Jake

I like the 10-person limit and I don't mind that many people vote for fewer than that. You should vote for everyone you believe ought to be a Hall of Famer. If your standards are so loose that it means you want to vote for more than 10 people, too bad -- this is an exclusive club. The way I would vote would also involve voting differently on a player's first ballot than second, if appropriate. My vote would have been: Frank Thomas (1st ballot) Greg Maddux (1st ballot) Curt Schilling Edgar Martinez with plans to vote for Mussina and Glavine on their second ballots. Bonds, Clemens, Piazza, Bagwell, Palmeiro excluded for steroid suspicion

I think ClipGrab works on all platforms

My grandpa was an immigrant from Greece and it took him no time at all to acquiesce into becoming quite the bigot

QUOTE (bmags @ Jan 10, 2014 -> 12:00 PM) The Bulls have a President of Player operations who punched out a coach. Their medical staff nearly killed a player. The GM fired the coaches favorite assistant for talking s*** at a local charity event. They are not a well run organization. They do have a good mascot. This is a negative now? I suppose you don't like Kendall Gill either? QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jan 10, 2014 -> 12:49 PM) (IMO the way to clear enough space to offer a guy like Melo is to trade Noah, and I'm not sure you can do so without moving him. But Noah ought to be worth a late first round pick and an expiring to someone right now, he'd be a major upgrade at Center for most teams not named the Pacers) Noah is worth more than that -- we just got better than that for the expiring contract of Luol Deng. Plus, the net gains of trading Noah and getting back Melo aren't large enough for it to make sense. Sign and trade for Melo seems much more likely, with NYK not getting anything too great in return. Dunleavy or something and a future 1st and 2nd

Pods was a no-defense, no-arm, no-power, little-walk, okay-hit, super-fast-until-he-got-hurt-all-the-time player. Eaton is a good defense, strong arm, better hit tool, many more walks, and just as promising but as-of-yet less productive runner. They're really not very similar. Pods should be seen as a floor of Eaton -- productive as a LH speed guy for a few years

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/looking-for...prospect-lists/ Also, look at this link. He goes over the best players, by position, to miss the Top 100. By and large, they don't miss. You might not pan out if you make the top 100, but if you don't make the top 100 you probably won't pan out. Get as many T100 guys as possible.

http://www.baseballamerica.com/minors/top-...ospect-tidbits/ 1. A player being ranked in the top 100 doesn't prove anything, but it means we are dealing with a much higher probability that he becomes a contributor and star. 2. The top 25 is much more rarified air.

QUOTE (Stan Bahnsen @ Jan 10, 2014 -> 12:13 PM) Voted approve/agree that it's premature. The major source of my anxiety is that the two guys from AZ only achieved upper-level success in the PCL, and those types of guys are numerous, and dicey. Cautious optimism. This is what league-adjusted statistics are for. All players mentioned did very well relative to that league

QUOTE (Steve9347 @ Jan 10, 2014 -> 10:58 AM) This minus the love part. That means "I Danks." That makes no sense!

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Jan 10, 2014 -> 10:42 AM) See, I don't necessarily agree with this, because I think this was something Williams wanted too. I just don't think he had or has the patience Hahn does. If the Sox thought Williams did a poor job, he would have been fired. Instead, he was promoted or, at the very least, re-assigned to a still very prestigious position. My main problem with the Williams era is that the Sox simply didn't have depth. Depth affords you the opportunity to make moves either internally or externally. There have been articles about KW going to JR after 2010 and 2011 and proposing that they do a rebuild, but he was told to keep pushing

You have to wonder what it would mean for LeBron's legacy to switch teams again. A lot of the mystique of great players comes with the idea of a city and the team's fans coming to love the player over the presumably long time that the player is there. A team's fans can really like any good player, but especially if he changes again, who will feel that real attachment to LeBron? Who will feel like he built something? Anyway, while I've always believed he'd better off with the Bulls, I don't see a good reason for him to come here. Sure, we're younger, but especially after losing Deng there are a thousand and one question marks on this team. You have Joakim, Taj, and...Jimmy. I'm pleased with some of the talent on the team, I think we could be relatively close to having another good team, but there is a bunch of uncertainty. Why would LBJ go to a team whose second and third most reliable players are Taj Gibson and Jimmy Butler? With a healthy Rose, sure -- you have an amazing big three. Subtract just one superstar, though, and who knows what you have.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Jan 10, 2014 -> 10:16 AM) The Sox apparently have earmarked some money for him if its in the right arena. They had a budget meeting weeks ago and apparently have had the calculator nerds in there all week. I wonder if that means "if he goes for much less than anticipated, we can get him!" or if we're really going to try to roll with the big boys. I suppose we could also try to do something funny with the contract terms to make it work, as well

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Jan 10, 2014 -> 09:59 AM) I'm no expert on WAR, but from what I can understand off FanGraphs, I believe his defense was rated so badly over that time, that it more than negated all of his offensive production. In '07 he had a .869 OPS with 30 HR, 6 SB, yet had a -0.7 WAR? His defensive rating was -35.4 (whatever that exactly means) It means he was 35 runs worse than the average CF that year. He was once one of the greatest CF ever, but somewhere around the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th hamstring tear, he got really god damn slow. I'm not sure what the replacement level CF defense was at that point, but from the looks of it replacement level was maybe -10 or so. Contrast that to the season where he was positive 33 runs, before all the injuries.

Why do I constantly feel like we're going to be looking at the Crawford and Bickell deals as the reasons why we lose a guy like Patrick Sharp?

Looking ahead to the candidacy of my other childhood favorite player, it's really astonishing to look at the career stats of Ken Griffey Jr. 1989-2000, ages 19-30 = 73.8 WAR, 140g/year 2001-2010, ages 31-40 = 3.5 WAR, 99g/year Sad.

That scouting report from Rizzo had a huge flaw on it, honestly. Giving the Big Hurt's hit tool a ceiling of 50 turned out to be way, way off -- it's hard to argue that it was anything but an 80 when all was said and done. It was a better tool than his power tool throughout his prime. His overall approach at the plate was simply unbelievable and his ability to execute that approach was just as stellar.

I didn't necessarily mean that as a bad thing. I think he was a very good GM and that fact is being reflected in the current work of the FO. I also think that Hahn had much to do with the good run that KW had, so not all that much has changed. Their "new" roles may be bringing out the best in each one, as KW all but admitted that the stress of all the day-to-day tasks of the GM were getting to him and making it more difficult to make sound personnel decisions

MJ fell short of sainthood, but gambling and extramarital sex are not exactly the most serious charges for a professional athlete. MJ's issues related to his ultra-competitiveness are something people would have loved to see from LeBron. One guy lashes out in anger, the other flops when pushed by Nazr Mohammed. I wish MJ didn't dress like a confused 15 year old from 1999, though. But, of course, my young non-sequitor self always was a bigger fan of Grant Hill. Something disturbingly familiar about this Derrick Rose business...

A vote for Hahn is a vote for KW

LeBron has never cheated on his girlfriend

Chris Christie sucks. I'm probably not going to shout and scream about this "scandal," but maybe it will make people actually think about him in some other context beyond "he was nice to Obama!"

QUOTE (bmags @ Jan 8, 2014 -> 09:47 PM) Can someone let me know when hangouts can actually handle MMS and isn't a garbage app. Seems like carrier/model makes a huge difference here. My ATT HTC One has been working great from the get-go, my girlfriend's Sprint Samsung Galaxy S3 hasn't been figured out across several updates

I don't think I can even root for the guy

I wonder if he's still a little heavy and a step slow, like John Manuel was saying

QUOTE (scs787 @ Jan 8, 2014 -> 04:20 PM) 9.8M in cap room is substantial cap money. That very well could be enough to upgrade over Peppers, and add another piece to the defense. Right - the question is whether you would rather have an extra 10 million in cap room and no Julius peppers or an extra 8 million in cap room and have Julius Peppers. I was not aware of this June 1 business -- if we're only eating 4 million to send him away, that changes things substantially.