Balta1701

QUOTE (fathom @ Oct 17, 2013 -> 09:27 PM) More talk about the Rangers: http://www.cbssports.com/mlb/writer/danny-...eu-to-sign-soon That post was hours ago

QUOTE (ChiSoxFan05 @ Oct 17, 2013 -> 09:09 PM) Obviously he won't do exactly that, but my point is if he has a stellar year but strikes out 200+ times, I'd be worried. A stellar year with that many K's means Ryan Howard numbers, so lower average but 40+ home runs. I can live with that.

QUOTE (ChiSoxFan05 @ Oct 17, 2013 -> 09:02 PM) Yes I am. If he hits .290, 20/85 rookie year, great. But if he does that on top of 250 strikeouts, I'm worried. I have no idea how those numbers could work without a .500 BABIP.

QUOTE (Vance Law @ Oct 17, 2013 -> 09:03 PM) Do Japanese players not count as "international free agents"? Not being sarcastic, is there a different designation for them? I thought Dice-K got like $100 million. Remember that $50 million of that was the posting fee that went to the Japanese franchise he was under contract with.

QUOTE (lasttriptotulsa @ Oct 17, 2013 -> 09:01 PM) We may have just signed the guy said to be the greatest Cuban hitter ever and your worried about his K's? I'm worried about everything. This is a big gamble. If it doesn't work or he struggled like Cespedes this year it really hammers us. We need Konerko level production here, that's a ton of salary for us.

So add Abreu to the haul we got in those trades this year since that's the money.

Nice work Ricky, hope you scouted right and we just signed a multi year all star.

QUOTE (ChiSoxFan05 @ Oct 17, 2013 -> 08:00 PM) John Lannan is a free agent. Kenny's favorite pitcher! Trade Hector for a bat or two, sign Lannan to 1 year deal to give EJ/Rienzo time? Why do EJ/Rienzo need time? Serious Q. Maybe one of them but both stuck in AAA all year?

I hope someone can fill me in on how this predictor translator works: “@enosarris: Abreu's in news, so here's his Davenport Translation (biggest sample): .321/.446/.660. DT for Cespedes .271/.338/.489 (real: 265/.324/.472)”

QUOTE (Baron @ Oct 17, 2013 -> 07:07 PM) Someone on twitter said a decision in the next 2 weeks. Hopefully sooner rather than later. I doubt they'd announce this before the Series ends.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Oct 17, 2013 -> 06:31 PM) Eh its a double edged sword. Higher cost of labor = jobs moving to where lower cost of labor is. Add in the fact that our labor market is artificially controlled through immigration and you have a situation where the labor market is not operating properly. Basically you have labor supply artificially reduced which equals higher cost. You then are also putting a floor. But then again, Im pretty much the only person who actually believes in laissez faire capitalism anymore. So if we are going to run this bastardized protectionist economy, we might as well just do whatever. (insert general grumbling and annoyance) That can also only happen so much though. While it may well be possible to replace some mcDonalds employees with automation, you cannot outsource the entire operation. Furthermore, eventually the people in the "low cost of labor" country start wanting things like clean air and a living wage as well, problems China is starting to deal with today.

QUOTE (Marty34 @ Oct 17, 2013 -> 06:27 PM) If reports are to believed, he'll get the largest contract in franchise history. They need him to hit from day 1. If they're looking to put a competitive club on the field next year, you're 100% right. If all your other statements about how the Sox won't be competitive for years are right, then they could live with him putting up 2 years of a sub-.700 OPS as long as he figures it out and hits 40 HR the next couple years.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Oct 17, 2013 -> 06:10 PM) No one in a modern, developed economy should consider cashiering at a fast food joint a career. And if you end up like that, it's your own fault. Just like it's your fault when you choose to become morbidly obese by eating McDonalds every day, just like you choose to be an addict by taking drugs, just like you choose to end up dying of liver or lung cancer from drinking and smoking throughout your life. We have this amazing thing called free will. You're not a victim of things outside of your control with every decision you make in life. But the 2 kids are. And whether you like it or not, currently we don't allow the government to decide when people are allowed to reproduce. Until we can do that, saying "it's your own fault" isn't good enough because all you do is keep the cycle going.

Link

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Oct 17, 2013 -> 05:24 PM) You can address the s***ty reality she's brought her kids into without accepting and excusing her behavior. How? How exactly can you do that? If you leave her to work a minimum wage job with 2 kids on her own, her kids aren't going to have stable housing, they're going to have terrible nutrition, that's going to impact their development significantly. They're going to be unlikely to go to college, they're likely to wind up in exactly the same situation their mother was in. If you give her family the kind of food aid her kids really need, then you're "accepting and excusing her behavior". She's not getting punished enough! Helping her out is "exactly why this country sucks" and "Forgetting the stupid decisions made by this lady". That's the double-edged sword of having a world where people can work a full time job and still be in poverty. Take your pick, which do you want, to improve the situation for the kids so that they can have a good future or do you want to punish the mom? The right answer should be that you shouldn't be able to work a full time job in a modern, developed economy and wind up that far below the poverty line.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Oct 17, 2013 -> 05:16 PM) Jesus Christ this whole post is exactly why this country sucks. Let's completely forget the stupid decisions this lady made because she's actually the victim of our awful, awful society. If her kids are hungry, that will teach her the appropriate lesson!

QUOTE (Iwritecode @ Oct 17, 2013 -> 04:57 PM) How do we differentiate between the 26-year-old with two kids that wants a "living wage" for 32+ hours a week from the 16 year old that just wants 20 hours a week to buy a few video games? Should they really be paid the the same amount? One of my favorite anecdotes from when these strikes began comes from Republican Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn from TN. She complained how she only made $2.15/hour on the minimum wage when she was a teenager in Mississippi. When you adjusted for inflation, of course which neither she nor the minimum wage does, that winds up between $12-$14 an hour. How do we differentiate between the 16 year old who wants to buy a few video games and the 18 year old working 15 hours a week to try to pay for college? If the 16 year old gets some extra money and puts it away, and that leads to $1000 fewer student loans a few years later, that strikes me as a triumph too.

QUOTE (ChiSox_Sonix @ Oct 17, 2013 -> 04:37 PM) It's probably been mentioned, but does anyone know how was he viewed in relation to Puig and Cespedes before the latter two had their success in MLB? Jonah Keri in 2012 on Abreu..."He just might be the best hitter in the world". (winds up saying he's more likely to wind up about Ryan Howard's level).

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Oct 17, 2013 -> 04:45 PM) Altanta yes. Dodgers last night, amazingly, I saw multiple tweets saying a few thousand seats remained unsold just prior to the game. Also I believe Cleveland was having a very hard time selling out, and not sure they made it. Tampa also definitely fell short. I think in L.A. they're just used to that. It's a big ballpark and people aren't used to getting their early.

QUOTE (Swingandalongonetoleft @ Oct 17, 2013 -> 04:24 PM) It's getting great reviews- almost surprisingly. I avoided checking out any of the pre-release streams of the album, they played 3 of the songs at Wrigley over the summer, but that's the only time I heard anything until it was waiting on my doorstep. I think it's not bad. Once my copy has a few more spins on it I think I'll probably like it more than Backspacer- but I'm having a hard time seeing myself compare it to Vitalogy like I've seen some reviewers do; not sure what copy of Lightning Bolt they were listening to, but it wasn't the one I got... I definitely get the Mind Your Manners/Spin the Black Circle comparison I've seen.

QUOTE (ChiSox_Sonix @ Oct 17, 2013 -> 04:37 PM) It's probably been mentioned, but does anyone know how was he viewed in relation to Puig and Cespedes before the latter two had their success in MLB? This guy was viewed as the best hitter Cuba had to offer. A better hitter than either of them. More complete, more developed, one of the best players Cuba has ever produced. Somewhere at the beginning of this thread there's a post confirming he defected and I reply to it something along the lines of "wait, when Cespedes signed everyone said that he was the best player in Cuba other than this one guy...is this that guy?"

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 17, 2013 -> 04:25 PM) three more dependent on the government ought to warm your heart. No, it doesn't. We should want a system where a person working a full time job is not stuck well below the poverty line. It shouldn't be the government's job to fill in for what corporate America doesn't want to pay.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 17, 2013 -> 04:14 PM) And if you mandate a $15 wage for all of them, most places in that demographic will close, and none will have those jobs. Really not true at all. Labor costs are less than 20% of the cost of a McDonalds Hamburger. Most of their franchises are extraordinarily profitable, and a cost increase of that magnitude would wind up causing only small decreases in profitability if their prices weren't adjusted in response. Of course, closing a few McDonalds would also do wonders for U.S. health care costs, but that's another story.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 17, 2013 -> 04:13 PM) That is a cop out. Making mimimum wage, you can get birth control very cheaply in many places. The biggest problem in your campaign for having this person earn a low wage to teach her a lesson about personal responsibility is how much damage it actually does to the economy when people like this can't grow up. They can't get an education, they can't get good jobs, and they can't contribute to the creation of good jobs. By the report, she had a kid when she was 19 and had been working at McDonalds for 3 years. I can't judge whether she was a high school dropout or not. But my point of view is...if people wind up stuck working minimum wage jobs for a decade+ because of what they did when they were 19, it's not just a personal failure, it's a major negative for society. On top of that, and I'm surprised you haven't figured this out yet...who do you think is paying for the kids? If she's working full time at McDonalds, that earns $17,000 a year before taxes. Unless there's a spouse contributing, that's not nearly enough to support 2 kids, and there's virtually no chance she has actual quality health coverage. Her kids are likely being partially/fully paid for by the taxpayers as well. So I hope it's worth it to you that this person gets their lesson about why they shouldn't have kids.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Oct 17, 2013 -> 04:09 PM) There are some people who question this, saying he might be like a .250 30 homer, .800 OPS guy, which is better than your run of the mill 1B but not by much. There have been a lot of reports too that they are juicing the holy bejeezus out of the ball down in Cuba too which is the reason for a lot of these inflated numbers. If the Sox spend my predicted $72 mil on him and he puts up an OPS in the .700's his first year, I'm going to be blaming the White Sox scouting department and Kenny Williams in particular. He makes a ton of sense but your putting a helluva lot of money on the word of your scouts. They have to be right.