Balta1701

QUOTE (daggins @ Oct 7, 2010 -> 09:28 PM) 2008 - 121 mil if I recalled. Realistically with our minor league system the way it is, payroll will have to increase if the Sox want to compete. There's no way they get Crawford but Adam Dunn might be a nice consolation prize. I guess he is going to be type B so he wont even cost a first rounder. That was with teams like the Phillies still paying a large portion of the team's salary.

QUOTE (chw42 @ Oct 7, 2010 -> 09:24 PM) He ranked their offense over the Yankees' at the start of the year...lol If the Twins had stayed healthy he might have been right. Don't forget the giant difference in ballpark factors there.

QUOTE (WhiteSoxfan1986 @ Oct 7, 2010 -> 09:16 PM) Unbelievable how bad the Twins have been in the postseason. Hopefully they can somehow come back, or at least make it a series. I just can't stand the Yankees. Go Texas. And like it or not, now I have to start cheering for the Phillies in the NL so that someone can beat the Yankees.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Oct 7, 2010 -> 09:28 PM) Whats missing is they can't hit. Third in runs, but 25th in average. Thats why they always get no-hit and 1-hit, they are super streaky. When they get on base, they do a great job of stealing bases, taking extra bases, etc. But they can easily be shut down. They have the most strikeouts of any team ever to make the postseason.

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ Oct 7, 2010 -> 05:38 PM) They'd have to be blown away to deal him. He's still cheap and under control for two more years. He's only 26 and even though he's underachieved his skill-set, in particular his speed/defense, is rivaled by very few in baseball. And his power picked up considerably towards the end of the year. I'd kill for either him or Kemp. These are the kinda guys you take major gambles on. The possible reward far outweighs the risk. Upton is a guy I just don't want. He simply has a major hole in his game; he strikes out too much. He's going to be a upper .700's OPS player unless he either gets down to 120 or fewer strikeouts or he hits 40+ HR. The only way he had a really good season was to put up a ridiculously high BABIP. You're going to hate the comparison for obvious reasons...but it's the Jordan Danks rule. If he can't cut down on the strikeouts, no matter how hard he hits the ball when he puts the bat on it, he will be an average player. Anywho...the thing to consider on the Rays is that they have 1 OF ready to take over, and they have 1 OF departing this year. They're not going to want to replace 2 OF's. And I don't think we'd match up with them anyway, since they're pitching-loaded and they happen to be strong at 3b, which is the position where we have 1 of our top guys.

I can't believe Ozzie melted down in a playoff game to the point that he got himself kicked out of the game! How pathetic is that!

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Oct 7, 2010 -> 09:16 PM) Unless someone wants to take Peavy's entire contract off the Sox hands, then Crawford aint gonna happen. I dunno...one of these years the Sox are going to decide to boost payroll. They've been sitting right around $95-$98 million for the past 5 years. They've dealt with declining attendance and the economic problems over that time, but league revenue sharing dollars have gone up, and the value of lots of ad contracts probably go up as well. I could see a salary boost as being possible one of these years. The problem is...even if they decide to boost the salary, they're just not outbidding the Yankees.

QUOTE (Rex Kicka** @ Oct 7, 2010 -> 02:50 PM) The stimulus was 50% tax cuts. And if you don't think there wasn't an effort to bring Republicans into the fold by esentially creating a smaller immediate stimulus as a result, you're really really mistaken. If the Republicans told the President he'd have 75 votes in the Senate for a $500 billion stimulus, we'd have a $500 billion stimulus and 10.5% unemployment. If the Republicans had told the President he'd have 65 votes for a health care bill that expanded coverage but did 99% of what the Republicans wanted, we'd have that bill.

QUOTE (bmags @ Oct 7, 2010 -> 12:50 PM) the initial stimulus proposal was 1.2 trillion and had a lot more actual spending. It finished at 800 billion with half in tax cuts. WHat the hell are you talking about. Ok, this is fundamentally untrue. There were a few people who were saying that we needed to shoot for the moon on the stimulus, that we would be in much worse shape if we went too small than if we went too big, and that $1.2 trillion should be a starting point. However...those people aside from 1 or 2 people were not in the administration. They were people on the outside like Krugman. They were the same ones saying it was too loaded with tax cuts, and needed more long-term, infrastructure based spending. The people on the inside followed the Larry Summers point of view...that the stimulus did not need to fill the output gap entirely, but instead needed just to be a backstop against a full blown depression. Thus...the first proposal was about an $800 billion or so stimulus. Some in the administration did publicly say that Congress would probably add spending to it because Congress likes spending money, but that never happened, and in fact they significantly weakened it. The Obama administration itself never put out a $1 trillion number on the stimulus package and they should have. They cut back to the "let's backstop it so that unemployment stabilizes" point of view. And voila, unemployment stabilized, isn't going higher, but has zero impetus to go higher, with no inflation whatsoever. Exactly what the people calling for a number >>$1 trillion said.

At least if we're involved, it'll make the Yankees have to spend more, so that the Sox get more money in revenue sharing dollars.

QUOTE (Chet Kincaid @ Oct 7, 2010 -> 12:37 AM) On a side note: Is it me or is the TBS coverage BRUTALLY bad? Well I guess it's better than letting boomer (Chris Berman) call the game on espn. It's not just you. They're putting play by play guys out there who haven't worked baseball the whole year. You could put Vin Scully out there but if he hasn't worked more than a handful of games over 2 years and mainly has hosted basketball, he's going to stink.

QUOTE (The Ginger Kid @ Oct 7, 2010 -> 08:05 PM) ejected from a playoff game? bad form, gardy. Why not? He was right and the call already cost his team the lead. May as well try to put some fire in them.

QUOTE (T R U @ Oct 6, 2010 -> 11:45 PM) and you're wrong anyways, they hit very little.. its just the perception people have when the Patriots are brought up.. were talking about a team that has had multiple 1,2,3 round picks over the past 4 years and have very little in terms of impact players from said drafts.. yeah yeah they are a good team, whatever I still hate them.. but they are not the best drafters that's for damn sure.. The reality is that the Patriots did have some incredible drafts...in the late 90's. They built 3 championship rosters out of those drafts and a good system. They haven't drafted nearly as well recently. I have difficulty thinking of any of their top picks who have been legitimate hits, although I'm sure there's 1 or 2 on their O and D-lines who I can't think of. They've invested a ton of picks in their secondary and that unit still doesn't have a Revis, their RB situation is weak, and they have only a limited WR corps.

QUOTE (Middle Buffalo @ Oct 7, 2010 -> 09:25 AM) Speaking of Wood, Kerry must be 50lbs lighter than when he was with the Cubs. How far was his locker from Sammy's? Within 1 bat swing of Sammy's stereo.

QUOTE (FlaSoxxJim @ Oct 6, 2010 -> 10:47 PM) Perhaps the alphabet works differently in Texas? Q is no longer taught as part of the alphabet in Texas. What kind of consonant only appears when it's followed by another vowel? That's a wimpy, socialist letter, that's what that is, always having to count on others to appear in words and never taking care of matters for itself. Get a job Q!

QUOTE (bigruss22 @ Oct 7, 2010 -> 01:23 AM) I think we learned from this past year that the on paper the staff may look great, but they are as streaky as they come. Cole Hamels at least fits that definition to a T.

QUOTE (The Ginger Kid @ Oct 7, 2010 -> 02:08 AM) looking forward to a yankee/phillies world series, from the POV that I want to see the 2 best teams wage battle if my team can't be in it. gardenhire is a yankee b****. You really think the Yankees are the best team in the AL on any night when Captain Cheeseburger isn't pitching?

I'm so sick of this. Every year it's the same story. One team we can't beat. Every time we're up in the game, and then either our starting pitching craps out or our bullpen craps out. Did we even win a game against them last year? They get so demoralized, and then all they can talk about is how great the other team is. I swear, things are never going to change until there's some accountability. Gardenhire should be fired yesterday. Wait, which board am I on?

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ Oct 6, 2010 -> 06:18 PM) Damn, Balta got pwned. It happens. I still feel like he was the only one who won a bloody game the entire stretch run in 08.

First oil spill report rips the administration for downplaying the severity of the spill repeatedly, all the way through August.

QUOTE (justBLAZE @ Oct 6, 2010 -> 05:25 PM) Phillies up 1, on a sac fly from Utley, after Victorino doubled and stole third. Halladay with an RBI single on a first pitch changeup. Volquez laboring.

Remember when President Obama said that the Citizens United decision could open the door to foreign funding of ads in U.S. elections, and justice Alito was caught on camera saying "not true"? Basically, if the Chamber is following the letter of the law as closely as possible, they're taking donations from overseas, using that to finance their operations, and that frees up those funds to spend on anti-Democrat ads. But...there's no way for anyone to check if they're even doing that, and not just openly using foreign contributions, because there are no disclosure requirements.

QUOTE (FlaSoxxJim @ Oct 6, 2010 -> 04:34 PM) What the hell would any intelligent alien life want to contact us for? If we had interstellar travel capabilities and we ran into another planet with evolved, intelligent life...wouldn't we want to make contact regardless of how evil the God they worshipped they were?

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 6, 2010 -> 04:05 PM) Johnson Space Center the host? Not any more, it used to be in a building right outside JSC, but the conference outgrew that building and is now in a convention center on the north side of the city.

QUOTE (FlaSoxxJim @ Oct 6, 2010 -> 03:46 PM) Finding the time to hopefully get to Houston for a conference next May. The nice thing about Houston is at least it's close to Austin. Houston hosts the Lunar and Planetary Science conference every year, so I'll be there in March.