lostfan

This reminds me of last year, when Dotel came in and took a s*** on the mound.

What happened? RBI single?

QUOTE (Pants Rowland @ Jun 18, 2009 -> 03:11 PM) I think it is frequently a forced situation called by the dugout with 2 outs and possibly a 2 strike count on the batter. It seems that is where he gets thrown out most often. He's also been thrown out twice on blown hit and runs with Lillibridge hitting behind him.

I might get some resistance for saying this, but I think Morneau is really overrated, and his name has become bigger than he is. The guy is very good, definitely All-Star caliber, but not MVP caliber, probably not even great. Aside from the fact that they bat together in the lineup, I have no idea why he is mentioned in the same breath as Mauer, and as an MVP candidate all the time. He put up an offseason pretty comparable to Dye last year... Dye wasn't in MVP talks for some reason, yet Morneau was the runner-up, WTF? People were talking about how Morneau carried the Twins last year, but he faded in September. Dye did the exact same thing except his team actually made the playoffs. I really didn't see what he did last year to get all that credit. I guess he benefits from being one of the two only real threats in the Twins lineup, and people always saying "Mauer and Morneau" when they talk about the Twins. But they aren't in the same stratosphere IMO.

QUOTE (BearSox @ Jun 18, 2009 -> 12:59 PM) So what, don't you think the leadership in Japan was getting intel about how the whole city got obliterated? I'm sorry, but if they didn't know the power of the A-Bomb after Hiroshima, they're retards. You don't need film, internet, and e-mail to get reports of a huge bomb that destroyed a whole city. It is idiotic to think Japan was going to surrender anytime soon. They have had soldiers who are still in jungles waiting to fight. It is Japanese code to never surrender. To think that they were on the verge of surrendering is lunacy. They didn't surrender until after Nagasaki, and I guarantee you they didn't want to but they had to. Yeah, it sucks innocent people had to die, but there is no question it saved hundreds of thousands of American lives, if not more. On the 2nd and 3rd paragraphs, there is no way of ever knowing. Some of their hardcore military leaders were still strongly pro-war when the writing was on the wall, but the civilian leadership was getting close to giving up. Without being able to talk to them directly we'll never really be able to tell how close. But they had nothing left to gain, and more to lose. I still don't really think it's fair to criticize Truman too harshly for it. He had a really hard decision to make, and went with the best of a bunch of bad options.

QUOTE (BearSox @ Jun 18, 2009 -> 12:51 PM) Yeah, except until they bombed pearl harbor... however, when you look back at it, Japan had a legit reason to consider us an enemy. It is no secret that FDR wanted to enter the war and he was providing a ton of help to Britian. Japan figured we'd join sooner or later, so they decided to strike first. That was because they signed the pact with Italy and Germany, which I'm sure they looked at in hindsight and figured "that was a f***ing terrible idea." By that point we had chosen sides without choosing sides and knew war was coming, and once we cut off their oil supply, they were backed into a corner. By bombing Pearl Harbor they were trying to knock out what they could of our ability to counter their movements in the Pacific. Ironically it ended up not even mattering, and it just got us all pissed off.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jun 18, 2009 -> 12:46 PM) Japanese history was at the end of a strange spasm of imperialsim in WWII. They had spent so many centuries preferring to be isolated. But then starting around the 1880's, they embarked on a series of huge wars, getting into tangles with China, Russia, and of course there was WWII. Then they kind of rewound and went back to that chosen isolation, though not economically, and that change worked well for them. ETA: I believe that the Russo-Japanese War, around 1899-1901 (peace treaty helped by Teddy R), was the third bloodiest war ever, having more deaths than any other than the 2 WW's. Yeah from what I can tell, the imperial conquest route wasn't a consensus, but Japan wasn't a democracy either, so that didn't matter. Admiral Yamamato kept trying to warn the military that going to war with the US would be a strategic disaster unless they won quickly and decisively, which was unlikely. And he was right.

QUOTE (ChiSox_Sonix @ Jun 18, 2009 -> 12:39 PM) As you said, it's one of those situations where you'll never what would have/could have been. However, doesn't it say something about the Japanese when even after the first bomb dropped, it took a second to convince them to surrender? If they were even teetering towards the "let's surrender" option, wouldnt you think after the first bomb dropped it would have led to an almost immediate action by the Japanese? Who knows? But I think it does say a lot for the mentality they had at the time. Regardless, I think it's wrong to criticize that decision because it wasnt like Truman did it recklessly. From all accounts that decision bothered him to the day he died. I definitely would never want to be responsible for making a decision like that. Plus, to that point, we never really even had much of a beef with Japan, and vice versa.

I've been over to check out TBE a little bit, and I'll vouch for it. Pretty cool crowd.

QUOTE (ChiSox_Sonix @ Jun 18, 2009 -> 09:50 AM) I hope you're kidding How is that not obvious...?

At the start of the season I would've laughed and rolled my eyes if you suggested signing Pods. After seeing Lillibridge bomb hard, and Wise and Anderson being hurt at the same time, it had gotten to the point where we had to sign him, so I wasn't opposed. I didn't expect him to last this long though and I'm surprised at how solid he's been.

Swisher is an "ok" player, not a good one. People get carried away talking about his OBP making him a better player, which along with a respectable amount of power just makes him an "average to slightly above average" player instead of a "poor" player. Swisher doesn't have the SLG and isn't consistent enough to be considered good. If his OPS was consistently around .900, then we'd be talking.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Jun 18, 2009 -> 08:15 AM) That Pence dude is pure genius. That's Michele Bachmann territory.

It's sad how Griffey's 56 HRs don't even seem to matter in the context of the rest of those cheaters.

QUOTE (Cubano @ Jun 17, 2009 -> 11:22 PM) Let me remind you that all these rogue states promote anti-USA policies around the world. In others words, they would destroy us if they could. We do not know what they do under the table for terrorists, etc. If they could. but they cant. so they dont. it just doesnt work that way. Even if we wanted to invade countries for being anti-american, we couldn't. Our army is not big enough. We don't have enough money. We don't have enough ordnance to use in these wars. Besides, what if venezuela attacked the US for promoting anti-venezuela policies around the world? Would that make any sense for them to do?

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ Jun 17, 2009 -> 08:56 PM) Well, of course, the easy/lazy response when saying Mauer won't hit .400 is to simply say that he won't do it because .400 has proven to be pretty much impossible. And end it right there. Just as the easy/lazy response to say he can do it is to simply say "Yeah, I think he's that good." And end it right there. I choose to look a little deeper. Now I agree that BABIP is more useful for pitchers than hitters. But it doesn't take a genius to see that a guy hitting .429 is pretty abnormal. And that he's obviously doing something that's gone above and beyond what he's normally done in his career. Now I don't care who you are. When over 4 of very 10 balls you put into play are falling in for hits, that's not all skill. There's a certain amount of fluke/luck that comes into play (bloop hits, defensive positioning, ect). Even Jim Thome has a few hits this year that came simply because of the shift that just about every team uses with him. If you look at Joe's BB%, K%, GB/FB ratios and LD% for this year, they all fall in line with what he's done for his career. Outside of his HR rates, which are wayyyy above and beyond his career rates, all his numbers are similar to his career numbers. So how does one explain the .429 BA? Other than BABIP, you really can't. It's almost 100 points higher than his career total. That's just abnormal. No way around it. Even in 2006, when his BABIP was .370, he topped out BA wise at I believe .350. History says the chances of sustaining that number over the course of a season are astronomical. But the bottomline is that Joe has played in only 42 games this season. That's just not enough of a sample size to determine if he really has a legitimate chance at .400. If he's anywhere near .400 on August 1st, this topic will get A LOT more interesting. I don't disagree with anything you've said here. Basically, your argument is that a .400 batting average is fluky high, it takes a combination of skill and luck to have an average that high, and it is so far above his career norms that it's a near certainty that he'll eventually regress to it. My argument is that I don't need to see BABIP to tell me that. When you see someone hitting 70, 80 points higher than they ever have before, you just kind of know all those factors come into play intuitively. BABIP is a really unnecessarily fancy way of telling me something I already know.

BearSox beat me to it. That said, the answer is Griffey. Bonds may have hit 600 without the roids.

QUOTE (mr_genius @ Jun 17, 2009 -> 09:23 PM) WordUpThome: OK WELL THIS OLDEN CHAPERONE HAS TO REQUEST THAT YOU GET OUTSIDE OF HERE HarperImage: why WordUpThome: WELL THE SIMP WordUpThome: SIMPLE ANSWER IS THAT THIS CHAT ROOM IS FULL OF CUSS-WORDING VAGABONDS HarperImage: whats the complex answer WordUpThome: CUSS WORDS

QUOTE (Cubano @ Jun 17, 2009 -> 08:55 PM) That is what this country elected when helping create the U.N. and contribute most of the money for it. Based on your post, then it was a mistake entering WWI and WWII. I didn't say anything about it being a mistake (although that is true, invading those countries because we don't like their governments would be a horrible mistake), but it's just something that's not going to happen. Even a Republican president with a Republican Congress wouldn't go that far. plus the UN was created in, what, 1947?

QUOTE (Cubano @ Jun 17, 2009 -> 08:51 PM) Aknowledged but I disagree with the below: "I will not post statements for the purpose of angering others." I can not control whether or not my comments will anger others. Post what you post, being in heated arguments is fine, nobody in here should be taking anything personally. We're all friends in here even when we fight. That statement is intended for people who post things on purpose only to make another poster mad.

I think that was Hillary Clinton, but yeah, probably with Obama's blessing.

Yeah, we're not gonna use our military to clean up domestic problems in other countries, sorry. Not even Iran and Venezuela. Has nothing to do whatsoever with Obama.

Liz Cheney: You know, aside from the fact that Obama not being willing to say "I believe in American exceptionalism" being flat-out false, I'm not sure what the critics really expect Obama to say if this is really what they believe (and they do). They essentially want him to come out in front of these foreign crowds and say "We are better than you, we are perfect, we have never made any mistakes or contributed to any problems. The sooner you recognize this, the better." Coming up short of doing that is "apologizing" or "bending over" or whatever the hell. Isn't there some kind of clinical psychological condition for this kind of behavior, where you need to constantly assert your superiority and sense of self-importance?

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Jun 17, 2009 -> 04:43 PM) First year in pro ball. Well, first full year.

QUOTE (Jenksy Cat @ Jun 17, 2009 -> 04:32 PM) I'll believe it when I see it. The next time we have s***ty loss and there aren't 673 posts about how this entire team needs to be cut/traded/fired I'll believe. I mock those posts because it ruins the site and drives people away. And you're not helping, either.