Jake

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Aug 1, 2014 -> 08:07 PM) By doing what? First - let's talk about what a war crime is, because it's more than just a feeling one has. War crimes, in this scenario, refer to the way non-combatants are treated in war. The overarching dictum is that nothing "of such a character as to cause physical suffering or extermination" of civilians is acceptable. More specifically - 1. Collective punishments are war crimes: people cannot be punished for actions they have not personally committed. Cities, towns, neighborhoods, and countries cannot be shelled because their government/military have wronged you. Practices that "strike at guilty and innocent alike" are war crimes. 2. Occupying powers must care for and educate children, avoid damaging private or public property, and provide medical services to all. 3. Military operations must target military targets. A military target is slightly difficult to define, but here's a good look: 4. When determining whether civilian loss of life is innocently incidental or not, the idea of proportionality is necessary. Is the response, which may cause civilian loss of life, proportional to the provoking attack/action? Here's a take on proportionality in this context from the International Criminal Court: 5. You can't kill civilians by proxy via destroying essential services. Water and food being primary, but also denial of medicine and things like this. With that established, how does Israel stack up? We know Hamas is largely a terrorist organization - I'm not going to try to say they are above war crimes. They're not. It's probably in their nature. Of course, and this is a topic we should discuss, Israel has created an environment that would beg for terrorist uprisings to occur. We can look to two incidents from July 30, where UN civilian camps were created at a school and a market. Israel's humanitarian spirit encouraged civilians to go to those places. Israel blew them up. Ban-ki Moon called the bombings "outrageous" and "unjustifiable," indicating an abundance of evidence that demonstrates IDF's responsibility. As for the frequent shelling of places like hospitals where Hamas supposedly has stashed weapons, both parties have committed a war crime. The UN humanitarian chief explains: The general fact that independent aid agencies continue to count the casualties at 10-20 Gazans per 1 Israeli, with 80% of Gazan deaths being civilians per the UN and few enough Israeli civilian casualties to count on one hand, should give an indication as to whether Israel is acting proportionally. Today there was another bombing of a UN location killing several and injuring enough to completely overwhelm the nearest hospital. With the morgue full, they were using freezers to store the bodies of dead children. Even the US State Department termed this "disgraceful" and called for Israel to do "more to meet its own standards and avoid civilian casualties." Israel says they're looking into it but they're pretty sure there was a bad guy on a motorcycle over there. Speaking of hospitals, the UN says a third of all hospitals in this region have been destroyed in the fighting. People cannot access many essential services, including sanitation. A huge portion of people went from being in one of the most densely populated places in the world to hiding in tiny spaces in the one of the most densely populated places in the world. That was right after the cease fire was broken because Hamas "captured" an IDF soldier until Israel realized that, no, he was killed in combat. Nobody batted an eye over that one. Amnesty International is another international organization that claims to have an abundance of evidence regarding Israel war crimes. I wonder why Israel wouldn't sign a 10-year truce document with the Palestinian unified government - its stipulations were essentially that Gaza be treated like a sovereign entity that can go more than three miles from its shore to practice its historically largest trade, fishing, and to be allowed to import materials to build houses for its growing population. Oh, they also wanted permission to visit Jerusalem to pray at their holy places. If convinced that they can't be trusted and would break the truce, let them; you can always do bulls*** like this war when they do that. This isn't a tit-for-tat game. Not liking Hamas is fine. However, if Israel is supposed to be an ally, we should expect better than what we expect from Hamas. But maybe we shouldn't expect this stuff from Benjamin Netanyahu - this statement from a hot mic should make your blood boil as an American: Prominent Israeli journalist Gideon Levy on those statements:

QUOTE (Timmy U @ Aug 2, 2014 -> 09:56 PM) Tekotte sold back to AZ. Mitchell back to Charlotte. If he can keep the approach he had at Birmingham, not taking a lot of fastballs down the middle for strike three, maybe he still has a shot as a 4th outfielder or DeAza who can catch things. I root for him because he seems like an extremely nice guy. Not holding my breath, though, he has teased us before. I don't think we should have promoted him so soon. He's never been any good in AA before so promoting after a ~40 game run down there just doesn't make sense to me. His whole career has been defined by moving up in level before he's ready and as soon as he shows a sign of getting comfortable, we bump him up again

Reed would obviously help this bullpen, but was far from a priority for us when we traded him. I have a feeling the horrible Arizona team probably would just assume not have traded a promising prospect for a meh closer as well. An extreme flyball closer was always going to be a recipe for disaster here. The book isn't closed on Davidson yet. It is also very easy to overstate the importance of bullpen upgrades

QUOTE (raBBit @ Aug 3, 2014 -> 06:51 PM) If each pitcher in the bullpen was rated by recent performance, track record and potential Thompson would rank last in each category. I'm not really on an anti-Guerra crusade, he's just the guy who screams "DJ Carrasco" in our pen. ie, seems to be over his skis, not great stuff, has been exposed to lots of MLB and MiLB and just doesn't seem that great. But this falls into what I was saying in the game thread, which is that our bullpen isn't stuffed with "worst" pitcher types, it just lacks "best" pitchers. Who do you go to when it matters? After Petricka, there are no obvious answers Thompson isn't exactly a super-duper exciting guy, but has been successful as a closer at every level - seemed like a guy who might have earned a longer shot at creating a valid sample size. With that said, if we're going to send guys down with options rather than cut boring vets like Guerra, Rienzo seems like the better candidate for that...and might be later this week when Putnam returns

QUOTE (raBBit @ Aug 3, 2014 -> 06:44 PM) What? I'd love to hear this argument. Guerra just being the guy with the least desirable mix of recent performance, track record, and potential development

QUOTE (flavum @ Aug 3, 2014 -> 06:38 PM) Cleto's last 5 appearances: 7.2 innings 2 hits 1 bb 13 k QUOTE (Lillian @ Aug 3, 2014 -> 06:41 PM) I heard the other night, that he was throwing 99-100. Welp, why the f*** not

Seems like an odd choice over Guerra, at the least. He's no special talent, but I remember looking over the Charlotte roster before his callup and thinking he was the only possible addition

QUOTE (SoxAce @ Aug 3, 2014 -> 06:08 PM) I still like Rienzo. I believe he would be a solid mop up guy in the future. He's just been all over the place as a starter, reliever. I dont think he's the type of guy who should only be pitching an inning to. Same with Surkamp. Problem is, we have too many of those types. As someone pointed out, you can probably name one.. maybe two guys in our pen you can consider locks for next season. I think Rienzo profiles well as a reliever because he has a good heater and generally is too iffy to see a bunch of batters. I think his cutter would play up against righties too (uses it like a slider). He just hasn't really done it before and is so all over the place he probably won't be right until next year. Surkamp is a sinker baller who has historically been better against righties and never relieved before. There were a lot of reasons to think it wouldn't go well. The sinker won't play up out of the pen and he's seeing a ton of lefties. Tough to quantify the effect of learning to be a reliever as well.

Let the dink and dunk parade commence

QUOTE (fathom @ Aug 3, 2014 -> 05:00 PM) How do you figure this isn't a terrible pen? It's not that I think they're good, but you can compare to the ERA of the Tigers' pen, for instance and see that they're getting more out of less because they still have some semblance of a hierarchy. Still - in terms of player acquisition, etc - the two best relievers to start the season are both hurt, the next guy to emerge as best is now hurt, and the LOOGY we signed in the offseason who had been one of the most consistent relievers in the game was inexplicably terrible. Not much has gone right and the fact we are very deep into our organization's reliever talent pool is evident.

It's really not so much that it's a terrible pen as much as there are hardly any guys better than others. Petricka is obviously your best guy and then everyone else is "meh." There's no obvious choice when you need to not give up runs

Last night the pen got dinked and dunked and dealt with some bad D. Guerra, though, is just getting pounded

Gotta think Semien is being prepped for MLB 2B with the way the lineup was today

QUOTE (fathom @ Aug 3, 2014 -> 03:07 PM) 0-4 with a K. Would have rather seen Thompson get the chance. Neither were ready. The obliviousness to whether hitters are ready for a promotion in our system is becoming tiresome.

good god, why did we call Mitchell up

I'm not sold on Wiggins, but I hope he makes the Cavs regret it

Not including today's game: Leading at start of 7: 38-8 Tied at start of 7: 10-9 Leading at start of 8: 43-7 Tied at start of 8 8: 7-7 Leading at start of 9: 47-6 Tied at start of 9: 4-4 http://www.baseball-reference.com/play-ind...amp;team_id=CHW No good way to compare teams, as far as I can tell, except to just look at each team's page. From a look at about 10 teams, we certainly are at or near worst with lead at start of innings 8 and 9. Ninth is our worst (no big surprise there). We also seem to be a bit better than many teams at winning games when losing late and our performance when tied isn't particularly bad. Last year, we were better with leads in the ninth but no better with leads in the eighth, a bunch worse with lead in the seventh, and a bunch worse in tie games.

Catch a ball in LF and we're probably winners tonight

There has been some absolutely brutal umpiring in the early going here. He threw 6 strikes in a row and had 1 to show for it

QUOTE (scs787 @ Aug 2, 2014 -> 03:21 PM) Wonder if the logic behind batting Beckham ahead of Abreu is to get him more good pitches to hit. That's about the only thing that makes sense to me. I think it might have more to do with wanting Alexei to bat with men on, not wanting to invite LOOGY matchups with Conor later in games, and a big vote of no confidence for the rest of the lineup (Flowers, ADA, Viciedo)

I'm guessing he has few resources, if any, besides himself and Mayo over there and therefore it's easy to overlook a far from top-tier guy like Ravelo. You try knowing 30 different systems 50-deep.

I have nothing against Paul George, it's just not THAT big of a deal. If he had torn his ACL, there wouldn't be nearly so much fretting about it despite it being a more serious injury. They're acting like the dude died. This happens to soccer players all the time. PG will be fine and unless they want to go Rose level with the recovery, he should be back before the season ends. And yes, it will be a bad thing if this kills international basketball. It drives interest around the world and a game like last night was a lot of fun to watch. Of the four major sports, basketball is by far the least likely for players to get season ending injuries. That's why Paul George is the first guy to have an injury of real note while playing for Team USA

Castro and Flowers would be a decent complementary tandem given their platoon splits

Abreu would seem to have a good toolset for long hitting streaks. If we assume his May was an anomaly, he's fairly adept at making contact. He also does not take very many walks and swings at a lot of pitches. He has shown a proficiency for being pretty successful on balls he puts in play. He bats highly in the order. Not prohibitively slow, though he would be better served to be able to get some infield hits.

QUOTE (bmags @ Aug 2, 2014 -> 09:41 AM) Espn saying he's out season. Maybe I'm downplaying this but that seems premature. That allows for the heroic early comeback narrative