Balta1701

My Rick Hahn rantings are more coherent.

This was about 1 party declaring that votes for the other party don't count. Is permanent 1 party rule with wins by other parties declared illegal preferable? Because that's what this has been about, so unless you're going to tell us why it's important that democracy ends, maybe not the best time for that discussion.

Fair enough, not clear you were referencing other conversations.

The last couple weeks...have not exactly left you in a position to scoff.

A 1% chance of the complete collapse of US democracy and establishment of a one party dictatorship is substantially higher than I would like it to be.

(Deep, relieved breath.)

Galveston's population today is ~50,000, and it was about 40,000 at the time of the storm. At the time, Houston basically didn't exist and Galveston was sort of the port city in that area, and it probably would have continued developing into something closer to Miami if it wasn't for the storm - densest at the coast and growing inland. Once the storm leveled the city, people moved inwards to Houston, and that became the governing seat of the area.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/deadliest-days-usa-history/

Technically per a 1869 court decision, no state can legally secede from the union, so those military bases are going to have a few jobs to do.

Where did you see that? https://www.cnn.com/world/live-news/coronavirus-pandemic-12-08-20-intl/h_adca135a0dc79384b4b7847e03bc37b3

Sinkerballer for Kuhl. I thought he showed some promise when he came up but 2019 missed the whole year for TJS, so with only 2020 on his record since the surgery and an elevated walk rate in 46 innings it’s hard to see him as a fit for what this team could use.

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/30484549/minor-league-affiliates-tracker-how-mlb-restructure-shakes-out

I bought a Sam Adams winter 12 pack instead of Goose Island last purchase because Goose advertises with the White Sox, so there’s more.

I don't want to take the dog out yet, it's snowing, and lab work for day is done, so here's a rant. As Lynn has 1 year left on his contract, this is by definition a "Win-now" deal. What does it take for a "win now" deal to become a true "Rick Hahn Special"? There are 4 failures together that make up the full Rick Hahn Special meal. 1. The entree, the big one. Not understanding your own team well enough. If you have a 70 win team by talent, and you make trades to win-now, you will wind up winning a few over 70 games and wondering what happened. This was the 2015 and 2016 White Sox, they convinced themselves they were way better than they actually were. Hopefully, in 2021, this is one the White Sox will not have to deal with, but hey with their managing decisions anything's possible. 2. Failure to scout the player you're acquiring appropriately. Jeff Samardzija was coming off a career year, the White Sox convinced themselves that him and Sale were 2 aces, when Samardzija in a normal year was a 2-3 win pitcher and a #3/#4 starter on a good rotation. Could the White Sox have misscouted Lynn? Over his career, he was a 2.5-3.5 win pitcher consistently until 2019-2020, when he suddenly turned into a 6 win pitcher. Could he have done a "Charlie Morton" with his career? Absolutely. But is it also possible the White Sox just traded for a 2 win pitcher? That would be consistent with the rest of his career, and the advanced stats do show that he was somewhat lucky in 2020 and over a longer season there was a good chance he'd drop off somewhat. As a corollary under this one - failing to take into account that the guy you're acquiring does have a salary. If the White Sox only had $30 million to spend this offseason, and they both sent out a player and took on payroll in the process, they've done more damage. This was part of the problem with deals like Samardzija, Colome, and Mazara, that even though we were getting players back, in the process we added to the payroll and those costs have to be paid too. 3. Failure to understand the players being given up/giving up way too much. The White Sox historically have been awful at this. Dunning has some issues - he probably won't throw 150 innings next year, he's coming off injury, etc. But, could Dunning be a really good pitcher a few years from now? Certainly possible. This one is the "oops I traded away Semien and he became really good, oops I traded a shortstop to San Diego and I'm not going to write that player's name" line. 4. Lack of depth in your system. If you trade a guy away, and as a consequence you leave a gaping position hole that you now need to fill, you have filled one hole while opening another. But if you have depth, you can get around those moves. If Stiever has a good year at AAA next year and he's a top 75 prospect looking at a rotation spot in 2022, we're not going to be all that mad at losing Dunning even if Dunning outpitches him, because we'll still have a cheap rotation piece ready to step in. He's then followed by Kelly, Thompson, and perhaps others. If there's 3 or 4 guys available in coming years, even before the next drafts, then the sting of losing Dunning isn't as big. If a deal hits 2 of these failures, there might be some criticism about it, but in the end it's probably a good move. For example, the Chapman for Torres and Miller for Frazier deals in 2016. In both cases, the Indians and Cubs gave up someone that it has turned out their system could not cover, and they gave up a very high price to do so. However, their teams were ready to compete, and they got players that did what they were supposed to - they rode those arms hard all the way to game 7 of the world series. Some people criticize those teams for those moves, but the teams were ready and they got really good relievers for those prices. Rick Hahn has especially impressed in this in that he has pulled off the Rick Hahn Special - doing a deal that hits all 4 of these failures - more than once, and did so in the space of 18 months. Since the goal of a GM is to basically do 0 of them, or at most 1 of them - failing on all 4 is really impressive and shouldn't happen often. For a GM to have multiple ones in 2 years, well he deserves to have the platter named for him. Plus, he has other deals that hit 3 of these failures - the Frazier deal hits #1, #2, and #4 - the players we gave up didn't turn into much, but still left a 70 win team with underperforming players and even less system depth. If Hahn hits only 2 of those failures with this deal, that would be tolerable with me (and a noted improvement on his record). If Dunning was a 5 win pitcher long term and Lynn was a 2 win pitcher next year, but the White Sox won 97 games and the year after that Stiever steps into the rotation, we can be annoyed with the scouting but that piece helped the team win games and compete. If some of the depth doesn't pan out and we really wish we had Dunning back, but Lynn is a 5 win pitcher on a 98 win roster - then we paid a high price, but we had our shot for that year. One hopes that this deal doesn't wind up hitting 3 of those, but well...trust in a GM is earned, not given away.

And interestingly, right now only 40% of those paid minimum wage and 50% of those paid below minimum wage (restaurant workers/tipped workers) are over the age of 25, and under 3% are 65 and over. But you didn't actually have any interest in whether or not half of the group you were discussing actually fits into your stereotype, you just needed to hit them because you needed to hit someone down because you could. https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2017/home.htm

I find it particularly ironic that the 2012 Red Sox had the 3rd highest payroll in MLB, $173 million (2nd highest opening day payroll/shed salary midseason), and managed to go exactly 69-93 in no small part because of how terrible their choice of manager was.

And yet, in the end, they didn't call him up. If you had a guy hitting .100, and no one knew that because guys weren't on camera and stats weren't recorded, and there was a chance you could trade the guy, you'd say the exact same stuff to keep his trade value up. He's probably close, but that's because he was close before last year, not because of anything they said this year.

But we don't know what his numbers were like there beyond the general platitudes of the org liking him (but, the org was not likely to say they thought he was doing terrible, were they?)

How do you justify saying that a guy who has played 2/3 of a season or less 5 times in his 8 seasons has a 75% chance of staying healthy the full year? I’d have said 50/50 is optimistic based on his career.

He was an impact guy when his defense was strong.

Not counting 2020 he’s been a big leaguer for 7 seasons and played 150 games in 3 of them, all the others he lost substantial time to injury. Maybe not always hurt but a pretty big risk