Balta1701

Unless you only consider pre-1966.

QUOTE (justBLAZE @ Nov 10, 2010 -> 01:10 PM) Heyman did a similar thing on SI.com with top 15 FA's. He has Paulie staying. Here is his take on the rest. You know, if he hit anything like last year...Aubrey Huff could fill that Kotsay-like roll and also have the benefit of not being a complete joke. (although, his 2009 campaign was notably Kotsay-like).

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Nov 10, 2010 -> 12:47 PM) Whatever the number is, if the feds poured in money, anything that has not already created some piece of useful infrastructure, that money needs to be returned. You just changed the game though...you said "useful infrastructure" rather than "the actual piece of infrastructure the money was intended for". All of these governors want to spend the money on roads.

Brian Cashman is already flying to Arkansas to meet with Cliff Lee & get that all started.

QUOTE (Brian @ Nov 10, 2010 -> 12:36 PM) How so? As long as Kobe is healthy, they have a shot. The west is not that good. Even if Kobe is healthy...they'd be absolutely out of their minds to push both him (and Gasol) that hard in the regular season. Going full-out for 82 games to try to get to 72, then having to face 4 more playoff rounds after that, after having long finals runs the last few years, on aging bodies with injury histories? Yeah you might be able to pull it off, but I might be able to break my arm and then suddenly learn I have a 99 mph fastball and lead the White Sox to the world series.

QUOTE (Athomeboy_2000 @ Nov 10, 2010 -> 12:35 PM) I forgot the new OT rules. what are they again? In the playoffs...if a team wins the toss, moves down the field and kicks a field goal, the other team gets a possession to match, or to get a touchdown to win. The motivation was...the occasional, but extant, "game that is decided entirely because a team wins the toss". Nothing changed in the Regular season yet. But, it is a good rule and I hope it gets put in there as well.

QUOTE (3E8 @ Nov 10, 2010 -> 12:08 PM) According to Chris O'Leary (who has been noticeably accurate in predicting injury issues with pitchers), Peavy's mechanics have always been such to make him susceptible to elbow/shoulder injury Jake Peavy Pitching Mechanics Analysis In general though, the "Inverted V" issue typically is expected to translate more to issues with the elbow, rather than issues with the shoulder. We hear about the inverted V issues for pitchers a lot, and usually it's in association with Tommy John surgery. A fair number of people, especially hard throwers coming up, have that same issue, and this injury for Peavy still remains quite unique. That's why I asked Pt exactly which part of his mechanics he was referring to. If it's the inverted V problem...why did his shoulder go out like this, rather than something more expected like elbow trouble?

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Nov 10, 2010 -> 11:42 AM) Well, I don't know if he should do that or not, but I can at least understand why he's doing it. But I agree with the Feds that if he's stopping the project, he needs to pay back the $271M in outlays they already received for the project. I believe he's actually received about $750 million in outlays.

QUOTE (FlaSoxxJim @ Nov 10, 2010 -> 12:28 PM) Quidditch is a difficult game for Muggles to master. Russians, on the other hand...

More Futurama for everyone.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Nov 10, 2010 -> 10:01 AM) A-Gon had surgery on 10/20 and likely won't swing a bat until March 20. Well, I'd assume that pretty much means he's only a deadline-deal option for teams.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Nov 10, 2010 -> 09:56 AM) It's easy to speculate on something that never happened. Fact is, nobody REALLY knows what would have happened if GM was left to fail. What we have here is a lot of guessing. GM was publicly traded, and therefore it was a public company. This is the SECOND time that industry was bailed out due to mismanagement. This is the SECOND time that industry gets to start over as if they never did anything wrong. Oh, ok, you and I were interpreting the phrase "public company" differently there. I was interpreting it as referring to the company after the point that the government stepped in and took control...aka. "publicly owned" in the sense that the government controlled it. My mistake. However, I think there is pretty much unanimous agreement by everyone making public statements within the industry that had the government not stepped in, their doors shut in December 08/January 09, and never reopen. Then, the other auto manufacturers follow suit shortly thereafter. Even the non-bailed-out ones admit this. You're definitely right on the latter 2 parts. And it continues to be a flaw we haven't taken steps to correct. And we can say the exact same thing about wall street too.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Nov 10, 2010 -> 09:53 AM) I'll add one thing that I thought was demonstrably good in the bill - protecting those with pre-existing conditions. And I continue to note that if you try to do this without all the other things in the bill, the system breaks. The Health insurers know it too.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Nov 10, 2010 -> 09:47 AM) they would have been reorganized and financed, just like they were by the government.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Nov 10, 2010 -> 09:44 AM) I have rather strong opinions on GM and the governments involvement in this entire debacle. They were basically enabled to rip people off (shareholders/bondholders), and come out clean on the other side...meanwhile the government glosses over the fact that while they saved jobs and GM is about IPO as a profitable company again, a lot of people lost a lot -- potentially everything -- due to mismanagement of a public company, and in the end, nothing will happen to any of them because of it. Oh, and GM gets to start over as if they never did anything wrong. This is far more complicated than many are even scratching the surface of. I think it set a bad precedent. Of course it sets a bad precedent. Everything we did for about a 2 year period set a bad precedent. And we still haven't corrected that problem. My biggest disagreement with you is on the fact that the shareholders/bondholders were ripped off. If that car company had to close its doors completely, it wasn't going to reopen. That would have sent a shock to the whole system. At that point, the only thing the bondholders and shareholders would have had a claim to is GM's assets; mainly its land and equipment. But...if the entire company has collapsed, and auto manufacturing in the U.S. has taken a huge hit, and all of GM's technical work is getting locked in a closet somewhere, all of its people are laid off, and there's an ongoing financial crisis, the land and assets GM had wouldn't have been worth all that much to the stakeholders anyway. They were basically going to get wiped out in a non-federally-mediated bankruptcy as well. One other disagreement I have is that you say the phrase "mismanagement of a public company". I'd counter that the auto manufacturers weren't exactly public companies when the mismanagement happened. Those people lost everything because of mismanagement of a private company, to the point that the government stepped in.

QUOTE (pittshoganerkoff @ Nov 10, 2010 -> 09:24 AM) Jolly ol' St. Nick will be here soon. Killing the naughty with his bicycle gun.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Nov 10, 2010 -> 09:15 AM) I think the funny part is that even after saying that bankruptcy would be this huge disaster for the car companies, the left is now taking credit for putting GM through bankruptcy. I guess that means 10 million people or whatever didn't lose their jobs, huh? Oh come on man, this is absolutely ridiculous. You do realize that the only reason why bankruptcy was even a plausible option was that the government stepped in? This isn't even up for debate. The leadership/CEO's of companies that weren't bailed out like Ford even admit this. 10 million people didn't lose their jobs BECAUSE the government stepped in. Bankruptcy other than Chapter 7 was possible only because the government stepped in. There was absolutely no private financing in December-March 2009 to shepherd 2 large, unprofitable, politically connected auto manufacturers through bankruptcy. "10 million people didn't lose their jobs and bankruptcy happened! See!" ignores literally every fact out there. I'm almost astonished that I have to write this reply.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Nov 10, 2010 -> 09:11 AM) I'm not some insurance defender, but I feel that even if you add the 30+M new people, and the cost of care does not go down, this bill has failed. I find it unacceptable that premiums continue to rise, even if they add 30+M people, considering many of them will be massively subsidized. Rising premiums should slow or go down because of this bill, not stay at the same rate. Eventually you're right, the cost curve does have to be bent downwards, and there remains a lot of work to do despite this bill. Politically though, we saw how hard it was to even do 1 slice...the insurance slice. You know my feelings already...I think you're letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Nov 10, 2010 -> 09:05 AM) Premiums will continue to rise at exactly the same rate as before, or even faster, counter to what they promised. And this will continue to happen until they reform the people who create the drugs and price them, or perform the services and send the bills. My point of view continues to be...if we can do exactly what is said here...get premiums to rise at exactly the rate they were beforehand, but also cover 30 million+ additional people...then the bill was a good thing. I think there's more to that as you all know, but I can live with exactly this for now.

QUOTE (Athomeboy_2000 @ Nov 10, 2010 -> 08:52 AM) The GOP has spent the better part of the last 12 months tell out right lies about health care reform (death panels and "grandma's gonna die because she's not important") and using framing like "Obamacare" to try and destroy support for reform. LF is actually right...if you poll on which parts of the ACA do people like/dislike...the "Individual mandate" is by far the least popular part. Things like "pre-existing condition coverage" or "Letting your children stay on your insurance until 25" are strongly popular.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Nov 10, 2010 -> 08:32 AM) Sounds to me like he's saying it was a feedback loop. Mechanics caused soreness and initial problems, his arm slot dropped, arm pain got worse, arm slot worsened, and so on. The question is...which mechanics? If it was his normal (Pre-10) mechanics that caused the initial soreness and injury problems...then he might not be able to be effective coming back...as he'd have to choose between his crappy mechanics that allowed him to get outs or better mechanics where he couldn't get people out.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Nov 10, 2010 -> 08:45 AM) And if Konerko walks, I am pretty confident that KW is going to find a big bat for 1B. He's not ready to rely on Viciedo yet. Or of not for 1b, either RF or DH.

Help me find a spoon, quick!

QUOTE (lostfan @ Nov 9, 2010 -> 09:27 PM) So why's that even being brought up? It sure sounds to me like that is a question that would only be asked for political reasons, not a question that would be asked by an actual legitimate investor. Basically, GM right now is an actual profitable company with a large amount of hardware. Furthermore, they're actually profitable while we're still very close to the bottom of the consumer market. If the consumer market ever recovers, they become a better investment. They also happen to have a "to big to fail" style explicit government guarantee. Oh yeah, there's lots of risks, but there's lots of risks with any company you invest in. You might not have confidence in their management, you might think we're in for another gas price spike in the near future, you might think that the key vehicle of the future for them (The Volt) is going to be a boondoggle, etc. But all of those are legitimate investment issues. The one you cite only makes sense if you're obsessed with bashing the government for the bailout.

QUOTE (Quinarvy @ Nov 10, 2010 -> 01:11 AM) Aside from Jeter, they are far less atrocious this year. Was the right side of the Yankee infield really THAT good on defense?