Balta1701

QUOTE(mrzo2733 @ May 27, 2005 -> 12:15 PM) If we're gonna go after an outfielder I'd like him to be better than Mackowiak. I think the fact is...when you look around MLB, there's not going to be much available for a non-obscene price that is better htan Machowiak. No matter what, we'd be trying to replace a guy who was struggling, and we'd likely be trying to do it with another guy who is struggling on his own (look at the recent threads here - Chavez, Lowell, etc.) Otherwise...the cost for an upgrade will be astronomical, especially when the Red Sox and Yankees get into the fray.

QUOTE(AirScott @ May 27, 2005 -> 10:23 AM) oh i bet braves fans feel the same way Yeah, I bet they would...had they not won 1 back in 95.

QUOTE(DABearSoX @ May 27, 2005 -> 11:54 AM) If we get to the series he wont be going anywhere I sure as Hell don't want him going anywhere anyway.

QUOTE(DABearSoX @ May 27, 2005 -> 11:58 AM) A bowling Ball is going to fall at the same rate that a marble does.....FYI But he did say he threw it...so he's applied a force in addition to gravity giving it an initial velocity. Therefore, it would actually fall faster.

The one that really pissed me off was Arow being thrown out at home on that play from 3rd. Why does Ozzie have the "go on contact" play on every single time? Even Pods was thrown out at home during this series...that ought to tell us something. When the infield is pulled in...you don't go on contact, or you're thrown out at home!

The thing that's driving me nuts about this team is the fact that almost everyone save Pods, Iguchi, and Crede are right now hitting far below their career averages. Just look at the numbers career this year Dye .269 .212 Kong .276 .237 Everett .275 .232 Arow .286 .262 Uribe .263 .237 A.J. .292 .264 Crede .254 .238 That's just remarkable in my eyes...in our starting lineup, we have only 2 guys who aren't hitting well below their career batting averages...Iguchi (a rookie) and Podsednik, who is hitting his career average. By the numbers, it's still almost impossible for me to believe that this mess won't improve. You can't just have 7 guys suddenly get worse all in 1 season. The odds against that are just enormous. At some point this season, our numbers are going to regress towards their career mean numbers. Even if they don't get all the way there, those are huge differences to make up. These guys are better hitters than what we're seeing now. What we need is for them to act like they are supposed to.

Happy Birthday Big man! (Btw, KW says in the Tribune that Frank will be rejoining the big league club sometime on the next homestand, which basically means next week, either while we're playing the Angels or Indians. And that means he'll be on the team when they travel to Coors field. Anyone else want to see that BP?)

QUOTE(fathom @ May 26, 2005 -> 08:45 PM) KW.....please, please, please do something about our offense. You have to be nuts to think our starting pitching will continue to perform at the level they have. You'd also have to be nuts to think that these hitters can keep looking this bad for an entire season.

Looks like Extra Innings for Cleveland/Minnesota again.

QUOTE(ottawa_sox @ May 26, 2005 -> 06:19 PM) I don't put that much stock in being picked an all-star. Every team needs to be represented and there are so many teams But Cleveland had 6 people last year. It wasn't because they were being represented.

QUOTE(Sirotka33 @ May 26, 2005 -> 06:19 PM) Come on Cleveland I want to see 7.0 gap between 1st and second in the AL central tomorrow in the paper!!!! Having grown up in the 90's...having to root for Cleveland still makes me feel so dirty.

QUOTE(ottawa_sox @ May 26, 2005 -> 05:24 PM) Michael Bates of "A Clockwork Orange" fame. I actually agree with you that he hasn't lived up to expectations. Yet. But he is only 24. And the same could have been said about Jon Garland. And as high as his ERA has been, it has, each and every year, been below the league average. But Garland wasn't picked as an all-star last year (Over Buehrle and Shingo, I might add)

I remember him...I think...wow there's a name I never thought I'd hear again.

QUOTE(3E8 @ May 26, 2005 -> 02:48 PM) On getaway day, games are usually in the afternoon to allow for travel times. Yeah, but at least it's not a huge trip - LA to Texas, night game tomorrow in Texas, not a big time change.

QUOTE(qwerty @ May 26, 2005 -> 11:50 AM) Five bucks he has to use a dictionary. What, you don't use the word deity in your everyday conversation? It's quite fun to say. (No dictionary.)

QUOTE(Kalapse @ May 26, 2005 -> 03:00 PM) Crede = Lowell (take into effect age, defense, current struggles and contract) Chavez >>>> Crede (take into effect the fact that Chavez is better than Crede in everyway except contract.) Thank you for making some sense. I would fire in that Chavez >> Crede, if you exclude the fact that we'd have to give up a ton (BMac) to get him, and his contract would be I think the biggest one on our squad right now (look how well spreading the wealth around has worked for us this year.) My equations would go something like this Crede + Anderson + BMac >>> Lowell Crede + Anderson + BMac > Chavez

QUOTE(RockRaines @ May 26, 2005 -> 02:43 PM) There are a few people that were VERY opposed to have spods on this team, but I think we have all come around. When we traded for Pods, I was really worried about that .240 BA he had last year. That and his walk/strikeout ratio was also troubling. Right now, he's got an OBP of .375, and he's still hitting .280 after a couple bad games against decent Anaheim pitching. If he keeps those numbers up for the whole year...then man we got a bargain.

So we have a guy at 3b who is struggling and who we hope will find a way to hit better, and we want to replace him with a guy at 3b who is struggling and we can hope will find a way to hit better, except the replacement costs more and isn't as good on defense. I can understand people wanting to upgrade to Chavez, simply for the glove. But why are people so desperate to trade 1 struggling hitter for another one, especially given how important clubhouse chemistry can be to a ballclub?

QUOTE(AnthraxFan93 @ May 26, 2005 -> 11:42 AM) I say never had the sox had a good GM, If they were smart, we fire KW.. And look into Atlanta system to find our next GM, you don't win 13 straight DIV titles on luck. Seriously, is this satire? You can claim that KW is not a good GM if you want, that's a point you can make. But who are we going to get from Atlanta? Are they just going to let Scheurholtz waltz out the door? While we're at it, can we add Mazzone to handle our pitching staff? That guy's a deity!

Right now, amazingly, I'm leaning towards KW, for 1 reason; it seems like he's doing a dynamite job building up the farm system. Right now, we've got as many guys on the way up as I can remember us having at any time in the past. Anderson. Fields. Sweeney. BMac. Gio. Bajenaru. We've had some excellent drafts in the last few years under KW, and I give the credit for that to the guy at the top. Also, KW seems to have done a remarkable job of finding guys who, for whatever reason, were underrated and hence available for less money than they deserve. (A.J., El Duque, Tadahito, Pods all come to mind). That has let us build a much deeper team than we've had in previous years, and that's been a big key this year.

QUOTE(YASNY @ May 26, 2005 -> 11:22 AM) Damn. First response and I get someone wanting to hand my ass to me on a platter. Churchill is an example .... an extreme one to be sure ... of the radically left slant of the "advanced" educational system in this country. The fact that he was employeed by an institution of "higher learning" and invited to speak at other "institutions of higher learning" after his extremist rants tends to reinforce the fact that some people in the world of academia do not consider him so very extreme. Hence, my point, that he is a "hero" to some. You do not agree that he is worthy of the label "hero". Good for you! Here's one thing you need to remember about institutes of higher education; it is their job to employ people who are completely out of the mainstream. It is also their job to expose their students to beliefs that are totally out of the mainstream. Why? Several reasons. First, it is an absolute necessity in a quality higher education that a student learns how to judge, evaluate, and refute an argument made by someone else with whom they disagree. This should happen at any credible institute. During my time at Indiana, I went to talks by such folks as Elizabeth Dole, Colin Powell, and Howard Zinn. I didn't agree with everything said by any of them. That's what's supposed to happen at a genuine university. Would I have gone to see him had he spoke at my university? Probably would have. Would I have agreed with him? Of course not. The guy's a nut. That's my evaluation of him. It's also worth noting that, at least prior to the point in January where that post 9/11 essay of his was unearthed, a lot of his speaking engagements came from the fact that he was supposedly a scholar on Native American issues, and that's a topic that is actually worth some discussion. (His record on that topic has sense been called into question, as I noted, since he may have lied about his heritage in the first place). I think that the thing that got to me most from your original statement was that it seemed that you lumped Pat Tillman and Ward Churchill on the same level, and gave Pat Tillman to the Right and Ward Churchill to my side. I think it's hard for anyone in this country to disagree with the statement that Tillman is a hero, no matter how badly the military treated his memory after he was killed. He gave up a wealthy life for something he believed in, and lost his life in the process. That qualifies as a hero in my book.

QUOTE(TheDybber @ May 26, 2005 -> 10:01 AM) Why do people live there again??? Last year, 4 hurricanes hit Florida. Why do people live there again? If the polar icecaps were to melt completely, New York City, Boston, and most of the Eastern seaboard would be under water. Why do people live there again? This is actually quite an interesting question to deal with (Graduate student in geology speaking here) - how much risk do you allow people to take with where they want to live? Within probably the next 500 years, there will be an absolutely massive, hugely devastating earthquake in the Pacific Northwest, larger and more powerful than anything that can happen in California. Maybe even on the scale of Sumatra. The last event that large happened on that fault roughly 300 years ago. It's average recurrence interval is about 500 years we think, but there's a lot of variation. The last time it happened, a tsunami was recorded in Japan. Should we evacuate the Pacific Northwest? The reality is...it's almost impossible to pick a place on the earth that isn't at risk for some sort of geologic hazard, whether it's flooding, a drought, a tsunami, an earthquake, etc. In most cases, all you can do is prepare for it and try to make sure the end result isn't cataclysmic. There are only a few places where you can point and say "it is genuinely stupid to live here because you're going to die." Almost everywhere else, it's a guessing game. And even in those cases...you have to balance the rights of the property owners against the government's desire to protect its citizens. There is no firm line at all. Oh, and 1 more I forgot; at some point in the next few thousand years, there will likely be a major collapse and avalanche in the Azores, setting off a tsunami that will dwarf the one from Sumatra, and do heavy, heavy damage to New York, Boston, and the entire east coast. Why do people live there? Because it's a risk they're willing to take.

As a person vehemently on the left, I'd love to know where exactly you came up with the idea that Ward Churchill is somehow a hero of the left? I highly doubt that the guy qualifies as a hero to almost anyone. Here's what Ward Churchill is; he's a random, obscure professor at a University in Colorado who holds some pretty damn extreme views, and who goes around publically expressing them. Because his views are so far out of the mainstream, the folks on the right wing (read: Bill O'Reilly) grab him as an example of those "crazy liberal universities" that they can use to brow-beat anyone who disagrees with them. CJR did a great piece the other day on how O'Reilly was using Ward Churchill as a whipping boy for his political opposition at the same time as he was complaining about the NYT using the widespread abuse of prisoners by the U.S. in the same manner. Here's the reality about Ward Churchill and the left; we really don't give a darn. The guy's a nutcase, he's certainly no spokesman for the left. The left does tend to care about academic freedom, and hence we wouldn't be thrilled if he lost his job simply because of some remarks he made (his reported lying about his heritage in his job application is a different story), but overall, no one really cares about what some crazy professor in Colorado thinks except for the folks trying to use his craziness to score political points against the other side.

QUOTE(Cubs Suck23 @ May 26, 2005 -> 08:55 AM) If Hawk was to retired who would you like to see replace him the booth... My choice would be Steve Stone I never think of Steve Stone as a play-by-play guy. I still think he's the best color man in baseball though.

While you're complaining about the "professional" rankings, you should also take a second to look at the rankings compiled by ESPN.com visitors. The public poll is turning out the right way. We're on top. Feel free to go vote yourself.