Balta1701

QUOTE (Chicago White Sox @ Aug 8, 2017 -> 06:26 PM) There may not be an easy solution, but that doesn't mean you ignore a problem until it becomes an even greater problem. I get what's at stake in South Korea and the broader region, but this issue is quickly spiraling out of control. We're approaching a breaking point and we can't be afraid to take action anymore because of the likelihood of casualties. At this point, we need to figure out what course of action will likely lead to the least amount of loss and act accordingly. I wish we had a different leader in place to help make that decision, but unfortunately this is the hand we're stuck with. The time for action is now. Then you're ready to drop nuclear weapons and vaporize the North, and hope they don't successfully vaporize the South or Japan. Right? Because that's the least loss of life possible by action - kill everyone in the north and only radiation pollution deaths in the South/Japan.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Aug 8, 2017 -> 06:24 PM) Look I know the most important thing here is the partisan talking points, and how to blame Bush for this. It isn't the millions of people who have already lost their lives, nor is it the millions who are going to lose their lives, and it definitely isn't a guy with nuclear technology who is threatening to nuke Guam and the rest of the USA. We have been appeasing NK for 50 years now and it has worked impressively well. If you don't count the millions of dead non-white people, really this is fine. 50 pushups.

The next person who says how terrible it is to "do nothing" and then does not give something we should do that actually will have any chance of working owes me 50 pushups.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Aug 8, 2017 -> 05:53 PM) What do you think should be done? What price are you willing to pay? If you're going to complain about "appeasement," why can't you just come out and say what you think should be done? Because there is no other answer.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Aug 8, 2017 -> 05:38 PM) Did we offer them the Rhineland yet? Keep up the big talk. It works great. I'm sure they'll be backing down any time now.

QUOTE (JenksIsMyHero @ Aug 8, 2017 -> 05:11 PM) So you have no solution. Thanks for the input. Making a deal with them that at least cuts down the threats in exchange for a nonaggression treaty and food aid has probably always been on the table.=. They won't give up their nuclear weapons in exchange for that, nor should they, but at least it would stabilize the situation. But of course, that's appeasement. So, as long as that is worse than where things are right now, you are correct.

QUOTE (JenksIsMyHero @ Aug 8, 2017 -> 04:47 PM) Um, haven't there been several options thrown out there in this thread full of non-experts? Pressuring China, assassination, inciting an internal revolt... What exactly is Pressuring China going to do? They don't care if their people starve. Their people aren't going to revolt, they've got millions of people more conditioned to hate us than anything else. Which means you have to get an assassin into that country and then have them not lash out after the trigger is pulled. Congrats. Great plan.

QUOTE (JenksIsMyHero @ Aug 8, 2017 -> 04:40 PM) My point is rhetoric doesn't matter - under Clinton or Obama, did NK continue it's nuclear weapons program? Did they continue to make bombs and test them? Did they continue to work on delivery systems? Yes, yes and yes. Their first nuclear bomb test was in 2006 under Bush. Their 2nd was in 2009, third in 2012, fourth and fifth in 2016, all under Obama. Clearly Obama's laid back, anti-war rhetoric halted their research/testing. And in fact, just looking at the wiki article, I forgot that from 2003-2007 the Bush presidency had six-party talks with NK and for a time they (allegedly) stopped their weapons program. So while Bush started out his Presidency calling them one of the Axis of Evil, by the end he was still trying a diplomatic approach and that still failed. End of the day, NK is just playing the world. No one is going to stop them unless military options are on the table and no one is willing to do that, so this will just gradually progress until they have a nuke capable of hitting the US and Western Europe. What incentive do they have to stop? None. What do they have to gain? Insane leverage. 1. Why is it so much worse if they have a nuclear weapon that can hit the US as opposed to vaporizing Seoul or Tokyo? They've been able to do that to Seoul for decades. 2. The Koreans did not stop their weapons program any time between 2002-2006. They popped the seals off of their plutonium generating reactor and removed the UN Monitoring equipment in December of 2002 and withdrew from the Nonproliferation Treaty in January of 03. They had a uranium enrichment program, but that was never anywhere close to generating a bomb. It took them about 2 years to complete one, during which time the 6 party talks happened. 3. In the six-party talks, the Koreans demanded what we're deriding as "appeasement". Per this website: Would that have worked and held up? God only knows. But I can tell you this - every single time we've decided to talk tough to them, every single time we've derided deals like that as appeasement...it has pushed them the other way. Every single bit of tough talk has failed and will continue to fail because the U.S. Cannot do anything to back it up short of vaporizing the entire peninsula. The tough talk in this thread contains the same basic flaw. It is guaranteed to fail because there is nothing to back it up. So either we sit around and do tough talk and watch their capabilities increase, or we appease, or we vaporize Seoul. Take your pick.

QUOTE (GoSox05 @ Aug 8, 2017 -> 04:31 PM) GWB declared three countries the "Axis of Evil" and then went and invaded one of them. What did you think the other countries would do? One of which was a neighbor to the country that was invaded. Even at the time, they had guns pointed at Seoul, so threatening them was already stupid. Remember how Obama said that using Chemical Weapons in Syria was a red line then it turned out to not be a red line? That's been our strategy with North Korea since 2001 - "all options are on the table!" we insist, "we can't wait any more" we insist, but no one has any other ideas what we can do. So we make empty threats and then expect a country run by an egomaniac not to respond. They're not going to give up the bomb now that they have it. So either we are going to vaporize them and kill most of the inhabitants of South Korea in the process, or every little bit of tough talk in this thread about how bad "appeasement" is, every word of it is bullplop. Now our leader has issued a threat to nuke them if they threaten again. It's either going to be nuclear war launched by a madman or it's yet another empty threat, but at least people feel tough.

Keuchel hasn't been very stellar since coming off the DL a couple weeks ago. Maybe this will be the game where he can get himself righted. If he can't be a consistent ace then the Astros are in real trouble in October.

I basically can't say anything better than this. Paragraph 1 is my comment on the person in this thread who says we should do something and then won't say what we should have done. Paragraph 3 is the reply on the other notes.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Aug 8, 2017 -> 03:21 PM) The reporting that I've heard is that the Trump admin has essentially been sitting on the report for a bit and there's been no commitment to publicly release it at all. They're already doing what they can to punish climate scientists, run them out of government, and scrub government resources and databases of even acknowledging the existence of the problem. This is basically incorrect. The final report was not due yet, it has been out for public comment by other scientists for the last several months. Basically the way it has been described to me is that it was on "auto-pilot", no politician had stepped in to intervene in it yet, including no step in to prevent release. If we had a respectable executive branch, this report would not yet be completed. The Times has attached a "publishing this to make sure it isn't censored" setup to it, and that might well have been the case in a couple weeks, but we weren't there yet.

QUOTE (AJUribe @ Aug 8, 2017 -> 03:07 PM) Yeah yeah l get it. The teams going to suck might as well sell tickets instead of wasting ab's on the adam engel's of the world. Adam Engel has a solidly higher chance of contributing to this team long term than Tim Tebow does. That was Q's point on the first page or two of this thread - count up OFs and we're sitting on like 9 at the AAA/Big League level Garcia Garcia Garcia Hanson Delmonico Engel Cordell Tilson Liriano May Obviously the DH and the DL creates some space to drop people, and not all of those guys are going to be successful, but if you get 1 successful big leaguer out of them by giving them playing time and seeing what they can develop into, you've substantially strengthened your roster. If Engel jumps out to a .775 OPS next year we're suddenly looking at a really valuable player. Would you put "Tim Tebow" in the top 5 of "guys with a nonzero chance of helping out this team long term" from that list? If you don't think he can help this team long term, then play the guys you have and see if someone turns themselves into a big leaguer.

So, that's not actually a finalized draft as far as everything I've read, there are still comments included, it's been circulated widely, and the final draft wasn't supposed to be available until August 18. The results are going to look a lot like that though.

QUOTE (FT35 @ Aug 8, 2017 -> 02:53 PM) Maybe I'm alone, but I doubt Tebow would make any impact on ticket sales. Aside from the handful of teenage girls who have a poster of him in their room--I just don't see the draw factor coming into play. LeBron maybe? Tebow? I'm not sure he was good enough, long enough to draw measurable interest. There's been a 50% boost in ticket sales at the A-ball level for the Mets this year. Those tickets are $15 for GA, with 2 drinks and 2 hot dogs included on their Tuesday promotion according to the googling I just did (kids get in free!). Altogether that's been the equivalent of about 40,000 extra tickets sold for their A-ball team. The difference is nonzero, but it's not going to "Sell out 10 games" and it would probably be less in the big leagues where costs are higher and where you've already heard of a number of the players - Tebow is likely the only player on that team that most of those new guests have heard of, which would not be the case in the big leagues. I could buy it being worth several thousand extra ticket sales over the course of a month. But an extra 20,000 tickets a game and 200k over 10 games to see a guy who, although he's been better than I thought he'd be, is currently no where near a major league caliber player?

QUOTE (AJUribe @ Aug 8, 2017 -> 02:05 PM) Theoretically speaking if Tebow played 10 home games in September do all 10 sell out? I'd say 1-3. Also at the same time you would be helping divisional teams sellout road games if he were on the club. LOL no. None. I think putting in Eddie Gaedel would produce a similar number of ticket sales.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Aug 8, 2017 -> 10:52 AM) He can't possibly be that dumb, can he? QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Aug 8, 2017 -> 09:14 AM) ? I got news for you...

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Aug 8, 2017 -> 10:22 AM) This exactly. If something better comes along, you dump him. Heck in a couple of months we are going to have a lot more 40 man spots opening as well. I'm sure they've been moving someone else there, but right now the only person on Charlotte's roster listed as a 3b is some 28 year old named Gerson Montilla and he's on the DL. Not like this is a position where we have no slot to put him.

QUOTE (bmags @ Aug 8, 2017 -> 09:14 AM) That's like a whose who of the worst framing catchers, but a reminder that Narvaez is 3rd from last, so only way to go is up (unless we sign Lucroy). Maybe Baltimore will trade Caleb Joseph for someone marginal. I could see Lucroy considering a 1 year deal to rebuild some value, perhaps with a player option a-la Wieters this year. Not sure he'd do that with a 60 win team though. Haven't paid attention to who needs a catcher this coming offseason.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Aug 8, 2017 -> 08:50 AM) It really is a sad state of affairs when we wish a biggot was the president instead of this idiot. ? I got news for you...

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Aug 8, 2017 -> 09:11 AM) egads no. stay away With the number of young pitchers we should have entering next year's rotation I won't scream "ick" at the concept of a veteran catcher, there are a couple guys in there who are good at handling pitching staffs (Tyler Flowers, Kurt Suzuki perhaps?, Lucroy, Wieters), but I dunno that I have a lot more confidence in any of them than the pair we currently have.

QUOTE (bmags @ Aug 8, 2017 -> 09:08 AM) Please just sign a good catcher. Please please please. Alex Avila (31) Welington Castillo (31) — $7MM player option Hank Conger (30) A.J. Ellis (37) Tyler Flowers (32) — $4MM club option with a $300K buyout Nick Hundley (34) Chris Iannetta (35) Jose Lobaton (33) Jonathan Lucroy (32) Miguel Montero (34) Rene Rivera (34) Carlos Ruiz (39) Geovany Soto (35) Chris Stewart (36) — $1.5MM club option with a $250K buyout Kurt Suzuki (34) Josh Thole (31) Matt Wieters (32) — can opt out of the remaining one year, $11MM on his contract Bobby Wilson (35) Ready for round 2 of Avila? Willing to pay Lucroy after his 2017 season? I'm open to what you're looking at here, there's your list.

QUOTE (chitownsportsfan @ Aug 7, 2017 -> 02:23 PM) Moncada had nothing left to learn about succeeding as a MLB player in AAA. We've already seen him make some adjustments the past couple games in his approach at the plate. He's still raw but he's so talented that he wasn't going to learn anything more about how to harness it against AAA arms and in fact he could have gotten into some bad habits. Then we should have seen more success from him. When a guy is doing things correctly in AAA, he will have success if he's talented enough. He should have had at least a couple post-injury weeks of pure dominance to establish "yes, he's doing things correctly". Because...a guy who is doing everything correctly at Charlotte will produce. A guy doing everything correctly in the big leagues will occasionally run into Chris Sale and walk away from the plate wondering what the hell that was. And when he's not having success in the big leagues - that's the place where I expect the guy to start getting into bad habits. In the big leagues, you do everything right and you're still going to make some outs. Maybe you decide to start doing some things wrong to see what they do.

Don't stop believing it's not butter.

QUOTE (miracleon35th @ Aug 6, 2017 -> 08:02 PM) This is the bottom for the Sox. They cannot afford to intentionally tank the team once again in 2018. The fans will notbstand for it. It looks like the Sox have decent talent right now at all positions That can only improve if some of the highly rated prospects get promoted. But just as wee see now, pitching will be the key. Let's see Reynaldo Lopez, Kopech and Goilito this season. Bring them up and see what they have. A healthy Rodon to start the season with a couple of the prospects filling a few spots in the rotation would be better than what we have seen this year. I'm not predicting they will be .500 next season, but I would be surprised if they suk this bad again. If they accepted the wonderful 2015 and 2016 seasons, then a season looking forwards to Jiminez's september callup will be acceptable.