caulfield12

QUOTE (Quinarvy @ Dec 6, 2011 -> 10:03 PM) Beane is the most overrated GM ever. And he's a starter... Just wish we could have leveraged something out of Jenks, Crede and (now) Beckham when they had value. Alas...life never works like that. Let's hope this is a case where we look back later and say KW maximized the value of a player and got someone who made even more of a contribution to the franchise over the long haul. Lost in all of the complaining is the faint praise for us getting what we did out of Santos the last two seasons (as a pitcher).

QUOTE (CyAcosta41 @ Dec 6, 2011 -> 09:05 PM) See, that's exactly my problem with what we're doing. We're not building up any real depth, at least not as much depth as we could be building up. Given our resources (lack of money and farm), we don't have the luxury of 1:1 trades of current major league talent (however flawed) for prospects. It's obviously a judgment call and market feel, but with some patience, a shrinking closer market might have landed us two "Molina-types" (or a Molina type, plus a hugely toolsy prospect). Someone might overpay (as we regularly seem to do). Wait it out a bit and find them. I sure hope that we wait it out a bit before dealing either or both Danks or Floyd. Solid (but not spectacular) starting pitchers of the workhorse variety have never been more valuable. Love Mark Buehrle to death (my favorite Sox pitcher since Gary Peters!), but the market for both he and a somewhat pedestrian CJ Wilson makes it very clear that someone -- someone of the "it just takes ONE" variety -- will overpay to bring in a quality major league starter who will start 30+ games with fairly predictable results (whether controlled for one year or two). I respect your analysis of KW's previous acquisitions and wasn't at all implying that he doesn't target some quality and oft-times undervalued quality players. He does. But part of that is that he's just a very active trader. Like Kenny Williams the hitter, Kenny Williams the GM swings hard (and often) just in case he hits it. Sometimes he does and it can be spectacular. But he misses a lot too. I just don't think our resources give us that luxury. You might be right...I'd rather roll the dice on 2 future Johan Santanas or Francisco Lirianos in A ball than one closer to the big leagues in Molina. Also ironic that we're acquiring more Venezuelans with Ozzie gone. And I forgot to mention the Quentin/Carter deal, too. FROM baseballamerica.com (sorry if already posted) The Blue Jays have an enviable amount of depth in their farm system and could afford to trade Molina, even though he was on the verge of pitching in the big leagues. Molina originally signed as a third baseman in April 2006. He moved to the mound in 2007, throwing just one inning in the Dominican Summer League. He returned in 2008 and made 20 appearances, completing the transition. Prior to 2011, Molina had made just 77 career appearances, four of which were starts. Toronto had their sights set on giving him a chance to start, assigning him to the high Class A Dunedin rotation. He flourished in the move, throwing 130 innings between Dunedin and Double-A New Hampshire while striking out more than a batter per inning and walking about one per nine. Molina has above-average command of a fastball that ranges from 88-93 mph. He originally tried to turn his slurvy breaking ball into a slider, but he has shifted to using a curveball now. Molina has a legitimate out-pitch in his splitter, and he also shows feel for a straight changeup. His secondary stuff doesn't jump off the page, but his fastball command helps it play up. He profiles nicely in the back of a rotation and will likely make his big league debut in 2012. Interesting, sounds a lot like Santos' career trajectory without the dominating fastball in the mid 90's.

QUOTE (VictoryMC98 @ Dec 6, 2011 -> 08:48 PM) One bad deal doesn't make you a worst GM.. Kenny gave up on Gio Gonzo.. and Foulke.. I would love to see Kenny be 1/2 the GM Beane is with a limited payroll. But Keith Foulke also removed himself from the closer's position. Let's not forget what Olivo (leading to F. Garcia) and Cotts contributed... They obviously made the wrong move with Swisher, but Ryan Sweeney was never going to be more than a 4th outfielder for the Sox. It will be interesting to see if DeLosSantos ever becomes more than a set-up guy...but clearly KW got fleeced with that move.

Clearly, they felt that the odds going forward with Crain/Reed were just as good, if not better, than with Sergio. Time will tell. The one thing we're doing is building up depth in the most important area for any organization, youung/quality starting pitching. In the meantime, there's always the possibility that Dunn/Peavy/Rios actually perform. There's no other choice but to wait it out for another 3-4 months with them. They can still get a haul for Thornton, Danks/Floyd, Quentin and POSSIBLY Ramirez, although I'd rather hold on to Alexei for now...at least through the first half of 2012.

QUOTE (SOXOBAMA @ Dec 6, 2011 -> 08:30 PM) Bailey is a much better player.. Since when has Billy Beane been a very good general manager the last 4-5 years? While has probably hasn't been AS BAD as Williams, he's clearly been in the bottom 50% of MLB GM's over that time span.

QUOTE (CyAcosta41 @ Dec 6, 2011 -> 08:18 PM) Except that the "find/make your market" approach and KW's "go balls-out after your target" approach aren't mutually exclusive. You can do both. Many of us believe that KW stares down his intended target worse than a high school quarterback. He always (eventually) gets his man, right? If we see this, most of his peers certainly do too. Kenny is clearly not the patient sort -- he shows his hand and the adversary will generally set the price. I have a major issue with this approach for many reasons, principally that it's so hit-or-miss dependent on the scouting behind the target. We've had great successes with the likes of Thornton, Floyd, and Danks (although the great Nick Massett was supposedly the number one target of that deal); we've had horrible failures with Swisher, Marquez, Flowers, Teahen, and many others. At best, KW and group have proven to be middle-of-the-pack talent evaluators and targeting basically one "must have" per deal is incredibly risky. But the biggest issue I have with it is simple opportunity cost. Great, have your discussions about your target, put that info in your hip-pocket, and then like any reasonable person doing due diligence, get a sense of the overall market. You may find out that something a heck of a lot better than your target exists once you start looking around. Maybe you get an even better "target." Or, maybe you get a similar target, plus a few more players/prospects allowing for a better chance of striking gold every now and then. And when the targeted team senses that you're shopping around, then maybe you have the ability to start extracting target plus X from a team that previously thought they had you by the short ones ... every time. Gee, wouldn't that be a nice change once in a while? In fairness, I don't KNOW for a fact that this is the way KW and the Sox operate. I truly hope they don't. But, it sure seems like this is at least somewhat accurate. It certainly is what a heck of a lot of baseball execs believe (at least as relayed through admittedly sometimes unreliable writers). Not aware? Sheesh. Something like THIS should never happen. And per Peter Gammons, the Red Sox might have been interested in Santos as well. A team with a limited warchest and a desert-like farm simply MUST maximize value with each and every transaction. The Yank-Mes and Sawks can cover their mistakes with wads of green, but we don't have the resources to do that. We have to be smarter. And we certainly can't be dumber. But look at some of the guys he has targeted and succeeded with: Danks Thornton Floyd Jenks Santos Alexei Ramirez Iguchi Pods Hermanson Thome Dye Viciedo I don't think it's fair to just assume the Orioles were going to provide us with Jeremy Reed/Miguel Olivo/Mike Morse. Marquez was viewed at best as a tainted prospect who might turn into Jon Garland-Lite but was far from a can't miss at the time we got him. Edwin Jackson performed better for the Sox than any other team he's pitched for. Teahen, the two Swisher deals, the Braves' deal (although it was just as much about getting rid of Javy and Lillibridge was a huge plus in 2011) and the Daniel Hudson move have been the primary ones to upset fans. And of course Dunn, Rios and Peavy. With the exception of the risky Rios move, the majority of people in baseball were in favor of both the Dunn and Peavy moves... Masset wasn't the centerpiece, it was clearly Danks. It's just that there was a lot of hype after the trade that Nick could supposedly hit 96-99 mph and might be a good closer candidate. We heard the same type of hype about Jon Adkins after the Durham fiasco, Felix Diaz, etc.

QUOTE (MAX @ Dec 6, 2011 -> 07:58 PM) Seems like both teams traded surpluses they had. I like this trade for both teams. In the end, starting pitching has to trump relievers, even "cost-controlled" closers. Santos makes a lot more sense for a contending team... We just better be right on this kid, because the last Blue Jays' prospect looks more like the long man out of the pen/spot starter than anything resembling a frontline starter. We'll just have to give Cooper a full spring training to see what tweaks he can make. Williams has had so many trades not turn out the last 3-4 years that a few have to go in his direction eventually. This is the kind of move that former KW fans will be trumpeting....taking the likes of a kid we paid virtually nothing for an turning him into a 6 year replacement for John Danks/Gavin Floyd.

Hard to say what to make of this... If you look at the White Sox history of closers, we've always done pretty well with "under the radar" guys like Howry, Foulke, Takatsu, Hermanson, Jenks, Marte, etc. There's no doubt that Santos has the ability to be an elite closer...although those last couple of blown saves against the Tigers were disconcerting. Clearly, this dramatically lowers the odds of keeping Buehrle/Danks/Floyd. They might as well just go with Crain and then Reed as the back-up option. Sale to the rotation. Looking at the free agency lists, there's an incredible lack of depth in the LH spot. Darren Oliver's the best option out there, which means the haul for Matt Thornton might end up being better than expected. Greg might be right in the end, just like Marty34. Ozzie Guillen might be in a very good position to go to the playoffs...and we're stuck in a bleak 3-4 year rebuilding process. One thing's for sure, they better start coming up with an innovative, out of the box marketing campaign or they're going to be lucky to draw 1.5 million. Kind of weird we've been targeting the Blue Jays' system so much for pitching.

QUOTE (qwerty @ Dec 5, 2011 -> 10:59 PM) Aamir Khan's directorial debut to boot... but such a task is nothing for someone that is nicknamed mr perfection. He very well may be the best actor in the world... and it also might not even be close. Khan has chameleon like abilities. http://www.tudou.com/programs/view/LLL_b_AF4lw/ Here's a very clear streaming copy with English subtitles.

Brooklyn Decker sucks as an actress. Compared to her, Sucker Punch is Academy Award-caliber stuff.

http://www.soku.com/search_video/q_Love%20in%20Space Here's a Chinese romantic comedy everyone might like... By the way, if you use tudou.com, youku.com, sohu.com, baidu.com or any number of Chinese websites, you can see practically any movie within a couple of months of when it comes out. Which is obviously unfortunate for US film-makers and producers. Just search with the exact English title. Margin Call came out weeks ago and I already used a couple of brief snippets of it for my ECON class. Then there are movies like "Gran Torino" that you have to pay for after watching for 5 minutes...the same idea with the itunes store, but still the money's not going back to the US. Typically, when a movie like Avatar plays here (it made up 20% of the entire year's box office the year it came out in China), only about 13% of the total proceeds go back to the US. About 45% go to the Chinese producers who funded the film and 55% goes to the theatre/cinema. There's actually a huge fight over the new Christian Bale Nanjing movie by Zhang Yimou because it cost almost $100 million (the most expensive Chinese movie of all-time) and has a longer showing time (less shows available per day), so the producers are asking to change the split from 45 to 47% and some of the theaters are boycotting. They also raised the price 5 RMB (about 70 cents) to the price for each ticket. Another movie which has done extremely well is called "Love Is Not Blind." Made for a cost of only $1.4 million, it's already grossed almost $100 million...still, nothing can equal the overall profitability of the Paranormal Activity movies. Finally, I found yet another Aamir Khan (3 IDIOTS) movie I really love, this time he's a teacher of an autistic/special needs child. Taare Zameen Par is the official title, which is translated to "Like Stars on Earth" in English.

Greg must be celebrating the Marlins' 2012 NL Championship, along with random Lawrence/KC-area fans. Reyes, Heath Bell and taking a run at Pujols? Wow!

QUOTE (Marty34 @ Dec 3, 2011 -> 10:04 PM) One thing I know for certain about the White Sox. They know far better than anyone else how to price their product for maximum revenue. Yay! Marty, for once we agree on something. Although that doesn't mean that most of us who grew up with the Sox in the late 70's or 80's in Old Comiskey Park will agree with that direction. Quite obviously, it's not OUR club to run like it was perceived to be when Bill Veeck was the owner.

You can avoid watching SLEEPING BEAUTY (NC-17) unless you really have a thing for Emily Browning. (FWIW, I actually enjoyed the Soderbergh movies with Sasha Grey 5X better even though there was no nudity). Yet to see Shame with Fassbender, will have to check that one out. Ides of March...not quite as good as it could have been when it bogs down into some of the traditional political cliches and conflicts two-thirds of the way through, but I thought it was an overall "decent+" movie and certainly worth watching.

QUOTE (Milkman delivers @ Dec 1, 2011 -> 02:00 PM) Actually, yes. You're right. It makes sense that I never equated Pablo and Antonio possibly being related in my head. Perhaps the article meant to say that the guy is the nephew of Pablo Ozuna? That, or they made two mistakes. http://mopupduty.com/jays-on-verge-of-sign...rto-osuna-1205/ Definitely no connection to "flying across 1B while signalling safe on any close infield grounder" Pablo Ozuna.

QUOTE (knightni @ Nov 30, 2011 -> 10:10 PM) Here's the guy that Paddy replaced. Why was I expecting a picture of Dave Wilder/Club Burn instead of this?

Does anyone want to make the case that Edgerton/Hardy are better in Warrior than Bale/Wahlberg in The Fighter? Warrior seems a little bit more like a promotional vehicle for MMA... In that sense, I would say it's clearly better than Real Steel (similar genre), but still not the overall quality of acting across Fighter with Amy Adams and Melissa Leo. Nolte was solid, though. And I always like the guy who plays the school principal in Warrior...I think the first time I remember seeing him was in the movie DAVE.

Winter's Bone? Right. I'm talking everyday poor that also isn't a focus on the nobility of being poor in that condescending way. Even with that, her character obviously had an education and knack for creativity (the bakery)...that would clearly separate her from the chronically poor/underemployed, like former GM/Ford/Chrysler assembly line workers in Michigan whose jobs have all been outsourced over the last 20 years. Pursuit of HappYness would also be close to this idea of portraying a poor but hard-working family fairly realistically...although obviously it has the Hollywood-ized happy ending.

QUOTE (bmags @ Nov 28, 2011 -> 07:38 PM) Blah, in pretty woman they added the bulls*** "oh but it was her first night as a prostitute" line. I think Bridesmaids resonates more because she is "falling behind" her friends and is trying to keep up. Swingers actually hit on being poor and young better than most. It's just ridiculous that I'm struggling to find any movies where the characters are poor and them being poor isn't a stereotype. ...where the heart is? Has it come to this? Even look at the League, those dudes are all comics who struggled for years, and first shot they get they create themselves all as uber succesful. Being poor sucks, but it's also where a lot of comedians inspiration comes from. Yet it's not represented in cinema often. Julia plays Vivian Ward in Pretty Woman. Vivian's time with Edward was not her first but it was her first time to kiss a client. I've watched that movie maybe 3 times, and I don't remember the line about it being her first time working as a prostitute. I agree, they do try to explain/rationalize her working as a prostitute to take the rough edges off her character as much as possible for a movie of that time period (I think it was 1990). It's not like Hesher or Greenberg in being a ruthless "dark" character, or Will Ferrell in "Everything Must Go."

QUOTE (bmags @ Nov 28, 2011 -> 05:39 PM) I loved bridesmaids. Bridesmaids was one of the few movies that acknowledged that there are people in the world who aren't so comfortably rich that money has no impact in any moment in their lives. Movie about a journalist? They are a rich columnist with a 2 million dollar condo in manhattan. Movie about a chef? He's a rich chef with a beautiful house and garden. Everybody is a doctor, or wealthy, or millionaire. Any attempts to show poor people are usually "poor people are the salt of the earth with common people knowledge. Money sucks" stories. I related more to kristen wiigs character than any recent one in years. Agreed, but they still needed the plot device of framing her against Rose Byrne's uber-rich but patently unhappy inside character. I was trying to think of a movie where the character is in a similar or worse predicament in the beginning, movies like Pretty Woman, for example. Or Shawshank, which is obviously a very different genre of movie.

The fourth Twilight (Breaking Dawn, Part 1) is better than the 2nd but worse than the 3rd and clearly worse than the original movie. Very very slow, and reminiscent of the Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter movies that preceded the more satisfying finales. I would never pay money to watch in a theatre...found it on the net. Harold and Kumar Rock!!! That first movie doesn't get enough credit for resuscitating NP Harris' career after the unforgettable Starship Troopers, which has become something of a cult classic in the years since.

Really liked 50/50, and Seth Rogen was actually fairly tolerable in that movie, albeit as the supporting actor. Starting to watch Javier Bardem in Biutiful.

QUOTE (bmags @ Nov 22, 2011 -> 03:24 PM) I saw the descendants on Saturday. I'm going to give you a short little take: Really poorly put together beginning and a strong finish that leads me to say that I rec this movie. I liked it. I liked it even though i'm damn tired of all these hollywood movies about really rich people feeling isolated and having trouble relating to your kids. STOP WRITING WHAT YOU KNOW. That's why I liked "The Kids are Alright" so much, it felt like it could actually be a true story, rather than one of those Apatow versions or Bridesmaids, etc.

QUOTE (Brian @ Nov 22, 2011 -> 06:11 AM) Should win an Oscar for best Cinematography. I didn't realize Kirsten Dunst was so "chesty," I'm still 50/50 on whether she had plastic surgery or not. Really hard to say definitively with her... The Charlotte Rampling character was so strong...even if her few scenes, but I'll never forget her in SWIMMING POOL...or maybe I'll never forget her younger co-star's presence in that one, not sure which.

Melancholia's very good, Lars Von Trier's best recent work by far. While it's not necessarily enjoyable, calling to mind recent movies like Rabbit Hole, Reservation Road, Blue Valentine or even Kirsten Dunst's earlier "All Good Things" with Ryan Gosling, it's definitely worth your time and has some incredible cinematography. I thought it was a much better film, for example, than The Tree of Life.