Balta1701

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Aug 10, 2017 -> 10:31 AM) In 71 plate appearances, Moncada has 13 walks. In 411 PAs this year, Tim Anderson has 10 walks. As of the last AB I saw last night, Moncada had been on base 14 times in his last 25 PAs.

If you can't meet the basic rules of professionalism for your job you should not have that job.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Aug 9, 2017 -> 08:09 AM) I don't think he did anything to warrant the suspension. Of course I didn't think Beltre should have been ejected for moving the on deck thing. People need to relax and laugh about some things. I don't know why everything is taken so seriously and offensively. There are plenty of things to take that way, but the littlest things now are made such a big deal of. An umpire can't criticize a player publicly. They're supposed to be unbiased judges. If he can't keep up that appearance then he should retire.

QUOTE (Sox-35th @ Aug 9, 2017 -> 10:00 PM) They have a fan base? I live 180 miles away and I have yet to meet a real Astros fan I have a bunch of them as students.

QUOTE (SoxAce @ Aug 9, 2017 -> 09:57 PM) I don't mind us kicking Houston's ass. I can't stand their fan base. I'm still annoyed at them for not adding to their starting rotation either in the offseason or at the deadline.

QUOTE (chitownsportsfan @ Aug 9, 2017 -> 09:57 PM) ty, that's awesome. I was just watching some cano clips but didn't see that one. Found one more, added to post.

He was 22 during that HR I believe. First big league hit

QUOTE (Tony @ Aug 9, 2017 -> 09:43 PM) Moncada and Anderson both hitting in the same game? Anderson now 11 for his last 30 with 6 XBH in that period.

Moncada has reached base 14 times in his last 25 plate appearances.

QUOTE (JenksIsMyHero @ Aug 9, 2017 -> 02:23 PM) According to this, they never really honored the deal, and the whole thing was based on Clinton and his admn believing that the NK regime would topple once Kim-Il Sung died. Proving once again we have, at best, an unreliable intelligence community or at worst, a poor one. So keep blaming Bush, Republicans in Congress or whomever, but that wasn't a deal that was going to last anyway. They were dead set on getting a nuclear weapon and we let them. They are currently dead set on building a global delivery system and we're letting them. Starting in 1994, the United States was to begin funding 2 light water nuclear reactors in North Korea, the sort that could not be used for weapons construction. Japan and South Korea were to assist. The President could agree to that, but Congress refused the funds. Therefore, an absolutely straightforward case is that the United States broke that deal first. The North had what was still a rudimentary uranium enrichment program in 2002. They admitted it when challenged, and then got to work reprocessing their plutonium for bombs. The plutonium route was vastly easier - the Uranium route was not even as far along as Iran's at the time and Iran needed another 15 years to get close. In 1994 Bill Clinton stated he was willing to go to war if North Korea attempted to reprocess that plutonium. That was the red line. In 2003, we had other priorities when they started reprocessing it. Literally all of their bombs are plutonium bombs - it would have taken another decade+ of work for them to get anywhere near a uranium bomb. They did not make any worthwhile progress from 1994-2002, and then made rapid progress from 2003-2005, because the deal would have worked. We could have traded those fuel rods for the reactors and we broke that agreement. If we got those rods out of the country they would not have a bomb today, regardless of their uranium program attempts. That is what negotiation does - you don't have to agree about everything, but you say "here's a red line we'll do this if you don't cross this". As long as we are ok with a nuclear armed North Korea, we should continue treating any negotiation as appeasement. The end result is what we see here.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Aug 9, 2017 -> 02:07 PM) You dont agree with it fine. But they were going to keep trying and they did, and finally got it, But whatever Well, they offered up a deal where they wouldn't and we accepted it and then we broke that deal first before they did, so "they were going to keep trying" remains only one possibility.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Aug 9, 2017 -> 11:45 AM) After reading all of the back and forth between everyone the last few days, i think it is very apparent that there is no sure thing reaction to what we are seeing unfold. people on both sides see the possible loss of life, they just see it on separate continents. NK has been trying to gain access to a nuke for a long time, multiple administrations have tried to prevent that, and unfortunately that just was something we could not prevent no matter what. There is no good answer here. We are dealing with a secretive, reclusive, unhinged dictator. The problem now is we have a boorish, loud, unprepared and frankly unqualified president who seems to be fanning the flames of war. Personally, i dont want war first, thinking later. But i dont have an answer. Frankly, nobody knows the answer here, we all are just speculating from the outside with very little knowledge of what is really going on. Hopefully cooler heads can prevail and loss of life can be prevented Still incorrect, but whatever.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Aug 8, 2017 -> 09:42 PM) Quintana has actually raised his season ERA pitching in the NL. That's a bit of a shocker. Coop magic? 2 words. Paul. Goldschmidt.

QUOTE (Chicago White Sox @ Aug 8, 2017 -> 07:54 PM) You really think you know everything huh. Maybe because people are afraid to make tough decisions. Why did my brother in law let his dog suffer until he simply rolled over and died rather than put him out of his misery weeks before? Or maybe they didn't feel it was a pressing enough issue at the time and figured they'd let it be someone else's problem years down the road. See global warming. Or maybe there are political consequences if there are casualties or something doesn't go to plan. Or maybe it's because people like you who are completely against US military involvement in foreign affairs represent a large portion of the voter base. Point is there are plenty of reasons for inaction, doesn't mean any of them are right and that we should continue to kick the can down the road until a US city is nuked. And none of that changes the calculus. No "top men" will figure out anything else. 1. Status quo, but louder, like we saw today. 2. Nuke them first. Small scale military action is a violation of the 1953 Armistice the U.S. signed, so the first bomb would be us resuming hostilities. Small scale military action also does not hit all their weapons and it leaves Seoul exposed to retaliation. Large scale military action of the size necessary to protect Seoul from artillery kills thousands of North Korean soldiers and they would have no choice but to respond, with either full scale invasion or nuclear weapons. This calculation will not magically change. 3. Negotiate. In good faith this time. Make a deal where they give up some things, perhaps a portion of their missile technology, in exchange for aid. Then actually keep up that deal.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Aug 8, 2017 -> 08:04 PM) I have no doubt that our current Presidential regime will continue the tradition since the end of active hostilities of talking loud, but really doing nothing about this. This will keep up until finally the inevitable happens. Whether it is this year, next year, 10 years or longer it is going to happen soon enough. In my opinion, the tipping point is long since gone. They have the nukes. It is already way too late. But what we really need now is the partisan blame in place so we all have our political marching orders, because THAT is all that matters here. Any word of this that wasn't equally applicable about why we had to strike the Soviets first? No? Ok good, just making sure.

It's being handled by top men.

You're right guys, that's brilliant. We should tell the experts to think of something. Why haven't we done that the last 20 years? That's my bad, I'll take the blame for that one. I'll go tell them right now and I'm sure this will only take a few minutes for them to iron out the details of something. I'm actually a little in awe of this response. It's basically "do the status quo but louder and make me feel better about it!!!"

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Aug 8, 2017 -> 07:20 PM) Bombing North Korea will not end well for North Koreans. You can't seem to acknowledge any of the negative effects of the thing you're advocating. That's the game he's playing which is why that's the exact amount of respect it's getting from now on from me - a game. He tells you how terrible things are right now and how bad appeasement is, but he will refuse to lay out the details or consequences of anything else. You will ask him how many people he's willing to kill and he will deflect the question. He gets to play the big man, pointing out all the flaws in everyone else's argument, but if all he does is sit back and say how bad everything is right now other than bombing, he doesn't have to defend all the people that would be vaporized that way. It's our fault for not figuring out how to put his bold vision of everything working well into practice.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Aug 8, 2017 -> 07:24 PM) The track record of appeasement is spotless thankfully. * 250 pushups.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Aug 8, 2017 -> 07:21 PM) Luckily no one has died from what has been done so far, or will die in the future... except for those few million dead Asians, but apparently they don't count. 200 pushups.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Aug 8, 2017 -> 07:17 PM) Offer them fuel oil and grains? That worked pretty well, right? 150 pushups.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Aug 8, 2017 -> 07:15 PM) The same people who are OK with millions of deaths so far are worried about hundreds of thousands... A troll is a good way to put it. Funny how that works. 100 pushups.

QUOTE (Chicago White Sox @ Aug 8, 2017 -> 07:03 PM) I already acknowledged the threat to South Korea. But that doesn't mean we can sit idly while a madman gets the nuclear capabilities to attack the mainland US. Tough problems oftentimes require tough solutions. Being passive for years and years and years is exactly what's gotten us into this mess in the first place. Again, I don't have the answer (cue Balta's lame 50 push-up comment), but there is a solution out there that is better than inaction and that doesn't necessarily mean invading and/or nuking North Korea. But I can promise you this, sanctions are simply putting a bandaid on a gunshot wound. More drastic measures must be taken if we actually want to eliminate a serious threat to the US. Nope. Negotiations where they keep their weapons but behave slightly better, or just do what we're doing right now. Anything else is fantasy. I have to admit, Jenks's line about how we could magically assassinate their leader without any blowback or just hope that suddenly their population will decide to revolt against a several million person strong army (most of them have served in it btw) is still a useful comment. It shows how truly futile all these are. They're Hollywood imagination at its weakest. And that's still better than the "do something but I don't know what!" statements. So yeah, 50 pushups.

QUOTE (Chicago White Sox @ Aug 8, 2017 -> 06:35 PM) But when you look past all the political bulls***, do you really think they were as big of a threat to the US as North Korea is today or will be soon? No. But they are also not nearly as big of a threat as the Soviet Union was either and we managed that and talked to them and negotiated with them.

QUOTE (Chicago White Sox @ Aug 8, 2017 -> 06:33 PM) So it's either this or do nothing? Those are the only two possibilities? Why don't we just give them nukes, because according to you everyone is f***ed either way... Because they already have them? That's sort of the point? A small military option could turn into them vaporizing the South, so you have to go in overwhelming, Mutually Assured Destruction style and hope you get everything. If you're not willing to negotiate with them, and you cannot tolerate the current circumstance, then you better damn well be ready for the preemptive strike because you have left no other options. Threatening them as was done today and being unwilling to back up those threats is what we are doing right now.