Balta1701

QUOTE (greg775 @ Feb 8, 2009 -> 12:24 PM) How do you know he won't be healthy? Because we've watched him from 2005 to 2008 and paid attention to his medical reports. He might be effective as a platoon player. I just think it'll take a miracle to get him a single complete season with no performance losses because of his back. We haven't gotten that from him in like 4 years.

QUOTE (whitesoxbrian @ Feb 8, 2009 -> 10:17 AM) His name is BJ Raji, but alright. I doubt that will happen. The Ford's love money and so they'll go with the guy who will sell the jerseys- Matt Stafford. Can you really blame the Lions for starting with a qb?

QUOTE (SoxAce @ Feb 7, 2009 -> 10:01 PM) I'm trying to lessen my severe man crush for him in case he's traded, but I hope Pax, if he makes a trade, does everything in his power to not trade Tyrus Thomas. I've said it since day one, when he gets his minutes (preferably 30+, stats even look sweeter at 34+ mpg), he'll shine. It'll help him too if he can get some solid C play next to him regularly (limited small lineups, Noah not in foul trouble).

QUOTE (kyyle23 @ Feb 8, 2009 -> 12:18 PM) I guess, but they really have no major competition at all Pearl Jam tried hard to challenge the ticketmaster monopoly in the 90's, testified before Congress IIRC, tried to do a tour with independent, non-ticketmaster venues. I believe ticketmaster just out-lobbied them.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Feb 7, 2009 -> 08:56 PM) 2) Do invest in education and health care, buildings, weatherizing/energy efficiency, "green jobs," technology, innovation, R&D, math and science In other words, invest in human capital... Notably, a lot of the big cuts in the centrist senator compromise bill were exactly those programs. The NSF, research funds, energy efficiency, school repair, Pell Grants, etc. They were basically cut to make room for that amt adjustment.

QUOTE (The Ginger Kid @ Feb 8, 2009 -> 11:46 AM) do you think he'll start in AA or AAA? AAA or the big leagues.

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Feb 7, 2009 -> 04:59 PM) These job numbers are all bulls*** anyway. It's just to add to the dramatics of the whole thing. You're right. Considering that the Senate cuts are some of the most effective and rapid parts, it could well be over a million.

Compromise reached after centrist Senators agree to cut 600,000 jobs from the economy. If only they'd allow me to write the headlines sometimes...

QUOTE (ptatc @ Feb 7, 2009 -> 03:52 PM) He was the best player in the minors in Low A when I saw him play for appleton. A man amoung men at 18. Bonds is the same thing. A great player before the abuse began. How exactly do we know when either of them started juicing? I'll guarantee you the stuff was available if they wanted it while they were still in high school, especially ARod. Maybe he's a man among boys at 18 because his body is overloading with artificial testosterone.

QUOTE (Leonard Zelig @ Feb 7, 2009 -> 03:11 PM) ESPN is reporting that 104 players tested positive in 2003, does anybody know how many players were tested? All of them. Over 1000 players were all tested in Spring Training. The rule as agreed was that if over 5% of players tested positive in 03 in unpunished, undisclosed tests, then in 2004 there would be mandatory testing with some limited punishments if you get caught several times. Later in the 2003 season, there were 200 or so random retests done. I think some goal of those was to retest the people who were informed they tested positive in spring training. The thing that is still remarkable to me to this day is...the players knew for months, since the last CBA was signed in August of 2002, that there were going to be tests in Spring 2003 and it was going to cover everyone and everyone would benefit if they actually took some steps to get themselves clean, and 10% of the league still tested positive. For White Sox fans, these are also the tests that the White Sox tried to screw with the players association on. If you refused to take the test, you would be recorded as a positive. In order to make sure testing continued in 2004, virtually the entire White Sox clubhouse mutinied against the players association, which they regarded as defending people who were cheating and refused initially to take the tests to make sure that they would continue the testing program in 2004. They were all eventually tested, I believe after they knew that the 5% number had already been crossed.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Feb 7, 2009 -> 12:34 PM) I bow to Kenny here because in reality, he, for a guy with our payroll size, has avoided giving out a big and bad contract, as opposed to some of the albatrosses around baseball, hell just 8.1 miles north. At the sametime he has managed to keep a talent pool pumping into Chicago that has allowed him to avoid the free agent market to save the team. We might not like the 50 cents talk, but why hate on the guy for telling it how it is? I'd rather have that than the Schuler type crap about how we went after a free agent that we offered a fraction of the money that the other teams did. (ala Ventura at 3 years 18 mil as compared to NYM at 4 years 32 mil). Give me honesty every time. On a side note...man am I glad we didn't sign Torii Hunter.

QUOTE (whitesoxbrian @ Feb 7, 2009 -> 03:05 PM) So it'd probably be Noah, Thomas, Hinrich, and our 1st either next year or the year after. Make it a lottery protected first and I'd be happy to.

He still loses his balance on the follow through a few times, but overall that's a pretty good swing. Lots of line drives off that bat.

QUOTE (nitetrain8601 @ Feb 7, 2009 -> 01:11 PM) Well, he's also unmotivated. They don't feed him the ball much downlow, Porter has phased him out of the offense and it is now ran through Shaq. With that, you have an unmotivated Amare who just looks around because he doesn't care. And Vinny Del Negro is the solution to that because...?

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Feb 7, 2009 -> 12:36 PM) The reality is that probably a fraction of players were juiced on the 05 team. Heck if you take the 03 numbers of 104 positive tests, which doesn't include HGH type stuff, that is one in seven players testing positive. That averages out to 3 to 4 players per each team. Granted it sounds like some teams have a concetration of problems, but I doubt very seriously that any team has zero cheaters. It is inevitable that some of our favorites will end up being frauds to. It is going to happen, sooner or later, that a name will slip out of the Sox clubhouse. Schoenweis doesn't count? He's already Mitchell Reported. Anyway, I still have 1 or 2 guys from that clubhouse I have suspicions about, at least one of whom was named by Canseco, but it's worth noting that by the time they got to 2005, the testing was already fully installed, although it couldn't detect everything, so the team that I'd be more worried about scares me less than you'd think. And I still come back to the fact that it seemed like if you were in the Sox clubhouse in the early 2000's and wanted to do that stuff, you might want to keep it out of the clubhouse, because there was a very big man with baseball bats who didn't seem to like that.

QUOTE (whitesoxbrian @ Feb 7, 2009 -> 11:18 AM) If the Bulls get Stoudemire, do they immediately give him an extension? I don't think they can without crossing in to luxury tax territory. I think they need to wait for Hughes's contract to expire to do that. (Edit; depending of course on what they give up to get him)

So, in my admin role, not in my partisan liberal role, I'm going to say "please everyone chill out" and "if one person in particular is having a problem with the GOP only thread then perhaps they should stay out of the GOP only thread or make heavy use of the ignore button." In fact I'd probably strongly encourage both sides of this particular discussion to make use of the ignore button, as they should probably consider this a warning.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Feb 7, 2009 -> 10:14 AM) I actually agree with KW with extensions for these guys. They have had 1 good season each. You can't get too far ahead of yourself. Generally, if they continue like they have been, a year or two of arbitration still is a decent deal. The no money talk is what has to stop. In last year's economy, it would make sense to jump on these guys early, a-la the Hanley Ramirez, Evan Longoria deals, etc. Because if you assume the market is just going to go up and up and up forever, then it makes sense to extend them as early as you can and buy out a couple years of FA to give yourself some cost certainty and save money year over year. But, KW is right. If the economy keeps plunging, then next year's FA market could be an even bigger bloodbath than this year's, where this year at least had the Yankees and Mets having new ballparks to sustain them. The Mets could well lose their Citigroup sponsorship and be out $20 million a year, the Yankees might well get caught up in the NYC economic bubble bursting and have revenues far lower than they were hoping, and that can easily ripple through the league. If the market is going up forever, then extensions early make sense. If the market stops and corrects to the down side, it makes no sense to try to extend people before the correction has worked its way through, because you'll be overpaying. Regardless of injuries, etc., these guys aren't worth right now what they were worth a few months ago, and that's a trend that may well continue.

QUOTE (daa84 @ Feb 7, 2009 -> 06:18 AM) i would have to imagine that the portland deal proposed above or the heat deal above would be better deals to take than anything the bulls could offer....with the heat, i guess they don't want marion back, at least not at his salary, but beasley would be a perfect block for them.....and portland i would think aldridge would be very appealing plus a pick or two...i guess the bulls can maybe offer a better package, with more quantity of players, at more affordable price, but i think the top end talent is better in the other two offers Does Portland have an expiring contract? The Suns have been in Salary cap hell for years, and it's arguably why they haven't won several titles (trading away their #7 pick in 2004 for nothing, giving up Kurt Thomas for nothing, giving up Joe Johnson) and on and on. That's a potential asset on the Bulls side.

QUOTE (Kalapse @ Feb 7, 2009 -> 10:58 AM) Keep it in PMs. No reason to be throwing that s*** around on a very public forum. I Concur. If you want to know, use the PM function.

Man, Amare's numbers have really taken a dive this season now that I look at them. Scoring down from 25 last year to 20 this year, 1 less rebound per game, 1 less block per game, 0.6 more turnovers per game, and that's in more minutes than last year as well. Either he's not the same player once you take him out of the SSOL offense or something's catching up with him.

Well, that's fairly surprising I'd say. Crap. Stay Clean, Albert. And just to comment again...if you're testing positive in 2003...they WARNED EVERYONE MONTHS IN ADVANCE THE TESTS WERE COMING. You knew coming in to the season that you needed to clean out your system before the tests, and then you were probably fine the rest of the year, and 10% of baseball still tested positive. Idiots. And another aspect of this story that no one has mentionned yet here...the SI writers are saying that MLBPA COO Gene Orza was directly involved in tipping off players in 2004 that additional tests were coming their way, including ARod. I wonder if he's had to testify about that enough that he might face charges if he denied doing that.

QUOTE (longshot7 @ Feb 6, 2009 -> 04:13 PM) I still don't see why it should be something we should hold against him. Doesn't steroids mean he had a greater desire to win than those that didn't use them? If nothing else...what typically happens to these guys 3-5 years after they're off? They have seasons like LoDuca had last year.

Lebron's triple double in NY taken away, 1 rebound of his was credited wrong.

QUOTE (SoxFan101 @ Feb 6, 2009 -> 02:17 PM) Does anyone think Kirk Hinrich or Larry Hughes could be moved for either a Kaman or Wilcox afterwards, both those guys are post players and would be better for our team needs than what Hinrich/Hughes offer. If we were to trade for Amare, the only way we can move Hughes's contract is if we get another 2010 expiring contract in return. Otherwise we'll lose the ability to extend Amare past 2010 without crossing the hated luxury tax # (since both Amare and Hughes expire in 2010).