caulfield12

QUOTE (South Side Fireworks Man @ May 19, 2014 -> 06:39 PM) If Semien catches the ball at 3B and Dunn doesn't miss the cutoff those throws result in 2 outs. Anytime the throw goes into the ground on a throw it makes it that much more difficult and unpredictable to catch.

QUOTE (South Side Fireworks Man @ May 19, 2014 -> 06:33 PM) Are you kidding? He had him dead to rights at 3B. But he didn't get him and that allowed the trail runner to get to 2nd, wiping out the double play situation...with Carroll being a sinker-ball/double play artist, if he has one good trait, that's it.

Three "errors" this inning. Two bad decisions and throws by Eaton and the original misplay by Beckham that wouldn't have been ruled a hit in any other stadium in America.

30+ pitches already. Not a very good throw by Eaton at all. Gordon smartly tags up and gets to 2nd base.

QUOTE (Soxfest @ May 19, 2014 -> 06:24 PM) 3rd game in a row WTF! Goodbye Mr. Carroll Beckham gets the double play and this inning's completely different. Hosmer's was the only hard hit ball.

There's no way that's not an error on Beckham. Even the home scorekeeper's going to start feeling sorry for Carroll in an inning or two and reverse that decision. This is going to be one of the shortest game threads of the season. Royals 16-5 when they score first. Not easy for Carroll to be pitching in his hometown essentially, Liberty, Missouri. Went to Missouri State for two years after he transferred from Purdue as well.

http://espn.go.com/mlb/stats/team/_/stat/b...nded/order/true White Sox batters now leading the majors in strikeouts with 409. Wind blowing at with nearly gale force, over/under on homers is 4.5 and the Royals coming off an offensive explosion yesterday, especially Alex Gordon. Nothing looks good about this game for the Sox. Over/under on Greg comments if Sox get blown out, 11.5 comments.

Probably he was decent for the Royals against us last year (since we sucked against everyone, especially the AL Central) but pretty terrible most of his times out with the Mariners. Then you have to take into consideration that games at Safeco aren't exactly offensive shootouts most of the time.

The market is already "self correcting" because of the irrational exuberance of some of the early deals is meeting financial reality/corporate profit margins in a way that's already risking the deterioration of some fanbases...like the Dodgers' current situation.

This applies more to the NBA, but the findings are interesting in terms of their application to MLB as well. (The original query was how much the Clippers would sell for.) Nate Silver has found a direct correlation between city/metropolitan statistical areas' GDP's as well as number of billionaires AND franchise valuations, with Oklahoma City being one of the few outliers. http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/got-a-...y-the-clippers/ http://blogs-images.forbes.com/danalexande...93970035433.jpg http://www.forbes.com/sites/danalexander/2...1-billionaires/ Illinois and Wisconsin combined with 28 billionaires in roughly the same area http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._...an_areas_by_GDP Metro areas by GDP

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ May 19, 2014 -> 03:44 PM) Chicago White Sox ‏@whitesox 8m Further exam on Abreu’s ankle confirmed inflammation as the issue. Jose will be in a boot for the next several days & re-evaluated soon. Daryl Van Schouwen ‏@CST_soxvan 31m Further tests (MRI) on Jose Abreu confirmed inflammation. No underlying tear. In boot next several days, re-evaluated during home stand. Hahn and Ventura should be thankful there was no tear. Or Schneider/Thomas. Can you imagine if that were the case? Talk about a promising season deteriorating into ashes in the blink of an eye.

Yes, you can get Stephen King to play Bill James and the total box office would be ... well let's just say it's going to be less than $5 million. It would be interesting to see it attempted, if they could find the perfect screenwriter for the project, like Aaron Sorkin.

QUOTE (Jose Abreu @ May 19, 2014 -> 03:13 PM) No structural damage, he will wear a boot and the Sox hope he'll be ready when the 15 days is up

QUOTE (LDF @ May 19, 2014 -> 03:29 PM) With Hahn success in most of his dealings in trades, I think most teams will be disinclined to deal. That being said i see Dunn being traded to a contender at some point. Decent value in return for Lindstrom, I would love to trade Beckman to stl, bos or even yanks for some of their prospects, if not them then a general trade. De Aza, forget it I doubt if any would trade for him. Most importantly is trading flowers, I know we may not have a good replacement, but his good hitting is getting me to wonder if he is on the PED. 2 wildcard in players being traded, imo, is hoping to trade dank brothers as a pkg and trading Viciedo. If Flowers was on PED's, shouldn't he be up there in the SLG and homer totals, not mostly singles and gork shots? Danks isn't going anywhere without eating a significant percentage of his salary the next 2 1/2 seasons. Replace Viciedo with who? Any trade brings back a younger prospect that's even more unproven, and we're already going into 2015 unsure what we're going to get out of Avisail. They're more likely to keep Viciedo/Ramirez and build around them than to trade them because there's especially no viable replacement for Ramirez at SS and there's growing concern about separating the three Cubans. Finally, trading Viciedo's hot hitting (without his 2012 power numbers) for one month is about like Seth Smith acquiring via trade a Top 25-50 MILB starting pitching prospect because his OPS is currently #2 in the majors. For what it's worth, Dunn's OPS is still Top 40 in all of MLB as well.

QUOTE (HickoryHuskers @ May 19, 2014 -> 09:03 AM) Yes, but even with some RSN's seemingly losing money and with some RSN's partially owned by teams, you still have to figure that there is a lot of profit going to RSN's from MLB. Keeping the TV rights in-house should improve MLB's bottom line. Yes, the highest-end teams may not get as much, but if MLB is making more money as a whole, that should be good for the sport, not to mention more control about getting games on where viewers want to see them. I think the part about losing money or not being profitable would get a lot more attention were it not the Astros, who have been bad for quite some time now. How many times in the last two years have they had 0.0 shares for their games? Plus, the Rockets haven't exactly been a perennial playoff-contending team, either. They have more followers here in China to this day just because of Jeremy Lin and the fact that Yao Ming and T-Mac played together back in the glory days of Yao's career, when every single game was broadcast live here in China, not unlike Dice-K/Darvish/Tanaka starts in Japan.

QUOTE (flavum @ May 19, 2014 -> 06:41 AM) When you look at Danks' career stats, he has all the ear-markings of somebody who will be out of baseball at 32. A few good years, a couple mediocre, surgery, rehab, comeback not as good, can't find Plan B to get outs, gone. Well, he did have Miranda Lambert as his maid-of-honor, and then there's the music career of his wife to fall back on if that $65 million contract isn't enough to last.

QUOTE (HickoryHuskers @ May 19, 2014 -> 07:39 AM) The Sox/Cubs/Bulls/Hawks are also primarily on a CSN station, but apparently the Chicago market isn't having the same issues. I know the teams hold 80% equity in CSN Chicago, is that not the case in Philly and Houston? In any case it was dumb for the teams in those markets to sign deals that gave the network so much leverage in restricting carriage. I would like to see MLB move to a model where all TV rights, both national and local, are controlled directly by MLB. Instead of having local cable sports channels owning each team's rights, you would have locally-produced games and daily/weekly team specific shows running on MLBN in each team's market in place of national programming during certain times, while allowing local broadcast stations (WGN/WCIU) to bid for up to 25% of each team's games. Then you're really going to be restricting the top teams' revenues or ability to sell rights at exorbitant rates that might even be against their own interests, eventually (and who's going to be allowed to determine what's a good deal for a team, and what's bad...like the Astros' situation now)...and how can you expect to forge a new owners' consensus on more revenue sharing with RSN's/media/broadcast rights when the cat's already out of the bag with the Yankees, Red Sox, Rangers, Dodgers, etc.? Ayn Rand rant coming here about free and unfettered capitalism...

QUOTE (oldsox @ May 19, 2014 -> 08:41 AM) What was the first ".......nik"? Beatnik, perhaps? Sputnik, lol?

QUOTE (fathom @ May 19, 2014 -> 07:58 AM) Would they be better off shutting him down for the rest of the year instead of risking a possibly more career-impacting injury? It seems there's one thought that weight loss (a bit) could help alleviate some of the problem....and I'm not even sure what "natural gait" means, that there's some predisposition to this problem genetically simply because of the way he walks or runs? Runners get shin splints from too much wear and tear...but this is slightly different. Somehow I never got that despite being a distance runner and soccer player. All I know is that the most painful things I've ever had to deal with personally are plantar fasciitis (see Carlos Quentin, another big dude), a herniated disk, an oblique and kidney stones.

http://www.azcentral.com/story/sports/mlb/...-russa/9237337/ "You can name a lot of really top major leaguers that were developed by the Diamondbacks," Kendrick said. "We have to get our act together in making sure which ones to keep. That's one of the historically bad parts of our record. This is not Kevin Towers alone. It's the general managers as a group." So the Diamondbacks are hitting reset … again. La Russa has "a complete free hand" to refit the franchise any way he chooses. Towers is surely toast, while manager Kirk Gibson just embarked on yet another evaluation period, to be judged by the greatest manager of his generation. This much is perfectly clear: For the last few years, the Diamondbacks wanted to be like the Cardinals, the football team that has the marketplace in a headlock. Now, they want to be like the Cardinals, the baseball franchise that has a never-ending supply of young talent. "There really is no mystery or magic, and I'll guarantee you there are no metrics," La Russa said. "I'm not bringing a computer sheet that says, 'OK, here's how we do it, boys. Just read this.' "No, it's basic competitive winning baseball with the right attitude and the guts to play it the right way." This is more than just an image boost, and to his credit, Kendrick drilled deep to discover what's ailing a franchise stuck in the mud of mediocrity. He recently came across a study that had him "standing on a bridge ready to jump." The project examined draft picks for every organization over a 10-year period. And from 2002-2012, the team whose draft picks posted the best WAR statistic (wins above replacement) was … the Diamondbacks. Problem is, a lot of those draft picks are now starring on other teams, such as Detroit Tigers ace Max Scherzer. "This tells me that we do a good job of drafting young players, and we've had pretty damn good scouting directors," Kendrick said. "What we haven't done a good job with is keeping those guys wearing a Diamondbacks uniform. "Why did that happen? Obviously, we've had general managers that have made a lot of trades, and the guys we've traded have ended up doing better than the guys we got in exchange. We didn't keep them on our team. Shame on us." The hiring of La Russa is intended to plug that organization gap, and could be the perfect marriage of problem and solver. La Russa is edgy. His teams love a good fight. And clearly, he needs another challenge. In Arizona, he is reunited with two former St. Louis coaches (Dave Duncan and Dave McKay, and the goal is to replicate their former organization, one that built a juggernaut on homegrown talent. "Look at the St. Louis Cardinals," La Russa said. "Those young guys come in there, put that uniform on and expect to get to a certain level. By the time they come to the big leagues, you're not retraining them. You're just reminding." At the very least, the appointment of La Russa buys the Diamondbacks some credibility and time, just as the hiring of Towers once did in the wake of the Josh Byrnes fiasco. It also means someone else gets to fire Towers and, if necessary, Gibson. But time isn't on Kendrick's side, and that's why his optimism was muted on Saturday. He said the current mess is not an overnight fix, and an institutional rebuild was something he didn't desire at 70 years of age. It doesn't guarantee this move will work, either. La Russa is one of the best field managers in history, but can he run baseball operations in 2014, when the sport is in the midst of a data revolution resulting in seismic shifts in strategy? Kendrick responded with a better trend. He said La Russa hasn't failed at anything in his life, and that really smart guys generally find the answers. "He was the man behind the movement to instant replay, so I've seen him work through complicated issues. I've seen him solve problems," Kendrick said. "And when you watched him in the dugout, you were always in fear, figuring he was going to do something to outsmart you." That's La Russa's reputation, and why this move is a public-relations windfall. Few will dare to question this hire, conveniently announced after another lopsided loss to the Dodgers. On the way out of Chase Field on Saturday, I actually witnessed a young man racing through the concourse screaming, 'We got La Russa!" In the midst of another abysmal season, that counts as progress.

The paradigm is radically different. Some of the best baseball CEOs have Ivy League educations, business-school training and experience working for Wall Street firms. They incorporate extensive use of advanced metrics in evaluating players and formulating a long-term roster vision. La Russa has railed against the so-called Moneyball philosophy And he was at it again Saturday when he said this: “There really is no mystery or magic, and I’ll guarantee you there are no metrics. I’m not bringing a computer sheet that says, ‘OK, here’s how we do it, boys. Just read this.’ No, it’s basic competitive winning baseball with the right attitude and the guts to play it the right way.” Game on! As a manager, La Russa endorsed the Cardinals’ trading of a terrific young cost-controlled pitcher, Dan Haren, for a more established and expensive veteran, Mark Mulder, who already had shown signs of shoulder fatigue. In today’s environment – which puts a premium on protecting cost-certain assets — a Haren-Mulder deal is just bad business. And bad baseball. Ironically, the failure of short-sighted trades is one of the reasons the Diamondbacks were eager to make the change that put TLR in command. Speaking to reporters Saturday, Arizona’s managing general ownership partner, Ken Kendrick, was unusually candid in expressing his displeasure in the team’s direction under general manager Kevin Towers and previous team executives. Kendrick cited the way the Diamondbacks have squandered successful drafts by inexplicably trading away elite prospects such as future American League Cy Young award winner Max Scherzer. “We do a good job of drafting young players, and we’ve had pretty damn good scouting directors,” Kendrick said. “What we haven’t done a good job with is keeping those guys wearing a Diamondbacks uniform. Why did that happen? Obviously, we’ve had general managers that have made a lot of trades, and the guys we’ve traded have ended up doing better than the guys we got in exchange. We didn’t keep them on our team. Shame on us.” That’s why I believe installing La Russa as the top baseball boss at the head of a franchise is such an interesting experiment. The Diamondbacks’ owners are fed up with the organization’s flawed-thinking habit of moving young talent in misguided deals designed for instant results, instant gratification. So they’ve recruited La Russa, who was perhaps the ultimate example of a win-now, win-today manager. Has La Russa evolved? Can he evolve? Yes, I believe that he can — and he will. He’s never failed at anything. But as Tony knows, he’ll have to prove it. La Russa was trained during 33 years of managing hardball. Now he’s in the big chair, competing against the new breed of baseball CEOs – the sharpies from Cornell, Princeton and Harvard, the former analysts from the Wall Street investment firms. The tough and smart old-school manager is coming back to take on the business-school boys. It’s “attitude and guts” vs. advanced metrics. This will be great fun. Bernie Miklasz has been covering St. Louis sports since 1989. http://www.stltoday.com/sports/columns/ber...ad7af6b7a0.html

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/envel...l#axzz30ImXXqdA http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/envel...0425-story.html

http://consumerist.com/2014/04/29/regional...casttwc-merger/ THE PHILADELPHIA EXPERIMENT We’ve written before about the mess here in Philadelphia, where Comcast successfully held a death grip on its local sports network through the “terrestrial loophole,” an antiquated aspect of FCC regulations that said a cable operator didn’t need to share its privately owned stations with others in the area if those stations only went out via terrestrial cables. The FCC closed that loophole several years ago, but CSN Philadelphia is still not available to companies that compete with Comcast in the area. Sources at some of those competitors tell Consumerist it’s because Comcast is demanding an “extortionate” rate — something along the lines of what a cable company would pay to broadcast a major network nationwide — just to air Phillies, Flyers, and Sixers games to customers in the Philadelphia market. Making matters even worse for those with satellite service, Comcast recently made a deal with the Phillies that ensures that all but around 10 of the team’s 162 games will be broadcast on Comcast-owned stations that are not available to DirecTV or Dish customers. If you need more concrete evidence that Comcast would rather tick off satellite companies than score higher ratings, you need look no further than the current NHL playoffs. NBC is touting that all playoff hockey games will be available on some NBC channel this season, and one of last week’s games between the Flyers and the NY Rangers was slated to appear on CNBC, a station that all DirecTV and Dish subscribers have. But here in Philadelphia, the game was also aired on CSN Philadelphia, which triggered NHL blackout rules, meaning that satellite customers in the area were left staring at a blank screen. There is absolutely no other reason for Comcast to simulcast this game on the smaller regional sports station other than to make sure it remains blacked out for Dish and DirecTV subscribers in the area. So rather than make sure that as many people could see the game as possible, generating more revenue and earning much-needed goodwill, Comcast chose to raise a middle finger to Philadelphia-area residents who dared to not subscribe to Comcast. The same will likely hold true for tonight’s game, which is available nationally on NBC Sports network, but which will presumably be blacked out for DirecTV and Dish users in the area because it’s also being shown on CSN Philly. HOUSTON, WE HAVE A PROBLEM There is a similar issue going on in Houston, where CSN Houston carries the majority of Rockets and Astros games, but which only about 2-in-5 Houstonians have access to. In spite of sinking ratings because of lack of availability, Comcast has yet to reach a deal with either DirecTV or Dish (or U-Verse and other terrestrial providers in the area), leading Houston Mayor Annise Parker to try to bring all the interested parties together to hopefully come to a resolution. TIME WARNER CABLE: THE UN-ARTFUL DODGER Comcast’s merger partner is trying to mimic its bigger pal’s tough-guy monopolistic stance with SportsNet L.A., jointly owned by the Dodgers and TWC. Because TWC is unwilling to budge on the price tag for access to the Dodgers — who currently have the leverage of doing well so far this season — some 70% of people in L.A. have no way of watching most Dodgers game. And much like in Houston, it’s come to the point of mayoral intervention, with Mayor Eric Garcetti (not to be confused with fictional Baltimore politician Tommy Carcetti) recently pleading with TWC to stop being jerks and make a dang deal already. IT ONLY GETS WORSE A merger between Comcast and Time Warner Cable only gives the combined company more leverage in negotiating with local sports teams — this is especially true with the proposed deal with Charter that would give a merged Comcast/TWC more contiguous coverage in L.A. and much of the East Coast. In NYC, the Mets games are shown on SNY, which is jointly owned by the team, TWC and Comcast. Combined, the cable companies would own one-third of the station. The station is already unavailable to Dish customers in the city. What’s to stop Comcast — especially when it becomes the dominant cable and broadband provider in NYC — to use that ownership stake to raise the price charged to DirecTV, forcing the satellite company to pass the cost on or drop the station? In L.A., Comcast’s adding of the few areas of the city currently held by Charter would bring Dodgers games to more people, but would also mean that the company has less reason to share with DirecTV or Dish, since not as many Angelinos would be up in arms about being unable to watch the games. Comcast has never done anything to show that it has any interest in making sports content available to a wider market. Even its online Olympics coverage was only available to pay-TV subscribers willing to pay for service tiers that included every NBC news and sports channel. A bigger Comcast with more money behind it will only continue to leverage exclusive regional sports deals in order to keep subscribers from cutting the cord and to convince sports fans to stay away from satellite.

http://espn.go.com/video/clip?id=10951020 Let's see if ptac agrees with ESPN "injury expert" Stephanie Bell whoever that is.

QUOTE (greg775 @ May 18, 2014 -> 07:34 PM) Draftnick is just a way to say/write it quickly. There's no known word for somebody who roots for their team to lose to get the best draft position. Not meant to be derogatory. The people that do it freely admit to it so they don't mind getting labeled I wouldn't think. Do you think there would be any difference in attendance/revenues if this team finished 78-84 or 68-94? Cost/benefit analysis time. How increased are the odds of getting a future superstar/franchise player to go along with Sale/Abreu at pick #4-5 vs. #9-13?