biggentleben

...and this is already being figured by players union folks, which is simply another brick in the wall between players and owners.

If you have ESPN+, watch the replays. My kids get a kick out of the fake fans behind the plate and the cheer teams.

I have two people who have both said the same thing to me regarding the 2020 season, though in different phrasing: "If 2020 happens, 2022 won't." There are more than 50 players known who will refuse to play in any proposed scenario out there right now. That's all levels of players. There are parks that will not be allowed to even host games empty, let alone if they try to put any fans in the stadiums, due to their state laws. On top of all that, owners have been so heavy-handed in these negotiations that players are done with it. They don't want to talk 2021. Right now, there should be a dual discussion on making a 2020 season right and working on concessions to middle ground for the 2021 CBA negotiations. Instead, owners are essentially telling players how it will be. Those that own baseball teams are about to cost the game a season of baseball. It's as illogical as it sounds, but it's true. I'm not sure if there's a more obvious sign of just how out of touch the voices running the league truly are...

Mel Rojas, Jr. was destined to be a Quad-A type but instead chose to go to Korea, where he's been a very productive player. He's the first player who ever reached out to me to talk about a scouting report that I wrote on him, and he still reaches out now and then to mention guys coming from Korea that will be of interest. He's with the KT Wiz.

Julio Franco as the hitting coach. Man...he looks like he could still play. Probably still says 40-something on his age.

...in the case of the Twins. Who had a fairly singular draft-and-develop strategy for nearly 30 years. Not the case around the league. Equate a $10-15K international signing to a late draft pick. The Twins have seen a selection of those turn out as well.

We are blessed in our local town to have someone who is overqualified in a pandemic working at the hospital in their crisis response. He has a doctorate in health sciences, but he's well-versed on pandemic behavior and spread. Anyway, the conversation he and I had recently was around the numbers. I recently took the time to put percentages to all the counties in the state (South Dakota) as far as testing. It revealed that less than 2% of the state had been tested and only one county locally had even cleared 2% with most being around 1%. He stated that this is exactly why the death rate right now is going to be deceptive. The hospitalization rate, he believes, can be accurate. Let me try to explain, by summarizing his words. Those who are not going to pass but will require hospitalization will likely end up hospitalized in this first wave, which is why working on the curve is important, but will end up with many hospitalizations that end up going home, as seen by the state's current sub-1% mortality rate. However, this virus is not done. The population most at risk is the one we've seen recently have "hot spots" - nursing homes, senior care facilities. Restrictions on visitation for grandma and grandpa will be reduced, and people will want to see their loved one. In those closed quarters, it will simply take one person getting sick to quickly spread it through the facility, and it will lead to very high death rates in those places. He estimates that you could easily see a second wave with fewer hospitalizations but a notably higher death rate. One thing we both have noticed is that there is not a consistent reporting requirement on unattended deaths. Four have occurred in our county in the last two weeks, and often the county would see a half-dozen over an entire year, according to the county coroner. We could have a number of deaths that we find that are from the illness later on when a person is found or we may have deaths being found at home that are never reported as virus-related.

Issue being that often, you don't know who the 2-5 that matter are until AA. Four years ago, everyone would have told you the jewel of the monster 2016-2017 IFA class was going to be Kevin Maitan. Three years ago, most everyone in baseball assumed that the Twins signed the best guy from that class when they inked Yunior Severino after he was removed from the Braves in their IFA punishment. At this point, the only guy of that group that's reached any sort of top 100 consideration is Pirates prospect Ji-Hwan Bae, who has had off-season issues along the way to becoming a pseudo-prospect. That was one of the largest international prospect hauls in recent memory under the current international rules, and four years later, none has played in AA. None has played even a full season at high-A at this point. Minor league baseball irons out the prospects from non-prospects, but to assume that removing short-season leagues helps with that is a fairly galaxy brain line of thinking when examining the way players actually develop.

Thank you. I had tough conversations with people on both sides of the issue for that piece, and it was very interesting to hear reasoning, to say the least. Certainly, I presented my point within the argument, but I'm not going to just do so without the numbers to back up my points, which was where the conversations with nay-sayers came in very handy with the structure of the piece.

No. Not even close to the situation...

Seriously, you need to stop with this. You've got an opinion. You want to convince everyone of your opinion. It quite literally got the previous discussion on minor league pay shut down. Having a considerate, respectful conversation about minor league pay is absolutely possible, and I've had it with people on both sides of the issue around the game. I will tell you that since I did the research for my piece, one of the gentlemen that I talked to who was really hanging on, hoping for a breakthrough chance with a club as an upper-level guy who was a quad-A type but really had good qualities as a future MLB coach or even manager has chosen to leave baseball altogether. The virus caused him not to be paid, which led to him picking up a gig job, and his wife is now pregnant with their first child. Whether he would have been a major league player at all, he was a potentially excellent coach that could have been very valuable to an organization in that capacity, and now he is leaving the game behind. It's not a matter of not getting quality from the product. For one, measuring that quality is not a cut and dry thing, and any person working in a front office will tell you that in their first two minutes of describing evaluating value received from a trade or draft or free agent signing.

The top pick in the 2019 draft had a bonus slot number of nearly $9M and top overall selection was paid just over $8M. However, by the 9th pick that draft slot value was under $5M and before the second round was out, the individual slot value was less than $1M. Last season, only the Red Sox had less than a $5M overall draft pool, with the Diamondbacks topping the league with $16M of draft pool funds. Just wanted to give you some perspective on the funds. That said, I do not believe that pulling money from the signing bonuses is where you'll get money for more funds for minor leaguers. That's a whole other discussion, though.

That said, it's been said that a minor league team is 2-5 guys who matter and the rest of the team is there in order to play catch with them. Without those guys playing catch, the 2-5 guys never develop. There's a reason for those players that is overlooked when folks go quickly to a minimalistic modality of the minor league system.

Basically, your biggest shot of a long-term affiliation is if the big league club decides to buy the affiliate. Then the affiliate is no longer community-owned, though. It's now the big league club's team. The only thing the town offers at that point is a stadium to host games. There can be longer contracts of 3-5 years instead of 2-3 years, but that's about as crazy as it typically gets.

Yeah, MiLB squashed this rumor pretty quick with a press release.

This past summer connected the two franchises again. This time won't work out as well for the Twins. Sam Dyson barely saw the field before leaving the Twins among a domestic abuse investigation this offseason. The Giants were able to see Jaylin Davis, always one of the more underrated prospects in the system, reach the majors on the completion of an incredible year that saw him overhaul his swing at the exact right time as AAA changed their ball. That's not the end, though, as the Giants also received a high-floor arm in Kai-Wei Tseng from Taiwan and an electric, high-ceiling arm in Prelander Berroa. It could be a deal that sticks in a Twins' fan's craw for a while.

The costs would not be terribly far off from what was suggested in the post you're replying to, however, teams put the burden on the city/affiliate to keep the stadium at the MLB team's particular level of standard with technology and player/staff accommodations and such. All that, and there is no obligation for any one major league team to stay beyond 2-3 years with an affiliate, hence the affiliate shuffle every two years as teams get affiliates to offer profit sharing, new stadiums, etc. in order to attract a big league club. In other words, the Saints could have a team in 2021 and not in 2024, and that'd be absolutely "normal" for affiliated ball. It'd make sense to stay away for a successful independent franchise.

That failure has been set up for decades as companies saw technology leap forward incredibly while doing business the same way. In many industries (multiple agricultural fields, multiple energy fields, etc.) that look-back is business still done the way it's been done since before the military even had heard of a thing that would eventually become the internet (in other words, more than 50 years without changing how business is done). Businesses are now being forced to consider how they can work with employees spending only 1-2 days at the office while spending a total of 25-35 hours a week working and getting just as much work done while spending more time with their family. Farmers/ranchers and consumers are both making an effort to get Congress to clean up the unwieldy "middle men" in our food production system in this country. Many businesses are realizing that shipping out for lowest cost always can suddenly come with significant cost when that country is unable to ship out any supplies whatsoever and discussing drastic changes to their business model that should have existed for decades but instead was allowed to continue on unchecked because profits=stock prices rising=good, right? It's very feasible that our local paper is going to cut yet another day from printing. We call ourselves a "daily" paper, but advertising is down such that if another day is cut, we'll be printing just four days per week. That is from the most significant news source in a seven-county region that covers more territory than Rhode Island and Connecticut combined. No one is out pounding the pavement to protect my job - in fact, it's more likely that they'll devalue my job in a press briefing than ever discuss its value, but I've surely not been allowed to leave home, and the way our news is delivered to us is absolutely a broken system. So many businesses NEED an overhaul right now. Perhaps this is finally the thing that does it. However, much like Sandy Hook and gun control, it's likely going to simply be the moment we all realize something should be done...and then keep on keeping on without putting our own foot forward to facilitate any meaningful change.

One of these is rearing its head in Minnesota's neighbor to the west currently. Over $1B designated to SD in COVID-19 relief funds, but the way it's set up, if the state ran at a deficit, the money would easily be assigned. Instead, the state has a constitutionally-required balanced budget, so the budget shortfalls to come from lost tax revenue, lost tourism, and lost lottery revenue will actually not be covered at all with those relief funds because they're not "COVID relief" needs. The state had budgeted for other needs in the state and the real financial need is covering the infrastructure, education, and healthcare portions of the budget that are still functioning in the midst of all this. The way all the wonderful stuff in DC has been written, not one nickel of that $1B can be used to ensure roads flooded in 2019 are repaired this spring, hospital staff that are not "essential" are paid, and educational staff and programs are funded. Poor leadership in DC isn't just coming out of the White House right now.

I'll be honest, I'd rather have the mask and as frequent hand wash than the mask and rubber gloves. Of course, I shave bald, so it does not affect me in the least, but for my two coppers...

While that doesn't surprise me, I don't have an issue with having SD have a legit study done in the state to give the combination a true scientific trial. Much of the negative press thus far has been with one of the elements of the drug or another not fully present, so having a full trial with the entire drug on board will give a true idea of the efficacy of the drug. If it works, then wonderful. If not, then there's at least a data point. You need negative data points to find the positive one. Negative data points are not failures - they're guides to the final positive solution.

Just a quick devil's advocate thought... Would the COVID deaths be counteracted by the reduction in car accident deaths or other accidental deaths that are not occurring currently with folks staying at home? I don't know the exact numbers...I'm just curious if it's a potential balance to your curiousity about a nearly static death rate despite the addition of COVID deaths.

How about this...when you guys want stock tips, I'll let you know what apps my wife is being told to add by all her friends with PTA and on Facebook, and you'll make millions. Shopify was huge last fall among her FB/work friends and Zoom around Veteran's Day was the app to get from the PTA. I'll ask her what the next big one is tonight for you!

A very large turkey processing plant locally has made significant changes and had no issues. I have an appointment to talk with them more about exact details of the timeline of additional precautions they've taken as they were making big changes all the way back in early February. Smithfield crossed some lines, and that really got them in deep crap. With such an important chunk of the nation's food supply on the line, let's hope that wakes up others.

I have an opinion piece going in our local paper tomorrow that is only an opinion piece because of how I wrote it. The information in the piece is not opinion whatsoever. The state of South Dakota was set up to give all power to govern local people to local governments (county and city). Those counties and cities set up their own charters, but in many cases, they ceded their power to the state government, power that the state government had written out of the state constitution to the localities. When this all first hit, those places with that issue needed to immediately get on top of things and do some emergency mandates before something was able to be put onto the ballot for November (or June or whatever for their municipality). Those who had the power put in ordinances that are, in many cases, more restrictive than many of the states that have "shut down". The county I'm in has had such an ordinance in place longer than all but three states and Puerto Rico among the United States and its territories. That takes you to emergency powers. In a declared disaster emergency (which didn't come from Trump until April 5, despite multiple requests), the governor's office has the power to shut down travel and the office can also restrict people from being in particular places, but it cannot tell people where TO be, just where NOT TO be. Similarly, the department of health has statute to declare public health emergency over one person or group of persons and set standards for that person. Additional powers for the DOH and for counties were requested from the state legislature on their final day of session in March, but even with one of their own on his death bed, they rejected both measures that would have done that. So, in South Dakota, the reason the Governor does not issue a "shelter-in-place" or a "stay-at-home" ORDER? She can't.