Balta1701

QUOTE (greg775 @ Oct 4, 2017 -> 12:20 PM) I'm just pointing out another incident has come and gone. Did the blocking of traffic, smashing of windows of businesses, arrests of a lot of people whom I'm sure right about now (lawyer fees, rioting on their record forever) wish they hadn't protested, prove worth anything? At least your actions, calling representatives, might help some. So another incident is over. Judges and jurors have been slow to convict cops in these cases. Maybe prosecutors will do a better job getting these cops convicted. It made you pay attention.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Oct 4, 2017 -> 02:32 PM) I would venture to guess most of the guns used in Chicago killings weren't purchased at the local gun store. There is one single gun shop in Riverdale that sold guns used in 1500 crimes in Chicago in a 5 year period.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Oct 4, 2017 -> 01:05 PM) Acquiring Stanton allows you to get your man, at a known cost, for likely little in the way of significant prospects. It is a reasonable alternative. The other consideration on Stanton is he would be on the team beginning in '18, as opposed to '19 or '20. Is it possible this FO thinks adding Stanton next season makes them competitive in '18? Given the relative state of the AL right now, that may not be a terrible gamble to take. The more I think about it, you obviously kick the tires and see what the going rate is for Stanton, and if the price is very little in the way of prospects, or if Miami is willing to eat some cash for a reasonable package, I might be willing to take a shot. My biggest problem with the logic here is the statement "little in the way of significant prospects". Lately when we've seen big contract guys move, the opposing team has still payed for them. The Dodgers wanted Adrian Gonzalez when he was fairly priced and they had to take on Carl Crawford's terrible deal to get him. The Blue Jays wanted Tulowitzki with a huge amount of money remaining and they gave up Hoffman in that deal. Cole Hamels had $100 million remaining on his deal when traded and the Rangers gave up a solid talent price for him - something like 4 players. The deals between the Rangers and Tigers moved big money guys and still had talent moving. That's my overall biggest problem with the concept - i don't think he moves for nearly as cheap as we want. I think the quoted asking prices of guys like Collins + Fulmer are dramatically less than they will actually need to move him even with that contract. Teams will pay a premium because this guy can make a difference for your roster right now, he can put you into the playoffs right now. That's worth a solid prospect price in addition to taking on his contract, and that doesn't make sense for the 2018 white Sox.

QUOTE (BlackSox13 @ Oct 4, 2017 -> 03:52 PM) On a separate issue all together. I give you and Balta mad props for how you both have handled the rebuild. I know you guys weren't fans of the rebuild and I think it's pretty damn cool you both stayed rather chill about it all season long instead of going off the rails. I think when Balta returned over the summer he had said he purposely stayed away so he didn't drag the board down, or something along those lines. Well done gents. Dude, I f***ing love this. I flat out hated Rick Hahn's moves the last 2 years. I was gone for a month because I was teaching a geology field camp in western Montana for a month and took a good long vacation after that ended. I'm still nervous about trusting Rick Hahn, but the times I stayed away for that reason were in 2015 and 2016. No one wanted to hear me say it was going to fall apart during the first month of 2016 and no one wanted to hear me say I told you so.

QUOTE (soxfan2014 @ Oct 4, 2017 -> 09:41 AM) I wonder what the league average OPS was for catching this year. Even with the lack of power, I think many teams would love to have his bat behind the plate. 0.724 league wide.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Oct 4, 2017 -> 08:55 AM) Yes, but this particular person seems to make it a public relations thing about him. His "speaking to the local politicians" was a joke. It was a replay of the cabinet meeting where they all say something nice about him. God bless the mayor of San Juan who called it what it was, a publicity stunt. With other presidents, even the ones I didn't particularly care for, there always was some good in these trips. Not with this guy. It's always about him. Just save the taxpayers money and keep Air Force One in DC. It's always 75% public relations. That's not a bad thing! Public relations is not a bad thing! People need to feel like the government is paying attention during these things. You've also got an entire island that is basically going to be dealing with PTSD - just having the tiniest bit of emotional support will help. The government needs to be compelled to pay attention during these things. I don't care if it is about him and he is a totalitarian racist jerk, our population put this racist in charge of the government and the government needs to function. People are hurt if the government can't do normal things, and yes that even includes press releases. Air Force One isn't that expensive - buy one less F-35 and it's basically free. Don't be penny wise, pound foolish.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Oct 3, 2017 -> 11:10 PM) Don't you hope/and or pray they stop? There has been a lot of progress with body cams, etc. Now we just need juries to convict. I don't hope and pray about anything. That doesn't do a darn thing. I vote with these issues in mind, call representatives, try to educate myself about the local laws before my district blows up over something similar. Try not to be the person turning a blind eye, and try to support the people who have had to deal with this rather than insisting they go away so you can go back to turning a blind eye.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Oct 4, 2017 -> 08:19 AM) Just got my annual letter, "Your healthcare plan will no longer be offered in 2018. If you wish to continue coverage, you will need to select a new plan by January 1." I can't wait to see how much more coverage they take away while charging me more. The ACA - the gift that keeps on giving!!! This was deliberate. It's literally part of keeping a private health care system. People are supposed to be compelled to shop around once a year. Don't you feel pride in the free market?

QUOTE (Chicago White Sox @ Oct 3, 2017 -> 07:40 PM) I don’t get why this has to turn into a partisan issue. EVERYONE should want these mass shootings to stop. Anyone arguing that some additional gun control measures wouldn’t help limit the frequency of or at very least the amount of carnage caused by these events, to some extent, has clearly been brainwashed by the NRA & those in the government on its payroll. Also, WTF is the rationalization for making silencers legal? I don’t follow politics that closely, but I can’t think of a more blatant example of lobbyist corruption in my entire life. I honestly hope there is a special place in hell for scum like Jeff Duncan and anyone who supports this bill. The motivation is apparently to protect the hearing of people who do a lot of shooting, or at least that's what's presented publicly.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Oct 4, 2017 -> 08:11 AM) What was the purpose of Trump's trip to Puerto Rico? It might have been too early given how slow any response to this one has been, but Presidents heading to disaster areas in this country to both speak to the local politicians and actually see things for themselves is not a bad thing.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Oct 3, 2017 -> 04:41 PM) They've shifted left, not radically left. If the Democrats start adopting DSA platform planks, then we can talk about a radical shift. Either way, how much they've shifted isn't relevant to whether or not Republican campaigns calling Obama and Kerry the most liberals to ever liberal in the history of liberalism caused that shift; same for the inverse and conservatives. If it gets you to address the core argument, fine, the Democrats are now a bunch of radical Marxists. Now explain how Republican political campaigns caused them to shift so far leftward. e: or don't because this is a dumb argument and you'll always find a way to blame Democrats/liberals for the actions of Republicans and conservatives The Democrats have been pushing to try to create a national health care system since I was -15 years old. Medicare was created in 1963. In the late 1960s Ted Kennedy nearly had a deal for an employer-mandate health care system with Richard Nixon but Kennedy turned it down thinking he could get a better deal and establish a full national health care system. In 1994, an Employer mandate made up the basis of Hillary's conceptual health care system to cover everyone. The Republicans responded by stating no they wouldn't mandate employers do that, but here's an individual mandate concept. The Affordable Care Act of 2010 included that Individual Mandate. No where near the universal coverage Ted Kennedy hoped to get, still would have left 10 million people uncovered and wound up with 25 million uncovered after the Supreme Court gutted the Medicaid Expansion. That's a singular goal - trying to save as many people as possible from dying from no health insurance. The Republicans marched from an employer mandate to an individual mandate to "being unable to afford insurance is freedom" and the Democrats followed them by shifting to the right basically begging them to pass a bill to cover more people. The end result is our modern day Republican party - "having no health insurance will motivate poor people in Las Vegas not to get shot", and a Democratic party that is accepting of things far to the right of what they were after decades ago. A Medicare-for-all plan, if ever proposed in a sensible way, would be basically where the Democrats have sat for most of any of our lives, at least on principle.

QUOTE (Jenksy Cat @ Oct 3, 2017 -> 06:58 PM) I think you guys are overestimating how big the market is going to be for 300+ mil deals. If you include Stanton there's at least 3 of them to go around and the Yankees/Nats/Cubs/BoSox aren't going to sign multiples. If teams like the Dodgers and Yankees get beneath the cap this offseason so that they're not paying the multi-year offender tax in 2019, I think you're underestimating how many there will be.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 3, 2017 -> 03:45 PM) It gave us the two worst political candidates in modern history, you might be OK with that, I am not. The only reason one of them was the "worst candidate in modern history" is the use of a private email server, which was the worst thing ever for 12 months and is again of course ok today.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 3, 2017 -> 03:35 PM) Um duh. But like I said years ago, when you use this same terminology to describe moderates, it loses all meaning and opens the door for the truly incompetent. Trump just happened to walk in and be the recipient of it. Sadly with the divide still out there, he stands a way too good of a shot at re-election. Yeah, because insulting a moderate president and blocking him at every single possible opportunity totally cost the opposing party the election in 2016. I guess that's just one of those things that's ok if you're a Republican. You can call the opposing president Hitler and it helps you win elections because Republicans are ok with that, but god forbid a Democrat points out that the guy literally just defended Nazis.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Oct 3, 2017 -> 03:07 PM) There is no way in hell I'd even think about trading Collins. I'm not sure I'd be very happy about trading Fulmer after his callup performance, but I would probably do Fulmer for Stanton. Fulmer +? Yeah this is where I hit my wall.

QUOTE (bmags @ Oct 3, 2017 -> 09:22 AM) The magnitude of this, nearly 600 people it's just staggering and hard to comprehend. People just going out to have a good time, celebrate with friends and family. The pain of this is just enormous. The total number of US Casualties in Operation Desert Storm was just over 600 (counting dead and wounded). Basically same number.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Oct 3, 2017 -> 01:02 PM) Well, after two weeks of protests it appears to me the St. Louis protests are over. Life goes on until the next incident. Maybe there will be no more incidents. We can hope and if we are religious, pray. LOL. These incidents have been happening your entire life. You've just been able to turn a blind eye to them because there weren't camera phones and you didn't have to worry about it happening to you or your family because...well.

QUOTE (JenksIsMyHero @ Oct 3, 2017 -> 02:52 PM) Except murder rates are way, way down. # of guns sold =/= more killings. Except medical technology and response rates have improved, so more people shot =/= more killings.

All right guys...don't be shy, add a name. Are you willing to give up Robert for him? Rutherford? Someone lower? Gotta elaborate on what you mean by the right price.

QUOTE (JenksIsMyHero @ Oct 3, 2017 -> 02:33 PM) I do wonder what role the mass media has on these cases. Let's assume the media treats these mass shootings as they treat suicides - you never hear about them except in rare circumstances; does that lessen the likelihood that the events would take place? If the sick f***s don't become instant celebrities, do they still have the desire to do it? Well, one thing worth noting is that there have been several hundred cases where >4 people have been shot in a single incident this year alone and we don't hear about most of them other than on page 3 of that area's local newspaper the day after because it is so normal for it to happen. Obviously this case is a different one given the scale, but seriously, a bunch of people getting shot in a single incident and it receiving little coverage is so normal it happens on every day that ends in Y.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Oct 3, 2017 -> 12:57 PM) Good post. To those who say nothing can be done, well, we need to have some of the politicians respond to some of the things being said by people like Kimmel in his monologue yesterday. Not just saying him but a lot of reasonable people have solutions to this assault rifle issue. Cmon, folks, this madman in Vegas should never have had an arsenal of weapons in his possession. Like you said the second amendment argument is crap here. 500 people injured, 50 dead by one man?? My gawd that is unacceptable. And people are right. Somebody else is going to try to break the new record of deaths. One other thing: People need to be aware. Wouldn't it have been perfect if somebody in Vegas or somewhere had caught this guy before the incident? I kind of agree with the Vegas sheriff though. Not much could have been done if anything to prevent this. He broke no laws prior to the incident. It is totally legal to buy huge numbers of after-market modified assault rifles rigged for fully automatic firing. It is fully legal to stockpile thousands of rounds of ammunition. The reason nothing could have been done is that one party wants guys like this to be able to buy arsenals and they have made the laws such that it will continue to happen.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Oct 3, 2017 -> 10:41 AM) This Shooting Isn’t About Gun Control We Refuse To Pass, It’s About Access To Mental Health Care We’re Continuing To GutI think the satirical newspaper is inaccurate here as there's literally no evidence that this person would have been classified as having any mental health issue prior to pulling the trigger unless we categorize "owning too many guns" as a sign of mental illness. Hell, he even seems to have planned the purchases to come from multiple sources so as to avoid setting off anything that would notify law enforcement. This was responsible ownership of an arsenal, as any good and freedom loving American should. The first thing he did that broke the law was breaking the window.

QUOTE (bmags @ Oct 3, 2017 -> 09:47 AM) I gave a 9 too (I think). Some thoughts: With others on the Yankees trade. I really liked many of the yankees 8-14 prospects (some used to acquire Sonny Gray) that going after the bigger fish of Rutherford at expense of pretty meh backend guys didn't do it for me. However, I'm not writing Rutherford off. He needs to make a big jump next year though. The other trades like Swarzak for Cordell, Jennings for Gillaspie, it's weird for me to say I didn't like them. I did. Sox seemed to like going after the players that struggled or were blocked just befor emajors. But, they weren't the player type I wanted. I was hoping to get some 18-19 year old big arms with big flaws, some big athletes but little polish. Sort of like what Preller was doing. I don't think they were bad trades, I think we may very well get actual major league production from them. But we are going to see this group of college players graduate to double A soon next year and we'll see a massive gulf of nothing behind them unless our LatAm signings begin to pay off. Lost in all this was Robert. Who, because we stashed him for taxes, I sort of forget how exciting he is. Can't wait for him to be stateside. Re: the stuff in the middle. Counting the fact that the White Sox were drafting in the top 10 again and weren't giving up any draft picks to sign guys...I think there was also a "Where would they play" factor. Our lower minors are heavy right now on position players we just drafted and guys we traded for. The only real place where we actually had room to play guys is at the AAA/AAAA level, and that's where Hahn started grabbing guys in those minor league deals. The low-minors the next 2 years should be still pretty full counting guys from the last 2 drafts.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Oct 2, 2017 -> 07:18 PM) I don't think stronger gun control laws (as in who is able to buy vs. who isn't (from a mental illness perspective or even a more detailed background check)) were going to stop this person (at least based upon the current information out there). So if you were going to look at this scenario in a vacuum, based on current facts, it would appear that the only thing stopping it would be an inability for anyone to purchase these type of firearms. I'm not a gun owner though (have barely shot a gun in my life, other than some rifles at scout camp), however, I do respect people's rights to own/protect / etc. I really see no scenario (outside of the ability to defend oneself from thy own government) where people need the types of firearms being used in these type of instances. QUOTE (TaylorStSox @ Oct 3, 2017 -> 08:10 AM) Anyone unaffiliated with an organized association that commits a random act of violence to this scale is mentally ill. This isn't like the 911 hijackers who were part of an organization and truly believed they were soldiers in a war. There's a clear distinction. Take the same words in your posts and turn them around the other way. This guy "WAS" a "Good guy with a gun". He has limited criminal history. He has no history of mental illness, at least of the level that would deny him firearm ownership. The same way you say "I don't think stronger gun control laws" were going to stop this person, no phony "improved mental health treatment" was going to stop this person either. This was apparently the kind of guy we're supposed to trust to be ok with buying weapons. Today, some kid under 10 is going to accidentally shoot someone. Today, there's going to be another incident where 3 or 4 people get gunned down. In those cases it'll almost certainly be a handgun, and there's a good chance that the person who purchased the gun the toddler will use was a good person with a gun, a responsible gun owner. It happens literally every day. Next week, we'll go back to discussing the importance of tax cuts and how government spending on things like, I dunno, mental health care, is a waste. This is just what Americans are ok with. Every one of us knows we're not going to do anything. We're not going to deny people who live in the Vegas suburbs their god-given right to build an arsenal. We're going to treat a 5 year old who shoots their 4 year old sibling as a natural disaster, totally nothing we could have done. Everything else is a cop-out. "Oh they don't need these weapons, but there's now ways to 3-D print them so nothing we can do." "Who needs a fully automatic weapon? Except there are a few hundred thousand of them legally licensed in Nevada that were grandfathered in and taking guns away from law abiding people is so wrong!". Until we face up to the fact that the problem, the only problem is the sentence "I do respect people's rights to own/protect / etc." then we better just face up to the fact that we're ok with this. That given the choice between these 59 people's lives, and the lives of the people who will die today and tomorrow and the next day, we have decided that keeping weapons of death around is more important. We have decided as a people that this is freedom and that this freedom is more important than the right of those 59 people to be alive. So, in a few weeks, we'll make silencers easier to get, another 4 year old will kill a 2 year old, flags will return to full mast, and this will be forgotten. We're ok with this. This is freedom, USA Style. And in a few months, or a year or two, we'll have another one this scale. And we'll be ok with that too.

QUOTE (Rowand44 @ Oct 2, 2017 -> 10:48 PM) There wasn't enough evidence this season to determine anything. He struggled when he was going through his Spring Training period then went on a pretty damn dominant run before making a bad start which happens to everyone. If you've decided that a 24 year old can't improve then that's fine but I think he's close to getting to where he needs to be. This of course is all dependent on health which once again is a big if at the moment. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that injury aside, he hasn't improved much at all between ages 22 and 24, and that alone would be disappointing even without shoulder surgery.