Balta1701

QUOTE (Marty34 @ May 9, 2012 -> 06:27 PM) He's not ready to hit RH'ers. Viciedo has a higher OPS against RH pitchers than Fukudome has.

QUOTE (Marty34 @ May 9, 2012 -> 06:26 PM) You act like KW's firing would be a bad idea. Why do you want KW to stay around so badly? If management decided he was the best person to start a rebuilding process, then he should get at least 2 years, more likely 3, to develop that rebuilding process. And it certainly shouldn't be sabotaged by putting a 23 year old hitter on the bench out of spite.

QUOTE (GoodAsGould @ May 9, 2012 -> 06:17 PM) You want to bench a guy against the vast majority of starters in the league? He wants to do anything possible to justify KW's firing, and if that means benching a 23 year old against 2/3 of the pitchers in the league in favor of a 35 year old, then he can blame KW when they don't win the division and say that's a reason to fire him.

QUOTE (ptatc @ May 9, 2012 -> 06:14 PM) It's not consistent with stress fracture (stress reaction is the new in vogue term) symptoms. It really sounds muscular and they are trying to decrease his number of pitches when the muscles will be fatigued and thus less stress on the ligaments. If this is the case, hypothetically, then could the fact that he was in the bullpen last year and threw fewer innings be directly related to why it's hurting now? i.e. if he'd thrown 150 innings last year at Charlotte, after 150 the previous 2 years at AAA, could that have helped his arm muscles be less fatigued now?

QUOTE (Reddy @ May 9, 2012 -> 05:10 PM) which is... what... we did... And hence...look, drama.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ May 9, 2012 -> 04:53 PM) Why didn't they just do this a week ago and avoid all the needless drama? They simply could have skipped one of his starts (arguing it was part of their plan all along to skip a start here or there, especially around offdays and in order to keep his final innings pitched total for the season down to 120-140ish) and it would have been a "small" story and there would have been SOME speculation, but not nearly to this extent. This would actually have been a real awful week to just "Skip his start" because we not only didn't have Mr. Offday, we had a double header. Skipping a start this week means a ton of roster moves and means something is seriously wrong with a guy.

QUOTE (iamshack @ May 9, 2012 -> 03:07 PM) The rescue versus breeder argument is really a complex one... Keep in mind that breeders are out there working hard to improve the breed and to place great dogs with great owners...most of them are responsible owners and most of the best breeders don't exactly make a killer living doing this...they are in it because they love the breed. When you support them you support the health of the breed and enable people who have the best interests of the dog in mind to actually continue their great work. There is nothing wrong with supporting breeders and buying well-bred dog with the personality and temperament to fit in best with you and your family. If I recall our discussion earlier in this thread, you suggested pretty strongly that a big key step if you're purchasing a dog from a breeder ought to involve personally checking out the breeder and the conditions where the pets are coming from.

QUOTE (Jake @ May 9, 2012 -> 04:03 PM) article was a bit tl;dr, is he expected to be healthy(ish) next year? He had the microfracture surgery in February. I feel like the recovery time for that is typically a full season just to get back into the league, and then years before full recovery.

In case you're interested, the costs of this battle in downtown Manhattan would probably be about $160 billion.

QUOTE (Rex Kicka** @ May 9, 2012 -> 03:57 PM) It's a flip flop I'll welcome. Can we get the Avengers on our side in this one?

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ May 9, 2012 -> 04:09 PM) I think a candidate could run a campaign of being agnostic and win yes. It's becoming less and less important for voters under the age of probably 40. Edit: and you do know that polling shows a mormon beating a christian right now right? I mean, mormons are more ridiculous than athiests, amiright? Pretty regularly polls show that athiests are the religious(or religion absent) group people would have the most problem voting for out of any in this country. From the Wiki:

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ May 9, 2012 -> 04:15 PM) You're still ignoring that at some point "something" existed to start the ball rolling. "Something" doesn't appear from nothingness. It does if you can define the words away because there is no such thing as nothing, just certain patterns of vibrations. (This is a very difficult one to put into text that is remotely comprehensible). Again...if "requiring that the universe came out of nothing" is a key part of your belief system, or that science cant explain how something came from nothing...then your belief system is in very short order going to be on shaky grounds. You might not understand it, and I probably won't...but that's where we're going.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ May 9, 2012 -> 04:10 PM) Balta, I dont have any belief system regarding it, I dont know what happened. What I do wonder about is how something can be created from nothing. In my opinion there are 2 answers, 1) some outside force created something from nothing or 2) we are not advanced enough to understand the question and therefore while there is an answer, it escapes us at this point. Either way, someone who says "I think a god like being created the universe" is a lot different than Christianity, which specifically believes that a god existed on Earth. It doesn't have to be "out of nothing" because "nothing" is only defined within the space of the dimensions of the universe, so until that collision happened, it wasn't nothing, it just was what it was. It's difficult to put into words what the concept of a 12 dimensional membrane where time doesn't really exist actually represents, but it's at least a fascinating set of math and I'm looking forward to where it goes in the next decade. We might well have some evidence for it based on the wMAP analysis.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ May 9, 2012 -> 04:02 PM) Still the problem of, what created those 2 distinct membranes. Without going into too many details, let me just respond by saying that if your entire belief system is built upon the idea that science hasn't established all of the details surrounding some aspect of the universe yet...then you have a very weak set of belief systems, because it's just waiting on the right experiment to knock it down. If your belief system, for example, requires that the Earth is at the center of the universe, and that turns out to be untrue, then does your belief system crumble or not? 75 years ago there was no concept of the big bang and no concept of parallel universes, dimensions outside of the main 4, etc. If your belief system would crumble if it turned out that physics provided an explanation for how the universe came into existence, then now would be the time to reevaluate your belief system, not after the paper gets published.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ May 9, 2012 -> 03:58 PM) When it comes to the creation of the universe, science and faith are on equal footing as no one can explain scientifically how something is created from nothing. Yet. We do have ideas. We just don't have the technology for how to test them all yet. However, M theory provides some tantalizing hints that something resembling the big bang could be caused by the collision of 2 separate but distinct membranes in 12 dimensional space.

QUOTE (Jake @ May 9, 2012 -> 03:55 PM) Well it's hard to imagine that anyone that looks at Matt Thornton right now isn't going to say "he's in his upper 30's, his fastball has lost an mph or two, his control looks iffy, he gets hammered in save situations" etc. I think both teams would be pleased in the long run with the proposed deal Considering that Matt Thornton's fastball was at 95.3 in 2008 and is at 95.1 right now on this season, I struggle to imagine anyone saying that. The only real obvious difference in Thornton's stats this year is that he looks to have grooved an extra HR ball early in the year. He's actually had fewer BB/PA so far this season than in most years.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ May 9, 2012 -> 03:53 PM) In Chicago it's rarely, if ever, a story. You hear about religion when there's a scandal. One difference probably is that there's simply more to report on in Chicago. The nightly christian update and the nightly meth lab seizure can be replaced by some double-homicide or something like that. Would be nice if things like Amendment 1 were treated like scandals more generally though.

QUOTE (Jake @ May 9, 2012 -> 03:50 PM) I think Thornton for Youkilis is fair. Both are buy low right now, Youk even moreso than MT Matt Thornton should by no means be a "Buy low" candidate in a trade right now. Someone wants him, they have to pay the normal Matt Thornton high price.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ May 9, 2012 -> 03:48 PM) Oh really? When's the last time you heard a postive story about what a religious organization is doing? You don't. You hear nothing but negative. You ought to try living in the South. I get at least one "a church is doing this good thing" story on the news per night.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ May 9, 2012 -> 03:49 PM) I think it's pretty silly that you believe various elements just existed in space prior to the Big Bang. I'll just start calling you a dummy from now on if that's the acceptable way to behave when talking about these issues. Wait, this was said somewhere and I missed it?

QUOTE (2nd_city_saint787 @ May 9, 2012 -> 03:25 PM) Are there any sites that show monthly attendance numbers? I'd be interested in seeing how the early numbers relate to past years. No im not trying to argue that they havent been bad, I know they have, I just wanna see how bad compared to past years You can figure it out from Baseball Reference if you do a bit of work. Through this point last year, the Sox were averaging 23,113 at home.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ May 9, 2012 -> 03:18 PM) You think that would do it? I honestly don't know. It seems like his approach right now looks like his 2011 approach from April to July. He looks different up there than he did in August-September of last year. That seems mental to me, I don't think that its about not being able to hit major league pitching. His approach right now looks nothing like the April to July approach. You can tell that from the strikeouts. Brent Morel is not supposed to be a strikeout machine. Last year, April to July, he struck out 27 times. This year, he has struck out 33 times. Morel turned the strikeouts up last year when he started swinging more aggressively and focusing less on making contact. This year, he's neither putting an aggressive swing on the ball (August/September) nor is he making weak contact (April to July). I can't figure out what the deal is, I don't even have a guess. He's stopped making solid contact but kept the strikeouts. That seems like a particularly bad combination. I don't know if a stint at Charlotte will help or if keeping him with Manto will help, but at some point, the manager and GM have to make that call, and the clock has to be ticking.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ May 9, 2012 -> 03:17 PM) Boy that Mitt Romney, changing positions again... If Mitt Romney flip flops on this issue, I will pledge all the compliments in the world towards him, as he would have taken a big step towards removing unnecessary hate towards that group.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ May 9, 2012 -> 03:14 PM) Except it wasn't. But OK. That article bounced back and forth in the numbers, but never really compared apples to apples. There was no where that actually showed SuperPAC money by candidate. It also misled by comparing fundraising when Walker had no limits, and the rest of the candidates did. That has now changed. Because it doesn't have to be disclosed. Which is one of the reasons why it's so insidious. Gives you the chance to pretend to deny things.