Balta1701

QUOTE (ChiSox_Sonix @ Oct 15, 2014 -> 09:14 AM) You responded to a statement about precautions not being taken at the facility by redirecting to the people the man came into contact with on the outside. It seemed like a deflection. I agree with your second statement, but it appears that either through negligence or ignorance, the hospital also messed this up. Look at the reason why I did that. It's focusing on the hospital. After they inexplicably sent him home, he was contagious and in contact with at least half a dozen people directly and a lot more indirectly, yet they're not coming down with anything and they're close to or passing the point of no return. They were exposed to him before these hospital workers were and so far 0 cases when even 1-2 wouldn't have been surprising. A couple days later he went back to the hospital and the issue was recognized. The people who treated him then are now coming down with this. That means this isn't somehow "becoming more easily transmitted". What it means is that the hospital's decontamination procedures either are terrible or aren't being followed, which is something I've read a number of medical reporters discussing this week anyway. They exposed themselves to concentrated doses of his body fluids somehow; with just a guess, I'd bet it was while removing protective equipment that wasn't fully disinfected because there's lax enforcement of those guidelines anyway.

QUOTE (LDF @ Oct 15, 2014 -> 09:19 AM) and I will accept all your counters. I am just discussing in how long does a player have to pay for their actions. but the above comment, would you be oppose to them being banned? For a first offense? I'd probably oppose that, but throw in a clear coverup like Melky Cabrera attempted and now I'm iffier. And in either case, no I would not sign them at market rate, I'd treat them like a pitcher with a partially torn elbow ligament. Maybe you get lucky but real good chance their performance falls off by a lot at some point, and who knows what else they might do to get around it.

QUOTE (LDF @ Oct 15, 2014 -> 09:09 AM) the point is, they both paid for their actions. now with rose there was a long rule against betting on baseball. the PED was basically new. yeah there is a gray line with PED, but players are playing dumb, with the typically children excuse, "I didn't know it was illegal" Melky Cabrera, who paid $10 grand to have a fake website established to try to cover up that he'd been juicing by saying "oh it came from this place", didn't know it was illegal. Oh, and he also just happened to be doing it during a contract year. Riiiiiiiight.

Teams also often put more limits on guys running as they move up the minors if they've already got their technique down because they want them to work on other things.

QUOTE (ChiSox_Sonix @ Oct 15, 2014 -> 09:02 AM) Why are you trying so hard to defend the hospital? It's pretty obvious precautions and procedures were not followed as they should have been. There are statements from workers backing that up that they were given changing and conflicting orders during this mess. I'm not defending the hospital one bit. I've been saying they f***ed up from basically the beginning. Where did you get that? I'm saying "it's not spreading in any unusual way and there's no reason for this silly panic".

That's unreadable even for you.

QUOTE (LDF @ Oct 15, 2014 -> 09:00 AM) did he or did he not pay for his actions. I am saying by the league standards. he is another analogy, did Pete Rose pay for his actions or did he not? is there a difference in the 2 examples? Would you hire Pete Rose as a coach today?

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Oct 15, 2014 -> 08:40 AM) And the Pirates don't even need Alexei Ramirez anymore, they seem to be happy with Mercer despite his offensive shortcomings. If Polanco makes it, they're pretty much set, although they do need to worry about keeping Martin/Liriano and that pitching staff intact. As mentioned earlier, Tabata and maybe Snider will become/have become expendable, although the team was very happy with Snider's performance the last 2 months after Polanco struggled and had to go back down to the minors. They have some pitching depth but that's the place where they seemingly will need to add with both Liriano and Volquez being FAs and Tallion still on the TJS recovery path.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Oct 15, 2014 -> 07:04 AM) And now a second worker in that hospital has been diagnosed with Ebola. This is either spreading easier than they said it could be, or precautions just weren't taken at that facility. In either case it's now reached the point someone of power needs to step in there and take some forceful/drastic measures. I have a feeling that won't be the last diagnosis. Take a second and actually think. How many people were in contact with Mr. Duncan before he got to the hospital? Remember all the family and children that were quarantined and the closed schools for decontamination? 0 cases out of them so far and by statements today they've "passed the point of greatest risk". People who were living with him so far are uncontaminated.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 3, 2014 -> 05:31 PM) eff Wilson ‏@JeffWilson_FWST 2m2 minutes ago #Rangers say they will interview Jeff Banister, Tim Bogar, Kevin Cash, Alex Cora, Torey Lovullo and Joe McEwing next week for managers job. Link

QUOTE (StRoostifer @ Oct 14, 2014 -> 10:06 PM) Careful now, keep talking realistically and its no longer s*** throwing. I'm not sure Snoddy is enough to be honest but then again I'm not sure what would be enough without being too much. I can definitely see the possibility of some interest in Phegley though. What's makes this difficult is the only other weakness on the Pirates as far as positions go is at 3B with Alvarez's high strikeouts and low BA. I know, let's trade John Danks to the Pirates! The Pirates are now extremely strong at 3b. Josh Harrison had an all star caliber season out of no where and has absolutely taken over that position full time. On top of that, Pedro Alvarez can't play 3b any more, he's got a case of the "yips" where every time he gets a slow ground ball to 3b he air mails the throw into the right field stands. They were trying to shift him over to 1b to have something to use him for late in the season when he had an injury flash. Short version; the Pirates had a guy at 3b who almost won the batting title this year. They're not adding a 3b right now.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Oct 14, 2014 -> 08:07 PM) There are instances where local control is a good idea and instances where it isn't. Can't we stop the partisan bulls*** for one minute and have a discussion that can acknowledge that there are pros and cons to every problem we face? You of all people know better as a scientist. And you know darn well what the reaction would be to enforcing mandates from the federal government that hospitals spend their money to stock up on emergency outbreak response equipment that isn't likely to be used in any given year or to enforcing federal mandates that hospitals practice and double-check and evaluate their anti-contamination and cleaning procedures.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Oct 14, 2014 -> 03:49 PM) I realize CDC can't control a lot but you act like everything is hunky dory when a lot of this is up to unique individual locations / locals and that is extremely difficult to control / manage. The real saving grace we seem to have is the current fact pattern that in general, the virus is not extremely contagious. However, what we should be doing, which is easier to control, is to control protocols of people coming into the country from regions with high risk of ebola. That is much easier to control / manage then all of these individual facilities who may / may not ultimately be prepared. CDC can post and do all it wants, it may not matter at the end of the day. And if we can't be prepared to handle this, I don't even want to think how unprepared we are as a country for something much more contagious and/or unexpected. Just to point out...this is the "local control/central government is bad/small government conservative" telling me how bad things are because things are left up to individual locations. Are there no small government conservatives in an outbreak? And on your latter point, that you don't want to think about how unprepared we are as a country for something worse...well, both the CDC and the NIH have been statutorily directed to spend their money on things other than public health preparedness. The CDC's budget for public health preparedness has been cut by over a billion dollars per year since 2002, money directly out of funding the ability of public health centers to purchase those things. The CDC's total budget is lower in total dollars than it was in 2006. Meanwhile, the NIH's research budget has, like almost all federal science funding, been flat since about 2003 with the exception of the ARRA in 2010, and in real dollars is actually down about 10% since then. Hence why the NIH's head said that we would very likely have a functioning vaccine for this virus if not for the budget situation for the last 10 years. You want to prepare. Fine. Scientists would love to. We have more of them sitting around doing odd jobs than we have money to pay for.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Oct 14, 2014 -> 01:22 PM) In the wake of pretty epic failures of that hospital (medical professionals), and people brazenly ignoring protocols, quarantine, etc., it may be time to instate some temporary drastic measures to curb what will become mass hysteria in the coming weeks of flu season, and instate these protocols before this thing falls off the rails. The last thing we need right now are full ER's because someone has the sniffles, because they read something about Ebola, etc, but it's exactly where we are headed. For example, I know someone working at the hospital by O'Hare that has been designated "the hospital where Ebola patients/threats will be transported too", and everything is confusion, nobody at the hospital knows what to do if/when it happens, nor do they have the equipment on hand to tackle the situation. They don't have the clean/hazmat suits because they're on backorder (lol), among many other issues of personnel and complete lack of training. While I'd urge people to stay calm and understand exactly what Ebola is and how it sperads, there are already plenty of reasons to be on alert at this point, and IMO, the medical professionals of the US have dropped the ball thus far. Just to point out...the CDC is not the point person on those decisions. They can advise but they aren't in control, those decisions are only made by state and local level health departments. They're the ones who have direct control over those decisions, the federal government as it stands now is not built to be able to do that.

QUOTE (StRoostifer @ Oct 14, 2014 -> 12:02 PM) I get what your saying. There's no doubt Lee comes with a risk factor and even I wouldn't count on him for the entire season, more hoping than anything. I am still curious about Domonic Brown and what it would cost to grab him. If he could bounce back he would be perfect for the DH spot. It only makes sense if the Dodgers are willing to spend send that 12M to the Sox when the time comes. 18M for each of the next two seasons is expensive for Ethier don't ya think? I like the idea of grabbing Ethier, just not wild about paying him 18M for the next two years. It also matters whether the Dodgers really are looking for a significant payroll cut. If they need to drop payroll, then it will be really hard for them to take Danks back and send money along.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Oct 14, 2014 -> 10:51 AM) He had one good season after 2004, that's it, then he completely fell off the map offensively. We will never know the truth, but I can't give the benefit of the doubt to anybody from that era. If we look at him in the fan graphs world, he had a 5 WAR season in 2004, a 4 WAR season in 2005 (wow, he was a more valuable player than I thought), a 1.7 WAR season in 2006 after breaking his face in Philly, and a 5.7 WAR season in 2007. He had a solid 3 year run in there, with an injury-issue 4th season, went to San Fran, and totally fell apart there after getting a contract.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Oct 14, 2014 -> 10:38 AM) If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck... "Big guys who play some baseball and have up and down careers" isn't a hard sell there. Rowand had even better seasons than 2004 well after they started testing. I just never found the body type case all that convincing, it always seems like people are stunned by the guys who test positive and then afterwards say they recognized the body type, not beforehand, with the notable exception of Giambi and the THG crew.

QUOTE (Y2JImmy0 @ Oct 14, 2014 -> 10:24 AM) Haha you might as well stop watching sports then. Sports are littered with bad guys. The 2005 White Sox had steroid users on the team and nobody really cared. If you could guarantee me that Melky would come here and solidify the lineup, I don't really care what means he takes to do that. Are we really sure about that? I know Ozuna got suspended but he also had an incredible 2006 that made me guess "maybe he started between 05/06". And yeah, people have whispered about other guys like Rowand but they never even made official lists. Was there anyone else? If nothing else, with the Red Sox winning in 04 behind Manroid and Ortiz, and testing having just started ramping up, the 05 white sox were probably the cleanest champs since maybe the early 1990s, maybe earlier.

QUOTE (Chicago White Sox @ Oct 13, 2014 -> 09:41 PM) DFA candidate? Dude has options left. What in the world are you talking about? If he's as bad as he was last year and shows no improvement with his fastball next year he won't be worth a 40 man spot.

QUOTE (TheFutureIsNear @ Oct 13, 2014 -> 09:21 PM) I just think Johnson still has to have SOME value. There's no way his stuff that made him a top 100 prospect just vanished in 1 year. He's too young for that, some team would take a gamble on him just like we would on Brown after the year he had. But Beck is expendable imo so if he got the deal done I would do it. Ehh no thanks on Lee. That elbow scares me. Now Papelbon? Yeah I think it would make a whole lot of sense for us to listen. The fans hate him there too so there's even more reason for the front office to move him. They were trying pretty desperately to get rid of him at the deadline to no avail. No idea what a Papelbon and Brown package would be though. Carlos Sanchez, Chris Beck, Trayce Thompson, and Chris Bassit? IDK that doesn't really seem like enough, but this is s*** throwing at its finest. Johnson has absolutely no trade value based on his performance this season. None whatsoever. He's a DFA candidate in the eyes of every trade partner, if someone really liked him they just have to wait a few months.

QUOTE (scs787 @ Oct 13, 2014 -> 09:05 PM) It's 2 years post steroids bust and Melky is still hitting. I'm fine if the Sox sign him. The half season .682 OPS Cabrera put up in 2013 doesn't scream "Still hitting". At best its inconsistent.

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Oct 13, 2014 -> 05:16 PM) You left out the word LEGAL. And not NECESSARY, but ACCEPTABLE. I can fathom no potential problem of protestors being tear gassed or having flash-grenades used while armed with semi-automatic assault rifles. Cause you know, we can tell that these guys aren't possessing guns legally. They don't look like legal gun owners somehow.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 13, 2014 -> 04:28 PM) Apparently we are still 50,000 posts away from their total... Hey Balta, wanna talk about the next election for a while? *cracks knuckles*

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Oct 13, 2014 -> 01:27 PM) One difference may be between the passive resistance offered then vs the armed-to-the-teeth (and probably not legally) looking for trouble aspect of the protesting now. Since when do you have a problem with more guns? Even at protests? More guns = everything's always better. The tea party definitely taught me that one, guns are absolutely necessary at protests.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Oct 13, 2014 -> 12:26 PM) That's fine, but I don't think it's unrealistic to think that even if his K rate improves to 25% next year or even 20% at the AAA level that it's outlandish to think he could be in the 27-32% area at the MLB level. Guys will strike out more in the majors because the pitchers are much, much better. Improving his contact ability should be priority #1 and once you get to that point, you can hope that his power improves beyond what it already is. You can't give up on him at this point, but it's hard to count on him at this point too. Pointing that out went more along the "you can't give up on him at this point" lines.