lostfan

I have ZERO complaints about Juan's work ethic. He's the perfect model of a professional, IMO. That's never been my problem with him this year (last year, I defended him a lot). It's that, the last few days notwithstanding, he's looked like what Jerry Owens would look like if he couldn't steal bases. That's about as useless as you can get as a baseball player. And it's a valid question to ask whether his best days are behind him now.

What's gotten into Juan Pierre? Did he swallow Adam Dunn's appendix?

Also, the Red Sox are a pretty SABR-oriented team, like the blog says (nice job, btw). The difference between them and the A's is the budget. I'm not sure how it's even really arguable that getting guys on base is a big factor in scoring runs and winning games, though.

I feel like so many people miss the point of advanced stats so the entire "controversy" for lack of a better word is a misnomer. Baseball has ALWAYS been a game that's heavy into stats so it's not like it's anything new... all the percentages and things that you see are the result of actual games being played and the marking of trends and whatnot. Without them, you'd basically just be pulling stuff out of your ass. Some of the more "mainstream" sabermetric stats are pretty straightforward, not even hard to understand at all. They're not different stats, they're better stats. And yes I understand how stat geeks can really come off as treating stats as gospel, and I roll my eyes too when it's obvious to the world that Player X has sucked hardcore and someone tries to make an excuse for him with his BABIP but that's not what I'm talking about. To just flat-out reject them just because you don't like them so you can just stubbornly go with your "gut" or whatever (the whole "clutch hitting" thing comes to mind) doesn't make any sense at all.

I'd like to offer my condolences Congratulations!

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jul 1, 2011 -> 09:41 AM) Although the reactions to the thread are...odd...congratulations, I think? Dude when I found out my wife (then-girlfriend, hadn't married her yet) was pregnant people were saying "is it yours?"

Chris Harris sent me a friend request... that made me smile. He's cool as s***, really down-to-earth and interacts with the fans a lot. He's sending his top 10 fans an autograph (I'm one, yay me)

QUOTE (justBLAZE @ Jul 1, 2011 -> 01:16 AM) You guys are right, but heck Josh Fields in 07 was the only reason I was watching to be honest :/ If he had stuck in the majors and Beckham wasn't such a headcase that would've almost made '07 worthwhile. Now I can only remember Jerry Owens, Darin Erstad, and Andy Gonzalez.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jun 29, 2011 -> 02:33 PM) I sure don't remember it as "spectacular". It was "encouraging" or I'll even say it was "pretty good for a rookie" but I remember facepalming because people got carried away and started talking about him like he was a white Frank Thomas. Dude still hit .244 and his OPS never got all the way to .800.

If the government was going to default, it's going to default. The debt ceiling won't have anything to do with it one way or another, and artificially defaulting just for the sake of making a political point is f***ing insanity and nobody actually wants to be responsible for doing that when the chips are on the table. Whenever conservatives quote Obama in '06 talking about a failure of leadership I'm wondering what kind of cognitive dissonance it takes to twist that around. I want to ask "are you saying he was right then, and wrong now?" It doesn't work that way, and even acknowledging that there were votes to raise the debt ceiling back then is like prima facie evidence that Obama didn't just pull the deficit out of his ass with his Stalinesque government programs meant to cripple and enslave us all. If it was a failure of leadership (it was) then it gets put off onto the next president, when the problem's compounded itself and made into another partisan issue with manufactured reality. Lame...

I don't really know what the point of having a debt ceiling is. It's like an archaic relic that has no practical use as anything other than a political scarecrow.

"they all do it" is a really lazy argument (calling it an "argument" is being generous actually). Everything isn't the same, things are what they are and aren't something else.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Jun 29, 2011 -> 04:15 PM) I think a lot of people were turning on Paulie because they "didn't think he could match" last year's performance. Paulie is our best hitter period. I wanted PK back, but I honestly didn't think he was going to match last year's performance, either. Considering that was the best statistical year of his career, and he'd never done anything like that over the life of his last contract. Color me surprised

Can we splice Pierre and Rios's genes, put Pierre's brain in Rios's body? We'd end up with a Pinky and the Brain kind of situation, we can just DFA Pinky and keep the Brain, it'd be totally worth the cost.

Damn, I forgot to check the box score and I go back and notice they won. That's not as good as forgetting an afternoon game and finding out they won, but still pretty bad ass.

I support what Ozzie's trying to do here... not sure if it'll really matter, but I support it.

QUOTE (FlySox87 @ Jun 28, 2011 -> 08:36 PM) I can agree with that. Although I'm 24 year old two years removed from college, so I'll make a mental note not to start any non-criminal justice (yeah, laugh it up haha) argument with the phrase "I've got a degree!" I had wanted to go intel out of a desire to later join the CIA, but I was told it was hard to get that field at OCS. So I almost enlisted so I could have a better shot at getting it when I went to OCS later. But that only lasted a day and I ultimately decided to go to OCS right away. Which is good, because I spent about three weeks at Basic before deciding I just wanted to be an infantryman. And two years later, that's exactly what I am. Either way, intel's a respectable field. You've apparently noticed my love for guns, so infantry just seemed more fitting for me personally. Infantry officer? ROTC? CIA is a process... to me it's just kind of a "name." The clearance itself gets you pretty far if you can qualify for it.

I would like to join the "I can't stand Ozzie's dumbass kids" chorus. God I wish those guys would just shut the f*** up.

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. Tax cuts pay for themselves and generate revenue.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jun 28, 2011 -> 06:10 PM) Bah, I think she probably knows enough about the state to make the connection and she heard that at some point, but didn't get all the details, so that's how it came out. It's like how a person might note that tax revenues started going up again in the mid-80's and credit the increased tax revenues to Reagan's 1981-1982 tax cuts if they were never told that Reagan started increasing taxes every year starting in 1983 to bring the budget back towards balance. If a whole party only knew about the first half of that, you might get ridiculous policies based on constant tax cuts being a panacea for everything. (Like how I turned that back to policy? I'm way more impressed with that one than I have any right to be.) Have you ever read The Big Con? Basically says how this bulls*** was sold in an organized fashion to the public (by special interests of course) starting in the 70s, really picked up traction in the 80s, and now is an article of faith.

Jeter goes every year just because he is who he is, but this year he is GLARINGLY undeserving. It's not even just a bunch of bloggers calling his decline now. I mean Jesus Christ, there's almost nothing he's good at anymore.

Bachmann isn't so much being an idiot as much as she's being phony. I bet she probably did a quick 45-second Google search before that speech was written and she saw the words "John Wayne." Also, holy s*** is the "57 states" thing a conservative comeback for everything? That was three years ago. He meant to say 47. Oh well. He's given hundreds of speeches and press conferences since then (many of them without a teleprompter!).

I actually don't really know where I stand with this one. I want to agree with it, but if we're talking about free speech, why can the state and/or federal government say that a kid can't buy porn, but they can't follow the same principle with violent video games? It's that whole bizarre "even mild references to sex are bad, but even the worst violence is ok" paradigm we have in our society.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jun 28, 2011 -> 01:02 PM) I want to hone in on something here. When did Obama insult the military? And how have Obama's policies been any worse (or better) in treatment of the military than Bush's? I think no matter what a Democrat does as president he's always going to have a perception (real or manufactured) that he doesn't properly respect the military. s*** even when Obama is going to do things to actually show respect, like salute caskets of dead soldiers, it's just written off as him being phony or something. He doesn't visit Arlington National Cemetery on Memorial Day (but goes to the Lincoln cemetery in Illinois instead) and out of the blue there's all kinds of mock indignation about a non-existent "tradition" or standard that Bush or Reagan was never held to. Al Gore, Michael Dukakis, Walter Mondale, Jimmy Carter, all of these guys are veterans, but they're all just kind of casually lumped in with the "clueless and hates the military" trope. Republican "tough guys" get hand-waved over it, example, Rudy 9iu11ani was pretty creative in getting a national security letter as a brand new clerk straight out of law school to avoid going to Vietnam but that doesn't stop him from trying to call anybody a coward, and there's Saxby Chambliss jumping the shark with the Max Cleland thing, etc.

QUOTE (FlySox87 @ Jun 28, 2011 -> 09:08 AM) That's legit. When were you in? What was your MOS? I wasn't pointing out that most of the posters here probably aren't vets because I was trying to be condescending or put myself on a high horse, if that's how it came across. Most Americans haven't served in the military, and since this board isn't dedicated to vets, I figured it was no different. And I wanted to point out from an insider's view what the consensus was on certain of the president's actions. It might sound really arrogant, but I do give extra consideration to what the troops think. I did so even before I joined up, and I continue to do so now. I won't vote for a president who doesn't have their well being in high regard. And I certainly won't vote for a president who insults them. Just my opinion. It's cool. I like you already. lol. Even though we're probably usually going to think opposite things (I did agree with your 2A post the other day, just maybe not as polemically), respecting my point of view or hearing my opinions as valid gets someone a long way with me when I'm talking politics. I was in from February 2001 to February 2008, I was in intel. I still work for the Army, still love the troops of course. I'm just saying though, young Soldiers think they know every f***ing thing about everything and really they don't. It's like the 23 year old college graduate starting conversations by saying "I have a degree and..." before he starts lecturing people on s*** that had nothing to do with whatever his degree program was.