Balta1701

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Oct 22, 2013 -> 08:30 PM) I think it is the average of the top 3 contracts at the position I thought it was top 5, but either way, probably around $18 million.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Oct 22, 2013 -> 06:27 PM) Its theoretically possible, but given the Bears current defense, you arent talking 1-2 players, they are going to need almost half a starting unit minimum. Its possible, but I just think 2 years is the general timeline for a turn around. Even the Bears offense, Jeffery/Marshall were brought in 2 years ago, not this year. Which people are forgetting. That's perfectly fine. The Bears have 4 new starting O-linemen this year and a new tight-end. That's 1/2 a starting unit right there. And that wasn't with an extraordinary amount of cap space either. And you might look back next year and say "Those 2 LB's we drafted in 2013 really made a difference in our defense this year".

Seriously, I have no idea how you can look at the modern NFL and say "it's impossible to completely overhaul one side of the ball in an offseason". The message of the modern NFL is exactly the opposit.e

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Oct 22, 2013 -> 05:43 PM) What young players do the Sox have that really would be foolish to get rid of? The ones who are going to make major steps forwards this year. Which ones are those? I don't know.

QUOTE (ChiSoxFan05 @ Oct 22, 2013 -> 05:41 PM) He also plays 3B/LF. So does Adam Dunn if we want to go to that level.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Oct 22, 2013 -> 05:40 PM) The timeline for problems is a lot shorter than 15 years. And besides, while these efforts do in some ways conflict, that doesn't mean we shouldn't be looking at both the short AND long term. In fact I think that is absolutely necessary. Which is why we passed a fairly large health care law with a number of cost-control measures that will hopefully at least start to fix by far the largest part of the long-term deficit. Now we need to stop ignoring the unemployment part.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 22, 2013 -> 05:36 PM) Ken Davidoff ‏@KenDavidoff 55s Alex Rodriguez's attorney Joe Tacopina said yesterday that A-Rod has "absolutely not" used illegal PEDs recently. http://bit.ly/1h6eMxE "This quote sponsored by the year 2009".

QUOTE (iamshack @ Oct 22, 2013 -> 04:42 PM) I don't agree. I think that year was 2012. In 2014 we're going to need an upgrade at C and 3b and possibly even LF before I feel like we're there. If you're right, then the White Sox need to be targeting McCann and trying to trade for a 3b option using their surplus of pitching, because those are the ways they can find difference-makers at those positions and there aren't obvious better options available the following year. Headley simply isn't an option for me in that case, not with a 1 year contract. If the Sox can't find anyone to trade them a 3b, then they're better off signing Headley as a FA next offseason. Like I said, I'm not going to be mad if you're right and they cut ties with both of the current incumbents...none of them have put up the numbers necessary to earn the position next year if another option is available.

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Oct 22, 2013 -> 04:36 PM) Which is why what we need is a transitional year, which I think is what we will get in 2014. Acquisitions this year should be limited those those that will productive for years and not handcuff us financially. It won't be fun, but we need it. The reason I was big on the Abreu signing is that right now I can say the Sox have a complete roster where if everything goes right and everyone develops and they come out of spring training awake and they remember that they're supposed to catch the ball, this team could compete right now. Without Abreu I would have said they have a gigantic gaping hole at 1b and that would prevent them from competing. If we're going to cut ties with someone now...Viciedo, De Aza, Phegley, Beckham...fine, but in some ways it has to be done based on information I don't have. I don't know how those guys worked with the coaching staff, how they were in the locker room, or what kinds of changes they were willing to make last year. That kind of info has to be big in deciding to replace on of those guys now.

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Oct 22, 2013 -> 04:28 PM) No, that's not true. You don't need to get all the way through dev. You need to get half decent through dev and then start making signings and trades. The signings and trades can even be half of it if you think about the stars you'd be targeting. The problem right now is figuring out which guys are going to be contributors. If Phegley, Viciedo, Abreu, and Garcia all hit next year and Gillaspie regresses, then if we'd done this move already it could put us in the playoffs. But, if Gillaspie and Keppinger in a platoon put up sort of what we might expect them to do and another hitter struggles...well then for example we'd have been much better off replacing Phegley with a high-salary McCann than we would have been taking on Headley. That's the problem...we have talent at a number of spots, but talent often doesn't equal production. To turn this around rapidly we need to replace the guys who won't produce with guys who will. Which ones are they?

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 22, 2013 -> 02:57 PM) I wouldn't be surprised if they were interested, but I wonder where his price is now? I wouldn't give up scraps for him. He's a highly paid, small upgrade on what we currently have at 3b and he's a free agent at the end of the year. That's the exact opposite of what the White Sox should target in trades if they give away anything of value.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 22, 2013 -> 02:51 PM) Let me put it this way, when was the last time the CBO was under-optimistic? About which term? The specific subject here was "interest paid on the national debt". I'd imagine that their 2005 estimates way-over-shot the actual amount paid right now.

Cincinnati names their pitching coach, Bryan Price, as their next manager.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Oct 22, 2013 -> 02:39 PM) Does that team win a division? I don't believe it does. It may win 85 games, but I don't see a division title. The problem is...there's actually a really solid chance that team could win the division or a wild card...but it'd be a major roll of the dice.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 22, 2013 -> 02:26 PM) I would love to see what the CBO projections in 2005 looked like for 2013. A great illustration of why we should focus on the problem at hand now, the continuing unemployment crisis and failure to recover from the 08 crash, rather than focusing on problems that might be the case 15 years from now as we have been.

QUOTE (Tex @ Oct 22, 2013 -> 02:05 PM) So no answer? Can we collect more in taxes? Can we spend less? Or is the size of the deficit the most important thing? Should the deficit be higher? Should it be higher by spending more or collecting less? 1. Yes we could, but doing so will contribute to the weak job market. 2. We definitely could but every time we do so it's putting people out of work. 3. It's flatly unimportant right now. I will worry about how to deal with that when we solve the immediate problem. 4. Yes. Hell, the Fed Chair has spent the last 5 years asking Congress every time he goes there to provide more fiscal support to the economy. 5. It should have been both, but that ship has sailed, we made the call years ago to keep this level of unemployment and focus on the deficit (which we've cut in half through policies already enacted).

QUOTE (Tex @ Oct 22, 2013 -> 01:53 PM) So which number is critical, the amount we can collect in taxes, the amount we spend, or the amount of the deficit? In other words, Do we have to collect only the amount we collect, or could be collect more? Do we have to spend everything that we spend? Do we have to run a deficit or if we could increase A while decreasing B and eliminating C? How about "none of the above, the fact that we're still stuck above 7% unemployment and every year that goes by without getting out of the hole is another $2 trillion dollars that the economy could have produced but doesn't"? That's the big problem and we continue to ignore it in favor of a focus on the deficit.

QUOTE (bbilek1 @ Oct 22, 2013 -> 11:22 AM) If the Reds gave us 3-4 million dollars a year for the duration of Phillips contract I would take him. Phillips has $50 million remaining on his contract, that would leave the White Sox on the hook for $35 million. That's probably more than I'd be willing to pay for him, but I absolutely would not send anything of value along with that trade.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Oct 22, 2013 -> 11:43 AM) Because he is conflating two subjects again. One is a measure of interest payments as part of GDP, the second one is a percentage of federal outlays (which is what we actually care about here). What he's not showing is that, per the CBO, net interest payments as a percentage of budget is projected to more than double in the next decade and keep going up from there. Here's the CBO number which can be compared to the St. Louis Fed number I showed earlier. In the early 1990's the debt interest/GDP ratio was about 3%. The CBO projects that it'll take over 10 years to get to that number again (and that's assuming accelerating economic expansion, which they continue to be wrong about). The fact that it is becoming a problem in the mid-2020's means, as I keep saying, it is not being driven by the short-term budget situation in the least, it is being driven by that brown line; spending on health care, which is assumed to keep going up at 7% a year, a rate that by everyone's agreement is simply unsustainable. However, as the CBO has noted as well, the rate of health care cost increases is dramatically beneath their previous estimates since the PPACA was passed; medicare costs only grew at 3% last year. This has already improved the budgetary situation in the decade of the 2020's by about a trillion dollars. It's not enough to bring the system fully into balance yet because the projections still assume costs will resume growing at 7-8% a year, but we can already see the impact in the form of hundreds of billions of dollars of improvement to the budgetary estimates. Which is exactly what worrying about long term interest payments and deficits 10+ years from now has helped create; a job market that has been stagnant for 3+ years.

QUOTE (Tex @ Oct 22, 2013 -> 11:03 AM) The other area we could look at is what drugs are available over the counter. Down here many people self medicate by visiting pharmacies in Mexico for what we could consider basic drugs. Unfortunately in fixing that problem we have the pharmaceutical lobby in the way, and they're very happy to spend money to keep people dramatically overpaying for drugs.

QUOTE (IlliniKrush @ Oct 22, 2013 -> 01:08 PM) We've all seen the articles and the math - if you jumped into the work force as an "unskilled" worker immediately after high school, you really aren't that bad off compared to the person that went to 7-8+ years of college and has possibly hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay back. Takes a long time to catch up to the HS worker that didn't take out loans and started earning immediately for an extra X amount of years. On average this really isn't true over the long term. It might seem that way when you compare 22 year olds but basically every study finds that the added earnings from a Bachelor's degree compared to a high school degree over a lifetime is at least a million dollars, if not up to 3 million. Yes, that definitely does vary by major, but the data still says that the payoff for education is enormous.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Oct 22, 2013 -> 09:52 AM) You keep ignoring the key point here. Nowhere in your posts are you dealing with the debt service as a percentage of federal spending. I'm pretty sure I did. It's half of what it was in the 1990's right now and despite 5 years of proclamations about how it is going to keep getting worse, it's been trending downwards. Here's a different version. And none of that mentions how right now 1/3 of the interest being paid on the debt is being returned to the treasury by the Fed. There is substantial room for growth in that number before it has any significant impact on the economy...and based on the interest rate on the 30 year bonds right now, the market believes that increases in that number over the next 30 years will be minimal. The reality is there are only 2 things that could drive that number up; a group of insane congresspeople forcing the U.S. into default for no good reason or significant economic expansion. But...significant economic expansion would drive increasing tax revenues that would offset significant fractions of that growth, muting the effect. They can't go up independently unless you default; every mechanism you could suggest for why interest rates would start to rise is a mechanism that requires significant economic growth to get us out of the hole first. This is literally the "in the long run we're all dead" quote. We have a major economic hole right now. If we fill that hole...some bad things might happen causing us to have to adjust policies slightly, fine...but that's no reason to keep a gigantic hole in the economy now. The only thing to worry about, literally the only one in the long-term budget projections is health care spending. If private spending continues going up at 7-8% a year like it was before the PPACA was passed, then we have a major long term problem with that issue. If the PPACA is successful in slowing cost growth (and there is some evidence it already has been somewhat successful in doing so), then the time when we have to deal with that problem moves farther and farther into the future.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Oct 22, 2013 -> 09:44 AM) What's "substantially less"? If it's north of $50/month, that's still ridiculous for someone making under 20k a year with kids. It's a freaking luxury, and anyone who says it's not is completely out of touch with reality. When a standard home telephone plan with internet access costs well over that much...both of which by all accounts are 100% mandatory in modern society at this point...I'd say that "completely out of touch with reality" is a really good summary of your point of view.

QUOTE (Steve9347 @ Oct 22, 2013 -> 09:20 AM) lol at this post When did James Spader become a fantastic character actor?

QUOTE (pittshoganerkoff @ Oct 22, 2013 -> 07:07 AM) Absolutely. I'm really enjoying it. One of the best characters for James Spader in quite a while. Me & the Balta spouse agree with this sentiment, it's quite well done except for the ungodly annoying soundtrack.