Balta1701

QUOTE(The Critic @ Oct 9, 2006 -> 03:09 PM) If that YouTube guy likes sports, we have another Mark Cuban on our hands! Now Google will screw up YouTube to the point where no one will visit the site anymore. They'll erase everything that people like about it. I can see it now - "partnering" with advertisers, popups all over the site, deleting "non-sponsored" clips.....book it. When Did Google become Microsoft?

QUOTE(gosox41 @ Oct 9, 2006 -> 03:07 PM) I agree about the offense, but I think the pitching is better then you give them credit for. Why do you think Garza will be a disappointment? Granted, he's no Santana, but I think he can be a solid #3 pitcher. I like Bonser a lot, but he needs to stay healthy. Anything they get out of Liriano is a plus. But it's Minnesota's bullpen that's awesome. Bob But in Minny's bullpen, there's some real candidates for regression next year as well. As the White Sox saw painfully this year, there's a ton of variation in bullpen performance for many pitchers from year to year. Minny's bullpen got dynamite years from guys like Matt Guerrier, Jesse Crain, Pat Neshek, Dennys Reyes, and "Steroids" Rincon. Yes, Nathan will be good next year barring injury. But there's a high probability that at least one, if not several, of those guys will wind up taking steps backwards next year, because that is just how things go in bullpens.

Ah, finally, someone came out & finally spouted the repeated lies about how it was the Dems' fault for this leaking when it did. First and foremost, yes, CREW had the suggestive emails, along with John Avarosis of Americablog.com, in the summer of this year. CREW forwarded those emails to the FBI and did not publish them. Crew has in fact given the name of the specific FBI Agent they gave the emails to to CNN. The FBI has not yet responded. Secondly... This of course ignores those damn little facts of how ABC actually got the info. Link. ABC Producer Maddy Sauer. So, 2 different people at ABC say the person who tipped them off was either a Republican or not a member of a Democratic Campaign. End of story. And finally...Given what has been discovered about the guy, are you saying it is a bad thing that his emails came out? Look, the fact is, the Republicans knew about this guy's problems years ago. They may not have known how bad it was, but they clearly had the hint of some things. They could have and should have taken care of this earlier. At least 5 years ago in at least one case. But nothing was done beyond an occasional talking to. The Republicans have known about this for years, and it's the Democrats fault for it coming out, and so we're the bad guys? Wow. Maybe we'd all be better off if the Republicans had just kept ignoring it. I'm sure no more harm would happen in the next 2 years if he kept his seat, right? Finally, one more point. The issue is not outing a gay Republican. The issue is outing a potential child Predator who happens to be a Republican. There is a monstrous difference there.

QUOTE(CWSGuy406 @ Oct 9, 2006 -> 02:20 PM) The Sox won't be hurting themselves if Fields is held in AAA for another year. He by no means dominated the competition at Charlotte. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad he had the year he did, but he still struck out over 140 times this year at Charlotte and with the Sox combined, and while an .894 OPS is good, it isn't great considering the park he played in. But here's the counter-point....there's only so much more that Fields can learn in AAA, and Crede's value can probably only go down from here. If we were to trade Crede now, the team getting him would be getting him coming off a career year, with 2 years left before he hits Free Agency. If his back passed another team's physical, that is a dynamite thing to trade for. If, on the other hand, we hold on to him, even if he has a year just as good as this one, his value might decline, because he'd only be 1 year away from Free Agency at the time of the deal. If his numbers regressed somewhat next year, that would hurt his value even more. And with Fields...he's already spent 1 year at AAA. Yes he has stuff to learn, but he isn't going to learn much more in the minors beyond what he could in a year at AAA followed by a year of winterball. He's followed the correct formula, and that should put him in the big leagues next year with someone. The real key point is this; if the White Sox hold on to both Fields and Crede, we're holding onto Fields to let him develop more while at the same time subtracting from the big league club - since trading Fields could net us a different valuable piece for next season from some team that has room to play him.

That is a huge lead.

QUOTE(redandwhite @ Oct 9, 2006 -> 01:22 PM) Interesting. Why is everybody so concerned with Boras being his agent then? Because he is a Free Agent after the 2008 season, and he's coming off of a career year, and he has back problems that Mr. Boras's folks do not want him to have surgery to correct, and because Josh Fields has now had a full year at AAA and should probably play in the big leagues next year for someone. All those things combine to make it a time to really evaluate what we want to do with Crede. Can we sign him? Can he stay healthy? Can we get something really good back for him in a trade? This team will hurt itself next year if it has to keep Fields at AAA because we still don't know what to do with Crede...even just as a trading chip he could provide the big league club a real improvement next year, but if he's stuck at AAA waiting on us to decide what to do with Crede, then he doesn't help the big league team at all.

So, one of the lesser known methods Wal-Mart has used to maximize its profits is to take advantage of the fact that most people don't actually know how much a lot of products cost. The classic example is given in this story from 2005...a simple pocket comb can be purchased by most people for about a quarter if you go to a barber (the barber in this example gets them for $.08 a piece). But at Wal-Mart, a cheaper comb goes for $.99. People don't know well how much they should actually spend on such a product, so they buy it from Wal-Mart anyway. Wal-Mart gets around this by identifying roughly 1-2% of their products that people actually do know the price of. These goods are then always placed at the lowest prices, advertised, and given key spaces within the stores. So, people see the goods whose prices they know at lower prices at Walmart, and simply assume all goods are well priced there. It is for this reason that Wal-Mart's slogan had to change from "Always the lowest price" to "Always Low Prices" several years ago. I spell this out of course in the Wal-mart prescription drugs post...because...guess what...they're doing exactly the same thing with prescription drugs. Creating a level price for about 100 drugs, some of which should be less expensive than the $4 talked about here, repeating the same drug on their list several times, and so on.

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Oct 9, 2006 -> 12:21 PM) Most of that I can at least respect, but an artificial fixing of money supply by refusing to deficit spend anymore pretty much went out of conventional thinking with Thomas Jefferson's fear of a central bank. The ability to deficit spend is a need of the American government in order to periodically rescue the economy with injections of liquidity. I don't think anyone, even strong supporters of the "Paygo" rule, would argue that having the government totally unable to issue debt is a good thing. The key point though is the current fiscal mess we've gotten ourselves in, which makes instituting that rule, at least on a temporary basis, a good idea. We're deeply in the red right now, but we're not deeply in the red at a time of national crisis. The economy is strong, and has supposedly been strong for years. Yet we're still printing money like it's going out of style at the federal level in order to finance such emergency measures as the Medicare Insurance Company Bailout act and so on. In other words, we're spending a ton of money on credit cards basically because we can. Given the fact that there can only be so far any nation can push its creditors, and the large bills coming in the future to provide health care for the retired baby-boomers, something needs to be done to get this deficit spending under control now. Presumably, in the event of a national crisis of some sort, that legislation could be overturned.

QUOTE(The Ginger Kid @ Oct 9, 2006 -> 11:25 AM) I'm one of the Brian "critics" and I think he'll be an all-star in the next few years. I think he could break out at any time and hit for average with respectable power. His defense speaks for itself and as his arm gets stronger he's going to be a force in CF. The trouble is that some think that Ozzie kept him from achieving that status this year. More annoying to me than my opinion that Ozzie hurt Anderson's development this year, particularly in the 2nd half, is that Ozzie cost this team a number of wins at the same time.

QUOTE(CanOfCorn @ Oct 9, 2006 -> 11:27 AM) I don't know...if The Boss is miffed enough, I could see him trying to see what he can get for Jeter. Check Jim Caple's article on Page 2 on ESPN. 5 of the 6 reasons actually make sense. Just because the reasoning makes sense doesn't mean there's snowball's chance on a planet with a high-CO2 pressure atmosphere that it'll happen.

QUOTE(Rowand44 @ Oct 9, 2006 -> 11:29 AM) Maybe one that gets Haeger off the team, not into the rotation. I think right now would be a very bad time to trade Haeger...in fact, this entire offseason would be. He's shown me he has potential at the big league level, but I doubt GM's league wide would have enough confidence in a young knuckleballer yet to give us something that could make it worth dealing him.

QUOTE(The Ginger Kid @ Oct 9, 2006 -> 11:28 AM) I have very high hopes for Senor Broadway, too. If Haeger does shine this spring then maybe a late trade wouldn't be a bad option. It's just so damn hard to judge pitching down in Tucson. IMO, it seems like a very, very bad idea to judge Haeger as rotation-ready out of Spring Training. There is only 1 reason why we should consider Haeger as a possible 5th starter next year - someone offered us something damn good for 2 of our starters, something we couldn't pass up. And under no realistic circumstances other than severe injury should Haeger start ST thinking he'll be in the bullpen and wind up having to re-adapt to the rotation. If we're going to use him in the bullpen next year, then he should spend ST getting used to it.

So, it usually does take a while for the USGS to give final intensity numbers on seismic events, but at least based on the preliminary numbers, some people are starting to conclude that this test was actuallya dud. (It is really, really hard to build a 1 kiloton nuclear device. A plutonium bomb should produce about a 20 kiloton blast at minimum...because you need to have enough plutonium there to achieve critical mass and a fission chain.)

QUOTE(The Ginger Kid @ Oct 9, 2006 -> 11:05 AM) I wouldn't mind seeing him get some starts this spring. You never know... If we're going to pencil him into the bullpen, he should stay in the bullpen. Don't dick around in the spring...if we're following the BMac path with him, then start him off in the bullpen, work him out of the bullpen, and give him enough innings out of the bullpen. If we're going to trade away 2 starters and pencil him in for a role in the rotation, that's different. If someone gets hurt, we have another backup option at AAA already in Broadway who we can call up next year if we wind up needing him. If we start him in the bullpen, he pencils in as the 7th starter, not the 6th.

QUOTE(The Ginger Kid @ Oct 9, 2006 -> 10:48 AM) knuckleballers out of the pen scare me -- too many walks and if that floater don't drop...see ya I would have said the exact same thing before we saw Haeger succeed quite well out of the bullpen in September.

QUOTE(Jeckle2000 @ Oct 9, 2006 -> 10:46 AM) Why do you have Thome hitting cleanup... HE'S NOT A CLEANUP HITTER! Or did his pathetic 2nd half not drill that home enough... In the #4 hole, Jim Thome's career #'s: G AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB K SB CS AVG OBP SLG Batting #4 - 1853 379 527 95 9 161 411 409 556 2 3 .284 .414 .606 In 2006, in the 4 hole: Batting #4 - 85 14 22 4 0 6 18 26 27 0 0 .259 .430 .518 That's still an OPS of .948 out of the 4 hole in only 85 at bats.

QUOTE(RME JICO @ Oct 9, 2006 -> 10:07 AM) After the failed experiments in the pen this year, there is no way Tracey and Haeger start the year there. One of the two is definitely possible, but not both of them. Haeger brings a whole new dimension to the pen compared to Tracey. After the way he pitched out of the pen to finish the year, I think it's going to be pretty darn hard for Haeger to not land himself one of those bullpen spots.

QUOTE(knightni @ Oct 9, 2006 -> 09:44 AM) I feel bad for Brady Quinn because he's going to the Raiders. Hey, there are still what, 4 teams without a win? Tampa Bay might have a need for him too.

QUOTE(redandwhite @ Oct 9, 2006 -> 05:13 AM) There's just something about him, on the sidelines or on the field, that screams out to me that he's going to be a hell of a QB in the future. After yesterday's game, saying Rivers looks like a good QB is like saying after yesterday that the Bears look good.

QUOTE(Soxy @ Oct 9, 2006 -> 09:05 AM) I'm always so shocked that To Kill a Mockingbird is on those lists. I think that's just one of the best American novels I've read. It promotes the damnable idea that we shouldn't lynch blacks for being black. Of course it should be burnt. We have to protect the children!

So, here's my overall thinking on any ARod deal. The 1 thing no team in the AL can afford to do if they acquire ARod is make the Yankees a better team. If the Yankees want to trade ARod, the deal has to hurt the Yankees on paper, because they're not dealing him for his numbers, they're dealing him for not coming through in the playoffs. If you send both a starting pitcher and Crede and maybe a AAA player to the Yankees for ARod, you're making the Yankees a better team. By a lot. If they want to trade him, they have to trade him at a loss to themselves, exactly as Texas did, in the hopes that they'll get better by not having to deal with him or his contract. In other words, they want to deal him...we can't give them Crede + Garcia + more. It's just too much...that sort of deal would solve some of our problems, but it would also make the Yankees nearly unstoppable.

Charlier Haeger has already earned himself at least a bullpen spot next year, if not a starting spot depending on what deals KW makes. I wouldn't be totally surprised if Tracey wound up in the big leagues also, if he has a good spring training. I could very easily see KW signing a bunch of righties (maybe including Hermanson) to minor league deals this offseason, tossing them into ST, and seeing who comes out on top, as he did with the lefties last year. Or he could also wind up as the top backup/bullpen guy if we decide to carry 12 pitchers, which is always a possibility. I do think we need to find 1 reliable, moderately experienced righty setup man. Otherwise, we'll be down to Haeger and the lefties coming out of the bullpen any day that MMac can't go. I also have a sneaking suspicion that we may see Cotts gone and Logan starting the year with the big league squad next year, but that's another matter. QUOTE(WhiteSoxfan1986 @ Oct 9, 2006 -> 08:27 AM) I'd like to get get a good setup guy. I would like to have somebody that I can trust in case Bobby goes down or is ineffective. I don't know about Bobby's long term value. Mike MacDougal and Matt Thornton say hi. QUOTE(redandwhite @ Oct 9, 2006 -> 08:42 AM) I really want the White Sox to go after J.C. Romero to be a lefty specialist.. Man, those are some of the most ridiculous lefty/right splits I've ever seen. V. Lefties: .202 .298 .303 .601 V. Righties .382 .455 .578 1.033 On a different team, as a pure Loogy, that'd be tolerable...but with Ozzie, you just know he wouldn't be used to face only lefties, he'd be given full innings, and he'd wind up being lit up. We've seen for 3 years how Ozzie uses pitchers...we may as well accept that and find pitchers that work well with him.

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Oct 9, 2006 -> 08:50 AM) With the complete lack of hard currency they have, and the lack of a dependable delivery system, it wa sa big deal for them to SHOW they could do it. We have known for a long time they have the materials and ability, now its a done deal. Slight but important edit; they don't have a reliable delivery system to hit the U.S. They have repeatedly shot missiles over Japan IIRC.

QUOTE(EvilMonkey @ Oct 9, 2006 -> 05:24 AM) And what more would you have liked Kolb to have done? You seem to be implying that 'they knew and did nothing'. Conmsidering that at that point nothing illegal had been known to be done, there wasn't too much Kolb could have done. Maybe he yelled at him, maybe he simply admonished him to be more carefull. However, since he told the (former) page to go tell all, my guess is that he wasn't nice to Foley. But again, what would you have wanted Kolb to do? Run to the papers? 'Out' him to the papers? At some point, Foley is an adult responsible for his own actions. For someone who hates it when conservatives on here paint with a broad brush, you seem to be using a spray gun trying to get all Republicans here. The same thing Hastert should have done. Take it to the whole committee overseeing the Congressional Page program. Ask them to look into things. Or at least have someone take a few steps to make sure that it didn't go any farther than where it was. Just because taking it public and screaming "Pedophile!" from rooftops wasn't a good option doesn't mean there weren't other things that could have been done behind the scenes to make sure worse things hadn't happened and didn't happen afterwards.

All books that do not worship the one true messiah should be burned.