lostfan

QUOTE (Jake @ Jul 7, 2014 -> 10:55 PM) I think the Melo saga in particular has taken several turns based on absolutely nothing. Not a mis/overinterpretation of an event, but just speculation building off of itself On Facebook I saw how his wife supposedly had a revelation that she could continue her career in LA. Umm... no s***? I'm assuming she's not a f***ing idiot and knew that already.

Garcia was probably the #1 thing I was looking forward to seeing this year (even moreso than Abreu) and I was pretty devastated when he got hurt. This would be awesome.

QUOTE (flavum @ Jul 7, 2014 -> 10:53 PM) Scherzer started. But yes, Sale should have won the MVP. Did he? s*** I just looked it up, you're right. *sits down*

Mario Kart 8. So fun. So my son with this game (he is 7). First of all he is just ruthless. I used to let him win sometimes when he was 3 or 4 but now he talks so much hot s*** during the game that when I have the chance to, I destroy him. He shows me no mercy so I respond in kind. This past weekend he asks me: Him: So dad do you like winning? Me: Sure. Him: Do you like losing? Me: No. Him: Not even a little bit? Me: Not really. Him: Well you better get used to losing, because you're about to get OWNED! Then the next day we're playing one of the N64 retro tracks. He says "did you like this track when you played it in olden times?"

Remember last year when Sale started the All-Star game and dominated the NL for 2 innings? Yeah.

While I don't necessarily have a problem with these free agents taking their time with significantly important career and potentially life-changing decisions, the excessive media coverage is... ummm

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jul 7, 2014 -> 10:39 PM) I don't think he legally could even do that. It'd be explicitly against the financial interests of the other Bulls shareholders. He probably could, if he wanted to. The question is why would he want to? It just doesn't seem like a smart way to run a business.

QUOTE (Jake @ Jul 7, 2014 -> 10:37 PM) You're definitely right that the Bulls have relatively fixed costs due to salary cap. They profit so much they'd have to have been something like $25-$30 million past tax threshold to fail to turn a profit, in which case they'd probably have a team so good that profits would have gone up. It's also worth mentioning that while this information is technically secret, it's widely believed that Reinsdorf's stake in the Bulls is far more significant than his stake in the Sox. With that said, I believe Jerry has been buying out some of the Sox's investors so that may not be as true as it once was. People need to think of the teams as companies. If you owned two businesses, chances are you wouldn't risk the good fortune of one by pouring its profits into the other. Likewise, if one was failing, you would just let the failing one die knowing your other was on solid ground. There aren't many good reasons for double-dipping like this. You can also mention how unbelievably low our payroll is compared to past years and our low future payroll commitments. I mentioned the payroll, they shed a ton of salary last year and the core players are controlled for the next few years so it's not likely to go up anytime soon unless they go on a free-agent spending spree. It's something that doesn't really make that much sense when you think about it for a few minutes.

If you've ever heard Bulls fans b****ing about the front office/ownership you always hear this complaint especially from the Bulls fans who are Cubs fans or who aren't from Chicago. (Right now it doesn't even make any sense anyway, they are willing to pay Carlos Boozer $17 million to NOT play for the Bulls in 2014-15, and if Carmelo doesn't sign with the Bulls it will be because he wanted money the Bulls couldn't offer because of the CBA and they'll say the Bulls were being "cheap" anyway which is dumb, but that's a separate topic...) Anyway I've always been inclined to believe this is bulls*** and it's something meatballs just say out of their asses mainly for 2 reasons. 1. The Sox don't have much debt to factor into their operating costs combined with a sweet TV deal, so they pull in a lot of revenue. They're not the Yankees but they're far from broke. They can afford high payroll without being subsidized by the Bulls, unlike what they seem to be implying. 2. Reinsdorf or any other investors on the Bulls could theoretically use their profits to invest in the Sox but even if they did it wouldn't affect the operating costs of the Bulls since the Bulls are pretty much sitting on a mint. Reinsdorf could go into the luxury tax and still profit if he wanted to, he just hasn't ever seen a need to until last year. What's the best way to respond to this? Keeping in mind these aren't usually the type of people to listen to facts or logic, but still.

Jose Abreu is kind of okay at baseball, right?

I don't know any personally but I've been reading comments and Bucks fans are something like a combination of scared, disappointed, and cynical.

Bucks: So Jason what is your vision for the Bucks? Kidd: I want power. Bucks: Well that's not actually a vision, Jason... Kidd: Power. Give me power. Bucks: Um ok

What the hell is Jason Kidd on? Did someone tell him he was a good coach last year? 6 seed in the East was not a real accomplishment.

@blasondamadrid: R.Madrid (1). Mirotic jugó el jueves su último partido con la camiseta del Madrid. Operación NBA en marcha. La próxima semana viaja a EEUU. non-fluent Spanish speaker translation: Mirotic has played his last game for Madrid, and he heads to the USA next week. @blasondamadrid: Real Madrid (2). Como contó Fernando Ruiz (@fernan_ruiz), Mirotic tenía tomada la decisión hace semanas. El club recibirá 2,5 millones. Mirotic had decided this weeks ago. Madrid gets 2.5 million. There are more tweets, but the gist of it is that Mirotic is ready to go to the NBA right now, and he will come pretty much no matter what the Bulls are paying.

The Sox have a hard time trying to figure out if they want to be mediocre or just suck.

QUOTE (chitownsportsfan @ Jun 17, 2014 -> 09:16 PM) So who goes under the mendoza line first, Flowers or Viciedo? God what a disappointment Viciedo's career has been. He pretty much turned out to be the worst case scenario despite gaudy MILB numbers. Not enough power, not even average, zero patience, and not just a below average defender, a brutal defender. 4th OF to play against LHP, that's all he turned into. Not going to lie, I thought he actually figured something out for a couple months there

QUOTE (Leonard Zelig @ Jun 17, 2014 -> 07:18 PM) what does "% of maximum" mean? Compared against the year with the most. So highest stolen bases and league batting average was in the early 1900s, most home runs in 2000. Not really sure why the highest RBI and runs aren't 100% though. http://regressing.deadspin.com/how-offense...ball-1591972267

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jun 17, 2014 -> 06:48 PM) Contained is a bad term for Iraq. Prior to the first Gulf War they had invaded two neighbors. After the first one, the gassed their own people. Depending on where you want to start the counter-factual timeline, it is impossible to call them "contained". Contained, in terms of a threat to the United States. Them attacking Iran was more complicated b/c the US was cool with it, and Saddam invaded with a wink-wink-nudge-nudge from the US (cuz remember, this is on the heels of the '79 hostage standoff, so Iran was a mortal enemy). You could also argue the invasion of Kuwait was a consequence of supporting Iraq against Iran. Iraq was broke and more or less trying to extort money out of Kuwait. Saddam thought, well, they supported me in the last war, and they haven't actually said they'll stop me here, so why not... That's one of those "if I knew then what I know now" moments for both sides, the U.S. probably would've been more explicit if they knew he was actually going to invade Kuwait, and Saddam probably never would've invaded Kuwait if he knew the U.S. was going to come out against him and subsequently use military force to push him back out.

QUOTE (Carlo Paz @ Jun 17, 2014 -> 02:54 PM) In a recent study, Sox fans were rated fourth in variability as related to winning. In other words, Sox fans only show up for a winning team. Only the A's, Phillies and Orioles fans are more demanding of a quality product before they come out to the park. Yankees and Cardinal fans will come out no matter what's on the field (though I'm quite sure this is related to the fact that the teams seldom stink for too long). Here's the study. https://scholarblogs.emory.edu/esma/2014/06...ormance-prices/ Been going to Orioles games since 2005, and they have sucked for the vast majority of that time until a year ago, and the attendance reflected that. Now they're halfway decent, and fun to watch, and people actually go to the games. I went to a sold-out game a couple weeks ago, which never happens.

This does not answer your question but it's a good an excuse as any to post this cool ass graph.

Nobody is giving me any notifications on Facebook right now

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jun 17, 2014 -> 01:18 PM) An interesting counter-factual would have been how long Hussien would have lasted with either no second war, and/or no first war. After seeing what happened in Eygpt, Syria, Urkraine, and Lbyia, for example, I am fairly sure Hussein still wouldn't be in power, and if that was the case, Iraq would have melted down. Without intervention, the same undercurrent of boiling civil strife and ethnic hatreds would have been still there to explode given the chance. It is impossible to say for sure what would have happened, but it isn't too hard to see a scenario very similar to this having happened in Iraq. I'd argue the instability in Iraq contributed to that at least in part (that is virtually impossible to really argue positively though). Saddam was contained but there probably would have been international pressure to end the sanctions because of the damage it was doing to Iraq's population (Saddam's abuse of them notwithstanding). That would've strengthened Saddam's hand. Iraq barely is able to function as a civil society without a strong (read: dictatorial) central government. When Saddam did have his civil institutions in place he was able to put down civil uprisings - pretty brutally too I might add. Of course all this sucks, and is bad, but is probably preferable to the current situation in which the Iranians have more influence over what happens inside the country than we do, and everyone is killing everyone and jihadists control large swaths of territory.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jun 17, 2014 -> 01:11 PM) Outside of Duncan, none of that team has been top picks, or can't miss players. They have done an unreal job of picking guys and turning them into players that fit what they do in San Antonio. That is the most amazing thing of all down there. Does anyone think Kawhi Leonard is a star anywhere else? Tony Parker was a 28th overall pick. Ginobli was 57th. Their free agents have all been fill in guys, and not top dollar guys. They haven't had a draft pick higher than #24 since Tim Duncan. San Antonio is just a freak of nature in professional sports. Kevin Durant hinted at this recently and everyone jumped him

QUOTE (bmags @ Jun 17, 2014 -> 10:11 AM) It's nice seeing lostfan post again, btw. That I can't get on at work is so depressing

QUOTE (Chilihead90 @ Jun 17, 2014 -> 12:35 AM) Hahah, that's pretty funny. They should have protected against that and had the same guy say "Xbox off" somewhere else in the commercial. He would also have to say "yes" afterwards lol