caulfield12

I'm not sure when we should sacrifice anything in trade return unless we can get a true upgrade in CF. Seeing all these names like Mallex Smith, or Dalton Pompey (or similar), we could simply go out and "buy/trade for" Juan Lagares, Michael Taylor, Jarrod Dyson or a similar player as a placeholder. As the 4th/5th piece, I guess it's okay...but this is one of those situations where you hope to get two potential All-Stars out of a deal. And then you have to consider that cost/trade or flip value of those acquisitions versus giving playing time to Tilson or possibly Engel/May out there. But it's going to be incredibly important to have a strong defensive CFer to give all our young pitchers as much confidence as possible beginning in late May or early June. So back to Albies/Maitan/Newcomb....you need at least two of those three. The back end isn't as important as long as you get the first two guys you're targeting. Captain Obviously Fantastic. At the moment, with Meadows, he's the centerpiece...but you can't get him until the Pirates have decided they won't get fair value on McCutcheon, and even then they need to keep him as "insurance" for an injury to Marte/Polanco/McCutcheon unless they feel pretty darned confident they can get by putting Bell out in LF or RF and covering his anticipated defensive inadequacies with Marte/Polanco. For now, the Pirates aren't budging and the Astros believe they're still ahead of Texas and the Mariners. Until those two situations change, then any movement would have to come from the Braves raising their package or the Yankees deciding they are legitimately competing in 2017 instead of "retooling" and hoping for the best.

Here's the thing. I occasionally learn something new about the game from Hawk, and I probably appreciate his historical references more than most...certainly those 40 and over are probably more in this "camp" as opposed to the modern school of thinking on announcers. Living abroad for most of the past decade, I've listened to tons of broadcasts from major and minor league teams. Farmer and DJ, for example, are just as homerish as Harrelson, Farmer in particularly. DJ is always a bit more detached and critical. I've watched a former college dorm-mate (Brett Dolan) go on to get a top t.v. job with the Astros (then lose it, mostly through no fault of his own) and the thing is that Brett or Benetti or any of those guys, they're solid and professional and do their homework and know their stuff, but they just don't have the same amount of passion about the sport or their team because they're used to covering sports year-round in order to make a living (the first 10-15 years of most broadcasting careers). Maybe they're guys you hang out with and say..."Well, if only I'd chosen that path, was in the right place at the right time..." With Harrelson's knowledge and experience, there's honestly no way you can train or replicate it. That's why I've enjoyed him so much since the 1980's. As far the modern school of announcing, they're generalists, to a large extent. Maybe for young people, that's preferable...but not to my taste. As Thad Bosley noted, we're not going to come to a consensus about this, any more than if we were talking about artwork, music or movies. Everyone has their criteria in terms of what they want to get out of sitting down and watching a baseball game.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Jan 4, 2017 -> 01:15 PM) That statistic is probably skewed because I presume the 1% impact as a percentage of their income could be significantly different. As a percent savings, it might be pretty significant. I still fully believe that the people who are the most tax screwed are most likely the upper middle class people or for the sake of this exercise, because the data is available, the 80-99%th percentile (134K - 615K by tax bracket), they also pay approximately 38% of total taxes). The 1% pays about 46^ of the taxes, but that is largley skewed by the fact that you are taking about huge mega dollars getting applied to a capital gains rate, so the effective rates at that level are much lower then the effective rates of the 80-99% percentile of income). More specifically, it is those who are in that percentile who are not self-employed who take even more of the brunt as their are just so few tax advantages. I'm just not sure how that group and Trump's typical voters in Wisconsin, MI, PA and Ohio have interests that are aligned. This latter group will be decimated by Ryan/Grover Norquist and Tom Price...and not so much by Trump's numerous conflicts of interest.

Two bonus picks... Independence Day remake After Earth Alice Through the Looking Glass Piranha 3DD The 3rd Human Centipede movie Fifty Shades of Grey Away with the Bullets for foreign films (China) Biggest guilty pleasure: Pacific Rim

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Jan 4, 2017 -> 06:08 AM) I don't agree with one word of this post Relax Luke Cage. Do you honestly enjoy Benetti? It reminds me of Ventura replacing Ozzie. He won't embarrass the team or organization, but he's about as interesting as listening to paint dry.

Frankly, I'd rather listen to Harrelson hype all the young prospects than put up with Benetti questioning Stone over and over and not providing any of his own insight. Hawak can also tell you more from hanging around BP for a week of spring training than we'll get all season from some "voice" announcers.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/m/553f7588-be0f-...t%3A-which.html

What happened to Indiana? By the way, there's a really good article on the Hoosiers/State of IU basketball in the post-Knight years at ESPN by Eamon Brennan. Finally, seems like Nebraska shocks people every other year now. When they were in the Big 8, they never did anything. I only remember Tyronn Lue (Raytown/KC) and Andre Woolridge (eventually transferred to Iowa) being their big name players over like a 20-30 year time period. And Danny Nee was a punk.

Well, they've basically got three weeks to get something done before Sox Fest at the end of the month... Then, it gets a bit uncomfortable for both Jose and the club, but he's never been anything but the best teammate since 2012. He certainly understands the situation...and is probably quite excited to get an opportunity to play for a playoff-contending team with an offense that can consistently support him.

It feels like almost NOBODY liked Jared Leto in that role. Plus there were all the rumors going around about how he supposedly treated Margot Robbie (poorly) on the set, although that might have been a "media creation" to drum up some additional hype around the movie. I guess there was an additional fan group who felt tricked as the Joker was such a small part of the movie, compared to the pre-release vibe. One of those roles that, no matter what you do, you're always going to be compared to Heath Ledger and found wanting.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Jan 3, 2017 -> 11:12 AM) Ford canceled plans for huge plant in mexico. 700 jobs added in detroit. Nice development. http://finance.yahoo.com/news/ford-isnt-ex...-192945024.html Ford isn't exactly caving in to Trump...

QUOTE (soxfan2014 @ Jan 3, 2017 -> 04:21 PM) They just ate most of Danks' $15 mill from last season and most of the $10 million given out to Latos,Rollins (both cut), and Jackson (missed over half the season). I wouldn't be shocked to see them kick in about $10 mill to move Melky because it is only for 1 year. Danks was almost forced because they were in first place and it felt like he could drag down the entire season. Melky, they have no compelling need to do anything one way or the other. No payroll crunch, etc. No rush to replace him with a better option, as the other two outfielders we roll out there will likely be much worse.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jan 3, 2017 -> 10:27 AM) It really isn't though. We have seen the Dems rally behind winners like Fidel Castro, Che Guerva, and Iran in recent years. The whole Machiavelli thing is just disgusting though. But that is the overly simplisitic political system we have apparently put into place now. Che Guevara is just a brand for souvenir sales. Rallying around him? Who? Are we also rallying around Jim Morrison or Jimi Hendrix or Bob Marley? In all seriousness, there's no comparing a 45+ year battle of competing ideology with pawn/puppet states like Cuba, Iran and North Korea. And wanting to actually engage or open a dialogue with countries who have little realistic chance of doing harm to you is quite different from completely realigning the global political alliance system and throwing the entire civilized world into turmoil.How are they even close to comparable?

Not only Saunders, but Rasmus and Rajai Davis too. Sox typically abhor eating salary...and nobody other than Liriano/Coats you could even conceive of giving his playing time to. In the end, Melky at $4-6 million (Sox might send $2 with) for 2 months is much more palatable than a full season commitment, especially with how his 2015 season went.

Well, corrupt in the eyes of those who don't want to be scrutinized. In the end, it will only result in more media-driven investigations...which will then be ridiculed for being witch hunts aimed almost exclusively at poor Donald Trump and the GOP. Nobody can even agree that there is such an entity as a truly bipartisan committee anywhere in government these days.

QUOTE (bmags @ Jan 3, 2017 -> 08:11 AM) Not a bet I'm taking. I don't think Sox need to target DH now with assumption they may be expensive in four years. Not a concern until midseason 2018...depending on where the rebuild is. But they better think about it before 2020, or something has gone terribly wrong.

So playing Sanchez or Lawrie is better? How? Does it even really matter one way or the other?

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jan 3, 2017 -> 08:40 AM) This is totally thinking of the past 10 years. Now we are more worried about quantity, and Todd Frazier gives us a better chance at that than does Saladino. We aren't going to be worried about chasing players to fill holes on a immediate basis until next decade. By then Saladino will be long gone. The one thing that might still be around is the player we get for Frazier, because we aren't getting anything for Saladino. It will be a prime consideration at the trade deadline in 2018 and going into the 2018-19 offeason. In all likelihood, it will be outfielders and/or a catcher. 3b is a good possibility as well.

QUOTE (bmags @ Jan 3, 2017 -> 07:26 AM) If they are the next market inefficiency that means they'll be cheap which is the point. Followed to that logical conclusion, any temporary disruption will eventually lead back to equilibrium. For now, they at least appear to be cheap. But that won't last forever.

It's just as likely those defensively-limited but solid hitters become the next market inefficiency...regaining value to an extent, while players like a Heyward, Alex Gordon or Adam Eaton return back to more more "normal" historical levels. It seems pretty obvious if everyone's now overpaying for defense and high leverage short relievers...or pitch framers...something else that's currently undervalued must come back into vogue. The other area with a lot of fascination around it is multidimensional guys like Bryant, Contreras, Baez and Zobrist that can play 3-4 different positions and provide some additional roster flexibility.

So he's basically insurance for Saladino's health, and they'd probably play Carlos Sanchez for 2-3 months at 2b-3b if Tyler can't go (if they were to cut Lawrie in the spring.) Not sure what the benefit of of playing Sanchez over Lawrie would be, though...that's a tough call either way. Or Davidson.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/02/politics/don...eech/index.html Dubai business partners hyped prominently by Trump at Mar-A-Lago New Year's Eve speech to 800 supporters.

Trump won't even use e-mails. He's going to use government (one shudders at the waste of resources there) couriers. Can't wait for some of those guys to be kidnapped by Russian agents when Trump falls out of favor with Putin (or vice versa).

Or assuming that JUST because of the A.Miller/Kimbrel/Giles trades that Nate Jones or David Robertson can be parlayed into gold. Heck, even Jennings is getting lots of hype as a trade piece. There is one conclusion that's clear (so far). If you look at a team like Toronto, who panicked and assumed they had no chance to keep EE and probably didn't want to keep Bautista except at bargain prices...they really got suckered into overpaying for Kendrys Morales quite early in the process. Quite obviously, there are plenty of cheap options still out there for even better bargain prices on the dollar (see Balta's list). The previous year, although the comp structure was different, Desmond and Fowler were bargains late in the process. There's even more out there entering 2017. If they had it to do over, they probably would have been elated to send someone like Dalton Pompey over for Abreu, and just assume his contract, instead of being stuck with the older and more injury-hampered Cuban in Morales (especially on turf). And yeah, Frazier is not perceived as a 1B/DH type just yet. He has too long a track record over at third. It's not unlike the reactions going on around the baseball world to McCutcheon's 2016 season...but the Pirates still wanting MVP prices back in terms of a trade return. Frazier is exactly the type of veteran glue player that a playoff roster needs.

But then what was the point of wasting money on Lawrie just to sit him? DH Lawrie...with Garcia getting most of the playing time in RF? That's the only way the current roster construction makes any sense. Of course, running Lawrie out there as your DH (instead of playing 2B/3B) brings his value to other teams down even more, although it is likelier to keep him healthy. The other problem is that it SLIGHTLY blocks the likes of Coats/Davidson/Carlos Sanchez from getting at-bats, but that's really not such a big deal, EXCEPT for the fact that a veteran roster full of players trying to get traded (Lawrie/Frazier/Cabrera/Abreu) to contenders might somehow come up with a decent overall team record, compared to one in the low 60's that gives you access to a pick at the top of the draft board. It also wastes a not insignificant amount of financial resources that could be better allocated/reserved for the future.