caulfield12

We’re reaching PizzaGate/Q-Anon/Seth Rich levels here...obviously, every Democratic woman in the country should make fake allegations against Kavanaugh so they could earn millions through Soros and gofundme.com appeals.

“One team that seems to revel in its reputation as stat-agnostic is the Chicago White Sox. That stems in part from the style of Sox executive VP Kenny Williams, who served as general manager from 2000 to 2012 and has expressed his preference for old-school ways over sabermetrics. On the other hand, Rick Hahn, promoted to GM in 2012, takes a friendlier view of analytics. The man at the center of the White Sox's analytics operation is Dan Fabian, who describes himself as a "stathead" and is well-respected within the industry (but just pretty good at baseball trivia). He has overseen the development of the White Sox Scouting Portal and has recently brought on Dan Strittmatter, a former math major at Notre Dame, to coordinate baseball information. But in contrast to the Cubs across town, led by Theo Epstein and new manager Joe Maddon, the White Sox are stuck in neutral, with no signs they're doing anything innovative.” White Sox are in the “one foot in category,” so not anywhere near the forefront...both those guys are from ND as well, but they’ve never gone outside the box for NASA, Wall Street quants, Cal Tech, MIT types. Haber is put in this category due to his educational background, but more of a negotiations/business guy than a pure analyst type. Not surprisingly, six out of the ten playoff teams are “true believers,” two more that just missed and then the Pirates, who were at the forefront of the pitch framing (Wilson and Cervelli) movement and pitching to contact as well as massive defensive shifting. http://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/12331388/the-great-analytics-rankings?_escaped_fragment_=mlb

They are also Jason Heyward for five more years and Yu Darvish for five more years and Tyler Chatwood for two more years. The three will make more than $50 million next season alone. They are a team that preaches culture – and still has a player in the middle of a must-win game sitting in the clubhouse and scrolling through an iPad, much to the chagrin of others in the dugout who were living and dying with every pitch. They are in that awkward place where they need to start considering the future as well as the present, lest the latter bleed into the former and cause the chaos spiral of other successful franchises that lost sight of their window and watched it slam on their fingers. The sentiment in the clubhouse, at least, was that wholesale change would be unnecessary. “I honestly don’t anticipate a lot,” Maddon said, and his sentiments were echoed by those who saw the injuries to Darvish and Bryant and closer Brandon Morrow and imagined how much better a 95-win team would be with them at full strength. And that’s true, all well and good in a hypothetical world, but injury-free seasons are a pipe dream, and such considerations must be baked in to any rational assessment of the future. Baez talked about the Cubs needing to play more as a team, and, OK, fine. That may be true, but it’s too difficult to quantify for anyone outside of the room to know. And Heyward said the season wasn’t a success because the Cubs didn’t pop any bottles in celebration, which, sure, even if the reality that October is a crapshoot renders most World Series-or-bust sentiment just blather. And Rizzo planted his flag for Maddon, saying that “without his leadership, guys aren’t playing the way they play” and that “Joe’s best year was this year as far as managing all the moving parts,” which doesn’t sound like the sort of talk from a guy who expects to be playing for a new manager next year, even if the Cubs do have as much cover as they ever will should they move to replace him. “I love this team,” Rizzo said. “I’ve loved this team from Day 1. We lost to teams that were better than us. That’s all you can say. We fell short.” 0:01 0:40 Arenado, Baez share hug at third

Brewers were one better...they had it for the last two months, though.

And Kyle Tucker in the same draft, who would be the #2 prospect in the Sox system...

The Astros traded or let go: JD Martinez, Vincente Velasquez (Phils), Domingo Santana, Kiki Hernandez (Dodgers), Preston Tucker, Delino DeShields, Jr., Robbie Grossman, Chris Johnson, Singleton, Jonathan Villar, etc. That’s not even counting the Cole and Verlander deals. That’s a LOT more talent than the White Sox produced between Sale/Q and this current rebuild’s class of talent (mostly imported via four trades.) The difference is they had 3-4X more that talent coming in, even if you account for the Appel over Bryant debacle and then selecting Brady Aiken fiasco. When you’re methodical about talent evaluation, you can make ten mistakes and still not miss a beat. Whereas we have one young pitcher go down and we’re moving the timetable back at least a year.

How can you retain Stevenson or Sparks when you just set a franchise record for ineptitude offensively? Either that, or the talent evaluation sucks and the coaches are maximizing the talent available to them...

There’s no need to read a book. Atwater, Rove, etc., have been masters at this since the Reagan years. The difference is the GOP fought back from the center, whereas Trump is on the extreme right on many issues, yet still won. Is it any surprise there’s now a countervailing movement from the far left? How often has the GOP had to compromise or back down? Bush/Gore, Citizens United, Merrick Garland, etc. Crony capitalism is slowly destroying the very social fabric of the US, to the point where there’s more issues that divide than unite Americans.

You mean, like Robin Ventura?

Amazon is raising its minimum wage to $15 an hour for all US employees. The change takes effect November 1 and applies to full-time, part-time and temporary workers. Amazon (AMZN) says the $15 minimum wage will benefit more than 250,000 Amazon employees, plus 100,000 seasonal workers. "We listened to our critics, thought hard about what we wanted to do, and decided we want to lead," said Jeff Bezos, Amazon's founder and CEO. "We're excited about this change and encourage our competitors and other large employers to join us." The change applies to Whole Foods and all other subsidiary employees. Amazon also said its public policy team will begin lobbying for an increase in the federal minimum wage, which has been $7.25 an hour since 2009.

Agreed. Our two best (projected) position players, Anderson and Moncada had OPS+ numbers of 97 and 88, Anderson in his third full season. Abreu, Narvaez and Palka were essentially their only above average hitters... Madrigal won’t be stopped on his path to the big leagues by his SLG %.

Instead of expressing respect and sympathy for Ford and calmly suggesting that she was mistaken in thinking that he sexually assaulted her, he ranted and shrieked and tossed off accusations and lies that demonstrated, to my surprise, that he clearly does not belong on the Supreme Court of the United States. Even if he did not do what he is accused of, the way he presented himself was truly shocking, immature, irrational and uncontrolled. No person with that degree of emotional instability belongs on the highest court in our land. Kavanaugh revealed himself to be untrustworthy in precisely the way justices of the Supreme Court must be trustworthy. They must be calm, thoughtful, open-minded, respectful and mature; Kavanaugh has made strikingly clear that he is none of these things. That, in itself, is a compelling reason not to confirm his nomination to serve on the Supreme Court. Over the past half-century, I have had the privilege of getting to know, to varying degrees, most of the individuals who have served on the Supreme Court since 1968. None of them — none of them — would have behaved in the truly immature and reprehensible way Kavanaugh did before the Senate Judiciary Committee. He is simply not fit to serve as a justice of the Supreme Court. If President Donald Trump, Senate Republicans and the Federalist Society care at all about the integrity of the Supreme Court as an institution, it is time for them to go back to the drawing board. They can do better, and they should. Geoffrey R. Stone is the Edward H. Levi distinguished service professor of law at the University of Chicago.

How is it a blue seat when Manchin votes more frequently for Trump and Big Pharma?

https://eand.co/the-economys-not-booming-capitalism-is-8a180c97e06d

Fine, but where’s this idea of an improved bullpen coming from? It’s likely to be just as bad as this year’s, unless we start spending money on some more talented veterans. Theoretically, the top 4 guys would be Jones, Burdi, Hamilton and Fry. Meanwhile, we’re going to pass on 8-10 elite or close to elite bullpen arms that are available right now because “we might not be competitive until 2021.” Not too long ago, Balta was targeting Kimbrel. If they were developing position players effectively, the entire rebuild wouldn’t/shouldn’t be set back by a full year due to the loss of a single starting pitcher...

Getting re-elected >>> Principles Why don’t we ever hear about McCaskill voting for Kavanaugh? She’s in basically the same position as Heitkamp in her race, Missouri has mostly been a conservative state the last 10-15 years.

And Braun, the other, haha.

The Brewers have done a pretty amazing job constructing that lineup from the rest of MLB, Japan, guys like Aguilar who were blocked in other organizations, castoffs like Shaw, etc. Arcia is basically their only homegrown position player, and he’s largely been a complete bust until today.

If he pitched for those four outs, you’d still be tied... Btw, Jesse Chavez would be the #3 starter for the White Sox.

Atta boy, Jack. That’s about as hard as he can throw these days. Now they can be extra careful with Rizzo.

Because you can’t burn Hader in a tie game and then not have him available tomorrow.

Cedeno isn't as good as his numbers.

Well, that was fast. Rizzo has been a monster since the ASB. Thankfully, Bryant isn’t close to his MVP form with all those injuries, especially the shoulder.

Covey and especially Giolito should be taking notes about how to be effective with low 90s stuff in this one...

They should give Jose Rondon more playing time...but still think Leury and Yolmer stick around for at least one more year. Too early to make decisions on most of those pen guys. Fulmer (ala Borchard) desperately needs a change of scenery deal for another busted prospect like Matt Thornton. Covey will be in the rotation to start the year unless they add more than one veteran. There’s nobody close to pushing him in the minors until Cease arrives.