mac9001

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Jan 20, 2018 -> 12:09 AM) Bigger policy deals are going to be tough to pull off with all the infrastructure money given away to tax cuts for corporations and the Top 1%. There's no shortage of buyers for US treasury debt. You can give away 10 trillion more and it won't stop a trillion dollar infrastructure plan if policy and politics align. The GOP doesn't have to worry about our fiscal state 10 years from now, they just need to get 50 votes in the senate, add trillion more to the debt and maybe you can at least hold onto the senate come the fall.

The longer this goes the more blame will fall on Trump, Ryan and McConnell. It's astonishing a party holding the presidency and both chambers of congress would allow their window of governance to be limited because of a funding bill. Every day this goes on significantly reduces their chances of passing any legislation of substance. You don't get opportunities like this often and wasting months just to keep the government funded instead of using your majority position to advance conservative policy is just an epic failure. They should have taken the political hit, made some deals and moved on to bigger policy goals.

Send Fisher to AA to start the year. Basabe in center, Adolfo in right, Call in left. Booker can fill in and rotate with those guys at DH. Kanny starts with: Rutherford, Robert, Gonzalez and Dedelow There's probably 3-4 more OFers that could use some ABs in Kanny, but they probably stay in Arizona until space opens up. Guys like Fisher, Call, Dedelow, Polo and Gonzalez should be pushed at the first sign of sustained success.

It would make for good TV if they just randomly throw a new guy out there every 5th day. Covey, Danish, Cooper, Guerrero, Stephens, Adams, next man up. I'm going to be optimistic and say Rodon is ready by May. Just throw Covey or Danish out there and let them take a beating for a few turns.

QUOTE (cjgalloway @ Jan 5, 2018 -> 06:25 PM) Does Stephens remind anyone else of Buehrle? Not great stuff. Not tons of K's, not high on our prospect list but just always gets the job done.. No I'm not advocating he is Buiehrle, I'd be happy with a 5th starter role or BP from him. I just see some similarities Buehrle in his short stint in AA averaged 5.2 K/9. Stephens so far has put up 9.0, 9.9, 8.2 K/9 on his three stops. In the last 6 games of the season he put up 10.5 K/9. He's not just some soft tossing innings eater. This dude has actually show a fairly impressive ability to punch guys out. My money is on Zavala having a massive season.

Seby Zavala emerges as our best catching prospect. Jordan Guerrero sticks as a MLB starter. Zack Burdi makes an early comeback and dominates. Ryan Cordell is our starting RFer by July.

His numbers really aren't that bad. He made 59 appearances last year (56 IP), in 46 of those appearances he did not allow a run (44.2 IP). 8 times he only allowed 1 run (7.1 IP). He had 5 bad outings, over those 5 bad outings he pitched a total of 3 IP and gave up 16 ER (including 4 ER three times). So he gave up 1 ER or less 91.5% of the time. He did blow 7 saves, but in four of those he only gave up 1 ER and three of them came in the month of July. Would I want him as my setup guy if I'm shooting for a pennant? Probably not. But he's a solid set-up option and he was just added to the worst bullpen in baseball. Given the 3 year commitments pen arms are getting I can't find anything to complain about given the cost to acquire these guys.

I'm fine giving all our AAA/AA arms a chance to see if anyone sticks. You get 5 starts, if you look like Covey you get a ticket back to Charlotte and next man up. The ideal scenario is we find enough internal talent to fill out the rotation and throw all our money next year into short-term deals to fix the bullpen.

Really surprising they didn't draft an arm. Makes you think they're going to sign some proven big league arms to fill out the bullpen.

Unless they spend $60 million on the bullpen and find a semi competent starter I'm betting on more losses in 2018 than 2017. As of right now Fulmer and Covey (maybe) are our 4th and 5th starters and James Shields is the staff ace. Short of Nate Jones nobody else in the bullpen deserves a major league job. Unless there's some serious cash thrown around this could be pretty ugly. I could easily see us running 10-15 different starting pitchers out there this year.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Nov 27, 2017 -> 10:00 AM) Man, I thought I was high on Zavala at 15/16-ish. I'm probably more bullish on him than Collins. If he stops hitting I may change my mind but he hasn't yet. I watched him absolutely crush a few balls in WS this year. There's not many people on the planet that can launch the way he did on a few of those balls.

1 Eloy Jimenez 2 Michael Kopech 3 Alec Hansen 4 Luis Robert 5 Dylan Cease 6 Zack Collins 7 Jake Burger 8 Dane Dunning 9 Blake Rutherford 10 Spencer Adams 11 Seby Zavala 12 Gavin Sheets 13 Jordan Guerrero - Absolutely asinine he's not protected 14 Zack Burdi 15 Jordan Stephens 16 Casey Gillaspie 17 Ryan Cordell 18 Carson Fulmer 19 Micker Adolfo 20 Luis Gonzalez 20 Luis Alex Basabe 21 Jake Peter 22 Thyago Vieira 23 AJ Puckett 24 Bernardo Flores 25 Aaron Bummer 26 Lincoln Henzman 27 Alex Call 28 Jameson Fisher 29 Ian Clarkin 30 Tito Polo

There's a new independent minor league ballpark coming to Rosemont. If there was ever an opportunity to buy a team and keep it close to home that might a a decent start.

Giolito looked solid, first start i've seen him this year where his command looked really sharp. He pitches like that and he'll be alright in the bigs.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Aug 15, 2017 -> 10:39 PM) The crazy thing is because of redistricting/gerrymandering (and the number of "safe" districts on BOTH sides) that the Dems still have probably only a 50/50 shot at winning back the House in 2018. That was part of the reason I had my doubts, but as I sit here today there's no doubt in my mind they're going to win the house back and probably convincingly. The level of damage Trump has inflicted to the Republican party has already reached a breaking point and he still has a year left. I've had similar discussions and fell back on a belief that there wasn't sufficient backlash against the greater Republican establishment in the way the Tea Party represented a clear rejection of the policies being enacted by liberals. While the Republicans don't have any legislative achievements to create a similar liberal backlash they will eventually contribution to the damage Trump has inflicted by some degree of legislative political overreach. At this point in Obama's presidency there wasn't a overwhelming fear of a Republican mid-term wave, the fact we're sitting here and discussing that distinct possibility so early is a bad sign for Republican political prospects. One issue that has plagued Democrats despite their voting success with minorities is they've never really over performed from a demographic standpoint with the exception of an increased turnout rate amount African Americans during the Obama years. With the events that transpired today it gives Democrats a powerful message; if you're not white, we're your only hope. That's not a very good message, but fear is an equally powerful motivating factor to hope.

It's amazing how much damage Trump has managed in his short tenure in office. I didn't think Democrats had much of a chance in the 2018 mid-terms, but at this rate Trump will single handily deliver a wave in the Democrats favor. They don't even need a message or platform, they can stand ideally by and just let Trump continue his unraveling. Looking back I clearly gave the man too much credit. The signs of his bigotry were there, but when you put it on display in blatant fashion during a televised press conference it's completely unforgivable. I've been of the opinion he still had time to turn things around and establish some credibility to his presidency. But after today it's over, his political career is done, and it's now just a matter of how many people he's taking with him.

The thing with Giolito is when you catch him on a good day he looks overwhelmingly dominant. The hitters don't stand a chance. Those have been far and few between, but it leaves an impression when you catch him on the right day. Maybe it takes him a few years to really figure it out, but those flashes of dominance leave a lasting impact.

QUOTE (fathom @ Aug 14, 2017 -> 08:20 PM) Not sure pitching in Charlotte would be pretty for him. If he comes down to him or Danish for the last Charlotte rotation spot i'd rather give it to Spence and see how it goes.

I would say 2020 is a much more realistic prediction for playoff contention. We're likely to be bad next year (bottom 5) and we'll (hopefully) have a decent amount of young talent hitting the bigs in 2019. Thus the type of deal/FA acquisitions to push the team into contention may not happen until after the 2019 season.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Aug 8, 2017 -> 11:08 PM) I'm a lot more worried about the North Korean leader. He is a powerderkeg just dying to flick some nukes at the USA and South Korea. All he has to do to be remembered forever is start the war that begins the end of humanity as we know it. He's nutty enough to do it. If he sends a nuke our way, we will literally blow that country off the map and that means S. Korea will be blown off the map too. At that point China and Russia decide what to do. If the North Korean nukes cause a lot of damage in the USA ... wow. North Korean leaders have been making idiotic provocative statements for 60 years. It's part of their standard political modus operandi. When our leaders try to beat them at their own game it's time for genuine concern. Unfortunately that seems to be the path we're likely headed.

As long as Giolito isn't getting completely lit up in spring training you figure they'll give him a rotation spot. Rodon Shields Lopez Giolito Scrub Vet It's going to be interesting trying to figure out the whole org depth chart for starting pitchers. It's kinda of insane but it's entirely possible we'll be starting a legit prospect with no org fillers top to bottom through the entire organization.

QUOTE (Soha @ Aug 6, 2017 -> 07:08 PM) If Lopez comes up and pitches well, Giolito maybe makes the team and does well, Rodon continues his progress....I think it's very possible this team falls in the 5-10 range next year. The SP stands a chance of being improved tremendously. Young hard throwers generally struggle their fist go around in the bigs and even if they pitch well unless you spend $50 million on the bullpen we'll still have a pretty terrible all around staff.

Fulmer's stuff looks a little better today. He's throwing his fastball by hitters and is locating the breaking ball a bit better.

QUOTE (Alexeihyeess @ Aug 4, 2017 -> 03:55 PM) I don't agree with that. Kopech is in AA, Giolito and Lopez in AAA...Id say their top end talent is fairly spread out. There's a good chance at least one of those three guys fails miserably at the major league level and spends the next few years as AAA fodder. I'm not even going to start getting overly optimistic on anyone until they can handle AA ball. Young prospects with projectability are fun to stockpile and watch. But at this point there's a much better chance Delmonico reaches 1000 PAs in the bigs than Rutherford or Adolfo. They're still so far away their likeihood of success is fairly low.

QUOTE (SoxPride18 @ Aug 4, 2017 -> 03:00 PM) Like who Our top 30 list is loaded with dudes in A ball or lower, it stands to reason a lot of these guys are going to fail and become upper minors filler.