Jake

I'm going to say that we don't know anything about this guy. Basically, his public statements tell us that he believes in swinging at good pitches and taking bad ones. Great. We know he'd make a great little league parent. Beyond that, everything is TBD

I'm a big fan of Turner. Lots and lots of skills. Lots of things would have to go wrong for him not to be a decent player. Sky's the limit if most things go right. Would be a huge challenge for player development, because this isn't just a raw toolsy guy. However, he will need some guidance (in all likelihood) to find his identity at the plate, especially as his body matures. He would be a guy that absolutely cannot post horrific numbers somewhere ala Hawkins, Mitchell

It isn't that a bundle of prospects wouldn't be a nice return for Quintana. The thing is, older players can get you bundles of prospects (Garza, for instance). What a young pitcher can get you that free agency and veterans can't get you is another young MLB player. A player like Lawrie isn't typically available except for another young player that has that kind of potential payoff. You can think of other guys. Even Gordon Beckham never seemed like he ought to be traded because the value of a non-horrible, young, talented MLB player is high.

Wow. I forgot Damaso and Blum. BLUM! I'm most disappointed that I forgot Blum. Damaso wasn't as important to that team as he was to other Sox teams, so I can see why I forgot him. Jeez, I suck. I just watched that home run yesterday on youtube.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Oct 25, 2013 -> 02:34 PM) Best defensive DH of all time is Rafael Palmeiro. I raise you Mark Kotsay

QUOTE (knightni @ Oct 26, 2013 -> 10:33 AM) Just got my first smart phone. This s*** is amazing, yo. Prepare to open up the app store whenever you are facing a problem. I remember getting a package in the mail and opening up the app store to see about a knife. Yep, that happened

I'm not at all interested in having Samardzija on my team and I don't think they should get anything too good for him in trade

QUOTE (bigruss22 @ Oct 25, 2013 -> 01:22 PM) DJ Williams and 2016 G Zach Norvell are unofficially visiting as well, huge weekend for recruiting. Surprising to me that they have other recruits coming at the same time, I wouldn't want Cliff to feel like our attention is divided

I believe in JFG

Pitch recognition is affected a great deal by mechanics and approach. Viciedo's pitch recognition magically gets better when he keeps his weight back on his load step. This is because it gives his body and hands the chance to adjust to the pitch. When he or anyone else can't keep their weight back, there is usually just one pitch they can hit (whichever one they are timed for). Your mental approach will also affect pitch recognition. A guy with a really aggressive mindset will do poorly adjusting to offspeed pitches. If you back it off too much, you won't hit fastballs. Guys that struggle to hit fastballs will get so aggressive, trying to catch up to heaters, that they start swinging at bulls*** offspeed stuff because they are cheating so much mentally. There are so many things that affect pitch recognition that it is really fairly difficult to tell if a guy has it or not. Bad mechanics, approach, etc. can easily overshadow these things. If guys have bad mechanics, bad approach, and still rake, that probably means they have excellent pitch recognition.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Oct 25, 2013 -> 09:18 AM) She had been on the job for a matter of weeks, she was paid like $26k so it's not like she's the brightest person in the department , and she claims that she was never told anything about talking with the media (a claim I believe given she's a call center employee). Ohhhh, so people making less money aren't very smart. This will make my evaluations of people much easier

Seems like this guy's philosophy is geared towards solving a problem that we don't have.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Oct 23, 2013 -> 04:23 PM) Everyone still has the ability to vote to change the law right? So if all of these people want to do these things, why not just vote to change the law? Youre entire paragraph can be summed up into a simply into: Life isnt fair. But the question we have to ask is, so what? We have to acknowledge life isnt fair and then we have to try and create a baseline of "fairness". To me its more important that people get access to free public education, free public healthcare, roads and other stuff. What isnt so important is whether or not everyone can pay to break the law. Because if that means regular people get all the other stuff (education, healthcare) so what. Sometimes the ends justifies the means. Governments exist to inject fairness into chaos. The reaction to unfairness under government rule shouldn't be, "forget about fairness. We tried fairness and it didn't work." We don't need to undermine the rule of law to give people free education, healthcare, roads, and other stuff. Most industrialized countries offer all of these things. You simply tax people. To sell off the rule of law is to violate the basics of the social contract. One of the basic truths that makes us accept our role in society is the knowledge that there are certain things that apply to everybody. The more special privileges you allow the upper class to have, the more class division will exist. While there are issues of tax unfairness and many lifestyle benefits that go along with wealth, our social order is invested in the attempt to hold all people under the same set of expectations. Right now, if a rich person gets off unfairly because of their celebrity or wealth, that pisses us off. We try to fix the system to prevent further abuses. We shame that person. If the system suddenly tried to allow the wealthy to buy their way out of legal trouble, it brings into question the reasons for existence in the first place. Why have laws? If you can buy your way out of law, then the law doesn't seem proper in the first place. Even when we disagree on laws, the spirit of a law's intent makes us respect it. A law whose apparent reason for existence is government profit offends us; think about our reaction to supposed "quotas" for traffic stops. We could make a law, for instance, that you can only have one child...unless you buy the right to more (China). Unfortunately, this redistributes one of the most important human experience into the upper class. Getting "free education, healthcare, roads, and other stuff" in exchange for undermining the entire purpose of governance doesn't make sense. You see this as everyone benefiting from the rich getting what they want. The question is, why would people accept this? They wouldn't, unless they thought it was the only way to get these services from the government: this is patently untrue, as we see all over the world and in our own history. This proposal amounts to coercion, the illusion of freedom. You give the public a choice of "no public goods, everyone follows the same rules" or "public goods, you can buy your way out of select violations of law," but these are not the choices. The choices are, "the wealthy pay a fair share of their earnings to the public goods that make their wealth possible and follow the same rules as everyone else" or "the wealthy buy their way out of laws, violate the basics of the social contracts, and there is little evidence that they get more or better benefits from the government." There are many other choices in between and outside these as well, and most of them don't involve a fundamental loss of liberty allowed by bribery.

Why are we pretending that healthcare reform has anything to do with "helping people get back to work"? These are not mutually exclusive and, again, it is disingenuous for conservatives to talk about legislating for jobs. That just means tax cuts, which we know doesn't create jobs. If conservatives were willing to invest in infrastructure, research, and education, things that create jobs and public goods, we'd have no sequester and the legislation would be flying through. And quit pretending that the people getting covered under the ACA somehow had it good before. They weren't getting "healthcare for free," they were getting emergency care that you were paying for. The ACA is not only trying to do one of the most basic things a government should do, it is helping those same people that are out of the workforce that you are so worried about.

I wouldn't have fired her, I don't think, but you shouldn't be telling members of the media (while at your job, for Christ's sake) that you don't think people like your employer's product

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Oct 24, 2013 -> 09:57 AM) He also seems to be injured frequently. That would not be great Definitely. I actually think it looks like a fair deal, where it is tough to say which team will win. They get what seems to be a higher degree of certainty, we get more talent at a position that is weak on our squad and in the league on the whole. Lawrie has done fine during injury-riddled seasons and may really break out if healthy. Q has been healthy and relatively consistent, but not dominant. A very interesting deal.

You guys are seriously underrating Brett Lawrie. He has been a "disappointment" so far and has been posting near 100 wRC+ with very good defense. Steamer has him posting a 110 wRC+ and 3.0 WAR over 130 games next year. That would be great.

QUOTE (bucket-of-suck @ Oct 23, 2013 -> 01:47 PM) Could be Quintana to Toronto for 3B Lawrie and RHP Aaron Sanchez. This is exactly what I would be hoping for. Q is more certain to be a 3+ WAR player, but Lawrie has the chance to bust out and be a 5+ WAR player at a thin position

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Oct 23, 2013 -> 08:02 AM) Why would you compare Jay to Manning in this situation? Peyton has long been one of the absolute best at getting rid of the ball extremely fast and not taking sacks, to compare the Bears new line to his veteran line just seems disingenuous in comparison. What is the average? How much have the bears improved from last year to this year? And putting the spotlight on Mills doesnt seem fair either. For a kid that wasnt even expected to play, having him out there not false starting and holding his own while he learns on the job is pretty impressive to me. I was trying to compare lines, but that's fine. I wanted to give everyone a reference of what a good blocking efficiency would be like. Our line's collective PBE is 29th in the league. Why is our PBE rank different than our collective pass blocking rank (31)? Well, that's because other players have also done a poor job of pass blocking - in our case, Martellus Bennett's negative impact on pass blocking has been almost as poor as our 2nd and 3rd worse pass blocking linemen (Bushrod and Long). Britton has also rated poorly, but his low snap count has restricted how bad it has been. You wanted a reference as to what average is, but I'm not sure how helpful it is. Our PBE is 72 while Denver is 85.2. It is meant to be read as a percentage...kind of. For this formula, we actually have allowed a lot more pressure than a couple teams below us, but it weights hits and sacks more. Jay has done an excellent job of avoiding sacks - he has the second lowest sack rate among QBs this year (10% of pressures become sacks). The worst, Ryan Tannehill, is 29% while the median is about 18%. Jay has cut that almost in half from last year (19%), which had improved from the previous year (24%). His last year in Denver, Jay had a league-best (and best ever recorded by PFF) 6%. To me, this is convincing evidence that the sack rate for an individual player is going to fluctuate based on the coaching. Our scheme has allowed Jay to have options when he sees pressure, much like he did in Denver. As for Mills, his PBE ranks 5th worst among 60 tackles. He has allowed a greater percentage of pressures per snap than any other tackles, but his PBE has been saved by Jay's ability to avoid sacks. His run blocking has ranked negatively, but many magnitudes better than his pass blocking. His run blocking is salvageable and you might even argue that he's a victim of sample size, he ranks around 45 out of 75 eligible in run blocking. Not so with the pass blocking. They rate his ability to avoid penalties well, though almost all players get that benefit. His pass blocking has been very similar to Gabe Carimi, who had the same PBE as a tackle. Gabe actually rated very good as a run blocker, though, so he had a little bit of redemptive value. They've both been horrible though. That doesn't mean "bench Mills now!" Of course, we hope the rookies get better. But it does mean that he has played like absolute s***. Long has been much better, though we should mention he's playing an easier position (tackles will have more polarized ratings than guards, who have less ability to make a positive impact and negative impact due to the relative difficulty of their position). Long has been an excellent run blocker and poor, not horrible in pass protection. The only players I've ever seen with worse PFF ratings than Mills and Carimi is a rookie J'Marcus Webb who finally got to a point where he was around league average last year; rookie Webb and rookie Mills aren't all that different, other than one is on the right and the other was on the left side. Then, for year over year improvement, things are mixed. Pass blocking is worse this year by the various measures, with pretty much the one difference being Jay's newfound ability to get rid of the ball before the actual sack. PBE was 75.7 last year vs 72.0 this year. Last year, though, we finished around 20th in run blocking while this year we have rated 6th. Our actual PFF rating isn't much different (other than 7 game sample vs 16, so we're on pace to be a bit higher over the season), but their run ratings around the league have gone down drastically. That will probably even out as the season progresses, but for now it is safe to say that our run blocking has improved. The pass blocking seems to have improved because our QB is getting sacked and hit a lot less - this might be Jay, but I suspect it is actually the new offensive coaching staff being able to scheme to cover up the deficiencies of the line. So far, Slauson looks like a great acquisition. Mills has played horribly and it is very discouraging that we replaced a guy playing like the worst T in football with another guy playing like the worst T in football; we can choose to let that happen, though, if we believe that he is just taking his lumps and will eventually get better. I'm guessing they found something on tape about Mills because he rated as one of if not the best pass blocker of the week in Week 1 and has been pretty much consistently the worst each week since. Long has been more encouraging, in that he rates well at one thing and not horrible at another. He is more obviously a guy we expect to get better, especially given his relative experience and skillset. Perhaps more worry should be allocated to Bushrod, who has not rated well. He hasn't done very well either, particularly in pass protection. He had a down year last year in pass blocking as well. He had one great year in pass protection and has never replicated it, to this point. He might be a poor expenditure when it is all said and done.

There's no fairness in that unless distribution of money is fair. The original distribution of currency was so unfair that the current distribution, even if more fair than it once was (not to say that is fairer than it ever has been, because that is not the case) is still unfair. Judging our desires by our willingness to pay only makes sense if we all have had equal opportunities to earn money. That isn't the case. Associating money with freedom means our freedom is measured by how much money we have. It is an injustice that it is already the case, why make that more true? You're not "free" to buy things if you're not as "free" to earn money as everyone else. Given the long history of asymmetrical distributions of wealth, it is clear that not everyone is free to pursue money and thus not free to buy things. If the things you buy can now include freedom, you just take freedom away from people with less money.

QUOTE (Quinarvy @ Oct 23, 2013 -> 01:36 PM) Would you guys do Santiago + Keppinger for Headley? No. Santiago will be more valuable than Headley this year and probably every successive year, is under team control, and is cheap. Headley is an old free agent to be that has been worth top talent for a period of about 6 months of his life. I'm happy to have Headley on the team, but I'm not sure if I'd even give up Rienzo-caliber players for him. I'm guessing there is some team that will give up more than that, especially if they hold on to Headley until the deadline.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Oct 23, 2013 -> 09:05 AM) Looking for a laptop or desktop? Either/or, really. I don't have a desktop currently, but my laptop is going to need replacing in the near future as well. I'm just kind of surveying the market and will jump on a good deal if I can find one on one or the other.

Shame on the government for trying to make sure everyone can have medical care. How is it that giving people the opportunity to literally be alive is somehow subordinate to "jobs legislation"? I put jobs legislation in quotes since the government has to do things that Republicans don't like in order to create jobs and is thus just a straw man for Republicans to talk about anyway

QUOTE (Tex @ Oct 23, 2013 -> 09:56 AM) There are always unintended consequences. A couple requirements for a successful tax plan. Above all else, it must raise money to run the government. The problem with sin taxes, (expensive cars, boats, cigarettes, liquor) is if people stop buying those items, it eliminates jobs and doesn't raise money to run the government. I agree that we have too many hidden taxes. Gasoline taxes are incredible, every tourist area tacks on surcharges for hotel rooms and rental cars (hey, who doesn't like out of towners paying extra taxes in your town?) The graduated income tax is about as fair of a system as can be divised. A lesson that SS2k5 taught me years ago. the amounts and where it jumps up is the debate in my eyes. Sin taxes just hammer poor people, usually. Someone addicted to cigarettes and is just scraping by isn't going to add to their stress by not smoking. They're just going to have give even more of their income to the habit. The same with taxing Cadillacs, etc. Middle class people want that s*** and they reach to get certain status items. You tax the money when it is earned and/or take all that is left when they die

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Oct 23, 2013 -> 11:11 AM) http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/report...ars_764582.html Just shows you that we aren't spending nearly enough on education and research.