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Phil has said a lot of dumb things since being President (frankly things that a FO should not say about other players), but on the other hand he's made the correct tough decisions to shed a bunch of salary and perform a proper rebuild. I'm not so sure he won't succeed in building a playoff team. We'll see how he drafts. Obviously his coaching choice as an abject failure but I'm not sure that was an easy job to fill.

Yay another Abreu single with 2 out no one on base.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jun 23, 2015 -> 02:16 PM) Unless you are trying to tell me that the confederate flag motivated him to kill, over everything else, then yes, this is not the thing we should be talking about. Gun Control at least makes sense to discuss, because that at least had the potential to stop this. The rebel flag? Not so much. Think about it, with police brutality, we actually talked about police tactics. Man goes and kills a bunch of black people, shouldn't we be talking about race relation, instead of symbology? Nah, this will distract people from the real issues because no one is comfortable with actually talking about race relations in this country because some one will get offended. That you don't think a state government flying a flag that represents white supremacy is dealing with race relations I'm not sure what to tell you.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jun 23, 2015 -> 01:58 PM) I am more surprised people want to waste time on this versus what actually happened in SC. White supremacist kills black people for upteenth time in southern history, people ask to remove symbols promoting white supremacy. Seems pretty relevant. It's only irrelevant to those who seem to not believe that this man was not motivated by what he explicitly said he was motivated by.

The real victims here are the people who wanted to honor the confederacy!

"to attacking the specter of the confederacy" LOL This isn't the first time people have objected to the confederate flag, it has been ongoing for years. But the argument is that you cannot celebrate that flag and the confederacy without endorsing it's very explicit ideas. This man endorsed those ideas explicitly, and people are surprised that people want to remove a white supremacist flag from flying over the state?

This was a bad trade. Sox have no room for error and they screwed up one of their few young attractive assets for a bad player.

The poor farmers who didn't own slaves were told that when freed the former slaves would take their jobs and women and they'd be lower than the slaves. They may not have owned slaves, but they were sold on the war with white supremacy.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jun 23, 2015 -> 10:19 AM) That's not at all what i'm saying/what I would say. They all committed treason in my book. I'm simply stating where I think the whole fascination with the confederate flag comes from today. And it comes from that "we're different and proud of it" mantra of the Civil War. We'll agree to disagree on whether that was part of the argument leading up to the Civil War. I'm still not sure how you don't think that was part of it (again, PART, not THE reason) when a lot of the argument was the South was going to die economically without slavery and that slavery was a great thing. Yes they tried everything, including federal power to keep slavery around, but at some point they decide that for survival they needed to band together and leave. Let me ask you guys this: in 2015, you've got (or recently had) Walmart and other stores selling tons of confederate gear. You have billboards proudly displaying the confederate flag on billboards and barn sides. You have the confederate flag raised in public squares. Do you REALLY believe that's because people of the south want to enslave blacks again and live in a white supremacist empire? If not, what % of people down there do you think actually believes that? I'm going with maybe 1%. KKK members, aryan army members and wack jobs like this guy in SC. No one else. Do I think they want to build a white supremacist empire and reinstitute slavery? no Do I think their purposeful revisionism of their history is dangerous to the country? Absolutely. The south frankly never truly dealt with the reckoning that they caused. Their use of terrorism to undermine reconstruction was one of the darkest times of this country just after they caused THE darkest time in this country. They have been led by idiots for years and convinced themselves that industrialization would be bad for them, because they were white supremacists. They are very stupid, and glorification of treasonous stupidity and trying to tell everyone it's not about the central idea that it WAS ABOUT is disgusting and will lead to poisonous results. They are lying about history and they need to stop being coddled about it.

I would be willing to believe southerners DID become more states rights/anti-fed centric after the civil war in which they took up arms against their own country and lost, and then for 15 years were basically not allowed representation in the federal government. Of course, it should have been a lot longer, and reconstruction should have been fully seen through, but it did not, because people like Jenks would look back and say "well, they just wanted freedom to govern themselves' rather then "wow these people took up arms against the country to create a white supremacist empire, we should probably take control until that stops"

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jun 23, 2015 -> 09:38 AM) But the entire basis for this was they had laws expressly allowing slavery, whereas the north did not, and the federal government (and northern states) wanted them to first stop spreading it into new territories, and second to abolish it in the southern states. The south didn't want to play by the new rules, mostly for economic reasons, but so what. They wanted the freedom to do what they thought was best, which was to continue slavery as their main economic engine. At the heart of that argument is states rights v. federal power, which the south had always argued for in the mid 1800's leading up to the Civil War. You really need to read a book like Battle Cry of Freedom. You are all just projecting your own views to the time. This is complete ignorance. States rights was not an argument except to try to gain favor with European powers who also hated slavery. The south continuously used FEDERAL POWER to establish and continue slavery. The Fugitive Slave Act was a FEDERAL act that eliminated NORTHERN STATES RIGHTS. They had no problem with federal power, they had a problem with federal power that affected them, and by 1860 they were so far down the rabbit hole of lunacy that slavery was the single greatest good they had contributed to the world, they couldn't see straight. The change in mindset over slavery in the SOUTH from 1800 to 1830 is astounding. In one generation it went from necessary evil to a gift from God.

LOL There are facts and there is the truth. You can pull any small data pieces from 200 years to obscure the truth, or you could just look at that history from the confederacy to the revisionism and the use of the battle flag from funerals to daughters of the confederacy to the civil rights movement where suddenly the confederate flag and states rights makes a comeback. It's the flag of white supremacist traitors to the country, that had every ambition of creating an empire of white supremacy. It is inseparable from the cause, it is not a sign that you like sweet tea and cornbread, it is a pride that you come from a land that put white supremacy first and foremost as it's great cause. Heritage! It needs no analogy to Nazi Germany, it is a horrible horrible symbol of terrorism and treason. fly it high!

jesus christ, the pretzels you will twist into to defend a bunch of lost cause white supremacists.

pretty incredible to get this after 30 years. Amazing that stuff exists still.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jun 22, 2015 -> 11:36 AM) Houston is AL. I have to remind myself about that a lot. We swept Houston, but you are right I was barely paying attention to the weekend we lost to orioles and then pittsburgh, and extrapolated the pittsburgh series.

QUOTE (Leonard Zelig @ Jun 22, 2015 -> 11:08 AM) On June 9 2010, the Sox were 25-33, 8 games under .500 same as now. They then went on a 25-5 run to get to 50-38. I know people will say that this team doesn't have that in them, but they would have said the same thing about the 2010 team. I'm not saying I'm expecting it but I'm not going to start looking forward to draft position. Much of this was the annual AL feasting on the NL. We just had a bit of that and promptly lost 8 in a row. Edit: pods was 2009. That was a fun run.

After 2 straight years of it, can't say I'm as excited as I once was for high draft picks. By all means, tank away, but I see no way out of this hell.

I can't believe EJ's 1 month in bigs is enough to lose status but Micah's was not.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jun 22, 2015 -> 09:45 AM) Basically the equation becomes would you pay $200,000 and wait a year to get a million dollar pitcher? Remember, the Sox second round pick had a slot of around $1.25 million. Hickman could have been picked there. At their third round pick, his slot value would have been about $800k. In a case where the Sox had neither a 2nd or 3rd round pick, this is an investment that makes sense for the Sox. They got a discount for a 2nd round pick to be named later basically. Makes sense, I did not know they received a discount there. For some reason I thought he got slot.

I probably would include Erik Johnson

QUOTE (ChiSox_Sonix @ Jun 19, 2015 -> 10:06 AM) Thompson had another good game. Hitting .282 now with a reasonable strikeout rate still. Probably the only bright spot for me for this whole year in minors.

QUOTE (shipps @ Jun 19, 2015 -> 11:50 AM) I am surprised it wasnt done at Midwest Ortho where all the other Bulls players have usually gone too. My guess is it will be a smashing success then.

I think Hahn in many situations would be a good GM. I think he is smart and is able to identify pro talent reasonably well. I do not think he was the correct GM to oversee the demolition of the team after 2013, because he could not convince his bosses that trying to patch over that roster was necessary. But maybe nobody could have done that. Maybe nobody could have had the buy-in to fire Buddy Bell.

The confederate flag was the flag chosen for a group trying to start a white supremacist country. That was explicit. While the US has never acted perfectly, it was never founded specifically to be a white supremacist state the way that the confederacy was. So no, "you may as well not remove the American flag", you may was well deal with the issue that you cannot remove white supremacy from the confederacy. It's not about southern culture, lest you say they are also inseparable.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jun 19, 2015 -> 10:15 AM) Why do people like Dave Martinez so much? What has he ever done except stand next to Joe Maddon during games ? Seriously, this guy has been interviewed countless times and never landed a job. I remember when the pitchforks were out for Greg Walker, and the guy here who convinced a few posters that Walker had a "lift and pull" philosophy, wanted the Sox to hire Rudy Jaramillo's "assistant". If he knew what he was talking about, Rudy Jaramillo was the hitting coach with a "lift and pull" philosophy. Just because a guy coaches under Maddon, doesn't mean he's just like Maddon. And really, the Rays sucked last year and finished under .500. Maddon flees, they are devastated by injury, and are in first place. Maybe his genius is overstated. "Blah, you can't care about this issue because some other people cared about another issue at one point and there are different people in this world who do things so we may as well just not do anything ever because choices may lead to different results!"