Balta1701

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 5, 2016 -> 10:03 AM) When you count all of the spending done with this recession, specifically the untold trillions from the Fed, the last sentence is almost laughable. The trade off has been illustrated for a decade now even though you won't pay any attention to it.. If you overheat the economy, you get inflation. If the economy is underheated and not stimulated enough, inflation will be below trend. 2k5 2009: "Shrink the stimulus, we need to fear inflation" Balta 2009: "If the stimulus is too small this will just drag on long term, if it's too big the Federal Reserve has plenty of ammunition to raise rates to fight inflation" 2k5 2010: "Cut the deficit before we get inflation" 2k5 2011: "Look over here, I see hidden inflation when you ignore the numbers everyone else uses for good reason" 2015: half a decade of below-goal inflation 2k5 2016: "Why is the economy still slowly recovering? It must be the tax code, I don't like that".

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 5, 2016 -> 09:30 AM) The big idea is that the system doesn't work when a smaller and smaller percentage support more and more of the country. Where they fall on the income ladder is honestly irrelevant. I mean I could just as easily argue that a guy like Trump generates billions in taxes (payroll taxes, gambling taxes, property taxes, corporate taxes, etc) so that any argument that he doesn't pay taxes is silly anyway, but what it comes down to is that the more of a pyramid the system turns into, the more unsustainable it is. The tax code as it is built now has a lot of loopholes for both the rich and the poor to get out of paying taxes. It has turned into an unnecessary bloated government bureaucracy, because no one can clearly figure out what is going on in the code. All of these things shift burdens and cause harmful secondary and tertiary effects to the economy as a whole. I also don't think it is a coincidence that each subsequent recession we see takes longer to recover from, more stimulus to recover from, and is on a lower recovery curve. It is all related to the velocity of money through the tax code. Of course, what you don't acknowledge is that thanks to policies that have your support, a smaller and smaller percentage own more and more of the country. The top 1% goes from receiving 1% of income in 1980 to >25% of income in 2015, then either they must support more and more of the country. And the suggestion that this relates to the length of the recession deserves a sigh. That was an enormous consumption bubble that burst, killing a huge amount of demand, and because people were worried about "inflation" that was mathematically impossible we decided we were ok with it being long.

Well, Baylor's Title IX coordinator resigned late Monday night and has declared that the university cared more about protecting the Baylor Brand than students, says that she received "resistance" from unnamed administrators.

QUOTE (Ezio Auditore @ Oct 5, 2016 -> 08:45 AM) Come on Mike, this is weak sauce and you know it. The left's objection to Romney's 47% comments wasn't a pedantic dispute about how many people don't pay federal income taxes. It was the subtext - he was saying to a crowd of wealthy donors that all Obama supporters were moochers who refused to take responsibility for themselves (whatever percentage of people don't pay income taxes, they're not all Democrats, but Romney tied a direct line) and that he was going to ignore them as president. He spoke in stereotypes, not facts, and people took issue with how he talked about them, not whether he was technically right or wrong. If you actually want to get into the policy parts of course, those 46.9% who "pay no taxes" are mostly paying the payroll tax, which is still a 10% slice off the top plus the behind the scenes part. It doesn't count because it doesn't hit rich people so it gets ignored. I don't know whether you can use $900 million in losses to offset the payroll tax, but because it is capped to the first $100k of your income it doesn't matter when your income is in the millions. Interestingly, Clinton's proposal to establish some new version of the AMT would actually deal with situations like Trump - high incomes have their deductions limited, as would expanding the payroll tax.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 4, 2016 -> 08:53 PM) Taking our time with Collins doesn't involve starting him at AA. Start him at A ball Winston Salem again, and let him have a couple of more months in A ball before making the decision to push him to AA. QUOTE (SouthSideSale @ Oct 4, 2016 -> 09:09 PM) Ok that's fine too. I just used AA as a starting point since he was at A for awhile. He can start there again and I'd be completely fine with it. QUOTE (Joshua Strong @ Oct 4, 2016 -> 10:32 PM) I want them to take their time with Collins but I think they have to move him from behind the plate and just focus on the bat I'm now totally convinced he's starting at AA and people will be defending it when it happens.

I'd hate to be cheering for one of the teams in one of these wild card games, but man are these fun.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Oct 4, 2016 -> 02:52 PM) Ivanka's pissed because all of this is finally starting to hurt her own brand...much harder to sell clothing when 2/3rds of American women have come to intensely dislike your father. It's not like right wing talk radio where intense loyalty from that 10-15% fringe element of the population can make up for it from a ratings perspective.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 4, 2016 -> 03:15 PM) It is funny that Rollins/Latos/Jackson gets brought out, but Miguel Gonzalez is never included in that, despite the fact he was the exact same sort of signing. The difference is that he worked out so it doesn't fit. My job of course now is to note is how flawed this approach is at building a contender even when you have an example of a player where it worked. It's great for a rebuilding team. You have 5-6 slots on your team that are open and staffed by players who aren't big league quality. You try to bring in 5-6 guys hoping that a few of them will work out - most of the time you will get unlucky. Most of the times you try to sign someone they will underperform - Avila, Jackson, Navarro, Latos. One of the 5-6 signings winds up working out and you're stuck in August complaining about how many slots on your team are taken up by guys who don't belong in the big leagues. When you need to fill 1-2 spots, you have some probability of getting lucky overall. You go out and sign Desmond and he puts up a 3 WAR season (note - this is solid, but still not like stealing an MVP for nothing). You hold onto Fowler and he puts up a dominant season. But in both of those cases these were basically the last guy on that team - the Cubs were, last offseason, in a position where if Fowler put up a 2 WAR season they were still solid on paper because Heyward in RF and Schwarber in LF were going to put up strong numbers, and if they didn't they had enough depth to make up for that. They got lucky on Fowler but they were able to do that because they didn't have to gamble on filling 5-6 positions this way. Finding these guys is a great rebuilding strategy. You sign 5-6 guys off the scrap heap and if 1-2 of them have great seasons then you have an asset you can get a draft pick for, or an asset you can trade at the deadline, or even hold onto if they have multiple years of control remaining. But when you are trying to build 40% of your competitive lineup/rotation with those guys, you better know how you're going to win if 33% of your starting lineup is gone by the end of may.

QUOTE (Y2JImmy0 @ Oct 4, 2016 -> 01:58 PM) I think they could rebuild and still sign Castro though. He's a benefit to our pitchers regardless. For how much I'm willing to spend on a rebuilding team - he's out of my price range. Teams that have no warm bodies at catcher and are strong everywhere else should be looking to sign him. Heck the Astros are apparently one of them - signing a guy like him is absolutely necessary for a team like the Astros. They don't sign a catcher - that means they are trading for a catcher because they have a roster that is otherwise loaded. They may look for someone better, but coming away with someone is literally the difference between them being in/out of the playoffs next year.

QUOTE (Jose Abreu @ Oct 4, 2016 -> 12:23 PM) Pitch framing and durability is great and all, but people would grow very tired of his horrible offense here. Which is a great illustration of why the only correct option for this team is rebuilding. The FA market will not fix this mess unless we win the lottery 3-4 times and find guys who dramatically overproduce their contracts. Otherwise, we are constantly trying to patch positions with guys who are "good enough" and then trying to acquire one big name player to overcome the fact that 4-5 positions in the lineup and a large chunk of the rotation and bullpen are filled with guys who are barely good enough. That's the "Rick Hahn Special" that we saw starting with Keppinger - "This guy is better than the complete vacant gap we have here and therefore that's a major upgrade". We've seen how well this works over and over and over again over the past 4 seasons. Either the big name isn't quite as big as we thought, or the guy who was supposed to be barely good enough does slightly worse and rapidly crosses over to terrible. Or both.

QUOTE (Black_Jack29 @ Oct 4, 2016 -> 12:56 PM) Frazier hit 40 homers, 21 doubles, and drove in 98 runs. How is that not a legit #4 or #5 hitter? Another thing to consider is who plays 3B if Frazier is allowed to walk after next season. The Sox would have to address that before they parted ways with him. In my world where you recognize this is a dramatically undertalented team and unbelievably weak franchise, you trade Frazier for the best return you can get for him now, and you see if you get a 3b back in the deals where you trade Sale, Abreu, and/or Quintana. If you do not get a 3b back, you don't worry about it - you take the best deals you can for those guys and your franchise is rebuilding. In that case, you look to the FA market. Set yourself a budget of maybe $5 million and target someone like Aaron Hill or Mark Reynolds - someone who fills the position for you but that you have nothing invested in. If they have a good first half you consider trading them at the deadline - if that adds some minor talent to your organization somewhere great, if it does not then you've limited your expenses. Within a year or two, combining the young players returned from trades and your own draftees, you should begin having most of those positions filled with quality major leaguers. When you have taken your team from 6-7 starters filled by fringe major leaguers to 1-2 positions, then you go out and spend big in either trades or FA to fill those remaining positions and now you are loaded for bear.

QUOTE (Jose Abreu @ Oct 4, 2016 -> 12:00 PM) What's with the Jason Castro love? He's worse than Avila 1. He's an available warm body who can actually catch. This is an upgrade from where the White Sox currently are. 2. He has played 100+ games each of the past 4 years. This is a substantial upgrade from where Alex Avila has been the last 2 years. 3. He is generally thought as one of the better pitch framers in the game. 4. He had a really spectacular offensive season a few years ago and guys at the catcher's spot sometimes do take years to break out because of all the physical and mental demands. 5. He is at least a positive value catcher and the White Sox would need something from that position in order to compete.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 4, 2016 -> 10:09 AM) This might be the least surprising post in the history of Soxtalk.

QUOTE (Brian @ Oct 4, 2016 -> 09:51 AM) Yeah, Trump is missing a few. That pesky no federal tax thingy for one. Can you deduct those sorts of paper losses from the payroll tax?

QUOTE (Ezio Auditore @ Oct 4, 2016 -> 08:24 AM) lol, people fell for this so hard. He got his hands on video of Michelle Obama screaming about whitey! #Imsoold

QUOTE (shipps @ Oct 3, 2016 -> 03:55 PM) I cant see Frazier going anywhere. I think the org (including Hawk) loves him so much that its more likely Frazier eventually gets a contract offer than getting traded. QUOTE (Black_Jack29 @ Oct 3, 2016 -> 04:01 PM) That was my thinking. Many pitchers will take a guaranteed $50M over a possible $150M several years down the road. I tend to agree. Frazier would be a nice fit for this team for the next four or so years. If the Sox ever develop a halfway decent 3B again, Frazier can move to 1B. QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 3, 2016 -> 04:01 PM) I think a Frazier extension makes a lot of sense. I'd like to argue this morning that a Frazier extension is a poor idea for the White Sox. Todd Frazier is a guy who I think is likely to be among the "fast dropoff" players. He is a guy with one strong plus tool - power. He has poor plate discipline overall - a strikeout rate above 20% and a walk rate only 8%, for his career. That means he's a guy who swings a lot, makes limited contact, but gets value when he makes contact because the ball goes far. In general, these are guys who do not age well. I think generally speaking statistics bears this out - Fraziers skill set is one that sees pretty rapid dropoffs sometime in the early to mid 30's. (a couple links: Link1, link2; link3) I believe we actually have seen some of this already. Take a look at his last 1.5 seasons of baseball - his power is still there, but his K rate shot up this year and the amount of weak contact he made also went up. If you convinced yourself you were getting an all star 3b this year, either you're name is Rick Hahn and you're severely overpaid or you were otherwise quite disappointed. These are what you see drop off in guys like him - in order to keep hitting the ball out of the park he has to put more into each swing, but that exposes him more to striking out, and eventually if the power tool weakens at all or his eye weakens at all, he can hit a cliff where his HR total drops off to the 20s and suddenly he's putting up Adam LaRoche numbers. He could darn well still have several good years in him, this is only speaking in terms of averages and there are always guys who break the trends, but an extension for Frazier is betting on him being a guy who breaks the trend. If you're going to make that bet, you better have a team in the first year or two of that deal that is otherwise loaded, because the back couple years could have a serious dropoff hidden in there.

QUOTE (Jose Abreu @ Oct 3, 2016 -> 08:21 PM) Awful? He played in 54 games and was on the upswing before the injury. If you took Abreu's first 54 games, you could say he's awful too. Seriously go look at his numbers last 3 years. 2014 - .655 OPS, 155 games played. 2015 - .696 OPS, 136 games played 2016 - .661 OPS, 54 games played. Want him back? Fine. He's the kind of guy you pick up when you've committed to rebuilding and you don't have a strong organizational candidate for CF. If he's healthy in the first half and outperforms any of those years, you trade him at the deadline. You tell me that's the starting CF on a competitive team? That's a Rick Hahn Special.

QUOTE (Lip Man 1 @ Oct 3, 2016 -> 07:18 PM) I found this comment from Rick interesting when reading the recap story of the press conference today: "You saw this last offseason -- at the end -- we made a couple of smaller moves as a means of trying to plug our holes, some of which panned out better than others," Hahn said. "If we were a little more aggressive, perhaps, from a standpoint of a full measure as opposed to arguably a half-measure in a certain scenario, then conceivably, the results would have been different." Mark "One big name player is the difference between winning 76 and 89 games". The Rick Hahn era summed up right there.

Say something positive about Robin? Here's one: Thanks for the best coached team I've ever seen on a baseball field in 2012.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 3, 2016 -> 03:29 PM) I kind of doubt that Rodon is the extending type of guy. Totally agreed, but years of control: Sale: 3 Abreu:3 Quintana: 4 Rodon: 5 Eaton: 5 So, if someone gives you a great deal for Eaton or Rodon, you consider moving them, but only for a deal that makes you significantly better 3 yearas down the road. There is no good reason why those 2 can't be part of your next competitive team if you do the deals correctly for the lefty(lefties), turn Frazier into something useful, turn Cabrera and Robertson into monetary savings, and then go for the FA market once you have built a solid, non-pathetic foundation.

QUOTE (shipps @ Oct 3, 2016 -> 11:34 AM) Hahn says that they absolutely under achieved this year. They dont think there is a problem with this team. As you can probably expect, I disagree with this statement. I think if they played this season 100 times, the average finish would be about 3-4 games below .500. So, if RH is saying "by one or two games", fine, but I'm skeptical that is his actual meaning. They took a team that was well below .500 but extremely lucky on injuries, added 1 big name to it to upgrade 3b, got a better performance out of Eaton, got a worse performance out of their bullpen, and went from historically lucky on injuries to slightly lucky. That is still a below .500 team.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Oct 2, 2016 -> 05:44 PM) I like how the exact scenario played out with the Bulls and we all still thought it would end up different lol Which scenario? Paxson staying and Forman being promoted? Hoiberg being hired without them looking at anyone else? At this point I'm actually not sure which one you mean.

QUOTE (OmarComing25 @ Oct 2, 2016 -> 02:28 PM) I really don't understand the view that Renteria is an in-house or organizational hire, he's been here for just a few months. He's not at all like the usual Sox manager hire. It still bothers me that they're unwilling to go outside and even listen. The Braves just set interviews with like 4 guys, including all their assistant coaches and their interim coach. How do you know 100% certainty that you won't hear a guy come in with a perspective you haven't thought of before?

Assuming true: The bad parts: 1. They're still absolutely unwilling/terrified of conducting an actual search. They haven't actually talked to someone and had competition since Cito Gaston and Ozzie Guillen were their last 2 candidates. 2. I can't shake the feeling that he gets the job with no interview or competition because he proved himself a yes-man, he proved that he would stay in line and not make waves during the season when he wouldn't take over the job if offered. The hopeful parts: 1. He was not in this organization a year ago. While he may have picked up some of the taint from this year, he is not entirely a White Sox lifetime servant. 2. Other organizations have found him to be capable and professional enough to hire. 3. Even if he's become an organizational guy, he is by definition a different person and even changes within an organization can make a difference.

As long as we still have naked Ty Pennington photographed holding the new logo.