NorthSideSox72

QUOTE (iamshack @ Oct 8, 2009 -> 01:06 PM) If the Rays want to move Crawford because they aren't interested in paying him $10 million this year, I have a hard time believing they want to do so in order to acquire a high-priced closer coming off a poor year. My guess is that if the Rays do move Crawford, they would be hoping to get back young arms and a catching prospect. Matt Zaleski and Kevin Dubler should do it.

QUOTE (ChiSox_Sonix @ Oct 8, 2009 -> 12:17 PM) And remember, this is stile moreso a "best prospects in the league" thing rather than one based off performance. Of course. If it were performance, we might see someone like Cook or F Hernandez on the list, but as a prospects, clearly they don't deserve to be there. That said, I personally think that as players move up levels, their performance is itself more and more indicative of their chances of major league success. Once you reach AA, it can't just be about tools or physical traits anymore - they need to be able to actually perform.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 8, 2009 -> 11:20 AM) I love those last three on that list. I can't wait to see if we get a star or two out of that grouping. Yeah I think its interesting, those three position players have a lot of potential. The other four are pitchers, and seem to fall more into the category of "are you worth something?", though you never know, one or two might prove something.

No Retherford or Shirek. Not so surprised with Shirek, but I thought CJ had a shot.

QUOTE (Kenny Hates Prospects @ Oct 8, 2009 -> 10:08 AM) Paying a player to play for another team is another matter entirely. Hard to move = trouble getting anything of value back without eating salary. GMJ and Luis Castillo are hard to move. Linebrink is hard to move. Jenks is not. Again, this concept of weak value, but still value nonetheless, seems lost on you guys. I'll put it this way: last year, had we moved Jenks, from our current farm system Bobby probably would have been worth something like Jordan Danks and Danny Hudson. Hell, Sox fans wanted Fernando Martinez + Murphy + more from the Mets. This year, from our system, Bobby should be worth more like Brent Morel and CJ Retherford. Neither of those guys are trash and they both represent value, but not "good" value because of current market conditions. Why is this so difficult to understand? There's a point between good value and no value. And why non-tender a player when at the very least you can still get something positive out of the deal to help the farm? Its not difficult to understand. Its just weird that you are agreeing with the author, but you think you are disagreeing. He says he's hard to move, you say he's easy to move but hard to get good value for. Those are the same damn thing. I give up.

QUOTE (Kenny Hates Prospects @ Oct 8, 2009 -> 08:29 AM) No, I meant exactly what I said. He'll be easy to move but it will be hard to get what people will probably expect out of him, i.e. a good return/good value, which means no top-5 prospects, no productive pre-arb MLB players, etc. Calling Jenks a non-tender candidate implies he has zero value. That will not be the case and if he's traded Jenks will still bring in pieces that will either deepen the farm or help the MLB club. There's a difference here between good value and no value. And no, it isn't true that any player is easy to move if you don't care what you get back. Salary is just as much an issue as talent and many players are immovable because of their contracts. Jenks however has not hit that point because FA closers are still going to make more in FA than he'll cost in arb, and they will command more years which adds greater risk to the package whereas Jenks isn't on the hook for anything beyond 2010 after he's offered arbitration. There will still be demand for Jenks, but because of the number of available arms and the limited financial flexibility of several clubs, Kenny has a lot less negotiating power than he would have had last year. Your real estate scenario is also a terrible comparison, in fact I couldn't even think of a worse one if I tried to. If you need to sell a home then you need to sell a home. You can't just waive off all responsibility and "release" yourself from the entire situation the way the Sox can release Jenks. If the Sox trade Jenks they will do it to recommit funds to other areas while improving the farm system and/or the big club at the same time, meaning worst case scenario they still add some value to the organization. In other words, there is no minimum amount of compensation that the Sox need to recoup in order to make the investment in Jenks during prior years worthwhile, and there is nothing 2010-related hinging on Jenks' return either. You're comparing a homeowner in a desperate situation who has everything to lose to a baseball club with nothing to worry about and only room for gain. OK then. You still actually agreed with the writer, yet said you disagreed, which seems odd to me. Just pointing out that the argument you made, that he's easy to move but you won't get back what you want, is exactly what the writer meant, so you are in agreement. I think you simply misunderstood what the writer was saying.

QUOTE (3E8 @ Oct 7, 2009 -> 11:24 PM) There's a difference between trying to make money by writing/directing a film and buying billions in derivatives contracts I really hate that people (due mostly to the media) have now got this idea that "derivatives" is a dirty word. Nevermind that the most commonly traded derivatives, futures, are highly liquid, regulated and transparent. AIG and others didn't go down because of "derivatives". They went down because they stepped into a non-core business of trading swaps, these swaps are UNREGULATED, UNCLEARED, OTC instruments, which AIG and others daisy chained into oblivion, reflected laughably low levels of risk and collateral against in their books, and took on enormous counterparty risk with firms that were highly likely to be unable to cover their calls. More than anything, it was a failure in compliance, risk and accounting - not the fact that they traded derivatives.

I personally could care less of Moore makes big bucks on his films, or if Al Gore makes big bucks on promoting alt energy, or if Mel Gibson made big bucks by producing The Passion of Christ, etc., etc. So the hell what? I don't watch Moore's films because he stretches or even just plain demolishes the truth at times to get his point across, and further, he's just an annoying character on the screen. If he makes money at it, great. If he donates some of that to a worth cause, even better. But its not hypocrisy, because Moore's point is CLEARLY not that making money is bad. I don't even have to see the film to understand that. He is criticizing the way certain people made that money, and the negative impact that had on others. The only way Moore is a hypocrite is if his making of the film somehow screwed other people out of money in the way he is accusing others of doing. And I don't see how that is the case here.

QUOTE (Kenny Hates Prospects @ Oct 7, 2009 -> 10:24 PM) I strongly disagree with this part. Jenks will be easy to move. The hard part is getting good talent back in the deal. The Sox will have to target MLB role players, probably ones already making pretty good chunks of money, or else they'll have to go after either prospects who aren't all that great or reclamation projects. You don't strongly disagree, you actually agree with it 100%. When someone says that a player is "hard to move", they mean exactly what you said in the second bolded above. Any player is easy to move if you don't care what you get back. This is like your realtor telling you its going to be hard to sell your house, and you say "no its not, we'll just set the price at two dollars".

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Oct 7, 2009 -> 02:32 PM) None of those are ever comprehensible, you knwo that. Then THAT is the problem. Insisting that private business charge people differently solves nothing, and makes things worse.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Oct 7, 2009 -> 01:01 PM) They almost certainly told him about it in one of tehir many account updates. No one reads through all of those. Then that is not the fault of the banks, AS LONG AS the updates are understandable by someone other than a lawyer with too much time on their hands.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Oct 7, 2009 -> 12:59 PM) You do realize the scale of what we're talking about here right? It's balloned from a couple billion to about $40 billion in fees annually. All the more reason to NOT simply tell the banks what they can charge. That would be you'd be getting hit with $40B some other way, even if you were being responsible. The better approach here is two-fold. One, protect the consumers by requiring the banks to be forthcoming on what "features" their accounts have and what fees will be charged, and two, to put the responsibility AT THAT POINT on the laps of the consumers, who are at fault if they are overdrawing their accounts.

QUOTE (Jenks Heat @ Oct 7, 2009 -> 12:45 PM) The bigger problem is that the banks are double dipping. You pay interest usually over 20% on the overdraft funds as well as the fee. Citibank hit me with the fee and I was unaware of it as they instituted the policy out of nowhere. I move the money from an interest bearing account to my 0% interest checking account weekly. Now every time I go over I get charged $10. The bolded is the issue, to me.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Oct 7, 2009 -> 12:50 PM) the problem is, in a tie game in extra innings, by the time you might notice he is running out of gas, the Twins will already be on a plane to New York On the other hand, DET's bullpen isn't exactly loaded with solid arms, and if you take our Rodney, you go to some scrub who will probably fail. My point isn't necessarily that it was the right call - it was that this idea that it was CLEARLY the wrong one is ignoring the full picture of the situation.

QUOTE (docsox24 @ Oct 7, 2009 -> 12:20 PM) I dont know why I havent read what a bad manager Leyland is. How can you have Rodney in the game for 4 innings? Can you imagine if Ozzie left Jenks in the game for 4 innings the kind of crap he would get? Not sure if you noticed, but DET was nearly out of pitchers, and this was a truly do or die game. So, if Rodney still has his stuff, then you definitely keep him in there until he shows signs that he is running out of gas.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Oct 7, 2009 -> 12:00 PM) So you're ok with banks charging the equivalent of thousands of percent interest on overdrafts? And signing people up for the overdraft program whether they want to or not? Instead of just, you know, having the transaction be declined? 1. I specifically said that I am not OK with the blind sign-up 2. Assuming people are in an overdraft program or not and should know that, I am OK with them handling it whatever way they see fit. 3. This isn't about interest - its a fee, and its been like that for a long time. 4. If I were running the bank, I'd decline it WHEN I COULD, but it is not nearly that simple. With a check, they can either overdraft you (and charge a fee), or decline payment (then you get a fee from the depositor). Either way, you get charged, and you should be. If we are talking about a debit card, then as long as the debit card can go to the account for eligible balance, then yeah, I'd have it decline if they would go under AND didn't have overdraft protection. So like I said, other than blindly signing people up for something, I have no issue with it at all. And even if they are given that OD protection unknowingly, which would you rather have happen? Pay a fee, or be declined and not be able to make your purchase? Neither is a good thing.

Congress' new crusade? They want to go after banks for charging overdraft fees. I don't like where this is going, at all. These fees are 100%, clearly, the fault of the consumer, not the bank. If you spend more than you have, you get penalized - um, duh? Did we not all learn this a loooooong time ago? Hey, we've all been there, I know a couple times some number of years ago I didn't time some checks right and went under temporarily, and paid the penalties, because it was my own damn fault. If Congress starts meddling here, the lost revenue from the fees will find its way to consumers elsewhere, and worse, it will hit the wrong people. People who screw up should pay, not everyone else. Really pretty simple. The only thing mentioned in the article that I can agree with is, banks should not be able to enroll account holders into special overdraft or other similar "features" without their knowledge. That's fine. But I hope consumers realize that if they DON'T have that, they are STILL going to get hit with fees.

QUOTE (dasox24 @ Oct 6, 2009 -> 10:26 PM) This year I'm trying to conquer the task of drinking about 100 beers I've never had before. Here's how my list is going so far: Xingu Black Beer Rogue Dead Guy Ale New Belgium Fat Tire Sweetwater Blue Newcastle Brown Ale Woodchuck Amber Guinness Draught Killian's Irish Red Rolling Rock Shiner Bock Kelpie Seaweed Ale Harp Lager My favorites have probably been the Xingu, Sweetwater Blue, and Newcastle. Though, I haven't had one I didn't like. I need to step up my game. At this rate I'll only get about half way, but that's fine since I'm a poor college student that shouldn't be buying these expensive beers anyway. Kelpie Seaweed Ale? What was that like?

20,000, b****es. I'm actually pretty certain I shouldn't be proud of that.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Oct 7, 2009 -> 07:39 AM) As they should. That thing is an abomination. Heh. That was my 20,000th post. Glad to see I haven't lost my edge.

QUOTE (FlaSoxxJim @ Oct 7, 2009 -> 07:49 AM) I'm glad I didn't have to be the one to say it. Some opportunist jackass decided that he should build giant heads of Presidents, destroying a mountain that overlooks what little was left (at that time - now there is even less) of the land allowed to the Lakota, and so the people already routed by the United States got to look up every day and see the faces of that country's leaders staring at them. It was beyond insulting, even by the standards of that time. Of course now, that's all national park and forest, as I believe the reservation has further shrunk and is now at the foot of that mountain any more. I'm not 100% sure on that aspect, though. It is different than this case though, in key ways. That cross was not a horrible insult to anyone. And it wasn't a government funded mission either.

"As a baseball fan" its last night's game, no doubt. I think people here are unable to seperate the Sox fan from the baseball fan. Obviously, as a Sox fan, I preferred last year.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Oct 7, 2009 -> 06:37 AM) At least according to Bulls***!, some native American tribes take offense at Mt. Rushmore. As they should. That thing is an abomination.

QUOTE (dasox24 @ Oct 6, 2009 -> 01:45 PM) That happened?? That's hilarious. Yup. The Onion ran this article, complete with graphics, about Congress wanting a new, retractable roof building. Then some paper in China did what many papers there do for their western reporting - they plagiarize (or really just copy) western pieces and title it their own, and publish it. Just happens that this particular dolt didn't realize the piece was parody. This incident was covered in the press here. Priceless.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Oct 6, 2009 -> 01:41 PM) The fact is though, our manager is not going to use his only backup catcher as a DH. As far as I can tell he hasn't done it in 6 seasons, and the only time he tried his backup catcher at 1b in the spring it exploded in his face and he caught a lot of criticism. I didn't say that Ozzie would do it - I am saying that I'd do it. I, clearly, am not Ozzie.