Jake

QUOTE (fathom @ Sep 28, 2013 -> 06:51 PM) He actually had impressive knowledge of the Royals' players. One of the best guests they've had in the booth in years based on him actually talking about current players. He definitely knows baseball and particularly White Sox baseball.

I know it sounds crazy, but I actually think he had done a better job than his predecessor (at least how Walker had done over his last several years as coach). He presided over Rios and Dunn returning to having value, which was incredibly important. Unfortunately, our team offenses have struggled due to PK's rapid decline, Alexei's regression, and the non-emergence of several other bats. It looked like Gordon Beckham might save his job, but Gordon has since plummeted into a position where he himself is probably losing his job. Dayan has remained inconsistent. Guys like Flowers, Phegley, Morel never broke through and Jeff Keppinger came in and had the worst year of his career. You might say Conor Gillaspie was an accomplishment, but turning a AAAA player into a slightly above replacement bat isn't something to hang one's hat on; and we really have no clue whether Manto had anything to do with Gillaspie who was acquired during ST. I don't think that a bad season means heads have to roll, but from the outside looking in it certainly seems reasonable. Bad offense, pretty much no improvement from players short of veterans returning to past form (not quite that, in Dunn's case). I'm guessing that things that are seen from within by Robin, Hahn, and the players have confirmed that we can do better. The key benefit to this timing is how little continuity we're going to have on the player side of things. The only key player who may "suffer" from the switch of hitting coaches is Dayan, who has clearly been working with Manto for quite a while. With that said, it isn't as if Manto had made Dayan into a great hitter and it may be the case that Tank didn't like working with him anyway. Beyond that, there is going to be a ton of roster turnover so this is the perfect time to get a new hitting coach into the mix. Get the coach who you want raising your young players like Avisail, Semien, etc. from Day 1. For that, it's a smart move. You let your fans know that you are serious and you put yourself in position to get a new guy to guide these young players throughout the offseason and into the starts of their careers. If Manto's the wrong guy, you get him away from the young guys ASAP and you don't waste their time working with a different philosophy of coach throughout AFL and whatever else.

I don't think springing for a big ticket outfielder made sense anyway for next year. You want Viciedo, De Aza, and Garcia out there pretty much everyday. I don't think they really want to move Dayan to 1B while his bat is still a question mark. On the other hand, pretty much every other position on the team other than SS could quite easily be upgraded.

It's awesome that our 14-year star doesn't have to flee just to get a ring. It would be wonderful if we can keep picking up those World Series victories often enough that being a White Sox legend becomes analogous with being a World Series hero. ...and yes, I spent way too much time rewatching highlights and such yesterday. Those were good times, even if Soxtalk was pulling its hair out the vast majority of the season

What a joke. What should Sweum be fired for? For not losing enough?

Another week, another decision: Vick or RG3?

Hahn pretty much revealed what needed revealing: we "owed it to the fans" to keep the team together and hope to compete this year, but soon knew it was more prudent to look to the future. I take that to mean that most parties involved didn't expect a winner this year and are probably seeing the players as the reason for this season rather than the manager.

In Mariano's defense, I'm not sure that he foresaw the craziness that would follow him around all year. It's pretty much unprecedented. Only in the 21st century, only for a Yankee

I'd be receptive to PK as a pinch hitter extraordinaire/platoon/injury reserve, especially if it is on the cheap as he has suggested. He basically said that he just doesn't want the worst season of his career (both individually and for the team) to be his last if he can help it. It seems like he realizes that his body may not hold up as a full-time player anyway. As to "why wait?" Sometimes as you are grinding mentally and physically, it is extremely easy to get very negative. Winning seems impossible, hitting seems difficult, your body feels like it'll never be the same....but then after you're away and rested for a while, you start to reevaluate. Your legs/back/wrist/whatever come back and feel a little more like normal, you start getting these competitive impulses, and you realize you're not ready to go. ...or those things don't happen and then you retire, knowing that you made the right choice.

I feel like PK really, really hates playing badly.

I love how often Aldous Huxley appears on these lists. One of my favorites.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Sep 27, 2013 -> 10:34 AM) I think this fits better. Kotsay was good in his prime but I don't think people will wax poetic about him 10 years from now 2-time Gold Glove DH

I feel like the thing that struck me the most was just seeing the friendship aspect of that moment.

I have a 42" Samsung LCD that is at least 6-7 years old. Works like a charm.

Let's be real, I'm probably going to cry for his last game at the Cell

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Sep 26, 2013 -> 10:08 AM) Now how much do those percentages change if you start telling people they have to pay more to get it done? Not sure, since they don't have to pay more

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Sep 25, 2013 -> 09:59 PM) So he did a poor job of selling it? Didn't 'get the message out'? That is always the fallback when liberal ideas get rejected. The message DID get out, and it was rejected. The way I see it is this: Americans have a very low opinion of Obamacare. Roughly 52% oppose while 39% are in favor of it. Meanwhile, 57% of Americans say they do not have enough information about the law to know if it will impact them - 67% of uninsured Americans don't know what the law does for them (this was in March this year, 3 years after the law passed). Now, opinion on many aspects of the law are totally different. 52% say they think Medicaid should be expanded to cover more low-income people (41% oppose this idea). 88% support the idea of giving tax credits to small businesses for buying healthcare for their employees. 81% support closing the "donut hole" in Medicare 80% support healthcare exchanges 76% support raising the maximum age of dependents on family insurance plans 76% support subsidies for individuals buying insurance 60% support increasing Medicare payroll tax on upper incomes The only aspect that was polled that drew less than majority support was the individual mandate, which was questionably described as a penalty by the pollsters and thus drawing criticism. Either way, this had 40% support and is essential for the law and all the other provisions to work correctly. Interestingly, despite the high unfavorability of the law in general, only 29% believed that their family would be worse off because of the law. As far as more misinformation, 59% of people say they believe that nationwide health expenditures are "going up faster than usual." It has actually been growing much slower than usual for several years - only 4% of Americans thought this was the case. Only 40% believed that more uninsured people would have insurance, lol. Anyway, the difference between how people feel about each aspect of the law and how they feel about the law on the whole tells me that the law was not well-marketed. People believing in clear un-truths like the supposed rapid inflation of healthcare costs and the idea that this law will not even cover uninsured people tells me that people have been hearing the wrong sources of information. The fact that a huge majority claim they need more information to know whether it will impact their lives in any way, including and especially uninsured people, tells me that the administration needed to have worked harder to disseminate information about the law. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/ot..._plan-1130.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/20/h..._n_2915826.html http://kff.org/health-reform/poll-finding/...-tracking-poll/

QUOTE (SleepyWhiteSox @ Sep 26, 2013 -> 09:18 AM) Can't wait for the new Nexus phone Can't wait for Nexus phones to be available for ATT

I didn't think his little pose was all that insane. IMO every Sammy Sosa homer was more ridiculous than that. The Braves handled it in the absolute worst way, regardless

I'm excited for the return of Rose, even though I won't forget last season. Anything is possible for the future, though, so I hope we kick some ass.

It's not a perfect comparison, but Avisail reminds me of Maggs a little bit at the plate. I mean this in terms of the way his swing looks at times. Results might be more like Carlos Lee

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Sep 25, 2013 -> 03:28 PM) Voter registration isn't easy NOW? f*** it all, why not just have them be able to vote when they go to the doctor as well? And screw you and your supposed racism in every damn thing that happens. Republican didn't bipartisan support the program because they think it is a BAD PROGRAM. Not because Obama is black, or a Democrat or that they want to put registration in it. However much you think he 'gave in', the bill still sucks. If all his 'capitulation' still caused moderates and such to lose, maybe it is because the bill still sucks. I'm happy for you to disagree with my thoughts on the law, but I didn't introduce racism into my argument because I don't think it had anything to do with the healthcare law. You wouldn't like it if I cried racism to distract (so much so that you thought you saw it when it wasn't there) so I'd like if I don't get accused of talking about racism when that had nothing to do with what I was talking about. As far as voting goes, I still don't see the objection. Why should it be hard? It's one thing to think there should be qualifications for voting (I don't agree with it, but at least that is a position to have) and another to think that pretty much any citizen should be able to vote, but it must not be too simple to do so. In this case, worries about fraud don't make sense either since it will be a government institution providing the service and will use the same verification processes as any other place that offers that service. If you want what many liberals think Obama did wrong on this bill, beyond the aforementioned capitulation, I would tell you that he did a very poor job of selling it. He didn't spend time or resources trying to correct misconceptions and fears about the law, presumably out of some half-brained strategy to avoid doing so. Critics on the left are still upset that he isn't doing more to educate people on what the law is and encouraging the enrollment that is central to its success. The inattentive public heard very few things about Obamacare and that was pretty much "death panels" and other overt lies about what the law does. In political communication circles, we think the conservatives were brilliant in the way they were able to control public discourse about that law. As a citizen, it is very upsetting. QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Sep 25, 2013 -> 03:45 PM) Actually, there are a few issues that have come up with implementation that we'd really like to tweak by passing small laws through Congress, but the party with the majority in the House is refusing to do anything which could improve the bill on the grounds that they want as many people to hate it as possible. For example, the way the bill was written it wound up excluding clergy members from receiving subsidies to purchase insurance through their churches. A simple, couple-line legislative fix would fix that. However, the Republicans will not allow any such fix to come up for a vote, demanding that clergy must suffer in order to demonstrate that the bill is a bad bill. As a consequence, several hundred thousand clergy members could be forced to make purchases on the exchanges and drop their current coverage as a consequence. We'd be happy to fix this and could do so without a problem if the bill were allowed to come up for a vote. One party will not allow any such things to happen. Many Democrats also want to tweak the employer mandate, one of the most unpopular features of the law among conservatives, but haven't been given the opportunity to do so. Most Democrats recognize the issue in that hard employee cutoff in that the marginal cost of employee #50 will have unintended consequences. There hasn't been any serious consideration of remedying this beyond scrapping the whole law.

QUOTE (bmags @ Sep 25, 2013 -> 02:36 PM) Republicans didn't care about that they weren't going to vote for anything, so Dems protected themselves from "too expensive" sniping by coming up with a bizarre round number to say it wouldn't be more expensive then so had a bunch of mechanisms to raise revenue that weren't really important in terms of fixing health care but important to go below the magic round number of CBO scoring. President Obama saw how important this law can be (and will be) to the future of the USA and thus bent over very far backwards to try to get it passed with bipartisan support. Unfortunately, he had no idea that the only attempts at cooperation by the right were going to be disingenuous (such as them having basically promoted the current law until Obama capitulated, at which point they no longer liked it). Likewise, he had no idea that this great degree of capitulation would still cause the moderates and other members of competitive districts to lose in the mid-terms. I have a feeling the Dem leadership would have approached things much differently with hindsight, by enacting either a single-payer system or at least implementing the public option. There is another, not often spoken about aspect to this law: voter registration. Per federal law, Obamacare exchanges and other providers must give citizens the opportunity to register to vote (ala DMVs). I believe this is a huge, unspoken aspect to the Republican opposition to this law. This makes voter registration much easier for a lot of folks that are currently struggling to get registered and thus not turning out. These people will also presumably like having healthcare and will vote to keep/enhance the institutions that provide them with healthcare. The current Republican establishment hates when people vote and they really hate it when people like a government service. Unlike voter ID and other voter-suppressive movements from the right, there is no good way to talk openly about the aforementioned issue. They can't complain that people can register to vote, because that is the process that helps to prevent the fraud they are so worried about. There have been a few cries about identity theft, but these haven't been picked up by mainstream voices because they don't make sense.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Sep 25, 2013 -> 01:10 PM) Nobody is more clutch than Jose Valentin He never, ever made an error that hurt the Sox

QUOTE (HickoryHuskers @ Sep 25, 2013 -> 11:55 AM) No, not setting up new exchanges. Using the existing exchange for Federal employees and allowing any American to participate in that exchange. Also, instead of mandating coverage by employers (which is worthless since it creates tons of loopholes), just give tax incentives to businesses to provide coverage to the point where nearly every employer will want to provide coverage. Also, by being able to participate in the Federal employee exchange, the cost to businesses should be lower. The main reason this had to be done because using things like tax incentives changed the math of the law. Requiring employers to provide health insurance doesn't affect the federal budget (at least, not in a direct manner) while giving them tax credits does. Republicans are very keen on the math.