Balta1701

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ May 29, 2014 -> 05:16 PM) How do you figure? It doesn't matter. He refuted that entire 3 paragraph post by saying it was wrong. Isn't that enough?

Writer at Basketball Insiders suggests that Mirotic's buyout might be less than has been previously reported.

QUOTE (raBBit @ May 29, 2014 -> 04:07 PM) I don't understand this argument. Why would a team in offseason give more than desperate team in July? In Beckham's case, his spot is permitting potential future pieces from getting playing time. If you trade Beckham in July, you can give the playing time to Semien/Johnson. In Beckham's case, putting up solid numbers and staying healthy from May on during a full season could certainly help him have better value than after 2 months of a solid performance. Of course, in that case, the White Sox would be assuming the risk of him hurting something and struggling through the 2nd half again. For Ramirez, maybe you can make that case because he's a long-term commitment. Teams might hesitate to commit $10 million of their salary next year to a guy who helps their team in the middle of this season if they think they have FA options. For example, imagine that the Yankees have their eyes set on Hanley Ramirez as their SS next year; if they did, they might not want to trade for Alexei at the deadline this year since they would struggle to find room for all of them.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ May 29, 2014 -> 01:07 PM) I'm still waiting on what law we are missing that would have prevented this. Here's a change I'd make: no media coverage of the killer. Cover the shooting but never make the name, photo or background info of the shooter available, unless he/she is eventually charged and it comes from the trial. When it's a murder suicide, treat it as a suicide. I'd bet a lot of these assholes do this stuff for the attention. Llink

QUOTE (IowaSoxFan @ May 29, 2014 -> 10:07 AM) There will be no Abreu's or Tanaka's and the FA pool is below average to pretty bad, so the Sox may have to take on some bad salary to maximize the return they get in a trade. At this point last year I'm pretty sure I hadn't heard Tanaka's name once.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ May 29, 2014 -> 10:03 AM) We'll see. We have a ton of games on the road in the month of June, with Abreu back starting on Monday. Downs and DeAza, in particular, are the ones under the most scrutiny for the moment. The combined salaries of Downs + De Aza are comparable to what the White Sox ate with Jeff Keppinger. They're nothing.

QUOTE (Buehrle>Wood @ May 29, 2014 -> 09:17 AM) I hate coffee culture as well as the pretentiousness around it. QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ May 29, 2014 -> 09:38 AM) Craft beer is slowly making its way down the same road. Completely and totally disagree. The people who are pretentious about such things have made it possible for me to get a much better quality cup of coffee/bottle of beer without having to become an expert in such things myself.

QUOTE (HickoryHuskers @ May 29, 2014 -> 07:37 AM) Noesi's ERA with the Sox is 4.33, with an ERA+ of 97. And that's also being pushed up by outings where he was clearly gassed and being stretched out, almost spring-training like.

QUOTE (LDF @ May 29, 2014 -> 07:31 AM) here is a question I need help with the answer, if we traded more players and by default, we scale back on the salary, are we going to get our hands slap by the baseball front office??? I taking about how over the weekend the sCrubs were mention and how the commish is looking at them. so does that mean we too should be looked at as well??? The only way that would happen is if we went the route of the Marlins/Astros and sold off everything (including guys like Sale and Quintana). The reason they raised MLBPA's ire in particular is revenue sharing. If they get $40 million from MLB and they spend $30 million on salaries, then the union has a valid point that the revenue sharing isn't helping small market teams be competitive because they're just pocketing the money.

QUOTE (The Ultimate Champion @ May 28, 2014 -> 06:54 PM) I think there's a real chance that Danks can work with the fastball in the 88-90mph range if he can stay there comfortably. He is a lefty with good enough control and secondary stuff, plus there's lot of experience there as well. He could still become a useful piece worth his contract IMO, and the only way you flat out dump the guy is if you're convinced he's a #5 and nothing more. I don't think you dump him for money concerns ATM. It's just too early to write the ending on that guy, especially coming off his last start. If that's the case then there is literally no one on the roster the White Sox need to dump for being overpaid. Dunn is hitting well enough that he could bring an actual trade return of non-zero value at the deadline if he's moved. Danks is the only long-term commitment underperforming as of now. If we're not dumping him for money concerns then we're not dumping anyone for money concerns.

QUOTE (chitownsportsfan @ May 28, 2014 -> 06:36 PM) Yankees could eat the rest of Dunn's salary in a deal as well. Adding him could make a lot of sense for both clubs as the Yankees could use Dunn as well. Why on Earth would the White Sox call this a good thing? At the very least Dunn seems like he's a non-terrible trade chip on his own right now. He's hitting adequately and isn't a long term commitment any more. At the very least the White Sox ought to be able to move Dunn's contract on its own this year if that's what they want to do unless he's hurt. You talk about the Yankees eating the rest of Danks's salary if he keeps pitching the way he has in all but his last start and maybe you'd have something.

QUOTE (Wanne @ May 28, 2014 -> 05:43 PM) If I'm talking to Cashman...Gary Sanchez better be in the discussion. I know he's young for the level but the .723 OPS he's putting up this year at AA doesn't leave me all that excited.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ May 28, 2014 -> 06:06 PM) Because there is no solution. You can't fix crazy. One side of this issue needs to accept that. ‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ May 28, 2014 -> 05:52 PM) Didn't answer the question tho. What would you have passed that would have prevented this? 3 month waiting period? Crazy knows no time limit. 2 round magazine? He stabbed half his victims. I don't know what the CA background check entails, but I do know that there are many people it rejects, including lots of recently retired military. He stabbed 3, possibly making use of a machete. All those were people he had easy access to as his roommates. He then shot 16 others, not counting himself.

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ May 28, 2014 -> 05:24 PM) So everything 'worked' until you get to your point #5. Then it was either the cops who missed something and/or were lazy and didn't want to do the paperwork, or the parents who didn't go far enough when they called the cops. Perhaps he wasn't investigated more because he was from a rich family? So perhaps 'money' got him out of some of the rules the little people have to follow? Or maybe, just maybe, the laws in a "hostile to guns" state are a pathetic joke that helps enable these kinds of tragedies for no good reason.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ May 28, 2014 -> 05:19 PM) Have people actually said "Oh good, only 7 are dead?" Compared to what he could have done had he been armed like the kid in Newtown? Yeah, that's a fair statement.

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ May 28, 2014 -> 04:48 PM) Well you have what turned out to be a crazy person in one of the most gun-hostile states in the country who managed to get a gun. California right NOW has everythign the so-called moderate anti gun groups claim would prevent this. Universal background checks? Check Very strong mental health requirements for gun ownership and possession? Check Full registration? Check Waiting periods before purchasing a firearm? Check Magazine restrictions? Check Assault weapons bad? Check Handgun registration? Check One gun a month? Check Handgun Safety Certificate required to buy a handgun? Microstamping requirement? Check Tell me, what more could have been passed, short of confiscation? Not to mention that they could have at ANY TIME 5150'ed him and put him under involuntary supervision for a brief bit, which would have triggered a notice in the state system that he had guns and had them removed. A couple things worth noting. 1. He didn't have a high capacity magazine. He was forced to reload multiple times. This almost certainly saved lives, his ammunition was distributed amongst dozens of clips. 2. He didn't have an assault weapon. Based on the much higher rate of wounded compared to the recent ones that involved such weapons, again, probably saved lives. 3. Your statement of a "very strong" mental health check shows just how weak the mental health checks are. 4. Wow, one gun a month? I mean, amazingly stringent there. 5. Um, his family actively called the police on him believing him to be a danger to himself and to others. Yes, I think confiscation seems like it would have made sense in this case. If that's not a case for confiscation I don't know what is. The thing that really ought to be realized is how absolutely, ridiculously, pathetically weak the restrictions are in, as you call it, one of the most gun-hostile states in the country. And that's again not even counting his ability to drrive to Nevada.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ May 28, 2014 -> 02:51 PM) I dunno about money, but it certainly centralizes the crime and the city and suburbs are all big fans of that. (it also keeps the poor people in areas that are more polluted and still have higher rates of lead contamination, but that's also a side issue to this discussion even if it may well be the most important detail)

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ May 28, 2014 -> 02:47 PM) Emotional issues with a future is better than no emotional issues and no future IMO. And again, we're talking about kids who are in juvi, jail or dead by the time they're 25 anyway. And what I'm saying is that the data are quite conclusive. The more times you pull kids away from parents, even unfit parents, the more adults you wind up in Jail or dead. You aren't saving kids by taking them out of those homes.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ May 28, 2014 -> 02:39 PM) How is it any worse than going to prison multiple times? You've got to break the cycle of these gangs. How else do you do it unless it becomes a 24/7 removal from the situation for a generation? Edit: Sorry, let me clarify. I think we should ship kids off to military schools or private schools IF they are the type of kids to get in trouble. Obviously if it's a good kid who wants to go to school, shipping them off makes no sense. Not quite sure which ages you're talking about and maybe the effect would decline as the child approached 18, but there is IMO very conclusive data out there which clearly shows the single worst thing you can do for a child is tear it away from its parents and send it somewhere else. Unless the child's life is literally in danger, there is absolutely huge emotional damage from tearing children away from even less-than-fit parents. You literally see worse outcomes from removing kids from homes where drugs are a problem than you do by leaving them in there.

QUOTE (The Ultimate Champion @ May 28, 2014 -> 02:25 PM) Yeah I agree, hopefully we can get something good out of him. TBH I'm not in love with either Beckham or Semien. Micah Johnson is really the guy I'm hoping for here. I really do like Semien based on his performance in the minors but I think they really were over-aggressive with him this season and it's hurting. You could watch his strikeouts go up and his walks go down last year as he moved up levels and that has stuck this season. He put up a .420 OBP at AA last year while only hitting .290. Even with some translation downward from facing better pitching, that's still potentially a guy who we could be talking about maybe a .375 OBP from if he adapted that approach to the bigs, and that'd be just dynamite sitting in front of Abreu. But right now his K-rate is about 2.5 times what it was at AA. That's a guy who is just seriously overmatched right now.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ May 28, 2014 -> 01:56 PM) If the White Sox needed Paddy to tell them Abreu was a ballplayer, they need to scrap the entire minor league deal. They would be beyond clueless. Phil Rogers had been hyping Abreu for several years. Wasn't it also Phil Rogers who spent a couple years hyping Salvador Sanchez?

QUOTE (IowaSoxFan @ May 28, 2014 -> 10:11 AM) It seems like his slider was the big thing that knocked him down in the draft. He went from being projected as a top 10 pick to falling to the Sox in the second allegedly because his slider was not the out pitch that it was in the Cape Cod League the previous summer. So, has he abandoned that pitch now? To me, it seemed if he could get that pitch back up to an acceptable level he would be really successful but from your account, it seems he is working on a cutter along with his fastball and not working the slider in. If thats true, it makes a lot of sense why his K numbers are so pedestrian. Based on the velocities I saw him throwing I don't think I saw a single slider in the game he pitched. I could be wrong of course.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ May 28, 2014 -> 09:23 AM) A lot of white families lost a lot during this crisis too...but lumping them all into "white families" is what makes this comparison look worse than it is. The top 1% of white families in Chicago will largely offset the losses suffered by the bottom 90% of white families. You may not believe this, but I'm a white guy who happens to know a LOT of white families...and not many of them are doing very well compared to the housing boom, so I'd put them in that same group with the black families that lost just as much. Now you've just gotten onto a thread I believe in a lot more. IMO the problem is much more the one you just discussed than the one that has been discussed already. I think that the complete breakdown of how our society distributes wealth is the elephant in the room that underlies this entire discussion and I think fighting that should be our number 1 priority. The top 0.01% have skyrocketed to the detriment of everyone else because they've been able to rig the system. Fix that problem and suddenly you'll discover you've taken large steps towards fixing the others

Maya Angelou, at age 86.