caulfield12

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Apr 12, 2018 -> 03:42 PM) He doesn't link them. He calls them "potential fits" That doesn’t exactly slide well into the title of a thread...if I had written ESPN instead of the author, it would be worse since he typically writes “speculative” articles like Phil Rogers rather than breaking actual stories.

QUOTE (dacoachisdrunk @ Apr 12, 2018 -> 11:10 AM) I really enjoy watching Ohtani play. Your right, he does have some Ichiro in him.. Not saying he is going to be a Hall of Famer at this time, but I love his approach at the plate. With the Angeles off to a great start, he will get even more exposure. He seems to have a great head on his shoulders, and so far the limelight of the Major Leagues hasn't seemed to faze him in the slightest. http://www.espn.com/blog/sweetspot/post/_/...-the-ante-again https://sports.yahoo.com/shohei-ohtanis-gif...-064350140.html Passan’s second article in a week on Ohtani...he lives in KC, so not far to go to see him in person Ohtani another double...now 10/27.

http://www.espn.com/blog/sweetspot/post/_/...gent-class-ever

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/u-republican...-155217659.html This takes the cake...

Hot take...Volstad lasts 2-3 weeks on the active roster, trade return is nil

https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/12/opinions/mor...artz/index.html If Pruitt is a “man of faith,” he should start acting like one

Empty Jeet seats: Marlins outdrawn by Double-A affiliate http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/2313400...wednesday-games Through nine home games, the Marlins are averaging 12,641 fans per game, which includes an Opening Day crowd of 34,000. That's compared to a reported average attendance of 24,996 for their first nine games last season. But it might not be apples to apples. Before the season, the new Marlins management said it would announce only sold tickets for a particular game, which is one reason this season's attendance seems even more paltry. Last season, the Marlins reported a home attendance of 1.65 million fans. However, the Miami Herald later reported that the number of fans who actually paid for tickets was about 820,000. That would put last year's paid average at 10,123 fans per game. A troubling sign this season is that the Marlins' home games have been against some of baseball's most marketable teams: the Chicago Cubs, the Boston Red Sox and the Mets, who at 10-1 have the best record in the majors.

I thought it meant bring him to Chicago in two months, not Charlotte...got it.

QUOTE (bmags @ Apr 12, 2018 -> 08:11 AM) Okay. So how does pulling in neighboring/orbit countries like Singapore/Japan/Vietnam into respecting more western-style IP law not...helping that situation? Singapore will never side 100% with the US, nor will Vietnam because of their political system. By pulling out of TPP, what leverage do we currently enjoy with Australia, S.Korea, Japan, Indonesia...? Just that we’re NOT China? If you want to “win” a trade war, you really need those countries, as well as the EU bloc, India, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, etc., to all cooperate together instead of moving unilaterally.

Vieira, Rondon (already up), Stephens, Guerrero...even Adams and Fry will get shots before Volstad. If they go with vets, it will be Gomez or Ross, Jr., first. If he was ever going to make it, it was coming out of ST this year.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Apr 12, 2018 -> 06:41 AM) He is gonna be known as a coward who never took the lead, never challenged anyone on any side, who spoke about reducing debt and exploded it, then stepped out the side door Except he’s the best candidate for the GOP to gain back the presidency after 2020...he has at least one more act left. Who else? Rubio? Kasich? Will Hurd? Leaving now leaves him less tainted than Pence, at the very least. https://www.marketwatch.com/Story/paul-ryan...&yptr=yahoo Ryan leaves behind an unfixable mess So here’s Ryan’s legacy. To support his tax cuts and the rest, you don’t have to trim domestic spending. You have to eliminate it — all of it. And then, you have to take your pick of eliminating essentially all of Social Security, or all of Medicare and most of Medicaid (or vice versa). Or you can whack all of the disability and SSI program, all of Medicaid, and all of domestic discretionary. And you still wouldn’t balance the budget. So good luck. Hope you enjoy paying your Mom’s hospital bills out of pocket, right after helping your father-in-law with mortgage payments. Say toodles to low-rate student loans you use to supplement your kids’ college fund, and the monthly unemployment reports and other economic data that guide your investing. If you have an autistic child or two who will never meaningfully work, hope you have a trust fund that will replace their SSI when you’re gone. And enjoy watching poor kids on TV die from lack of insurance, because it would happen — would have to happen — for anything like the nonsense vision Ryan has sold to come true. The best part is that all this would not even deliver the growth Ryan has promised for years, like the shoe salesman he richly deserves to be. According to CBO, even with just the cake-and-candy policies Ryan and Trump have passed already will produce relative stagnation by 2020, with monthly job gains slowing to just 62,000 on average, though unemployment will still be low. Growth will revert back to about 1.5% to 1.7% a year, CBO says. So there will be no payoff to the middle class, in the form of new jobs, for all the succor thrown at the richest. It only gets worse if there’s a recession, as there eventually will be. And it would get much worse if you really whacked the whole non-defense, non-entitlement parts of the federal government, plus most of Social Security, and then headed into a recession.

Remove Price and Kimbrel (to Chisox). Rodon Jimenez Moncada Kopech Robert...all become consistent 3-5 fWAR performers. Hansen or Cease need to be studs too...at least one of them.

It?€™s only a tragedy insomuch the impulses to address poverty issues were never followed up on...no compromises were made with Dems, or olive branches extended. Just a legacy of hyperpartisanship, and especially an inability to corral members of the House by either Boehner or Ryan to work across the aisle OR at least work together with each other. He’s mostly going to be known as “cute” Eddie Munster, for his workout pics, his powerpoints and spreadsheets, attacking public sector unions and threatening to gut Social Security and health care safety nets (aka “starving the government”).

Makers and Takers...The Tragedy of Paul Ryan Ryan’s second act was his most compelling. As a young rank-and-file member of the House, Ryan had earned a reputation for being studious and sincere—but also ideologically charged. This was the story of his Obama-era budgets, and also his talk of dividing the electorate into “makers and takers,” those who help the economy and those who leech off it. It was Ryan’s experience on the national stage with Romney—escaping the comfortable confines of Wisconsin’s 1st congressional district—that exposed him to widespread perceptions of Republican callousness and indifference, scaring Ryan straight and prompting him to write a book in which he apologized for the “makers and takers” rhetoric. If this transformation seemed all too convenient, well, Bob Woodson thought so too. Woodson, a longtime community organizer and civil rights advocate, met Ryan at the tail end of the 2012 campaign at a poverty event in Cleveland. Ryan kept in touch, and some months after the campaign ended he reached out to Woodson asking for a tour of facilities around the country that help struggling people to get back on their feet. It struck Woodson as a publicity stunt, but Ryan said he wanted no media present. Woodson was still skeptical. ”And then every month, for about the next four years, we went to a different city, we met different groups, and he deepened his understanding of these people,” Woodson told me. “I witnessed a transformation in him. He’s traveled to more low-income black neighborhoods than any member of the Black Caucus that I know of.” These experiences, in concert with the harsh lessons learned from 2012, were the catalyst for Ryan’s reinvention. He was a unrecognizable when he returned to Congress after the defeat. Ryan talked differently, thought differently and voted differently, conspicuously breaking from the party’s right flank and speaking—often lecturing—about the need for the party to modulate its positions expand its appeal among non-traditional Republican voters. He voted to raise the debt ceiling, break the sequester and reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act. He also lampooned Ted Cruz and the other conservatives who shut down the government in the hopeless pursuit of defunding the Affordable Care Act. All of this informed Ryan’s approach to taking over for Boehner in the fall of 2015. He had come to understand that the Republican Party was widely perceived to be not just cruel, but clueless. The new speaker aimed to address both vulnerabilities with a sweeping series of policy proposals, known as the “Better Way” agenda, which would articulate legislative solutions and wrap them in the sort of aspirational, inclusive messaging Kemp had once steeped Ryan in. The culmination of these efforts, appropriately, was in January 2016—the month before Trump officially began his conquest of the GOP. In South Carolina, Ryan teamed with Senator Tim Scott to host a forum on poverty and upward mobility, using the high-profile event to highlight how Republicans were advancing ideas on how to address everything from minority unemployment to criminal justice reform.“Where did the party of Jack Kemp go? Is it still out there?” Senator Lindsey Graham wondered aloud to the audience. The answer, that day, appeared to be yes. The event was a hit. Many of the GOP presidential contenders joined Ryan and Scott on stage, speaking to a diverse crowd the likes of which I’ve never seen at a Republican event. Ryan told me the night before that Trump had been invited. But the future president didn’t show up. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/201...ns-plans-217989

Volstad is organizational filler...no point to bring him up, except as emergency spot starter or DH.

It's going to be challenging to finish behind the Tigers and the Royals...

I would think Gomez (or Ross Jr.)...just to see if he has anything left, then they move on to the more legit prospects.

QUOTE (bmags @ Apr 11, 2018 -> 08:48 AM) I would side with ss2k5 here on Clinton and TPP. It was a pretty obvious response to backlash, though, it did side too heavily on IP laws on the US side. The annoying part about the push against TPP is the binary nature of either it happens and the TPP changes go into effect or it doesn't and *things stay as they are* and not the obvious China continues to broaden its influence with nearby countries. It's not the end of the world, but I think things would have been better in 10 years with TPP than they will be without it. The problem is you have to confront this eventually...the longer they get away with excessive tariffs, subsidies for state owned enterprises, intellectual property theft, transfer of tech then reverse-engineering it with a Chinese name...it will just get worse and worse. Unless you just hope their debt issues and property bubbles will cause a repeat ofvJapan in the late 80?€™s/early 90?€™s. Here?€™s just one blatant example. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landwind_X7 Imagine how the designers of Land Rovers feel about this. Or the fact 92% of MS Office isnt paid for or licensed due to piracy/copies.

Ohtani getting first start against a lefty. 1/1 (off Matt Moore), now at .400, 8 RBI's playing about half the games. Very nice opposite field approach. Has a little of Ichiro in his game with the feet movement and lean as the pitch is nearing the plate. Autographed Topps rookie cards are already in the $6-7000 range. Crazy. Like Bitcoin, except they’re at least tangible goods.

QUOTE (soxfan49 @ Apr 11, 2018 -> 04:24 PM) Weren’t you the conductor of the “Moncada is fine” train? What changed? Nothing. As long as his OPS at the end of the year is between 750 and 787.5, that will be enough for this year as long as his defense is sound. Others will go with wrc+.

And the poor/middle class donate a much higher percentage of their incomes to churches and non-profits. How much of his actual money has Trump ever given away? Loads of promises, but not much follow through unless someone calls him out in order to hold him accountable in front of the media/public.

Shouldn’t Engel prevent us from needing Swaggerty? Teal implied.

21 k’s in 53 pa’s. Granted, he got screwed yesterday his first at-bat should have 9 walks/20 k’s), but 20 in 53 is still 38%. Guess we have to shoot for 30-33% rate this year and hope for 27.5-30% in 2019.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Apr 11, 2018 -> 01:55 PM) Family Sunday is among the best family bargains in professional sports. Cost used to be an issue with the White Sox, but not for several years. White Sox fans just don't come out until the team wins a lot. They used to complain about the upper deck, then lower level tickets were $20 for Chris Sale starts. They couldn't even sell most of those. Some of those came with free t-shirts too, right? Well, we are still ahead of the Pirates, A’s and Marlins...after struggling to keep from announcing a number below 10k for three consecutive games. 15,325 avg Fwiw, KC barely drew 14k on a much nicer day against the M’s, but they’re still holding onto a higher season ticket base three years after winning the World Series. Their average is around 19k. Minnesota only had 15,438 against the best team in baseball, the Astros. CLE is at 17,248 per game with a two-time playoff team and World Series contender. With all this rebuilding going on...the “haves” (top 15 or so teams) are only getting comparatively richer. Of course we have Ohtani Sept 7/8/9...when school is back. Thankfully, it’s a weekend series.

Could Baltimore Orioles' $0 tickets (for kids under 9) be the antidote for baseball's attendance woes? https://sports.yahoo.com/baltimore-orioles-...-142016925.html It’s not going to bring back the days of 45,000-person crowds at Camden – not yet at least. This is a long-term play in a sport that has struggled to cultivate a younger base as the average age of its fan runs inverse with its attendance – up and up, to its current 57 years old. It’s what made the crowd in Chicago of less than 1,000 recently so disconcerting. It wasn’t just the nasty weather that day. The White Sox barely broke 1.6 million total fans at home last year. The Marlins last year featured about 1,500 people at one game. Which makes the likely failure of their goal of to draw more fans than in 2017 all the more troublesome. What Angelos hopes to glean from Kids Cheer Free, in addition to brand loyalty, is a new set of data. Will a baseball team with across-the-board reasonable concession items be able to do what the Atlanta Falcons did, according to ESPN, and make even more money than they did before slashing prices? Will families take advantage of the program and bring in kids older than 9? Does something like this engender even more loyalty to the team than the latest Cal Ripken Jr. bobblehead? “It’s really a long-term-investment program,” Angelos said. “It’s a winner all the way around. If nothing else, you won’t walk into Camden Yards today, or five or 10 years from now, and say kids are priced out of the ballpark.” A new generation of kids who love baseball isn’t going to form all by itself. The Orioles, the Diamondbacks, the Rockies – they’re at the forefront, along with a few others, reaching out to families, cutting prices, insistent the game won’t just to get back to the 79.5 million-fan threshold but exceed it. The responsibility is clear, the risk palpable, and yet John Angelos doesn’t feel that at all. No, it’s something more acute, something liberating, something that the tickets and concessions and everything else germinate in him. It’s almost like he’s … free.