Nine of twelve

The potential problem with that is we don't know yet whether antibodies to the current iteration of the virus will protect against the inevitable mutations. Viruses can evolve pretty quickly and there's no guarantee that surviving this version will protect one against a different form. The same is true for a vaccine. This is why effective vaccines against flu and against HIV and against others haven't emerged. Yes, flu shots help, but there are many flu viruses and they continue to mutate so the annual shot represents epidemiologists' best guess for the viruses most likely to be problematic each year.

Speak for yourself. I think sports are much better when players have strong mutual respect and understand that playing the game hard, but cleanly, is the best thing for everyone. I myself don't hate any team or fans. Except maybe the Yankees.

I'm not a baseball insider but I think any competent professional pitching coach should understand how a knuckleball is thrown and be able to teach it. The paucity of knuckleball throwers through the years is evidence that it is a difficult pitch to master. I like the pitch not because it's "fun", but because it is proven to be effective if thrown well, and no team should rule out a player learning the pitch if he can make it work.

If and when the situation changes my mind will change as well.

I thought it would go without saying, but I guess it doesn't, that those in need of urgent medical care should of course always be first priority. I think the discussion that HBD and I have been having (or maybe monopolizing) was which jobs should have higher priority for testing than professional athletes.

That's all well and good, but it's irrelevant to this discussion. This discussion is about Mauer's 2009 season and how it ranks with the other four Minnesota Twins MVP seasons. And that season is quite likely the best season a catcher has ever had.

OK, fine. You asked who I would prioritize if I'm not prioritizing professional athletes. I would prioritize each of those jobs and many more ahead of professional athletes. For the purpose of answering your question the exact order does not matter. Or, if you like, they can be grouped into one category of workers defined as those more important than professional athletes. Then those workers could be labeled priority number one and professional athletes can be priority number two. Workers grouped into the category defined as those less important than professional athletes can be priority number three.

Oh, let's see... grocery and other retail workers, police, EMT's, other first responders, prison workers, judges and other court system workers, mail and other delivery workers, educators and other school workers, day care workers, auto repair workers, hair salon workers, bar and restaurant workers, road and building maintenance workers, public government service workers, need I go on?

I haven't read anything about this subject so I don't know for sure, but it's probably more accurate to say that they are making their plans just in case training camp will be able to begin as currently scheduled even though they realize there is a significant chance they will need to cancel or postpone. It's much easier to plan for camp and then cancel as opposed to doing it the other way around.

If I were in charge of administration of this plan at this time here is what I would require. All players, coaches and staff to be involved (this includes everyone from every team from clubhouse attendants to bus drivers to food preparation workers; EVERYONE) would travel to their workplaces and be isolated from everyone else for two weeks. Repeat: no one else comes in. Ever. At the end of that two-week period everyone would be tested. If there are no positive tests then the plan can proceed, and everyone involved would have contact with no one outside the tested cohort until the risk to the public has fallen to a reasonable level. If anyone leaves and wishes to return another two weeks of isolation followed by a test would be needed. This is a logistical nightmare. Lots of sanitizing would be required. Security at residences, training facilities, and stadiums would have to be extremely tight. There would be no contact with media unless each member was also part of the original tested cohort. And there's also the matter of having available the many thousands of tests that would be required. The last I heard was there weren't enough even for the general public. In short, the effort and resources required to give us a spectator sport, an activity that is VERY low on the essential-services spectrum, would be much better placed on higher priority activities, such as producing protective gear for essential services and medical equipment for critically ill people. I'm sorry if anyone disagrees, but that's just the way I think it is and I think it's selfish and borderline unpatriotic to seriously consider such a plan.

Of course it's because of the positions they played. That's exactly the point. Being a top-flight catcher was a big part of what made him the best baseball player in the world in 2009. It's far more valuable than being a top-flight first baseman.

No it is not. At least it shouldn't be. And the batter-runner is out at first.

For the sake of my own amusement I wanted to see what that bastion of journalistic integrity , The New York Post, had on its web site on the day Morneau was announced as MVP. The large headline was "JETER LOSES MVP", with a large photo of him and a small photo of Morneau inserted on the side. This was funny and awful at the same time, though not surprising.

This should never have been part of the game in the first place, and should never be again. Plus, Hal McRae was a jerk, to put it kindly.

Whether Sano could do it depends a heavily on the rest of the lineup. (Captain Obvious writing here.) Frequent plate appearances with a man on first base and a capable hitter on deck would reduce pitchers' tendency to walk him. He has the ability to hit 45-50 dingers in a full season, and if that happens with an average of one man on base that's 90-100 RBI right there. It would be no small feat to generate another 40-50 RBI but he would be much more likely to reach 140 compared to someone hitting "only" 30 HR. The other thing to mention about his increasing tendency to draw walks is his apparent improvement in recognizing breaking balls outside the zone. The reason pitchers have thrown so many of those pitches in the past is to get swinging strikes as opposed to throwing waste pitches. If his pitch recognition improves he will still draw more walks but there won't be as many of those pitches thrown to him, especially earlier in the count. That means more hittable pitches and more balls hit very far.

I agree. But that doesn't change my opinion that it's too easy. I think the bar for enshrinement should be higher. There are many players in the Hall whose careers do not merit enshrinement. (IMHO, naturally.) Of course, those players can never be dis-enshrined, but their memberships then provide a standard for later borderline players. To me it cheapens the status of the truly great players.

It's too easy to be elected to the HOF. I think peak value should be a very minimal factor to consider, and probably shouldn't matter at all. Here's an example I like to cite: Mark Fidrych had an ERA of 2.47 during his first three seasons. It would not be difficult to make the argument that he was the best starting pitcher in the majors during that time. In spite of this, I don't think there's a reasonable case for him to be inducted. Cumulative performance is what sets the greatest players apart from the rest. Some of the players who have been inducted fall a bit short of the standard I would apply, including my favorite baseball player ever. We'll never know, but if not for one game in October of 1991 and the sympathy factor of a popular player suffering a retinal hemorrhage I think Kirby would have been a borderline inductee. And there are many others who don't truly stand far above the rest. There's also the other side of the coin, where deserving players are not voted in or have to endure a long wait. There's no better example than Blyleven. When he retired he was third all time in strikeouts. Repeating for emphasis: ****ing THIRD! In the history of the game! If a player retired third all time in home runs he would deservingly be close to unanimous on the first ballot, and Blyleven should have been. This type of thing has made me conclude that being elected to the HOF is unimportant. Let the records of the players, managers, and others stand on their own without a highly arbitrary thumbs-up/thumbs-down vote.

If it's in the New York Post it's suspect until proven otherwise.

I consider myself above average in baseball knowledge for a fan, but this presentation shows how much more a trained professional knows than a layman. It was very interesting to see how Bauer and Kepler made adjustments to each other's adjustments. And even if you know what you are doing as a pitcher, sometimes you're the pigeon and sometimes you're the statue.

This has been discussed elsewhere, but I'll say it on this thread as well. We do not have enough information at this point to even guess at a date for resumption of MLB but I think having games in June is almost certainly out of the question. I would not be surprised if the entire season is cancelled.

I think this is very likely. We know too little at this point to even guess at a date for resumption of MLB but I will not be surprised if the entire 2020 season is cancelled.

I'll expand on this. First, pitching to contact is what is says. It is NOT "spending tons of pitches nibbling", it's inducing batters to make less-than-ideal contact, especially early in the count. Neither pitching to contact nor pitching for a strikeout will be successful for everyone and neither should be the approach a pitching coach and manager should promote. Instead, the approach should be tailored to what works best for an individual pitcher. A strikeout is second only to a double play in the best possible outcome of a plate appearance for a pitcher but pitch to contact, if successful, will allow a starter to go further into a game (and into a career) because not as many pitches will need to be thrown to get outs.

That was when he was juicing. If you look at subsequent years you'll see that after he got caught and quit the juice his performance dropped off markedly.

My comment on Mauer: I don't know if he would have made my list or not but I think it's appropriate to consider him underrated because there are so many people who, for lack of a better way to say it, hated on him for many years. He was a very good catcher, maybe not the best at preventing WP's or PB's but an he had an outstanding arm. He also seemed to have a reputation within the baseball community of being very good at working with pitchers. That skill, getting the most out of your pitcher, is almost impossible to measure statistically but is probably the most important part of a catcher's job. And in 2009 he was the best baseball player in the world.

Bob Allison was my mom's favorite Twin in the '60's, but I think it was for reasons other than his baseball talent.