Jake

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.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Oct 31, 2012 -> 01:18 PM) Some people like but don't love Jake. For instance, I don't discount how even in a quality start, there's trouble brewing in the 7th and 8th with him because of the fact he won't come out of games. That means even Jake's dominant starts can turn to hell in a hurry. You are overstating this problem greatly. Just because the times it goes wrong really stress you out, does not mean that every single start is in peril as he reaches higher pitch counts.

QUOTE (The Ultimate Champion @ Oct 31, 2012 -> 12:19 PM) Alex Rios: $12.5M - also 2013:$12.5M, 2014:$12.5M, 2015:$13.5M club option ($1M buyout) Adam Dunn: $15M - also 2013:$15M, 2014:$15M Jesse Crain: $4.5M Matt Thornton; $5.5M Alexei Ramirez: $7M - also 2014:$9.5M, 2015:$10M, 2016:$10M club option ($1M buyout) Gavin Floyd: $9.5M I would be very surprised (and very disappointed as well) if 3 or more of these 6 salaries are still scheduled to be paid in full by the Sox come January. IMO 3 need to be gone, I would hope for at least 4, and in a perfect world we have dropped 5 of the 6 with prospects coming back and with money spent on either a longterm really good FA and/or shorter term reclamation type deals. I think we can definitely contend next year regardless of what we do over the offseason since we're going to have pitching and we'll probably have defense too, but IMO it would be a big mistake to not continue ahead in the same direction we've gone in since the dreaded "all in" debacle. I have no idea how you plan on us having a good team without most of those guys. Thornton clearly the most expendable, but each one after him gets very difficult to replace

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Oct 31, 2012 -> 10:04 AM) Hahn has said he can win with a 9 figure number. So that means $100M plus. That's such a funny statement. "I can win with a payroll of less than a billion!"

QUOTE (Iwritecode @ Oct 31, 2012 -> 11:12 AM) FIFY Yep. Pitching looks bad when the offense can't score 3 runs in a game. The pitching could have picked up some games for us down the stretch, but their slight regression pales in comparison to the huge slump by the offense

QUOTE (iamshack @ Oct 31, 2012 -> 11:04 AM) Honestly, I'd identify some clubs with the best 3b/pitching prospects, and approach them about a deal for Sale. I think I'd probably start with the Rockies and talk to them about Arenado and some of their pitching spects...maybe even Toronto and Brett Lawrie and pitching spects... I just think with where we are organizationally, we could benefit more from a package of very talented young players rather than Sale himself... Flame away... Flame on. Sale was one of the singular most valuable players in baseball last season and he's 23(?) years old AND cheap. There is some chance you could trade him and get a combination of players to equal his WAR right away...which it is up to you whether a few players adding up to one player's WAR is a wash or not. As far as trading for prospects, I wouldn't even consider it. I think it is clear at this point that we're after a pennant.

In other nudes, Nate Silver's article today I think is particularly interesting since it talks about the potential shortcoming of his model, compares to other models like his, and gives more detail on the state vs national poll dilemma. fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com