Balta1701

QUOTE (bmags @ Aug 7, 2015 -> 10:52 AM) You think there were better republican candidates that lost in 2008 and 2012? No, but I sure think they all came out of them looking poorly.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Aug 7, 2015 -> 10:16 AM) I provided a link a couple of weeks ago with hundreds if not thousands of examples involving people with guns who were able to prevent death or more deaths because of their actions. You, on the other hand, keep with the myth making that people with guns who think they can be heros always, without a doubt, without exception, make situations worse. That's just factually inaccurate. When you can start citing some examples of "heros" accidentally shooting and killing people in their attempts to stop the bad guy, then your point is well taken. Until then, your opinion on this is completely unfounded. Citing to friendly fire incidents with the military in battle is pretty poor. Again, cite some examples when you have soldiers in close quarters with a single gunmen, and the ensuing fire fight involves friendly fire. I bet that's an EXTREMELY rare occurrence. Friendly fire incidents are almost always communication f***-ups, not "oh my god I have a gun and it has a mind of its own and its going to shoot every person in the room because they're so dangerous!" Yes, thousands of people do successfully defend themselves with guns. But no one keeps stats on when someone tries and fails and winds up dead. The only stat we have is things like the FBI stats showing There was an interesting study released a couple weeks ago. It only featured 77 people so it's not statistically significant in any of the groups which means it needs to be done on a larger scale, but its interesting to highlight. They took groups with varying levels of firearms training, including police and down to novices, and put them through 3 scenarios including a carjacking and a convenience store robbery, gave them a weapon and watched how they used it. The people without police level training overwhelmingly got themselves killed and occasionally shot a bystander. They didn't take cover like the police-trained people did, so the assailant with the gun had an easy shot, and they hesitated before pulling the trigger leading to the same result - the armed person shot them as they were preparing to fire. It's a pretty obvious explanation for why as we weaken gun laws we constantly see increasing homicide rates - people who don't deal with these things every day, who aren't constantly training on them and keeping their training up to speed, act like they're untrained. They pull weapons in cases where they don't need to, escalating situations, and when they do pull them in an appropriate situation they make enough mistakes that they get themselves killed. We've had over 600 people killed by police in this country this year. Even the person making this thread keeps making comments about how we need to have police do a better job. They're actively trained on a regular basis and still they make mistakes. Maybe we should actually stop and think about that - if people who train constantly can't be 100% accurate in making those decisions, how on Earth do we expect people who don't train constantly or even, in the case of several states including the one where this first theater shooting happened train at all, to do anything different?

QUOTE (greg775 @ Aug 6, 2015 -> 11:40 PM) "People like me" is kind of an insult but maybe you didn't mean it that way. I am an educated, moral, law abiding citizen. I've been ticketed for speeding a handful of times in my life but that's it. Plus if I am firing randomly and hit an innocent person, I go to jail forever. Law abiding citizens will be careful as their freedom is at stake. You kill somebody besides the killer u are going to jail forever. I think you are not considering the fact deeply enough that I deserve the right to not die in a movie theatre. In a free country shouldn't I have a fighting chance to live?? Frankly I do consider it an insult. I don't think that any person, even a well trained one, is going to figure out how to, under fire, pull out a weapon, take aim, in a crowded room, with people panicking, in a dark room, with loud sound being piped in around you, and actually hit the right person. Moreover, I question the judgment of anyone who thinks that is a shot they could take so much that I don't want them carrying a weapon in the first place. The idea that you'd be able to pull that shot off and hit the right person under fire is so far-fetched that I have no issue saying your judgment is flawed if you think you could pull that shot off. How often do things go wrong in war zones? How often do the wrong people get hit? You're saying you could pull off a shot as difficult as that and I'm just supposed to trust you. I can even give counter examples. The shooter in the case that started this thread was able to walk out of the theater without people recognizing he was the shooter. In the Arizona shooting of Gabby Giffords, a person carrying a concealed weapon was across the street and nearly shot the wrong person because there was a mob and chaos as people tried to tackle the shooter. There's zero reason to believe this hero scenario you're dreaming of actually happens, yet because it makes you feel good you can't let it go. Call that an insult if you want, but if you're dreaming about being the hero and you just push the consequences out of your mind because they're bad...then yes your judgment deserves questioning. Now turn it around the other way. I also don't believe we should die if we are going to movie theaters, or walking down the street, or wherever else. I also don't believe that untrained people who dream of the fantasy of how they're going to be the hero are going to do anything but make the situation worse, because there's virtually no evidence they do anything else. There are about as many cases of kids under 16 shooting themselves or others accidentally as there are of successful self defenses during the year. So I say, given that there's so little evidence this fantasy actually happens, the only way you're actually going to prevent these things is to stop letting every person get their hands on guns so easily. Until we do that, we're just going to have to put up with these things. Eventually it will happen that someone will stop one and the gun rights people will say this proves everythign works, and then in another case someone will shoot two bystanders and that will prove nothing, and in the end we'll just put up with these shootings, with thousands of bodies per year, we'll pretend that having guns around makes us safer and we'll mourn the 7 year old who gets shot by the 5 year old who thought he had a toy and we'll eulogize the victims in the next mass shooting because that's easier than recognizing that there's a reason why it happened and that it could have been prevented or at least much less deadly if everyone in the country didn't have a tool for instant killing easily available.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Aug 7, 2015 -> 12:45 AM) LOL. Hardly any Democratic debates are on tap and the quote in there backs me up about Hilly's "coronation." Seriously, Democratic party should be ashamed of itself. Hillary does not want to get out there and speak so they've cut the number of debates dramatically. She and the Demo hiararchy knows she's already won the election barring her doing something monumentally stupid - something she's not going to do. http://news.yahoo.com/why-democrats-callin...-192004677.html The challengers always want more debates than the front runner. In 2004 John Kerry asked Bush to "debate every week". Frankly, I can't make a better argument for fewer debates than "look at how it worked for the Republican candidates the last 2 times out".

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Aug 7, 2015 -> 09:31 AM) Who do you think, specifically, should get three starting slots in Charlotte? Because I see 2, max, from AA that might be ready - Jaye and Montas. I'd agree that Jaye should come up. Montas maybe too. But the other thing is, BHAM is in a playoff race, and the club tends to like keeping key guys around that as the season comes to a close. I'd also like them to go easy on Montas given that he's still building up innings, but we'll see. Would be nice to get him a AA playoff start after a full season there.

QUOTE (LDF @ Aug 7, 2015 -> 12:01 AM) can you envision him hitting something like 15 hrs and a avg of 270?? In 2012 in a full minor league season tyler hit 9 HR. 2013, 500 PA season, 5 HR. 2014, season was cut short, was on pace for about 15 HR in a full season at Charlotte. 2015, 25 year old at Charlotte, 4 HR in 231 PA - on pace for about 9, although he got off to a slow start while recovering from injury. HR numbers from the minors don't translate directly but they're often instructive. He hits some HR on occasion but usually guys who hit 5-10 in most of their minor league seasons don't come to the big leagues and suddenly start hitting 15 without some additional chemical enhancement. I'd say that 15 HR might be something he could hit once or twice in his career if he had a long, successful big league career, but it seems like a stretch to expect him to come close to that very often.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Aug 6, 2015 -> 05:15 PM) But please respond to my basic premise: Don't I have the right to protect myself and my family from lunatics who come to a darkened theatre to kill me?? I mean is it not my RIGHT? It's unfair to let a madman have such an advantage. Risk of Death is a BIG DEAL IMO. Do I have a right to protect myself by not having people like you armed and randomly firing in dark rooms?

QUOTE (Special K @ Aug 6, 2015 -> 05:25 PM) Tyler Flowers is the least of the Sox problems. We should focus on 3b, SS, 2b, DH and RF, before we worry about catcher. Especially when he's been league average. Someone tell me what our DH offensive production has been this year, I'm sure it's bottom of the league. Same for 3b. Same for SS. Same for 2b and same for RF. Just to note - replacement level does not equal "league average".

QUOTE (LDF @ Aug 6, 2015 -> 03:23 PM) i don't i do think they will never make the playoff again if KW is still calling the shots. That's a rough prediction. It's still baseball. Even poorly put together teams can still get to that 2nd wild card or win a weak division or just get lucky.

QUOTE (HuskyCaucasian @ Aug 6, 2015 -> 01:34 PM) In Cosby's case, he did, in a sense force himself on the women. They were drugged so he could do whatever he wanted. (Or do I have the Cosby stuff wrong) His point is that rape typically is not, in a mental/emotional sense, about a desire for sex.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Aug 5, 2015 -> 11:53 PM) He told people to grow up, that he didn't say all Mexicans who crossed the border are bad. The difference is Trump wouldn't let people force him out of the race on a statement he didnt' mean. He just told people off, told em to grow up and he doesn't think all those who crossed the border into the USA are bad. He did say illegal immigration is bad. It is bad, isn't it?? It's why it's illegal. Really, you're going to come into the Dem thread and lie to my face and expect me to not have a pile of direct quotes to read back to you?

QUOTE (Lemon_44 @ Aug 6, 2015 -> 06:49 AM) I don't get why people are on Avi in the first place. The guy clearly has talent and just because he doesn't come in and light it up from day 1, people want to give up on him. He's been fine this first full year and is not one of the Sox's problems. He's been one of the worst outfielders in baseball and the White Sox insist they have a roster ready to compete right now. If they have a roster ready to compete right now then they can't afford to give time for one of the worst outfielders in baseball to develop.

QUOTE (OmarComing25 @ Aug 6, 2015 -> 02:09 AM) I fail to see how what they did with Rizzo and Arrieta is special or unique in any way. Rizzo was always a highly regarded talent, and struggles at the MLB level at 23 are hardly surprising. He was always going to get time to struggle whether the Cubs were rebuilding or not. How much time did we give Beckham to struggle? How about Viciedo? The Phillies have been giving Domonic Brown a lot of time to struggle, every team does this, especially with guys who have Rizzo's talent level. The White Sox have done this plenty in the last 10 years, often to the point of getting criticized for giving too long of a leash (see Beckham again), and the only true rebuilding year we've had in the last decade was 2014. Even this year we've shown plenty of patience with guys like Sanchez. How many teams would have cut their losses after his performance the first 6 weeks, and these guys don't have the talent that Rizzo does. As for Arrieta, the move the Cubs made with him is the same move that every team makes every year. Teams take flyers on talented pitchers all the time that haven't put it together yet. How is letting Arrieta struggle in Iowa different than us continuing to give Drabek starts in Charlotte? I just fail to see how those two guys' successes were from rebuilding, you can do those exact same types of moves while trying to compete (and the White Sox have a lot). We had plenty of time to develop Gordon Beckham but look how that turned out. Many of the Cubs' young hitters are struggling right now and they're no longer rebuilding. They're still going to give them time to struggle. I don't see the difference between now and when Rizzo was struggling too, it's the same idea. It's not unique or special except when you look at a team like the White Sox where they have a talented right fielder who started the season at age 23 and who we were counting on to be the #5 hitter on a contending team so much that we traded away a bunch of pieces for a starter with 1 year before free agency. Or when you look at a team like the White Sox counting on a 24 year old 2b to leapfrog over AAA almost completely and be a key contributor to the lineup on a contending team. Or when you look at the White Sox calling up a 22 year old starter with like 25 innings out of college and expecting him to be a key piece in the rotation on a contending team. Not every player you give time to develop is going to succeed. Listing names of guys who failed doesn't mean that you will never find guys who are late bloomers. If Drabek doesn't succeed in AAA it doesn't make Jake Arrieta no longer exist. If Avi Garcia remains a .675 OPS hitter for the rest of his career Anthony Rizzo doesn't suddenly vanish from existence. The thing they did that is different from what we did is they gave guys a chance to struggle. When guys didn't work out, they weren't screwed by it. When guys needed time to become good players, they weren't suddenly trying to figure out what to do with the big player they traded for who will become a free agent at the end of the year. Their worst mistake out of that time was going to the FA market for one big name pitcher in a way that totally didn't fit what they were doing otherwise, and even then they didn't give up a draft pick to sign him like we did with two positions this year. When our 2b position guys turned out to need a couple months to grow into big league hitters it majorly screwed us. When our 23 year old wasn't ready to carry a roster it was exceptionally damaging. Those were things that people should have seen coming easily. Those were positions where we needed to recognize - "hey, we're not quite there yet, let's give these guys time to struggle and see what they become". And maybe even "let's look into backup plans, keep acquiring talent that isn't quite there because we don't know what every guy will do."

QUOTE (OmarComing25 @ Aug 5, 2015 -> 10:17 PM) His DRS is -3 though, which is 115th out of 138 players who have played at 3b this season. This feels like the opposite case of Adam Eaton last year, who ranked well by DRS but poorly by UZR. http://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/...-fielding.shtml That's a completely ridiculous way of looking at it because it looks like 75 of those players have played fewer than 10 games there and even if they're terrible they wouldn't have a DRS more than +3 or lower than -3 so they're all hanging around zero. The way it looks to me there's 15-20 part or full time 3b who are measurably worse than him based on DRS also. So he's certainly not the best 3b in the league and no one would say so...but for a 23 year old in his first season, there's nothing there saying "he must be moved from this position soon."

QUOTE (SoxPride18 @ Aug 5, 2015 -> 09:54 PM) Bryant is not a third basemen. Hurts his value when he has to go to left eventually. His OPS has dipped under 800 now. Granted he's a rookie, but a lot more expectations than what he has done. Sorting on defense for 3b in Fangraphs, he's 9th out of 21 qualified 3b in defensive value.

QUOTE (OmarComing25 @ Aug 5, 2015 -> 06:15 PM) I asked in an earlier post, when should we have done a complete rebuild? There was no logical situation for it until 2013, which wasn't intended to be a rebuilding year but turned into one anyway. How does that mean we're LOOOONG overdue for one? There was nothing to tear down at the end of 2013, our only assets were Quintana and Sale, both at 24 years old and both the exact kind of players you rebuild around. What year should we have gone for the rebuild? As others have pointed out, there's not necessarily a need to do a complete rebuild with the parity and second wildcard. Look at this season, 84 wins could end up being enough for both wildcard positions the way things are playing out right now. I think the thought process really went off the rails in the 2014 offseason. Fine, Adam Dunn and the 2011 team turned into a disaster. 2012 was somehow better, then in 2013 we had to begin tearing things down. We moved off Peavy, we cleared salary, we started giving time to young guys. We successfully brought in Abreu, so we started gathering pieces...then the 2014 offseason hit. In the 2014 offseason was where we really blew it. We made so many basic errors, so many flaws in our thought process. That's where we shortcut the path we were on that could have actually worked and could have actually worked at building a strong, deep roster. First on that list is that we couldn't be patient, we couldn't give time for guys to adapt to the big leagues, we knew with absolute certainty that they were ready to go and big leaguers never need time to grow into the league. Avi Garcia was ready right now and we were sure of it. Micah Johnson could jump completely over AAA because we said he would. Carlos Rodon was going to improve our record this season by 10 wins. Then we threw in a nice batch of assuming some guys would develop while other guys never would, because we said so. Phegley and Semien would never develop into anything useful because we said they wouldn't. Bassitt was talented but he's a reliever, guys never improve on their offspeed stuff. But hey, here's a big name pitcher off of a career best year. And the fan base fully bought in, continued declaring in the same breath that we gave up so little for that pitcher and then wondering how we had an organization with so little depth. Then there's the failure to assess risk. Conor Gillaspie and Tyler Flowers were going to be solid players because they had 1 year that showed it. There was no risk of them taking steps back. Abreu and Eaton were guaranteed to have better seasons than 2014. Alexei Ramirez had no risk of getting older and therefore we had to hold him because we can't afford to give anyone time to grow into his spot. Chris Sale's arm is rubber. Then there's the failure to think about defense. And yes, some of the guys they traded away weren't going to help with that, but then we plugged in guys who were no better, and we weren't willing to give guys time to improve on their defense or grow into positions. Then there's the assumption that paying full value on the free agent market is a good deal. That's just a lesson we need to learn, it's flat out not working for us. Or really, most teams - the teams that had great FA spending sprees last offseason are overwhelmingly disappointing right now. So fine, the team didn't have an obvious time to "rebuild" coming into 2014, but then they started the process in 2014 and then short circuited it. They couldn't be patient. They couldn't pass on 2015 and use it as a year to grow some guys up while filtering out the unsuccessful ones. They couldn't give people time to grow into their roles. They went for the big names instead of making sure they were deep with guys who could grow into contributors. They bet hugely on the whole roster taking big steps forwards and in the process, they set themselves back substantially. They had time, they had a roster that could have grown together and then had tiny holes to fill, instead they went for the big splashes, they had to compete right now, full speed ahead and bleep the torpedoes. And the end result is that now we're back to having to fill gaping holes on the FA market and worrying about a roster with little depth and we'll need to rely on rookies and we've got a lot of weak defenders but I'm sure it'll work better in 2016 so let's spend big again.

QUOTE (OmarComing25 @ Aug 5, 2015 -> 07:26 PM) The Cubs are held up as an example of a complete rebuild yielding results, yet by far the biggest reason for their success this year - their pitching, had largely nothing to do with the rebuild. You have the free agents (Lester, Hammel) and the guys picked up off the scrap heap (Arrieta, Strop, Rondon, James Russell). Those are moves that can be done without rebuilding, and they're going to drop another $25 million/year on a pitcher this offseason as well. Their best position player was also acquired through sketchy means (Rizzo). If Arrieta pitched like he did in Baltimore and Hammel pitched like he did in Oakland last year, then the Cubs are likely nowhere near a playoff spot. You could argue that their eye for talent is great and the reason why so many of their scrap heap moves work out, and I wouldn't disagree, and yes they still have a lot of young talent that came from the rebuild, but my main point is so far it's the non-rebuilding moves that have led to their success. If we had a few similar scrap heap moves break right for us on the position side, then we'd be right there for a playoff spot too. I'm just not convinced a complete breakdown is the right move. For one I don't trust this organization to execute it correctly, and also the Pirates and Royals were in rebuilding mode for 20+ years before it finally worked out. We'd be punting on several seasons, and there's no guarantee we'd be better off afterwards than we are now. You can rebuild without doing a complete teardown. But looking beyond how they got Bryant...look at the other parts of that list and how they got them. With Rizzo they didn't just defraud the Padres, they did something really important. They gave him time to struggle. They gave him the 2013 season where he hit .233 and they didn't say "this 23 year old is going to be a key part right now and he's going to carry us to the division". They picked up Arrieta and didn't discard him when he put up a 1.5 WHIP in his first 7 starts at Iowa. They gave a talented but failed 27 year old a chance to see if he could turn into anything. They did that with enough guys and turned one of them into an ace quality pitcher. Why were they able to do that? Because in addition to piling up draft picks like Bryant...they also piled up castoffs from teams that were ready to "win now". From teams that did "all in" deals and left themselves no room for the guys that weren't 100% ready to go right now. They picked up scrap heap guys and used their other big advantage - time - to turn as many of them into contributing, controlled, long term pieces as they could because they didn't insist that their team was ready to go because it had to be.

QUOTE (LDF @ Aug 5, 2015 -> 06:42 PM) here is a wild arse statement. would the new ownership keep the team in chi??? The team's lease on the ballpark runs through 2029. Between the deal with the TV network and the sweetheart deals that the ownership group got for the ballpark, including the revenue from parking, they're going to be in Chicago at least until that point. That's so far in the future it's impossible to predict how things will evolve in terms of financing options for new buildings, growth in other parts of the country, etc. 5 years ago no one would have predicted the kind of insane TV money deals that are commonplace now, just to show how rapidly the economics are changing.

QUOTE (shipps @ Aug 5, 2015 -> 05:31 PM) what happened? at work They walked Abreu and Cabrera intentionally and then walked Garcia unintentionally, the Garcia walk was with the bases loaded and that drove Eaton home. 3 straight walks, 2 intentional, to end the game.

Well that's an interesting way to end a game.

Rays just sacrificed their DH slot.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Aug 5, 2015 -> 05:24 PM) I bet Eaton goes if Alexei wasn't out by 2 miles the ither night Throw was close but maybe a bit up the 3b line.

I think Eaton would have had a good chance at scoring there...but Abreu is on deck and Melky is up afterwards. Take the chances with the next guy.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Aug 5, 2015 -> 05:21 PM) Did the throw hit Cabrera? Or the high slide? The ball hit his right shoulder then bounced up and hit his head. It missed the glove while he was turning his head towards the tag. Took his eyes off it and just assumed it would go into the glove.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Aug 5, 2015 -> 05:20 PM) Well, he doesn't have a university degree, right? When's the last time we elected a president without that minimum level of education? Again, I don't care about this. Others here might tell you I'm not exactly very likely to vote for Scott Walker, but there's no education requirement for the Presidency.