caulfield12

http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=...0&sort=10,d Top 30 in MLB strikeout percentage You've got a possible MVP in Judge, but 4 of the 5 with fWAR numbers over 3 are from #19-30. Other than that, just Gallo and Sano over 2.5. About half have BB percentages at over 10%. Moncada currently at 32.8% and 16.4% on the walks. 2/1 ratio. Narvaez the only other Sox hitter over 10% now that Frazier is gone. To show how bad this current team is, Leury and Yolmer are #3 and #4 in fWAR rankings.

Plus Cruz has always had PEDs allegations hanging over his head...maybe we should go with Aaron Judge instead, haha. Some pretty big humans.

Not sure that Erdogan in Turkey having nuclear weapons is the greatest idea, either. There are 60-70 warheads at Incirlik Air Base. Israel and Iran, etc. Pakistan and India. Yet they contunue to follow the path of deterrence, and assured mutual destruction.

QUOTE (steveno89 @ Aug 9, 2017 -> 08:16 AM) I'm not sure Jimenez has a potential 70 hit tool. Power? Absolutely, but most scouts seem to think Jimenez will be an above average hitter in the 55/60 grade realm. 70 hit and 70 power = unreal I could see Jimenez being a similar player to Giancarlo Stanton at ceiling, which is a very good player. Nelson Cruz/Stanton are probably the best comps out there...

What military plan doesn't get Incheon/Seoul and the majority of the South Korean economy obliterated in the process? http://m.koreatimes.co.kr/phone/news/view...._newsidx=234480 North Korea should never be accepted as a nuclear state William Brown, adjunct professor at Georgetown School of Foreign Service, said that it is important to understand Pyongyang’s objective in building nuclear weapons is not just to stay alive but are designed to force unification with the South. “A bitter rivalry for the peninsula and, in time, one will win over the other,” Brown said, noting that the Kim regime perceives that North and South Korea are in a zero-sum game. “So this would be like accepting East Germany as a nuclear state,” he said. “If they could rewrite history, these pundits might have given nuclear weapons to East Germany to keep it from disintegrating.”

QUOTE (JenksIsMyHero @ Aug 9, 2017 -> 07:48 AM) Bulls***. Bush got NK to the table with the regional players for 5 years worth of talks, culminating in NK agreeing to halt its nuclear weapons program and shut down their facilities and normalize relations with Japan and the US. And it was Obama who ruined the agreement by condemning their "satellite" launch in 2009. I know you can't blame Obama for anything, so fine, we'll call it NK reneging on their agreement, something they continue to do because they have no desire whatsoever to end their military progression. But keep dreaming guys. Maybe this time it'll work! And what exactly should Obama have done then instead??? By the time Obama took office in 2009, the North Koreans had already conducted their first nuclear test, and two nuclear agreements had already collapsed amid mutual accusations of cheating. But Obama quickly reached out to North Korea in hopes of resuming talks. Pyongyang’s response: a second nuclear test.Obama then adopted a hard-line approach that essentially echoes the stringent policies of President George W. Bush. Obama refused to engage in direct talks with Pyongyang until the regime first demonstrated it was willing to give up its nukes. In the meantime, the U.S. tightened sanctions against North Korea, believing the poor, isolated country would eventually collapse or agree to denuclearize.Two years later, famine forced Pyongyang back to the negotiating table. In early 2012, Obama and Kim reached an agreement that required the North to freeze its nuclear and ballistic missile programs in return for 240,000 tons of U.S. food aid. But soon afterward, that deal fell apart when Pyongyang fired a missile to launch a satellite. In 2013, North Korea conducted its third nuclear test. Newsweek.com/Ed Perry

And why did Iran agree to work together with the Obama administration? They were supposedly irrational actors as well. Oh, yeah...Obama negotiated "a bad deal," one so bad that Trump has said nary a word about it for weeks and weeks while singlehandedly trying to dismantle every remaining initiative of the Obama administration...

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Aug 9, 2017 -> 07:30 AM) What exactly is the size and scope of the invasion force you're willing to put up with? Because you're not taking out their nuclear capabilities with targeted air strikes. http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/20..._from_obam.html Apparently, this situation in Korea is all Jimmy Carter/Blacklisted screenwriters from the McCarthy era/liberals' fault. Trump and his brain trust should watch Red Dawn and Red Dawn II in order to map out a strategy...because anything that works on television or in a movie must be real.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Aug 9, 2017 -> 07:26 AM) Diplomatic solutions to problems actually have some record of success in the world. Maybe it works this time, maybe it doesn't. Diplomatic solutions won't get rid of NK's nuclear capabilities, but *maybe* they could stop their ability to project those weapons regionally or globally. It's certainly not a guarantee. The track record for foreign military interventions or targeted assassinations or backing coups is far, far worse than diplomatic approaches. SK, China, Japan, and Russia, the countries that are actually most likely to have to deal with NK's bulls*** whether it's unlikely first-strike actions or post-US strike humanitarian crises, are not on board. Perhaps that should be an indication, especially SK's and Japan's stances, that rushing into yet another foreign military adventure is not the smartest move. Does SK actually want unification and the massive problem of now having to take care of NK's population? I'm fairly certain China wants a buffer. The broader point about the State Department being non-functional at this point is that there are lot of negotiations and discussions that normally would happen between administrators, diplomats and foreign service workers in the background. Instead we're getting two highly unstable and incompetent morons shouting at each other in increasingly unhinged public statements. A competent, professionally staffed State Department *might* be able to work to diffuse Trump's idiocy, but unfortunately the oilman in charge is also an incompetent idiot so that's one less major avenue of addressing this problem Once again, to reiterate, Trump hasn't even nominated an ambassador to South Korea... China is the ONLY country in the world with the economic leverage over North Korea to bring about regime change, but that would also involve choking off the civilian population of the country first, deepening an ongoing humanitarian crisis.

QUOTE (Chicago White Sox @ Aug 9, 2017 -> 07:11 AM) Caulfield, did you really post data that goes exactly against your previous point? That's the baseline before all this happened. It also matches Trump's general popularity rating, which is mid 30's. What it doesn't do is show the complete shift in information, tone, and rhetoric over the last 24 hours.

QUOTE (Chicago White Sox @ Aug 9, 2017 -> 06:05 AM) Who said I wasn't? I'm pretty sure all my arguments on North Korea have been we're approaching the point of last resort. I'm just arguing against Caulfield's "most erroneous post in Sox history" comment, which indirectly implied (by his estimates) 70 to 80% of the country would love to go to war. This survey doesn't even begin to reflect the recent intelligence over the last 24 hours that provoked the Trump fire/fury/eternal damnation meltdown...once again, this survey came BEFORE that point. Now we supposedly are facing an imminent direct threat, not a theoretical months or years into the future one. Sixty percent of surveyed Americans said they felt the threat can be contained. Republicans were more inclined than Democrats to say North Korea's nuclear program is "a threat to the US that requires military action now,"with 48% of surveyed Republicans and 22% of surveyed Democrats saying that reflects their views. The UN Security Council unanimously passed sanctions on North Korea Saturday following missile tests from North Korea last month. Experts believe if the most recent test had been fired on a flatter, standard trajectory, it could have threatened cities like Los Angeles, Denver and Chicago. Trump told a reporter last month, "We will handle North Korea. We are going to be able to handle them. It will be handled. We handle everything." The CBS News poll was conducted from August 3 to 6, surveying 1,111 people with a margin of error of 4%. http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/08/politics/nor...+Search+Results

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/08/09/t...eactions-241434 Brilliant, Trump might want to get around to nominating an ambassador to South Korea at some point. Meanwhile, Guam and the Marianas Islands want their own missile defense systems for self-protection now. Would like to see someone spell out a scenario where the US unilaterally strikes first and we still look justified in the court of world opinion. Let's not forget Trump has to go through Congress and the UN Security Council (China /Russia) first, and nobody's going to be easily convinced about American "proof/justification/rationale" as the entire world was played for suckers by Colin Powell and Wolfowitz/Cheney/Rumsfield the last time around. Will Britain even be on our side this time out? We probably have Israel, Turkey and Poland on our side now...? Anyone else? Australia? Not after Turnbull was embarrassed by Trump on that phone call, although they have a new PM again. Saudia Arabia, I guess. South Korea and Japan simply want Trump not to do anything stupid or precipitous.

QUOTE (Brian @ Aug 9, 2017 -> 04:39 AM) Real question is, does Trump know Guam is our territory? Sink it!!! Voted for Hillary and Obama...

QUOTE (greg775 @ Aug 8, 2017 -> 10:53 PM) This is very very astute and very scary. I don't think they want to negotiate anything involving their nukes. Jong Un doesn't care about sanctions as long as he is comfy. These crazy leaders only want personal gratification. He doesn't care about his people. That's why it's in China and Russia's hands. And they seem to be enjoying the fracas, figuring the USA is a sitting duck for nukes. http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/09/opinions/twe...etzl/index.html Every realistic solution is in the hands of the Chinese. 3. Other than a change of leadership within North Korea or an extremely improbable and almost certainly ineffective and counter-productive US military strike, the only likely means of driving this perceptual change among North Korea's leaders would be by ratcheting up sanctions and other non-military coercive measures to the point of undermining their grip on power in the absence of denuclearization. 4. Although the sanctions on North Korea announced Saturday build on previous rounds of sanctions, they will almost certainly not convince North Korea to change course in any meaningful way. The sanctions may well pinch, but North Korea's brutal leaders have shown that they are willing to let hundreds of thousands of their citizens starve to death rather than make strategic concessions. The only way sanctions could potentially lead North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons would be if China credibly expressed its willingness to shut off North Korea's trade and oil lifeline in the absence of denuclearization -- something China is far from willing to do for its own strategic reasons. 5. North Korea provides China a buffer between itself and US-allied South Korea, a tool for preventing the reunification of the Korean peninsula, and a cheap source of natural resources and labor. In exchange, China provides nearly all of its crude oil and most of the food going to its military, services cash transfers to Pyongyang via Chinese financial institutions and keeps the North Korean economy afloat via trade and access to Chinese markets. Without this support and China's protection in watering down UN sanctions and other forms of international pressure, North Korea would likely collapse in short order. 6. But Beijing's support for Pyongyang comes at a growing cost. North Korea is increasingly hostile to China and its nuclear weapons program undermines the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which China supports. China's relationship with North Korea makes Beijing complicit in the "crime against humanity" currently underway in North Korea, and its instability and technological unevenness create the possibility of a future nuclear accident that would contaminate northeast China. North Korean belligerence also justifies the strong US presence in South Korea, the strengthening of missile-defense capabilities in South Korea and Japan that undermine China's nuclear deterrent, the eventual revision of Article 9 of the Japanese constitution which outlaws war as a means to settle international disputes and underpins Japan's postwar pacifism, and increases the likelihood of a nuclear arms race in Asia. All of this harms Beijing's interests more than those of any other country. 7. Chinese policymakers may want North Korea to follow China's example and reform from within, but North Korea's leaders, even with their economy in ruins, will not be able to make sufficient economic reforms in the absence of political reforms that would undermine the foundation of the country's totalitarian structure. Meaningful economic growth would require a level of market information and worker empowerment that is simply incompatible with North Korea's brutal system of control, but easing up that control would eventually break the dominance of North Korea's leaders and their Workers' Party. Given the massive numbers of North Koreans who have been murdered, starved, and imprisoned by the current regime, it is hard to imagine many of North Korea's top leaders surviving a transition to a more open society. 8. For these reasons, Chinese leaders face a binary choice. If China believes it is better off with a nuclear armed and hostile North Korea on its border, it can continue on its current path of expressing displeasure and supporting some sanctions but not placing sufficient pressure on North Korea to alter Pyongyang's strategic calculus and actions. If China believes it cannot live with a nuclear armed and hostile North Korea, Beijing must do what it takes to force the North Korean leadership to either give up their nuclear weapons or face regime destabilization and collapse. 9. Continuing along the current path will give Pyongyang ever more leverage over Beijing and an increasing ability to force China to maintain or increase levels of material and political support no matter how much damage North Korea might be doing to China's broader strategic interests. This approach will also invite the United States, South Korea and Japan to more fully realize that the best and perhaps only way to influence North Korea's behavior will be by increasing the costs imposed on China for its tacit endorsement of the status quo. 10. Alternately, China could decide that it is willing to push for change by giving Pyongyang a choice between denuclearization and a cutoff of China's economic and trade lifeline. This would be a big risk for Beijing, but the rewards could be huge. 11. If China could convince North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons, China would emerge as a responsible power player in the region and undermine US and allied efforts to counter the North Korean nuclear threat. If North Korea was unwilling to give up its nuclear weapons and China turned up the pressure to the point that threatened North Korea's leaders' grip on power, China could also play the leading role in managing a Korean reunification process that could expressly protect China's national interests. This might include making sure US forces would not go North of the 38th parallel and even potentially stationing Chinese troops in northern Korea for some period of time under a UN mandate. Korean reunification would enhance China's trade relations with Korea, open a high-tech corridor from southern Korea to northeast China, eliminate the threat of nuclear proliferation, reduce the justification for the maintenance of US forces in Korea at current levels, and put China in a great position to positively assist in the transitional process. This would lead to generations of good will and mutually beneficial collaboration. 12. Because China has traditionally seen North Korea through the prism of its broader strategic rivalry with the United States, however, some level of strategic trust between Beijing and Washington would be required to make this type of transition possible. Given the highly erratic behavior, strategic incongruity, and general unreliability of the US administration, reaching this level of strategic trust in the present context would be a tall order. The bottom line is that while the continued evolution of sanctions places more pressure on Pyongyang, these sanctions will not work as long as China is unwilling to push far harder and risk far more for denuclearization. While the US can and should continue to increase the costs to both China and North Korea of the status quo, real change will only happen when China changes its policy based on its own perceived strategic interests or when the North Korean regime finally collapses under its own weight, which could take years. Because both of these possibilities remain unlikely in the short-term, the US will likely back into a policy of containing North Korea similar to how the US contained for many years a nuclear armed Soviet Union. This type of relationship could eventually become relatively stable because North Korean leaders would be very cautious about launching a nuclear weapon that would certainly lead to their country's annihilation. But while the North Korean leader's verbal bellicosity has already been factored into the system, the same attributes are far more destabilizing when they come from the President of the United States -- and the possibility of miscalculation by one side or the other is increasing by the day. Greg, for the record, nuclear fallout is 100x more likely to impact China, Eastern Russia and Japan than the USA.

QUOTE (Chicago White Sox @ Aug 8, 2017 -> 10:26 PM) Caulfield, what the f*** are you talking about? Most erroneous quote in "Sox" history? I assume you mean Soxtalk, but regardless I'm not surprised that you ignored the numerous ridiculous statements & fake statistics you provide here (like in the post above) on a regular basis. Want to back up this 75-80% claim? One simple google search provided multiple data points suggesting 50% to 60% of US citizens oppose getting involved in Syria & other foreign affairs. And while different, there is a subset of the population that is generally anti war or unnecessarily putting our soldiers at risk. I'm still not how my statement is erroneous other than perhaps my accusation aimed at Balta. But if I'm wrong and the vast majority of this country is eager for some military action like you suggest, please provide some facts that prove that notion. "Or maybe it's because people like you who are completely against US military involvement in foreign affairs represent a large portion of the voter base." What is a large portion? It's definitely over 50%, so is it 60%? 2/3rd's? 75%? Pretty much nobody (outside of us bleeding hearts) cares about Syria or the Middle East unless it impacts them directly, or they see an an iconic photograph of an adorable but clearly dead child washed up on the beach or another cute and shellshocked kid in an ambulance covered in blood and muck (in which case they make a donation or share the story at FB only for it to be forgotten days later.) Syria and the civil war there and refugee crisis just don't register. They're certainly not a DIRECT threat to the American people. If you tee up a survey question, "If there is strong/compelling evidence from the US intelligence community that North Korea will be able to strike at the heart of every American city within the next 12 months with thermonuclear weapons, would you be for or against taking decisive military action/s (assuming the last negotiations fail)?" You're going to get all the Trump voters and many independents taking the position that it's better to take him or the leadership out than waiting for something bad to happen. There's no way it's less than "a large portion of the voter base." If you include the non-voter base, those most uninformed on current affairs, it will arguably be even higher.

Garcia has to be benched tomorrow. It's time.

We can tie Phillies for #1 draft pick if we manage to blow this one...

QUOTE (BigHurt3515 @ Aug 8, 2017 -> 08:35 PM) I feel like they haven't throw Yoan a fastball all game So much for the "concerns" about not having any hits on that particular pitch. Roll Walk Tide, Yoan.

Quintana has actually raised his season ERA pitching in the NL. That's a bit of a shocker. Coop magic? Petricka...what happened to the quasi closer version of yourself?

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Aug 8, 2017 -> 08:32 PM) So. What's your solution. The same the best and brightest of the Trump admin has come up with for Afghanistan. Status quo. It's gotten so bad Congress is having to threaten to withhold funding if no new plans or strategies are presented in the coming weeks.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Aug 8, 2017 -> 08:20 PM) That statement must be the most erroneous in Sox history, as we shall see in the coming weeks. Other than a large number of churches and charitable orgs, the numbers must be 75-80% in favor of direct military action (as long as their own kids don't have to fight), which many degrees higher than the number of Americans that can actually identify the key differences between North and South Korea in the first place.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Aug 8, 2017 -> 07:04 PM) BS. This entire thread is predicated on the lie that hundreds of thousands of people ONLY die if one thing happens. It is completely and utterly Trumpesque in its level of untruth. Millions of people are going to die whether action is taken or not. That is quite literally the only truth here. "Diplomacy" hasn't achieved anything here except killing millions of people already. The Korean Peninsula for the last half century is quite literally the biggest mistake diplomatically that the United States has made. Time after time they have chosen to appease this regime. Millions are dead today, not in the future, but today, because of it. Now they have an estimated 60 warheads and are quickly working towards the easiest parts which is delivering them to where they need to go. They are flat out telling us what they plan to do with the missiles, and still we pretend it isn't real, and instead roll over for them as if they were a child throwing a temper tantrum. Even if they aren't the ones pushing the button to launch, they will be selling the missiles and technology to those who will, assuming they haven't done so already. Millions of people will die because of the situation the United States has actively allowed to happen. I have no doubt that our current Presidential regime will continue the tradition since the end of active hostilities of talking loud, but really doing nothing about this. This will keep up until finally the inevitable happens. Whether it is this year, next year, 10 years or longer it is going to happen soon enough. In my opinion, the tipping point is long since gone. They have the nukes. It is already way too late. But what we really need now is the partisan blame in place so we all have our political marching orders, because THAT is all that matters here. Hundreds of millions died in Russia and China in the 1950's, during peacetime. In fact, one of the largest reasons was China selling their grain to the Soviet Union in exchange for modernized/nuclear weapons. Where were we then? We can play this same game about Cambodia under the Khymer Rouge/Pol Pot, Bosnia/Serbia, Somalia/Sudan, Rwanda...going all the way back to Korea and Vietnam. In the end, China and Russia aren't interested in having millions die because that will draw most of the industrialized world into an abyss there is no coming back from...Japan would be forced into the conflict, and that's something they have been dead set against since 1945. Somehow, cooler heads have to prevail from those three entities, along with the new South Korean government, that has been caught in the middle on THAAD since Ms. Park was impeached.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Aug 8, 2017 -> 06:38 PM) You means the ones that ignore the genocide and self-induced famine deaths of millions? The ones that ignore that a crazy percentage of their population is currently being housed in concentration style re-education camps now? I would love to see the conversation turn that direction... But instead we are left to pretending that this regime hasn't killed anyone, and isn't going to kill anyone as long as we let them have nuclear weapons peacefully. If someone has direct family members in NK right now, the odds are already pretty solid that they are dead, dying of starvation, or in a government run concentration camp. No one seems to have a problem with that though. I recommend you read Suki Kim's book first before making such grandiose statements... http://ideas.ted.com/what-i-learned-from-t...in-north-korea/

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Aug 8, 2017 -> 06:34 PM) You're right guys, that's brilliant. We should tell the experts to think of something. Why haven't we done that the last 20 years? That's my bad, I'll take the blame for that one. I'll go tell them right now and I'm sure this will only take a few minutes for them to iron out the details of something. I'm actually a little in awe of this response. It's basically "do the status quo but louder and make me feel better about it!!!" Better yet, let's send Jared Kushner. He can solve any intractable, centuries long problem Jimmy Carter and Dennis Rodman couldn't. Perhaps Ivanka can just cut a deal to move her factories from mainland China to rural North Korea. Or send both Stephen Miller and Jared, it would be like Ditka vs. a Hurricane.

QUOTE (Chicago White Sox @ Aug 8, 2017 -> 06:33 PM) How do you know this? What is to be gained when the US has 22,000+ nuclear weapons to wipe the entire Korean Peninsula off the map...? To make himself more heroic or a martyr standing up to oppose US imperialism?