bmags

I found the len bias one very disappointing, but the 2 Escobars was unreal good. I'm excited for this one.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Nov 2, 2011 -> 07:16 PM) unless something drastically changes I am willing to admit I was very wrong on Carcillo. I guess Q and Bowman were able to squeeze only the good stuff out of him so far. You know, all my friends from philly said that we would end up loving him.

Ginn was drafted that high because of devin hester.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Nov 2, 2011 -> 05:37 PM) Raines protected everyone. Except hiimself

QUOTE (Milkman delivers @ Nov 2, 2011 -> 03:26 AM) It's nice to finally be on the receiving end of one of those Gold Gloves for life thing. haha

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Nov 1, 2011 -> 09:38 PM) Oh god. Dude, really? The value of the walk is not JUST getting on base, it's having the plate discipline to only swing at good pitches. You want a case study on this? Watch 35 yo Paul Konerko hit. Bat speed diminished, and it doesn't matter because he never swings at anything except the pitch he wants to hit. The only time he ever even swings at a breaking ball is when it hangs or when it fools him. The idea behind the 'Moneyball' approach is to not make stupid outs by swinging at bad pitches just because you're Jason Bay and there's a man on third. Guess what? I'll take a walk over a broken bad drippler or a K in absolutely every situation. If you show you're willing to take your base, the pitcher has no choice but to throw you strikes, and THAT's when guys mash. Why do all the elite hitters have high OBPs? Because they know which pitches to swing at and aren't afraid to let the pitcher put them on if they won't throw it. This in turn forces the pitcher to put on down Main Street when he gets behind in the count. If you get aggressive because of the situation, the pitcher can just throw you sliders and let you get yourself out. I'm sick of the BS Ozzie Guillen-style ego-ball. Yeah, let's tell Adam Dunn to swing at MORE bad pitches because he's a 'run producer.' The reason he sucked last year was because he couldn't even hit GOOD pitches. His plate discipline is what made him awesome and preserving it is his only hope at bouncing back. This was feisty. I liked it.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Nov 1, 2011 -> 09:15 PM) Also, this latest Greece episode is laughable. The Euro zone decides to give Greece a whole bunch of money, and cut their debt in half, in exchange for further austerity and tax measures. Greek leadership says OK. Then Greek President goes on TV and says he wants to put it to a vote with his people. Oops. Greece may decide to vote itself into financial oblivion. It would be laughable if it didn't affect more than greece.

I don't know, seems like a convoluted message. Do we want them to be so aggressive they'll swing at a bad pitch instead of getting on the base paths and prolonging the inning?

so he's a mathematician?

If they wanted grinders why not bring in Daren Erstad??!??!?!?!?!?

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Nov 1, 2011 -> 07:03 PM) I have a few problems with hard slotting. At what point do you stop the slotting process? Do you have a hard slot through the first 10 rounds perhaps and then set a maximum salary and signing bonus that players can sign for beyond that? The NFL has gone to a hard slot and, as far as I was aware, there were no real holdouts from anyone and the NFL only had a month or so to negotiate contracts whereas in years past, they've had 4 months to do so and still have had holdouts. But there are only 7 rounds in the NFL, compared to 50 in baseball. On top of that, you can only enter the NFL and NBA drafts once (EDIT: correction, you can enter the NBA draft multiple times, but you have a set date to pull out by and if you sign with an agent, you can not go back to college), whereas in the MLB, you can enter the draft 3 times (and there may be exceptions to the rules where you can enter more than that, though I'm not perfectly clear on the rules). So what happens if you draft Bob Pole 1st overall as a junior in college and he simply doesn't want to sign for the hard slot? That's a pretty impossible situation for that team. Drawing from that, how are you going to prevent a player from simply turning down the hard slot money? You could simply have said player be assigned to that team for the rest of his career or for a year or whatever, but if he doesn't want to play with that team for that money, he's not going to. And then he's just going to re-enter the draft the following season and small-market teams will avoid him like the plague, but then he's going to get less money while having a year wasted in his development as a player. And, seriously, how many times are you going to be able to enter the draft? You almost have to limit it to once, but then you will get fewer high schoolers involved, which means less development from a team standpoint and more from whatever college said player attends, which may not be what MLB teams want. That's not to say college players don't develop into superstars...the greatest player in White Sox history went to Auburn...just that there are teams that prefer to develop their own players. On top of all of that, the MLB draft is still an absolute crapshoot, even more than the NBA and NFL. In both of those, you have a failure of a draft if you don't develop a superstar or like 50% starters or extremely valuable role players within those. If you got any of that in an MLB draft - one superstar or even 25% of your draft becoming valuable role players - you are already having an incredible draft and if those role players turn into good starters, one of the best drafts of the past 5-10 years. I don't see any way that hard slotting is somehow going to improve the 50+% bust rate of 1st round picks while very possibly not significantly cutting 1st round costs (except in the case of a Stephen Strasburg type). There is also the argument that some teams would rather build their team in the middle rounds as opposed to the higher rounds because it is cheaper and they have enough faith in their developmental system that they can afford to. The best pitching prospect in the game right now was drafted in the 8th round and one of the best hitting prospects was a 20th round draft pick, and for years Brian Sabean would sign guys before there were even offered arbitration, signifying to the former team that they could offer arbitration freely because he did not want his first round pick (the best example I can think of with regards to this is Ray Durham, and I recall reading several articles at the time citing the exact thing I just said). And, in the end, player compensation through Type A and B statuses will either be eliminated or significantly reduced because you will have to allow for the trading of draft picks...I don't see any way you can do this without having the ability to trade draft picks, just as in the NBA and NFL. I see far too many problems with hard slotting right now to allow it. The best bet is to simply go with the soft slot and hard luxury tax for the time being and if the need arises 5-10 years from now to tackle it then. What if you created a total draft budget, for all teams, with a hard luxury tax on any salary on the draft over that budget. That would allow teams to spend a little more to get that high schooler to sign, but it would come at the expense of some later picks, whom may be drafted based on signability.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Nov 1, 2011 -> 04:11 PM) I have a big ass Jeep (with a hemi), and the main reason is getting into a bad accident with my little infiniti and literally being inches away from it killing me since it crumbled so easily. Theres just something more comforting about being in a 5k+ lb SUV. Plus the storage space has been really nice and during last years snow storm it completely owned that s***. that's why i support slower speed limits. edit: also, a yaris isn't a smart car.

In the city, I see no benefit to having a big SUV. My gf has a toyota yaris, I'm always amazed at the spaces we can fit ourselves into.

QUOTE (bigruss22 @ Nov 1, 2011 -> 05:49 AM) So Ive been talking a bit about with my manager about my start time for once I graduate, so that we can both plan things out. I want to, and he's encouraging heavily, for me to pursue my MBA part time as soon as I can, like within a year of undergrad graduation to be enrolled. That said, has anyone here taken the GMAT? How many study hours do I need to plan on? Good resources to buy? And while we are on the subject, what opinions do you guys ahve about the B-schools in Chicago? Obviously Kellogg and Booth are top in the country, but for part time (and a more reasonable expectation) I've heard decent/good things about Depaul/Loyola/UIC. They also cost less than half of Kellogg (I could afford the extra cost, but for going within a year out of undergrad that means I would be living at home for awhile ). I find that ridiculous. Most of those schools would want you to have 3 years experience anyway. If your manager wants you to do that, i hope his company helps their employees with the cost. These next few years should help guide you toward what kind of business you actually like working in, then use the MBA to give you a final launch toward it. I don't agree with your manager, but whatever. Of MBAs, i'd imagine UIC is the best. What you will need to work on most is the math section. I imagine you haven't done algebra, etc, for years.

Pre Pat Burrell being just absolute trash with a crappy contract, he had one pretty awful year before recovering back to .890 OPS seasons.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Oct 31, 2011 -> 06:48 PM) The problem is the fawning, not that's he's religious or vocal about it. Warner is an evangelical born-again Christian and active in that community, but no one really dislikes him because of it. Probably because the media didn't waste so much time obsessing over it. I love Kurt Warner. One of my favorite QBs ever.

I'm going to go out on a fake limb...I guarantee the bears will beat the lions at soldier field.

fwiw, only Parent irks me. I'm glad McEwing is getting a promotion, and I like Manto. but Parent's hiring is terrible.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Oct 31, 2011 -> 03:39 PM) If that's the case...that's an issue which is coachable/learnable with time and a good QB coach. Does denver even have a QB Coach? Dude, you don't need to be coached to learn that. It's not like that should be an epiphony moment for Tebow. "No no, son, you are supposed to throw it to where he WILL be in the route, he doesn't just stop right to where you throw it." "OHHHHHHHHHHHHHH I get it!"

I'm starting to be under the impression, that the good QBs would have made it regardless of when they started playing. The 'it worked for this guy, but this guy started TOO early, but this guy needed to be on the bench" I don't find that compelling. What about Cam Newton makes him better for starting now as opposed to Alex Smith? I thought Newton was just as raw.

SLOTS! SLOTS! SLOTS-SLOTS-SLOTS-SLOTS! I wonder if the union would take slots if players would only be under team control for 4 years. Seems reasonable enough to me. The top players out of the draft make too much and are a crap shoot, but the ones that do make it, get underpaid for most of their prime.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Oct 31, 2011 -> 03:34 PM) True, but they weren't gonna make the playoffs whether the QB was Orton, Tebow, or Quinn. You might as well throw him out there for a couple games. He was just a 1st-round pick from the previous administration, so you can't just dump him. It's not like the AFC west is gangbusters.

I think Tebow's two performances have gone beyond "struggles". You look at blaine gabbert and that looks like pretty typical rookie struggling. Some promise, jittery in the pocket, trouble reading defenses. Tebow's isn't that. He can't throw the ball. His mechanics are atrocious, and they are coupled with poor arm strength AND accuracy. http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/news?slug=ms-s...truggles_103111 You don't really see those come out about qbs just because they are learning.

Saw moneyball today. I thought it was good. Could have shaved 15 minutes off the end, but I thought they did do a good job condensing Beane's backstory and motivation for why he would be willing to look differently at scouting. Though I really wish they would hammer home more that it was about value and not explicitly stats vs. old guard. It waters down the "yeah but the A's suck now!" element...because obviously OBP was not as undervalued as it was then, and he was on a budget.

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