The Beast

”Fabulous bullpen signing.” Who is Nightengale trying to blow? $3 million isn’t awful. Also we need a starter not more bullpen games.

I’m very curious, especially if some other free agent pitchers sign for $1-$2 million over $5 million, if that is what he received.

Without another arm in addition to Rodon they are going to be in trouble. They need more depth in the rotation and Rodon is just not that guy. This signing is so White Sox unless it is a minor league deal. If he gets a multi-million dollar deal then I’ll be even more mad especially if they could have afforded some of the other arms out there and if they don’t go after someone else. He’s got to prove he belongs at the major league level still or enjoy being DFAd.

My question is does he still have the velocity needed to be effective in the major leagues? There were times last year where he looked to be fighting control and struggling to regain form. Give him a incentive based deal to prove it, otherwise try and move on to someone else.

I would still probably prefer getting Pfizer or Moderna even as a healthy person with no issues since they have a higher efficacy but I guess I would take JNJ with a booster against the variants. It would have been helpful to know what the companies knew about their vaccines earlier but if Biden’s vaccine distribution plan works then I guess the current course of action is fine. Awesome news. Now does anyone know when the average Joe who works in a business position from home can get the vaccine in Illinois? I may have misread the phases to understand what I would fall in.

It’s great news that more vaccines are available, now we just have to hope boosters can be given to fight the new variants.

I would agree that at this point they are probably looking for depth players and to fill out the roster with the exception that they would still consider Bauer at the right price (Jerry’s price!). If not Bauer, they could bring in Odorizzi, Paxton, Archer or Teheran. We also forget that we have no idea if spring training will start on time, so it is possible Cruz, Ozuna and Bauer are taking time to decide in case there is a late market. Either way I am looking forward to seeing how these upgrades perform over the guys they brought in last year.

Amen to this.

I probably missed nothing here, but I like how jerking off and circle jerking have been mentioned in two different rants. Hilarious.

So...what does everyone think comes of Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus package? I don’t think it gets to reconciliation, they get rid of the $15 minimum wage provision, figure out some cuts to slim it down, authorize vaccination and COVID relief spending (state and local government and direct payments). Direct payments get more limited I scope in terms of those who have an annual income of a certain dollar amount (aka people who don’t need it).

Go KC or Bills. Fuck Tampa Tom.

Leila Rahimi, Jenn Sterger and Cody Decker were must listens on the topic on 670 the Score today, especially Sterger, who had career setbacks as fallout from Favre dick pics.

Yeah I’m good with not pursuing that kind of deal. 4 years is one thing, 6 years is another.

Here were some highlights from some of the gems I saw on a Facebook post today. Person 1: “Make sure you have water and food. Talk to your kids in case we lose cell phone usage. Now who is going to have electricity to heat a house. Talked to Com Ed today who is on high alert for power outages and blackouts.” Person 2: “Bought a massive generator this past weekend.” Am I missing something? Is China taking over the utilities and is civil war coming that will cause a food shortage and phone lines to be down? I’ve got to see what Parler is feeding folks this information, I’m almost hesitant to ask them where they got this information to reach these conclusions... Cant wait for tomorrow, I hope Biden and Harris stay safe and healthy. There’s so much to be done with divided government over the next four years and lots to be optimistic about even in times of turmoil.

It should be about that, but some kids take classes to get by or pick an easy major. The career centers don’t necessarily help guiding in a way where they can help students with figuring out how to be off valuable to an employer. Liberal arts have a role in general education but as college degree programs, they can be nixed, just like Illinois Wesleyan did recently with some of their programs, recognizing enrollment was declining and they needed to shore up their more technical programs to gain more students and really provide them with more value. Yes, there has to be a better way. I’ll use myself as an example even if some of you are tired of it: I was an average student in high school, who despite being in a DuPage County school district was misplaced in science and math courses, forcing me into a two year algebra course where I also was on a lower level track for science too. As a result I was achieving well in my math courses and took classes in both science and math with kids who either failed the year before, didn’t give a shit about their academics or just had learning disabilities and couldn’t focus. This misplacement mattered because it led me to an average ACT score. My strength was writing in high school, so I focused on mostly English courses. I didn’t care much for reading literature but I loved (and still love) the newspaper so I was drawn to journalism and thought I would pursue it. I worked on the school paper and school radio station and continued that into college. When I got on campus I had a few things going on - a long distance relationship, not being sure if I wanted to be an English major (secondary education), in marketing or in journalism. Everyone I heard from said that journalism wasn’t a good career financially and in terms of job prospects. Eventually I lost passion for sports reporting and saw how competitive broadcasting was and found out I didn’t want to teach literature so I transferred schools and majored in business while I got a scholarship to work in the sports information department. Since graduating, I interned at a professional sports organization, a startup and PR firm, worked for a startup, FMLA administrator and an insurer for the last six years. During the last six years I got a data science degree to be more marketable and have focused more on getting a sales analytics job even though it’s been a challenge getting projects to get experience on the technical nature of that work. However, I have also thought about job satisfaction and pay for different jobs. I see how jobs like nursing and PT help people and provide a great income and how data analysis and web development could have great incomes and could work in a team setting doing potentially interesting work. I guess my overall point is, yes, you learn over time about what your likes and dislikes are, but damn, if you don’t know what you want after high school, there should really be a way in high school to focus on strengthening a weakness (taking an additional math or science class) instead of wasting time in a foreign language class you’ll forget over time or there needs to be more real talk about careers throughout high school. Or, colleges need to focus more on their students in advising them better. If that’s just no possible and it’s on the student, then fuck, just stay home, work and go to a community college and hope you eventually find what you want and finish your undergraduate degree and go to work or go into a graduate program so you can begin another career. Otherwise, the same issue is there where people work for just a living while thinking of other careers, hating or feeling indifferent about what they do and feel stuck with their careers or trying to change them. There has to be a better way. Would be curious to see what you think about what I wrote above. I am not the only one who has this kind of experience, there are Reddit threads all about career changers and people who feel lost throughout their college education and careers. It’s not so much about me (at least in this thread) as much as it is about this all to common scenario not being fixed or considered.

Sox N Roll...

Schools definitely should put less weight on standardized tests and put more weight on real life skills. One thing I would propose is giving kids an option to do a BA or BS track in high school, where they could choose to take foreign language if they are on the BA track or an additional math and science course if they are on the BS track. Make the courses they take applicable to real life scenarios in fields like you describe or help kids with deficiencies who want to get better at subjects get more experience in subjects. There is no question that in high school and college I was more concerned about my next meal or getting laid than courses. But it was naive of me to think that because I am decent at writing that I should focus mostly on writing and journalism courses since I will probably end up in media. Fast forward to today and I have a business degree and a data science degree (thanks for the grad degree Mr Employer), but now I see that I would much rather work in health care in some capacity. I would think that taking some sort of unrelated pre-reqs to go along with the degree I got would have helped a decent amount, especially if I wanted to go into nursing or PT, which I still could do if being a data analyst doesn’t work out on the health care or insurance side of things, it’s just more tough when you’re in your 30s with the same questions you posed in your earlier post. Challenging kids and young adults in different ways would be beneficial to help them for the decisions they face in the future and the ways you describe would be helpful for students to better see the application.

So this was a rumor ginned up about Nelson Cruz and now we are talking about pitching? Or is there a rumor about pitching too?

Here’s another problem. What do you do with young adults who don’t know what to do and just pick something, only to find out later they want to do something else or they hate or are indifferent the work they are in? What do we do as a society to stop people from majoring in a subject, like sociology and instead help guide them to major in a position? And...if it is too crazy for someone to decide what they should do for the next 30 years, do we have them major in something of interest but have them take classes in something that involves prerequisites for a job? I know this has been discussed before but there are too many real life situations where people chose the wrong field, didn’t think and just chose a major or thought they had passion and didn’t like the job. That’s a problem.

Fair enough, I forgot about those. He definitely has had a hell of a career.

Really? Seems a bit snarky for someone who is one of the better human beings in the league. I’d rather be snarky towards those smug and smarmy assholes in Rodgers and Brady. I hope they get trounced by either the Bills or Chiefs.

The state charges will catch up to him, he can’t pardon himself for those.

I like the plan, I just don’t know how much it would cost. A lot of these things would be great in our cities, but if local governments have ignored or neglected poverty in their cities for this long, what would start it now? Have any people in public service talked about this in a serious way before?

I am hoping to see actual bipartisanship in Washington DC given the congress that we have. That is not likely but it is what I want to see. I would like to see the ACA get a public option and for infrastructure to be a priority. I also want immigration reform to get done since there’s room to compromise there. @southsider2k5 and @Texsox I want to see what ideas each party has about how to address a skills gap that is generational and how each party would address jobs lost from automation. Is it retraining programs for careers in demand like nursing or a trade as opposed to UBI? I’m not sure but the only person who has had much of an idea is Andrew Yang. What would be a poverty proposal that could help?

Bummer. They might as well convert McCormick Place to be a hospital rather than a convention center then.