Laika

Pneumonia sounds like the acute cause of death in most of these cases. Pretty sure the medical interventions for viral pneumonia are a little bit better in 2020 than they were in 1918.

The death rate of this thing in any first world country will be very contingent on how overloaded the health care system is. There is not some absolute, "native" mortality rate of 1-2% or some clean number you can expect. If the spread does not overwhelm to health care system you might see a mortality rate under 1% here. Maybe it's only a wee bit higher than the seasonal influenza. If the HC system becomes overwhelmed you might see like, ~6% in those areas. I think Italy's reported mortality rate is around there. Wild times. Imagine if in your City the hospital become overwhelmed and a huge swath of the old people just f***ing died in the hallways.

I suppose we will be dealing with a shortened fantasy season. Not a big deal. Once we know how long the league will be in hiatus for, we can figure out what, if anything, needs to be adjusted in the league. Hopefully there is some sort of baseball season this year. BUT it will f*** up the nice schedule someone spent days solving in the LOD

The DDL announces that matchups will be played without fans this year because of COVID19

At this point I believe that Cavan Biggio can do anything. The organization is stupidly thin in the OF. If someone like Kevin Smith or Santiago Espinal ends up being a surprisingly good middle infielder, it would be nice if Biggio could slide into the OF to accommodate them. Or even further out, in a couple of years Orelvis or Hiraldo could be knocking on the door as good looking middle infielders. There's also a non-zero chance that Groshans ends up in the middle infield. In the immediate it looks like it would just accommodate Panik or Drury if they decide to not suck. Not very exciting but who the f*** knows what is going to happen with the fringe talent around this roster. The team could be in a situation this year where Alford is gone, Fisher is horrendous, Teoscar is replacement level, Grichuk can't get on base, and Gurriel can't OBP .300, etc. and maybe Joe Panik is doing an Eric Sogard thing.

Split Squad day. Pearson is, I think, scheduled to throw against the Pirates and that one is on TV. Game 2 is against the Canadian Junior National team. Dasan Brown should be playing against his former National team. Should be surreal for him - last year I think he homered against the Jays while wearing red. I think a good amount of Jays prospects get looks in this game. Unfortunately it's not on TV?

I think he's just falling into that gigantic bucket of veteran free agents who project for 0 to around 1.5 WAR. Teams continue to show that they do not value these guys - they might give them a few million bucks, or a bit more if they have a glaring need and love the player, but for the most part teams are happier to give the playing time to cost-controlled players. Part of this is that teams in general are better at developing and extracting value from young talent out of their own system these days. For players like Kevin Pillar who never expected to get a big contract, they just end up settling for a bit less and they sign. For players like Puig and Gennett who at one point in the not-too-distant past were eyeing a big free agent contract it's a tough pill to swallow. That's why Puig rejected 1/$10M earlier this offseason (he probably wants that decision back) and I would just guess that something similar has happened with Scooter. I bet he's turned down some guaranteed money this offseason, maybe because it was only a few million or maybe because it wasn't a guaranteed starting job.

It's just behind Tony Rasmus being his son's personal hitting coach and behind John McDonald's dad doing his angels in the outfield thing

40 man cut candidates: Anthony Alford (certainly gone) Thomas Pannone (could be cut) Hector Perez (unlikely) Billy McKinney (unlikely?) Brandon Drury (very unlikely?)

I took a quick look and I can't find the toggle. Not sure this is an option in Fantrax, for some reason?

about 6 inches

He had his appendix removed a week ago. This was a second surgery after that?

The hype was pretty silly to begin with for a high school player who profiles at 1B. Hard for them to go in the first, although we have seen a small number this decade (Triston Casas, Josh Naylor, Nick Pratto come to mind). But I think Jordan has been playing 3B. Really all it takes is one team to think he can play 3rd and he's probably going high enough to sign... maybe even the notion that he could play the OF. Or, one team to see a Triston Casas type of hit-power combo.

Gurriel - Grichuk - Teoscar is a high variance OF with a lot of downside risk. Not much to take to the bank. In a good world, Gurriel is a 3 win player and Grichuk and Hernandez both approach 2 WAR. But in a bad world Toronto could get like, 2.0 WAR total from the three. On an individual level it would not be shocking to see any of them have years under 1 WAR. Grichuk just did it, Gurriel is a big BABIP risk as a low BB% player without much defensive value, and Teoscar has basically been a 1 WAR player his entire career. I don't think the defense would be that horrible though and I am slightly excited to see what Gurriel and Hernandez do this year.

Kinda weird.

Yasiel Puig is decent, would be a projected upgrade for Toronto, has a chance to be a significant upgrade, is positioned to be a bargain, is perhaps unfairly maligned, and is fun to watch. Should the Blue Jays sign him? Yes. Will the Blue Jays sign him? Almost certainly not.

Everyone knows how to read FanGraphs. If Puig was a really good player he'd already be signed. Or a reliable player.

The main problem with this selective sampling is that you started with 2017, which was the best season of Normal Puig. Start with 2015 and there's no trend. Even the numbers from 2017-2019 don't seem significant; players fluctuate like that all the time. Careful.

Max, he does. Not as much of a chance but it's there.

Todd, we might end up seeing that Biggio + Panik lineup against righties. Good call.

Billy Butler with defense

It's not faith in any sense of the word. He projects for 2 wins and was a 3 win player as recently as 2017, and his skills have not changed since then. We have projections for every player and, centered around those projections, we can reason our way to upper and lower tier outcomes. Puig is expected to be worth about 2 WAR. It would not be that weird to see 3 WAR because he did it recently while exhibiting the same tools. If you get super optimistic and say, presume he has a good defensive year and figures something tiny out on offense, 4 WAR seems super optimistic but still possible... maybe you give it a 5-10% chance of happening. Alford projects to be BELOW replacement level. Do you know how bad you have to be to get a negative projection? Here are some other players with ZiPS projections around -0.3 WAR: THE Ryan Goins Richie Martin, coming off a -1.0 WAR year old friend Mitch Nay Sicnarf Loopstok (yes this is a real name) old friend Kendrys Morales old friend Dioner Navarro, who hasn't played since his -1.8 WAR 2016 but did play in AAA last year and had a nice 69 wRC+ old friend Travis Snider, out of the league since 2015 Danial Palka, who had a 2 wRC+ last year. That's not a typo. old friend Ezequiel Carrera In order to envision a scenario where he is worth 2 WAR, you basically have to imagine that he has some sort of Freaky Friday thing happen with Byron Buxton. It would be borderline shocking to see Alford get to 1 WAR, but I guess that might be possible if he is used mostly as a defensive replacement and pinch runner? I dunno. The guy can't hit at all. Like, he swings through every type of pitch, even hanging sliders and fastballs.

Bigly doubt this, lol

Yes, as soon as the annual NPD ends would be the line in the sand between seasons for this purpose. That is one reason to have debut waivers. The second reason is to prevent teams from populating their MiLB roster with actual prospects, for free, now that we have unregulated demotions/promotions. Maybe we will just leave it as it is.

That’s not absolutely true. I mean last year Dallas Keuchel and Craig Kimbrel were free agents until the all star break. Puig could just be demanding too much money