Jake

I have the sense that one of these mass killings will result in the loss of rights for people with mental illnesses rather than a push to make guns harder to acquire. Lots of people deserve help for mental illness that the government isn't providing them; but I'd rather err on the side of taking away too many guns than institutionalizing too many people. I have a feeling that the political consensus will end up being "institutionalize first, ask questions later"

QUOTE (ChiSoxFan05 @ Sep 17, 2013 -> 08:47 PM) I'm new to all the sabermetric stats. Are UZR and WAR and all of this stuff really indicative of how they're performing in the field. (#TWTW but not really) UZR is the absolute best way to evaluate player defense - it is predicated on humans reviewing video with objective (ie, not opinion-based) measures. The belief is that UZR is best evaluated with about three seasons worth of data, though. This is of course true for lots of other statistics; we know that batting average and other conventional stats tend to be unreliable over short periods of time, even single seasons can be predicated on luck or random fluctuations. So, I look at UZR with smaller sample sizes, but always take it with a grain of salt. One season isn't a bad amount of data, but when one season sticks out as different from the player's other years, you should definitely look upon it skeptically. This is especially true because defense isn't nearly as prone to things like slumps as offense, so in most cases a brief change in UZR is nothing to be alarmed about unless there is a clear cause like injury. Some players will have an upward trajectory in the early parts of their careers and many others will steadily get worse defensively.

See, what my doctor had told me is that there is a period in the middle of people's lives where it is common for the changes to stop....but the vision changes would come back at some point as you age. Mine has been stable for a while, so it seems like if I didn't do it soon (ie in the next ten years, which ins't THAT soon lol) I'd be wasting my time.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Sep 17, 2013 -> 02:26 PM) Every single TV they rate high is a panny. I love Panny plasmas but at some point you have to like another set right? They also started to push Vizio, which to me just looks sketchy. Actually check that, they apparently hate Panny LED"s. It's okay, we're quickly approaching a point where the high-end TVs are near indistinguishable and the whole thing becomes highly subjective in nature. I look at CNET for some things, but just as one piece of the puzzle. I, of course, love researching the s*** out of tech purchases.

I read it and it was okay. Like others have said, there is quite a bit of objectionable material. The rips on Chicago are (at least) unnecessary, saying "Sox Park" was kind of weird, and I thought it was very interesting to say that we are a history-less franchise. There are franchises with more, to be sure, but we have been around forever and the White Sox franchise has done lots of things to leave a mark on baseball - dominating in the early 20th century, then the Black Sox, Bill Veeck, the marquee players to come through in the past 30 years (Big Frank most notably), and then...the thing NEVER MENTIONED in the article...we won the World Series 8 years ago! That isn't ancient history and to paint us a franchise that is the Cubs' pathetic little brother is silly because this franchise has accomplished something in the very recent past and we did it with a style that he thinks is useless for a winner. His primary concern, the state of the baseball fan and the in-game experience, is completely left behind because there is so much other bulls*** included. It comes off as an incoherent ramble instead of a harbinger of doom or whatever it was he was looking for.

This is the concern with any player that isn't in the MLB. You look at what he does when he isn't doing well and then you wonder...will those things happen a BUNCH at the next level and be his downfall? It's difficult to tell.

No reason to let go of Gillaspie. Cheap, left-handed, not a complete moron, and can be an average player for you. At worst, not a bad bench piece to play solid corner D and pinch hit.

I use the list feature extensively on Twitter. I have a White Sox list, so I can go there and get pretty much solely White Sox and MLB related news. I then have a list for other Chicago sports, which you might think would get crowded but at any given time there is usually only one team being posted about. Blackhawks and Bulls will have the most conflicts once they are both playing games at the same time, but that won't be too often. I then have a politics and news list where I have curated which news sources and political commentators/figures I want to hear from. I typically will make a quick sweep through that list, identify articles I want to read, then save each one I want to my Pocket for reading later. Facebook is for general BS among friends, I find that I check it fairly often but don't actually post/comment/like very often. I have a couple groups that I use, such as one for my work and one among a group of workout buddies. I will occasionally share news that I think is important and not 100% certain to start an argument. I have also used it to solicit donations for my fundraising commitment to St. Jude with limited success.

Trestman said that Peppers was very ill. He was sent home from Thursday's practice with illness and Trestman says that Peppers was sicker on Sunday than he was on Thursday.

While I would not deny that pitchers are easier to evaluate, particularly due to the fact that most of their skills are measurable. Unfortunately, it is far more likely that a pitcher deals with injury. Pitcher injuries are far more frequently career-altering than the vast majority of injuries suffered by position players. There is research showing that from the first time a pitcher goes to the DL for any reason, they basically become a ticking time bomb. This is why drafting is hard. It is difficult to objectively say how good and advanced a hitter is, but you can usually feel reasonably assured about what their physical skills/abilities will be. I know that Tim Anderson is going to be fast. I know that Alexei Ramirez is going to have a great arm. With pitchers, you know that at a moment's notice the one physical skill they have that matters may permanently degrade.

QUOTE (Chilihead90 @ Sep 15, 2013 -> 11:43 PM) And you fantasy opponent, aka, ME, beats you by 0.6 pts because the 49'ers fumbled the ball on the kickoff a the end of the game. Kaepernick only got me 8 pts, but Seattle D scored me 22 pts. My DEFENSE led my team in pts this week and I won! lol I quit

Can we get a daily/weekly "greg says" topic?

I'm not worried about the turnovers. Our offense looks competent, even when it is unsuccessful. Our three and outs look better than our offense has looked in years. I can't say whether it's going to be a great offense, but it doesn't suck. Very encouraging. Our D looked vulnerable yesterday at times against a bad offense, so let's hope that gets shored up. No D-line presence whatsoever.

If Alexei is here, he must play SS. He's one of the game's best defensive shortstops, stupid errors or not

My fantasy opponent has Kaepernick and Seattle D. One is taking from the other and things are looking good for me at the moment

Dayan's success against righties gives me hope. There isn't much about Beckham to be positive about. His hot run was almost purely predicated on luck and even then, he was just shooting singles everywhere.

We can Crean somebody to make room for Lyle FWIW, Alexander RT'd somebody saying they thought Lyle and Alexander would go to Illinois. He RT's lots of stuff though

QUOTE (Soxfest @ Sep 15, 2013 -> 06:34 PM) A lot of money tied up in those 2 guys. Luckily, Melton isn't necessarily here next year and while we owe a lot to Peppers either way, we can send him away without really f***ing ourselves over as well after this year.

I had been feeling disappointed by the way Johnson finished his season, so this run in AA is encouraging

I can't recommend the book I've been reading enough - What Money Can't Buy by Michael Sandel. Talks about the rise in economic, free-market thinking and the effects that our whole-hearted embrace of that type of thought has done and could do. Not so much a polemic "this is always bad under all circumstances" type of read but rather a call for more complete consideration. Basically, in the interest of personal liberty and free markets, we have allowed the market to become part of activities that we wouldn't normally think of as economic - standing in line, hunting endangered species, free tickets to Shakespeare in NYC, for example. We can trace this to a expansion of economic theory, the idea that we do cost-benefit analyses in all aspects of our lives rather than just when buying and selling goods. Now, rather than these implicit costs and benefits (is it worth standing in this line?), we have taken to making these actual costs and benefits (I can pay a homeless person 10 bucks an hour to stay in line). Economists, who do think about these things and see them as efficient allocations of these things, claim to operate in a non-moral sphere. You'll hardly find a leading economist that says their studies involve morality. This book says that if we are to bring this free-market thinking into spheres that have previously been non-economic, then we need to also keep the moral considerations that previously governed them. Another example is one that we debate more often in the mainstream - cap and trade. Economists love this but there is a part of it that economists don't like to debate: the moral implications of buying and selling the right to pollute. Does creating a market for pollution harm the sense of shared sacrifice and collective action that may be necessary to make environmental policies possible? EDIT: another interesting (to me) implication of this argument is that it is fairly non-partisan. On one hand, we can thank progressives for this kind of thinking; we wanted religion out of government and this was the primary source of moral deliberation. We progressives like things that are measurable, like science and economics. Then, of course, conservatives have generally been full-throated backers of free markets. If progressives like myself want to bring moral thinking into governance, we should be less eager to put down our religious friends across the aisle. While the separation of church and state is a good thing, the state can't get away from making decisions that reflect a common sense of morality. We have to accept that religion shapes moral thinking and work with that in our policy. If we ask the religious right not to bring their religion with them to Washington while we use moral appeals against the other thing they like (completely free markets), I think we ask too much. Drop your religion and drop your free markets!

I love that Semien is competing up here, but I really think he is going to need more MiLB time. The strikeouts, lack of walks, and ~1.000 BABIP tells me his numbers would be due for a yucky regression. Maybe he can be ready mid-season next year. Weirder things have happened than a guy like him just figuring it out, though. Also, I thought I was on the wrong page when I looked at Phegley's wRC+. That'll make you beg and plead for Flowers

Micah with a HR after Jaye surrenders 2 in the first.

I fear that my vision would continue to get worse. Not sure if that is legitimate concern or not. What's the point of correcting my vision from -4.0 to perfect in both eyes if I'll gradually just start working back up to -.50, -1.0, etc?

It is worth noting that Marshall really should have played the ball better on the interception thrown his way. If he does so much as put his hand by the defender it is probably an innocent incompletion. I would expect him to more often make a pretty legitimate run at it.

I think I've gotta go with Vick over RG3 next week. There are only so many garbage time points for RG3 and he's still not outproducing Vick. I'll wait on Rivers since Cam will probably go off at some point, he's been pretty consistent as a top fantasy QB. Jones-Drew has me worried, though. Luckily he's my RB2, but I don't have anybody to replace him with. I passed on a true WR1 on one of my teams, but had two WR2 types in Jordy Nelson and DeSean Jackson. That's looking good so far as they're both acting like WR1's