More Royals, more data Just in case
The recent acknowledgement that 10 Royals showed a choice not to take a vaccine of marginal benefit had led to firestorm. In a recent Royal piece by Jeremy Greco, he lays out the issues with the Royals. He is right on the baseball side, but I will disagree with his point on vaccines.
Greco writes, “Then-General Manager Dayton Moore infamously attempted to ban this word rebuild during the 2018/2019 off-season. Despite fielding a team that had just lost more than 104 games, Mr. Moore did not want to “rebuild.” He just wanted to win. Of course, the word rebuild means to build something again after it has been destroyed. The 2015 championship squad was good and destroyed by the 2018 off-season; almost all of the stars had departed for other clubs and were playing poorly to boot. The club needed to be rebuilt, and Moore’s refusal to use the word didn’t change that.”
Royals have been on a rebuilding since 2018 and Moore attempted to put a competitive team on the field while rebuilding from 2018 thru the present. This looks from hind set the wrong strategy but in 2018, we had virtually depleted farm system that had to rebuild and not much asset to trade other than Salvy and Merrifield who the pundits wanted to trade every year. (Perez is a Kansas City treasure for many fans and he is the link to the glory days and maybe the future.)
I agreed with the decision to draft the college pitchers beginning with Brady Singer since they were more mature and possibly capable to moving forward quicker. We also found that the instruction side of the minors was missing as young draft picks like Pratto and Melendez did not show much improvement in hitting through 2019. In 2020, the pandemic years seem to change as many of our players took giant steps and now, they are either playing on the major league level on the cusp to take their place in Kansas City
Coming in 2022, I viewed this team on the verge of turning the corner and I thought I could see the light. We had veterans mixing in with young players. Witt made his appearance as a major leaguer, and we appeared to develop a bullpen of young firearms. The question was whether the young starters take that next step. In 2021, we won the season series with Twins, White Sox and Tigers and in a weak Central division, there was enough thought that maybe we could at least move to 80 to 85 victories and get beyond .500 mark.
The season started disastrous as most of our hitters like Merrifield, Mondesi, Perez were hitting .100 while Witt went through an adjustment period and the only hitters that exceeded expectations were Benintendi, Michael Taylor and Hunter Dozier. Mondesi injured his knee and ended up out for the season. The pitching collapsed totally, and Singer had to be sent down to the minors. Pitching is still an issue even though Singer has improved as the only starter with a winning record and Keller is the only starter under 4.00 ERA. So the light at the end of tunnel was extinguished. We are now back to ground zero and Moore strategy of combining veterans mixed with young players coming up is now over.
It is time to ask whether Moore and Piccolo are the right guys to lead this rebuild and whether Mike Matheny is the right manager. There is enough evidence to suggest that Matheny and pitching coach Cal Elrod should be replaced. While Matheny appeared to have presided over improvements over the past two years, this year has proven to be different. The team regressed and Elrod tenure as pitching coach has not shown any successes and many of our young arms with the exception of Singer have regressed. Greco point that we are witnessing no accountability and acceptance of the status quo is no longer acceptable are warranted. He is right.
Greco point about the vaccines is wrong for the simple reason that we live in a society that values freedom and we are talking about a virus that has IFR of .2 to .4 depending on which study you previewed, which is 2 to 4 per 1000. As I have mentioned in numerous pieces that this was a serious infection, but it was not the bubonic plague and even with the more liberal interpretation of what is a Covid death (counting people who died with Covid as opposed to because of covid has inflated the data), this pandemic did not match the worse of the Spanish flu. The lockdowns, mask and vaccine mandates, closing of schools and economic restrictions have failed to stem the virus and data from Stanford, John Hopkins, Oxford, Harvard and University of Chicago back this up. From a previous post, I quoted two experts who noted, “The White House promoted it hard even before FDA regulators had seen any data. Once they saw the data, they weren’t impressed. It showed no clear benefit against severe disease for people under 40.” The real story is why Canadian government under Justin Trudeau still have vaccine mandates, mandates that caused widespread protest against the government. As for Merrifield stating that he would take vaccines if he was traded to Toronto was not good at all. My own view is that this is a frustrated player who has given his all for a losing team for the past six years. He has been one of our best players for the past six years but this year he started slowly even though recently he has recouped some of the old Merrifield but still Merrifield at 33 must be at that point is that he stays in Kansas City, he will never see a playoff game. It is time to trade Merrifield, give him his chance to win and allow the younger players to learn to become major leaguers. We have young players ready.
Harvard professor Martin Kulldorlf in a reviewing a recent study on adverse events of the vaccines, noted, “The results are concerning. It is the responsibility of the manufacturers and FDA to ensure that benefits outweigh harms. They have failed to do so.” Vaccines do not stop transmission of the virus, something that Anthony Fauci admitted after getting the virus despite receiving all the boosters. So, a better question why is the decision not to take vaccines since we now know the vaccines are at best marginally beneficial?
Greco noted, “Many in the US like to talk about all of our freedoms, but they never want to discuss the responsibilities that come with that freedom. One of those responsibilities is to avoid allowing our freedoms to impinge upon the freedoms of others. When you choose not to get vaccinated or to wear a mask indoors, you are impinging on the freedom of others to be in that space safely. And no one has the right to put other people at risk for the sake of their own comfort.” The problem is that for the past two plus years we have witnessed giving up our freedom for security to deal with this infection. Giving up freedom led the destruction of our economy, destroyed education of our children and we will end up losing more lives in the long run than we save. More young people lost their lives to drug overdose and suicide than Corona virus. Lockdowns and mandates failed and yet we don’t care the people who suffered from the lockdowns the politicians promoted. It is time to realize and maybe if more reporters read this piece, they will be more willing to give the players the benefit of the doubt. U.S. Public Health Agencies Aren't ‘Following the Science,’ Officials Say (commonsense. news)
I am not going to criticize the players for this or for that matter the organization. There are plenty to criticize the team management for. As for vaccinations, the studies below show the efficacy of the vaccines, and you can decide if the players had a reason not to take the vaccine. As for mandates, a better question is why are we mandating a vaccine that even Fauci acknowledge doesn’t’ stop transmission or FDA insiders acknowledge no real evidence of benefit for those under 40 like baseball players? Vaccines may have benefit for a select group of patients but for younger patients, benefit is not so clear. Including athletes.
FYI I took first two dosage and a booster since I viewed based on the science the benefit outweighed the risk since I am past the age of 60 and greater risk from complications of the virus. We know that for younger people, the risk of the virus is lessened.
Real Vaccine Efficacy Rates Are Much Lower Than Previously Estimated ⋆ Brownstone Institute
U.S. Public Health Agencies Aren't ‘Following the Science,’ Officials Say (commonsense.news)
Brown University’s Silence on Post-Vaccine Myocarditis ⋆ Brownstone Institute
University Vaccine Mandates Must End Now ⋆ Brownstone Institute
A Common Sense Look at 20 million Saved Lives ⋆ Brownstone Institute
Did Covid Vaccines Save Tens of Millions of Lives? ⋆ Brownstone Institute
A Sensible and Compassionate Anti-Covid Strategy ⋆ Brownstone Institute
One Big Data Error Kicked Off this Crisis ⋆ Brownstone Institute
The Myth of the Disease-Ridden Red States ⋆ Brownstone Institute
Jab Mandates Are Both Unethical and Fail the Cost/Benefit Test ⋆ Brownstone Institute