spiderman

The hype was definitely building for this year's team, maybe unrealistic. It's a bit depressing though that they are playing themselves out of contention 5 games into this season.

He always receives some initial attention because he's an outlier and creates some attention for himself with his style. He is never going to be a national candidate.

Positive test rate is an indicator of how widespread the virus is. A state with a high percentage of positive tests could eventually lead to increased hospitalizations, but obviously, that is a function of total cases identified, the demographics and the symptoms being present States will have more demand in area's with higher positive rates, but states are adding more capacity to test. Illinois is now up to 35K+ - it wasn't long enough that Illinois was under 10K tests per day. They continued to ramp up testing locations as percentage of positive tests were 20%.

I don't know about "months", but I do agree that the test results need to be very quick to be meaningful - one to two days, not a week or longer.

There's too much injury risk in play here. It sucks that the NBA couldn't finish the season due to the pandemic and the Bulls are unlikely to play in a game until the end of this year (at best), but it is what it is at this point. Figure out who to draft and who to coach this team.

Her Twitter feed is a trainwreck. Holy crap. What a nut.

Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Niki Haley and Larry Hogan would be the most logical ones to watch, but others will throw themselves in for 2024. Long way away.

The country is very divided. Trump didn't start that, but has definitely added to that. He doesn't have much credibility despite being the President largely because he doesn't tell the truth and is ignorant on government/policy. It's unfortunate that everything has to be so political these days and facts can be disputed. Regardless of policy, which can't be ignored in a pandemic, he is not the leader the country needs. Unfortunately, given our divide, I'm not sure who that would be.

Positive test ratio does tell you what type of shape you're in. If 20% of a specific geographic area are testing positive (as some parts of the South are) vs. 2-4% (as Illinois has for the past few weeks), that is indicative of the spread (or lack of) of the virus. Number of cases is often reported by the media and while the numbers show increases (from 20K to now over 60K) that grab headlines, that number wouldn't be as meaningful if the % of positive cases was much lower than where it is in several parts of the country. Most states have not not implemented robust contact tracing and are still lacking enough to keep up with the spread and hired enough to keep up with the early demand that resulted from the initial shelters in place. As recently as a few weeks back, Illinois was still behind, but most of the country was (and is). The CDC has issues guidelines around this prior to re-opening, and many states are still behind and/or catching up now to the demands from re-opening that were not considered. Nationwide, there needs to be at least 200K+. In order to keep up with the spread, there needs to be high % of new cases traced within 24 hours. Some of that is due to privacy concerns, etc. around the technology. NY has more contact tracing, but in many cases, aren't able to get cooperation from people. Now that the disease is spreading in many area's though, while contact tracing can be helpful for new(er) outbreaks, it's not enough to keep up with the spread. The Defense Production Act should be more widely used for more PPE . The increased cases and re-opening of the country are both conflicting and increasing the shortages that we're seeing in specific parts of the country right now. We continue to be at the mercy of other countries for our supplies without invoking more domestic production. I have no disagreement. The federal government has allowed the states to deal with their own situations (outside of the CARES act). More money will be coming if politics can be removed from the situation, but unfortunately that ship sailed a long time ago. I appreciate your post. Thoughtful and legitimate criticism.

Obviously, we're still learning about the virus and how it behaves/spreads, but why would you get your health advice from Donald Trump when you have guidelines from the CDC and countless other medical experts? If you think that politics doesn't play a role in any of this, from Trump and his political opponents, I have a bridge to sell you. The initial lockdowns were for bending the curve, which many states did do - to allow for medical capacity to not be overwhelmed. Re-opening was always going to happen because you have to have a balance between economic and medical demands. Moving the goalposts now doesn't help your argument now. There was at least optimism from doctors that warmer weather would suppress the virus. That has not been true and we have to abide by social distancing guidelines until there are improved medical options.

Percentage of positive cases remains under 3% in the state. Illinois tested over 36K people today. As the state re-opens, there will be more cases.

Oliver Darcy is your exhibit 1367? What's next? Don Lemon's logic?

Why so defensive? If you can't make a logical argument, that's ok, I get it, but hopefully I can help educate you vs. your last reply and you can walk away with more knowledge vs. your talking points which are a nice try at distraction, but not accurate. Both of my comments on testing/masks were both in reply to your comments and both are not accurate. You took Trump's on testing to imply that he's directing his government to do less testing. Is that accurate? If so, can you explain why literally everyone in the involved has publicly stated that they have never been directed to do so? Can you explain why we just tested 750K people on 7/9? Not a good argument. Even Fauci doesn't want a federal government mandate on masks. He prefers state/local mandates. How would you actually enforce a national mandate on masks? Again, as mentioned, there are federal guidelines. More states are adding additional regulations on masks.

We're testing about 650K people a day. There is literally no evidence that anyone in the government has been directed to slow testing. The CDC has published guidelines including social distancing and wearing a mask. Most local governments require you to wear a mask. Please keep going.

I would have loved to see Trump attempting to shut down the country in February. There is not one politician that would have supported that.

How did the White House specifically fail us?

Yes, I would prefer to not speculate on why he's not at camp. Hopefully, it's unrelated to health reasons and some completely unrelated. Let's play this out though - assuming he comes back shortly and is ready to pitch, what is the White Sox rotation and how does limited spring training alter how they would use him? Giolito, Keuchel, Lopez, Gonzalez and Cease are all likely to start the season in the rotation. Does Kopech become the 6th guy? Do they move Gonzalez into the bullpen as a long-reliever? Very interesting.

I'm sure he's already in great shape, but not being at camp (should it become several days) will allow the White Sox to use even more caution with him. It may align with his service time as well.

Here is the full quote. Seems clear that he is referring to the virus and the ability to play more than 60 games. “The reality is we weren’t going to play more than 60 games no matter how the negotiations with the players went, or any other factor,” Manfred told Patrick. “I think this is the one thing we come back to every single day: we’re trying to manage something that has proven to be unpredictable and unmanageable. I know it hasn’t looked particularly pretty in spots, but having said that, if we can pull off this 60-game season, I think it was the best we were going to do for our fans given the course of the virus. “It’s the calendar. We’re playing 60 games in 63 days right now. I don’t see, given the reality of the health situation over the past few weeks, how we were going to get going any faster than the calendar we’re on right now. No matter what the state of those negotiations were.”

If Kopech is delayed in coming to camp, this could allow the White Sox to give him extra time to build up his arm strength on the side.

No reason to speculate. They say he's healthy, which is great. Obviously, if this spans more than a few days, more questions will come. Hopefully, he is healthy and he is a good mental state.

Only about 99.8% of the time.

Is he still being stretched out or more of a 1 inning guy? Detwiler is awful so if Fulmer can fill that role, fine by me.

Are there any free agents available or any speedy minor league talent in the system known for their baserunning? Would be nice for those late innings or extra innings to have a player for that specific situations.

Early on, with starting pitchers not throwing deep into games, managers are going to use a ton of pitchers game to game. Some relievers won't be as available early on in B2B games also. 16 is crazy, but gives the manager a ton of flexibility game to game and manage inning to inning while allowing the staff to build up.