Balta1701

QUOTE (hawksox13 @ Jun 3, 2010 -> 10:11 AM) Has A.J. said that he will decline trades to other teams? I know a lot of people are caught up on his 10/5 rights, but it seems to me that if a contender came calling he would welcome the opportunity to go out and try to win another championship. He doesn't seem to take well to losing. I may have missed something, but I just don't see that being a stumbling block in moving A.J. If the 10/5 rights need to be worried about for anyone, it's Buehrle. If his kick in doesn't he get a raise if he's traded and the extra year made mandatory? Or is that how his contract is already set up? Yes, Buehrle's contract becomes much more onerous if he's traded. AJ hasn't flat out said "I'll block any trade" but he's given strong indications that he doesn't want to be dealt a few times this season. The Sun Times had this quote back early in the year, but the link for them isnt' working any more.

QUOTE (hawksox13 @ Jun 3, 2010 -> 10:05 AM) Most of these guys are going to be rental players for whatever team acquires them, so getting Konerko in early June may be a much more attractive option to a team then getting him on July 31st. That's nearly two more months of value. And for a team like the Angels that have a huge hole to plug, dealing Konerko now could really maximize his value. I'm sure Kenny has at least put out feelers to see what the Angels may be willing to offer for Konerko. The biggest mistake Kenny could make would be to hold onto all these guys or even go out and try to acquire another player to try and make a run at anything this year. He needs to make some deals and start preparing for 2011. That's his job. If he's too stubborn to admit his failures of this past off season and start to correct them the Sox need to bring in someone else to do the job. If someone offers you a really solid price right now, for almost any of those guys...yeah, you do it, but KW does have a bit of luxury in terms of being able to wait on moving anyone other than AJ to see how the market develops.

The former Car Czar had an op-ed piece in the Washington Post earlier this week worth highlighting.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jun 3, 2010 -> 09:46 AM) Well obviously BP is protecting itself, that's normal. As for the limits on fines, I don't know what they are. That's the problem, nobody knows what they are, and the law as it stands is unclear. There's a liability limit of $75 million, but there's the requirement of BP to pay for the cleanup (Which has been a joke so far), and if a court finds that gross negligence was responsible for the spill there's a possible fine of up to $4300 per barrel spilled. But...that only can happen if a court determines gross negligence, and then the fine value is highly dependent on what you calculate the total volume of oil spilled to be, which the court is going to have to litigate also (and we wonder why the CEO of BP would publicly deny the existence of underwater plumes; because if he admits they exist, that dramatically increases his company's liability). If nothing else, it'll be 20 years before BP pays out a strawpenny, just like Exxon, and by that time, it's certainly plausible that the conservative supreme court could just decide, like they did with Exxon, to hack down the fines dramatically.

QUOTE (hawksox13 @ Jun 3, 2010 -> 09:45 AM) It now appears that it's Xavier Nady that the Angels are looking at. Kenny needs to wake up and start dealing before teams start to fill needs and the Sox current players somehow become even less valuable than they've already become. Konerko's number one most likely landing spot appears to be the Angels. Kenny needs to step it up, admit failure and get what he can for some of these guys. Say goodbye and thank you to A.J., Paulie, Andruw Jones, J.J. Putz, and Jenks if possible. Don't be stubborn, don't sign some other old 3B and give up prospects when they literally will be zero help (Lowell). It's time to start dumping players, picking up prospects, saving money that can be spent this offseason, and correcing this mess we call 2010. Wake up Kenny, it's over!!! Really, the only way that there is going to be a non-trivial decrease in the value of those guys is if they get hurt. It doesn't make sense to deal Jones right now especially, since any team getting him will want to know he can pull out of his slump.

I hate to see a good slogan undermined by basic data, I really do.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jun 3, 2010 -> 09:07 AM) If you do some reading on this, you will find that debarment does not require any Congressional action whatsoever. Its an agency call. Fines and penalties can also be done without Congress. The ONLY part I mentioned that requires Congress is the liability restriction, and if you listen to the noise right now, you'll find that has got pretty good bipartisan support. The question I have in reply is how much the fines are limited based on the limitations on the books, and that's going to be a matter for the courts to figure out. And BP is already working hard to make sure that every case coming out of this geyser winds up before a favorable judge (having a favorable judge in the Exxon case was a huge, huge, huge advantage to Exxon; for example, it helped them dramatically curtail the amount of stuff they had to disclose by slapping extremely stringent deadlines and requirements on the plaintiffs discovery phase).

QUOTE (BaseballNick @ Jun 3, 2010 -> 09:22 AM) I'd like to see Morel, Viciedo, Hudson, Flowers, and Torres. I know it's early for Morel and Viciedo, but I think Morel can handle it, and selfishly, I want to see what Viciedo looks like against good pitching. Had Mitchell not gotten hurt, I'd have him on my list too. Viciedo keeps hitting through June and July...I'd be happy to see him take over at 1b after our big league 1b gets traded.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jun 3, 2010 -> 09:16 AM) there's all sorts of crazy ideas out there. The main ones are, I think, a government plot to go to war, some insurance scam for the guy that owned the WTC, and, of course, the jews/ Mosad are responsible. Generally, they think a missile hit the Pentagon and that the WTC buildings were wired with demolition charges. If you want a good explanation, go find the first episode of the show "The Lone Gunman". There's a creepy shot of what it would look like looking through the front windows of a plane...flying into the world trade center. The episode ran in about 2000.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jun 3, 2010 -> 09:12 AM) Flowers has struggled in AAA and is jut now starting to get his swing back to where it was, from what I've read. Now is the worst possible moment to bring him up to the majors. I would like to see Hudson, Torres and Gartrell. In September, add in Flowers if he has picked up the pace in AAA (Lucy if not), and maybe a couple others (possibly even Morel). I would like to see Lucy come back up within the next 10 days or so. Hudson, July 31-ish...whenever Garcia is moved (and he ought to go somewhere like Washington, San Diego, St. Louis, or Colorado...place that could use a veteran, back of the rotation starter with playoff experience).

Wow, if you ever wanted to kill any desire I had to own an Apple product, this is the way to do it. Good work AT&T.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jun 3, 2010 -> 09:06 AM) She gets more press from the left than anywhere... I like how Newsmax ran yesterday the major story that they'd gotten her facebook post released to them before it was posted on Facebook.

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Jun 2, 2010 -> 10:59 PM) I guess I just take the example of him being a whiney b**** several times and then him half assing it in this year's playoffs anytime the score didn't treat him well. I just don't like that attitude at all - and that comes across on the court larger then life. I can't disagree the guy's got a massive marketing machine though. He'd put asses in the seats for sure. You know the amazing thing Kap? I half agree with you. Lebron's game is no where near at the level it should be, and if it wasn't for his ego, I think he'd have a title by now. He's gotten everything he wanted from Cleveland. He got a coach who let him work on whatever he wanted to work on, rather than what the team needed him to work on. He got a coach who put in the system he wanted rather than focusing on running what might work best for them. He was able to get virtual veto power over trades, and they wound up with things like Shaq on the floor for 40 minutes against a couple of 25 year olds in the Celtics series. He ought to be the most dominant post player in the game, but he's shown no interest in going down low and doing that kind of work. His game is way too perimeter oriented. All that said...the other side of it is...his physical skill set is so far beyond what anyone else in the league can compare to, even with the weaknesses in his game, he's still far and away the best player.

QUOTE (lostfan @ Jun 2, 2010 -> 09:41 PM) If it was really a government-orchestrated conspiracy to get us to go to war it is probably the sloppiest and dumbest goal of a conspiracy of all time, because there's been no net benefit from it whatsoever. IT depends on who was doing the organizing. You could certainly say that a lot of defense contractors have benefited from it massively.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jun 3, 2010 -> 08:58 AM) I said before, I got dismissed, and I'll say it again. The US gov't is going to do a deep debarment of BP in the near future, in addition to slamming them with a wide array of fines and penalties, and probably removing the liability protections they are shielded by. Its the only way, politically, for Obama to survive this. Anything that can be filibustered will be. Obama can do some fines, but we've already seen what happens in Congress when you try to raise the liability cap.

Torres needs to replace Williams in the bullpen. The starting pitching can't last 5 innings any more; we need someone who can.

Was I the only one who saw Santos get bloodied up on Tuesday?

QUOTE (docsox24 @ Jun 2, 2010 -> 06:28 PM) That's true. Just stop starting him please Then tell Carlos to hit better than him, and tell Jones to heal back up and hit better than him.

QUOTE (docsox24 @ Jun 2, 2010 -> 06:26 PM) Except we aren't going to win with kotsay batting 5th and DH and with Omar or whatever crap is playing 3b. Not one other team in baseball would give them this many at bats Oh, that's just silly. Lots of teams give at bats to backups/fill-ins/guys who aren't that good. Go look at a team like the Red Sox, giving >250 at bats to Hermida, Hall, and Lowell, when none of them are producing. Vizquel, for another, is right now on pace for basically the same number of at bats he had last season. They might not hit them 5th, but really, if the guys who were supposed to be putting up the big numbers were doing so, we wouldn't care nearly as much.

QUOTE (SoxAce @ Jun 2, 2010 -> 06:13 PM) Haha, now all we need now in a thread is how Roger Bossard's field is terrible for our team to play in. Who wants to go after Nancy Faust?

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jun 2, 2010 -> 05:43 PM) Poor choice of words, and a REAL stretch, but reading what she says it's still accurate. I think that depends on what the meaning of the word is...is.

QUOTE (qwerty @ Jun 2, 2010 -> 05:25 PM) Since 2007 he has attempted 140 bunts for a hit and registered a hit only 36 times... good for 26%. For his entire career he is at 35%. While still having extremely good speed, pierre has indeed lost a step or more... in just the past few seasons. It was a common complaint of dodgers fans that pierre has lost a step of speed in the past few years... if not more... and i will take their word for it. From his heyday it's even more severe. Not everyone is ichiro and seemingly never loses a step. I will agree that his bunted ball placement has been poor thus far. I'll totally agree that he's lost a step, but that's not the reason why his bunts aren't succeeding. If you gave him back the speed he had in 2003, I'm not sure if there's a single bunt that he'd have beaten out this year.

QUOTE (Quinarvy @ Jun 2, 2010 -> 05:15 PM) I greatly enjoy him as a person, but man his defense is killing me when Morel is apparently studly on defense. I'm not trying to forgive him for being awful on D, but I keep coming back to this...he's been much, much, much worse on D than he's been his last stints at 3b. He's been worse there than he was as a rookie, and he's been approaching average over the last few years. Until this year.

QUOTE (fathom @ Jun 2, 2010 -> 05:22 PM) I've only flat out heard them say that a player was only good cause of the juice twice now..Lowell and Carlos Pena Carlos Pena? Seriously? That makes very little sense to me.