21 thoughts on “January 26, 2019: Transit”

  1. MLB.com has been doing prospect preseason rankings since 2004. Only 2 players have been No. 1 for more than one season: Delmon Young ('05-'07) and Byron Buxton ('14-'15). Mauer was their first No. 1. Mauer was Baseball America's No. 1 in '05 because he was still considered a rookie. So if MLB.com had decided to stick with Mauer, he could have been the third. Their Top 100 will be announced tonight. No. 1 will not be Ohtani again.

    1. I don't know how much importance to place on a list that ranked Delmon Young #1 overall for three years, but here are the Twins on that list:

      #5. Royce Lewis
      #9. Alex Kiriloff
      #68. Brusdar Graterol

      Lewis was #20 last year. Nick Gordon (#80) fell off the list. Fernando Romero (#68) is no longer eligible and I'm not sure if Stephen Gonsalves (#78) fell off or is no longer eligible after his 24.1 innings pitched with the Twins last year.

      1. Twins are only AL Central team with 2 in Top 10. Only other one is Eloy Jiminez at #3 for White Sox, who are the only AL Central team with more players on the list. They have 6 and 5 of them have an ETA of 2019. All 3 players for the Twins have an ETA of 2020, which might explain why the Twins have 0 money committed to that season.

  2. Crikey! Hannover almost scored twice in the first 2 minutes.

    Alas, BVB game only available in Spanish. Así es la vida!

    1. What are you watching it on? I'm streaming it on Fox Sports on my Roku and it's in English.

        1. If you have a streaming device on your TV you should be able to login with your Comcast account and get English commentary. (although listening in Spanish can be pretty fun, too)

  3. On yesterday’s question, this is where I was at:

  4. an academic friend of mine (political economist) is giving a keynote address at the American Burn Association meetings upcoming in Vegas. What the hell is a political economist doing giving a talk to burn specialists, you ask? Well, he's a pretty deep thinker on questions having to do with voluntary exchange. There are some really interesting ethical questions to grapple with in this space. A comment of his on the Bookface:

    Can someone who is severely burned give binding, informed consent? The surgeon can obviously operate, but the formula that is often used is the Baux score. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baux_score
    The question is, if someone comes in with a Baux score of 130, what do you do? It is NOT survivable without treatment, probability 1. But treatment is essentially skinning the person alive, something rightly considered torture. Should the surgeon just always treat, knowing that all that is going to happen is that the agony of the patient is going to be extended?
    ....
    It IS interesting, and actually heartbreaking. I was in a surgery unit observing attempts to treat a 4 year old girl with substantial 3rd degree burns. It's hard not to cry, just seeing it. But the surgeons, nurses, and other folks all do miracles. It's just so painful, though, for so long. I have a friend who had been burned badly as a teenager who told me that, even knowing he would survive, he would have preferred not to go through the "treatment." The thing is that no action needs to be taken if you "decide" to end your life. They can just treat the pain, a little, and you'll die in a week or so. Or they can torture you for six months. How do you present that to a patient who is terrified and barely conscious? How do you present that to parents who are desperate to get their child back? The P-Baux is interesting, too (pediatric R-Baux): P-Baux = TBSA - Age +18*R (where R is severe inhalation injury, yes or no, and that is no typo, age is substracted, not added as in R-Baux).

      1. My wife also got one for Christmas. Tonight, she made a cheesy chicken and broccoli with rice. It was excellent. The cleanup will not be so excellent. I'm letting the pot soak for a while before I tackle that.

    1. At the time we considered it intentional. Maybe not by Fleer, but certainly by Ripken. Just look how well positioned the words were - not upside down or sideways. Definitely staged. If I remember right, it supposedly wasn't his bat.

      1. Could it have been a practical joke on him? Somebody who has gone through pictures like that might have known how they like to position the bat so that the words would be facing up. My thinking is if he was doing it intentionally, then it would have said F--- You instead of F--- Face, which seems to be derogatory towards him.

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