5 hours ago, Sully151 said:

How about 7 teams make the playoffs. The team with the most wins in all of MLB gets a bi.

6 teams round one

3 winners from round one and MLB season winner round two

2 remaining teams World Series.

With such a compact schedule there are likely to be many ties for the playoff spots.  So there will likely be coin tosses or single game tiebreakers (which teams would get the home field advantage in these one game play in games?)

On 5/1/2020 at 3:28 PM, calscuf said:

For once the Orange Man says something true. 

Biden appears to have problems on three fronts:  1) The alleged incident  2) Any retaliation for this complaint being made  3) The hypocrisy of Biden's position regarding whether women should be believed. 

1) With two more contemporaneous parties coming out today in support of the allegation according to the AP but with the confusion of whether she "chickened out" and did not include sexual assault in her complaint (which remains to be found or which might have already been scrubbed by the Biden staffers that have had access to his Delaware papers), the question on the incident may not be resolved in either's favor (which is what the NYT concluded). 

2) The retaliation/demotion and ultimately asking the accuser to quit appears to have some substance and is backed by contemporaneous reports.  

3) If there are no facts that back either parties claims then the issue will be a tie with neither party being able to claim the truth.  In this case, Biden and the other Democrats will be strung by their previous comments that women should have the benefit of the doubt and be believed if no other facts emerge. In other words, in the case of a tie the woman is to be believed.

People will bring up the Trump female accusers claims that the POTUS is a "cooch (using a Kardashian reference) grabber" also.  These claims were already out there before the 2016 election and the voters decided that other concerns outweighed these claims and elected Trump.  Biden is running as the decent candidate that is respectful of women and these allegations do not line up with that position.   

5 hours ago, RendZone said:

It’s going to be a crapshoot. I can’t really believe that all teams and players will be 100% emotionally invested in playing in this temporary fanless hybrid league. I wouldn’t put too much stock in last year’s standings. Any team can win this “tournament.”

Since the players union has already agreed to prorated pay based on games played, I think that most players will have a great financial investment in playing regardless of fans.  Many of the highly paid players have adjusted their lifestyles to their contracts and the non highly paid players do not make that much.

Should take 56 or 57 wins out of 100 to make the playoffs.  Home field advantage will not be as important with so few fans.  Players will have to take at least a third cut in pay with no or very little stadium, concession, beer and parking revenue.  

With ten team divisions and 100 games to be played that means 5 or 6 home and 5 or 6 away games against our nine divisional foes.  

The players and the stadium personnel need for this to happen.  Wonder what the expanded playoffs would be like?

5 minutes ago, AngelsLakersFan said:

Come on guys, Donnie is keeping up on all the latest scientific journals. We are so lucky to have him keeping us up to speed with these science based press conferences.

I do not believe that our POTUS reads much at all,  much less medical journals.  However, someone must have brought this to his attention.  He was of course completely off course to propose studying treatments using disinfectants internally.  

On 4/23/2020 at 11:15 PM, Ace-Of-Diamonds said:

https://deadline.com/2020/04/coronavirus-donald-trump-briefing-washington-post-1202916609/

“I’m The President, And You’re Fake News”: Donald Trump Lashes Out As He Calls For Testing Injections Of UV Rays, Disinfectants To Kill Coronavirus

*******************

How do you inject UV rays into the lungs. That aught to work, after all Trump is a stable genius. Who needs scientists and medical experts, they're fake news. Trump is the answer, but what is the question?

Actually Mount Sinai Hospital in NYC has developed a patented procedure for inserting a catheter in the ventilator tube of already intubated Covid-19 patients to emit a controlled dose of UV light  (which does kill viruses and bacteria).  Obviously this has not gone through any critical trials and the further bad news in NYC, 85% of patients placed on ventilators subsequently die (as opposed to 50% nationally).  So Trump was not just talking out of his behind.    

The data about the Payroll Protection Act supplied by Bloomberg's 4/20 article is very interesting.  The figures show the amount of eligible payroll (based on 2 1/2 times monthly payroll for businesses with fewer than 500 employees) that each state was able to access with Nebraska , North Dakota and Kansas leading the way with 80.7%, 79.0% and 78.4% respectively.  New York and California were ranked 49th and 50th with 39.9% and 37.9% respectively.  The largest number of loans approved was Texas at 134,737.  The largest amounts total approved were headed by California at $33.4B and New York at $20.38B  with $295,662  and $250,385 averages respectively.  It appears that businesses with preexisting relationships with community banks were best served.  Already the Democrats are claiming that whether the state was red or blue had some influence on the allocations which is obviously a crock.  Very small businesses without the ability to borrow previously were at a disadvantage obviously without the strong banking relationships that that entails.  

14 hours ago, nate said:

 

The hotel and restaurant chains were allowed access to the Payroll Protection Act by a last minute change in the legislation. I would be interested in finding out which party and congressional members proposed this change.  The Shake Shack did nothing wrong but followed the law as it was written and only returned the loan to the program because of the bad optics.  Sloppy legislation because of the rush is the culprit here.  

52 minutes ago, st1ckboy said:

Hey, if you're down on your luck, and there are assistance programs out there to help you, take them. Hopefully it will keep you afloat until you can stand on your own two feet again. I just hope you don't have to rely on my money for too long.

Unemployment insurance is not welfare.  Your previous employers paid into these programs and if you are entitled then by all means use these resources until you can find a new job.  I was on unemployment insurance three times in my first ten years of working.    

2 hours ago, RendZone said:

College football will solve everything in August. It makes no sense playing in empty spring training ballparks and keeping those phony stats that will reflect permanently on the players careers. It would be a glorified exhibition season. 
 

 

I don't want to wait three and a half months to get my sports viewing fix.

Let's get her started in AZ with the balance of the season when the Covid-19 situation allows.  Baseball (any live sports) would be a huge tonic for a bored stay at home nation.  

7 hours ago, Kevinb said:

I’ll see what I can do

Even though very few respond to these Polls, I would like to get a sense of how many AW members have been tested, have been hospitalized, have lost their jobs and any that have received any of the $2.2 trillion in Federal monies.

POTUS and the Congress have moved forward with a three pronged approach to helping the average American get through the economic aspects of this emergency.

1)  The $1200 checks that will go to all who qualify and should start appearing in people's bank accounts next week.  The problem will be with the number of low earning Americans who do file tax returns or do not have direct deposit of their tax refunds.  These folks will have to receive a check and the government only has the ability to currently send out 5 million checks a week so those waiting for a check will have a possibility of several months delay before seeing this one time shot of cash.  

2) The expanded unemployment eligibility (including the self employed or private contractors) plus the extra $600.00 per week will be a great help but the bottleneck will be the individual State's Unemployment systems which will be severely overloaded.  Those in the best shape will be those already on unemployment who will just have the $600.00 added to their already established accounts.

3) The loans from the banks (backed up by the SBA) which will allow small businesses to continue paying folks thus not forcing them into the unemployment mess (see #2 above) and will not have to be repaid if they continue to pay their employees.  Of the $350 billion allocated to this program, supposedly $ 100 billion has already been approved (I have no idea what this means in terms of when the businesses will get the money) but banks are an extremely regulated industry with lots of rules to follow and the large number of businesses applying for this basically free money and the notoriously slow SBA bureaucracy will I am sure not go as smoothly as we all want.  

The question is, who will get the blame for what will inevitably be delays.  Will this all be blamed on Trump?  

On 4/1/2020 at 10:19 AM, Kevinb said:

It won't happen. But that being said yes I could totally be happy watching any sporting event with no fans in the stadium. I don't watch sports for the fans, I watch for the game itself. 

What about searching the fans in the batter's box picture that are hot or are exceptionally endowed?  Isn't that part of baseball?

2 minutes ago, Taylor said:

It should be 100% mail-in voting, across the country, with the option to vote in person but people encouraged to stay home and fill out their ballots.

Only if the rules for non signed and non matching signatures on mail in ballots are followed.  We might get final results a couple of weeks later.  Imagine the "hanging chad" fiasco multiplied by fifty.  

I have mentioned this on several threads but the requirement (not recommendation ) to require masks on all folks leaving their homes seems to be gaining some traction.  Riverside County made it mandatory and LA City will require anyone entering an essential service (groceries, pharmacies, etc)  to be masked or turned away starting Friday.  I am not generally in favor of having any of my civil liberties taken away (even if it is just for a short time) but if everyone masking up for awhile is what it takes to beat Covid-19, then I say lets do it now.  None of this wishy-washy stuff, let's turn our nation into Japan for a short while and bring Covid-19 to its knees.  All of our leaders should be setting an example.  Seeing our POTUS in a mask is just the message we need.  The sooner we all take this very seriously, the sooner we can begin opening up things again.  

I see that Mayor Garcetti of LA has indicated that people will not be allowed in essential businesses (groceries, pharmacies, etc,) unless they are wearing some sort of mask protection.  This is to start Friday.  This needs to be the new norm for awhile not just in LA City and Riverside County.  

2 hours ago, Stradling said:

Yep, most of my stores are in Riverside County. 

Will your stores refuse service to anyone not masked in some manner?  If this requirement for masks expands (and I expect it will), I can see personnel stationed outside of grocery stores, etc refusing entry to unmasked shoppers. I would support this for the safety of the grocery store workers and the other customers.  

I see that Riverside County has made it mandatory to wear a face mask when leaving your home (even when buying beer).  

Like the Asians, I expect that the economy will return to normal only with the wearing of some form of masks being required for a period for everyone.  It will probably seem strange to us for everyone at a ball game at Angel Stadium to be wearing a mask, but I think that is coming at least in the short term.   I also think that the blood test that shows whether you have had Covid-19 will also be a reentry requirement for all that want to return to work.  

With wearing masks now becoming the new norm, there will be probably be a lot of social stigma attached to those that venture out without masks.  Ironically this will make more people stay home, which is probably a good thing. I also think that with the good masks (N95 or KN95) going for around $3.00 a pop that I might think twice about using up what may be a limited stock of masks, so now I am into mask hoarding.  Like a fool, I spent $460.00 today on masks but I feel that I am trying to stock up for my large extended family.  My step daughter is a hair stylist and she will pretty much have to "mask up" if she hopes to have any business.  

41 minutes ago, tdawg87 said:

I don't think it will take that long. Certainly we aren't going back to "normal" for a long time, but I think this will reach its absolute peak within the next 2-3 months. And yes, it's going to suck and it's possible we could reach close to a million deaths in the US alone. That thought is utterly terrifying. The population of New Hampshire is 1.3 million, for perspective. Regardless of everything, this will change the world drastically. 

I want off Mr. Bones Wild Ride.

 

I disagree with those that say you cannot put a price tag on a human life.  It is done all the time in the court system for wrongful deaths.  I think that the government estimates of 100k to 240k US deaths is too low.  I am hoping that it stays below 1 million deaths but am still staying with my original estimates of 1.7 million US deaths from Covid-19.  We experience 2.878 million deaths per year in the US right now to put it into perspective.  The stock market should certainly not be our primary concern but the job losses and  the possible depression level hardships could ruin a lot more lifes for several years.  I hope that the target dates of April 30 to May 4 to start easing the job and small business destroying restrictions are realistic.  

1 hour ago, Catwhoshatinthehat said:

I would expect somewhere like New York to be one of the hardest hit places.  We have an office in NY and a few weeks ago someone from a different floor working in the building who hadn't been to work in over a week tested positive and the entire building was shutdown.  Everyone I've talked to in that office takes some form of public transportation to get to work and some take two the further out they live.  People packed like sardines in public transportation would be a breeding ground for any virus. 

The how do you explain Japan's rather low numbers?