Balta1701

QUOTE (justBLAZE @ Aug 18, 2010 -> 01:18 PM) Rosenthal and Nightendale say Lee to Braves is a lock, Lee willing to waive no-trade clause and Glaus moves to bench not 3B like earlier reports suggested. Man, Glaus started off this season so hot and he's been Jermaine Dye bad since July 1.

On another point...yesterday there was discussion over whether any country that had the bomb had been invaded. I have come up with another example; the United Kingdom had a portion of its territory invaded in the early 1980's; the Falklands War. Thinking about that war also made me realize what a benefit it was to have the NPT in existence...such that multiple countries in South America had not by that time gone nuclear...because it wouldn't have been a very good thing for the world if one of those Exocets that hit the Royal Navy was armed with a nuclear warhead rather than a conventional one.

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Aug 17, 2010 -> 09:34 PM) This thread is pretty funny. Substitute a few words here and there and this is the health care bulls*** all over again, except now you all are taking opposite positions between government/national interests and the interests of the individual. Hilarious the hypocracy. I just realized that there was more to this post than I thought at 9:00 a.m. So Kap...which side do you support...Iran's right to a nuclear weapon unencumbered by the rest of the world, or the individual mandate?

Good Kane read that I'm not even going to bother trying to find something to excerpt.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Aug 18, 2010 -> 10:30 AM) Then I would have loved to have been on the cutting room floor had they continued to tape up until yesterdays game. I can pick about 25 things I'd have loved to see from the cutting room floor so far.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Aug 18, 2010 -> 10:35 AM) I'm going to guess no. The answer depends on what is believed behind the scenes. There are enough NL teams that could seriously use his bat that someone ought to claim him...unless they think that the money is severely toxic in some way. When teams are grabbing Jose Guillen, they're clearly not worried about clubhouse issues as much as a bat in the lineup. But then again, we have no idea what all the details on his contract are...and we have no idea what he'd do regarding attempting to use a NTC to block a waiver claim.

QUOTE (Real @ Aug 18, 2010 -> 10:09 AM) Somebody's upset! Is anyone not?

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Aug 18, 2010 -> 10:28 AM) It's too bad they're not filming The Club anymore. I'd love to hear Ozzie in the clubhouse after last night. Kenny too. Last night would have wound up being an edited-out game, I'm sure of that. All the actually interesting games were.

Couple year old link. More useful knowledge.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Aug 18, 2010 -> 09:59 AM) But doesn't the other league, in this case the AL, get first dibs? No, same league gets first dibs, he has to clear the full NL first.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Aug 18, 2010 -> 10:07 AM) Bobby Jenks: Day Games: .329/.402/.479./882 9.18 ERA 1.920 WHIP Night games: .226/.294/.290/.584 2.16 ERA 1.200 WHIP Maybe if we had a manager that paid attention to things like this and statistics in general we could have used him more effectively. That's just such a ridiculous stat though...what manager on earth is going to say "Bobby, you're my closer in night games, Matt, you're closing day games". Do you genuinely think that stat would hold up if Bobby only pitched night games?

Creepy.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Aug 18, 2010 -> 10:01 AM) I don't see it. New construction has dropped off massively (which is good for the overall market), population increase hasn't abated that I have seen. I'd assume that some time in the next year or two, we see it go back to more or less being similar increases to before 2000 - just a little over inflation. Hard to say where the EXACT bottom is - I was thinking we were in the territory late last year, but it looks now like its late this year or early next, from what most experts are saying. Overall, the current period is good for buyers, if you have the capital. You can't win trying to find the exact bottom of the market. Looking back in a few years, it will be somewhere in the 2009-2011 period, more or less. The number I'm watching as sort of a tell-all is the "months of supply remaining". Normally in a non-depressed market, there's somewhere in the range of 5-6 months of supply available. At the peak of the collapse in 2008, we saw 11 months of supply on the market. The housing credits hit and took some of that away because it created an investment opportunity again...but now that those credits have ended, the reports from a lot of areas suggest that right now may be the slowest time for housing sales in years/decades, and we might well push a new record of 12+ months of supply on the market.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Aug 18, 2010 -> 09:59 AM) But Hudson struggled mightily against KC and Oakland. And I do agree the salary thing is a huge factor in all of this. I'm just hopeful Jackson becomes a valuable piece of the rotation for the next season +1 month. And Jackson was destroyed by the same NL that Hudson is beating. We can go around and around on this one, you all know That I'm going to be the skeptic on Jackson until he proves me wrong for a full year and a half...but I think my standard is the one I came to earlier in this thread talking to Shack. If Jackson wins 2 playoff games for the Sox, this trade is a win. If he doesn't, it's a loss.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Aug 18, 2010 -> 09:55 AM) Knowing Kenny he'll still go after him even if we get swept by the Twins which would be an awful decision. Seeing that he would do that, which team with a worse record in our league would block him? I still think I'd claim him if I were the Giants. Pick your OF: Manny Ramirez or Jose Guillen.

It can't stay "This" bad because it's once again resumed its plummet and continuing this trend would within a year or two make all housing free everywhere...but it doesn't have to get any better once things level off. The housing market is still massively overbuilt and, combined with a Japan style lost decade and a tolerance of 10% unemployment at the national level, it could easily be depressed for well over 10 years.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Aug 18, 2010 -> 09:53 AM) Not the point I was making. I don't care whether or not it was the safe move. Obama was doing what he thought was right, and as I said, I agree with his overall view. But the President needs to be above getting into fights over private land issues like this. Its not his place to intrude. The sole reason why the President needed to be involved in this one is the specific circumstances. This case has rapidly become a statement on who we are as a people and whether or not we have any willingness to live up to our own ideals.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Aug 18, 2010 -> 09:49 AM) The Presidential thing to have done there, IMO, is to not take the bait. He should have said nothing, or simply said, this is a local issue. In this case..absolutely not. Calling out the people opposing this site for being bigoted ************* (pick your profane words) was 100% the right move and it's the kind of move we've rarely seen from this man since he took office. Playing it safe politically is not always the honorable move.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Aug 18, 2010 -> 09:28 AM) I'd agree that its well up from 40, and down a bit over 10, which is what I was getting at with trends. I have no solid data for you, this is just knowing that, in general, certain things keep increasing - jobs that can be done from anywhere, people willing to move for jobs, and populations shifting west and south. I don't see any of those things abating, and the recession itself will exacerbate some aspects of it (because people are desperate for jobs, anywhere). And then of course the people who can do so, are re-financing at a fast pace. That's why I think, long run, the typical mortgage life will be more year 2000-ish than 1960-ish or 1980-ish. I'd guess that in the next 20 years, the trends from the last 10 years would probably be more dominant. There's really little that can be done to make the average worker's job situation more insecure than it currently is, in a way that would drive additional mobility, but the trends from the last decade (soaring energy/moving costs, deteriorating worker conditions, lack of other job options, severely disturbed housing market, strongly anti-worker government policy) will escalate.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Aug 18, 2010 -> 07:10 AM) Well, considering that we signed Alexei for basically $1.25 million per year, signed Putz for $3 million, signed our 5th starter for $1 million, traded for Quentin, Danks, Floyd, Thornton, developed Buehrle and traded for Konerko early in his development, and drafted Beckham, I'd say we've done pretty well at identifying talent in FA and in other organizations and acquiring it while the costs are low. Personally, I don't care where these players come from, as long as we are identifying talent and acquiring it when it is affordable. Whether we draft these guys ourselves is irrelevant since we have proven we've been able to acquire them using the resources available to us. I'd still take our core and place it against that of most teams. We just need to get it done on the field. There's one big possible flaw with that mold...and we're witnessing it now. There's one commonality of every single name you mentioned there who came from another team; they all were acquired before the season started. Every time we've stolen someone from another team, it's been in the offseason. But when a hole appears mid-season, we don't have young guys ready and raring to go that we can plug in to that hole, because filling holes mid-season requires paying a premium price.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Aug 18, 2010 -> 08:06 AM) I for one saw something in those late innings that makes me think we've turned a corner against them. Aside from a gassed Thornton, the rest of the team didn't quit and even showed some balls by throwing at Hardy. I have a sneaking suspicion that we take these next two and rather easily. You know what this game reminded me of? August 26th, 2006. Sox were a few games back, were sputtering in the 2nd half, trying like Hell to find a way to claw back towards the top, facing the Twins @ the Cell, Santana on the mound against Contreras, Contreras spots them a big early lead, the Sox claw back with a couple against Santana, a couple off of Steroids Rincon, go into the 9th down 1 run against Nathan...and JD kills a ball off him for his first ever blown save against the Sox. You're thinking "God that team's pumped up now, they somehow clawed back into it against the Twins, this is it, we've finally gotten to them, JD's pumping his fists rounding the bases" 2 innings later, the Sox offense had resumed being moribund, and Nick Punto had the game winning hit off of Matt Thornton. That was a crushing, crushing loss.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Aug 17, 2010 -> 04:11 PM) Probably won't be on the extreme cheap, but it will be cheaper than it was before. There will be a few teams that will be interested in signing him. The fact that he's a FA now will elevate his price somewhat unless 29 teams think he can't possibly recover.

QUOTE (JoeCoolMan24 @ Aug 17, 2010 -> 09:39 PM) Morel is 1/4 with a 2B. Viciedo is 3/4. Finished 3/5 but with 2 K's. Still don't like the K's, that's unusual for him, but he at least snapped out of it a bit.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Aug 18, 2010 -> 09:13 AM) I'd say that's a stretch. The guy has spent most of the year on the DL with a potentially debilitating illness, and just now got back going. He's also just reaching AA now. Yeah, I can't imagine, after what he's gone through this year, that he'd even sniff the majors before mid 2012, and even saying that, he hasn't put up dominant numbers in the minors yet either.

QUOTE (JoeCoolMan24 @ Aug 18, 2010 -> 04:11 AM) So 3 starts don't convince you that Edwin is "cured", but 3 starts convince you that Hudson is so great? Technically Hudson's had 4 starts .