Balta1701

QUOTE (iamshack @ Jul 17, 2011 -> 01:01 PM) It seems like many of the guys who were forbidden to pitch in the ASG were hammered in their first starts back...Verlander/Hamels/Shields... They all pitched last Sunday, so almost none of them got any extra time off.

QUOTE (Baron @ Jul 17, 2011 -> 01:11 PM) Why even pick Alex Rios as your pick to click? A broken clock is right 2 times out of 162 games?

Marmol for Viciedo? No.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jul 17, 2011 -> 11:16 AM) Morel, Beckham, and Ramirez have to be at the top of their positions, or close to it, for how much range they have. Rios has to be a top half guy as well. I think our infield is stellar...except there is very little range at 1b. The OF this year has been atrocious. Carlos Quentin has been our most reliable OF.

QUOTE (Kalapse @ Jul 17, 2011 -> 01:00 PM) Edwin has 8 quality starts in 18 outings this season which is just brutal, hell Danks has 9 in 15 outings and he's having a down year. QS may not tell you how dominant a starter is but it gives you a good idea of how often he's giving your team a chance to win and Edwin's inefficiency, lack of a third quality pitch and Javy Vazquez-esque blowups have been a problem. It's real easy to fall in love with him after an outing like yesterday but he's such an incredibly flawed pitcher. If you understand what you're getting with him, a middle of the order pitcher who will throw you a good number of innings, that's fine. Problem is, especially with Boras as his agent, the fact that he has a 96 mph fastball also means people will likely pay him like he's an upper rotation starter. That is also the price the Sox gave up to trade for him.

Oh yeah. Phil her up! With premium this time baby!

Let's rock.

QUOTE (JohnCangelosi @ Jul 16, 2011 -> 09:49 PM) Anyone else watching this Twins game? Funny, the announcers just mentioning that they will gain ground on the top 2 teams in the division if they can hold the lead in the 9th. The way he said it was like the White Sox aren't even on the radar for these guys, and I guess you cannot blame them considering they own us....hopefully we can turn things around and become respectable with them again We do te same thing though, counting to the division lead even though there are 2 teams ahead of us.

QUOTE (chiguy79 @ Jul 16, 2011 -> 08:42 PM) Ozzie, lets not play the "Sunday" B Team tomorrow and try to actually get a sweep and some momentum....if you want to change the lineup lets pull Rios or Dunn. Aside from AJ/Flowers, isn't pulling Rios and Dunn pretty much the normal "B team" lineup?

Transcripts indicate that the prosecution in this case deliberately showed the evidence that they weren't permitted to use. This is pretty likely to piss the judge off.

QUOTE (chw42 @ Jul 16, 2011 -> 08:13 PM) Even though Beckham's 4-8 in the past two games, he's still looked lost in certain at bats. Like he struck out the two times he got out last night and it wasn't pretty... Sometimes that happens against Justin Verlander though. That happens for anyone.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jul 16, 2011 -> 07:06 PM) We got three years of Crain for about the same price as two years of Jenks. I am pretty happy with who we have. And for good measure, the Twins have the worst bullpen ERA in baseball.

Definitely nice to see that Carlos has the balance back in his swing. Things get dangerous when he's on. Good work Edwin. Screw you Fox.

Another walk for Viciedo!

QUOTE (FlaSoxxJim @ Jul 15, 2011 -> 04:28 PM) I am in the apparent vast minority of people who were let down by Deathly Hallows 2. It is admittedly because I can't avoid making comparisons between the book and the film. I completely understand the need to streamline a story and cut out a lot of peripheral detail for the sake of a compelling and tight film with such a shorty run time. But there were so many plot deviations that they seemed to do for no reason at all and that didn't enhance the storyline in any way and it was really irritating. I will go out and see it again soon (with the advantage of having not just sat through 21 hours of prior Potter installments like I did before yesterday's midnight showing), and hopefully I warm up to it a bit more. I will end by stating that I strongly disagree with caufield's earlier assertion that the film versions of Deathly Hallows were better than the book. Like all of the other Potter film installments. This last one isn't in the same league — or even in the same solar system as the source material. It was a decent film, but I sorta had the same feeling walking out of it that I had walking out of LOTR: Return of the King, the pacing itself is off for cinema. In ROTK, you've got that incredible buildup to a giant battle, then the battle ends almost all of a sudden without warning, and the movie practically seems like it should end there, then you have to stop and rebuild the emotion in a period of like 5 minutes. There were what, 2, maybe 3 of those in this film. Made it hard to keep the energy of the film going and hard to get into the real end scene.

If there was any hope of getting the extra $500 bil or so in infrastructure spending we need through the congress or the couple hundred bil more we need in state and local aid, I'd agree. But after the stimulus tax cut package was already pared back, I struggle to believe that not doing the PPACA would have translated to good economic stimulus legislation. He'll, the admin had the authority to do a lot more good in the housing market and spent 3% of the allocated mobey because they didn't want people complaining that they were paying their neighbors mortgage.

Good idea, suggest bird types to the guy who made a living frying them in oil.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Jul 16, 2011 -> 01:56 PM) It wasn't just raising the interest rates, it was using the interest rates to attempt to "control" the stock market, which was a fools game. Yes, raising the interest rates -- to a point -- was the right thing to do, but not for the sake of controlling the NASDAQ...there is no "controlling" markets...they do what they do, and if you try to leverage them one way or the other, they will eventually hit a tipping point in which you'll lose all control -- and that's what happened. He pumped the interest rates way up, market collapsed, and then subsequently dropped them down. He admitted he screwed up, too. The Nasdaq was responding to the enormous investment by everyone in tech stocks and the assumption that it would never go down. Just like the real estate market was responding to the believe that real estate never goes down. That belief is an inflationary belief, and raising rates was the appropriate response. The screwup was in the runnup, not in the popping.

Welcome back Zambrano. I think Stanton hit that ball 440.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Jul 16, 2011 -> 01:44 PM) That .com bubble bursting was also helped along by poor fed decisions under Greenspan, who kept rocketing up the interest rates to "control" the markets. The only problem was that control was an illusion, at best. I dunno, I think that raising interest rates in 1999 was probably the right move just as it was in 2006. The problem is that once a big enough bubble is inflated, there's no way to slowly let the air out of it at the Fed level. You might have been able to do it with federal policy, i.e. start in 2004 with stronger controls on mortgage qualifications, but once its built, a small prick is enough to pop it, and one it pops, it's going to go almost the whole way down. The alternative would have been a significant inflationary response in both cases, which would have popped the bubble anyway, probably in more catastrophic ways. Especially with the 2007 commodity price binge. The Feds mistakes were in the runup, not in the actual popping.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jul 16, 2011 -> 10:16 AM) Except the reality is that he also left a major recession behind and that surplus was gone no matter who was the President next. That is a completely partisan line that ignores reality. For once, I'll agree with 2k5 here...the 2001 recession and evaporation of most of that surplus was pretty much unavoidable. Of course, I also have to add other caveats. First, the move to deficits rather than balance at that point was almost entirely a choice, made in the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, the 2003 Medicare Drug bill, the expansion of the DHS, and the unnecessary wars. And the other caveat, especially regarding the follow up...the 2001 recession was a choice of the Clinton administration, they blew through (willingly) the level that was previously thought to be overheating, that was bound to push a recession in response. The 2008 debacle was entirely a policy choice as well. The lack of regulation of the financial industry, the hidden but bad employment situation, the focus on gains at the top while the rest of the population stagnated...those were all policy choices. Not all of them Bush choices (the 1999 Financial deregulation, for example), but they were all policy choices.

QUOTE (lostfan @ Jul 16, 2011 -> 10:52 AM) With the exception of the stimulus anything Obama's tried to do to reverse it in any kind of meaningful, structural way (ending Bush tax cuts, defense cuts of any kind, healthcare reform that actually does something to lower costs) is met with fierce, vigorous opposition. Worth pointing out...very few of those things on your list would have a positive impact on the economy. I'd contend that in 10 years or so the PPACA will be a strong positive, but not any time in the near future.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Jul 16, 2011 -> 10:59 AM) Stop giving Obama excuses if you aren't going to afford Bush the same exact excuses. Bush was ONE guy. He lost his majority house/senate half way into office, and still got things passed despite a supermajority democratic house/senate. So if anything, the democratic house/senate passed everything you're b****ing about now...yet you blame Bush, and only Bush. That makes no sense. And while he had those supermajorities, fierce opposition wouldn't have mattered. His own party sold him out during the healthcare debate, when they didn't have too...because they're bought and paid for by the same corporations that own the republicans, too. What this tells you of course is that the Democrats pay a price for standing in the way of a President's wars priorities, while the Republicans do not.

Do i want to know what happens on wednesday?

QUOTE (oldsox @ Jul 16, 2011 -> 10:58 AM) Would Gordo ever have made it as a big league SS? I never saw him. I know he played SS at B'ham and a bit at Charlotte. Probably, but he wouldn't be as good defensively at SS as he is at 2b. He's a better 2b than most of the other guys in the league, he'd be an average SS at best.