Jake

I actually find Melky easier to root for than Colby Rasmus

QUOTE (bmags @ Dec 14, 2014 -> 11:21 AM) I also have no confidence Bulls doctors did a good job. The guys at Midwest Orthopedics are legit. It's the trainers and general medicine guys for the Bulls that have been suspect

QUOTE (woods of ypres @ Dec 14, 2014 -> 06:05 PM) I've heard rumour that people from Chicago don't like Chicago style Pizza; and its mostly tourists, and out-of-towners (like ME!) that eat it. I feel like it isn't so much that Chicagoans truly want those giant ones with the sauce on top, it's that Chicagoans are never going to like that really thin stuff that New Yorkers eat. We like a lot of cheese and voluminous crust

If I had to guess, Hahn probably hoped to really improve the catcher position. T-Flow modestly outperformed expectations last year, but it was just last offseason that he made a run at McCann. I'm sure he wishes he could have brought in somebody better. 2B and 3B are also up in the air a bit, but I think catcher is where we have the least upside.

MLB's testing regimen is pretty good at this point and is by far the best in American pro sports

So I'm not going to love Melky, I do love Q and Flowers, and I love the White Sox.

I'm inclined to give Q the benefit of the doubt as he had just become a pro ballplayer and had all sorts of things to navigate through (various handlers, language barrier, etc). http://www.csnchicago.com/white-sox-talk/s...uintana-thrives As far as Flowers goes, there's not a ton of info out there about it but he tested positive for HGH in 2006. I don't know if there's an interesting story or what because nobody seems to give a s*** about whether some 19-year-old kid took HGH to cheat at rookie ball. I don't get super worked up about guys who dicked up when they were kids. All I can find about Flowers's side of things is that he didn't contest the claim and said that he did in fact do some kind of PED while in community college. And Melky is a s***bag.

I'm less concerned with the fact that he once cheated than that I don't feel especially reassured that he isn't/isn't trying to anymore.

Provided that this post was not obviously incendiary ("break open those crates!"), which we don't know for sure, and that this is a public school, it's a sad thing that this guy lost his job. The local farmers aren't donors, they are taxpayers. They don't have the right to like the personal beliefs of all local public school faculty

I agree that Bonifacio remains an attractive option. Depth at all of our thinnest positions. Kills lefties.

As a cost saving measure, I was willing to accept the small hard drive in the MacBook Air (128GB). I don't really do storage-intensive things, short of some amateur photography that is stored on external drives. Still, I was shocked at how little drive space I had. I spent all morning trying to find out how to carve out some more drive space since I only had about 12GB free. Then...I realized that Time Machine had created 40GB in local snapshots. One click later and I'm oozing with free space.

I don't love it, but he almost certainly will outperform the alternatives. I prefer him to Rasmus, for sure.

The thing Arrieta has going for him is that ALL his stuff changed last year. It wasn't like he got lucky. He earned those numbers last year. He struck out more, walked less, gave up less homers, pitched more. What he doesn't have going for him is that he's never done that stuff before. Pitchers are fickle creatures, by and large.

You also have to remember that Noesi is relatively young, right-handed, not coming off of a surgery, and put up those numbers after not at all being prepared to be a starting pitcher. They're not the same thing, even if they put up similar numbers. Danks has shown that he can be an upper echelon starter in MLB, but also is getting older and hasn't produced since his surgery. Noesi may have more upside in that we know he's healthy and he did alright out there despite a lot of things working against him last season.

In the context of a hundreds of pages long bill, "I helped write it" could mean so many different things as to make it nearly meaningless. Since he definitely was involved in Romneycare, is this claim made based on portions of Romneycare being carried over to the new bill? Did he write it all himself? Did he answer questions from legislators about what should be in it?

I've heard grammarians say that often is supposed to be pronounced "offen"

Tigers don't want Scherzer? Let's get 'im boys!

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Dec 11, 2014 -> 12:21 PM) I think you're right if we assume that Danks cannot be moved. I guess I'm still hoping he can I'm kind of indifferent for now. We can roll with Danks for a while if we have to. He might even pitch well again someday, who knows

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Dec 11, 2014 -> 12:17 PM) Good for the bullpen, I still think we need a starter. Rienzo doesn't count though. Other than throwing all of Jerry's money at a Scherzer type of guy, I wouldn't want to give a guaranteed contract to anyone. You have Sale-Shark-Q-Danks to start with, all of whom are basically cemented there. Banks, so long as he's here, has to be in the rotation. Then you have Noesi, who was solid all year and is a great value proposition if he can improve even just modestly from last year. Wouldn't want to release him or anything like that. Ideally, we at least give him a trial run of starts to see if he's for real. Then you have Rodon waiting in the wings for a spot too. We're not super deep, but adding a guaranteed contract player in there could make it where we have guys pitching only because we can't get rid of them (Danks, potential FA)

That's...a fabulous trade. Jennings has a little bit of track record - the ERA makes him look better than he has been - and he is under team control for forever. Reigns was clearly on the far outside of both our bullpen and rotation, and was a realistic possible DFA if we needed the space on the 40. We took on nearly no risk in this deal to get who is probably going to be a valuable piece.

Without moving Danks, it would be odd for them to go after Volquez instead of just sticking with Noesi for that spot.

I'm actually intrigued by Ackley. There are arguments to be made that a swap would be fair and Ackley would suit our needs better since we want more lefty-righty balance and he's not an absolute butcher. The offensive bar is lower for Ackley to remain useful.

You always say you're basically out of cash when you're really about 10% away from your projected maximum. Then you can still get the guy you want, but you might be able to convince him you can't give him what he wants.

QUOTE (ptatc @ Dec 9, 2014 -> 09:39 AM) This is the key. He is only going to pitch 160-175 effectively. How do you want to sparse them out. If you put him in the rotation at the beginning of the season, he will be gassed in August and could hurt the team. My vote would be to sart him in Charlotte and limit his innings early on. It's not out of the possibility that the Sox will have him in the Chicago pen for the first 1/4 of the season then by July work him into the rotation. He will learn to use his pitches to get MLB hitters out and move on to the rotation. I think that is what the Sox will do, although I think starting in the minors would be better. This is actually a plausible and defensible plan. I suppose the budget-conscious thing could be to start in Charlotte and if he succeeds there as expected, call him up and have him do some relief appearances at first to lighten the load. I don't love that plan, though, just because I think it is hard on a lot of guys to switch back and forth to and from the rotation.

QUOTE (Real @ Dec 9, 2014 -> 06:51 AM) Does Danks plus Anderson land Kemp? Salary swap plus a legit prospect? Would you do it if you were Hahn? Right now Kemp is unwantable. We don't have to give up actual good players to get him. It's just a matter of whether we can stomach his contract