caulfield12

The irony here is that fans would be more willing to excuse all that if he hadn't followed Selig's wishes in 1994 against the interests of his own team, about holding down spending for free agents/collusion (Belle for one year was one of the few exceptions), about not overspending on the draft, and now it would be pretty surprising if we went over the cap for intl. spending as well when smaller budget iteams like the Rays, Royals, Braves and DBacks have gone over or currently are planning to do so. He was on the inside with Selig all that time, the definition of the establishment...until he lost the power struggle which ended up with Manfred as commissioner and broke from Selig in favor of trying to form his own cabal. So whatever invisible advantages we had from aligning with Bud all that time have been lost. In the meantime, a not insignificant percentage of the White Sox fanbase at least partially blames the other half for the failures of the franchise. It's a pretty amazing trick to pull off, from a public relations standpoint.

QUOTE (GreenSox @ Feb 5, 2016 -> 09:33 PM) Because now they have a closer and a young pitcher. They made a crafty decision using their depth. They thought a couple of moves ahead. Would be nice if the Sox would do that instead of going paycheck to paycheck with zero depth. The Sox reportedly want a lefty; why didn't they look at Parra themselves? Look at Parra's trendline offensively and defensively over the last couple of seasons. You'll find another version of Austin Jackson with no clear case of regression (especially from a Gold Glove level of play) at his young age. Two enigmas...although Parra was never a great hitter in the first place.

Look at her wavering on trade agreements when the political winds shift. Her bringing up the derivatives/swaps legislation that came from her hisband's administration...why didn't Sanders turn around and come back at her with "if it was good enough for your husband and greenspan and rubin, what evidence exists that you were you against it at that time?" She took forever on Keystone waiting to see which way it would play out. She's now anti state death penalty when her husband had the highest execution rate of any state governed by a Democrat in the 1980's and early 90's precisely because Dukakis, Mondale, McGovern and liberals in general got hammered for being soft on crime (see Lee Atwater/Bush/Willie Horton). Most cynics believe it was purely politics...anticipating weaknesses that could be eliminated for a potential presidential campaign.

If you do think about it objectively, and remove the White Sox being your favorite team from the equation...it's pretty hard to look at the politics of it as well as the cost to taxpayers (especially in light of current budget problems) and feel it was a good deal in terms of the overall public interest of all residents of the State of Illinois. In that sense, this is just what the rich people in our country do...take advantage of tax loopholes, social connections, political donations, bankruptcy law, tax havens. Do you blame the system itself or primarily the individual actors within that system? In this case, the ballclub (increasing valuation/ROI) itself has certainly accrued more benefits than the public. So it comes down to putting a dollar figure on 2005 whether that was worth it for the city and state. Florida taxpayers would undoubtedly disagree their two World Series winners in Miami were worth it, overall. Or football fans in St. Louis.

It seems one of Parra's main motivations for going to Colorado was to play with CarGo. Might have been like Upton there was no mutual interest? The weird part is the Rockies seemingly lowered Dickerson's value by forcing a move with him or Blackmon. Why they would want to get more expensive with at best an incremental upgrade seems bizarre for a rebuilding team. And it's not like Parra has been playing great defense recently...if that was the primary consideration over Dickerson it would make SOME sense at least.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Feb 5, 2016 -> 04:47 PM) You can't tell the difference between being intentionally bad, and being bad? If you are going to be intentionally bad, why should the rest of baseball have to subsidize you while you wait half a decade, or more, to maybe be good again? But there are almost always shades of grey...which would you penalize of those six NL teams? The Brewers, Reds, Rockies, Padres, Braves and Phillies? What about the Marlins when they fired Guillen and traded half their expensive new acquisitions to Toronto? The Cubs, Astros, Twins and Mets should be penalized as well when their efforts were largely successful? Let's not forget the Red Sox in last place 3/4 years, the Padres, the Mariners, etc. I imagine most here could never come close to an agreement...and, for as many fans who are discouraged by games against no-name lesser competition, just as many love it when the White Sox beat up on teams and put up huge offensive numbers in those games.

But who determines which teams aren't competitive enough? What if their spending/trading is clearly inefficient but not evidence of deliberate sabotage? For example, the Mariners, Padres or White Sox in the last couple of seasons. The Twins were over .500 but hardly spent a dime this offseason...or the Yankees. The Marlins? They would counter with Stanton and Wei Yin Chen. Can you blame the A's because ownership erred in letting SF take the territorial rights to San Jose? What should or could the Reds or Brewers realistically do in the face of three superteams in their own division? Can you force the Phillies to spend FA money a year or two earlier because of their new media rights deal payments already kicking in?

When you think about it, Sanders has become a one-man version of Occupy Wall Street. It's forcing Hillary to tack to the left because her pragmatic/realistic/moderate/progressive side isn't going to motivate anyone, no matter how many times she mentions the Children's Legal Defense fund, CHIP, the fight over Hillary Care, etc. The Clintons made so much of the fact they were supposedly broke when they left the White House (that was quickly remedied by book deals)...but I don't feel many young people get a sense that Hillary cares about poor people. From reading about all the deals and sources of money for the Clinton Foundation (they can locate it in Harlem, but their hearts are in Westchester), the picture of what they've actually accomplished for all the millions of dollars "invested" gets murkier and murkier. Heck, the left wing of the Democratic party doesn't 100% believe the Obamas really care about the issues Sanders is directly taking on, either. Only Bill had that seemingly magical ability to connect to people and no matter how earnestly she endeavors, it's just lacking in her...that genuineness or authenticity, it's clear she's always going to be arguing the Presidency is something she has earned and has the right to but she doesn't know how to win it or exactly why. It's that tone-deafness which already destroyed Jeb Bush.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Feb 4, 2016 -> 10:26 PM) Count the Buckeyes out, they aren't making it. The preseason did a lot of damage to both OSU and Wisconsin, that's for sure. They both need to knock off Iowa/Indiana/MD/Purdue/MSU and not get tripped up on the road by lower tier teams. I guess you'd have to argue MI is still in a pretty strong position for the #6 bid (especially with Lavert healthy) and WI/OSU are going to have to fight tooth and nail to get there. Fwiw, Wisconsin has now won five in a row after starting out 1-4.

I thought it was 2029. At least 90% sure on that. All they did was changed the "sunfield" from right in the old park to left in the new one, essentially.

Friedman didn't become one of the best GM's in baseball by making rash, emotional decisions on players. They're not going to sell low on Puig. If it was going to happen, it would have taken place 2-3 months ago. These are not the outfielders we are looking for. But it is confirmation that Hahn isn't complete deterred by rumors and hearsay stuff in the Twitter-verse, either. Due diligence. How many times did we hear those two words out of KW's mouth over the years?

Ohio State, Wisconsin and Michigan are going to be in a dogfight for those 5th and 6th NCAA tourney bids... Theoretically, seven's a possibility, but so is just five.

The other danger we've seen with White Sox farm systems the last decade is the fact that we end up with players 4-10 who often wouldn't even be ranked in other organizations. There's a tendency to overrate or overvalue those players, as it's human nature to look for positives since what else do fans have? And there are lots of compelling human interest stories in our system, too, like Eddy Alvarez. Blake Hickman was another prospect last year (have some bias as a fellow Hawkeye on that one). Last year, Montas and Trayce Thompson. But that STILL shouldn't take away the focus from the fact that the major league roster is lacking in 4 key positions.

Bernie Sanders has become a much better debater and taking O'Malley out of the equations has added to contrast between the two. I think the biggest question is how many of the young people that he's getting out there between ages 18-29 will still be motivated to vote for Hillary in a national election when/if Sanders has to concede the nomination? It's something like 75-80% right now. Even Obama wasn't close to that number in 2008.

Hillary Clinton, undoubtedly aware her chances of winning in NH are slim and none, will instead go to Flint this weekend as part of her national campaign.

QUOTE (oldsox @ Feb 4, 2016 -> 09:21 PM) Would Ian Desmond sign a one year deal for $10mm? Nope. But if you created fair and realistic incentives that would give him the opportunity to make 25-35% more than he would get in guaranteed money playing for another organization (let's say the top offer right now is $12-15 million)...how could he and his agent not consider it?

QUOTE (hi8is @ Feb 4, 2016 -> 07:46 PM) Baseball life... Could it please be April already? Real life... Could it please be 1990 again so I could purchase google.com, sex.com, toys.com, and money.com - among other domains? Money Magazine would have been there first. Btw, what product/s do sex.com and toys.com even sell? Better to have put all that money into Apple, Nike or Johnson & Johnson stock.

There always tends to be a bit of an overreaction, both positive and negative, to AFL results. There are lots of positive signals with Engel, but one of the most difficult jumps in baseball is from High A to AA. Typically, Birmingham has been difficult also because the stadium was the minor league equivalent of playing in Oakland, but the new stadium's playing much fairer. If he can put up an 800+ ops for a full year playing for the Barons, that will elevate his prospect status. Last year, he was at only 704, and that's a somewhat worrisome number. As a collegiate player, he put up that line at age 23. Typically, the high school and international prospects are seeing that same level of competition at age 19-21 (like Courtney Hawkins). That said, he's on a positive arc in his development, compared to where he was just a couple of seasons ago. Instead of Torii Hunter, maybe a better comp is Aaron Rowand with more speed and less power. He also had a little Adam Eaton to his game as well. But, yeah, physically....he does show a pretty strong resemblance to Trout. Engel also has only 17 career minor league homers to go with roughly 1200 at-bats...including 279 k's and 121 walks. He's going to have to increase his walk rate and cut his K's down to 15-20% to be a starter in the major leagues.

I can't see where the Dodgers would take back Cabrera...they already have enough overpaid veteran OFers as it is. The deal where we get back Urias, Montas and Pederson makes more sense. It would have been even more logical had we not added Frazier, which puts us in a position where we have to compete this season. It's pretty much completely dependent on how close Urias is to being able to contribute. You can make the argument that by the end of the season, Sale, Rodon, Urias, Fulmer and Johnson/Montas might be the most talented young rotation in the majors, after the Mets. If Montas is added to the bullpen, he becomes a huge weapon there assuming he can control his walks and perfect just one secondary pitch instead of working on 2-3 simultaneously. There's a lot of risk for both sides. The Dodgers, trying to cut payroll, are taking two of their top prospects that would be cost-controlled out of their depth chart. The White Sox could be taking a strength and turning it into a weakness, and guessing wrong on all three prospects panning out.

Right now, the best option might be trading for Desmond Jennings and adding Ian Desmond on a one year deal with a base of $10 million but a load of incentives where he could earn $17.5-20.0 million. The competitive athlete in him might respond well to that motivation, especially after turning down the 7 year, $107 million option. Or maybe it's a one year deal with a second year option that kicks in if he reaches his incentives, 20 homers and 30 steals, 750+ OPS, gets elected to the All-Star team, whatever, etc. With the caveat on Desmond Jennings being that you're not giving up someone you're unwilling to part with from the minors, and the Rays really aren't in a position to extract that with Jennings getting more expensive and the two injury-marred years. You lose the comp pick and get it back a year later on Ian Desmond. We should be willing to make our club a legit contender...the value to competing for the playoffs over the next two years should be a priority over 2020-22. Of course, this also depends on what Boras' demands are for Austin Jackson.

From the Democratic side, I'd include Mario Cuomo and Jesse Jackson on the best public speakers list. 1. Clinton 2. Cuomo 3. Jackson 4. Obama For Republicans, Gingrich is definitely up there. Jack Kemp. Rubio might get there someday with more practice. Paul Ryan has some potential. Reagan obviously.

They also need to reform those "competitive balance" picks. The criteria is too fuzzy. No way the Cardinals or Tigers belong in that category, for instance.

Isn't he being ranked around #10 in the Top 20 LA prospects signing list? Adolfo was higher than that, wasn't he?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/mar...02c9_story.html Marco Rubio is running scared https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-l...ters/?tid=a_inl That's the biggest hole in the Rubio candidacy...he doesn't have the ability to improvise and have that feel for different audiences that Bill Clinton and Obama were so good at sensing intuitively. Everyone is criticizing him for giving the same canned speech over and over again, and being the product of his speech writers. If you look at his policies, he's very much the same thing as GW Bush. Hard line/military interventionist, cutting taxes on the rich/supply side economics, God knows exactly where he stands on immigration at this point. Just like Obama, people are projecting their hopes/dreams/aspirations about what he and is and what he represents and I wonder if it another sort of trap that voters will quickly become disillusioned whenever a young/attractive "change" candidate comes along. Rubio's currently getting a huge advantage of looking "normal" or more palatable because of the constant comparisons with Trump and Cruz...the longer they stay in the race together and the other candidates who are/were legit possibilities are wiped out (Bush first, then Kasich and Christie depending on NH, my sense is Kasich can stay in this longer and will start to spend more and more time "mentoring" Rubio unless they absolutely just don't get along well), the better Rubio's chances of winning the nomination.

QUOTE (fathom @ Feb 4, 2016 -> 08:41 AM) Why would you trade Q for an aging player with two years left? Because there's no combination of players that gets you either Puig or Pederson that the White Sox are willing to part with... That trade only works if the White Sox are confident that Urias/Montas will produce more upside than Quintana, which is a dubious bet. Probably the most likely result is something like Ethier/Wood for Robertson and Danks. As for Eminor's comments, you could just as persuasively argue the White Sox are not "actively" trying to win with Avi, Saladino, LaRoche and Johnson, either.