Jake

When I lived in Memphis, I remember hearing that part of the reason the city's crime rate looked so bad was because they reported absolutely everything. They found that doing so, while continuing to make the crime problem look serious, made it much easier to reduce serial offenses and to anticipate police needs.

Finally avenging the Everett deal!

TBH, I'm not super optimistic about our chances. Having seen a time pretty damn similar to this win a SC gives me plenty of hope, but I would not be at all shocked to see us just lay an egg. As far as Nashville goes, it's a pretty nice place. As a person who has lived in TN for a while, I've learned to hate it based on the fact that every person who lives in/is from Nashville thinks they are from the best place in the world and certainly better than anyone else's place.

Anyone know why Beckham was pulled after 1 AB yesterday?

TV hasn't even adopted 1080p yet.

Yeah, Thompson is getting a chance to repeat this level because he is supremely talented and we need to see if pulling back the reins can result in him becoming somewhere near as productive as his talent level allows for.

Didn't someone post about how there have been fewer home runs per game so far this year than the same time last year?

QUOTE (IlliniKrush @ Apr 11, 2014 -> 01:25 AM) Where to begin looking for a big TV for a basement? What to look for? Will be used 99% of the time to watch sports. Online? In store? Brand? LED vs Plasma? Any help appreciated, there seems to be a million options. Depending on just how big you want, you might want to look into Plasma. They are heavier and, despite improvements, more energy intensive, but they look absolutely awesome.

He definitely had a pattern of diving the wrong way, I've seen it in a lot of athletic big guys like him. They all end up hurting their shoulders too, in my experience. With that said, it's hard to teach. You don't want to make him dive 100 times in practice because each time you do that you have a substantial risk of injury. Easy to critique in hindsight. I'm sure he had been told to be careful on the dives.

QUOTE (ptatc @ Apr 10, 2014 -> 09:47 AM) IMHO. Too many pitchers trying to throw too hard. This is the downside of the ever increasing use of the bullpen. The pitchers have it their mind that a 6 inning effort is a quality start. So they throw harder more often because they don't need to conserve the effort for later innings. The best comment I heard about all of this stuff was basically that we have become very good at repairing this injury that used to eliminate countless players at various ages. On the other hand, we're woefully underinformed on what causes it in the first place in comparison. This is why we suddenly have people re-injuring, which was so unheard of. We fixed it, but we didn't fix the player. We don't know if it was his motion, workload, genetics, all of those things, etc.

What sucks the most here is that we don't even know if he's any good. Next year we'll be wanting to put out a playoff-ready team but we'll have to start a 23 year old, iffy-fielding RF that swings at everything and has less than 500 ABs of track record. This was the perfect year to let him fail, but it will be a lot more difficult from here on out. QUOTE (hi8is @ Apr 10, 2014 -> 02:34 PM) Joy. FWIW, labrum repairs have come a really long way since 2004. Beyond that, the kind of labral tear you get from impact like this is a lot more common and straightforward to repair. He should be 100%.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Apr 10, 2014 -> 10:10 AM) Sounds like a perfect tidbit for the catch-all thread. Oh, wait a second... We should have an "interesting stats" catch-all

I think we've all lost our enthusiasm for Trayce Thompson, at least for those of us who ever had it in the first place. Last year was a big year for him and he just didn't quite put everything together. He's still plenty young, but it's tough to see a guy spend 5 years in the minors without doing anything spectacular. There was one particular trend that I find encouraging, though 2009, R (25 games) - 4.3% BB%, 35.5% K% 2010, A (58 games) - 8.9% BB%, 29.4% K% 2011, A (136 games) - 10.1% BB%, 28.8% K% 2012, A+ (116 games) - 8.8% BB%, 28.2% K% 2013, AA (135 games) - 10.2% BB%, 23.6% K% Contact had always been the issue for Trayce. While overall production hasn't been great, he was difficult to project favorably because he struck out so damn much. His only saving grace was that walk rate. Last year he drastically cuts the K rate without hurting his BB rate. He'd been getting pushed up level after level despite not a great deal of success at any of them - certainly not mastering them - so I am very interested in how he does repeating this level where he posted his best contact rates of his career.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Apr 9, 2014 -> 01:30 PM) I'm talking about from the perspective of the player. What good would it have done Kobe to go to Random U and generate a bunch of profits for them and their conference versus going straight to the NBA if some team (really, every team) was willing to pay him millions of dollars right out of HS? There are highly positive intrinsic benefits from going to college that you could argue for. Of course, we could also argue that elite college athletes aren't allowed to experience those intrinsic benefits.

QUOTE (Buehrle>Wood @ Apr 9, 2014 -> 09:18 AM) So you don't think jerking him from bullpen to starter to bullpen to starter back to bullpen and then back to starter at the peak of his development process was mismanging him? Come on man... In 2011, he learns the screwball. It propels him through the minors, making him an incredibly effective starter. He even comes up to the MLB team and looks pretty damn good while throwing lots of screwballs - 31% of his pitches were screwgies. In 2012, we put him in the bullpen. He quits throwing them. He says multiple times that he needs an extended warmup to find the release on the pitch. He does learn a changeup because he says it is much easier to warm up with it. The changeup sucks, but he adapted. Finishes 2012 having thrown 6.3% of his pitches as screwballs. 2013 - we put him in the f***ing bullpen again because of DYLAN AXELROD! Yep, no more screwballs. Changeup use becomes more prominent. 4.2% screwballs. So you have a guy whose rise from organizational fodder to potential key cog of the starting rotation was precipitated in large part by his learning the screwball. We put him in the bullpen and he can't warm up with it, especially because he just learned the pitch. It's actually quite impressive that he learned yet another pitch and got by without the pitch that seemed to play the biggest role in him becoming a useful baseball player. At this point, it seems he's just never going to throw the screwball again because it is too much of a risk to try to re-learn it. There's no way you can say that the Sox putting him in the bullpen isn't the reason that that happened. Anyway, it's not a big deal. Even if Hector turns into a good starter, which he very well may, we got what we wanted out of that trade. Eaton is awesome. Who cares? Hector's a great guy and I wish him the best. His control may make him marginal for his entire career or he may put things together and be pretty darn good.

O'Leary hasn't been universally well-received

I think the donut contract makes much more sense on both sides for pitchers than position players

QUOTE (Middle Buffalo @ Apr 7, 2014 -> 04:09 PM) Left forearm hair starting to turn gray. Right arm still brunette. The most catch-all post in Soxtalk history

QUOTE (ptatc @ Apr 7, 2014 -> 04:40 PM) Personally, I don't mind the late ER as much. Sale has some of this. It does create some stress. What I don't like is the lack of trunk flexion and hip flexion during the follow through. He stands up too straight after the pitch and wraps his arm around after the pitch. This makes the posterior shoulder absorb the forces that cannot be dissipated through a longer eccentric contraction. thus he gets to the fully cocked position late and doesn't dissipate the forces later. This was always my comment on Peavy. It drives me crazy when pitchers have the poor follow through. This pretty much describes the flaw in my own delivery if I'm following you correctly. I have the SLAP repair, biceps tenodesis, and infraspinatus repair as evidence for your argument

He's too good not to be on the MLB club as soon as we dump the excess (Keppinger) and not good enough to hold him in the minors just to avoid super 2 status

There's plenty of talent in the bullpen, it's just a matter of finding out which roles are right for people and which guys will stick and which have to go. Petricka is a good example of a guy who didn't quite make it out of ST but could very well become a key cog.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Apr 5, 2014 -> 04:50 PM) Isn't this the last year of his contract? Nobody knows how old he really is? I wouldn't think the Sox can get much for him. He's signed through '15 with team option for '16. We know how old he is. Cuba has been keeping very solid records since before he was born.

I see no reason to take Hoffman at 3 and if it is with Rodon on the board, it is unconscionable

Don't know if it has been said, but the sample size that led to the conclusion that his defense was poor was woefully small. You need at least a full season of reps to even begin to get a valid sample size and you won't know the true value of the defender until you have multiple full seasons of data.

http://hamptonroads.com/2014/04/nc-probes-...s-2012-election Elections Director Kim Strach told state lawmakers at an oversight hearing Wednesday that her staff has identified 765 registered North Carolina voters whose first names, last names, birthdates and last four digits of their Social Security numbers appear to match information for voters in another state. Each case will now require further investigation to determine whether voter fraud occurred. "Could it be voter fraud? Sure, it could be voter fraud," Strach said. "Could it be an error on the part of a precinct person choosing the wrong person's name in the first place? It could be. We're looking at each of these individual cases." ... Strach said there could also be about 50 people statewide who died before election day but were recorded as casting a ballot. In several past cases, instances of so-called zombie voters turned out to be the result of clerical errors. ... However, other states using the cross-check system have yielded relatively few criminal prosecutions for voter fraud once the cases were thoroughly investigated. Only 11 people were prosecuted on allegations of double-voting as a result of the 15 states that performed similar database checks following the 2010 elections, according to data compiled by elections officials in Kansas, where the cross-check program originated. Bob Hall, director of the non-profit group Democracy North Carolina, cautioned officials not to jump to conclusions based on the preliminary database check. "I know there is more than one Bob Hall with my birth date who lives among the 28 states researched," Hall said. "There may be cases of fraud, but the true scale and conspiracy involved need to be examined more closely before those with political agendas claim they've proven guilt beyond a reasonable doubt."