Balta1701

Well, at least we know KW isn't making bad decisions while hung over.

In terms of Hermanson and El Duque... Both of these players have struggled with injuries this year. However, every year once the season begins, there turns out to be several major teams in dire need of bullpen help (Think the Yankees and Red Sox this year). If you were considering trading either Hermanson or El Duque...if they can come out and have a solid April next year, their trade value would be exponentially higher than it is right now.

When people write up numbers like these including Contreras...do they include the green that the Yankees sent us?

QUOTE(Wedge @ Oct 31, 2005 -> 01:00 PM) Didn't Guardado have some fairly serious problem with his rotator cuff? Yes. He was nursing a torn rotator cuff most of last season. He missed the last 2 motnhs of 04 with it. He rehabbed it, but some are wondering if it still bothers him (it is still torn) - he blew 4 saves after August 10th.

QUOTE(rangercal @ Oct 31, 2005 -> 11:27 AM) I think PK may get more than 14 mil. Why? Supply and demand. Especially since the demand for a 1b is from teams like the sawx, Yankees and angels. With the Angels though, it's worth noting that they really don't have a huge amount of cash to spend this offseason...they have somewhere over $73 million committed to their top 9 guys, and they're estimating needing around $16 million to pay the 14 guys they have in arbitration...thus bringing them to $89 million. Their salary this year was reportedly $97 million, and their GM says it will be "a little higher" next year. None of this includes either signing or replacing Paul Byrd and Bengie Molina. In other words, for them to even offer Konerko more than $12 million, it will mean that their salary will have to jump by about $5 million next year, and that's assuming they replace Byrd and Molina with people making the minimum.

QUOTE(FlaSoxxJim @ Oct 31, 2005 -> 11:26 AM) It will be very unfortunate. And the truth is that the ultra conservatives spoiling for the fight are going to win even if their guy goes down. It galvanizes and energizes the conservative base, puts their cause into the spotlight, and will be a vehicle by which they raise 10s of millions of dollars. There will be political fallout come election time, but the social conservatives are looking to be paid for their loyalty to the GOP the last few election cycles. And it dramatically reduces the number of times "Rove, Libby and Fitzgerald" will have their names in the news.

QUOTE(kapkomet @ Oct 31, 2005 -> 11:03 AM) Ok, Balta. Find some positions you support that the guy has done. It's too easy to cherry pick cases about what you're against. I also think it's too easy for the media to cherry pick all these quotes without really reading the backgrounds of these cases. You can find his opinion in the search case here and the federal opinion in the "notify your husband" case at that link. I'll look into the guy more later.

Wow. Just...wow.

Mercy.

QUOTE(RockRaines @ Oct 31, 2005 -> 08:37 AM) I would still do it. Billy Beane could hold a gun to my head and I wouldn't even consider that deal.

QUOTE(jackie hayes @ Oct 31, 2005 -> 10:30 AM) Can you point to something which states that this adjustment is done on the Household Survey data (from which the unemployment rate is derived)? B/c I can only find evidence that the adjustment is made on Establishment Survey data (which is not used to calculate the unemployment rate), and really, it wouldn't make any sense to use it on Household Survey data. No I can't right now and I think you're right...I don't think I should have included that in my rant at present, but I believe my point still stands about the nature of the household survey, and I still don't like the B/D model anyway. It works and is useful, but it needs to have a published margin of error in any given month.

QUOTE(RockRaines @ Oct 31, 2005 -> 09:00 AM) Hes better at 3B than crede, sorry. He has better range than Crede (only slightly), but Crede is more reliable when he gets the ball (only slightly). Chavez had a lower fielding percentage by a fair amount, but he would have caught more balls than Crede even if Joe hadn't been hurt. Although, that could be a reflection of Uribe vs. Crosby in who sucks up more balls, or even in the type of pitchers each team has as well. They are, in my opinion, very very close with the glove, Or at least last year they were. Remove a couple of stupid mistakes by Crede (Ramirez popup) and he'd be the best in my book. If ARod wins a gold glove at third they should beat the living sh*t out of the voters.

QUOTE(Punch and Judy Garland @ Oct 30, 2005 -> 10:52 PM) I don't think the trade hurt them that badly because Mota is damaged goods and they probably don't make the playoffs that year without Finley with all of his RBI's for him and the grand slam in the final weekend to put them there. THe Vazquez-Unit fiasco probably signaled the beginning of the end They went into a slump immediately after that trade for a reason. They lost a lot of talent in that trade. The biggest loss for them, IMO, from that trade, was Eric Gagne. Mota was doing an excellent job as a setup man for Gagne last year. Then they traded Mota, and suddenly Tracy discovered he didn't have anyone reliable as a bridge to Gagne. So what happened? Suddenly Gagne had to pitch more than the 9th. He came in during the 8th several times, and even had to come in during the 7th one game. This started right before his consecutive saves streak ended. He really started to look winded. He lost velocity on his fastball, and he started shifting his arm angle. He started having leg problems. Then, in the spring, the Dodgers allowed him to rush himself back too early, and no one paid attention when his mechanics were still off. He might have gotten hurt anyway had Mota not been traded, but in this case, I seriously doubt it. One of the reasons he was so dominant as a closer was that he was not being overused in that role, and when they started needing to overuse him, needing to ride his arm to the playoffs in 04, his arm gave out.

QUOTE(JHBowden @ Oct 31, 2005 -> 09:12 AM) If you're still not convinced, I recommend looking at other industrialized countries of the world. In Germany, for instance, the unemployment rate is 13%, while in Japan and the United States the unemployment rate remains under 5% even in sluggish economic conditions. There are reasons for this, and wage floors are one of them. Germany, for instance, has very high rates of unionization, and the bottom union wage, much higher than the minimum wage in the United States, is the de facto minimum wage. Ok, this is one of those issues close to my heart for some strange statistical reason, so I have to chime in now. It is totally impossible to take the current "US Unemployment percentage" and compare it to anything, whether it is the unemployment rate in another country, or even the unemployment rate in the U.S. 5 years ago. Why? Because that number has become the single most heavily politically spun number in existence. In the past decade or so, the way that number is calculated has undergone several fundamental shifts that no one has been told about. First and foremost, in 2002-2003, the Department of Labor phased in what they call the "Birth/Death" model indicator, which is basically a statistical trick designed to account for jobs the government basically assumes are being created based on past performance...but I for one have virtually no confidence in this number...it is included as-is in the unemployment figures every month, but never are we given a margin of error on the number. The margin of error on that number has to be huge, somewhere between 10's of thousands to hundreds of thousands depending on how rapidly shifts are taking place in the economy. Even the DOL admits that their model currently cannot account for rapid shifts in employment, and it will tend to smear them out. Furthermore...the unemployment percentage does not count people who go on programs like disability, government assistance, etc. The numbers of these folks have absolutely exploded in the past 5 years...increasing by an amount in the millions. On top of that, the unemployment percentage draws some sort of line along the long-term unemployed, such that people who reach a point where they stop looking for jobs are also not counted. This number has also dramatically increased under the Bush administration. With these facts, I contend that it is absolutely impossible to judge anything using the unemployment percentage, because the number it measures is actually meaningless. It measures the percentage of a certain portion of the labor market which is employed, but it ignores a portion of the labor market where the unemployemnt is much higher - the long-term unemployed and others. Here are a few sources (data linked to by Brad Delong...used since his site has free access only) that illustrate this phenomenon. The "unemployment rate" has become decoupled from other indicators such as the percentage of the total population which is employed, which is what we'd really like to understand. Link 1 Link 2

QUOTE(kapkomet @ Oct 31, 2005 -> 08:43 AM) All the early rhetoric appears to be leading to the 'nuclear option'. Buckle in, folks, this is likely to be the most politicized event for some time. I agree. This looks like the fight that the far right wing was furious they didn't get with Miers.

When he actually does retire...yes. Just managing this team to a title earned a wall spot.

QUOTE(NUKE_CLEVELAND @ Oct 30, 2005 -> 04:34 PM) I know. Republicans are in power so good news is no news. My fiance finally got a job this quarter which provides health insurance and actually allows me to save money. My economy has never been healthier.

QUOTE(kapkomet @ Oct 28, 2005 -> 08:10 PM) Anyway... JOE WILSON said the VP assigned him to Niger in the NY Slimes article. That's an outright lie, by your own evidence above - he was assigned by the CIA, and remember who works for the CIA, his own wife. So let's start with that premise alone, and that to me says that they were out to "lay blame" out there for the media on Bush's administration. This is actually untrue, and is based on an RNC Talking point which deliberately misinterprets/edits Wilson's own words to make Wilson sound like a distortion. For some reason the link to the original MMFA post debunking that talking point is not working on my computer this evening despite the fact that MMFA cites it all the time, but here is a page which links to all of the hard evidence.

QUOTE(Rex Kickass @ Oct 28, 2005 -> 08:41 PM) No they aren't. Prior to the late 1880's, you would actually have been correct. There was no concept of "Free Speech" or anything like that when it came to corporations. Corporations were viewed as existing to serve the good of the people, not the good of themselves. When corporations did something wrong...they weren't fined...they were simply killed off - their charter was revoked. Unions, for example, are not considered peopel under the law. The coup de grace came in 1978. This article is a brief retelling of the story. I'll excerpt this important part. Rehnquist was, sadly, in the minority on that case.

Happy Birthday Happy Birthday Whoop-de-doo Whoop-de-doo Open up your presents Open up your presents Just for you Just for you

Oh, and if Greg Walker can keep Crede from flying wide open on those low and outside pitches for 2 months next season...he's got that swing right for now, and had a great end of the season and good start to this season. He can still hit .280 or better. He just needs to keep that swing working well all year. When he's going well, he has probably the prettiest swing on that team.

On top of all of this...let's also not forget that a lot of people were saying the ideal trade bait for a guy like Chavez would be BMac.

QUOTE(Middle Buffalo @ Oct 30, 2005 -> 03:59 PM) Could someone fill me in. How and why did this horrible song become a part of the Sox pennant chase? Seriously. I've heard it like this. Crede, Rowand, Pierzynski go to a bar, watch some random local band. During their performance, Crede yells out "Play some f***ing Journey!" They play Don't Stop Believing. The 3 crack up. Game 2 of the Boston series rolls around. We're down 4-0 in the 5th inning. David Wells on the mound. The Cell plays that song (I'm not sure if one of the 3 asked them to). We end that inning winning 5-4 after an Iguchi home run. Since that point, they never stopped believing.

QUOTE(Milkman delivers @ Oct 30, 2005 -> 03:17 PM) I was visibly upset when I opened this and found that it was the wrong Perry. I clicked on this figuring it was actually you who started the thread originally

QUOTE(Punch and Judy Garland @ Oct 30, 2005 -> 11:04 AM) I agree about market shift. A lot of teams became too reliant on college kids. One of the problems with the whole "Moneyball" book was that people interpreted it as saying "Do everything that Oakland does" when that's not what Oakland was doing to win. Oakland was taking only College talent for a long time there because Beane felt that college talent, with more experience, was a much lower risk than high school talent, and other teams were failing to recognize it. So Beane was living off the College talent and moving it up to the big leagues/trading it rapidly. Now, after Moneyball was published...everyone started taking the old Beane drafting approach and valuing College performance higher, thus making up the deficit that Beane was exploiting. So now, if GM's are jumping onto the "College player" bandwagon...where would the best value most likely be found? In the other spot.