Balta1701

QUOTE (Milkman delivers @ Dec 1, 2012 -> 01:44 PM) Bet against the Chiefs. Seriously though, every single player on that team has to be contemplating suicide each week. I have respect for them for not taking the easy way out. No.

QUOTE (Harry Chappas @ Nov 30, 2012 -> 05:18 PM) Hawk Harrelson lives in South Bend (Really?)

QUOTE (chw42 @ Nov 30, 2012 -> 02:24 PM) Hanson changed his mechanics for the better last year, which may have had something to do with the velocity drop. Nevertheless, his mechanics just aren't good, even after he's tweaked them. Like I said, he also was dealing with shoulder issues, and those are always worrisome.

QUOTE (2nd_city_saint787 @ Nov 30, 2012 -> 01:37 PM) So is Leesman another Axelrod type who despite his good numbers in AAA we still don't think he's legit? You can feel free to add those 2 to the list as well...basically, you've got 6 candidates who could pitch in a pinch, a couple of whom are probably going to wind up contributing in the bullpen...even if you don't have a Chris Sale immediate star in there...that's a lot of usable arms.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Nov 30, 2012 -> 01:04 PM) Really nice deal for the Angels. Hanson has struggled but he has #1-2 starter potential. Who'd they give up? And Hanson also has some worrisome sh oulder issues.

QUOTE (spiderman @ Nov 30, 2012 -> 12:17 PM) Although they have some decent depth after Peavy & Sale with Danks hopefully on his way back followed by Floyd and Quintana with Santiago in the mix as well, they do have to be extremely careful with this rotation. Sale and Peavy both have durability issues (although last year went well), Danks is an unknown and Quintana in my opinion is more likely to be a gas can. Perhaps adding another lower end arm to the mix will help if the Sox do decide to occasionally use a 6 man rotation type at times. Even if Quintana is a gas can this year, the Sox still have the makings of a substantial amount of pitching depth in their upper minors, when you count Castro, Santiago, and Rienzo, with Johnson probably a bit farther behind. They might not all succeed, but they're all at about the place where they could reasonably compete for a rotation spot already. So you don't have to have a lot of confidence in each individual guy, but there's talent that can step in if people do become unreliable and hopefully gain experience/give some tolerable outings as well.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Nov 30, 2012 -> 10:40 AM) I'm not saying that didn't help. It most assuredly did. But you don't combat the falling prices elsewhere by raising your own here. No...but if there's a limit to how low you can reduce your prices (which, unless you're building a Palazzo on Michigan Avenue sometime soon)...you are left with the options of taking advantage of the marketplace you do have (selling Chicago, i.e. like the Auto show) or offering a higher quality product.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Nov 30, 2012 -> 10:36 AM) Yeah that's no good. Honestly i wouldn't be surprised if one or both of those units never comes back online. They shouldn't...but not (entirely) because of this event.

And you get to ignore the actual hotel/city conditions and tourism completely, because every negative thing ever must be 100% the fault of the unions.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Nov 30, 2012 -> 10:31 AM) The flee from Chicago convention centers didn't happen until the mid 2000s. Also, I'm not saying you don't have a point, you do...Vegas could have simply priced Chicago out with their new availability...but that said, it wasn't hard to price Chicago out when they require you to hire a certain number of electricians, plumbers, etc...when your actual requirements are far less than they force you to hire. This is, again, what protectionism gets you. And it's also much easier to price Chicago out when Chicago has 30k hotel rooms and Vegas has 100k+ hotel rooms, with more tourism seasonality, gambling supplements, and strip level nightlife/entertainment...all of which have improved over the last decade at the same time as you're saying the Chicago Convention market dried up.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Nov 30, 2012 -> 10:24 AM) Even allowing you to make this ridiculous point. Chicago was a booming convention town as little as 10 years ago. So, what exactly happened in the past 10 years? Vegas was already rebuilt...Vegas already had huge convention centers...but people continued coming here. Why? And why did they suddenly stop in the 2000's? Did they suddenly realize Vegas had hotel rooms? You're ridiculous. So wait, the Unions in Chicago had no power 10 years ago and they gained all that power in 10 years to sabotage the convention industry? Well that's straight amazing.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Nov 30, 2012 -> 10:24 AM) Again, 20 years ago Vegas was still hotel heavy, before it was rebuilt, before the Mirage. So again, your point is rendered moot. When the point is "you guys will reflexively blame unions for everything you don't like and find a way to look past every other economic reality", I think your saying that Las Vegas hasn't improved as a convention destination massively in the past 20 years and ignoring the fact that it has 5x the number of hotel rooms available as chicago pretty well illustrates it.

I think I can literally stop reading when you say that Las Vegas didn't become "Hotel heavy" over the past 20 years. 20 years ago the Mirage opened. Since that time, basically the entire strip has been rebuilt, massively increasing the availability of hotel rooms...and oh yeah, the LV convention center underwent a major renovation to expand space in 1990, and another in 1998.

Holy bleep...apparently this happened.

QUOTE (Chicago White Sox @ Nov 30, 2012 -> 09:37 AM) We already signed Wise for next year, so bringing back Johnson would only leave a reserve infielder and backup catcher left to find if we go with a 4 man bench. And quite frankly, in a perfect world our reserve infielder and backup catcher should be left-handed. That probably doesn't happen, but if it did, we'd have an all left-handed bench which is certainly not ideal. Regardless, Johnson just doesn't seem flexible enough to be part of a 4 man bench IMO. If Tyler Flowers is the starting catcher, the Sox just have to find a LH hitting backup, I don't care how they do it.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Nov 30, 2012 -> 09:13 AM) Depends on who your other bench guys are. Assuming you carry Johnson and a backup C, with a 4 man bench, you have two guys to cover the OF and skill IF positions. If one of them is a guy like Lillibridge, then all you reall need is a CF backup and you're set. Although...that's still somewhat of a weakness, unless both of your other backups can cover the OF and middle infield positions. You can get days where both your SS and 2b are hurt and then all of a sudden you're playing a guy there who has never played there before. It might only cost a game or two, but that can be pretty big, and it only makes sense if the other backup you're carrying is worth an extra win or two.

QUOTE (lostfan @ Nov 29, 2012 -> 11:25 PM) This had more to do with the priorities of the administration than it did with Powell. Billions and billions for the DoD but the State Department was an afterthought, and they'd even have the military doing stuff State should've been doing. That didn't change until some time well into Bush's second term (by which time Rice was SoS). Remember the surge and Rumsfeld leaving, Gates coming on, and the military doing a complete change in strategy after the administration admitted (through actions, not verbally) it didn't know what the f*** it was doing? Something like that. It all kinda happened at the same time. That wasn't Powell's fault, it was Bush's security team of neocons and loons who had no business in positions of power. And so clearly, it was incredibly important that Colin Powell stay in that position. After all, everyone was listening to him, he was doing such great work, refusing to sell his soul in that speech and instead resigning would have cost the state department so much influence and made them so much less effective!

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Nov 29, 2012 -> 04:16 PM) Jon Morosi ‏@jonmorosi Source: #Yankees, Mariano Rivera are on verge of one-year, $10 million contract. @MLBONFOX That deal is done, will be announced tomorrow.

QUOTE (Chicago White Sox @ Nov 29, 2012 -> 07:12 PM) While I'd like to keep Johnson for his left-handed bat, we obviously can't if we go with a four man bench like we typically have under KW in recent years. And personally I don't think a 5 man bench is needed in the AL. It will be interesting to see how Hahn handles the bench and if he possibly goes with five guys. Honestly, I never thought KW did a great job putting together a bench outside of a few specific years. Maybe Hahn will give it more thought and look for players with specific skillsets that complement the rest of the team. Depends on what he does with the bullpen. If he keeps Thornton, Crain, and maybe adds another veteran, then he might have more confidence going with a 6 man pen, particularly if there's no young guy in the rotation. If the 5th starter is whichever rookie wins the job in ST, which isn't necessarily a bad option with what our system has right now...and the bullpen is made up of all the guys who were rookies last year, maybe even with one of the other veterans removed, then I want that extra reliever.

Anywho, I just finished up the paper I needed to review, so time for a good rant. I like how it's just reflexively "Unions" why conventions might go to Orlando and Las Vegas. Yup, Unions. No consideration is given, of course, to the fact that those 2 cities have substantial hotel advantages, produced in one case through the fact that one has a clear on-season and an off-season for tourism, which would generate a substantial portion of the year when hotels aren't booked solid and could be available cheaply...and the other which winds up having the price of the hotels subsidized through the fact that the non-geologists blow money in the city. On top of that, Chicago proper has only about 30k hotel rooms according to its olympics application (100k in the metro area), whereas Vegas you're talking 150k just in the city. Chicago doesn't have those advantages. When you host a convention in Chicago, you're not hosting a convention in a place you can go to cheaply, you're hosting a convention there because you want access to the Chicago market and you want to somehow take advantage of that market. That of course, is all the fault of the unions. And re: the electrician. Now, I'm willing to grant that Chicago is unusually corrupt and there's probably a backroom deal or 17 signed somewhere along the line to grease the skids...but on the other side can anyone think of a reason why a large major city might want to have some decently high quality regulation and training of the people who are allowed to do even small electrical projects in the city? Yes, it's going to raise the costs. But the city also has a keen interest in the stability of its own electrical systems, and also has a huge interest in electrical safety, as fires in an urban environment are hugely threatening to lives and property. And Chicago just happens to have a small history involving fire. Not to mention other elemental extremes. So yes, Chicago is probably particularly corrupt and I'd be happy to discuss how specific elements of deregulation could help improve the city's economy...but don't tell me that the city ought to allow just any contractor to work on the electrical systems in the city. A city ought to make sure that people who are doing electrical work in the downtown area are certified on their local systems and do double and triple checks and follow city-wide standardized procedures to the letter. And yes, that is a burdensome regulation that costs businesses substantial amounts of money...but fire does too. And blackouts do too. Oh, and one more...in one of my less exciting excursions through someone's anti-union story, here's the actual regulations from the City of Chicago regarding the use of PVC pipe: So, the City does allow PVC pipes. For the very largest pipe sizes, >24 inch, you are correct that clay is required, but this is not unusual for the largest drains, and frankly, after going through the regulations for other states, Chicago's piping regulations aren't unusually stringent (and it's also not like Chicago has had any sort of recent memory issue with pipes bursting and floods). Crumbling, old clay pipes...that can certainly be an issue...but now we're talking about an issue of lack of upkeep and trying to make a 50 year system last 150 years, like we do with so many other bits of our infrastructure in this country.

QUOTE (elrockinMT @ Nov 29, 2012 -> 04:11 PM) I think we blew like 20 save opportunities last year. Is that correct? For context, the average team in MLB blew 18 saves. The Sox are on the high side but only slightly. 7 teams blew more saves than us. Yes, it's an area we could improve in...but Hell, we ran a bullpen of 7 bloody rookies out there at one point. Being that close to average isn't all that bad, and we might well get better at that just by having guys who aren't rookies and who have seen that kind of pressure before.

For $100 I'd probably do it too, although you gotta check on the price of the glasses too, is that included?

If you're unemployed and desperate, keep at it. If you're already working somewhere and that position would be a moderate upgrade or less...just let it go.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Nov 29, 2012 -> 02:07 PM) That's how I feel about it as well. We have plenty of relievers. Move Matty, add a different Vet?

Is 3D literally the only thing that you get improved for that $250?