Balta1701

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jan 14, 2009 -> 09:10 AM) Abreu hits lefties pretty decently. He loses a little bit of power but has a nice average and OBP. For last year's splits, yes. Every other year before last one, his performance against lefties has been 150-250 points of OPS lower against lefties than against righties. In 2007 he put up a .678 OPS against lefties. 2008 was the anomaly in his L/R splits. Sometimes you do get those things with a small sample size (See: Thome against lefties in 2008).

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Jan 13, 2009 -> 08:37 PM) If they get Abreu, their young hitters play as well as they are capable/projected and the starting pitching holds up, they could definitely threaten for the Wild Card. But lots of things have to fall into place and break the right way for this to transpire. Bobby Abreu would be really, really rough for the Reds. That'd give them Bruce, Votto, and Abreu all coming up from the left hand side. Their only bat threats from the right hand side would be Phillips and Hernandez. That's the kind of team that you can destroy with an average LOOGY or two. They really need a guy like Dye to balance the 2 lefties.

Guy is now in custody according to CNN.

Long but excellent piece on how taking some of the stimulus package money and investing it in a substantial upgrade of our freight rail system can turn around and generate major savings in terms of time, money, efficiency, greenhouse gases, and so on, if the money is allocated wisely. I'll excerpt a few useful bits here.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Jan 13, 2009 -> 07:29 PM) f*** me...no conclusion to prison break. That was my fear. ? It said there would be a finale to it to air on Fridays later this spring.

For discussion, here's an issue that was brought up before and scoffed at by everyone else without really making an argument against it. Bob Herbert, non-economist writer for the NYT, raises the Stock Transfer tax issue.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jan 13, 2009 -> 06:40 PM) Yeah, I have to say, to me that should be a game changer. You want to be SecTreas, but you managed to "forget" to pay $34k in back taxes over 5 years? And hire an illegal alien? End of interview. So, on both issues, it turns out it's actually quite a bit more complicated than presented here. On the immigrant housekeeper, when she started working for him, she was a legal immigrant. She had the appropriate immigration documents. Those documents expired for a period of 3 months, probably due to her simply not handling the documentation application request properly. She left after those 3 months to have a baby. In other words, the only way for him to know that she had an immigration issue would be to repeatedly conduct immigration sweeps of everyone he meets or to take down all of the details from her identification documents upon hiring her so that he knows whether or not her papers are expiring and constantly keep tabs on that (something that no business in the country wants to be doing - does your business know whether or not your drivers's license is expired after you've been officially hired?) Secondly, the mistake he made - failing to pay the Social Security and Medicare taxes, is a common mistake made by employees of some organizations like the IMF, because the IMF pays your federal taxes through standard withholding but does not withhold social security and medicare taxes, and as such, the employee is expected to calculate and pay them on his or her own. The "Immigrant" problem is bunk and shouldn't be a knock on him. He did his due diligence. The tax problem I could see being an issue...in the sense that I don't like my SecTreas making careless mistakes...but it's at least a complicated one.

If I gave you this list of names and asked you "Which one of these people is deciding how the United States votes on U.N. Security council resolutions?", what would your answer be? 1. George W. Bush 2. Dick Cheney 3. Condoleeza Rice 4. Vladimir Putin 5. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad 6. Ehud Olmert Make a guess. Please. Who runs our foreign policy?

QUOTE (knightni @ Jan 13, 2009 -> 03:05 PM) I bet that you'll be in line the weekend that the new Star Trek movie opens. If I'm looking at being unemployed 2 months after that, the answer will probably be no. If any of the postdoc applications come through before then such that I know I'm not going to desperately searching for work after defending in a horrendous economy, then I'll be there at midnight friday A.M.

QUOTE (kyyle23 @ Jan 13, 2009 -> 04:14 PM) dont act like you arent going to tell the room to shut up when you hear Spock start up I will not allow you to lecture me.

QUOTE (kyyle23 @ Jan 13, 2009 -> 02:52 PM) Variety confirmed the list of movie trailers to be shown during the Superbowl Yay.,

QUOTE (Steve9347 @ Jan 13, 2009 -> 02:03 PM) The movie's not for everyone. Something tells me the guy that doesn't get around to seeing The Dark Knight until a month after it was released on DVD probably wasn't very hyped to see it. If it's not your cup o' tea, no matter how good it is you'll have a problem with it. Some of us really, really wanted to see it sooner, but are in a financial position right now where a $20-$30 trip to the movies is just hard to justify when you can wait 6 months and catch the same thing for $1.

QUOTE (knightni @ Jan 13, 2009 -> 02:23 PM) Why would the Angels want Dye over Konerko? They need a 1B more than another corner OF. Seriously...look at the Angels roster the last few years and count the OF's. If they have under 5 starters they seem to panic and find someone to sign for a ridiculous contract.

QUOTE (GREEDY @ Jan 13, 2009 -> 01:44 PM) On the flipside of that, wouldn't the team that would be receiving Dye in the trade, be better off keeping their own talent and signing Abreu? Why give up something of value for JD, when similar players are available for roughly the same money in the FA Market? Until all of the big name free agents have inked, these Dye rumors make zero sense to me unless they are in exchange for a player with a questionable contract. Because Dye is a different sort of player than Abreu. Dye is a big time power hitter from the right hand side. Abreu is a medium level power hitter from the left hand side who is more of an OBP machine than Dye. Dye get you 70 points more slugging (just last year) and probably 15+ more home runs in an equal number of at bats. Strictly in terms of numbers, some teams will fit better with one over another. If you have a left handed heavy lineup, i.e. Cincinnati, where Votto and Bruce both are 20+ home run guys from the left hand side, adding in a lefty like Abreu is setting you up to just be dead meat for left handed pitching. Alternatively, if I'm a team who has good hitters but is just lacking pop (The Dodgers come to mind if they lose Manny) then the extra 15-20 home runs is a major threat in the middle of my lineup that I'm missing out on. (Hell, with G*d, Thome, Fields, and hopefully Konerko putting serious power numbers in our lineup, I can make an argument that Abreu is actually a better fit for us in that the extra OBP will turn in to major run production). Plus, there are personality differences between the 2, where one type might be better on a team full of young guys than another. And since Dye's 2010 year is an option year, there are also contract differences...you can cut JD lose after a year if your team pulls a 2007-2008 Chicago Bulls and falls apart, while if you have to go to 2-3 years with Abreu, you can't.

QUOTE (Texsox @ Jan 13, 2009 -> 09:57 AM) Yeah, I even ate some three year old Cheerios I found in my desk drawer It tastes like...burning...

QUOTE (Texsox @ Jan 13, 2009 -> 09:30 AM) The lines will always be meandering and fuzzy. Dude, are you high?

QUOTE (Milkman delivers @ Jan 13, 2009 -> 09:40 AM) The person below me wishes he could drink on a Monday night. True. The person below me has recently found a food item lying around that was several years past its expiration date.

QUOTE (Texsox @ Jan 13, 2009 -> 08:28 AM) Ricky not getting 100% is a joke. Actually the whole first ballot, second, etc nauseates me. Was Ricky that much better than Nolan Ryan?

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ Jan 12, 2009 -> 07:08 PM) It's up at the end of next season. We'd be no worse off than if we kept Hughes and his horrible contract. At least with O'Neal we'd get back a legitmate, if no longer all-star worthy, big, while breaking up the pathetic logjam at SG/SF. Actually, we might well be a lot worse off. Hughes's contract is like $12 million, O'Neal's is like $22 million or something like that. But...if you can take 1 of the 2 guys you're stuck with, i.e. Hinrich or Nocioni, and turn them in part in to O'Neal, then you've made an intelligent move for that huge contract.

Given where the Israeli thread has gone, I'm going to post this here rather than there. I think there's pretty much no defense for this. Arabs make up 1/6 of the Israeli population right now, give or take. After a vote today, the 2 parties that typically gain the votes of that block have been banned from running in the upcoming Israeli elections. Hopefully this doesn't last in the Israeli courts at all. The last thing we need is for the Jewish state to officially start enforcing racial politics.

QUOTE (MHizzle85 @ Jan 12, 2009 -> 06:39 PM) Fellow Bulls fans, what do you think of trading for Jermaine O'Neal? One. Giant. Contract.

Deng and Hinrich both returning for the Bulls tonight per 670.

Punch.

QUOTE (bmags @ Jan 12, 2009 -> 03:13 PM) Eh, Teixera just got 200 in this market for his top 5 production at 1b, you don't think Mauer will exceed that by a large amount? Depends on whether or not he's smart enough to sign with the Yankees after Posada is done at that spot or not.

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Jan 12, 2009 -> 02:52 PM) You know, on this specific matter that started this, I have to admit I was very suprised when some high ranking Egyptian came out and said that Hamas screwed up here and is to blame. Of course, Hamas was calling for his head right after that, and he was forced to 'clarify his position', but he did have a moment of clarity there in realizing the problem in the area. Maybe it is because they hate the Pali's too, and have no problem showing it by arming their wall with soldiers. Or maybe it's because Israel kicked their ass inthe last war and could do it again. I dunno. If Israel really touched the Egyptians after actually signing a treaty with them decades ago, they'd unleash all hell. What has really happened is that Israel has maintained a blockade (an act of war btw) of Hamas for the last several months, and every so often a group of starving people finds a way to break through to the Egyptian side and becomes refugees there. Like just about every country, the Egyptians don't want a flood of refugees across their border as Israel tries to starve the people out of Gaza, so they aren't exactly in the business of trying to strengthen Hamas right now.