Jake

For interviews, I prefer Phil Emery. That dude will tell you EXACTLY what he is thinking. I've never seen a guy pull out PFF stats and salary numbers nonchalantly to explain and justify a roster move.

Most of the argument is about his journalistic integrity. It isn't that people can't or wouldn't find out, but whether this article was exploitative or unnecessarily harmful. I enjoyed reading it, but it became much more about her transgender status than it needed to be to be a good article or lay out the facts.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Jan 21, 2014 -> 05:41 PM) Krohl/Vanderbilt previously attempted suicide, no? There are many different reasons she could have committed suicide, among them being outed as a man, being outed as a fraud, depression. We are putting the blame on Hannan, but ultimately Krohl/Vanderbilt took her own life. Hannan may have played a part but he didn't do this to push this person over the edge. Not too many people are arguing that this fiasco caused her to commit suicide -- there was quite a bit of lag between Hannan's last convo with her and her suicide IIRC. Either way, it is always a very complicated thing and in this case, we know that she had been suicidal before. Like you said, who knows why, though I bet her difficulty with her gender identity didn't help. I wouldn't want to try to draw a straight line between the threat of this article and her death. It isn't clear that he/Grantland was willing to publish it if she were alive.

This is why I keep going back to the whole thing being careless. Hannan and the entire editorial staff never bothered to mention what the circumstances were that led him to out her to the investor -- did he press him for more details, etc.? There were so many steps along the way where Hannan could have been up front about the fact he was entering tricky territory and somehow nobody ever made that kind of thing appear in the article.

QUOTE (Steve9347 @ Jan 21, 2014 -> 04:32 PM) Smart move - it likely wouldn't be denied even if they aren't, and you get some points with the fans. Seems like every team is sprinkling rumors that can either make it seem like they were involved, maybe even offered more than everyone but got turned down while also having rumors that make it seem like they weren't really interested. This way they are covered whether he turns out to be great or a bust.

There is a limit on how much you are now allowed to spend internationally and on the draft -- they did give a big bonus to Soler, though. Nonetheless, it is a relative certainty that their spending on draft and sanctioned international signings would have gone down when Theo came rather than up

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Jan 21, 2014 -> 03:40 PM) Guessing, false info, the internet. Pick your poison. The Sox have heard jack s***, so I assume everyone else is in the same boat. When you say they haven't heard anything, does that mean Tanaka's people haven't actually negotiated with anyone? Just give us a single bid and we'll pick the highest one? Seems like an odd tactic. Or does this mean that all teams have gone back and forth and have basically reached their limit and now everybody's waiting?

Hannan could even have just said she was born under the name Stephen Krohl or simply "another name." Imagine if he had just said she was used to be named Steven Krohl and let people guess at what that means.

He looks like he was being brief for the sake of not letting the story turn into "look at the freakshow"

Most of the info he found was publicly available. However, he didn't have to be fixated on those details. Finding out she was transgendered took a way too central role in the story.

I do understand that there is some difficulty in reporting the entire story in any way resembling its current form without saying what her former name was. This is, for the most part, why many have insisted that outing her gender identity change (if we may call it that) to the investor was the most problematic part of the deal. Remember how her former supervisor only barely insinuated something was amiss when Hannan spoke to him? That would have perhaps been a little better. Of course, we don't know how the conversation with the investor went; somehow this was a part of the conversation that didn't matter enough to include in the article, even though the investor having thought she was attractive was worth including. Reporters love dropping random facts with no explicit purpose and they do this under the guise of "just reporting the facts" when in fact, this is just a sneaky way of hiding your biases. Why include this and not that? If he's not going to make his agenda public, then Hannan can't be mad when people say he included the investor's comment about how she was good looking while giving no attention to the very serious topic of outing her to mean that Hannan didn't give a f*** about transgender issues. Let's get this straight -- the article was presented the way it was because 1. she died and 2. she was born Stephen Krohl If the article was about 1. the putter and 2. the liar, it would have been quite different. It would have been shorter. There would have been much of the beginning of the current article and not much of the end. "I found these lawsuits in which she was involved during these dates, dates that should have placed her in D.C. After finding her credentials weren't checking out, I found another legal document - a change of name. She was born under the name Krohl, but has since divorced herself from her entire family as far as my research can tell. Moreover, she has held a number of odd jobs in these cities at these other times in which she says she was working for the Pentagon. Moreover, nobody going by her former name graduated from Penn or MIT." Oh, wow! Neat! Very cool investigative reporting. He totally called her out for being a fraud. Look at how all these people placebo'd into liking her silly putter.

I am very hesitant to jump out and say that since Dr. V did some things very wrong, that she deserved harm beyond what those wrong things merited. It is one thing to be outed as a liar and receive what comes from defrauding people of their money and time. To be outed as a transgender person, in all likelihood, is unfathomably traumatizing. She likely lived much of her life in absolute turmoil about her identity. By all accounts, the outside world very much saw a young man. She felt like a young woman. If Dr. V was anything like most other transgendered people, being able to live as a woman was incredibly liberating on the most fundamental level. I cannot fathom how it must feel to finally feel like I am in the correct body after feeling as if I were in the wrong one for so long. Dr. V clearly wanted to get away from anyone associated with her past, which makes sense -- she doesn't want people tiptoeing around, trying to figure out pronouns and that sort of thing. She just wanted to be herself, a woman. The consequences of being outed means all of that tumbling down. The brief moment in her life in which she was finally happy in her own skin getting interrupted by the very past she meant to disavow had to be incredibly unsettling. It is the most damaging invasion of privacy one can ever imagine. We don't know how much this came to fruition before her death. Hannan outed her to that investor, but we aren't sure if that investor reacted. Hannan let Dr. V know that he knew, but he obviously didn't publish anything before her death. We simply don't know how seriously threatened she felt. Perhaps everyone in her personal life was finding out because of all this. Maybe not. She certainly had issues more complicated than "I will kill myself if I am outed." However, it very well could be that if she was maybe 25% of the way towards doing that, feeling as if she had been outed could easily be a significant enough moment to push her the rest of the way toward action. She wasn't blameless. She probably deserved humiliation -- how humiliating it would have been for everyone to find out that she made up her credentials, talked all funny to sound like a scientist, tricked Gary McCord, sold a bunch of golf clubs on false pretenses -- but being unveiled in such a public way in regard to her gender identity is just so incredibly personal. I wish I could explain just how significant that is. That isn't to say that all trans people should or want to live in absolute secrecy -- this is clearly not the case -- but they have to handle that on their own terms. You can obviously say that she walked herself into this. Lying about your identity in general certainly puts your gender identity at risk of being compromised. She even could have probably snuffed out Hannan earlier in the process, giving him no window to her in a significant way. However, what do you say about a guy walking home alone at night that gets mugged? It's his fault? What about the mugger? Who do we blame? If Martha Stewart got whacked by another inside trader, is that deserved? She played a dangerous game, maybe dangerous people could have come along. She increased her risk. That doesn't mean she deserved to be killed. You can imagine all kinds of scenarios, but you get my point. Putting yourself at risk does not mean you deserve the worst possible outcome. Doing something wrong doesn't mean you should risk punishment beyond your transgression. There is an argument to be taken seriously here that Dr. V received a punishment, by being outed, that far exceeds her lies. Being Essay wasn't a lie, it was the only truth she had ever known. Dr. V was a lie and that is where we should focus our condemnation -- but we also need to take into account that Dr. V probably came about because of a person who spent her life struggling dearly for acceptance. I've already talked about the article and how I don't think it is horrible, but it is important to recognize that trans people being outed shouldn't be a run of the mill thing to happen if you happen to not like them as a person.

What would you give up for Eric Gordon? Anything?

Is signing PK, Abreu, and Tanaka plus trading for Avi Garcia, Adam Eaton, and Matt Davidson enough to get an early season attendance boost?

QUOTE (Steve9347 @ Jan 21, 2014 -> 01:03 PM) Why are we naming winter storms now? To make The Weather Channel money

Outing her to the business partner was certainly the worst part -- luckily, we think (and I emphasize the uncertainty in this) that he seemed to have taken that information in stride. On the other hand, I almost feel that this is the most forgivable part. This was, like much of it, a person with good intentions doing something dumb out of ignorance. I can understand how Hannan didn't realize that he needed to out her lies to this businessperson without outing her transgender status. The more I think about it, the more I believe he could have convinced that guy that she was a fraud and that her name had been changed without making it clear that the former name was a male name. Much of the rest happens in the same vein, but was largely preventable. Many of the contentious points in the article, while plausibly benign and presumably of benign intention, were not presented in a manner that befits contentious points. The article that went to print, ultimately, was careless. The gendered pronouns late in the article were not horrible -- Hannan never referred to Essay Vanderbilt as "he" -- but he could have simply added a footnote or parenthetical comment that he isn't sure if Essay would have felt referring to her previous identity as "he" was appropriate. This is another case of editorial failure, as well, since one would hope these details would be picked up by an editor. The AP style book has recommendations on this. When the chills go up his spine, he could easily have made it clear that they weren't chills because "ew, it's not a girl!" but because this was the moment he realized Essay was a fraud. Instead, it is ambiguous. Why the hell didn't an editor do something about this? It would have been quite simple to clarify what exactly the significance of that moment was. Overall, it is a very good thing that this article has triggered a productive conversation about trans issues among a demographic that doesn't normally entertain these things. Trans people are quite clearly invisible, as we see in the article, but the article has in effect made their issues visible. This isn't without negative effects, obviously, since Essay's dignity indubitably suffered posthumously and possibly, the prying drove her more quickly to her death. Many people will fortify transphobic positions. Many others, who have not ever thought about these things, will now think about them. Caleb Hannan never realized the significance of outing someone. Now all of us do. I think all of us now would be much more judicious with that kind of knowledge and that's a good thing.

I recall one of our insiders suggesting that $20M/year was our upper limit

If Dayan posts a 107 wRC+, he'll be here for a while. That would be a logical step given how competitive he was against RHP last year, especially down the stretch. He was actually worse against LHP than RHP last year, whereas he had been absolutely otherworldly against lefties in the past.

FACE

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jan 21, 2014 -> 08:17 AM) so what would it be? either an automatic one point or a two point try? like NFL Blitz on N64

Sources tell me that he has just tried Portillo's. He loves it and wants to sign with the Sox, but will weigh 300 pounds before ST begins

"still in the mix" means "they aren't telling me s*** beyond 'he didn't tell us to f*** off and we won't be telling our little minions like you more than that'"

Given the luxury tax issues the two big-money teams involved have, plus the debt the Ricketts people have, I don't see why the Sox can't be the team with the most money to swing around. Are we willing to do so? Who knows

LA has some obvious appeal to any person, and could easily have even greater appeal to someone like Masahiro. AFAIK, LA is the best baseball market for a person that hopes to run into people that speak Japanese to play in. Maybe it doesn't matter to him. Maybe it doesn't matter enough that there are other things ($$$?) that are more important

QUOTE (dayan024 @ Jan 20, 2014 -> 04:46 PM) Dodgers Nation ‏@DodgersNation 50s Wayne Graczyk of the Japan Times says on @MLBNetworkRadio he doesn't think Tanaka will necessarily take the highest bid. Makes sense - what's a few million to gamble for the right fit? Plus there are things like taxes to consider from location to location. And, of course, you may be taking the "smaller" offer if you take a huge 4 year deal over 7, or a deal with incentives/opt-outs/etc, but be doing so with the belief that taking it earns you more money.