Jake

QUOTE (Joshua Strong @ Jun 14, 2015 -> 07:52 PM) I think he could be a good 4th OFer I think he's at least a year away from it being a defensible developmental decision to not given him regular at bats at some level.

God I'm watching this press conference and they are peppering David Blatt with just ludicrous questions

I'll start by acknowledging that this is about the easiest time to bring up this argument, but does anyone else think that LeBron may soon start to turn that corner where, physically, he's just not the same guy anymore? Maybe the better question isn't whether those athletic abilities are on the decline but instead whether it matters.

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ Jun 14, 2015 -> 10:56 PM) Like who? It's more of a general statement than me believing this Cleveland team can win. In general, if you find yourself needing 25+ FGA per game from LeBron, your team is probably screwed.

For all that he does so well, LeBron as volume shooter is rarely a winning formula for his teams. MJ could routinely average 25-28 FGA/G with decent enough efficiency but that's not LBJ at his best. LBJ is best when shooting crazy efficient, distributing on offense, and making his presence felt on D. I'm actually becoming suspect of how much of a defensive player he can be anymore from all the mileage, but we see that offensive juggernaut all the time. Not in this series/with this version of CLE, though. I mean, there are some great distribution numbers, but he shouldn't be taking 35 shots. Someone else on his team needs to touch the ball.

Steph Curry just chucked up a 35 foot three with nobody guarding him and 9 seconds on the shot clock and drained it to put GS up by 11 in 90 seconds left. There's your signature game.

It's funny, given all the criticism, that Tortorella casually dropped Crawford's name as the presumptive Conn Smythe winner on ESPN today. Would make up for him getting jobbed in 2013, at least.

QUOTE (raBBit @ Jun 4, 2015 -> 12:52 PM) When I hated the Gordon Beckham signing it was for three reasons. 1.) It rendered Bonifacio's signing useless (or at least a poor allocation of funds) as Beckham took his principal role. - This still holds true. Bonifacio has been underutilized and is a wart, relatively speaking, on the payroll. 2.) Beckham has never been a good defender at 3B - The Sox scouts were right on his defense. He has passed the eye test and been incredible. 3.) Beckham is not a platoon bat. I kept saying that Beckham has sucked equally against RHP and LHP over the course of his 3000+ PAs. - He has been garbage against LHP once again. RHP: .302./357/.508/.865, 70 PAs LHP: .240/.333/.240/.573, 30 PAs I do think Gillaspie should only start 1-3 times a week against RHSP with good fastballs until Beckham cools. We can't build a pitching staff on guys who manufacture ground balls and throw Conor Gillaspie and Micah Johnson out there. Obviously you can't put much credence into splits of a role player in June but his career has been fun to follow in a statistical sense. Beckham has been a guy who is completely neutral in his career as far as LHP/RHP splits. RHP: .247/.306/.379/.685 and LHP: .243/.315/.368/.683 That is nearly identical. That is what you get with a proper sample size. His statistics on a year-to-year basis are a great token to the ideas that you A.) you cannot put weight into small sample sizes and B.) everything regresses to the mean. I am jumping all over the place but some of you want to freak out and say the Sox are the worst organization in the world because Melky, Eaton, Alexei and LaRoche aren't hitting to your expectations right now but don't go overboard. Things will regress the mean. If this team sucks in the end there's no prize for the one's who were saying it from April 9th, we all suffer together. Don't fret over the the day to day to results. We have eight weeks to wait for the regression. Regarding the platoon business, since he has spent much of the season in a sort of platoon role, you can't take his splits from this year as evidence that he still doesn't hit lefties any better. By and large, he has been protected from the toughest righties, so we might just say that Robin has managed his ABs well. Of course, it is very plausible and maybe even likely that he has been about equally effective against both LHP and RHP because that's just his natural tendency prior to last season.

I do wonder to what extent some of our disagreements on police incidents is rooted in different ideas of what police are for and what we expect of them. I think there is some degree to which some see police as perfectly normal civilians doing a particular job where they should be held to the same standard as anyone at any job. Others see police as one of a few very special positions in society where we expect something beyond the typical job performance.

So is it a MLB deal?

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Jun 11, 2015 -> 05:45 PM) http://nypost.com/2013/01/27/city-says-cop...subdued-killer/ Go ahead and read that Greg. But you might want to sit down first. I'm not sure if I understand the sequence of events. The madman enters the train after having been recognized by the cop, the cop hides, the madman tries to kill a man, once the man who was stabbed disarms the madman, the cop comes out of hiding? Or am I missing some nuance to the story? The city's defense that they can't simply take responsibility for every bad thing that happens of course makes sense, as does the argument that there could be times that the measures needed to protect a single person could jeopardize the safety of many others. But the way I'm reading it is that the cop just waited for the madman to finish his business before acting, which seems indefensible

I think Crawford, outside of the last game, hasn't been great but is far from the major reason we're in such a close series. Our skaters have not played that well. The Roszival injury is hurting a lot and every d-man outside of the Keith/Hjalmarsson tandem has been terrible at times, while Cumiskey/Van Riemsdyk/Timonen have all been terrible the majority of their time on the ice. We had gotten little production out of our top line until last night. The bright side is that the series is tied and we're rooting for the Blackhawks. They are the team, of all those I root for, that I get least stressed about. I've felt fairly pessimistic at times throughout the postseason, but with the Hawks there's always that thought in your mind that they could turn it on at any moment. Even better, I feel extremely confident that they won't fold. They're capable of being outplayed, but not of giving up or getting rattled by the moment.

Crawford won us that one. I'd like to see us get a win where it really feels like we win in all phases.

Reserve d-men are just playing terribly. Dumb mistakes every shift.

I'm really excited about Rodon, but he still has two big things to prove. First, we haven't seen him throw strikes consistently in the MLB and it was something he fought in his last year at NC State as well. The other thing is I'd like to see a third pitch. You occasionally see dominant starters that pretty much just throw two pitches, but it's not an easy route to success. Throwing a serviceable change about 15-20% of the time would make it infinitely harder for hitters to get comfortable against him. Since the comparisons to Sale are inevitable, it's worth mentioning that Sale had a very advanced changeup from the start and we never really saw him struggle with command. With that said, Rodon has his own advantages, namely that he's built like a tank and has a conventional, relatively low effort motion.

I don't think rest is a very relevant concern with DH'ing Soto

I think it is clear that much of the reaction you see from the kids is based on the fact that they did not trust the cops to treat them fairly or even in a way that preserved their safety. Why take off running if you aren't doing anything wrong? Maybe because you think the cops aren't going to treat you like an innocent person. Why try to help free your friend from an officer's grasp? Because you fear for their life. Now, that doesn't necessarily make those fears well-founded, though the way things went sure won't help anybody there restore their faith. I think it's clear that many people, especially black people, have little trust in the police. It's also clear that they are not insane to feel that way. And whether they should feel so much distrust that they outright disobey them or intervene on behalf of their peers is obviously pretty debatable. We know that most police interactions are perfectly fine. But the fact is that we as a society have a problem largely of our own creation regarding trust of police.

Yeah, I think it would make more sense to take a flyer on the internal candidate than Dominguez

If anyone could come back, it's the Hawks. But they haven't shown much of any sign of having it in them in these three games.

I think the Hawks are the better team, but we have not played better for more than a handful of minutes in this series.

Quintana is one of the most valuable trade pieces in the game. Baez is on a fast track to bustville. No thanks.

QUOTE (LDF @ Jun 8, 2015 -> 08:18 PM) now that is what i want to hear..... someone who is team first. any word on his agent??? I say don't tell me, show me when it comes to that kind of thing

QUOTE (whitesoxfan99 @ Jun 8, 2015 -> 05:53 PM) Really poor location with the slider throughout this game by Jay. Was able to get away with those against Big 10 competition but that isn't going to work at higher levels. I've read that some scouts like his curveball better for that very reason, he controls it much better

QUOTE (fathom @ Jun 8, 2015 -> 03:50 PM) IIRC, Baseball America was reporting his signing demands were scaring off some teams as well. I think I saw that when going through the 2009 draft thread on this site a few weeks ago. It's not all that uncommon that we hear about these things and the kid ends up signing for the slot he's drafted at. Sometimes the team calls the kid's bluff and he just takes the money and runs.

I finally sucked it up and watched the whole thing. 1. Why the hell does that cop do the roll in the first 10 seconds of the video? That was hilarious. 2. Yeah, that cop was out of control. When he finally targeted this girl, she was literally out of the picture. She was just one of several in her group who were all headed away from the scene as instructed. Of course, as others pointed out, the instructions were extremely contradictory. Don't run, get out of here, get on the ground, stop running. If I had to guess what happened, he probably heard this girl say something that especially pissed him off so he decided he would teach her not to talk to authorities that way. Also, very interesting how they tell the black kid on the ground he can't go get his things but are completely unconcerned with the white cameraman doing what he pleases. The cameraman knows it too, because he offers to go get the kid's stuff for him.