Balta1701

Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller is Trump's top pick for Sec of Agriculture, called Clinton c-word in tweet abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump…

QUOTE (shipps @ Nov 14, 2016 -> 06:28 PM) Does this change his tradability in any way, good or bad? He remains under team control for just as long, but this likely leads to a small but not unexpected salary boost each of the next 3 seasons. It does perhaps reduce the downside risk for a team acquiring him - if his performance keeps dropping, a team could choose to non-tender him in 2019 without being on the hook for $15 mil+.

QUOTE (Sockin @ Nov 14, 2016 -> 05:53 PM) Not sure about that. Seems teams want to get stuff settled before the new CBA. If the White Sox don't trade Sale, they have until Castro/Wieters and Fowler/Desmond are signed to make moves to avoid having next season be completely wasted. Once those guys are off the market, the two positions the White Sox would need to upgrade to have a prayer of a .500 record become wastelands. That's the reason to push. If you're ok taking "Best offer" for Sale even if its disappointing, then it's ok to wait.

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Nov 14, 2016 -> 05:36 PM) Told you guys. Ditto.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Nov 14, 2016 -> 11:58 AM) I can't knock much anything that he hit on last night. In fact, in general, I'm pretty happy with the more public stances he's taken since becoming president-elect. We will see how it continues. It actually is funny cause most of what he has put out I presume would have the mega die-hards who voted for him pretty upset. If you're ok with deploying a gestapo army to round up 3 million people into camps in preparation for immediate deportation, and you're ok with a presidential special advisor who per sworn testimony didn't want his kids going to school with those jews, then you need to go back and double check your conscience.

QUOTE (CanOfCorn @ Nov 14, 2016 -> 10:19 AM) Oooohhhh...is that because nothing happens on the weekends? /green Bah, it's the 21st century. It doesn't matter if he's ordering deportations from the White House or from New York, the brown people wind up in prison all the same.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Nov 13, 2016 -> 10:29 PM) If he doesn't rebound, Hahn is going to be ruing the trade deadline the last couple of years when he had opportunities to dump that contract. Rebuilding teams can't afford to pay elite closer salaries (especially for non-elite performance). For much of the last two seasons, the argument was that his save conversion rate was decent and mostly that his peripherals were impressive or at least looked better than the traditional metrics. But it was obvious over the course of the season that his stuff was just not as crisp...maybe his confidence was shaken a bit in the middle of the season, and he goes into the offseason (due to the injury) with nobody realistically knowing what to expect in 2017. Someone mentioned that Jansen, Chapman and Melancon being out there complicates his trade market...not only that, but the Royals are sitting on Wade Davis, who's a year away from free agency. Miller's name is coming up a lot in Cleveland, because of their payroll/budget and the absolute haul they could get for him. So until those five situations are clarified, Robertson is likely stuck with the Sox and vice-versa. Bull. The white sox aren't bankrupt. They have plenty of money to waste on an overpaid closer the next 2 years, and if they move a couple of their movable players they'll have plenty of funds even to sign players if they want. The problem is that they don't have enough money to add the large number of front line players that would be required to even come close to a wild card team - that's where having an overpaid closer (and, FWIW, the draft pick given up for him) actually hurts.

Done.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Nov 13, 2016 -> 07:31 PM) For those advising others to wait it out and see how a Trump administration turns out before criticizing, he just hired notorious racist/misogynist/anti-semite/xenophobe Steve Bannon as his chief strategist. This is looking very scary already. He begins outlining his plans for internment camps for 3 million mexicans on 60 minutes tonight.

Joe Buck, please stop calling Antonio Brown Anthony Brown. Please. Antonio is the one catching.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Nov 13, 2016 -> 05:44 PM) Agreed. HE could get hot in June and July and a contender could need a middle infielder. And if you are going for it, he's pretty serviceable at 2b. Weird. Worth adding that there have been whispers of "attitude issues" of some sort since he came up in Torotno? I'll admit that I was surprised how rapidly Oakland parted with him, so maybe there's something to that?

Well, Zack Erwin was terrible in the low minors last year and although JB Wendelken made the big leagues in the Oakland pen he had an ERA near 10, so still a ways to go for this trade to be a complete failure.

Kansas City will also be interesting to watch after this. They have a team that has a ton of post-2017 free agents - Cain, Moustakas, Davis, Escobar, Hosmer, Dyson, Duffy, Vargas from a quick look. Basically their window closes in 1 year. If they don't find a quality replacement for Morales, they might as well start trading those guys now. They're going to have to make a move to add offense and someone under contract for 1 year would make sense. They have anything that would interest for Frazier?

QUOTE (pettie4sox @ Nov 12, 2016 -> 11:56 AM) Republicans have two years to make America great again before 2010 happens to them. It's just that simple. No it isn't. The Democrats don't turn out for Midterms. Maybe when Medicare is put on the chopping block, that will do it. That's Ryan's #2 priority, after getting rid of health care for all the blah people and his tax cuts.

QUOTE (chw42 @ Nov 11, 2016 -> 03:57 PM) How many outstanding votes are still out there? Last I checked, Clinton is winning by 400,000 popular votes. I don't think that's 1.7% more than Trump. California always takes forever to finish all their absentee and provisional ballots.

A graduate school friend of mine is faculty in Arizona. He is Persian. This week he's had a car "aim" at him (not sure exactly how close it got) and a bicyclist spit on him.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Nov 12, 2016 -> 08:23 AM) You were before? The way that team grew up last year during the season was seriously impressive as well.

Whoof. Opening night and I'm exhausted just from watching that slugfest. Stood toe to toe with an older more seasoned team from Kansas and took home the W. I'm genuinely impressed again Tom. This team stays healthy from here and these kids get a chance to grow up again during the year and I will be wearing an awful lot of red Early next year. :applause

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Nov 10, 2016 -> 05:50 PM) I am betting on something like a 20 to 30% fall off, at least. The last time we did this we saw a 25% falloff from a much lower attendance number. That's being offset by about 5%+ growth in revenue shared dollars per year - those dollars are why we're still at a constant/slightly increasing payroll despite the vacant stadium. Another dropoff in attendance (I don't believe would be as large as you suggest btw) would still leave the White Sox with a $110-$120 million payroll in a couple years. They would just, hopefully, have enough organizational talent to compete with that payroll level, as opposed to now where the barren organization leaves that payroll as just enough to sustain an upper 70s win team.

QUOTE (Chicago White Sox @ Nov 10, 2016 -> 04:33 PM) Why wouldn't you just give Davidson a look? I'm not a huge fan of his, but I think he did enough in 2016 to warrant a shot assuming we go full-rebuild and don't acquire anyone better. I'd have no issue with that but have little confidence in him. If I were going to give him substantial playing time, signing Valbuena as a lefty to go along with him would make some sense to me. With a guy like Davidson that I think has busted, I would find more value in signing Valbuena to a contract and using them interchangeably than just trying out Davidson as the only option. Valbuena's flexible enough to play more than one position if Davidson does show some promise, and if Valbuena stayed healthy and got off to a good start (he outhit Frazier last year and hit 25 HR in 2015) he'd be a potential moveable asset at the deadline - someone out there will have a 3b who gets hurt creating a need for a cheap rental.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Nov 10, 2016 -> 03:18 PM) There is one gigantic flaw in trading everybody for prospects. Prospects bust, so even if you do well, you still are going to have to fill in holes with competent players. Unlike the Cubs, they can't spend $400 million filling in those areas. A couple of these guys are going to have to stick around. Great. Quintana is under team control for 4 more years. Eaton is under team control for 5 more years. Rodon is under control for 5 more years. Tim Anderson is under control for 6 more years. The free agent market after 2018 is FAR better than the one this year and it would be nice to have abundant resources to use to fill a couple last remaining holes then. The only way this team is a playoff caliber team by 2019 is to solve the problem of having the least talent in the division soon and then giving that talent time to grow up. That means guys who are free agents before 2020 should be moved for whatever you can get, and the 2020/2021 free agent class is guys you look at the offer for and ask whether the offer makes you better in 2019.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Nov 10, 2016 -> 04:02 PM) It has been mentioned a couple of times before, but Frazier doesn't really want to leave from the sounds of it either. He wanted to extend in Cincy even with their rebuild. He also would likely be very happy to get an extension signed before he is going into his age-32 season, for financial reasons.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Nov 10, 2016 -> 12:19 PM) It has for now, but these prices won't stay this cheap forever. And when they rise, the pressure to revert to coal will be there, particularly if these resources haven't been retired and/or aren't subject to as much environmental regulation. With the technological development of the last 8 years, I'd say there is strong reason to suspect that oil and gas will remain impressively cheap for the next 4+ years. The oil and gas industry have clearly been prepping for that - they're focusing on oil fields that can be profitable at about a $50/barrel price or less right now, types of unconventional resources that 3 years ago could have been developed at $100/barrel are now profitable at $50/barrel because they've gotten better at this. Natural gas is in a similar boat - there are huge volumes of now accessible resources that would respond pretty rapidly as a feedback to increasing prices.

QUOTE (WBWSF @ Nov 10, 2016 -> 03:42 PM) If the team moves Frazier who plays third base? Matt Davidson? You trade a player who just hit 40 home runs for a prospect? If you're rebuilding, you go out and sign someone like Valbuena or Hill to play 3b in the case that a Sale or other player trade does not bring back a valid 3b option.

QUOTE (JenksIsMyHero @ Nov 10, 2016 -> 12:09 PM) OMG! THere are s***ty people in the world!! WHAT A SHOCK! This is literally the same response as me posting the black women saying that Obama was going to pay her mortgage now that he's President and concluding that all black people must feel the same way. Come on, you guys are better than this. We thought that the people of this country were better than this. They aren't. That's plenty of reason to be terrified.