Balta1701

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ May 15, 2010 -> 07:21 PM) Brent Lillibridge has a 700+ OPS with Charlotte. When (OR IF) we start talking about replacing Pierre or Beckham with Lillibridge, that's when we'll know the season is pretty much unofficially over. I think that the season would be well over beyond that point. Even if we did a full fire sale, Lillibridge is going to be behind Beckham, Ramirez, Morel, Viciedo, probably the struggling CJ, and a few other people.

When you're driving with a BAC of 0.2, and you run into another car and kill a few people...that's still an accident. But it's an accident in exactly the same sense as this was. It's an accident that is entirely preventable. When that happens, you don't just throw up your hands and say "Oh, well, there was nothing anyone could do". You throw the driver in jail. But there's one thing you're missing, and that's the key problem here. Yes, there is inherent risk in life. But that doesn't mean we can't take steps to mitigate that risk. And, like the DUI example, we don't just accept infinite risk. We don't accept people driving down the street if they can't see straight, we ban that practice because its going to kill people. Similarly...in a working world, in the world where capitalism works right, you don't accept things like banks that are leveraged 40 to 1 against the assets they're holding, because a 5% decline in their asset values destroys every bank they do business with. You don't accept people drilling without bothering to know what they're drilling into. You don't accept people drilling without working batteries in the blowout preventer. You don't accept a company's word that their products are safe, you check them...especially when they're not liable if people get hurt. The reason why we're pointing fingers at the deregulatory philosophy of the last 8 years...and to an equal extent the last 30 years, is that all of those precautions, the things that worked for 50 years to prevent a recurrence of the depression, the things that might have worked to prevent this spill, the things that keep food safe, the basic expectation of a fair system...they are the precautions that have been stripped away, by both parties, over the last 30 years, in the zeal for/worship of the fair market as the cure for everything. There's a word we came up with for what's been going on in this country..."E Coli Conservatism". Kill off all of the protections, leave it to the government to deal with the consequences, and then say "See the government can't do anything right" when the reason it isn't working is that at the top it was decided to kill off all the protections. If you end all of the inspections by the FDA through cutbacks because you promise me that the unregulated free market can police itself, you can't expect me to not be mad if people die of E Coli. If you allow unrestrained drilling and don't even mandate the safety precautions that everyone else in the world does, and you tell me it's ok because the market will police itself, you can't be surprised if I get mad when the market doesn't police itself and the livelihoods of a few million people are destroyed.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ May 15, 2010 -> 06:54 PM) Brent Lillibridge is OPSing (704) ahead of or equal to Jordan Danks, Maurice Gartrell and CJ Retherford. That wasn't predicted by ANYONE. A .704 OPS isn't anything to write home about and really shouldn't be surprising for a guy who's been in AAA for that long. No one predicted he'd have a better OPS than Quentin or Beckham either...that doesn't mean that we should be impressed by that. It just means that D2 is struggling...mainly again, because of the K's, and so are the other 2 guys.

It's also worth pointing out that there was no guarantee that the other options out there as DH would be doing that well either. Matsui, for example, has a .716 OPS, which is only good in comparison to Quentin or Kotsay.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ May 15, 2010 -> 06:38 PM) Kotsay has 1 hit as a DH. Jones is hitting .258 as a DH. Quentin hasn't hit well but does have 7 of the 12 RBI as the DH and he isn't even about 1/3 of his AB. You can say Jones has been better than expected, it still doesn't answer why the Sox did not go out and get another bat. Ozzie thought the offense was fine. KW went with it. 2 huge mistakes. Quentin is 4-34 with 1 hr and 7 rbi as a DH. If he were 9-34 I really don't think the overall DH numbers become stellar, and perhaps one reason he isn't hitting is because he's the DH. Again, a lot of players have trouble adjusting to being a DH. Even Frank Thomas. The whole rotating DH thing is just another toy that Ozzie doesn't need to be playing with. Having a defender the ilk of Teahen playing 3B last night so Omar Vizquel can DH is a joke. Bah, the idea of putting some of these guys part time at DH still doesn't bother me. Konerko could benefit from some time there as well. If Quentin can't handle being a DH mentally, then he ought to start hitting while he's in the field. I'll totally agree with you though. The concept of Vizquel as DH is pathetic and inexcusable. And we all knew coming into the season it would happen, and it'll probably happen more from here.

QUOTE (Thunderbolt @ May 15, 2010 -> 07:10 PM) I'd add that playing a kid like Nix in the Of, was a ridiculious thing to do too. I have zero issues with that.

QUOTE (kapkomet @ May 15, 2010 -> 06:01 PM) Yup, that's how stupid the argument is for your side. It's always a double standard for what your side of things are and what morality is according to your world. Thanks for proving me right once again. Good to know what really gets you going. "Sure, I may have destroyed the economy of 3 or 4 states, and put the whole planet in jeopardy, but making me pay $.15 a gallon to cover the additional risks/costs associated with those problems...that's hideous socialism!" Oh, while we're at it...yet another failure at trying to plug the geyser tonight.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ May 15, 2010 -> 04:26 PM) DH is a huge problem. The rotating DH has been a total failure. The Sox have gotten better production out of the 2 guys brought into be the backup platoon DH than I expected, mainly because of Jones. The problem has been...when Jones plays, they've been putting Quentin or Pierre at DH, and until the last 2 weeks Pierre wasn't hitting, and Quentin isn't hitting at all. The rotation Dh would be putting up stellar numbers...if Carlos Quentin was hitting at all.

QUOTE (greg775 @ May 15, 2010 -> 03:52 PM) Of these players in the lineup, Pierre (even though he's had some hits in May), He's hitting .347 in May and .438 in his last week.

QUOTE (Thunderbolt @ May 15, 2010 -> 03:57 PM) Beckham isn't hitting at all. Are you really going to tell me that giving him the second most at-bats out of anyone on this ballclub is optimizing the teams chances to win? It's not. We have a bad sitiuation, and Ozzie is making the worst of it. Beckham has gotten a couple hits the last few days. Hopefully it's a good sign.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ May 15, 2010 -> 12:12 PM) Peavy is coming around, but he has been somewhat of a debacle this year as well. So has Floyd and Buehrle. Everyone mentions the lack of offense. The White Sox had ample opportunity to add offense this past offseason, yet passed. Now they are looking for offense. They can wait the proverbial 60 games to realize they don't have enough, but it may be too late by then. Its time JR, KW and OG realized they need better hitters and get better hitters to Chicago ASAP. Status quo isn't going to work. There's no guarantee Rios will keep hitting like he's been hitting. There's no guarantee Jones has found the fountain of youth, as a matter of fact, his stats this season are eerily similar to his stats last season after 110 AB. Beckham and Quentin will eventually hit. Ramirez will hit. They are still going to need more if they want to win a championship. If the goal is to be within 6 or 7 games of winning the AL Central so you can sell that the next season, they might as well stand pat, but a personnel move or 2 is overdue. The problem though continues to not be the positions where we would have brought anyone else end. It's the positions where we were hoping to have a solid player. RF, 2b, C, SS.

QUOTE (kapkomet @ May 15, 2010 -> 12:14 PM) picture=capitalism picture=Obama needs to save the day picture=government needs to fix it Because you know who's done a great job here? BP, Transocean, and Halliburton. So, I assume you've stopped eating food since so much of our food production industry is based on illegal immigrant labor? Otherwise, you're just as much to blame as anyone else here for the entire immigration problem.

The Cubs are now 0-5 against the Pirates this year.

QUOTE (bmags @ May 14, 2010 -> 11:09 PM) What about the capitalists in the shrimping industry who are getting destroyed not due to better competition, but because some other capitalists who are always right because they are capitalists completely f***ed up trying to cut corners and created a disaster. Oh he who attempts to make money can never be wrong. What's really impressive right now is how few people seem to realize that the economies of about 5 states have been absolutely destroyed for the next decade. Haley Barbour is still saying "Go to the beach, it'll be fine and nice". He doesn't have a clue that every tourist dollar and every offshore food production dollar his state has taken in for the last century has just completely evaporated and won't be coming back. About the only ones who seem to realize it are the ones in Florida. Probably because of the tourist industry there.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ May 15, 2010 -> 10:00 AM) I think the poster's original point was the Sox got out from under the Dye and Thome contracts,( and Contreras too), each was making $10 million plus, they upped the payroll and look what they have to show for it. Its not like dumping bad contracts is any guarantee the Sox will then spend their "available" money wisely. This past winter JR and Brooks Boyer both said the White Sox had money available to add a "significant" hitter. I have no idea what they are waiting for. If the Sox were anticipating having money for a significant hitter...that money could be evaporating with the walkup ticket sales. What they have to show for those guys is Rios and Peavy. I think I'm pretty satisfied with what we have to show from those 2 guys, especially now that JFP's found his grove. We should be back to complaining about the 2007 season and how the 2 key things that we brought in after it, Beckham and Quentin, have been debacles.

QUOTE (bmags @ May 14, 2010 -> 11:10 PM) then that really doesn't have much to do with size alone being the problem. see Canada. Again, are we talking about size of deposits or size of liabilities.

QUOTE (lostfan @ May 15, 2010 -> 12:19 AM) Yeah really, using this case as an argument against deregulation is like using the Shahzad Faisal case to argue against Mirandizing terrorism suspects (Faisal basically gave up everything after being read his rights plus he was a U.S. citizen). Huh?

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ May 14, 2010 -> 11:15 PM) Maybe I misunderstood your post. (What savings from Thome and Dye? Dye never left, and Thome they saved about $1 million from.) It seemed like you were saying Thome didn't cost us that much money last year (obviously Andruw and Kotsay are cheaper, that's given). Okay, now I get it, you were talking about 2007 I guess? Look at the original post...it said "look what they did with the savings from Thome and Dye" I interpreted this as meaning "whatever money they saved by dealing Thome and Dye last year, they turned into Vizquel and Kotsay, so they're not likely to do anything even if they do save money by trading people". My response was...They saved about $1 million by trading Thome...and they didn't ever trade Dye, so it makes no sense to talk about savings from him. Trading AJ for nothing except contract savings right now would save $4-5 million or so. That's a lot more than we saved by deadling Thome and Contreras last year.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ May 14, 2010 -> 11:31 PM) That makes sense on why they sent him to the pen if they were trying to prolong the obvious. Of course, some pitchers woulnd't react as well to the pen and having only a day or so rest between outings.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ May 14, 2010 -> 11:03 PM) So Balta, you know for a fact that the Phillies paid Thome's contract for his "option year." Where is this reported? Because officially, it was $12-13 million, yes? At least on our payroll, it certainly looked that way. Why would the team have been concerned in 2008 about his 2009 option kicking in if they didn't have to pay his salary, Pat Gillick's "secret" handshake agreement did the trick? Huh?

QUOTE (mr_genius @ May 14, 2010 -> 11:01 PM) that would explain the super low unemployment rate and budget surplus in California. i wondered how they did it. now i know. You know what other budget deficit we can blame on the Mexicans? Iceland's. Makes exactly as much sense as your point.

QUOTE (kitekrazy @ May 14, 2010 -> 10:51 PM) Clearing payroll isn't the answer either. Look what they did with the savings from Thome and Dye. It's the philosophy that needs to be changed. What savings from Thome and Dye? Dye never left, and Thome they saved about $1 million from.

Factcheck has a piece calling out the people who continue to state that immigration is bad for jobs/workers/the economy/the budget.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ May 14, 2010 -> 10:43 PM) Why would AJ block a trade....to stay on this White Sox team? He's as good as gone.

QUOTE (kapkomet @ May 14, 2010 -> 09:02 PM) Yup. And the policy has been in place for a lot longer then "10 years". Again, you people want Bush to be Obama's savior in that he inherited every problem in the world, just stop it. Take some responsibility and STFU. And if the Obama administration tried to shut down a drilling operation for safety violations? You'd be the first one out there calling him a socialist and saying that it's a terrible idea to make business have to spend more money on things they'll never need. Or you would have been before this mess. Conservatism can never fail. It can only be failed.