NorthSideSox72

Part that kills me on this too: at the lower levels, the talent pipelines have really improved the last couple years. Hostetler's drafting and Paddy's re-opening of the LatAm spigot are starting to show some talent in the minors. And then there's the major league club, shooting themselves in the knee.

What a f***ing joke. If they really mean this, they are baseball-clueless. If they are floating it in the media to see the reaction, they are business-stupid. If they are giving Robin an "out", they should never have let it leak, and are marketing-stupid to put it out there to be seen. So, unless the journalist completely made this up (which I highly doubt), this is pure idiocy.

QUOTE (brett05 @ Sep 27, 2016 -> 01:27 PM) Whatever helps you thru a Clinton loss. Her only hope now is to get Trump to implode. I trust souces like 538, who actually understand statistical modeling. They found only 2 polls that were actual samplings - meaning, not some website with a click poll (which are hilariously useless). The CNN one, where Clinton won by a huge margin, and a PPP one where Clinton won but by a slim margin. The PPP one was also better at representative sampling across parties. Those were the only debate "winner" polls that even came out. So I have zero idea where you are getting some other idea of Trump "winning" from. That all said, none of this matters much. What matters is where the polls are in a week, in those few key battleground states. Everything else is noise.

So here's an irony. It is state-level Republicans, in heavily blue Illinois, who have a really clear path to how some of their policies may in fact be best for poor communities. They are the ones trying to get the state budget under control, in a state which needs exactly that moreso than possibly any other. There's a path to relevance in a dead-blue state available to them, if they focused their budgeting cutting scissors on the right areas to get the state to where they can afford everything it needs. Instead, for reasons inexplicable to me, their favorite target seems to be schools of all things. Shooting themselves in the foot.

Our Brian Bilek (raBBit) snagged an interview with Marco Paddy, Director of International Scouting. This is, per Marco, the first real interview he's done with the media before (he's given a quote here and there). So this was a really neat get. The interview is here, where he talks about the talent pipeline from Latin America among other topics.

All that needs to be watched in the coming week, poll-wise, are the ones in the few states that actually matter - OH, PA, FL, NC primarily, with smaller levels of interest in CO, IA and NV. The national polls are irrelevant. We'll have an idea of whether or not either candidate made a dent in the next few days, through the lens of those few states.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Sep 26, 2016 -> 10:27 AM) All sorts of lab tech type jobs, working at refineries or gas plants, power plants etc. Thanks. Seriously, I didn't realize that was the case.

After Lester Holt asked Trump about what made him change his Birther stance a second time and he still didn't even come into the vicinity of answering, I would have like to see Holt just keep asking the same question over and over and over again. Not that either of them gave entirely direct answers on other stuff either, but most answers were at least in the zip code of the topic. Anyway, this... QUOTE (Tony @ Sep 26, 2016 -> 11:15 PM) My take away was she had him on the ropes a few times, but didn't finish. She won, but it was far from a knockout, and for this not to be close in November, she is going to need a knockout at some point. I think she could get in during the next two debates if he gets rattled, but she needs to get more aggressive and more prepared. He'll crumble if she pushes him hard enough. ... is my take as well. There were a few moments when she could have hit the jugular, but she didn't. She did what she needed to do, it will play, but nothing special really happened. We saw what both of them already are and have been all along, just in the same room at the same time for the first time.

QUOTE (Y2JImmy0 @ Sep 27, 2016 -> 07:47 AM) I think Collins and Hansen will be on top 100 lists. Burdi won't be on Law's list but I bet all 3 are on other lists. One complication, maybe, is that Fulmer is still eligible for some lists (the ones that use MLB rookie status as the "line").

QUOTE (pettie4sox @ Sep 23, 2016 -> 03:12 PM) Most of your sciences are trade skills. Really? What do undergrad degrees in Physics, Chemistry or Biology get you? Pretty sure most ways to use those degrees end up needing graduate degrees too, but maybe I'm wrong.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Sep 25, 2016 -> 10:44 PM) How the hell could that be true? Are you talking in America? Give me stats regarding cities of over 150,000. Chicago, Baltimore, St. Louis, Kansas City. Murder, murder, murder. You make it sound like America is Mayberry. Cmon. Our country is DANGEROUS. Violent crime is about half what it was 15 years ago. Here is a simple graph to show you this. Given your field of work, it's surprising you get yanked like this. You've been suckered into the fact that so much more is in the news now than was before, which gives the illiusion of more crime. It's not reality though. Now that said, there are always exceptions in there. Chicago's murder rate bottomed out a couple years ago, at a level of about a third of what it had been a couple decades prior. But it's spiked back up a little bit the last 2 years.

QUOTE (winninguglyin83 @ Sep 23, 2016 -> 09:43 PM) So Baseball America not fans of Fisher and Schnurbusch? I guess Call missing the list is not surprising because he got promoted. But ... the other two left out because of age or projected limitations? Mitchell was asked (by me, lol) about both of them, among a few others. He actually had positive info about both, just neither were good enough to make the league T20. Keep in mind it's a 14-team league, and there's a lot of talent to compete with, so not making a Top 20 doesn't necessarily mean they aren't prospects. Furthermore, the PIO is probably the least-seen league in all of stateside MiLB. Mitchell, for example, never actually saw GTF in person - he was going on reports he got from various sources (in fact we, FS, gave him a few tidbits earlier in the year, though we didn't see GTF in person this year either).

QUOTE (Y2JImmy0 @ Sep 24, 2016 -> 02:39 PM) Bill MItchell did his prospect chat with info on many of the Sox players. Looks like NorthSideSox got some questions in. I'm not sure if I can post that stuff in here though As a general rule, it's OK to post stuff from behind a paywall in SMALL snippets. You can't post the whole transcript of a chat, but you can post like 1 or 2 Q&A pairs, and then link to the larger article for people to pay or not pay as they'd like.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Sep 23, 2016 -> 03:04 PM) This release of the video in Charlotte is horrifying. This is murder. In cold blood. Look the cops made the decision to shoot this guy. They must pay. Throw them all in jail for the rest of their lives. How can you watch this video and not be disgusted with cops??? They didn't need to murder this guy. My gawd. In this case, I agree with the "f*** the police" chant. I am sick over this. http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/23/us/charlotte...ideo/index.html It may or may not be murder, but you can't tell a damn thing on that video. The sound is good, that is helpful. But visually, you can barely even see the guy who got shot OR the cops. This is more useful as audio than video. The thing that is standing out to me about this case is the brain injury. That could explain a lot. Also just adds to the sadness of this whole thing.

QUOTE (JenksIsMyHero @ Sep 23, 2016 -> 10:12 AM) http://money.cnn.com/2016/09/22/media/disn...linkId=29118376 Silly white kid. You can't pretend to be another race! That's racist! Oh, and silly brown kid, you can't be a brown character. You have to be a white character! This whiny, complaining society has gone so far anti-PC that we're now on the other end of the extreme. I read this story yesterday and had a similar reaction. Seems like significant oversensitivity to me in this case. That said, I also think the "WE ARE TOO PC" thing also gets overblown. When Trump says patently racist things, as he is wont to do, he's isn't breaking through the PC barrier. He's just being an asshole, and I'm glad he gets called on it.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Sep 21, 2016 -> 03:27 PM) Conversely I know two people with poli sci degrees who have been gainfully employed for about a decade since they graduated. You're also largely SOL if you don't have a college degree at all for many jobs these days, even relatively low skilled office jobs want a degree in something. What I do these days is only tangentially related to my original engineering degree. Getting into the unions themselves isn't easy. There are only so many slots and like everything else in life, it helps if you know someone already. I'd like to point out that my degree is Poli Sci. Ended up working in Financial Technology, been in this field for 18 years now and it's been going quite well. Having a degree is key, major is usually a secondary factor. Fact is, there are very few undergraduate degrees that are themselves trade degrees. Engineering is one of the few exceptions. Mostly, what bachelors degrees have become is the new High School - a show of completion, of basic life skills, of work ethic and the ability to learn and adapt. Not so much highly specialized knowledge for a specific job (again, other than Engineering and a few other exceptions).

QUOTE (greg775 @ Sep 22, 2016 -> 09:40 PM) They have been peaceful in Tulsa. Part of that is fear. Tulsa, OK has to be one of the worst possible places in the country for black people to live. Look at that town's history, and look at the current politics there and in Oklahoma generally.

We are in the midst of looking at our content at FutureSox, and deciding how we want to do things going forward. One of the topics that has come up, is about the daily recaps. For those unaware, during the season, we publish daily recaps of all the affiliate games with highlights and a few notes. So we are here to ask what you think. Should we keep doing them daily? Would just a weekly highlights sweep suffice? Do you think they are entirely not of value? Do you think the style or approach should change? Your feedback is appreciated!

QUOTE (greg775 @ Sep 21, 2016 -> 12:05 AM) I'm all about the military. If ONE military man or woman is upset then I am upset. I respect the hell outta the military. Colin is going about this in a very wrong way. dude, you're talking about a few hundred thousand people. If you are upset at anything that makes one of them upset, you are going to be one depressed guy because you will be upset about EVERYTHING. Being against the protest is one thing. But your statement here is patently absurd.

QUOTE (bmags @ Sep 19, 2016 -> 10:19 AM) I saw hell or high water. Not as enthusiastic as you all. There was too much lack of tension from the "cat" part of the cat and mouse game. And the whole "bank tried to keep your mom poor to steal the land!" thing, k well she didn't have to take a loan out. I think that latter point, was part of what made it a good movie. It wasn't intended to be that black and white. These weren't Robin Hood guys, they had plenty of blood and failure on their hands, and weren't fighting purely for some moral cause. On the cat side, I thought they hit it on the head, but that's subjective.

For the record, regardless of your feelings about the protests themselves, I think we should all be disturbed by Police Departments refusing certain duties to protect certain individuals who are protesting. That is a disgusting misunderstanding of their jobs, and they should get the hammer if they follow through. It's dereliction of duty. The very heart of their job is protection of people's rights. QUOTE (Reddy @ Sep 15, 2016 -> 07:21 PM) I've been suspended for posts that the mods simply disagreed with in the 'buster hahahahahahahahaha wait, wait, hold on... AAAAAAHhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaaha That's a good one.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Sep 15, 2016 -> 10:14 AM) And for half a million dollars a year, I would take it in a heartbeat. QUOTE (raBBit @ Sep 15, 2016 -> 11:42 AM) While he's shown us a lot, he's still probably going to improve. I know you two are aware but his minimal experience in AA/AAA is almost unprecedented. He's been playing catch up all year and he's hanging in there. Also both good points. He's going to be cheap for 3 years and pretty-cheap for 3 more potentially. And the fact that he's not a disaster playing regularly in MLB, after never playing above A-ball prior to this year, is encouraging too.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Sep 15, 2016 -> 10:18 AM) Ok, that makes sense with his numbers showing a good K rate, but a high BAA. With better defense at higher levels, that will probably improve. He also typically posts high GO/AO numbers as a result. He's a key guy going into 2017 - should be interesting to see how he does in full season ball. Should be at Kanny, and hopefully we can get an in-person look at him. It's impressive he is doing what he's done so far in 2015 and 2016, given he never pitched in DSL and came straight stateside. That is rare for pitchers.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Sep 15, 2016 -> 10:11 AM) Reading Solorzano's stat line, is he a sinker ball pitcher? Yes, his bread and butter is a heavy fastball you might call a sinker. Not much velo, but precision control and his pitches move - was told last year he plays with 2 different fastballs, but heavy. I don't know much on his offspeed pitches though.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Sep 15, 2016 -> 10:05 AM) His major league OPS is finally in line with his minor league career average, both just under .700. I think that is a pretty reasonable early ceiling for him offensively. And a .690 OPS with his defense is better than your average MLB backup catcher. He's one of the few bright spots this year.