Balta1701

QUOTE(EvilMonkey @ Feb 3, 2006 -> 10:26 PM) Seriously, who, over the age of 18, doesn't already have SOME form of ID? You have to have it for almost anything you do, so why is it so hard to produce SOMETHING to prove who you are? On average, roughly 10% of American citizens have no form of ID, depending on what state you're in/city you're in/conditions you live in.

Chris Matthews...from that liberal bastion of MSNBC...blames the church burnings today on "Liberals." This man really seems to admire O'Reilly. Wow.

QUOTE(klaus kinski @ Feb 3, 2006 -> 06:54 PM) I'm still not convinced our offense is improved until we see what we got in center, and DH If Jim Thome avoids injury...our offense has massively improved. If everything goes perfectly right for us this year...we could have one of the top 2-3 offenses in the AL. But that means Crede & Anderson not struggling, Thome staying healthy, Konerko and Dye not dropping off, Pods not getting hurt at the end of the year, Iguchi and Uribe adapting to their roles, and AJ having a vastly better year. Some of those won't happen. Hopefully most of them will. But, if you put Konerko and Thome together in a lineup, compared to anything we had last year...that is a massive improvement.

QUOTE(Heads22 @ Feb 3, 2006 -> 05:24 PM) Here there's regular, plus (with ethanol) and premium. In all my time when I worked in a gas station (like 5-6 months) I think maybe 5 people baught premium. You know...now that I think about it...since my only form of transportation is a bicycle...I guess some finite percentage of the fuel I use is ethanol too. Anywho...it's social hour here, so I'm going to go refuel.

QUOTE(Heads22 @ Feb 3, 2006 -> 05:18 PM) Anyone here use ethanol regularly? It's all we use in our cars at home. Most fuels around here contain some percentage of ethanol.

QUOTE(q\/\/3r+y @ Feb 3, 2006 -> 04:38 PM) Konerko does not like to dh... most hitters do not like to dh unless they really have no other option aka too fat and not athletic enough to play any where else. Most of the best hitters since the dh have commented on how they feel better batting when they are playing a position rather than on the bench the entire game. The numbers reflect it for alot of the big name hitters too. Frank thomas is a great example... his numbers when playing first base were like .330ish. Konerko probally wouldn't have any problem with once a week but anything more than that i am sure he would squabble about. There's no good reason as far as I can tell to DH Konerko more than 1 time per week unless he's really not feeling good for some reason. He's younger than Thome, and Thome is recovering from injuries related to fielding. However, having both of them gives us a real advantage. Thome can play first base some, but because of his injuries he shouldn't be there much. This is totally different from last year, where our only backup options for much of the year at 1st base were Dye and Timo (ick). This led to Konerko playing 1st base for a huge fraction of the year with basically no extra off days, unlike almost every other position player on the team. PK played in 158 games last year during the regular season, and obviously 12 in the postseason, and he only got like 43 at bats the whole year as a DH (and a lot of those were during the brief times when Gload was around). Next year, we can use Thome to give PK some rest every now and then by allowing PK to DH. It doesn't, and probably shouldn't, have to happen very often unless PK winds up with some sort of nagging injury. But just by giving PK's body some extra rest by DHing him 1 day a week or so, he'll hopefully be a little healthier, maybe break out of slumps faster (off-days clearly helped him in late May), and it'll let us keep both PK and JT in the lineup for hopefully 150+ days for both of them. That's the real goal - to keep both of their bats in the lineup.

QUOTE(Mplssoxfan @ Feb 3, 2006 -> 04:26 PM) The problem with ethanol plants as they are now construed is, as I understand it, that the energy input (electricity or natural gas, IIRC) exceeds the energy output of the ethanol, so in some sene, we're really not solving anything. I could be wrong. If so, please enlighten me. There are ways to make ethanol as a fuel that give significantly positive outputs of energy. Making ethanol from corn, including other things that the corn makes (i.e. animal feed) gives you a slightly positive output of energy. You can get higher energy outputs by making the ethanol out of different products...things where you use a larger part of the plant to produce the stuff. Link

QUOTE(nitetrain8601 @ Feb 3, 2006 -> 03:12 PM) Unless PK is really sucking(which is possible) up until Interleague starts, Thome won't have a start at 1B. I believe you're wrong...after we signed PK the reports said Thome would probably play 1b about 1 time per week to give PK a chance to DH and get a little extra rest. I don't have a citation...but that's what I remember reading, and it makes sense to me if his elbow is all right. PK seemed to really be helped when he got his incredibly rare off-days last year.

QUOTE(hammerhead johnson @ Feb 3, 2006 -> 03:13 PM) I couldn't be happier for him. I refuse to feel sorry for such an extraordinary flake. I bet his money keeps him very very warm at night.

QUOTE(kapkomet @ Feb 3, 2006 -> 03:36 PM) Yay! I beat ya to it. I'm wordy & I already had 1 person @ in a blog comment complain when I didna post the link to some random article. Bah!

Backing very slowly out of this thread....

QUOTE(Kalapse @ Feb 3, 2006 -> 02:34 PM) BWAHAHAHAHA!!! I finally understand your avatar....

QUOTE(Flash Tizzle @ Feb 3, 2006 -> 02:30 PM) Chicago area commuting is even worse when you factor in the absurd number of railroad crossings. Atleast on the Southside it is. Suppose it's the price you pay for being the central hub of all railway traffic. I recall an article where 3 or 4 of the top five delays due to freight line interference occured around Chicago. Blue Island's two tracks on 127th, near Eisenhower High School, were rated the worst in the nation. A lot of those railcrossings happen in a small area because of the lake...if anything wants to come from the Eastern U.S. to go to the Northwest, it basically has to run just south of Lake Michigan. That's one of the reasons why there are so many interstate highways running through NW Indiana too.

That is why you offer that team anything they want in exchange for their draft picks.

QUOTE(santo=dorf @ Feb 3, 2006 -> 10:09 AM) Do you think if a pitchers get 5 runs scored in the first inning, he should try to strike every batter outafter that? Or is it ok for him to give up a few runs? What's wrong with pitching at the level of your opponent as long as you get the win? This basically sums up a lot of the saber-metric type debates in my eyes. A lot of the new generation stat guys say that wins are a very useless stat...but right there you just gave the best reason why they're not useless. Sometimes a win comes because you see you're pitching against Santana and you throw a near-no-hitter, sometimes a win comes because you're pitching against the Royals and you figure you've got some room to work with. Wins aren't a perfect stat, but because of that reason, I don't think they're a worthless one either.

QUOTE(kyyle23 @ Feb 3, 2006 -> 02:19 PM) Just curious, but where did Thome spend most of his time in the lineup when he was with the Indians? In 2002, he hit #4 for 447 of his 480 at bats. To go back farther I'll have to find someone other than ESPN who gives me that stat.

Ouch. That really really hurts.

Linky

QUOTE(Mplssoxfan @ Feb 3, 2006 -> 02:01 PM) But how long could they afford that? If Iran shut down all oil production, it wouldn't take long for the Saudis, the Kuwatis and the Nigerians, et. al., to ramp things up, assuring themselves of a little extra profit in the meantime. Do you actually believe that any of those countries has a shred of spare capacity left? About the only spare capacity left in the world during peak times (i.e. the summer) is in Iraq...and it's constantly being blown up. Hell, there was some sort of gigantic, major attack which did so much damage that the government wasn't saying explicitly what was hit. There simply isn't additional production available anywhere in the world to replace what would be lost if just one Middle East country decided to cut its oil exports by a significant amount.

I think I still like Thome in the 3 spot, because Thome's massive OBP numbers will give PK and Dye more RBI opportunities. But I do like the idea of Thome hitting behind PK too. Heck, the difference could come down to the performance of Iguchi and/or Crede (or even Anderson). If one of those other 3 righties provides enough pop to give Thome some protection and drive him in when he gets on base...then he might do well hitting behind Konerko. If a few of those guys struggle...then we really can't afford to have people pitching around Thome every time. We could afford to have them do it with Dye, as long as they have to pitch to JT and PK.

Link

Yeah, thanks to the fact that the 3 obvious contenders for Coach of the Year in the NFL this year were all African American, there was a huge surge in African American coach hiring this year. Right?

Goldberg

Hugh Douglas ripped McNabb on the radio yesterday.