Balta1701

QUOTE(Kalapse @ Aug 17, 2007 -> 11:53 AM) Eh, that's a little righty heavy. No more so than our lineup for the last couple years right? 05 lefties were Pods, AJ, and Everett, 06 they were Pods, Thome, and AJ, 07 Pods/Erstad, Thome, AJ, and now the Rally Richar.

QUOTE(Kalapse @ Aug 17, 2007 -> 11:35 AM) Just thought I'd jot this down so it is on record. That is the most believable thing I've read on this site in a while. I just wish we'd find a better option at SS.

Link

QUOTE(Jenks Heat @ Aug 17, 2007 -> 11:09 AM) The fact that Juan Uribe plays daily, Alex Cintron still plays and Darin Erstad is treated like Rod Carew. Well, unfortunately, with the first 2 guys you mention, we don't have much of a choice right now. Pick your poison at SS. It's either them or Andy Gonzalez is your everyday shortstop. And people wonder why I say SS is by far a more important position to fix than any other for next year.

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Aug 17, 2007 -> 09:55 AM) I think the Cubs overpaid again. I think the Cubs overpaid as well...and I still think Zambrano gave them a discount.

QUOTE(southsideirish71 @ Aug 17, 2007 -> 09:34 AM) If Santana stays in our division, the only thing we are good for is 4 to 5 guarenteed losses. Which could balance the sox getting into the playoffs in a year. I am a fan of the sox, and could give a flying crap what is in the best interest of other teams. Of course...if Mr. Santana stays with the Twins, then Mr. Santana also does not wind up pitching for the Yankees or Red Sox in 2009 and doing his best to make those juggernauts totally unbeatable in a playoff series.

QUOTE(Markbilliards @ Aug 17, 2007 -> 09:09 AM) So if we judge them entirely by ERA I guess Zammy's better, but is he that much better which he deserved the contract he got? Mark does eat a ton more innings than Carlos does though because Carlos focuses on the strikeout so much more. OF course, if you Judge solely based on ERA, without correcting for the fact that he's pitching in the NL, you're really missing a key factor. On average, a pitcher moving from the NL to the AL sees his ERA go up by just under a run, and the reverse holds true for going from the AL to the NL.

QUOTE(29andPoplar @ Aug 17, 2007 -> 09:10 AM) I really don't know where these misconceptions come from. Unfortunately, it's watching the performance of some of our hitters at the plate.

QUOTE(FlaSoxxJim @ Aug 17, 2007 -> 08:44 AM) Are we reading the same story about the $1 million shipping charges for 19-cent washers?? Yes. So naturally, I took the person's name and state, and plugged it into OpenSecrets to see if they'd been dumping money into either political party. And as far as I can tell, she hasn't been...and I'm sure this is totally unrelated to the fact that she was actually caught.

QUOTE(Texsox @ Aug 17, 2007 -> 07:07 AM) Which one has the best chance to control costs, have everyone covered, and offer choices for those that can afford it? As you pointed out, everyone does have coverage of some sort via our safety net and not allowing people to just suffer and die. By far the biggest problem with that though is that the safety net setup is pretty much the worst, most expensive way to operate. It's more costly because: 1. People are unable to get preventative treatment for health problems, which can cause small problems to rapidly become big ones 2. People's backup is by far the most expensive way to treat things; going to an emergency room 3. The backup option keeps landing people in bankruptcy because it's so bloody expensive.

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Aug 17, 2007 -> 07:05 AM) And they got nailed for it. Good. That's actually better news than a lot of the fraud and waste going on in Iraq tht HASN'T been addressed. As far as I can tell, the campaign contributions by the person facing indictment were essentially nil according to Opensecrets.org.

And if things weren't bad enough for Ron, the rest of the story suddenly comes out.

QUOTE(Dick Allen @ Aug 16, 2007 -> 08:08 PM) Actually, I was hoping for a little higher than .171 avg. and a little better than .244 slugging pct. Its still early though. Like I said, his numbers were almost guaranteed to be bad when he came up. There was just no way around it. He simply hasn't played enough baseball in his lifetime to be ready for what the big league pitching staffs were going to throw at him. The hope is that the learning curve will be very steep and will go a long way, and I think he's shown some evidence of that.

QUOTE(daa84 @ Aug 16, 2007 -> 07:42 PM) as far as richar goes i also agree.....lets put it this way...his 8 walks so far are only 5 away from uribe's total of 13 from 2006 Richar is doing exactly what we should have hoped he'd do when he came up; looking like he has promise. The kid's been bloody raw at every level, he bounced around in the D-Backs lower levels for several years basically just learning the game but hung on on sheer talent, and finally started to move up in the last few years. He was bound to struggle when he first came up, but at least he's having some decent at bats and hopefully learning a few things.

I think Rock may well be one of those guys who puts up low numbers his first year, but then as time goes on winds up with more and more people lobbying for him and telling other sportswriters to look at his numbers, like we saw with Sutter a year ago or so & like we've seen with some other guys. There are already a lot of the stathead people out there who see this guy's numbers and say "Yeah, that's HOF worthy" and over time I think they'll add up.

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Aug 16, 2007 -> 05:59 PM) I would say the instant returns are a big part of it. Plus you are talking about a known commodity versus someone who might go Todd Van Poppel on us. Well, let's think for just a second. Take the $7 million. If you spent that 5 times on draft picks, then that's $35 mil and you get 5 top tier pitchers. That's basically 1 Javy Vazquez contract extension or 3/4 of a Ted Lilly or 3/5 of a Gil Meche. So in other words, you have 5 different chances for a guy to turn into Javy Vazquez for the same price. There may be a higher percentage of busts than the known commodity...but you also have 5 more chances to win. It's sort of a bit of gambling I guess...do you spend your money on 1 sure thing or on 5 guys where you get a limited chance of success with each one? For a top-of-the-draft kind of guy, I thnk the math certainly favors taking your chances on the expensive guy...UNLESS you see a cheaper guy who you think could be the same or better. If we lined up Porcello and Poreda and said to ourselves "well, they both throw hard, but one of them is a lefty...and the lefty will be $5 million cheaper", then that $5 mil you saved is a replacement for Uribe. You sort of have to weigh everything.

Should we perhaps tell the Cub fans that if they send us money, we'll open up a love for the Cardinals thread?

QUOTE(29andPoplar @ Aug 16, 2007 -> 03:12 PM) Well on the surface it may seem logical but unfortunately it doesn't exactly work that way. His rehab is being coordinated by Boras Corp. and they are not known for full disclosure and free and easy communication. Well, the question is...are things any different when Mr. Crede is still under the Sox's control rather than a FA? I mean, I can't imagine any other team in baseball being willing to give him a 1 year, $4-5 million deal next year, can you?

QUOTE(CWSGuy406 @ Aug 16, 2007 -> 03:19 PM) Gosh damn, DJ is such a dolt. He said Podsednik is one of the fastest players in the league. Is that a fair statement at this point? Without even thinking about it, I bet I could come up with ten guys faster. Eyeing every roster over once, I bet I'd double that number. Pods is certainly not even the fastest guy on this team, heck he hasn't been the fastest guy on this team any year he's been here. He may not even be the 2nd fastest right now.

QUOTE(Dick Allen @ Aug 16, 2007 -> 03:15 PM) This is really a funny place. It was just a couple of months ago that Thome supposedly walked all the time because Paulie sucked. Now Thome is done. Jim Thome is and always has been one of the streakiest hitters in baseball. Next week or so when he gets hot again it will be interesting to watch the backpedaling.OPS April 1.233 May .825 June .753 July .970 August .556 Last 7 days .279

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Aug 16, 2007 -> 11:37 AM) Just something to consider here... for those who have good credit and at least a little bit of equity (or cash) available, this credit crunch is not a bad thing at all. In fact, it will create lower rates for those with good credit. Plus with values having gone down or leveled, people are staying in their homes longer in response (and developers are slowing down dramatically), so values should stabilize and even increase soon. This credit crunch issue is really only directly effecting those with bad credit, those who were over-leveraged, and the mortgage industry. Patience. I hate to say it, but I'm probably about 3-4 years away from actually being able to purchase a home because I'll finally be done with the Ph.D. and looking for something tenure track...and I couldn't be happier about the timing of this. Home price shifts usually take years to work their way entirely through the market and to hit everywhere, and this one will probably be no different, so with a little bit of luck, I'll be able to hop in at the bottom. Also, I will note one other thing...while the credit crunch is only directly hitting those groups you mention, the real risk has always been in the indirect results of it. An awful lot of the recent economic expansion has been done on the expansion of credit; real wages have barely changed in the last 6 years or so since the dot com bubble burst, but consumer spending has kept going up and up and up, and so much of that has been done because of the easy access to low interest credit. Something like 10-12% of the economy I believe directly deals with home sales, construction, etc., and then beyond that, you have the people taking out equity to purchase new items, new appliances, new things for the home, etc., and if this crunch really winds up finally contracting the credit market a bit, it might well finally be the thing that slows down the consumer spending binge.

Once again, Bud Selig proves he really isn't all that peeved about the pervasiveness of steroid abuse in his game.

Beautiful stuff for the apologies of the week, a copyrighted feature of Le Show.

Oh for crying out loud... Now they don't even want the people who they've been holding up as the saviors of the mission to testify publically about it. Yeesh. Thankfully, I'm pretty sure it's written into the law that they have to...but of course, the law only seems to matter so much any more.

QUOTE(kapkomet @ Aug 15, 2007 -> 08:24 PM) For all the doom and gloomers, yes. Realistically, I would say no... but you will see where the floor is once you hit that 10% number. Well, we're there.