Balta1701

QUOTE (Joshua Strong @ Oct 15, 2013 -> 02:30 PM) If Rick Hahn is committed to 'doing things the right way', I think that the rebuild is going to take 3 years, and by the 2017 season starts Chris Sale will only be 27/28 and Avsail Garcia will only be 25 with their best years still ahead of them. Plus guys like Courtney Hawkins, Tyler Danish, and maybe Micker Zapata might be ready to contribute at the major league level. Those last 3 you name will be what, 20-22? Seriously, even if those guys are close to the big leagues there's a good chance they won't be anywhere near ready to contribute at the major league level. They'd still be young for the upper minor league levels, let alone the majors.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Oct 15, 2013 -> 02:28 PM) Cruz's voters and his campaign coffers would love it. Cruz doesn't particularly seem to care what the rest of the GOP thinks, either. It's also possible that some Senators could want to avoid having the decision time come in the House out of concern that the House leadership will give up the fight and would consider using those delaying tactics to prevent the House from taking up the Senate's measure until after the deadline as well.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Oct 15, 2013 -> 01:39 PM) So it now appears it will go down something like this... --Senate is putting together a deal, to hit the floor Wednesday, being crafted by people from both parties. Sounds like extending gov't funding and debt ceiling to Jan/Feb period, adding income verification to ObamaCare, --House is saying they are working on something, but apparently it is just the Republicans, and will include yet more ObamaCare stuff. --Senate will pass their bill, and send it to the house late Wednesday, with Obama's pre-stamp of approval. It will probably pass with relatively bipartisan support. --House may not even get a bill done, and if they do, it will be fully GOP-led, with little or no Dem support. This will put the issue squarely in Boehner's lap as we hit the deadline. He'll have a very difficult decision to make, whether or not to buck his own party core. What will he do? It's worth noting that since a bill isn't already on the floor, if Ted Cruz or another senator wants to single-handedly delay the Senate acting on a bill for several days until after the debt limit deadline is breached, he can do so at this point. There are multiple steps where he can request 30 hours of debate; bringing the bill to the floor, actually acting on the bill, and a third I can't remember right now. Those delays can easily push past the Oct. 17th reported deadline for the Senate to take its initial vote on any bill.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Oct 15, 2013 -> 02:04 PM) 99 losses because of the manager is a reason to eat what essentially is maybe half what Jeff Keppinger makes a season. If that. While this may seem logical, it's simply not how our organization (or really, most of the organizations in Chicago) behave. These guys really hate spending money on 2 coaches at once.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Oct 15, 2013 -> 02:02 PM) As I have stated, better players can transform someone from an idiot to a genius. I would imagine Mattingly's baseball IQ and the way he went about his business wasn't much different from when they were losing to when they were almost unstoppable. People put too much both good and bad on managers. I have even seen people judge managers on the team's record vs. it's pythagorean record. Did you know if you did that, Joe Maddon wouldn't be so highly thought of. This year was only the 2nd time out of his 8 seasons as a manager the team's actual record was better than it's pythagorean. The White Sox were 3 games worse than the pythagorean as well.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Oct 15, 2013 -> 01:45 PM) All you can do is work on the same things. There will be a new hitting coach, so I'm sure there will be something a bit different. What did Mattingly do differently that transformed the Dodgers from a last place team, and about to lose his job,to a team that may win the WS, and a probable extension almost overnight? I really think blaming the 2013 season on spring training is wrong and old. It's already been stated by people who were actually there (Hawk, Stone, Hahn, Robin) that the White Sox actually worked more on fundamentals this past spring than they did in 2012. If it was the country club some here say it was and the Sox lost 99 games, there would be a new manager. Gene Lamont, who won 2 division titles in a row, was fired by the Sox about 30 games into the 1995 season and replaced by Terry Bevington. The reason.......spring training was a country club and they weren't ready to play. JR said as much. Besides, you don't boot grounders in August because they didn't hit you enough fungos in March. This team was bad, but will be better when they get better players. He waived his hands, healed Hanley, healed Greinke, and called up Puig. And just to note...even if the Sox thought Ventura did everything he could have wrong this year...they don't like eating money on contracts unless they have to. You know that as well as I do.

QUOTE (bmags @ Oct 15, 2013 -> 12:14 PM) I'd also be willing to trade a draft pick next year for D tackle help. I don't think with our age we have the ability to waste a year with this talent. Trouble is, I'm not sure the Bears have the cap space to make a trade for anyone better than what's available on the scrap heap. In fact I'm pretty sure they don't.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Oct 15, 2013 -> 12:54 PM) Sounds like it will be Nolasco tonight. In a 7 game series that's the right move.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 15, 2013 -> 10:41 AM) I'll be honest, if I am not getting a young superstar bat, I am not trading Chris Sale. Basically I want his equivalent as a hitter. I want Stanton. I want Trout. I don't want prospects. I'd just like to note, since I haven't said so recently, that basically every time this season people have advocated trading Sale, my immediate response has been something along the lines of "is Trout available yet". Nice to see people coming around to my side .

QUOTE (Soxfest @ Oct 14, 2013 -> 08:54 PM) http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-10...health-coverage Prices in Illinois not good. Read the fine print, they're specifically looking at the "lowest priced plans" when they tally up the deductible and then they quote the price of the premium plan as what he needs to "keep the doctors and network he has now". That's the classic cross up ploy. In reality he'd be getting significantly better coverage under that premium plan, but because the plans are changing that's the only plan that keeps access to every doctor. In reality he will get one of the silver plans and probably find it slightly more expensive than what he was paying but will also have slightly better coverage. The problems with the internet website are legitimate problems. This is standard opposition research. This is the stuff I was expecting, not "its two weeks in and the website doesn't work". That should not be happening at this point.

“@BNightengale: Awful news. Umpire Wally Bell dies from heart attack, per @RobRains.He just worked the #STLCards and #Pirates Series. He was only 48. Terrible”

QUOTE (Rowand44 @ Oct 14, 2013 -> 05:18 PM) Rumblings from fans, nothing out of the organization. We are in a thread inspired by an article saying they would push hard for Granderson.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Oct 14, 2013 -> 04:36 PM) Are all u guys attorneys? So nothing can be improved in our judicial system?? It's perfect as it, with all these delays in cut and dried cases?? This is a family murder where EVERYONE agrees she is guilty including her. As a taxpayer I happen to be appalled at all the delays. Where are the rights for the gawddarn victims???? Tell me please. Do the victims have the right to hearing a complete accounting of the facts and evidence from the police as well? To be sure that the confession they're reading is one they should believe?

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Oct 14, 2013 -> 04:23 PM) If shes guilty, shell go to jail. Maybe today, tomorrow or 2 years from now. Based on the charges I'd find it difficult to believe she's not currently sitting in jail unless she's fabulously wealthy.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 14, 2013 -> 03:58 PM) All outs are not created equally. Any stat that pretends they are is flawed. Pretending that base running mistakes are somehow equal to an infield pop up is just silly. Saying it can't be quantified so therefore it can't be factored isn't good enough either. There is obviously an effect, otherwise it wouldn't be talked about as much as it does when compared to other outs. Common sense tells you that. I can't imagine that the baserunning stats ignore the situation when they're calculating how valuable an out/stolen base/move from first to third is. That should be quite readily quantified by the change in the relative probability of scoring between having the runner on first and the runner retired/extra out.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Oct 14, 2013 -> 01:27 PM) But this is another thing I don't understand. Why are baserunning and offensive metrics never "off", but defensive metrics always can be wrong? What makes offensive numbers foolproof, weighted perfectly, but defense you need a sample size of 3 years. From a statistical point of view only, the answer would be "scatter" or "variability". What that probably tells me is that guys are very inconsistent about which balls at the edge of their range they're actually able to get to, to the point where you need lots and lots of data to come up with some sort of meaningful statistical statement.

QUOTE (Jake @ Oct 14, 2013 -> 10:05 AM) And pretty much any other in-progress experiment that was running on federal grants had to shut down as well, nationwide. Most of these can't exactly be paused Not exactly. If a grant has already been paid to a researcher at a university, then you have the money to keep running (and frankly, I'm not going to shut down an experiment I'm running even if I stop getting paid). The things that actually shut down were things being staffed by federal employees. People working for the CDC, NASA, NIH, government labs like Oak Ridge, Sandia, Livermore, Los Alamos, those guys are the ones who had to shut down immediately and preserve what they could.

QUOTE (oldsox @ Oct 14, 2013 -> 07:32 AM) Correct. I remember one year in Robin's career where he stunk it up defensively, then went back to being good on defense the next year. De Aza needs to stay in left more that last season, but then we have Viciedo there, so Robin has a dilemma. The one thing that keeps driving me nuts is that it wasn't just one guy...it was the entire team that stunk it up defensively last year...after being pretty darn great the previous year.

QUOTE (Tex @ Oct 13, 2013 -> 09:05 PM) Thank you. But out of the thousands and thousands of grad students, how many are doing research like this, and is it typical? 700 scientists in this years program, I'd guess on average 1-1.5 grad students each on average (some lots, some more individual). And just as a reminder, this is on top of the sequester which did the same basic thing nationwide.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 13, 2013 -> 08:55 PM) To be fair, if you actually watched him this year, he was one of the worst defenders and baserunners in all of baseball this year. Plus he got off to the same terrible start the rest of the team did.

Will Boston score this series?

Holy Patriots comeback Batman

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 13, 2013 -> 05:25 PM) So are the other teams that passed on him and Trout. (...and Pujols 15 times).

QUOTE (Tex @ Oct 13, 2013 -> 04:21 PM) Being in the humanities this is all out of my area of expertise so pardon the questions. So how many students do you think are affected by what amounts today as a two week shutdown, and how many students if this goes until the end of the year? How did the research begin without money? How does a month or two, or more delay in receiving the next check have such a disastrous affect for most projects? The problem with the antarctic program is that it's a one-shot deal. 700 scientists are scheduled to travel to U.S. bases in Antarctica this year for science. But, it takes maybe 10+ support people to prepare and operate each of those scientists because the bases are so remote. I can't just go there on a whim. To pull off a field season in Antarctica, I need to start planning 2, 3 years in advance. I need to get advance data, put together satellite data, put together a research plan, develop a very large grant proposal for hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars. To do this right I'm committing at least 6 months, maybe a year of work to it. This time is time I pay for based on whatever I can. Usually for a young faculty member it's time I pay for out of startup funds that the University has given me to start my lab up. Otherwise, it's basically time I'm not quite paid for. That is then followed by 6 months to a year of waiting for the grant proposal review process, and another 6 months of waiting for funds to be released. So now we're talking about ~2 years of planning. Then my grant is approved and the money arrives. Now I have the money to plan my expedition. I start spending some of that money to cover the time I spend planning for the trip. I spend other bits of it on the supplies I need, I spend other bits developing and testing the equipment, then I spend a very large portion of it setting up my travel and booking the resources I need at the site. (The grant money I get from the organization I spend to get there and to pay for my time on the site). Some of that money also goes to support colleagues and grad students working on the project, who may also collect data, prepare for the trip, and maybe even accompany if they're necessary and there is money. Maybe 80% of the funds are spent during that year of preparation. Its like a non-refundable hotel booking and a non-refundable flight. So now I've put 3 years of work into this trip and spent nearly a million dollars. The antarctic bases are only open from September to March. During the Antarctic winter the conditions are too harsh so they close and a skeleton crew hunkers down. In September, I'm finished packing. I catch a series of flights down starting in October or November, flights I paid for and arranged months ago. My gear arrives with me on military-style cargo planes that land on the ice sheets. I then spend a couple weeks preparing to go to the field and then finally get transported out to my field site by whatever transportation I've planned (plane, boat, something to carry across the ice, whatever). I spend maybe a couple weeks at most at the site taking my data and measurements before I have to head back. I then get back to the base and have to gather up everything I've taken, re-pack, and get off the continent before winter sets in again. After that, I'm bringing back measurements, samples, data, whatever, that I can spend a year or maybe several years analyzing, likely in cooperation with other faculty members and grad students. In geology, just preparing samples will take 6 months to a year. Finally, a year, maybe more after the trip, I'm submitting papers based on it. Even if you rush everything, we're talking about 4 years of a person's life relying on this trip. And the single worst point you could cut it off is the October when people are heading down. At that point, the time spent putting together the grant and the trip has already >80% been spent. The money has arrived and has overwhelmingly been spent. That's when these people are getting cut off. Now imagine that they're 2-3 years into a 5 year tenure process. This project has consumed maybe 1/2 or more of their research time just to get to this point. They're counting on this trip to supply the paper(s) that will drive their tenure application. The deadline is 2 years down the road. Starting from scratch is another 3+ year process. There's literally no way to make it go faster; you spend a year waiting on the grant process whether you like it or not. You've already spent years on the project. Your university is expecting you to publish or you won't get tenure. Your grad students are waiting on those samples. There is no "Waiting a month" for the next check here. These people spent the money to get down there. That money is gone. It's not coming back. It's been spent. The government isn't going to double the value of the grants of the people who were cut off, that money was spent and nothing was produced. If the base reopens next week, it will take weeks for the support staff to arrive just to get it back and running. Maybe a few of the people who were scheduled to arrive in December might still be able to salvage their projects, but that's it; anyone who needed time on the ice cap is screwed. Right now, we've probably already lost 80+% of the projects people were going to do because people flew down and are now being evacuated. The money is spent, the time is lost, the government isn't going to just "send the next check". If you want the next check, you're going to have to reapply to the program next year, get approved again, and then head down in the 2015 season if you're lucky. And then think of a grad student who was expecting to work on those samples and be paid for by that grant - that student has no samples to work with. That student can't wait 2 extra years doing nothing until the samples actually arrive. But of course, all this year's projects now have to compete with the projects that would have been funded in 2015, so now a bunch of those projects aren't funded either because that year will have 2x the normal number of good projects submitted to it. The money to get there was already spent, the time was already spent, and it isn't coming back.

QUOTE (Tex @ Oct 13, 2013 -> 04:02 PM) Exactly. I had hoped that academia could make adjustments. They can not. How many grad students are awarded federal money for their projects versus Professors? The complaint was that only long in the tooth professors drink from that well. At least in my science, there are very few grad students at the masters or Ph.D. level who are able to complete a project without some level of support. Many of them will support a portion of their educational expenses through being a teaching assistant, but that money generally cannot be used to fund a research project. Some schools do have dedicated research funds for those purposes, but in that case we're talking about private schools that have large enough endowments to fund those programs. At every school I've been at, including 2 large state schools and 1 private school, the actual research was overwhelmingly funded based on federal grants. If you lose those, you effectively end the students. There isn't anyone else who foots the bill for the majority. You can definitely get private funds but mining and oil companies aren't willing to fund all that much outside of their own groups; they're more than happy for people to do research under federal grants and then hire them afterwards.