Balta1701

Lots of baseball players get DUI's, they don't get suspended. Liriano had one a couple years ago. Tony LaRussa had one and then had a player die driving drunk. I think the Union would win any challenge to a suspension for that.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Feb 17, 2011 -> 11:41 AM) Oh, I know your retail cost is correct. But they are comparing the wholesale market to the retail market. And I am not disputing the fact that there are a lot of hidden costs...that is very interesting. But there are a lot of hidden costs with all sorts of things. It doesn't really change how a utility is going to view things. One thing I can tell you though is that these projections for renewables that you are seeing are very low for what we are experiencing in practice as of the present. How the utility views things though is very different from what is best for society and best for public policy. The utility doesn't care how much it drives up health care costs for people living downstream of its generating sites except in the small increase in its insurance rates. You just gave a good argument, to my eyes, about why we shouldn't be setting policy based on what is best for utilities.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Feb 17, 2011 -> 10:35 AM) Shack and I can monitor it and keep it going. You could just have this turned into perhaps a "Workout thread" that could be bounced on occasion.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Feb 16, 2011 -> 07:39 PM) To say doubling or tripling the cost of coal would make renewables vastly cheaper right now is simply not true. Maybe at some point in the future, yes, but now, no. Ok, but you did the math wrong. It's only doubling or tripling the cost if the cost is $.10/kWh. If you're using a cost of $.02/kwh, that means the hidden costs are 15x as much as the up-front costs. And anyway, I'm not making stuff up when I quote a $.10/kwh price for electricity.

People would go weeks/months without using the workout forum.

QUOTE (T R U @ Feb 17, 2011 -> 05:33 AM) 26 HR and an .800+ OPS from the 6ish spot will be more than enough from Quentin.. he gets a raw deal because of how awesome he was a few years ago, but I had no problem with what he brought to the lineup last season He gets a raw deal because that low .800's OPS is barely enough production to offset the terrible job he did defensively in RF.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Feb 16, 2011 -> 06:36 PM) Its always nice when they praise your team and talk in depth about it, but you are right, what Mitch Williams thinks or Harold Reynolds or anyone at ESPN or Ozzie and KW, it really doesn't matter. What matters starts April 1st. I'm not sure whether this bothers me or not. If I had a job as an analyist on MLB Network, and my job was to give educated commentary on every single team, I'd do my best to know them backwards and forwards. I'd like to know everyone in their bullpens, I'd like to know which ones disappointed the previous year, which players overachieved, what's waiting at AAA, what's working upwards at AA for each team, which organizations look bad because of injuries, which organizations might be being overrated, etc. I think, if that's all I ever had to do was prepare 8 hours a day to go on a show at night and talk about baseball for 30 minutes, I could probably pull off most of that, but it'd take a lot of effort and I'm sure I'd miss a few things. I think I can talk pretty intelligently about a lot of teams, but I don't know anyone's system as well as the Sox. Even with that though, I think I could give you a much better set of soundbites and discussion than what any of them give, statistically based or whatever. Thing is though, I'm pretty sure that "7 hours of research, a half hour of makeup, and a half hour on TV" isn't their job description. There's probably a lot more setup, interviews, meetings, etc. If I had only 1-2 hours a day to learn about teams, and then I had to plug in days where I didn't even get that because I had a special feature or I had to meet with a guest, my coverage would probably look an awful lot like the people on MLB Network. I'd occasionally surprise by being able to talk about something you didn't expect me to know, like some random player's contract status or a potential surprise prospect like Morel, but there'd be so much left out from what I could know, I'd be stuck talking about the things I'd been assigned to cover.

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WTF? Joe Nathan lives around here, and I didn't find him, shake his hand, and accidentally jerk really hard on his elbow? Anyway, although it's not the same injury, I find it interesting that Peavy was throwing off the mound at least a month, month and a half before Nathan.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Feb 16, 2011 -> 06:34 PM) He also was a White Sox draft pick and minor leaguer who was part of the deal to Seattle that brought Wimpy to the Sox. As far as national coverage, it seems to me the more national guys drool over the Sox the more dissappointing they become. Its better that they hop on the bandwagon in July and act like they knew they would be good all along. I'm still a fan of Rob Neyer in 2005. He was the only guy out there who picked the White Sox to win the AL Central to start the year. The Sox then stormed out to the best record in baseball in April, and by May 1, Neyer started constantly saying that the Indians would come back and win the Central.

There's a cute study about to be published looking at the effectively hidden costs of heavy U.S. coal consumption. Typical electricity rates are something like $.10-$.15/kWh, with obviously decent variation. So if you compare the full lifecycle cost of coal electricity, renewables are vastly cheaper, but if you consider only the on-site cost, the cost on your electric bill, coal looks cheaper, while people like me cough all the way to the health insurer. This is the fun game of dirty energy; you bear the costs out in health care and the climate, but your raw electricity bill stays down. As long as everyone plays the game, we get to pretend that coal is cheap. If one person switches to a renewable source, it doesn't make much of a difference, so there's no way for you to get that money back except to pretend that the indirect costs are a subsidy given to you to use coal as your main fuel. It takes a large number of people switching to have the economy start realizing those savings.

QUOTE (Rooftop Shots @ Feb 16, 2011 -> 05:49 PM) I'm puzzled by your quote. Because I like to hear good reports and comments from pros about the team that I follow, and if that doesn't happen, then that makes me a fan of the wrong team???? Wow! I was simply stating a few points, that with the team that we have, and the acquisions that were already added to what we have, as to why we seem to still get ducked in conversations as not even being in the same league when talks are mentioned on high profile teams. The key clause there..."If that really bothers you". If you want to be a fan of this team, you can't let it bother you. We're always going to get ignored in conversations. At least for the foreseeable future. That's just reality.

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Brewers, Rickie Weeks agree to 4 year, $38.5 million contract.

Raider sign Richard Seymour to a 2 year extension that, if the games are ever played, will pay him more per season than Peppers.

QUOTE (Swingandalongonetoleft @ Feb 16, 2011 -> 02:32 PM) To be fair to him, that isn't too far removed from having no closing experience. One can only hope as a Sox fan that Sale's run as a closer last year wasn't just a product of hitters never seeing him pitch before, which is entirely possible, and will make me uneasy until he picks up where he left off and stays there. Sale's stuff is flat out ridiculous. If he stays healthy, he has the best raw left-handed stuff I've seen from any pitcher since pre-surgery Liriano. Maybe better than him even; Chris hasn't featured all of his offspeed stuff yet. He could also suddenly struggle with the strike zone unexpectedly, but really, if he stays healthy and throws strikes with the fastball...people aren't hitting him. If he can get that slider over, people won't even be swinging. If he can get a 3rd pitch over, people might as well just forfeit.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Feb 16, 2011 -> 11:33 AM) Well, in this case, its not nearly as laughably stupid as Walker's decision. Florida was still on the hook for billions of their own, so there is a strong argument to be made about it. And I don't know the financial projections of the line either, so its possible that Florida's contribution may not be offset by the gains. At least according to the Orlando Sentinel, this is incorrect; there were companies willing to foot the remaining $280 million of the cost not covered by the Feds and be on the hook for any cost overruns, in exchange for being the company that ran the rail line and could take profits off of it.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Feb 16, 2011 -> 02:21 PM) He was being called Pay-Rod and having fake money thrown at him in his first year in Texas. There was a lot of animosity long before then. I think people are a lot more used to it now.

QUOTE (Athomeboy_2000 @ Feb 16, 2011 -> 10:07 AM) New Florida Republican Governor Rick Scott announced Wednesday he is rejecting money for the federal high-speed rail system that would have linked Orlando and Tampa. Apparently the ridership study was favorable to the line, but he canceled the project anyways. He didnt want of that "dirty" big government money. After a bit of thought, if this rail line had existed, I'd have been on it before, and I'd have blown a lot more money at the bar in Orlando than the zero dollars I actually blew since I had to be the DD to get us back across the peninsula after visiting KSC.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Feb 16, 2011 -> 02:00 PM) St Louis will be pissed if he leaves. Also if he ends up leaving a $30 mill/yr contract on the table to do it, he will turn into ARod. Alex was pretty universally loved until he signed his massive deal. Then it was all downhill. He was disliked though because his massive deal also wasn't translating into wins. There's a lot more to the equation than the way you're presenting it.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Feb 16, 2011 -> 01:25 PM) If he doesn't want to tarnish his legacy, he won't leave St Louis. People are so used to guys leaving in FA these days that I have a hard time believing that would really "Tarnish his legacy". He's not destroying an entire city, I doubt he'll be stupid enough to do it on TV, or antyhing like that.

I think the Sox's system will look a lot better mid-season than it does right now...just because we can't possibly be this injury-hit 2 years in a row.

QUOTE (Soxy @ Feb 16, 2011 -> 12:59 PM) This unilateral crap is nonsense. That's because the goal is not the pay cuts or the balanced budget. The goal is to piss off liberals.

If this really bothers you, then you're a fan of the wrong team. Hell, even the Cubs can get ignored towards the end of a season if they're having a down year. Then it becomes Bears time.

I think we can all agree that this settles the health care debate once and for all.