Balta1701

Today is the 145th day of the year. There have been 103 mass shootings (4 or more shot) in the U.S. this year.

Sigh. At least he had a small enough caliber weapon that it didn't get to double digits, so we don't need to pretend to care about either mental health issues or access to guns.

QUOTE (chisoxfan310 @ May 24, 2014 -> 10:32 AM) With Fielder being out for the year, anyone think that Texas will possibly target Dunn say in about a month? Right now they have a worse record than us and are farther back in their division. With their injuries it might not even be possible for them to turn around this season.

QUOTE (raBBit @ May 23, 2014 -> 04:14 PM) Great post. I like how one year of deviation from the norm completely washes away the org's track record. But we're supposed to forget about Rasmus's.

QUOTE (raBBit @ May 23, 2014 -> 03:14 PM) I really don't think Rasmus is out of the realm of possibility but if Hahn understands that we have been nearly last in defense the last two years one of the ways of changing that is shifting Eaton to LF and bringing in a defensive CF. Rasmus is a LH power hitter who plays a great CF. Kind of a buy low candidate with the injuries he's had. I follow the Blue Jays pretty regularly and their fans find it unlikely that they bring him back. The good news is the White Sox, particularly this season, have an exemplary record of keeping their players healthy so we could be confident at him overcoming those problems if he came to the south side.

QUOTE (southside hitman @ May 23, 2014 -> 02:35 PM) Also Law's thoughts on Kolek's injury concerns. nick (weed,CA) When I see Kolek I see a guy destined for TJ. Everything he throws is max effort, does this thought scare teams away? Klaw (2:20 PM) Completely disagree on the max-effort part. So you're saying it's 99% sure he's going to the White Sox?

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ May 23, 2014 -> 09:40 AM) Do they have the nuts to do it to the fanbase this early in the season though? I mean, the team is .500 and it isn't even June. Tough pill to swallow for ticket sales. If they got an offer that actually included not picking up much remaining money and talent coming back, I can't imagine they'd hesitate.

QUOTE (Marty34 @ May 23, 2014 -> 08:52 AM) The Sabre man just gave you proof that player A is better than player B by virtue of the .3 difference in WAR, there's no denying 7 > 6.7. It's just as laughable as TWTW though. Yes there is if you have a basic understanding of statistics and "margins of error".

So only 8 ks through 4? Guess he's still laboring.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ May 22, 2014 -> 06:01 PM) Keep ignoring the admissions made by the admn Balta, the actual words they used. Whatever helps you stick to that narrative of yours. I don't see the word "liberals" or "democrats" or anything similar in that statement. He does, however, cite the phrase "members of the school community" as having complained.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ May 22, 2014 -> 05:54 PM) Again, at the end of the day, I don't disagree that losing some awards night is a huge deal. It means little in the grand scheme. The issue here is a school admn being concerned and acting for the wrong reasons. Being concerned that underachieving kids are being excluded and that we should change tradition in response to that is a terribly stupid policy. Belittling accomplishment, despite how silly or unimportant it may seem, is wrong. And again I remain impressed with the amount of hyperbole necessary just to get to that word. A perfect example of how this is just using something silly to make a point about a caricature of people you disagree wtih.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ May 22, 2014 -> 05:11 PM) C'mon, you honestly don't think Don Cooper had any opinion about Gio TWICE? Wasn't familiar with him at all? That KW just went all rogue twice and traded him without any commentary from the best pitching coach in baseball? The point is that we also have to hold someone accountable for misjudging talent, if we're going to give Cooper all the credit for choosing to protect Quintana over Santiago (and trading Santiago wasn't even an option, in all likelihood), then who do we blame for Mark Teahen or Nick Swisher? Picking Anderson over Brian Young? Mitchell over Trout, etc.? Davidson looking like he's a bust so far? Ozzie Guillen? Buddy Bell? Why wasn't Cooper able to see that Danks/Floyd would break down and that Buehrle would be a 8-1 and 2ish ERA in 2014? If we want to ascribe all these magical powers to Cooper for the Santiago trade, then shouldn't he also get the blame for Danks/Floyd never taking the next step after 2008 and then breaking down? With the Sox cutting ties to Mark Buehrle when they would have been better off giving Mark $17.5 million per season than Danks $13.5 million? Is Cooper also responsible for Paulino being atrocious, and Erik Johnson regressing? Shouldn't Cooper have been able to see that Zach Stewart and Nestor Molina wouldn't ever amount to anything? We can't just selectively credit Cooper. Why on God's green earth do you keep pretending that the pitching coach would have major inputs on position players? We can certainly "selectively credit/blame" cooper when it comes to the pitching staff.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ May 22, 2014 -> 05:12 PM) This IS on liberals. You're being purposefully dumb if you don't agree with that. Conservatives are equally wrong on the other extreme of this issue ("don't give em anything and don't give them any help, they'll learn on their own!") No, its your caricature of them. Which is the point...something a school administrator does gets picked up, something akin to Fox broacasts it as a scandal because it fits their caricature of people, you go off on a rant, we respond with "why the **** should anyone care" and that somehow proves the point.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ May 22, 2014 -> 05:03 PM) I dunno. Maybe? I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with the separate event, but I really don't understand people being so upset about it, either. The reason why people are happy to get upset about it is that they can blame it on the liberals and say how terrible they are. As we already saw here.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ May 22, 2014 -> 04:49 PM) Gio Gonzalez never pitched in the majors. What the actual f***?

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ May 22, 2014 -> 04:43 PM) If that's the case, then Cooper also felt that Gio Gonzalez and Edwin Jackson couldn't be worked with, too. Or that Brian Anderson would be better than Chris Young. Or that Daniel Hudson and Brandon McCarthy would never amount to anything. That he should have known from looking at Buehrle and Danks that Buehrle would never miss a start and Danks' career would be derailed because of a flaw in his delivery. That Sergio Santos was worth less going forward than Nestor Molina. Something tells me that on the first bolded part, Coop's opinion wasn't allt hat important. On the second bolded part, I've gotten the strong impression that Coop's opinion was key in why both of those trades happened. Even though the first one was awful, even I'll admit, both of those guys have had injury-riddled careers, which might well be why Coop would say to move them.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ May 22, 2014 -> 04:41 PM) So not any part of you took honors courses or did well in school or went to college, etc in order to have someone look at you and be proud and/or impressed with your achievements? Yes, obviously we also went to learn. We went to get a degree and start a career. But for me, a portion of it was how people would see me/think of me going forward. In junior high and high school, when you have little else, those were motivating factors for me and many others. It was special to be a group of 25-30 kids that were in all AP classes and got recognized for it. Just like getting extra tassles at graduation or fighting over class rank. Again, I liken it to a track meet or the Olympics. You perform in those activities to win and when you win you want special recognition for it. You want to stand on that podium on your own. You don't want to be handed a medal at the same time as everyone else at a large ceremony. Just to note...skipped the graduation for the last degree I got. Honestly the college one was nice but was probably more for parents than for me too.

QUOTE (HickoryHuskers @ May 22, 2014 -> 04:22 PM) Well, enough people thought there was a difference between being honored in front of a larger group than a smaller group that they complained about the long-standing tradition. Worth noting, if it became a "media story" big enough to be picked up here, then even if it was really totally innocuous and unimportant, they were going to have the phone ringing off the hook with complaints.

QUOTE (robinventura23 @ May 22, 2014 -> 02:28 PM) There will be an opening at DH next season. I can see them try to put Viciedo there. I can see it, I still think it's the wrong move unless there's an ideal option as a LH hitting outfielder available.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ May 22, 2014 -> 02:27 PM) As a rebuilding team, wouldn't you prefer players with a higher upside as opposed to a higher floor? Some of both would be nice. If we've got Jose Abreu hitting 40 HR in the middle of the lineup and Chris Sale holding together the top of the rotation, a guy who can hit 7th, hit .280, do a decent job fielding, and maybe hit 15 HR is useful. A guy who can give you 200 innings and put up an ERA in the low to mid 4's, covering a spot in the middle of the rotation, similarly very useful.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ May 22, 2014 -> 01:33 PM) But they're losing the distinction. How do you not get that? Instead of being praised and applauded for being good students, they get roped in with the other morons so the morons don't feel bad. It's like having a track meet and instead of giving the winners of the events 5 seconds of recognition during a medals ceremony, they just wait and hand out medals to everyone, including participation medals, at the same time. It's moronic. It's a bunch of politically correct, oh don't hurt anyone's feelings, no one can be different and unique, progressive bulls*** this country has been transitioning to for the last couple of decades. I'm all about being more opened armed and not being such a white/christian/male dominated society, but enough already with this crap about everyone having to be thought of as the same. We're not. We're different. Some kids are smart, some kids are stupid. Some kids are good at sports, some kids suck at sports. Move the f*** along, it's life. It's not equal or fair and the faster kids learn that, the better off they'll be. Just to stress what happened here...."I disagree with liberals and I disagree with this ergo this decision was made because of liberals".

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ May 22, 2014 -> 02:13 PM) Viciedo hasn't played anything but OF since 2011. You can make a big deal out of 3B vs OF. RF vs LF isn't that big of a difference. That excuse is dated now, especially when you see someone like Gordon make the transition flawlessly from 3B to OF. When one of his issues is "how good of a read does he get on a fly ball off the bat" I'd say it's a bigger issue than you let on.

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ May 22, 2014 -> 01:59 PM) No, I guess I don't consider O Swing% an advanced metric. It's just someone counting the number of times a guy swings at pitches out of the zone. Has that not been something obviously relevant for like 70+ years? No. Without modern pitch tracking it's literally impossible to come up with that metric because prior to that there was no record of whether or not a pitch was out of the zone if a guy swung.

QUOTE (southside hitman @ May 22, 2014 -> 11:55 AM) Conor isn't exactly a wizard out there either, but it's probably better than Davidson. With Viciedo's terrible OF defense, I would imagine one of Viciedo/Davidson/Gillaspie would have to go for next year. Again I stress, Viciedo isn't going to be great in the OF, but if you put him in RF and give him time to adapt to the position I still think he can be adequate. He had to switch positions again a month ago. So far in the Sox org his path has been 3b-1b-3b-1b-RF-LF-LF-RF.

QUOTE (Jose Abreu @ May 22, 2014 -> 11:56 AM) Ventura said he's not going over 100. Set it at 98.5. I'll take the over.