caulfield12

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Feb 13, 2015 -> 04:16 PM) Wow, really? I thought the first one was really good. I loved the whole tone/look of it. For the same reason that The Golden Compass never had a sequel. Or, more recently, Stephanie Meyer's(Twilight series) YA book-based "The Host" completely bombed...or John Carter, etc. Personally, I enjoyed those books, but they do tend to be very dark in nature...they aren't easily adapted to the screen. Maybe, in hindsight, Rapace was TOO good (Swedish film)...but that still doesn't mean it will connect to a mainstream audience, any more than "Under the Skin" could earn boffo box office. 50 Shades of Grey will sink like the Titanic in the second week, probably down 75%. Then the big question becomes whether a sequel will be profitable enough. And should they go all-out and do an NC-17 sequel and cut the budget by 75%, not put it into theatres via wide release and hope to make it back by DVD sales/netflix/rentals, etc.

QUOTE (Tex @ Feb 13, 2015 -> 11:15 AM) No it is not the same. You have placed the US at the top of the moral capital punishment pyramid. Perhaps the US is too lenient on criminals and don't execute enough. Your assumption is the US is the moral perfection on the planet and that anything that differs from ours is wrong. There are countries, a lot of them, that have stopped capital punishment. Where do they fall on your list? Can those countries say that all of the countries that kill criminals are wrong? For example, here in China, there's pretty much a zero tolerance policy on drugs (with quite low benchmarks in terms of KG weight trafficked once to earn you the death penalty) and quite limited freedom of speech. As we all know, in the US, over 50% of the criminals who are imprisoned are there for drug crimes. So, because the Chinese/Singaporean/Taiwanese system has worked better economically the last 20-30 years (in terms of GDP growth)...can anyone be absolutely sure the Chinese are wrong? Of course, the trend is actually going against making drugs a capital crime with the legalization of marijuana. Same thing with possession of handguns/weapons (that aren't knives). It's easy for people here to see all the murders on the news in the US and think of our country as barbaric and shortsighted in its policies. So, as Tex notes, we have to look at it from other perspectives to be able to engage in a real debate. To belittle other countries for having policies (for example, showing of skin) based on sacred theistic beliefs is not for us to judge, even if we inherently disagree. A lot of women (when I lived in Indonesia) belief that wearing a hijab/burka is freeing or liberating. They feel like "equal" women and not judged solely on their physical appearance but on their thoughts and ideas. You can understand, when the perception in America is that sex sells and that many women are solely successful because of appearance or a sex tape or being on a tv show, that wouldn't make any sense...can anyone explain why Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian or Farrah Abraham are "successful" to someone from Pakistan or Afghanistan, and keep a straight face while doing so?

Interestingly, Friedman, fwiw, "only" went to Tulane.

QUOTE (ChiSox_Sonix @ Feb 13, 2015 -> 12:05 PM) As with always...exactly the type of person who proves why so many people decide to own their own guns. Or why so many countries decide to start their own nuclear programs. Assured deterrence or assured mutual destruction? If individuals should have the right to defend themselves (with firearms), what gives any country in the world the right to control the destiny of others making that same decision? Isn't the world LESS LIKELY to have a nuclear war if more are armed with them? The problem of course is who decides who has the guns/weapons. Here we have an anti-religious zealot. That, in and of itself, doesn't make him dangerous. However, let's say instead of killing 3 Muslims that he killed Kirk Cameron and his family outside the premiere of "Saving Christmas." I have a feeling there would be a lot more people upset (if Christianity instead of Islam was attacked so brazenly).

QUOTE (Harry Chappas @ Feb 13, 2015 -> 12:00 PM) Harrelson picked him up in a Rule 5 draft so obviously every other GM was well aware of the the outstanding potential he had was going to produce. I like Hawk but that interview on the radio was painful he added nothing to the conversation and the reception was bad. I am not certain if in 100 years we will be talking about Abreu or Garcia as the person who changed the course of White Sox history. Would be shocking if it turned about to be Avisail over Abreu, but stranger things have happened. Up until September, 2008, I would have thought Carlos Quentin would change the course of the franchise (along with Beckham and Viciedo) and that obviously never materialized.

QUOTE (Tex @ Feb 13, 2015 -> 11:08 AM) Part of the acceptance among fans is someone who has made a career of watching baseball players over 40 years is dismissed as not knowing anything and a 21 year old kid with a spreadsheet can manage any team at any time (just ask them). Just plug in the key factors and use the decision that pops up. Both sides could learn a lot from each other. The fact that it seems you have to chose sides is the craziest part of that. Plus, there's the "elitism" vs. "populism" side of it when you consider a lot of the new breed of GM's are coming from schools like Harvard, Yale, MIT, Northwestern/Kellogg, etc. The new Dodgers' GM (MIT), Jon Daniels (Cornell), Epstein (Yale), Mark Shapiro (Princeton), Matt Silverman (TB-Harvard), DePodesta (Harvard), Rick Hahn (Northwestern/Harvard Law), Michael Hill (Marlins-Harvard), Jeff Bridich (Rockies/Harvard), AJ Preller (Padres/Cornell), Ben Cherington (Amherst), Chris Antonetti (Georgetown), Jeff Luhnow (Northwestern/Penn), etc. Sandy Alderson, the former General Manager of the Oakland A’s as well as the San Diego Padres (and the current GM of the New York Mets), pioneered using data driven analytics in Major League Baseball. He’s just a modest guy who is okay with others getting credit for his unconventional thinking that challenged the status quo but is now widely accepted within baseball circles. Indeed Sandy Alderson is as much behind Moneyball as Billy Beane and Billy Beane himself would certainly agree with this. So we’d like to salute Sandy Alderson, the Ivy League graduate (Dartmouth/Harvard Law) and former United States Marine (who served in Vietnam), for changing the business of baseball, for inspiring a movie about his unconventional thinking, and for letting others take all the credit. http://theivycoach.com/the-ivy-coach-blog/...e-and-baseball/

Iowa's the perfect example. They can beat North Carolina in Chapel Hill and sweep Ohio State but also give away a game at home to a team that hasn't won on the road in B10 play and is something like 3-20 in their last 23. Sometimes Aaron White looks like he could make an NBA roster, Gesell is VERY solid (or he looks like Lickliter's son and not deserving of a scholarship) and Uthoff potentially like an NBA late 1st rounder. Then games like this, you wonder if they will ever make the NCAA Tournament again. Uthoff and Jok are maddening sometimes. They still have a VERY favorable schedule over the final 7 (the only pretty sure loss at Indiana), but if they lose to NW on the road Sunday, the roof could cave in again like last year...with the main difference being they were #12 or 13 in the country when they collapsed last year. Very frustrating losses to MSU and Minny at home. But no B10 team should be ashamed to lose to WI twice, even though neither game was close, especially in Madison.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Feb 13, 2015 -> 11:08 AM) He was meeting with Billy Martin and his agent. TV crews were all over it. Fregosi obviously eventually became the replacement. Tony LaRussa getting fired didn't cost the White Sox any championships. Yes, but you could say the same thing about the hiring and firing of Terry Bevington. That really didn't make it a good move, no matter how you spin it. I think this Bob Verdi quote's the best summation (we have to picture Hawk's desk covered with cartons of cigarettes, haha) The Hawk gave the Hawk high marks in baseball, but a D-minus in diplomacy. There can be little doubt about the latter, and it`s only another curious twist in Chicago`s twilight zone of a summer that a man so championed as a people person failed in elementary communications.

http://www.southsidesox.com/2013/1/11/3862...y-minor-leagues So the basic point was that the Bonilla trade wasn't so terrible because he wouldn't have elevated the White Sox much beyond mediocrity....and that the Sox specific version of mediocrity put them in the exact position to draft Frank Thomas 7th. Well, I'm having a hard time giving a GM credit for that one...in hindsight, it worked out well, but that wasn't Harrelson's doing. It's like saying if he drafted Bonds instead of Kurt Brown....the White Sox would had Bonilla and Bonds paired together and in their primes...and could easily have peaked a couple of years earlier, avoiding the disaster of the 1994 season being wiped out by the strike, etc., etc. Of course, they might not have been able to draft Thomas and Alex Fernandez by that point. And they likely would have been able to compete with Baines/Bonilla/Bonds/Ventura...so they probably wouldn't have ended up trading Baines for Sosa/Alvarez/Fletcher. http://www.southsidesox.com/2010/10/23/176...ma-harrelson-is Must-read article, some great "inside" stuff here about Hawk's year... Didn't realize he basically was sabotaging LaRussa at the end of April already by floating the idea of Billy Martin (Royko wrote the story)...and the "college of coaches" thing reminds me of a Hawk 13-1 blowout soundtrack, haha. And say whatever you want about Dombrowski and Duncan, they were 100% loyal to LaRussa. Among the other people Harrelson has hired to coach are Dick Allen, Rico Petrocelli, Tom Haller, Bob Bailey, Dick Bosman, Chuck Hartenstein, Bob Bolin, Jose Cardenal, Buzz Capra, Doug Rader, Herman Franks and Jim Marshall. There are some dinosaurs (Herman Franks?) and certifiable loonies in there, but Harrelson swears by them. (Also Moe Drabowsky, his buddy Drysdale and Willie Horton, among others). SI portrayed Hawk as a flamboyant, freewheeling baseball character. The horror stories didn't come out until September. As Bob Verdi wrote in the Tribune: Shortly after his appointment last October, Harrelson called a meeting of White Sox administrative staffers, presumably to welcome them, introduce himself and so on. Instead, the Hawk warned of leaks and other disloyal acts, threatening even secretaries with dismissal. The troops, many of whom had nothing to do with the game`s inner workings, were shaken.

QUOTE (VAfan @ Feb 13, 2015 -> 12:23 AM) As we approach Spring Training, a lot of things are set for the Sox. We know our top 3 starting pitchers. Eaton, Cabrera, Abreu, LaRoche, Garcia, Gillaspie, Ramirez, and Flowers are all pretty set as starters. Robertson is our closer. Wells and Jennings have strengthened our bullpen. Bonafacio is making the team in some capacity. So what hasn't been answered? Here are 10 questions that need to be answered. 1. Who's going to emerge as our starting second baseman? Sanchez, who ended last season there? Micah Johnson, the speedy lefty? Bonafacio, who's probably better in a utility role? Saladino, who's coming off injury? Or even Gordon Beckham, in a bid for the Sox to torture us once again after we thought we were done with him? 2. Who is going to stick at backup catcher? Soto? Brantly? Nieto? Kottaras? 3. Will Jesse Crain be healthy enough to help us this year? Will Nate Jones? (This is a two-fer.) 4. How will the Sox deploy Carlos Rodon? Will he stay in the minors long enough to give another season of control? When will his major league debut be? Will be in the bullpen, or as a starter? Will he displace Nieto or Danks if he starts? 5. Gillaspie and LaRoche don't hit lefties very well. Who subs for them? Seems like Bonafacio and Beckham are both candidates to platoon with Gillaspie. But what about LaRoche? 6. Who is going to be our 4th (or 5th) outfielder (assuming Bonafacio will also sub in the outfield a fair amount). 7. How does the rest of the bullpen shake out behind Robertson and Wells? 8. Will these players all be healthier this year? Adam Eaton? 123 games. Avisail Garcia? 46 games. Jose Abreu? 145 games. Chris Sale? 26 games, 174 innings. 9. Will guys like Matt Davidson and Eric Johnson get their careers back on track to where they can be seen at least as future help, if not being ready to help this year? 10. Who else are the Sox going to add to help the club in 2015? Answer all 10, or pick and choose which ones you like, or add some others. Should be an interesting season! As for #7, I think you meant Duke? Robertson Duke Petricka Putnam Guerra Then there's obviously a whole ton of uncertainty. Webb, maybe, if he's not sent back to Charlotte. Jennings, as a 2nd lefty. Sanburn. Beck. Cleto. Do they want a long man? Would they push Montas onto the roster as a reliever if he completely dominated in spring training? Surkamp is unlikely. Erik Johnson, although he probably belongs in Charlotte...could be the long man, though. Crain and Nate Jones...will they be the trade deadline "acquisitions" when/if they return? Or is that way too optimistic? As for the LaRoche issue, that probably won't be resolved until the end of ST (along with the 4th outfielder). Right now, it's Shuck and Taylor, but that's not very reassuring. A number of names have been suggested (Padres' depth, Tabata, etc.) Will have to be patient there. Another big question is who's the next starter if/when there's an injury or if Noesi falters? There's basically zero depth. Some of the names I mentioned above. It all depends on Rodon's progress. Names like Johnson, Carroll and Rienzo bring back too many unpleasant memories of 2014. Montas, Danish and Beck will be monitored closely. The biggest issue would be an early issue...and either blowing a service year of Rodon by bringing him up too fast OR running the risk of the back of the rotation pulling the team down in April/May.

http://www.sportsonearth.com/article/10899...44367-658620023 Really high ranking for the Tigers, IMO. Royals 10th, Indians 13th, White Sox 14th, that's probably a fair assessment. The White Sox shouldn't be in the 20's anymore. Any of the four top teams in the AL Central could win it, any of them could finish 4th as well.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/12/opinion/khan...ting/index.html

Iowa went scoreless for 8+ minutes in the first half and are lucky to be only down 23-19 to Minnesota at halftime in Iowa City. Sigh. I guess it's better than the game in Minny when they blew a 17 point lead in the 2nd half and had to win it in overtime. Hopefully the poor performance is out of their system but you can never predict this team. This had all the makings of a "trap" game...Minnesota hasn't won on the road in the B10, and psychologically, Minny feels they definitely should have won that first game. Iowa's now 26th/27th in the ratings, so I was hoping that missing out on being back in the Top 25 would serve as a motivating factor. Usually, success/recognition leads to a backslide for this program.

http://pro.boxoffice.com/latest-news/2015-...entines-weekend Didn't see it coming. 50 Shades of Grey projected to beat all Feb/Valentine's Day openings and challenge American Sniper's numbers. This article gives a list of reasons. Guess Charlie Hunnam might be second-guessing sitting this one out, but he'll be fine. From all reports, Jamie Dornan is pretty one-dimensional in his performance, but most women don't really care.

QUOTE (shipps @ Feb 12, 2015 -> 05:14 PM) If I was a betting man I would go all in on the Yankee's getting him. Jeter being gone and their need for the next star replacement at shortstop. They probably see Yoan as being the perfect candidate to do that. Except almost all of the scouting reports are putting him at 3B, 2B and CF. If his offense is elite, you can get away with a below-average defender at a position, but there's also a belief he's going to fill out even more, making SS even more of a challenge. A lot of teams, apparently, have had questions about his arm and playability at that position after workouts and are trying to get him back for a 2nd look to do more defensive/fielding drills.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Feb 12, 2015 -> 10:55 AM) lol, this is literally five posts up Make sure to point that out to southsider2k5 in the Shields thread re-linking the Passan article, lol. Your vigilance is much-appreciated, though.

http://m.mlb.com/news/article/108942702/ji...field-prospects In-depth report from Jim Callis on how Moncada stacks up in tools against the Top 15 MLB infield prospects

Wasn't KW supposed to issue a statement about the situation sometime this week? What happened? Perhaps the team is gathering more evidence...and there might be some legal repercussions as well, vis a vis the White Sox, the RBI program, etc.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/12/us/chapel-hi...ting/index.html

QUOTE (greg775 @ Feb 11, 2015 -> 10:59 PM) He should be taken off the air for good. You can't lie about that kind of s***. Didn't he agree to a six-month work stint without pay? Amazing the egos of these rich anchors. They probably would work for nothing when you get down to it just to keep their egos satisfied. I mean how can you make up such a story? Ridiculous. Do you watch The Newsroom? Just curious.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Feb 11, 2015 -> 10:49 PM) What some of you Sabes people must realize is a lot of us, including Barkley, do not give a s*** about advanced stats. I mean some of it is interesting, but I think what Charles is saying is a ballplayer knows a good ballplayer when he sees one. Believe me, I don't need advanced stats to tell me Rios or Dunn are good players. I happen to SEE them play and can tell you they are not. I'm not a big WAR guy obviously. When I see Adam Dunn whiff as much as he did as a Sox, and the fact he as our big gun never sniffed a postseason, tells me a lot. I don't need advanced stats telling me he was good or some such. Again, if you watch your favorite team all year, you know who is good and who is bad. That's my take. The Sabes people should be more tolerant of us Sabes haters or Sabes dislikers. This is my favorite SoxTalk soliloquy of the year so far.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Feb 11, 2015 -> 09:35 PM) The new Dodgers GM that Freidman hired, he was a MIT grad with zero baseball experience, your ultimate "Sabr" guy. Now as time has passed and he has spent more time in baseball, I read he recently admitted that he has been trusting scouts just as much, if not more than the numbers. It's not about one way or the other, it's about making the baseball team possible using every available resource. https://slice.mit.edu/2014/11/18/mit-alumnu...ngeles-dodgers/ Farhan Zaidi, the first Asian-American GM (many thought it was going to be Kim Ng ten years ago). First Muslim. First of Pakistani/Filipino descent. Morey (Rockets) graduated with an MBA from MIT in 2000, fwiw. Interestingly, the Cespedes acquisition was more of a non-SABR projection than pretty much any move you can imagine...and required a lot of input from the scouting side. With the A’s, Zaidi was widely credited for his part in the signing of Yoenis Cespedes, the Cuban defector who became a star from the time he arrived in 2012. “He’s absolutely brilliant,” Beane said of Zaidi in an interview with The San Francisco Chronicle this year. “He has a great qualitative mind, but also a creative mind. The ability to look at things both micro and macro is unique, and Farhan could do whatever he wants to do, not just in this game, but in any sport or any business. I’m more worried about losing him to Apple or Google than I am to another team.” http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/06/sports/b...as-gm.html?_r=0

QUOTE (Brian @ Feb 11, 2015 -> 05:44 PM) I had a free pass to see Project Almanac and I actually enjoyed it. Plenty of flaws and you'll have to suspend disbelief but I expected that. The found footage aspect wasn't needed at all. It's a "genre" that needs to die. The name itself sounds like a ripoff of Chronicle. Didn't they go through like 2-3 different name changes before settling on their final decision? Sometimes, a name alone is enough to doom a movie.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Feb 11, 2015 -> 08:28 PM) I've heard the same criticisms of Flash Boys. Yet no movie there unless Brad Pitt can play a Chinese-Canadian. I do believe one thing, firmly. Arguing/discussing baseball has become even more frustrating, because you can take a stat like VORP or FIP and say, for example, Ronald Belisario was the 3rd most valuable pitcher/player on the White Sox last season. Something that nobody who watched him pitch even a handful of times would agree with...and yet someone who hasn't watched him (especially as a closer) will argue vehemently that he was more valuable than Putnam or Petricka, and then a bunch of numbers will get bandied back and forth and a substantive discussion of actual performance gets lost in the numbers, the forest for the trees, so to speak. Now this isn't that common...but it's been extended to "team WAR" and then you lose the individual contributors to a team and so-called chemistry (which some will argue doesn't exist, the team is only the sum of the individual pieces) isn't taken into account in any way, shape or form. For example, how Dave Schoenfeld could rank the Sox in the #22-23 area (preseason) is just astounding to me, after all the additional talent they've brought on board. For the majority of last year, with the worst bullpen in the game, they were a #15-20 team, at worst. But the Cubs add Lester and Maddon and a team that almost anyone would argue is even or behind the White Sox at the major league level is #13? In the end, part of being a White Sox fan is knowing that no matter what the numbers say, your team will always have to fight twice as hard to earn respect on a national basis. I guess if we lose that chip on our shoulders (like was beginning to happen in 2006), things tend to get too complacent.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Feb 11, 2015 -> 04:49 PM) We don't know, obviously, but it's more likely that if you're having an ongoing dispute with someone, you get upset that last time and finally snap, just like road rage. I don't know why you'd jump to racism if there's a beef between these people that pre-existed their murder. Except for the fact that there's a definition connection between his religious convictions and their faiths. His wife is trying to say "he's basically the kind of guy who had parking disputes with numerous neighbors," and yet he didn't kill any of them (OTHER neighbors), threaten them on multiple occasions (with his gun visible) or make comments about their religions/churches that were confrontational in nature.