caulfield12

Pham would have cost a lot for an outfielder who basically forced his way out complaining about playing time the last three years, then followed it up with an MVP type year...followed by Moncada’s numbers this year. On the wrong side of the aging curve, too. Who would you have been willing to trade for him? Avilan or Cedeno can still go. Frye’s value has eroded, obviously. And Abreu/Avi have been subprime assets that can easily go over the offseason or trade deadline next year. They still might be wavering on keeping Avi if he can rebound...stay healthy...and be somewhere between his 17 and 18 numbers. His asking price for a three to four year deal has to be much lower, as well.

His lack of concentration and focus on defense the last two months would be one big reason, and concern about ever hitting over .200 against lefties.

https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2018/08/01/qanon-trump-rally-foreman-lead-pkg-vpx.cnn Q-Anon leaps to the top of Trump conspiracy pushers...

They could have traded Abreu and given you Skole or Delmonico every day for the remainder of the season at 1st.

They should all give fans an In-N-Out Burger when they leave the park for each home loss by more than 3 runs...bring in 5 food trucks and a massive prep crew from the West Coast.

Chris Volstad’s family should be out picketing at the front gate tmrw, lol...

Another Cubs’ World Series title might be the absolute bottom before the Era of These Kids Can Play III begins in earnest.

Need more pitchers who can excel up in the strike zone and fight back against the trend of severe uppercut swings (especially LHB)...Covey five years too late.

LEO PANITCH: All the more frustrating. But it also indicates that he’s sitting on top of the Democratic Party and a Democratic Party establishment that is very much part of the problem. PAUL JAY: And he’s very much involved in actively managing- I was saying off camera, I’ve been told by many people who know the story that when Perez was fighting with Keith Ellison for being head of the DNC, Obama was actively working the phones to defeat Keith Ellison. Did not want the progressive candidate to be head of the DNC. So he’s not just out there as, you know, [inaudible] and all this. He’s, he’s in the pits fighting. And Thomas Frank, the author who did What Happened to Kansas, he made an interesting comment in one of our interviews where he says, you need to understand, the corporate Democrats don’t dislike the left of the party. They hate the left of the party. Yes. And this is because this is a class contradiction. It’s not just some difference of opinion. LEO PANITCH: Well, it’s because they’ve decided that they’ve got to be pragmatic with capital. They need to live with capital. They think that socialism is a bad thing. They think that capitalism is the best of all possible worlds. Although they think you can- stupidly, they think it can be a humane capitalism. PAUL JAY: Well, actually, let me, let me play a clip of Obama right here, that he speaks to the point you’re just making. BARACK OBAMA: But we can learn from the last 70 years that it will not involve unregulated, unbridled, unethical capitalism. It also won’t involve old-style command and control socialism from the top. That was tried. It didn’t work very well. For almost all countries, progress is going to depend on an inclusive market-based system. One that offers education for every child. That protects collective bargaining, and secures the rights of every worker. That breaks up monopolies to encourage competition in small and medium-sized businesses. And has laws that root out corruption, and ensures fair dealing in business. That maintains some form of progressive taxation. So that rich people are still rich, but they’re giving a little bit back to make sure that everybody else has something, to pay for universal health care, and retirement security, and invest in infrastructure and scientific research that builds platforms for innovation. It involves promoting an inclusive capitalism both within nations and between nations. PAUL JAY: So this seems to be the nub of the problem with President Obama. The rich, and one should say the super rich, can still be rich and super rich. And if only they give up a little everything will be OK. LEO PANITCH: You know, I keep referring to these guys as pragmatists. And it’s true, they are. That that’s what drives them. They’re pragmatic, unlike me and you who are, indeed, idealists. That said, you listen to those words and you think, what a romantic. What an idealist. You cannot have what he’s talking about within capitalism. The room for reform within the system as it’s evolved does not allow for that any more. That is what one needs to learn. And we’ve seen the failure not only of his but of Blair’s and the Third Way’s politics, of Schroder’s, et cetera. Of a whole range of them who said that we can have all these things while riding with the wind of global competition and accumulation. And that’s simply proven not to be the case. And much of his speech makes that case. So for him to then turn around and say, well, we want to have all these things within an inclusive capitalism, there’s no grounds for it. He’s standing on no ground. And in that sense, I think the fact that he points to how this has all evolved in such an ugly way, in my view this actually helps make the case of the socialist left. Moreover, insofar as he says we’ve tried top-down socialism and it didn’t work, that leaves space to say, well, we haven’t tried bottom-up socialism. We tried social democracy, but we haven’t tried democratic socialism. We’ve tried authoritarian communism, but we haven’t tried democratic socialism. And the first thing we need to do in democratic socialism is turn the financial system into a public utility. The second thing we need to do is fundamentally transform the institutions of the state so they aren’t organized and structured so as to reproduce private property, and reproduce the power of the very people that he says are the greedy bastards they are. So I think one can do something with this. And I think- you know, we were saying this off-camera as well. His rhetoric in the run up to the 2008 election, and then the disappointment that it was already felt by 2010, is what I think contributed to creating Occupy. And what created Occupy, since Occupy with its anarchistic impulses meant you could protest forever but not change the world, quickly lead- the bridge was very short- quickly led to the candidacy of a democratic socialist within the Democratic Party that almost turned American politics on its ears as much as the Trump one did. PAUL JAY: But I think the speech and Obama as the preeminent spokesperson for this whole class of meritocracy, and billionaires in the tech sector, and Wall Street who are somewhat liberal; if that class gets to pick the next president after Trump, and again we get lots of nice words over here but even more growing inequality over there because that’s how the system is built, to create such more inequality, then the problem is going to be the next round will be another Trump except this time it won’t be a clown. This time the deep economic crisis, the challenge, the threat of the climate crisis, and the geopolitical rivalries that are being spurred by the current state of capitalism, it’s going to be a far more dangerous situation. Which makes this 2020 election so decisive. https://therealnews.com/stories/obama-says-inequality-led-to-rise-of-the-right-but-takes-no-responsibility-for-it-2-2

Other than Merrifield, they haven’t developed any position players...Cuthbert had an impressive rookie year, then fell back. If Mondesi is for real, it has taken 3-4 years of failure to become a legit starter offensively.

But Getzie left KC for the Sox...!

How many errors have been made trying to turn a double play too quickly by Moncada...leading to a big inning? 16th error. You’ve got to make those plays. Seems like at least 6-7 similar situations exactly like what just happened since he came back from the DL.

Sure, when Giolito and Covey have more lives than Engel, it’s going to cause frustration for every pitcher in AAA and AA as well. Obviously, they can only send Lucas down and bring him back up just one more time before they risk a claim, so Hahn would look dumb if he gives up on the most important (well, at least most recognizable to fans) piece in that huge trade for Eaton.

Well, it being Salvador Perez is the dumbest part...Moncada doesn’t even run that much, only his 3rd CS. Royals’ announcers getting on Covey for “pitching scared” with runners on base.

https://eand.co/capitalism-is-a-social-ist-construction-e4afa2facc20 How Capitalism Is A Product of Socialism

Is that supposed to be a compliment to him?

Nope, have to stand by my pick since the beginning of May...no turning back now.

First time Madrigal has fallen below an 800 ops with Kanny...

That’s one of the possible outcomes, I suppose...to back up YOUR argument. Even our two best acquisitions the last decade plus, Quentin and Eaton, were far from linear upwards in improvement...and then you have Beckham/Viciedo. Three went downhill from their first seasons with the team, and we seemingly got so much from Eaton (hard to say what, at this exact moment) because he actually stayed on the field for one whole season, and got positive defensive numbers due to the positional change to a RFer piling up all those assists.

One part of this is guys like Soto, Benintendi, Albies, Acuna, etc., more than holding their own. Another is the Sox internal record of despair on the position player front, and the fact that none of the young hitters (Davidson, Palka, Yolmer) we have given at-bats to has become the next Justin Turner, C.Taylor, Martin Gonzalez, JD Martinez, etc. That’s not even counting Abreu and Avi. We do have Moncada and Anderson, and Narvaez (who everyone hates defensively)? Everyone else has been pretty much wasted playing time. Our young pitching isn’t looking so hot, either. Then you have Dunning, Hansen and Robert with major question marks currently attached to their names...who we absolutely need to come through, since Madrigal is the only guy there I am close to 100% confident in. With starting pitchers going 4-5 innings more frequently, there’s less focus on that area than having a young lineup like the Cubs, Astros or Yankees that can stay healthy. Too much risk and variability. And we still need to build a bullpen from scratch. Look at Houston, with Cole, Verlander and Morton coming through trades or FA, just like Lester, Arrieta, Q, Darvish, Hamels. Both teams used a combination of great scouting and deep farm systems to buy what they needed from the market. Right now, we’ve got a 4/5 in Lopez and our best young pitcher likely will be gone before he’s needed in 2020. Another issue is the fact that he would have the worst numbers of ANY regular on the Cubs. Perhaps Javier Baez would be a better comp, then? Jimenez, Gonzalez, Crosby and Marte are the comps the Sox can’t live with, and obviously Stewart. How can they hit on EVERY position prospect and even get an All-Star and top catcher in the game out of a player any team could have Rule 5’d a half decade ago? (Yes, I realize we got Quintana close to the same way, but that was ages ago.) Yoan Moncada Mahalanobis Comps Rank Name KATOH+ Proj. WAR Actual WAR 1 Ian Stewart 8.5 3.1 2 Andrew McCutchen 14.3 34.5 3 Melvin Upton 12.6 22.4 4 D’Angelo Jimenez 13.2 7.4 5 Alex Gonzalez 14.0 6.2 6 Bobby Crosby 11.5  8.1 7 Andy Marte 13.8 0.3 8 Grady Sizemore 8.3 29.4 9 Jim Thome 12.0 27.8 10 Sean Burroughs 15.0 5.4

August probably...

Fine, they’re guaranteed to average 3-4 fWAR the next five years. How low are we setting our standards these days? Nobody in the world, when that trade was made, expected Moncada to be anything less than an 850+ ops, 4+ fWAR player. We can rationalize all we want why he has disappointed or what happened to his fielding the last two months, but this almost forces Jimenez to be a superstar...or for the White Sox to spend hundreds of millions in free agency, unless Kopech and Cease can both be counted on to line up as #1 and #2 for the next decade.

I can be more presidential than any president in history except for maybe Abe Lincoln with the big hat,” Trump said. “I admit it, Abe Lincoln is tough.” The president spent considerable time talking about his trade policies, including tit-for-tat tariffs with China that he said would eventually pay dividends for the United States. The tariffs are causing unease among Republican lawmakers facing tough re-election battles in November, and Trump's focus on them suggested he was concerned about their potential political impact. China and other top U.S. trade partners zeroed in on American farmers with retaliatory tariffs after the administration imposed duties on Chinese goods as well as steel and aluminum from the European Union, Canada and Mexico. "China and others have targeted our farmers. Not good. Not nice. And you know what our farmers are saying? 'It’s OK. We can take it,'" Trump said. The Trump administration announced a $12 billion farm aid package last week, prompting some farmers and farm-state lawmakers, including Trump’s fellow Republicans, to criticize the move, saying they would rather trade with no tariffs than receive government help. "I want to thank our farmers," Trump said. "Our farmers are true patriots." Yahoo.com Just gave at least two GOP districts in Iowa back to the Dems View photos At least three could be seen promoting a bizarre online community called QAnon, whose members believe in a secret master plan by Mr Trump to overthrow the so-called deep state. One sign said: “His name was Seth Rich,” a likely reference to a debunked claim that the Democratic National Committee killed an employee for leaking emails in 2016. Mr Acosta, who shared footage of the scene on Twitter, said it was just a “sample” of the abuse faced at the rally in Tampa.

https://www.stltoday.com/sports/baseball/professional/inside-pitch-what-to-make-of-the-tommy-pham-trade/youtube_a963835e-c420-5a67-8f94-bc89dc35fda6.html

2.3 fWAR now for 2017-2018 http://www.espn.com/mlb/stats/batting/_/sort/strikeouts/order/true Tied for first in MLB strikeouts with Gallo. Chris Davis and Chris Taylor the only other two from the Top 10 with under 21 homers. Those luminaries would be Stanton, Judge, Goldschmidt, Upton, Harper and Khris Davis. Tim Anderson barely ahead of Alex Gordon in RC27...and abysmal BB/K ratio. Not good. fWAR of 3.7 in nearly 1450 at-bats (2.5 seasons). Yolmer knocking on the door of irrelevancy.