vandy125

QUOTE(TLAK @ Sep 14, 2006 -> 08:46 PM) 5 years $60 million guaranteed may also have been a factor in Konerko signing. Never believe ball players, its about the money. These guys have a short period of time to set up their families for generations to come. The LA offer was supposedly equal, the Baltimore one supposedly a little above but what doesn't make the newpapers is the terms of the deals and how they impact the real value of an offer to the player. I can't believe a player is going to turn down a superior offer just because he likes the guys. I call BS on that argument. Regardless of what you say, Konerko has said that it was a factor for him. I would tend to believe what he says on his own decision more than what you believe. Sure, money is important, and we do not know all of the factors that came into the equation, but how can you so quickly dismiss the one factor that came straight from his mouth? I'm going to have to call BS on that.

QUOTE(TLAK @ Sep 13, 2006 -> 08:32 PM) As to the comparisons between Thomas and Thome, you really should be comparing Thomas + Rowand to Thome + Anderson. Compare those numbers; compare that leadership when you decide who you would rather have. If you are going to go that far in the comparison, do not forget to add Konerko to the equation since Thome was a reason that he signed. Who would the first baseman have been without Thome coming and Konerko signing as a result of that? Gload?

Dang Kennedy! Good job Freddy!

The story has been updated and no one got hurt.

QUOTE(Balta1701 @ Sep 13, 2006 -> 01:51 PM) Ozuna, LF Iguchi, 2B Dye, RF Thome, DH Konerko, 1b Crede, 3B Uribe, SS Anderson, CF Alomar, C Me likey that lineup

QUOTE(WilliamTell @ Sep 13, 2006 -> 11:55 AM) It matters to me because I love having cheaper gas in Iowa. Last I knew it was like 2.25 in Cedar Falls, but that was on Sunday. 2.19 in Des Moines, and that is the Super Unleaded, which is cheaper than Regular Unleaded.

Along the lines of this topic, BMW is rolling out a Hydrogen car. Its good to see things starting to move in that direction. Hydrogen Car

Props to Buerhle for a quick inning after we took the lead!

QUOTE(Kalapse @ Sep 9, 2006 -> 01:27 PM) Or a NAZI!! I hate Illinois Nazis...

QUOTE(Rowand44 @ Sep 7, 2006 -> 03:59 AM) No, this isn't true at all. To keep it simple, he doesn't even come close to using the personnel given to him in the best possible situations. Marte was absolutely horrid down the stretch last year, everyone on this board could have told you what he was going to do that night and Boston and Ozzie almost blew the darn game by putting him in there. And we still won the title. I'm not saying he's doing things perfect like some seem to think he needs to do, but I think he has a better handle of what is happening in that clubhouse than any of our armchair managers ever will. He seems to be held up against an impossible standard. If we went 162-0 some people would still complain that he overused the starting pitchers or that he almost blew a game by making a stupid mistake in putting someone in (how dare he). We seem to have a lot of psychics here who know what will happen when certain pitchers or hitters get put in. Inevitably someone predicts doom and gloom on every move. When it does not happen, they do not say they were wrong, or they admit it quickly and move on. When it does happen, they point to it and say "See, we all predicted that would happen. Why would he do such a dumb move?" They then go on and keep pointing to it weeks, even a year later as an example where their doom and gloom actually came true (imagine that ever happening). The same thing does not happen with their other predictions where they "admitted" they were wrong.

This is how I kind of feel about our starting pitchers right now (since this is the key): Garland - Right now pitching the best out of them all. Buehrle - He has been a bit rough, but I think he is pulling it back together. Vazquez - Seems to be putting it together a bit better than earlier. Not quite as confident as I am with Buehrle Garcia - Can keep you in ballgames, but I don't feel very confident for a win with him pitching right now without some big offense. Contreras - Injured? I feel like at least four of the five can really pull things together in the end here, but haven't we been saying things like that all year?

I was actually pretty happy to take 2-3 from the DRays with both Freddy and Javy on the mound for the series. I know that everyone wanted a sweep (who wouldn't), but could you honestly expect a sweep with the way those two have been pitching? Also, this against one of the fastest teams out there where singles and walks easily turn to doubles. It was good to see Javy pitch well and actually pitch out of a couple of jams instead of imploding at that point. The key is pitching, pitching, and more pitching for this final month. If it is there, we run away with this thing.

If the guys in front of him get on base, there would be more opportunties to do hit-and-run and be more aggressive with Dye at the plate. He makes contact and puts the ball in play at a higher rate than Thome does. Thome is actually the worst on the team at putting the ball in play (about 70%, watch out when he does get a hold of a pitch though). Dye does it at about a 79% clip (This is based on (AB + SAC - K) / (AB + SAC) AB-----SF-----K------BIP %--------Player 115----1------11-----0.905172414--Gload 458----7------47-----0.898924731--Crede 146----2------15-----0.898648649--Ozuna 62-----1------7------0.888888889--Sandy 424----4------54-----0.873831776--Pierz 241----2------31-----0.872427984--Cintron 376----11-----62-----0.839793282--Uribe 446----11-----83-----0.818380744--Pods 467----7------88-----0.814345992--Kong 461----7------92-----0.803418803--Iguchi 441----6------95-----0.787472036--Dye 290----3------72-----0.754266212--BA 405----5------120----0.707317073--Thome

QUOTE(Balta1701 @ Aug 25, 2006 -> 01:03 PM) If you have a quota of Asian and Hispanic Americans to fill...I'd say the largest populations of both of those minorities are probably from California, or at least the Southwest. It looks like it is coast dominated to me. There is only one person on there that is not from a state on the east or west coast.

QUOTE(Balta1701 @ Aug 24, 2006 -> 03:15 PM) Just when you need an out...Neifi Perez comes up.

QUOTE(Steff @ Aug 23, 2006 -> 12:32 PM) We BLEW a FIFTEEN GAME LEAD yet last years team keeps being referrered to as one the the greatest...??? It boggles my mind. We did not blow a fifteen game lead last year. Cleveland played out of their minds the 2nd half of last year. What we did do was lead the Central Division wire to wire. How many teams have done that? We also romped through the competition in the playoffs and went 11-1 against the best teams out there (including 4 straight complete game victories, which is unheard of these days). Only 1 other team can say that they did that. We did this as a complete team. You cannot point to 1 or 2 people as the catalysts for doing all of that who just pulled the rest along to the championship. It was one of the best "teams" I have seen (I am not that old though). This year, we are missing that pitching part of the team, but we can still make the playoffs by the offense carrying us. It is not nearly as complete of a team as last year. Sorry for the derailment. As mentioned above, I am in with this team as far as making the playoffs.

Call me in. It looks like all 3 WC contenders are having problems right now. I think that we pull through and at least make it in the playoffs. How well we do from there kind of depends on if we stumble into the playoffs (and just happened to stumble less than the other WC contenders), or if we start right before the playoffs.

QUOTE(whitesoxfan101 @ Aug 22, 2006 -> 05:28 PM) Some drunk Viking probably came up with the names, it's a bunch of crap just like the whole "Bluegrass State" thing in Kentucky, there isn't any damned blue grass in that state. As for the article itself......even it is contradictory. I never know what to believe with global warming, nobody can agree on anything in regards to this subject. I saw this just recently on the History Channel. Greenland gots its name to entice settlers to come out to it. Greenland Wikipedia

Texas has come back from 6-0 and taken the lead against Detroit

Didn't they have some sort of competition to decide the music for this?

QUOTE(Balta1701 @ Aug 18, 2006 -> 02:40 AM) If you let me go back to the fossil record, there are absolutely tons of examples of new traits appearing over time. Bone structures changing, shells changing, you name it. We can do similar things with biological tools to some extent, and by isolating specific genes that are related to specific changes in species and to reasonable margins of error figure out when those genes first appeared. This is done all of the time in my building...they have a bunch of bacteria they like to play with to do so. I had always been under the impression that the fossil record was not very conclusive as far as showing macroevolution taking place. If it was, then there probably would not be a debate between a graduated evolution occuring (small steps) vs the punctualistic evolution occurring (big steps all at once). From what I have understood, we do not yet have enough evidence to declare either way, and I am not sure what type of evidence there would be to say that it was graduated. There is also the issue of the Cambrian explosion of fossils. I have heard that just about every species now living can trace itself back to that time. Why is it that so much of that happened in one time period? Why is there not a steady development of the fossil record before and through that time? QUOTE(Balta1701 @ Aug 18, 2006 -> 02:40 AM) Here's a prime example from plants. Let's go right back to wheat, because it is a good example of both. Wheat is not just how we see it today due to the replication of chromosomes, but after these replications, wheat has been acted on by various other mutations and selective pressures to bring it where it is today. Here is a recent paper (not sure if you can actually get to that abstract, I can) that discusses how the wheat genes weren't just replciated, but after they were replicated, due to random mutations, some of the genes shut off, others began to work in different ways, so right now, the chromosomes that were replicated in those events are no longer identical. That, IMO, can only be judged as a gain in information, by any standard. Here's an excerpt in case you can't see that. ... There are other examples, but again we're limited in what we can really conceive of because of the time span. Another prime example is the development of resistence to certain drugs in viruses and bacteria. You start off with an antibiotic which actually does cure a disease, but eventually a random mutation arises in some of those bugs that allows them to resist the antibiotic. Suddenly, when the antibiotic is used, it kills off all the non-resistant bugs, allowing the bugs with the new mutation to grow more rapidly. There again, I am not sure that I see this information gain. It seems more like old information is being replaced with new information. That is a net effect of 0. You say that certain genes shut off. So, they are losing information when that happens, but the new mutations take over which pretty much replaces the old genes that got shut off. The wheat is still wheat, and the virus is still a virus. I guess what it comes down to is that, like you said, the rate at which these things can supposedly happen is far too slow for us to be able to see new abilities form. IMO, the fossils do not yet show us this happening in a manner that we can say it was gradual. We see points A and B in what we think the path is, but we do not yet have good evidence as to how something could move from point A to point B due to the incredibly slow rate that they occur.

QUOTE(Balta1701 @ Aug 17, 2006 -> 12:34 PM) A gain in information, if we want to call it that (I'm not a fan of that term since there's no real great definition for the total amount of information contained within a DNA Unit) would also fit...anything which changes the ratio of alleles in a population would fit that definition, including the appearance of new mutations. Well, yeah, the big problem you run into in providing a concrete example is time, in that significant changes in species, to the point where 2 formerly joined populations will be unable to breed if they rejoin each other, simply does take quite a few generations. It has been observed in plants, however, with the classic example being wheat, where a series of mutations led to the development of the modern-day grain from older plants. It has also been observed in the laboratory...just one example, using the classic fruit flies that a lot of scientists play with because they do reproduce quickly...Rice and Salt (1988) placed originally genetically matching groups of fruit flies under different conditions of food, water, light, and so forth, and after several generations, they brought the groups back together, and found that they were different enough that the two groups did not interbreed. Here and here are some short lists of examples where scientists have in fact observed speciation, or what you might call macro-evolution, taking place. To me, those do not sound like examples of macroevolution. In those examples that I read and looked at, it seemed to me that nothing fundamental has changed about the fruitflys, the different plants, etc. Take the fruit flies as an example. The whole group had the ability to survive the different conditions that they put them in, but as time progressed, the one's that could better survive the different environments became more prevalent. This is natural selection, and to me it seems like there was no gain of information or abilities. Natural selection is different from evolution. In fact, it seems like they lost abilities because they were no longer able to interbreed with other types of fruit flies. What I am looking for is some sort of useful ability gained, something added to them, not already existing abilities within a species. If I read correctly about some of the cross-hybridization, (I am looking at the 5.1.1.4 Raphanobrassica section as an example), it appears that they have even gotten plants to trade some of their abilites, but again, I do not see any gains in useful abilities. Am I missing something with all of this? If I understand alleles correctly, I would not think the change in a ratio of these is what I am looking for (one gene becoming more dominant if I am correct?). To me those are abilities that an organism already has. I would be looking more towards the mutations that add new genes that are useful for the organism's survival.

QUOTE(Milkman delivers @ Aug 17, 2006 -> 04:05 PM) That's a good job of twisting his words around. He said it could cost us a playoff spot if Ozzie keeps putting Jenks out there for more than an inning. The stats clearly show that he gets worse when he throws more than 15 pitches or goes more than 1 inning. I agree with that 1 inning thing, but isn't the 15 pitch thing kind of self-fulfilling? He would usually only need to throw 15 or more pitches if he is struggling.

QUOTE(Reddy @ Aug 17, 2006 -> 01:45 PM) yeah i really dont get that... take out one of our best bats for.... why? A bit of a rest for AJ, and I would rather have him giving AJ a rest than the Widge of '06

QUOTE(southsideirish71 @ Aug 17, 2006 -> 01:40 PM) Mark plunks the lefty ala Marte. Next guy singles. Man on first and third for Sweeney. first and third or first and second. Game Day has them on 2nd