Jake

QUOTE (mr_genius @ Nov 1, 2012 -> 08:57 PM) not sure what's going on in that video. Hugo Chavez bad and Obama bad? is that the narrative? Chavez says that he would support/vote for Obama if he were American. Then it cuts to Fidel Castro's daughter, who I believe is actually an American citizen, saying she would vote for Obama. It then mentions that the EPA sent out an email that had a picture of Che Guevara in it (this actually happened, some "rogue" staffer sent it out as a joke without permission). Then it cuts back to Hugo Chavez claiming that if Obama were Venezuelan, Obama would vote Chavez. Then Romney says he approves the message in a fairly heavily American accent, lol (I am just a tick short of fluent in Spanish now 8)) QUOTE (greg775 @ Nov 2, 2012 -> 02:17 AM) With a few days remaining, does Romney truly have a shot at this? I have a gut feeling that as bad as Obama is, Romney might be the worst president ever, even worse than Quayle would have been. And I'm a lifelong Republican saying this. Romney has a shot, but not much of one. If Rasmussen is the lone correct polling service, like many in certain echo chambers believe, then Romney will have a great Tuesday. However, it doesn't have a great track record, despite putting more resources into their polls than just about anyone not named Gallup. They have had 4+ point Republican leans in a couple elections. There was one election when they came out looking decent, at least in the choosing of winners, though. I don't think at this point anything could change much voter-wise, so the only way Romney has a chance is if all of our information has been incorrect or something random happens -- it won't really be possible to know if he won because of the 10-20% chance he does happens or if the polling data was incorrect. It's the toughest part of political science, there are very few events to judge your models against.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Nov 2, 2012 -> 11:17 AM) Get Ready for the Phony Debt Fight "The Debt" is going to be used as an excuse to unnecessarily cut Social Security and Medicare regardless of who wins Interesting. I had been intrigued by the notion of Social Security cuts and even privatization, but I realized after research that the motivations behind the calls for that are almost surely ideological. Social Security has been running at a profit for so long that $2 trillion of our debt is actually owed to the Social Security fund -- so it is hard for me to say that it is near insolvency when it still has TOO much money AND provided the government pays back the debt, they will have >$2 trillion in the bank to cover any potential tough times in which they run at a deficit. Last time I looked at it, the next time it really should get some serious attention would be about 20 years from now.

Some token of gratitude is nice so the guy knows that he isn't just a tool for you to get things from.

All I can say about NCAA vs NBA or any pro league... I like to watch sports because I like to see the very best in the world at their craft do work. The NCAA has a very limited interest to me because the talent can't touch the NBA, save 1 or 2 players in a given game. The main novelty of the NCAA is to see who might become good enough for the better league, and occasionally something to keep you occupied when nothing else is going on. It gives people with no more pro markets nearby something to watch. In the end though, I want to see the best in the world at play.

I don't think we'll make a splash just to do it. I'm okay with bringing Youk in at a reasonable price instead of selling the farm for someone like Moustakas (who would be AWESOME on the right deal)

QUOTE (Jerksticks @ Nov 1, 2012 -> 08:28 PM) I feel like Dunn is an example of overrated walks actually. You know why? Because his 0-19s with a couple walks and 0 runs scored destroy us. 0-8s and 0-11s all over the place. 0-15 with a run scored and a walk in July against Detroit and Boston. He goes 5-6 games without RBIs that kill us. His game offends me but it is what it is- in no way is it perfect for the 3-hole though; that is as arguable as a topic gets! He drove in Youk 10 times- 3 times each month? He drove in De Aza 22 times which was the most- a whopping 3.6 times per month. Drove himself in 41 times lol. Boom or bust. I'd like to see all the hrs he hit this year: against who and the situation. Other than that 2 hr game at the end of the year, I'd be willing to wager the majority were meaningless and more importantly against bad, mopup-style RH pitchers with no velocity. All a hunch. I hate every second I watch him. When his HR total was at about 30, it was reported that about 2/3 occurred when the game was within a run OR put the game within a run. A smaller, yet oddly high amount gave us the lead. I'm operating off of memory here so someone should try to verify. Also, he hit 15 HR in 215 PA against LHP vs. 26 HR in 434 PA against RHP. sOPS+ actually higher against lefties (134) than righties (117). He's obviously far more exaggerated as a boom or bust batter against lefties, though.

QUOTE (MexSoxFan#1 @ Nov 1, 2012 -> 07:00 PM) The thing I want to know is, do we have a 3 pt lead with the ball or on defense. Makes a world of difference.with ads like this, Romney will surely win the coveted Hispanic vote

QUOTE (mr_genius @ Nov 1, 2012 -> 06:20 PM) I'm pretty sure the Democrats are fatter. every time i go into a 'democrat stronghold', i see super extreme fatsos everywhere. Come to the Southern USA (in before Reddy anti-South rant part 2 )

QUOTE (mr_genius @ Nov 1, 2012 -> 05:08 PM) i wouldn't go to any of any of those for free and I agree on this point

QUOTE (mr_genius @ Nov 1, 2012 -> 06:34 PM) in the name of bipartisanship, i have a great idea and want to run it by you guys. here are some basics to start with. 1) you guys like to raise taxes. 2) you really would like to raise taxes mostly on Republicans 3) you guys think Republicans are fatter than Democrats based on comments here at Soxtalk. What about a fatso tax? All fatsos have a weigh in and have their tax rates raised or lowed based on how fat they are. the tax will be like a fine. so for an extreme fatso the fine is like 5k a year. what do you guys think? I know how to do this even moreso. Right now, fat people already pay a fine for being fat -- much higher health insurance rates. We will nationalize the healthcare system and fat people will then pay the government more, rather than "fat cat" insurance companies

The ideal 3 hitter has high AVG, high OBP, and high power numbers Since Pujols and Kemp are unavailable, I'm willing to have a non-ideal one -- be that Dunn or someone else.

Thanks a lot for doing this again. Also, if any Sox folks are reading out there...this kind of thing means a lot for us that follow the team so rabidly.

I'd like to know if there is a trend as far as obesity in the respective parties. Which has the fattest politicians? Which has the fattest voters? This could be completely partisan blinders, and is certainly influenced by anecdote, but I feel like the Repubs would be fatter.

The comments on that Bloomberg article are hilariously out of touch. Somehow they read that and said that he's voting Obama because he thinks Sandy was caused by global warming. Not only does he explicitly say that he has no idea if it was caused by global warming, he does not say that global warming is the one reason he will vote for Obama -- he merely says that is one of many important things that he feels Obama is right about.

The handling of Brian Anderson continues to frustrate, all because of Rob Mackowiak

QUOTE (Quinarvy @ Nov 1, 2012 -> 02:11 PM) If it's $38M with incentives, it's bad. If it's $32 with incentives, it's good. How much does $1.5M per season mean to you?

Strikeouts stink but you can look at the numbers and see that Dunn is not an inadequate situational hitter (like driving in runner from 3B). I'd like to see him raise his average (why wouldn't I?), but a lot of us have problems with him because we spent our whole baseball careers trying not to strike out and not hit every ball to the pull side...and here's some guy that does that and makes millions of dollars. I don't mean that we're envious or anything like that, but his style of play is counter-intuitive to the way we were taught it. His production is flat out too difficult to replace if we are going to call 2011 an anomaly and 2012 a new norm. You can give me all the batting average (almost useless), OPS (nice for predicting run production) you want but when it comes down to it the guy was responsible for a ton of runs scoring last year and those runs are going to cost money if you are to be certain that they'll be replaced.

QUOTE (Steve9347 @ Nov 1, 2012 -> 09:50 AM) Honestly, with NBA TV I just can't justify any version of League Pass (though, I just looked at it and that 5-team is a ripoff). Why would you pay $26.99 per month for 5 teams when you could pay $39.99 for all teams? Or pay $0 and watch NBA TV? Seriously, don't waste your money on that stuff. Unless you have the world's worst cable package, you get NBA TV. That means every night you get games or NBA Gametime. Then ESPN does their NBA Coast to Coast on other nights. NBA Gametime (NBA TV) - live lookins to games around the league, basically NFL RedZone for NBA fans. NBA Coast to Coast (ESPN/ESPN2) - same as above. Tuesday and Thursday nights - NBA on TNT Wednesday and Friday nights - NBA on ESPN Random other nights - Bulls on CSN/CLTV/WGN Random other nights - games on NBA TV Save your money! I'm out of market at school and don't get NBA TV but...still doesn't justify the price of NBA League Pass to me. MLB.tv is worth the cost to me though.

QUOTE (Quinarvy @ Oct 31, 2012 -> 10:10 PM) This was me at the Kansas City Renaissance Festival, but I wore it again today around campus. Your eye black is cute

If the Royals' goal is to compete next year, they're going to seek more starters than just Ervin Santana.

Had an Atwater Brewery Decadent Chocolate Stout today. Not bad... but perhaps the best smelling stout I've had. The taste more or less follows the nose, but I didn't find it to be particularly complex or interesting beyond the initial coffee/mocha scent. Also a bit watery and over-carbonated for a stout. I think it would be great for someone that isn't sure if they can "handle" dark beer, though. New Belgium Red Hoptober isn't bad, either. Had that on tap.

I liked Youk. I won't be sad if we don't bring him back. His health is a huge concern and I'm not sure that he wants to continue being a third baseman.

We have basically the worst turnout of any country and while much of that has to do with our antiquated "winner-take-all" system, most countries with far better turnouts make election day a national holiday (some fine you a small amount for not voting, which I'm truly not against if nobody is working that day anyway)

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Oct 31, 2012 -> 04:18 PM) According to people with knowledge, early voting favors Democrats. So they should see leads early. Almost had to be the case with BO carrying 10+ point leads. It's funny how Democrats seem to carry high-priority, habitual voters (research shows that early voting attracts almost solely habitual voters) but also rely heavily on low-priority voters that show up sporadically, especially low incomes

It is more uncertain that we could find replacements for those big $ players' production (Dunn, Rios, Alexei) than the uncertainty about whether they'll be as good next year. Especially in the case of Dunn, it is not a stretch to say that he could do better next year. Same with Alexei, though last year turned out not to be a huge departure from his past like it felt it was at first. And no, I don't want Dan Haren and his aching back. We have enough aging injury risks for one staff. With the uncertainty surrounding a bullpen on any yearly basis, I'm not eager to gut it for very marginal cost cutting either. You can hope Jones can match Crain, or you can have both and have very good odds that at least one of them will hold things down late in games. Same with Veal, Thornton on the left side.