Balta1701

QUOTE(kapkomet @ Nov 21, 2005 -> 04:27 PM) It's the Red Sox, folks. Yippee. The rich get richer. One could have said the same thing last season when the Yankees went out and bought themselves a couple of pitchers, 1 from the Marlins, with nasty injury histories and questions about their reliability. Look what it got them. Don't underestimate the possibility tha thte Bosox will end up regretting this for injury-related reasons.

The more I look, the More I agree with Milkman about Hanley Ramirez...I've heard that name for like 2 years now but nothing I've seen justifies the hype yet...the Red Sox may very well be trying to use him as trade bait while he still has value left, especially since they have Renteria in a basically un-tradeable contract for 3 years.

New information means a bump in this thread... The people at the center for American Progress have unearthed a Pentagon document where the Pentagon complained about the possible use of the chemical weapon white phosphorus by Saddam.

QUOTE(Texsox @ Nov 21, 2005 -> 03:49 PM) At what point are we being the biggest, baddest, police force in the world and when are we being an Army? Are we trying for zero crime before leaving? We don't have that in the US. There is no Army in the traditional sense to fight. See, this question would make a lot more sense if Iraq was anywhere close to our own level of crime. But when tens of thousands of its citizens are being murdered every year out of a population less than California, even getting their crime rate down remotely close to where the crime rate in the U.S. currently is would be an incredible accomplishment.

QUOTE(NUKE_CLEVELAND @ Nov 21, 2005 -> 07:17 AM) This team is just screaming for a real quarterback. Thats what we need to address. I will agree with you...but I would also point out that quite often, it takes Quarterbacks quite a while to even begin to get settled into the league when they come out of college...Peyton Manning, Carson Palmer, Drew Brees, Eli Manning...you name them, they all took quite a few games and mistakes before they really learned how to run an offense. It does vary depending on the QB in question...but if you have a guy who can play the position well, with talent...unless you're getting a huge upgrade in talent, you're often better off going with the guy who's been in the NFL learning.

QUOTE(timotime @ Nov 21, 2005 -> 03:18 PM) out of curiosity, does anyone know where wunsch is these days? is he even in the bigs anymore? He was pitching for the Dodgers and doing fairly well last season...until he hurt himself walking down the stairs in the bullpen and missed the rest of the regular season.

QUOTE(Punch and Judy Garland @ Nov 21, 2005 -> 03:03 PM) My money is on the St. Louis Cardinals as the mystery team. They will use Lowell in left, bench or spin him. I'd bet on them to be involved as they were the surprise of the Burnett sweepstakes so you know they have interest in a power pitcher and want to spend more money than most had thought That would make some sense...they could also use a backup 3b in case Rolen goes down again, as it seems he may do fairly often. And on the Dodger question...let's not forget that the Dodgers have one of the best minor leagues in baseball right now...if they wanted to make deals, they have plenty of pieces.

QUOTE(Texsox @ Nov 21, 2005 -> 02:47 PM) And I'm guessing at some point they will switch again. We've already seen the birth of "Big government conservatives"...

QUOTE(kapkomet @ Nov 21, 2005 -> 02:31 PM) And I think they are too... just not with some magical date that you all want. No...they've been unwilling even to do that...even to say that there are benchmarks after which we will begin withdrawing...their line is that they are in until they win (and of course, they've defined us leaving as us losing)

QUOTE(Texsox @ Nov 21, 2005 -> 02:25 PM) The more I think about Kap's comment about the US wanting to use Iraq as a Middle East base, I think we will drag our heels for a long time, and keep many troops. Possible 20,000? Possibly more. That may prove to be a good thing. I imagine we should be setting up a nice base and getting comfy. Actually...we've quietly been constructing something like 14 bases in Iraq...many of which, to paraphrase Mr. Kerry in 1 of the debates, have something of a permanent character to them.

QUOTE(kapkomet @ Nov 21, 2005 -> 02:05 PM) Who said we're not listening? The plans are being drawn up, and I'm sure that we'll get together with their elected officials and determine the best strategy. Now get back to your homework... Actually...given that Bush has thus far refused to set a timetable for withdrawal, and that's exactly what they asked for...it'd mean a major policy shift if they did listen to that demand.

QUOTE(kapkomet @ Nov 21, 2005 -> 01:55 PM) Ok, that's fine... they have not asked us to leave yet. So if they actually asked us to leave immediately we'd listen...but we don't have to listen to them because they're only asking for a timetable? There's some sort of joke about sovereignty that I'm sure I could think of if I wasn't trying to catch up on 7 field mapping days worth of homework.

Just a small bit of a reminder...from January...(now behind the NYT Timeselect wall)

By the way...Mr. Elder doesn't cite the particular poll he's pointing to, but I've seen at least one poll with these results. It was a standard poll of like 1200 Americans. However, that poll didn't sample a statistically significant number of any minority group to really allow for judgement. In the African American community, the poll hit less than 100 respondents. Given a sample size that small, just by random variation, you'd expect that the poll would be unable to tell the difference between roughly a 1% approval rating and a 20% approval rating at the 95% confidence level. This means that if I took a random sample of 100 people and polled them 100 times, 95 of those times I would have wound up seeing the entire range of numbers from 1 to 20% approval...and the real value would be somwhere inbetween. If he's citing a better poll, I'd love to know about it, but having seen similar results, I believe its an artifact of trying to look at an extremely small subset of a larger, more statistically significant poll. There's a reason why most polls use at least 1000 people.

Who cares more about her any more...the far left or the far right?

QUOTE(kapkomet @ Nov 17, 2005 -> 02:13 PM) Again, maybe too logical... but come on... the guy had the weapons. Everyone knows it. So where did they go? Oh, let me guess. Clinton gets ALL the credit because HE destroyed them in 1998. :rolly Actually...according to UNSCOM, they were able to account for well over 95% of Saddam's original weapons program during those years of investigation. Virtually all were destroyed, by the Iraqis, after GW1, a majority of the remainder was destroyed by UNSCOM, and the last shards died in Operation Rommel.

QUOTE(kapkomet @ Nov 17, 2005 -> 04:44 PM) Why is it that quite a few people in Washington knew she was a CIA agent BEFORE the information was "leaked", and these people are willing to testify UNDER OATH about that fact? Just curious. First of all...if the information was leaked to Woodward first...it's still an illegal leak no matter who did it. And second...thus far no one has come out in Washington who is actually able to say that they knew Plame was a CIA agent before the White House began spreading that she was (scroll down at this link just over 1/2 of the way).

QUOTE(DBAH0 @ Nov 17, 2005 -> 06:00 AM) Good news on the Dodger front; If Coletti's is smart and has available money he'll go after Konerko. 1b is a huge hole in LA. That said...the key is probably him having the money. Thanks to Depodesta, the Dodgers have a lot tied up in some pretty bad contracts...Derek Lowe, J.D. Drew being the prime examples. They also have an owner who's probably going to draw just as much of a line in the sand as JR sometimes does on our peak salary, since McCourt wants to make money on this deal.

Smart move by Chipper...wasn't a chance in Hell the Braves would pick up those option years, so he just used them as bargaining power to get himself 2 more years at $11 million a year...and given that he has had a lot of trouble staying healthy lately, that's probably $10 million or so more than he would have made unless he had a perfectly healthy 2006 season.

QUOTE(santo=dorf @ Nov 15, 2005 -> 07:53 AM) If ownership is willing to pay for Abreu, who cares how much he is making? Ok, now you know very well how wrong that remark is...or at least you should. Every single person here should care how much Abreu is making...because you can't build an entire team with just Abreu. We have money that we need to give to Garland, Pierzynski, Crede and Konerko this year...and next year Buehrle enters an option year and Contreras is a FA. Dump money on Abreu, and all of a sudden there's nothing left to keep Buehrle, and he winds up a damn Cardinal...and we all curse KW for not resigning MB.

QUOTE(FlaSoxxJim @ Nov 17, 2005 -> 12:39 PM) I agree it woudl be interesting to see any and all of these. Some may well be forgeries and others quite old and of little use, but clearly these are documents that need to be sifted through by independent researchers. Better still if the original Arabic docs were retranslated by new translation teams as well. The big thing that suggests to me that there are few, if any, bombshell revelations in the docs is that if there were the administration would have seized on them long ago. Let's just remember this...information which at least indirectly came from forged documents made it into Bush's SOTU speech on Iraq. Information from a number of false sources and known liars made it into Bush's mouth repeatedly (Al Qaeda guys in Iraq, mobile weapons labs, etc.) If there was anything in those documents that would have proven their case, they would have leaked it in 2002-2003 to shut people like me up who were saying that we were being handed a shoddy case.

QUOTE(spiderman @ Nov 16, 2005 -> 10:23 PM) I say keep Rowand, Pods, and Dye in the OF, have Anderson as the 4th OF and part-time DH, and find one more bat as insurance in case Anderson struggles (maybe Frank Thomas).... Barring a trade involving a guy on Thome's level...I think that sounds like the best plan I can possibly imagine. Anywho...Rowand is on the trading block for a couple reasons. 1...we have talent coming up that can replace him. 2...we proved this year that there's a demand for center fielders who can be a vacuum cleaner. 3. Several teams, including the Yankees and Red Sox, suffered through a long season of outfielders with limited range. I personally wouldn't trade Rowand for either Wang or for Sheffield...unless we got more in the deal, and we had someone lined up to take another starting pitcher off of our hands (i.e. someone willing to give us a gigantic MVP caliber bat for Contreras or something like that)

QUOTE(The Ginger Kid @ Nov 17, 2005 -> 01:05 AM) wow...crede really stayed back on that one. His head never moved. Sweet swing. Mercy. That's how his swing looked all of October. It was beautiful. He'd take one quick motion towards the plate and swing...while keeping his shoulder closed, and he'd drive the ball. In september he had the highest OPS of anyone in the AL with at least 50 at bats. The guy can really swing a great bat when he keeps his shoulder closed and looks to drive the ball. He just gets in these ruts where he flies open and becomes a simple guy to strike out/pop out on pitches either outside or high. If he can limit those slumps from being month-long to being week-long, people may very well be clamoring for him to be our #3 hitter next year. But that's a big if.

I think this thread has single handedly overloaded the Mysql running this page.

QUOTE(Frank the Tank 35 @ Nov 16, 2005 -> 06:45 PM) Oh and BTW, does anybody remember last offseason when KW said Duque was in the best condition he's ever seen, etc etc... then Duque made a couple trips to the DL. Not exactly the same type of situation I realize, but it's good to be cautious. Thome would be an awesome addition if healthy, don't get me wrong. Having played around with Google a little bit...I'm not sure that was KW saying that.