Balta1701

Josh is going to the DL.

By the way...for all of y'all who keep saying this race is destroying the Dem party...yowza, Hillary and Obama dragged not only the primary total well above Kerry's total in 06, but their coattails hit a down the race ticket.

QUOTE (mr_genius @ May 7, 2008 -> 06:02 PM) haha that would suck living there but hippie liberals have been doing this for years, nothing new. a lot of whom are Obama supporters. go figure I love the randomly thrown in insult at Obama supporters and presumably the candidate that seems totally out of place there. Anyway, the "Free State Project", another libertarian group, has been trying to do the same thing for a few years as well. Clearly, this means Obama sucks.

Signs that Chicago has angered a deity...

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ May 7, 2008 -> 01:54 PM) Its been noted that Harold specifically worked with AJ in the offseason to balance his plate approach, and that has paid dividends - he's back to using all fields. I think that's a pretty good sign he can teach. But AJ's been slumping as bad as anyone lately. Hitting .125 in his last 7 games. His average has dropped from .405 on April 15 and .325 on April 27 down to .282.

In case you haven't been following it, there's a fascinating look at the Bush Administration happening over at the Federal Election Commission right now. Basically, George W. gets to nominate people, the Senate has to confirm them. The Bush administration has for several months been pushing for votes on a slate of 4 nominees (2 Dems and 2 Reps) to the committee to happen all as one block. Why? Because they have at least one nominee who'd lose in an up or down vote on him, Hans von Spakovsky, who amongst other things has been one of the "Voter suppression" gurus that the administration has been using at the Justice Department. So Bush pushes for a vote on all 4 at once, the Dems say no because they want to vote that guy down, and the FEC gets completely shut down. Because the FEC can't get a quorum, it can't do normal business, like deciding on whether or not John McCain can opt out of the public campaign financing system after he'd already asked to opt in. Basically, if he isn't allowed out of that system, he goes to jail for 5 years. According to a letter from one of the 2 guys currently sitting on the FEC waiting for a quorum, David Mason, sent to the McCain camp, McCain was risking legal action and could not withdraw from the system without a majority vote by the FEC. So, therefore...in an effort to resolve the controversy and get the FEC moving again, the President has submitted a new slate of nominees for the FEC today. What did he do to compromise? Did he remove Hans von Spakovsky? Did he decide to allow up or down votes on each of them individually? Did the Dems just vote them all down? Of course not. Instead, he resubmitted his list of nominees, with Hans von Spakovsky still included...but instead he replaced David Mason on the list. That's what you get for messing with the Republican nominee, I guess.

Whoa, you wanna know something interesting? The DNC's nomination acceptance speech day (aka Obama's speech at the DNC this year) is scheduled 45 years to the day after Dr. King gave his "I have a Dream" speech.

Just out of curiosity...if our starting pitchers keep up what they're doing, where they keep performing well and going very deep in to games, and we continue to have the fewest bullpen innings pitched in baseball...how long do we need to go with the 7 man pen? I think a few people might find reason to believe that an extra bat on the bench could be useful.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ May 7, 2008 -> 02:22 PM) Per DCW, the superdelegate Clinton enjoys is 11.5 at this moment. Another one of those is due to a flip today.

QUOTE (SoxFan562004 @ May 7, 2008 -> 10:55 AM) thanks for the Clinton numbers, I had no idea that the 4 super delegate number was so huge. I'm now wondering if there might to be strong momentum to put more pressure on Hillarly, people might not want to stand alone against her, but once more and more come out asking her to step down, it might be a flood. McGovern, a Clinton backer, coming out today isn't exactly what I'm looking for since, while he still has cache in the dem party, he doesn't exactly have a political future to worry about. If Dean or Gore or someone of that ilk make a strong statement about her pulling out, that would be a serious hit. They won't do that until at the earliest Obama has a firm lead in pledged delegates that can not be overtaken. That happens on the 20th I believe. The top people have held out this long out of fairness to everyone else, they're not going to end it and have people question why they did so when there were still votes to be counted. I think the good news is...its' sounding like there's zero chance of her being able to drag this to the convention, which was the real worry. Now Obama gets at least 2 months or so where it's him versus McCain while he has a gigantic funding advantage.

QUOTE (Steve9347 @ May 7, 2008 -> 10:50 AM) Keeps idiots tuned in. At this point...there's some elements of strategy that might actually be helpful though. Obama is probably going to lose West Virginia and Kentucky quite badly, and might well lose them even if Hillary drops out of the race. Over in the Dems thread people are saying that it's worth noting that McCain is only pulling in 75% or so of the Republican vote despite being the nominee, how do you rationalize the nominee losing states when a race is no longer even competitive? And furthermore...although we're limping across the finish line now...I still contend it's not going to be a bad thing to get the organizations even in these last few states up and primed for a run with the candidates. In terms of a 50 state strategy for building the party long term, and in terms of OBama's 50 state voter registration initiative, running the ads, running up the turnout machines, putting in the early money in those last set of states over the next 2 weeks is probably only going to help in November. Oregon especially was recently considered quite swingy, running through there and having the Obama ads hit the air early can't be a bad thing.

So far, the AP is saying that Obama's superdelegate count for the day is at 4.

QUOTE (RME JICO @ May 7, 2008 -> 10:29 AM) There will always be exceptions. Cabrera of the Orioles always had a good K rate and a high ERA, but that is more of an exception than a norm. Which is why you need to look at the K/BB ratio also. Here's the simple way to think about it. Assume for a moment that all pitchers have a roughly constant BABIP. They will give up a constant number of hits per times a batter hits a ball. Unless they give up an abnormal number of home runs, then their WHIP, which will translate to ERA, is determined entirely by the number of walks they give up. A pitcher who has a high K rate but also walks a lot loses the benefits of the high K rate. A pitcher with a low K rate who walks almost no one will still be average to above average because he'll keep the number of baserunners low. That's the other think you have to take in to account with K rate. The first obvious complication of that is the Brandon Webb complication. Assuming you have a constant BABIP doesn't work for all pitchers, because movement on your pitches can kill batters who put the ball in play. But to first order, K/BB ratio is going to show you a lot.

QUOTE (SoxFan562004 @ May 7, 2008 -> 08:17 AM) Have there been polls in IL for an Obama/McCain election? I would love to see those early potential numbers. Wouldn't that be a major bullet in Obama's gun against Hill's "unelectable" platform if Obama can pull a major state that is historically republican? In Early March, Survey USA released polls for all 50 states with the Clinton/McCain and Obama/McCain matchups. Obama wins Illinois 60-31, Hillary wins Illinois 48-37.

QUOTE (SoxFan562004 @ May 7, 2008 -> 08:15 AM) I think there might have to be some strategy sessions for the super delegates and other dem party before there is a party line asking her to quit. No matter how you cut it, likely Bill and Hillary are going to be around and powerful Dems for many years. There are people in the party who likely don't want to be the fall person for leading the charge against her. There have been repeated rumors of these sorts of sessions happening basically since mid to late Feb. when the numbers really started going one way. Dean, Pelosi, and Reid have all indicated that these sorts of things have happened, and in public statements they reinforce the impression by saying "Things are being done" or something along the line of "This will be over after June 1". Obama is almost certainly going to take a firm hold of the pledged delegate lead 2 weeks from now when Oregon hits. By then he'll probably have a superdelegate lead as well. I think the pressure to "End it" on the rest of the supers will be tremendous...especially if we can get Dean, Pelosi, and Harry to come out and do their endorsements after that point, which I think they will.

Kick some tail MB. Bats...we need fear taken from bats.

QUOTE (Pants Rowland @ May 7, 2008 -> 06:51 AM) I have been a little disappointed in the bullpen thus far this season. Dotel scares me and I am concerned about overworking Linebrink. I know it is not going to be lights out every night but I was hoping for a little more consistency. I do not blame Cooper for this necessarily, but I am not going to call the bullpen anything more than average so far. Right now, Linebrink is tied for 121st in MLB for most games pitched in, with 12. Both Boone Logan and Bobby Jenks are ahead of him. The top guys have made 1.5 times as many appearances as him or more, the top is 21, and everyone in the top 10 have appeared 18 times or more already. He's had a couple stretches where he's appeared in several games in a row, but each of those has been punctuated by a longer period of rest. We are currently 9th in the league in ERA out of the bullpen, with a 3.25. And, as some of us (Me) predicted coming in to the season...we're also already last in the league in innings pitched out of our bullpen once again.

QUOTE (Steve9347 @ May 7, 2008 -> 08:22 AM) I can't believe that seating the FL and MI delegates is being considered. It's a goddamn joke, but you know Hillary will cry until it happens. They will be seated in some fashion. Everyone knows it, there's going to be no reason not to in the end. The question is whether or not they seat them the way Hillary wants (Michigan goes entirely for her and Obama gets nothing there) or whether there's some more fair split. And honestly, once we get through these next couple weeks, it probably won't matter anyway.

Wow...well I'll be. About 8 pages ago I did some quick math and Said that Obama basically needed to win Lake County 66-33 in order to have a shot and if he did that and turnout was high enough he might pull it off. He's winning it 65-35 right now. He has a lead of 21,000 in the county with 56% in...and is behind her by 16500 votes. Extrapolate that and could literally come down to a couple hundred votes. Who's the guy in this thread who said earlier he wouldn't bother voting unless prohibition was on the ballot?

QUOTE (Gregory Pratt @ May 6, 2008 -> 07:29 PM) This isn't a save opportunity, is it? No way. No. Jenks just hasn't pitched in a while.

QUOTE (Brian @ May 6, 2008 -> 06:30 PM) This is getting to a point if Obama doesn't win, I may have trouble sleeping. An hour ago I could of accepted it. He'd still need a really big margin in Lake. It's not out of the question, just not likely.

QUOTE (Athomeboy_2000 @ May 6, 2008 -> 06:24 PM) Looks like almost all the precincts are in other than Lake. it all hinges on Lake. Monroe and Tippecanoe (IU and PU) are still at less than 50% in. Porter and LaPorte aren't in all the way yet, but the margins there are small. There's a few precincts hanging out around Indy still to come in also that might have a few Obama votes.

QUOTE (SoxFan562004 @ May 6, 2008 -> 06:29 PM) are all the outlets still not calling it? Only CBS. They all called Missouri for Clinton on Super Tuesday and had exactly the same thing happen when St. Louis came in.

MY MAN! BOOYEAH!

APPLAUSE