Jake

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jul 23, 2013 -> 07:38 PM) “@MDGonzales: Darling left a nasty voicemail message for me in 2000. I confronted him about it in 2004, he backed down.” lol wtf?

I feel like we have opposite understandings of each other's posts. I was astonished because I interpreted your post to mean "all of the violence is from gangs and you just can't fix that" and I thought that was a horrible way to look at it. Now you're accusing me of saying that, which I don't mean to say. A good strategy to dealing with gangs (obviously, we don't have a magic solution for this) would be a tremendous way to reduce violent crimes. I would love to focus on the gang problem, because its root causes are likely less varied than the rest of the population that is violent. However, we're still dealing with a huge portion of violent crime that is not gang related. I do think that one of the most efficient things we can do is something about our horrible income inequality - see here -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality. The countries that are safer than us almost always have less income inequality than us, though as you would point out, there are other predictors. You cannot oppressively achieve more equality and you don't necessarily want perfect equality; you just want it to be MORE equal. Strong social programs and progressive taxation can achieve this. Not systematically disadvantaging certain races of people could help us catch up in this regard too. For some perspective, we have more "intentional homicides" than pretty much any first world country and a lot of places we would consider s***holes. Take the UK, Canada, Germany, and Spain. They are different enough places so if you hate one thing about one, you might not find that weakness in another. Spain, for instance, has a very decentralized government. Their UNODC murder rates - Spain (.8), Germany (.8), UK (1.2), Canada (1.6) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_count...l_homicide_rate USA? 4.8. We're worse than double the murder rate of these countries. Suppose half the murders are caused by gangs in our country and none are caused by gangs in any other country. If we magically eliminate these gang murders, we are looking at 2.4/2.5. We're still significantly above these other countries and we're still in some shifty company with that 2.4/2.5 rating -- Libya, Iran, Israel, Kuwait, Lebanon, etc. So not only are we facing a very violent gang problem, the non-gang population murders beyond a first-world rate, too. The countries who are doing better than us aren't the 1984 dystopias that you say I like. We have a murder problem and more specifically, we have a gun problem. The gun problem is made worse by our poverty problems. And our poverty problems are made worse by our often regressive tax system and our race problem. These aren't the costs of freedom. It's the cost of bad, lazy, and selfish governance.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Jul 23, 2013 -> 05:42 PM) It is the same thing in baseball. Only guys like Braun, ARod, Bonds are noticed. But a AAA pitcher who can add two mph to his fastball can suddenly make the majors. Same thing with a hitter who might need a tiny bit more pop in his bat. There are guys at those levels up to no good too, and they are taking away MLB jobs from clean players. They're getting penalized too. The MiLB drug policy is notoriously harsh and there are many lowly MLBers and MiLB guys involved in this controversy.

QUOTE (fathom @ Jul 23, 2013 -> 06:12 PM) Wilkins out again Strange. Is it just me, or is he losing at bats to Mike McDade and Travis Ishikawa?

QUOTE (Chicago White Sox @ Jul 23, 2013 -> 06:04 PM) I don't get the Wong love. Unless he's some sort of defensive wizard, I don't see how he's much of an improvement over Semien. Much more of a sure bet at this point. Their ceilings aren't entirely different.

I'd be tickled s***less about that trade. I'd feel the same way about Wong/Adams/Kelly, which might be easier to swing with the StL fanbase

http://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publicat...reat-assessment 48% of violent crime in the USA is considered "gang-related." That means over half is not. While ignoring gangs as a problem (and god forbid we try to make it harder for them to buy guns) is in itself both insensitive and stupid, to imagine that our problem with violent crime is just or mostly from gangs is patently false.

I believe they are not restricted to the even-numbered suspensions when it comes to non-analytical positives

Bradley or bust

They probably just didn't like the asking price for Peavy. No hard feelings. Enjoy the 12 starts of an inferior pitcher.

I like Wong, but I too am concerned about him being a centerpiece. There is a good chance that he is an .800 OPS player that plays slid D, but practically no chance of better. Screw all these other young guys, Wong + Adams and you have a deal.

We may well have refused that deal. Maybe we don't like those guys (it WAS pitching heavy, which doesn't seem like what we'd go for) and maybe Rick has been offered packages that he thinks are better.

I don't think Alexei is a good fit with Boston, at all

Yeah, you can't really have too many MLB-ready bats. If they both turn out, we can find a place for them

That's actually Trayvon Martin in lostfan's profile picture

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Jul 23, 2013 -> 11:06 AM) After reading the last few paragraphs of this Jeff Passan article, I will change my opinion and say that Braun does owe Laurenzi an apology. It's one thing to use the loophole to your advantage, it's another to go this far with the blame game & accusations. It's time for everyone to congratulate LittleHurt. In the history of message boards, he's the first one to respond to new facts by changing his opinion. A Soxtalk first, for sure.

I don't have a problem with dealing De Aza given how he has played this year. He has hit very well, but as myself and others have said, it is not unreasonable to say that he has been the ringleader of this circus. With that said, you have to get good value for him. Given the contract situations, he should have similar value to Rios. Maybe more.

You guys really like Carlos Boozer that much?

Dunn+Kep would only make too much sense for the Yanks

Jesus, why not just trade for Dunn then?

I find it unbelievable that the Yanks would take on 15 mill of salary for next year

Martin Perez, Luke Jackson, Luis Sardinas, Rougned Odor, Nomar Mazara, Ronald Guzman, Neil Ramirez (maybe?), Jorge Alfaro (hurt), Joey Gallo (hurt) Also, top 10 guy entering the season Cody Buckel has suffered a complete implosion. He had a great year last year and had an outside shot to make the big league club entering this year. He threw 9.1 IP in Double-A with a 20.25 ERA (29 runs) with 28 BB. No typos there. They assigned him to extended spring where he seems to be rotting away. John Sickels says "pitchers will break your heart" in reference to him and he's right. Crazy collapse.

T.J. Quinn made a good point on ESPN about Nelson Cruz - as an upcoming free agent, it behooves him to get this resolved by the end of the season so it isn't hanging over his head when he's looking for a new team. This could open up the market for Rios for sure.

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Jul 22, 2013 -> 10:32 PM) At first I thought you said Toure' Toure' LOL

QUOTE (fathom @ Jul 22, 2013 -> 10:04 PM) Jason Grilli might have blown out his elbow tonight. If true, that's very sad.