Jake

Other than Davidson, who I still expect to fare well, I thought Wilkins would have a better year and maybe look like a MLB replacement candidate. Not seeing that yet. I also was more down on Micah Johnson than most people, as I wouldn't have predicted his start in AA

As a white guy, I enjoy all kinds of social benefits, which I then parlay into financial and other benefits, and this is because of slavery and a history of sexism. There aren't many people that are intentionally connecting my white man-ness with the bestowing of these benefits, but they are nonetheless the result of these things. When I walk into a room, as a white man, there are certain things people assume about me that they don't assume about other people that aren't white guys. They are probably not worried about me stealing things, being a bad driver, being over-emotional. These are, all else being equal, obvious ways that I unfairly benefit from our racial past. Beyond that, we operate in a capitalist economy that is justified in tremendous part on the idea that the distribution of wealth is morally neutral. This is why we argue against social welfare policy - when an amoral economic system assigns some parties more and less wealth, there is no justice in giving some of it to those who got less. The only undeniable injustice, in that case, would be taking the wealth of the wealthier parties and giving it to those less off ones. However, our distribution of wealth is patently unjust and morally unjustifiable. Even if we want to forget about native Americans for simplicity's sake - we'll say that they weren't willing to participate in free trade or something. We'll also pretend that vestiges of feudalism and nobility didn't make it across the pond: all the white Americans started off on the right foot. Black folks were not paid for labor until 1865, quite obviously legally discriminated against in employment since at least the 1960s, and are arguably still falling victim to racist housing policy today. This is not to mention the aforementioned social norms that play against them. So we exclude these people from the economy, then only allow them a small part of it, exclude them from education, then only allow them a small part of it, exclude them from our society, then only allow them a small part of it, and then as we finally start to approach a more equal-looking legal treatment of them...we wonder why they don't just succeed? We (white folks) decided to take a 200 year head start before we evened the playing field of legal opportunities. It takes deliberate effort. Thomas Jefferson, in his Notes on the State of Virginia, wanted to emancipate slaves and send them to Africa - how awful. EVEN THEN, he argued that it would be wholly unjust to simply send them there. First, he says, you'd have to train each and every one of them in vocations and give them an adequate education otherwise, in addition to giving them the material goods with which they might successfully lead a life. Imagine what kinds of measures he'd want to take to integrate them into American society (something he didn't advocate for because he feared they'd resent white people too much). In letters to a friend who was considering freeing his slaves, Jefferson said not to even do it if he wasn't going to give them the training and resources to integrate into society. That all from a guy who didn't think very highly of slaves. So the reason something like reparations might make sense is because we've hardly done a damn thing to make up for the way things went. Just doing nothing now, feeling personally blameless, conveniently lets us live in a system that was rigged in our favor. Sure, there have been other injustices and there are all kinds of intricacies of society that play for and against different people, but there's nothing quite like the treatment of blacks in the USA - that is, other than our treatment of women, which is a kind of similar issue that we still feel the vestiges of in multiple areas of life.

He fares best earning above minimum MLB salary with us and getting lots of chances to prove himself in AAA. If he complained and we cut him loose, he'd have to go on a minor league deal with somebody who won't be fan of him pitching terribly in the minors

I find it hard to believe they'll have Jeter not play the majority of the game if he starts

There's nothing worse than to give up on a guy with as much talent and high level success as Davidson, especially when you're pining for a f***ing relief pitcher who will hardly be as valuable as a below average third baseman in a good year

Webb is striking out 6.8 per 9 and walking 6.1 per 9. He's getting by on an unsustainably low homer rate. I see the potential as everyone else does, but the best way to ruin the kid is to put him in at closer when he's very obviously not ready for it. My order of closer candidates: 1. Belisario 2. Putnam 3. Petricka 4. Webb Though I could see Guerra climbing up there given his considerable MLB closing experience. Belisario has a few more outings to get back to his dominant self. Putnam could be overtaken by Petricka if he continues to look shaky. Webb has the most to prove of those four IMO

We act like a guy who sits low 90s and reaches back regularly for 95-96 while getting a lot of swing and misses with a slider is bad from a LH starter while we all watch Chris Sale in awe

Sierra is the only clear replacement and he does a lot of the same things ADA does while improving upon some of ADA's weakness like D and arm. With that said, ADA has similar walk rate, K rate, LD rate, GB rate, FB rate, and HR/FB this year compared to his past. That suggests some horrendous luck. The only change of significance is that he is popping up a lot more often, but that doesn't explain .60-.100 loss of batting average

If I'm going to take away time from ADA, I'm giving it to Sierra. He's earned it.

I know it gets political in a hot hurry, but that line - "you don't think it'll happen to your child until it does" - it's hard not to feel something when you hear that from an anguished parent

FWIW, I never understand the relevance of pointing out whether a given crime was gang related. It's as if those don't count

I'd have no problem putting Rodon in the MLB bullpen pretty quickly - takes load off arm, starts arb clock (Boras), valuable experience in controlled setting

lmao that is not a base hit

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ May 24, 2014 -> 09:27 PM) Well, we saw the return for Alex Rios. Not pretty. Right, but that was all future salary-related

I'm really not sure how the league views Dunn at this point nor how they would view after a good season this year

Webb is pitching the fourth best of the active pitchers in our bullpen. I'd like him to prove a little more first

QUOTE (CaliSoxFanViaSWside @ May 24, 2014 -> 01:04 AM) 1st time in 40+ years we beat the Yanks 8 in a row at home. Hawk was really selling that inane stat

I'm really not sold on moving Dayan to DH and if this is a throwaway season, there's even more of a reason to continue trying to make it work in the OF

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ May 23, 2014 -> 10:09 AM) Yeah, I remember that. That was a Jeff Sullivan article, right? I'll have to try to find that again. Yes. He was most interested in whether this "good lack of discipline" applied to Abreu. It didn't.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ May 23, 2014 -> 09:23 AM) Um, how about a day at a time like the vast majority of the population? Why do teachers get some special treatment just because they're teachers? I could walk into work tomorrow and they could say see you later, regardless of how long i've been there. Well, in part, it's the nature of the job. While teachers can be dismissed immediately for certain extreme things, it's hard to measure job performance in any setting, let alone without a year's worth of work to evaluate. There's also a cost to the students, for whom this is all for. Whether it's an elementary school teacher who is a group of children's only teacher or a high school teacher who is running a series of classes, it's a significant disruption to install a new teacher in there midstream. The only way you could ever manage that kind of switching effectively is to really, really homogenize the syllabi, something most people aren't big fans of doing.

Earlier this year, FanGraphs looked at O-Swing% and compared it to the same basic thing, excepted they added an arbitrary amount to the strike zone size to see if there were a bunch of hitters who only swung at near-miss pitches. Except for just a handful of guys, you basically saw that if guys swing at some non-strikes, they swing at all of them.

Something to think about re: college pitcher pitch counts - they throw every 7th day, the majority of the time. We've seen durability from Japanese pitchers who threw a lot of pitches on a similarly long-rested schedule

While not necessarily inaccurate, they couldn't have painted a more negative picture of Reinsdorf. Makes it look like he's been a big baby demanding power, as if that's all he does or nobody else is interested in the same things

When I saw the thread title, I thought I was about to read the dumbest post ever. In reality, that was pretty interesting

No f***ing clue why Belisario was throwing a bunch of offspeed stuff to Tex. Use your gift, Ronald. It's called a mid-90s fastball that breaks like a left-handed curveball