred trying to play the fans/players via the media again... On 06/17 Rob characterized things as “a jointly developed framework that we agreed could form the basis of an agreement.” That sounds a lot different than the quote in the Nightengale tweet, “I don’t know what Tony and I were doing there for several hours going back and forth and making trades if we weren’t reaching an agreement.” The original quotes makes it pretty clear that they were working on a framework that could form the basis of an agreement, not reaching an agreement itself.

Last year only two AL teams had players get 500+ PAs in the DH spot, Minnesota & Oakland. Both small market playoff teams. Most teams seem to have moved away from the primary DH to rotating players through the spot in exchange for the additional roster flexibility. If we had the DH sooner we could have kept Khris or Domingo or Ji-Man or even Garrett Cooper. With Stearns & company's track record of finding useful players on the cheap I think the DH will be just another weapon in their arsenal.

Just watched a couple videos of Wiemer & he definitely swings with some serious intent. Iron out the mechanics to unlock more consistency & he could be a monster. Even if he never makes enough contact, sounds like he's got enough arm strength to maybe take a shot at the Kieschnick career path as a last resort.

Not too concerned about no pitchers yet. Here are notable pitchers drafted under Stearns & company so far... 2016: Braden Webb (3rd), Corbin Burnes (4th), Zack Brown (5th) 2017: Caden Lemons (2nd), Brendan Murphy (4th), Bowden Francis (7th), Alec Bettinger (10th), Max Lazar (11th), Dylan File (21st) 2018: Aaron Ashby (4th), Justin Jarvis (5th), Drew Rasmussen (6th), Clayton Andrews (17th) 2019: Ethan Small (1st), Antoine Kelly (2nd), Nick Bennett (6th) So far they've found a lot of interesting pitching talent in the 4th round & beyond. Guys that were already here like Woodruff (11th), Hader (19th), Davies (26th) & Suter (31st) were also varying degrees of developemental success stories. Wouldn't be surprised if they have a couple two tree college seniors with funky deliveries or stuff that plays above the radar gun readings they're hoping to talk into taking that twenty grand too.