Jake

I feel like our perception of all this is based on the premises of: 1. White Sox desperately trying to dump Alexei and 2. Cardinals only kinda sorta listening With no clear replacement for Alexei and his fair and long-term deal, it seems unlikely that we were actually desperate to dump him. He could easily be a part of a rebuilt White Sox team. It makes even more sense for us to exercise caution while we don't know what we have in Semien (who had hardly broken out at the time of these negotiations). Beyond that, his trade value was unlikely to go down if we waited. The contract gets shorter, we move into the offseason when teams have more money and more teams might bid, etc. He was a guy we had no reason to dump for nothing and I have a feeling we were asking for a lot. The Cards, on the other hand, may have very well been rather desperate for him but were unable or unwilling to pay a very high price for him. Who knows, perhaps after their frustrating finish they'll be even more emboldened to up the ante for a guy like Alexei.

1. Gronk's BACK!!! 2. With 3 guys on bye this week, I had to put in Mike James (fill-in in TB) at Flex. I was hoping he'd just get above 5 points or so. 140 yards rushing through 3 quarters plus a touchdown pass.

I'll go 6.5. Minuses: -Bevy of budget cuts to appease Rs who would never be satisfied, thus hampering our recovery -Letting conservatives bastardize his healthcare vision -Allowing the spying apparatus of his predecessor continue to exist and develop -Failing to close Gitmo entirely -Stance on whistleblowers (not including Snowden) -Failing to institute a system of checks on drone program Pluses: -end of war in Iraq -ending the Where's Osama? goose chase -ending torture programs -acting on financial crisis and preventing a depression -passing healthcare reform, regardless of political consequences -repeal of DADT -becoming the first POTUS to support marriage equality -Dodd-Frank -restoring pre-Bush tax rates on highest earners -reforming NCLB, extending government giving for education, putting universal Pre-K on national agenda -presiding over a major shift in international perception of USA and its leadership abroad for the better -avoiding several int'l conflicts that could have turned into wars That's off the top of my head. Some pluses and some minuses are clearly more important than others. I find many of the minuses troubling, though I also know that they would all almost certainly still exist and perhaps to a greater extent if his opponents were in office, which is even more troubling.

Would be nice to know how much the neck is bothering him.

I think BO envisioned his presidency as being most notable for cooperation. Unfortunately, his attempts to reach across the aisle have been interpreted as weakness and haven't really helped him with anything. Legislation that is more conservative than it should be has definitely made it through, but not in the way it would be if they were reached through compromise. You just have certain things that are highly conservative - sequestration, for instance

I like to think that this just foiled the Cubs' plans again

The question is: are there just some party spots that he likes to hit up or does this mean he really wants to go there? Question 2: does it matter which one of the above it is?

The Sox are in a much better place next year. We have many more real MLB players on our team. Their bullpen and our bullpen are completely different. Ours has several young, established players that have experience in high leverage situations along with several more really talented guys. Don't pat them on the back for trading Soriano, they're paying literally almost all of his salary. That was stupid.

Replacing Kozma with Alexei very well may have gotten them a World Series win. Acting like the Cardinals were smart when they were continually getting f***ed by horrible shortstops doesn't seem like the smart thing to do here. Alexei is better than Pete Kozma at everything

They're saying he was there Friday and Saturday, on his own accord

Larry Sanders has one quarter to break double figures for the SEASON

QUOTE (greg775 @ Nov 2, 2013 -> 08:56 PM) Yeah, he has produced terribly but as a No. 1 pick he has a lot of time left before he's deemed a total bust. I'd suspect he'll remain a Sox unless Hahn despises his offensive game which is always a possibility.The key here is what does Hahn think of these guys. He's been around and has seen them up close for a long time. Do any insiders know what he thinks of Lexi, Beckham, DeAza, Viciedo, Phegs and Flowers? It'd be nice to know what the GM thinks of these guys' futures. I'm guessing Hahn doesn't expect much from Beckham. He's a safe bet not to be sub-replacement level player, but there doesn't seem to be much reason to think he will suddenly bust out after all this time. I bet Hahn would love to get some value for him on the trade market - if he can get us Brett Lawrie, I don't think there will be a second of his hesitation. If there isn't a market for him, and I doubt there is, Becks gives us flexibility with Semien. We'll feel much freer to leave Semien in AAA for a while and, even if he Semien breaks camp with the big league club, Semien can bat for Becks against RHP at times while Conor plays at 3B. Then, against LHP, you can have Gordon at 2B and Semien at 3B. As for those other guys, I think the FO is cautiously optimistic about Dayan. I think they see a little sunk cost with him, but know that he's a relatively small step forward from being a really valuable player. I don't think they like Phegs and Flowers at all. I think they see Alexei for what he is: a guy making exactly what he deserves, playing awesome defense, holding his own at the plate, and adding a base stealing element to his game. With that said, I bet they're uncertain about his loss of power and are frustrated about the mental errors last year. I'm sure they'd like to see Semien become a SS, which would free them up to get some real value for Alexei.

On the bright side, I like what I'm seeing from virtually everyone else. Even Hinrich. Noah needs work, but I wonder how about his health. I think it's safe to assume that Derrick isn't going to suck forever. The team looks locked and loaded for when he's back to form.

I think I'd prefer just rolling with Leesman, Veal, and whatever scrap heap guys we invite to ST

Gordon quite clearly had unbelievably lucky run of soft hits and bloops when he came off the DL. He didn't produce well all year. I have very little confidence in him going forward. His defense even fell off, and I don't know what that could have to do with his glove hand

Jo still isn't right either. Derrick Rose cost us this game, though. If you had Mike James play in the fourth quarter, we win.

QUOTE (Steve9347 @ Nov 2, 2013 -> 08:41 PM) Rose is f***ing worthless right now. Worse than that, honestly. Looks like things are going to be real ugly for a while

QUOTE (Jake @ Nov 2, 2013 -> 08:38 PM) Shades of Ben Gordon

Shades of Ben Gordon

I like the aggressiveness of Booz taking it inside and then having the wherewithal to pass it out

I f***ing love Jimmy

Surprised to see Thad Young knocking down threes

I wonder how much this neck issue is a confounding factor with Derrick. This Sixers team is the epitome of what you get when you have zero depth. They can really compete when their top guys are on the court, but after player 6 or 7 it's f***ing horrible. Since they don't have LeBron James or Kevin Durant in those 6 or 7 guys, they won't be too good in the long run but they might be a somewhat fun team to watch.

QUOTE (TaylorStSox @ Nov 2, 2013 -> 01:15 PM) Of course I value defense. I will never value defensive stats. Defense is evaluated with eyes, not numbers. Don't even bother trying to change my mind, it will be pointless. QUOTE (TaylorStSox @ Nov 2, 2013 -> 01:24 PM) My eyes tell me if a player is a bad/good/great defender. I want to see his positioning, his instincts, his first step, his arm strength, the way he moves, how he reads the ball, the decisions he makes, his rhythm. Defense is an art, not math. All of these things are evaluated with human eyes in the calculation of UZR. Every single defensive play is watched and measured. The distance the player covered, the speed of the batted ball, whether baserunners advance more bases than they ought to, and a few subjective measures of difficulty (bad hops, for instance). Each play is given a number value based on how these things came together: did the guy not cover the distance that he should have but made a great throw to get the runner out? His range will be downgraded and his arm will be upgraded. Did he cover a ton of ground, then drop the ball? Range is upgraded, error rating downgraded.

There is a great deal of academic research on this subject and the vast majority shows a total lack of partisan bias in traditional news sources, and there is more evidence of conservative bias in the news networks than liberal bias. News media tend to give more airtime to opposing viewpoints that are factually false than what they merit, which is a much more significant source of news inaccuracy. There is more evidence that there are significant biases against female and minority politicians. It would be interesting to see if this still applies to Obama, as in the past many minority legislators generally only made the news when they had broken the law (and they are much more likely to be criticized for breaking the law than white legislators) or when they were at the forefront of a racial issue. The POTUS is obviously relevant all the time. What we're seeing here is a manifestation of another line of research, which is strong partisans on both sides finding the same news source to be biased against them. Those who claim bias in media consistently misreport what they remember seeing in a given segment. The offending pieces of info are more impactful and lead the person to forget the parts that backed their point of view. This applies not just to people that are strong ideological partisans, but also those who have opposing views of a particular issue. We call this selective recall. Selective categorization is similar: two sides hear the same sentence, both claim it is biased against them. This happens in law all the time, where defendant and plaintiff both think that jury instructions and things like that are harming them. Then there are different standards; partisans will each have their idea of which facts, opinions, etc deserve the most scrutiny and airtime. Another factor at hand, visible in this discussion, is another insight uncovered by political psychology research. People report more bias and inaccuracy the larger they believe the audience for that information is. Telling people that an article came from a journalist versus a student newspaper, for instance, can make partisans go from strong allegations of bias to relative agreement on non-bias. I've seen two different things that explain the difference between liberal and conservative differences in how much you hear about media bias. For one, Republican elites were the first to make claims about partisan media bias. The cultural association is very important. Beyond that, conservatives (not libertarians, fwiw) generally score much lower on a personality trait that some call "openness to experience." This means that they have a stronger preference for things that are familiar while those who are high on this trait (liberals) will be more apt to search for new experiences. This helps to explain a behavior that is relevant here: conservatives are much more likely to engage in what is called "safe argument," which basically means restricting political discussions to likeminded people. I'm guessing this is part of the reason for the popularity of conservative talk radio and why Fox News was commercially viable long, long before the change in content at MSNBC at continues to be much more successful in its ratings. People that frequently engage in these safe arguments (these are interpersonal interactions) are much more likely to report partisan bias in the media. A last note is that people that feel that they are strongly informed on their views will react to perceived media bias by counteracting it. That is, they will try to promote the information that they perceive as correct with extra gusto to try to correct the harm done by biased media. Conservatives tend to believe in their own political competency quite a bit more than Democrats and thus are a bit louder in their alternative media promotion.