Balta1701

QUOTE (Steve9347 @ Aug 23, 2011 -> 01:39 PM) Cutler would be in line for a career year if he had an O-Line and receivers worth a s***. I think he has an O-line that is massively upgraded from last year. That's not to say its the best in the league (since a massive upgrade from the worst in the league could still be below average), but it should be a lot better. I'm not sure about the WR's yet. Hopefully there's a "wakeup call for Williams" last night, like last weekend was the wakeup call for Webb.

The people I read who actively work on clean energy policy are aghast at that NYT article that Mr Genius cited. In particular they're frustrated at the part I've bolded, how in their efforts to write an article saying that green jobs haven't shown up, they limited themselves to 1 city in the san fran area, but then missed massive job growth throughout the rest of the eare. Talk about a bait and switch. The NYT cites the Brookings study, but then pulls out one tiny piece of it to make the exact opposite argument of the study. As Climate Progress wrote, Brookings actually found nationwide: On top of that, median salaries for cleantech-related jobs are $46,343, or about $7,727 more than the median wages across the broader economy. But you’d never know that from the NYT hit job. Link2

QUOTE (fathom @ Aug 23, 2011 -> 01:15 PM) Money for next two years on the books, I was referring to. Then there's no reason to move him now as opposed to the offseason unless you're given a good offer for him. Now, you can deal with 1 team. In the offseason, you can deal with 28 teams.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Aug 23, 2011 -> 11:16 AM) I was really pleased with Cutler. Good footwork and nice decisions. In fact I noticed a couple plays where he looked off the defense and made some nice reads (showing his comfort in year two of the offense). He got hung out to dry on wideout drops, including a couple big third down drops and than there was Hester's slip in the end zone. Roy Williams looked real bad today. Just one game but catch the ball. Defense had a couple solid drives but than obviously got crushed. Part of that was due to turnovers, poor field position, and of course the fact that we play a base defefnse throughout the preseason (not blitzes, minimal changing things up). We left the game healthy and despite the blowout score, I saw plenty to be pleased with. Jaworski did a really nice breakdown early in the game of Cutler's footwork on his throws, how he was planting and having the knee in the right spot before launching.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Aug 23, 2011 -> 12:22 PM) Cool, thats usually not his style, he has a high football IQ. He's also a rookie who's never played a pro game. Football IQ or not, he's probably still somewhat overwhelmed.

QUOTE (fathom @ Aug 23, 2011 -> 01:13 PM) I don't think any of us really know the financial well-being of the organization right now. If they desperately need to make sure they clear his salary for next year, and they can come to an agreement with a team like the Yankees that they'd get a mid-tier prospect for Thornton right now, KW might jump at it. Even if they're in dire straits, it depends on your definition of "Mid Tier". Matty is owed less than $1 million for the remainder of this season. If we were that desperate to clear money, then we could have dumped guys like Crain or Ohman at the deadline and produced bigger savings.

QUOTE (kitekrazy @ Aug 23, 2011 -> 12:49 PM) I still question the validity of there ever being a Gonzalez for Beckham deal. It wouldn't have been Gonzalez for Beckham alone, but he could have been the centerpiece. Flowers, maybe Viciedo would probably have been in there as well.

QUOTE (fathom @ Aug 23, 2011 -> 01:10 PM) Don't forget Thome saying that he felt the Sox organization wasn't as professional as some other clubs he's been on. No way would we bring him back, IMO That wasn't a knock at the Sox though, that was a "This is a very loose, fun clubhouse" compliment.

QUOTE (elrockinMT @ Aug 23, 2011 -> 12:44 PM) Putting Matt Thornton on waivers makes no sense at all. Sorry. Of course you put Matt Thornton on waivers, you put almost everyone on Waivers to see who happens to get through and to see if you get offered a good amount for any of your guys by a team that suddenly panics. Letting Matt Thornton go on waivers for anything less than a really good return makes no sense at all.

Link

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Aug 23, 2011 -> 10:28 AM) Just after watching a few plays, it's obvious how much a receiver as tall as Roy can help Cutler. The problem is he has to be able to catch the f***ing ball too, and so far Williams is not capable of that. Yeah, the fact that williams was tall was the reason Cutler was able to get the ball onto his hands on those 2 failed throws.

No, you do not give him up if you're not offered fair value. If you absolutely need to cut his salary, he's still tradeable for fair value in the offseason when you have 28 other teams you can negotiate with, instead of only the team that put in the waiver claim for him. You're right about one thing, owing $12 million to a setup man is going to be a thing of the past. Pretty soon it'll be $20-$30 million.

There is now an iphone app giving MLB Gameday at-bat stats for AAA baseball.

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Aug 22, 2011 -> 09:46 PM) NY Times editorial staff wants to stop the Canadian XL oil pipeline from Canada to Texas. Why? "We have two main concerns: the risk of oil spills along the pipeline, which would traverse highly sensitive terrain, and the fact that the extraction of petroleum from the tar sands creates far more greenhouse emissions than conventional production does. " So, Canada is going to produce this stuff regardless of whatever enviro concerns you, me or the NY Times editorial staff has. If we block it, they can just sell to our Chinese overlords, and kiss goodbye the thousands of jobs it would create directly and indirectly. And we would continue to pay more for oil from other sources. Well, first of all, this stuff isn't cheap. It is very, very, very expensive to process this stuff into oil. The companies that began developing the tar sands only hit profitability when oil prices spiked after 2005. So, we're going to pay more for oil from this source; if oil prices were to drop, they'd scale back production at these sites. And secondly, no, they really can't sell this stuff to China. You lose so much mass in the enormous number of processing steps that at current price levels, its not profitable to ship this heavy tar overseas for processing. This pipeline would enable direct shipment of the stuff to the refineries in the gulf area that have already been processing heavy oil (From the gulf), limiting the transport costs.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Aug 23, 2011 -> 10:05 AM) Which is why I am also OK with more drilling, and some nuclear, though I am a little hesitant about the oil shale thing because of the much higher environmental impact of that. The right answer on oil shale is to price the externalities (The carbon emissions, the oil spills, and the destruction of a Canadian province or two). If you do that and it remains competitive, then that means oil prices have continued to go up and other options have failed to come online, both of which would be severely disappointing.

So, Chester Taylor still looks to be a 1.5 yard back, the Bears front 7 could have done more damage but to be fair they were Briggsless and it was the preseason, and Roy Williams needs to catch those balls or be replaced.

Maybe Gilmore saw my posts about him flying completely open on every swing and corrected that?

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Aug 23, 2011 -> 09:28 AM) But the US is not an oil company (waits for sarcastic response from Balta or StrangeSox), and energy policy is an inherently important national security and economic issue. We are doing very little as a government to help protect ourselves, and it scares the crap out of me. Thanks! I liked that one.

QUOTE (HickoryHuskers @ Aug 23, 2011 -> 08:07 AM) Questions about the Danks brothers: 1) Does Jordan have a legitimate shot at playing for the Sox in the next few years? 2) If so, does John have some incentive to take less money to play with his brother? 1. D2 has not developed as well as we hoped he would have. Still strikes out way too much. He might well get a september callup this year, but right now he's a 4th/5th outfielder. He's supposedly a solid defender, but he would probably look a lot like Adam Dunn with the bat if he was called up. 2. This is another of those things where if there was a big, big incentive for D1 to play with D2, he'd have signed a contract extension already. D1 might give a small discount for that...but you can tell a lot from the fact that it hasn't been done yet.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Aug 23, 2011 -> 09:34 AM) The problem is we don't have Pedroia, Youkilis, Ortiz, Ellsbury and Adrian Gonzalez (who we could have had for Beckham). Keep in mind though...unless we had zero bad contracts on this team, we wouldn't be in position to give Gonzalez $23 million a year.

QUOTE (mr_genius @ Aug 22, 2011 -> 07:53 PM) maybe Obama can put him on the ticket as VP. totally bipartisan ticket. would the Dems go for that? They're not going to replace a veteran Democrat on the lower half of the ticket to give a Republican an incredible advantage in 2016.

QUOTE (lostfan @ Aug 22, 2011 -> 11:17 PM) So if the regime falls (I guess it will sooner rather than later)... then what? The last time we asked that question after a round or three of triumphant chest-beating it became clear nobody had a clue what the f*** to do and the s*** hit the fan and kept flying. Not really keen on having that happen again. The fact that there is now an uprising in Tripoli is probably the best thing that could happen to the country. A week ago, it seemed like there was a good chance that a Western-Libya based revolutionary council would wind up taking control over Tripoli. Now, there are revolutionary groups in Tripoli that have the standing to join an actual transitional government. If there's a governmental worry now, I think it's that the Islamist parties will wind up successfully gaining a lot of strength.

Wow, I'm somewhat surprised that the advanced stats rate Cuddyer as a below average OF. Most of the announcers seem to have argued the opposite when I've watched games involving the Twins.

No one's out there saying that Flowers will keep hitting .310 and putting up a .900 OPS. His problem has always been strikeouts...but he's been able to hit well in the minors with a 1 strikeout every 3.5 PA's mark. Usually guys dont' get better on that number when they get to the bigs. If he kept it constant, he'd be a solid offensive catcher, probably hitting 20+ HR a year out of that spot with a decent OBP. If it went up, then he'd be failing to put the ball in play enough to really make a difference. So far in the bigs this year, he's K'd 1 time every 4 PA's, which is actually an improvement. If nothing else...that means he didnt' come up and strike out every other at bat. He didn't get worse.

QUOTE (Papa Tru @ Aug 22, 2011 -> 04:28 PM) I was more just making a comment on how bad the moves the Raiders make are.. And yet, they're on the verge of fielding a competitive team again.