Kenny Hates Prospects

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Feb 10, 2011 -> 03:01 PM) Sort of like chicken before factory farming started. Chickens were once jungle animals that were easy enough to catch by local inhabitants that they became a staple. They readily took to man and became a great food source. They are actually pretty easy to care for all things considered. You can build small "chicken tractors" that protect them and allow them to graze over natural foods, moving them regularly, let them free range over a well-protected area, and then build a coop to house them safely at night. They eat all kinds of s***, so they can be fed very cheaply, and they produce eggs and lots of young, and grow quickly, so there's the potential of easily growing enough to feed yourself and then growing extra commercially. You should also consider that maybe - just maybe - the animals that we have "domesticated" have in another way "domesticated" us. By providing human beings with good food they have increased their numbers in ways nature never would have allowed and have been afforded a type of protection that nature herself also would have never allowed. People have actually destroyed wolf and coyote populations all over the place because of them.

This is why I don't post in slam. Ugh. Back to baseball... Anyone want to respond to my Leslie Anderson thread? It's pretty cool...

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Feb 10, 2011 -> 02:41 PM) You really thinking that factory farm animals are extremely large because they don't get enough exercise? You have to be kidding. They are engorged with food and steroids their entire short-lived, tortured lives. When an animal is a month or two away from harvesting it will be penned up so that it basically can't move and fattened up. This is very profitable. But the other things you say are true. They are given unnatural substances and unnatural lives. Again, I'm not defending factory farming. QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Feb 10, 2011 -> 02:41 PM) In your personal opinion. LOL! My opinion?! Nature is a process of life growing on death! It's not a f***ing matter of opinion. Tell me, what is humus composed of? What do plants and fungi feed on? What does microbial life feed on? Large and small animals, people? It's no f***ing opinion. Life doesn't exist without death, therefore the taking of life is the necessary "evil (it's not even evil)" of life, and if done properly and humanely is supposed to be a sign of respect for nature. There's a reason every tribe reveres the animals it hunts and FIGHTS for conservation of lands from non-hunting, PC westerners who try to exploit it. QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Feb 10, 2011 -> 02:41 PM) In Western civilizations No, they're not good meat animals period. They require too much input for too little yield. Anyone who could make a living selling dog meat could make a much better living selling other meats with less input required and over smaller area. QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Feb 10, 2011 -> 02:41 PM) No. He was saying that MB hunts for sport because he enjoys it. It is not necessary for him to hunt animals to stay alive. Yes, he surely enjoys following hunting instincts, but notice how he doesn't run around gleefully stomping lady bugs or shooting people? He's not going to kill what he's not going to eat, and when he hunts, he will obey regulations and take only what he feels is necessary or allowed.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Feb 10, 2011 -> 11:03 AM) But that is the exact reason why I dont go around making a big deal about it. Because I know that its a weak argument. I may love dogs and cats, but until Im willing to treat all animals (and even if you want to change that to all intelligent animals) the same way, Im a hypocrite. YOU have been bred and conditioned by your own culture to love cats and dogs just as much as THEY have been bred and conditioned by your ancestory to love YOU. Not wanting to kill them or see them endure pain is perfectly understandable. And no, you're not willing to love all animals the same way. Maybe you think you are, but you're not, because you haven't grown up in a society that would put all animals on the same plane as far as their worthiness of human love and respect. If you want to consider yourself something, maybe you should consider yourself a witness or a victim, because I don't think it's fair to consider yourself a hypocrite. You've been raised in a particular environment to adopt particular sets of belifes, and other ideas that you may now consider more morally pure, were withheld from you by that environment such that you would not develop them. How can one who is out of touch with all these other animals but told to love and respect dogs and cats as inherently more deserving of that love be expected to reject those ideas? To understand other animals and why you should care about them you need to experience them. And going back to the genesis of this argument, MB's hunting, he is the type of person who experiences the animals he hunts. You cannot effectively hunt without understanding and experiencing the animal you are pursuing. The notion that animals are just out there in the wild standing around aimlessly like it's a f***ing bus stop is an absurd product of modern civilization, and anyone who'd go out into the wild with all the guns and ammo he could carry would inevitably starve to death for lack of proper skills and experience, and would probably just end himself with the weapon. QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Feb 10, 2011 -> 11:03 AM) Furthermore the entire US law is hypocritical. Im sure that you are aware but under the law, dogs are property. If you kill my dog, your only civil liability to me is the value of the dog. There is no special exception for a dog being mans best friend or like a human, they are property. Yet the difference in how a dog as property is treated and a cow as property is treated, are completely divergent. No one disputes that I can kill my cow for food, its just whether I did it humanely. Im sure that many people would be up in arms if I had a dog farm where I killed dogs for food, regardless of how humanely. People would be up in arms if you raised dogs for food, yes. But that doesn't mean it's wrong or against nature. Just like morality vs. law. You wouldn't open a dog harvesting farm because you'd get picketed daily and you'd be forced out of business. In another country, that may be different. But in terms of practicality dogs probably aren't going to be the best meat animals anyway, and if you want a lean animal that's cute and has litters, you'd farm rabbits, which is done all over the world including here. And there's nothing wrong with that either. But mostly you'd want an animal that maximizes return of your labor, that provides high and fatty yield along with other parts (bone, leather) that can be used elsewhere or sold for extra income. So you probably wouldn't raise dogs even somewhere where you could conceivably raise dogs because it wouldn't be the most practical thing to do anyway. QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Feb 10, 2011 -> 11:03 AM) This is where the law clearly goes from being objective to subjective, and why I dont really care to argue about the legality of what Vick did. I dont like what he did, I dont agree with the practices, but Im not 100% sure that there is a good reason why we have created rules that govern how people can treat property, except for the fact that we are trying to pretend we are "humane." Because at the end of the day, how we treat most animals is anything but humane. I agree with this 100% QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Feb 10, 2011 -> 11:03 AM) Hunting, whether something you can stomach when considering the methods undertaken by human predators or not, is part of the natural order of things. Predators target prey for sustenance, and if that is the reason for Mark's hunting, than I find that difficult to be critical of. Hunting for pure sport, whether it is explained away in some attempt to justify it by achieving some ecological or modern logistical objective, is another debate altogether. And if hunters were only hunting for food and not for sport, I would agree with this standpoint. The problem is that I do not believe Mark is hunting to feed his family because he cant afford to buy food. He is hunting because he enjoys hunting. http://mlb.fanhouse.com/2007/09/24/mark-bu...ear-with-a-bow/ Here is a story about Mark bear hunting. Im sure that he hunted that Bear because the bear had a considerable amount of flesh to feed his starving family. So you are only supposed to eat because you're starving? Or you're not supposed to kill and eat a healthy wild animal when you can go to the grocery store and buy a probably innoculated formerly sick animal that was raised in brutal conditions and slaughtered so that you youldn't have to do the job yourself? Hunting isn't "sport" even though it may be classified as such. You're killing an animal and afterwards you're going to eat it. This is life. The "sport" comes in the chase, the thrill, etc. but these are just natural instincts that are being followed, not actually sports. If by sport you mean "fun," then yes, following natural instincts can be fun. People enjoy having sex, too. That doesn't make it a sport. Starvation BTW has been and still is a part of daily life for most people on this earth. It's not gone or anything, humanity hasn't exactly conquered it in the first world. This abundance of food you probably think exists now actually does not exist at all. It's an illusion. Fossil fuel energies and their products along with long man hours have produced huge numbers of plant and animal crop that cannot occur in nature, and these crops have been produced on sick land in sick conditions that are basically barren, and if left alone these lands and farms would produce a whole bunch of nothing. Starvation is going to come back to us, but the trick here is that when it does people who don't want to kill will have to change thier ideas about the whole thing, but they'll inevitably head out into barren conditions to try to hunt game that simply is not there anymore without any appropriate skill even if having obtained the appropriate weaponry. QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Feb 10, 2011 -> 11:03 AM) So we can assume that Mark only hunts for food, or we can actually look at the facts and realize that Mark hunts for fun. While I personally feel what Vick did is worse than what Mark does, I actually think that Vick has stopped doing it. Conversely, Mark will continue to hunt and kill animals for the rest of his life. Right. Mark Buehrle only eats because eating is fun. WTF??? If you're saying he doesn't eat what he kills then I'm sure you'd be lying. QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Feb 10, 2011 -> 11:03 AM) I get that we are White Sox fans so we are going to defend Mark, but he really is being a hypocrite here. No, I'd defend Mark Buehrle even if his name were Jimmy Buttschlong and he happened to live in North Dakota and worked the fryer in McDonalds.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Feb 10, 2011 -> 11:03 AM) The first paragraph is mostly irrelevant, I dont care how great animals are at defending themselves in the wild against other animals, they were never built to defend themselves against 20th century technology. If you want to prove that you can kill an animal with your bare hands, knife or non-compound bow I can see that it is a challenge, But if you are going out there with a high powered rifle or a compound bow, its the proverbial fish in a barrel. And I can tell right now that you have zero experience actually hunting or tracking anything. You assume it is easy, call it fish in a barrel. You have no idea whatsoever how wrong you are. Furthermore, men have developed tools for hunting as they have evolved and there's no reason to omit a gun that can kill instantly in favor of, say, an arrow with a poison tip, where the hunter must then follow the prey for as long as necessary until it finally dies. You are missing the entire point here because you do not know what hunting actually is. Guns do not make animals appear at the snap of a finger, nor do animals put themselves within proper shooting range just because you're sitting there with a gun. Hunting trips last for days sometimes in pristine wilderness and hunters will come home with nothing. Those who still live with nature and subsist on hunting still also have a tremendous amount of respect for the game they hunt and often deify those animals, and while in the 21st century some of that may be gone, there is still a good level of respect shown by the hunter in most all cases. If you ever want to see an angry hunter, take a shot at an animal without killing it on site. That hunter will talk to whoever he needs to talk to to make sure you don't hunt there again, and then he'll pick up the animal and take it himself, and give up on his own hunting experience just to put the animal out of its misery. And BTW, people hunt pig with knives. Hunters can't sneak up on most animals like that because their senses are far too keen to allow it - they are just as "meant" to evade gunfire as any other form of projectile killing, and the accuracy of modern weaponry is there to make the experience more humane. Taking and landing several poor shots on an animal and watching it suffer the last moments of its life, while simultaenously ruining more meat on the animal, is bad practice. And hunting/killing with your bare hands? Do you get your hunting information from Man vs. Hotel or something? You can only kill small game that way, and you don't go running after it, you trap it first. Mankind is meant to use his intellect to PROPERLY hunt so long as it's natural and as painless as possible. He's not meant to ignore his intellect and instead burn up 50X the caloric value of the food he's hunting by running around like an idiot. We're talking survival here - that's the whole point of killing for life. This system still exists and it always will even if you'll prefer to mute it around you. QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Feb 10, 2011 -> 11:03 AM) Moving on to the dog breeding comment, then I assume you are against eating pigs, cows, etc as they were all domesticated thousands of years ago. So using your logic it should not be okay to put pigs or cows in pens to be killed, because they naturally trust their human oppressor. Here is a link that shows all of the animals that have been domesticated like dogs http://archaeology.about.com/od/dterms/a/domestication.htm, you will notice that cow and chicken are domesticated animals, yet are given no special treatment. Domesticated for what purposes though? Dogs in this part of the world are meant as companions, pigs are meant as meat animals. Species are raised and bred differently because of that, and through their lives their mental and physical activities differ and are accentuated through their breeding, so that a dog on a farm is meant to lead other animals and bark for intruders, or a dog in a junk yard is meant to defend property, or a dog in the police department meant to find particular scents, etc. Dogs at home are meant to be simply companions. Tell me why a large pig should make a better pet than a dog, and a dog a better meat animal than a pig? If in other areas of the world dogs are meat animals then I don't like that, but it's still easily justifiable if it's part of the whole life process and it's done the right way. It's also perfectly acceptable for other animals to use humans as meat animals. I'm not arguring against domestication necessarily. It's impossible to raise livestock without providing food and protection, and those will lead to domesticated animals, but not nearly in the same way as the dog that sits on your lap or sticks his head out the window when you're driving. And it would be pointless to raise meat animals without bothering to select the best ones to breed for greater health, strength, nutritional value, and yield. But I'm not going to in any way attempt to argue in favor of factory farming if that's where you're going. I think animals deserve adequate space and deserve to be in conditions that are clean and as low-stress as possible. Stressed animals are far more prone to develop sicknesses and are not going to have the same nutritional value as a healthy, happy animal. So when you say "pens" and s*** I don't know what you mean because the size and conditions of those pens, along with the number and male:female ratio of the animals therein would dictate whether a practice is correct or not. QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Feb 10, 2011 -> 11:03 AM) And what humans do every day is wrong then. They take trusting, intelligent lifeform that was bred to serve man and used his higher intelligence to deceive the animal into stuffing itself until it became fat and then killed it for profit. LOL are you serious? You just took the word "maiming" and replaced it with "stuffing itself?" Eating is a natural behavior. Animals eat, and especially in nature, eat as much as they can as often as they can. The reason farm-raised animals are fat are because they're bred that way, they don't eat a diverse diet, and most importantly, they usually don't get the exercise they'd get in the wild. But feeding them is natural, and you don't have to trick them into feeding themselves. Maiming themselves is different. QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Feb 10, 2011 -> 11:03 AM) Is dog fighting arguably less humane? Of course it is, but now we are just talking about degrees. Dog fighting is as low as it gets. Death with the body giving nothing towards life. It's exploiting life through death for monetary gain where no one benefits except the gambler, and there are a zillion other ways for people to gamble without involving the needless taking of a life. You don't have a choice as to whether or not you want to eat. Even when you consider the mistreatment of animals on factory farms and the actions of governments economically, although you could rightly make some connections to inhumane gambling and waste of life, the majority is becoming food, so the end principle is right, but the process of getting there is wrong. QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Feb 10, 2011 -> 11:03 AM) As for the entire last paragraph, each person is entitled to their own opinion. I dont care about morality in terms of arguing the law, because morals are dependent on what side of the fence you sit. Many people from india would think that its far more wrong to kill a cow than a dog, people in the US think its worse to kill a dog than a cow. I am not going to be so bold as to say that my moral compass is better than theirs. I instead will admit to the hypocritical nature of humans, and try not to think to hard about the issue because I know that I am as hypocritical as anyone when it comes to this. My statements here were because I've seen people try to say that Vick did his time and therefore it's wrong to still hate him for his actions. That's absurd. Hypocritical nature of humans? Humans ate what they could when they had to. Humans are hypocrites now because at least in the first world not many of them are truly starving - and the ones who are hungry need only to hit up the nearby dumpster to find perfectly good second-hand food that others in the third world might literally kill for. But this hypocrisy doesn't apply to all people, not even all people in the first world who do not go hungry. There is nothing wrong with taking life to extend life. Dogs are not meat animals, because they over time have proven themselves worthy of other uses - it's f***ing hilarious to think that other animals may be better or equally suited for the roles of dogs when our ancestors actually relied upon them much of the time to feed themselves and each other, and if dogs weren't as valuable as they are then humans never would have kept another mouth to feed. Cows are meat animals. Cows are slow, big, taste great, give great milk - and to get milk a female has to be calving, so you need to keep them producing animals for milk and dairy. You don't just buy a cow and start milking it, unless you're into those kinds of websites. But cows don't really help humans in any other way. If people in India want to consider them unpalatable for religious reasons that's fine. I'm not sure I could imagine at starving Indian child though, away from any who'd criticize, turning down a steak. Besides, religious peoples still raise animals they can't eat for religious reasons and sell them to other nations who do, getting back food they can eat in return.

I'd like to see the Sox try to rework Peavy's option year into a short extension should he have even a decent year this season. We already owe him guaranteed money, and his injury history could make him consider a deal that would be less per annum and fewer in years than he'd get on the open market. Also he has said he feels like he owes it to the team to be out there and performing, so maybe that could be a factor. But I want to see something come of this deal. I don't lament losing any of the pieces we did, but I'd like some value back, especially with Jackson and MB becoming FAs and the big Danks decision looming.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Feb 10, 2011 -> 12:09 AM) Take the thread to the filibuster, because that is where it belongs. It has absolutely nothing to do with baseball at this point. Now where did I say hunting is wrong? I never did, in fact I placed no value judgment on either Vick nor Mark, its not my place. But lets cut to the heart of my point, taking a life is taking a life. You can rationalize it all you want, but murder is murder. I understand that in order to live, I murder animals. I am a hypocrite because I value certain animals over others. I can candy coat anything in the world, but the arguments of "culling populations", "eradicating the weak", have been used before. You can draw pretend lines in the sand wherever you want, but there are certainly people who are going to call Mark a hypocrite for killing animals on one hand, and wishing Vick harm for killing animals. I guess the dead deer appreciates that he wasnt forced to fight another deer first before being killed, but I dont get into the minds of deers or animals. I personally would prefer not being hunted by another species that is smarter and has better weaponry, nor would I want to be put in a cage and forced to fight another human to the death. But that is just me, Im sure there are some people out there that think one is some how better than the other. I dont really care, I just think that its foolish and could come across as hypocritical. Taking a life is taking a life. I agree with that. Once the body is lifeless, it's only matter. Before farmers could use fertilizers mass produced from fossil fuel energies they kept pigeons and fed their crops animal parts. In wiser parts of the world people are starting to get back to that. But plants eat animals, animals eat plants, and people eat both. Then when people die the plants are supposed to be able to eat them, too, except our own fear of death is so hilariously ridiculous that we pack our dead in boxes or incinerate the bodies, and rob the soil of the blood and bodily fluids that are supposed to enrich it. There is nothing wrong with this cycle except our influencing on it, because our influence on it displays our fear and our greed, and that's what destroys s*** and makes people have to kill hundreds of deer in order to save a forest. But there's nothing wrong at all with nature. Nature was doing just fine on her own until we had to f*** it all up. The murder is murder line is just way off though and I'm not sure I should even try to respond to it because I can't think of what I could say that would make you think differently. But if you can't see the difference between torturing and then inhumanely murdering a pet, a non-livestock animal, and then disposing of the body in some dump of rotting garbage, and say, taking the life of an animal quickly, painlessly, after a long life that as free as possible at this moment in time, and then using the body to feed your own body, and to extend your own life - then I just don't know what to say. Look, you talk about "personally preferring" things - that's not how it works. You either live off death or you die yourself. There's no room to "prefer" anything. In the wild - if you were an ape or something - I'm sure you wouldn't prefer death, but something would be after you, and there's a decent chance it would catch you and eat you. The deer, likewise, would probably prefer to run away, but it would also certainly prefer the opportunity to graze over its natural foodstuffs rather than be forced to be more of a scavenger, and I'm sure it would prefer being able to openly graze without crossing roads, or having to starve, or watch developers come in and build empty shells no one wants to live in, etc. There is an enormous difference between partaking in the cycle of life nature has created, and careless destruction borne of despicable cruelty and wastefulness. Huge difference. And there are no hypocrites either. There are no hypocrites in nature. Human beings weren't hypocrites either until we lost all touch with where we came from and began associating nature with dogparks and s***.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Feb 9, 2011 -> 11:18 PM) Should probably just have not said anything. Comes off even worse because of his pro-hunting stance. What is wrong with hunting? What is wrong with taking the life of another animal responsibly after allowing it to live a natural life? What is wrong about buying licenses that fund conservation efforts? What is wrong with attempting to control animal populations which have been allowed to run rampant thanks to deforestation and the culling of natural predators? Do you know the havoc deer can wreak upon an environment? And do you know how factory farms operate? The nutritional deficiencies vegans just beg for? What soy actually is, and what it's milk has done to children? Do you know what life is, and that death is simply a part of it? That death is required for life? Yeah, Mark really comes off as a douche here, caring about dogs and having the sac to appreciate where his meat comes from, rather than just picking it up out of the store all the time and ignoring where it came from.

QUOTE (JoeCoolMan24 @ Feb 9, 2011 -> 10:36 PM) I was waiting for this. If someone ran over a dog, most people would not think the driver is a monster. But if a person runs over a human, they are going to get a lot of s*** for that. But if you are raising humans in terrible conditions, keeping them locked up, and then force the humans to fight eachother to the death and kill off the weak or injured ones, then I am pretty sure you are going to see just as much, if not MORE hate than the people who do the same things to dogs. Apples and oranges. I agree with you mostly, in terms of the overall idea. Animals are actually quite a bit more intelligent than human beings give them credit for, and are far more capable of defending themselves (or evading danger) than many human beings are, if you think about it. Many people will stand there and take a beating because they are afraid to fight back, or will refuse to arm themselves because they convince themselves that some of the ridiculousness they hear is true, like violence is wrong/bad/uncalled for in "civilized" society, etc. Most animals OTOH can at least play dead to try to confuse prey, or will arm themselves with some kind of unique poison, escape capability, claws/teeth/whipping or breakable tail, etc. The difference - and where dogs come in - is that dogs are animals bred to serve human beings and provide unconditional love generations removed from the wild and existing in breeds that didn't even exist naturally, not wild animals conditioned by the harshness of nature. Dogs trust their abusers and follow the orders of their abusers because their abusers feed them and at least appear to keep them safe. What Vick did, to me, is sick, plain and simple. He took a trusting, intelligent lifeform bred to serve man and he used his higher intellect to deceive the animal into maiming itself for its master, the only benefits being gambling monies, and then when the animal was useless he destroyed it in a fashion that (at least I would hope) makes people want to puke. Most people are going to be naturally anthropocentric in the way they think, and that's what law is based on. The law says what Vick did was wrong, but really not all that wrong, basically akin to selling some coke, vandalising a neighbor's property, stealing some money, etc. According to law, what Vick did is perfectly acceptable in other areas of the world, and at least not all that atrocious here. But you're not supposed to adjust your own concept of what is right based upon what the justice system says. Law isn't the issue here, morality is, which is actually a separate thing, and it boggles my mind when people constantly try to override the moral understanding of others with some remark about Vick "doing his time," or "atoning," or whatever. All that s*** relates to law, not individual morality - even an apology means absolutely nothing in this world. So as a purely moral issue, no, in my eyes Vick doesn't at all deserve to be let off the hook, no matter what the legal system says. The moral punishment for his crimes, which cannot be enforced by any legal system, is that Vick must go through the rest of his life being hated like cancer by a wide swath of humanity for being the scum he is. MB was nice about what he said. Perfectly nice. And he is in no way wrong for saying it.

edit looks like this topic was moved/deleted...

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Feb 8, 2011 -> 08:10 PM) I bet when Jordan Danks is 28 he'll be able to hit .300 at Durham. I really think you're on to something here, Dick. Clearly a player who came from Cuba and had a pretty nice season in the minors in his only try at professional baseball - one who btw can actually put the bat on the baseball - is an excellent comp to Jordan Danks. Good show.

Yeah, tons of great of debates resulted from WhiteSUX. Baiting + ruining perfectly good threads like this one with "Derr my team is better!" sports retardism = great debate. On a side note, thank you to the mods for not banning me. I made a couple posts thinking I'd get banned for them and I didn't expect to be able to log in afterwards, but here I am. So thank you again.

QUOTE (since56 @ Feb 9, 2011 -> 07:48 PM) Animal lover and avid hunter, hmmm. Brilliant observation. Given that hunters only hunt because they're angry at the animals they're shooting at, I am also confused by this hypocritical stance of his.

QUOTE (WhiteSUX @ Feb 8, 2011 -> 11:11 PM) You guys do realize we've been in the playoffs 6 out of the last 9 years. while you have been watching pre-season bears games at hooters sports bar. Alright I'll give you guys the 2005 season but at that time the baseball world was still in shock by the red sox winning the 2004 series. You guys really pulled a fast one on us. Please don't say "us" when talking about the Twins. You do not represent them. I'm sure most Twins fans would be as just as annoyed by your tenure here as Sox fans would be if one of us were to visit TwinsTalk.com and act like an idiot over there.

QUOTE (WhiteSUX @ Feb 8, 2011 -> 08:28 PM) Kenny the only Cuban's you're gonna see this year are the ones Mauer and Morneau smoke after winning the A.L. central title SLAPSHOT! Go smoke a turd.

I've actually wondered at times why I haven't been perma-banned myself, but now I see why. You really do have to do quite a bit to get canned around here. WhiteSUX is hilariously bad as a troll. The name is about as lame and uncreative as one could get, the posting style is nothing but mindless baiting, there's zero wit involved (and I know, the idiot PMed me and I had to block his dumbass - and I'm probably not the only one, either) and the posts are only offensive because they're of such low quality. Real trolls are capable of walking a fine line and at least occasionally coming up with something intelligent/humorous to say, but wow, this little rag is just TURRIBLE. He's going to get himself banned eventually (one sweet sunny day) and then afterwards I'm sure he'll be like "Yeah, I told those Sux fans what's up! Bet they're all mad at the Twins now!" without realizing that no one actually cares and he didn't even bother to get his money's worth in the process. What a weakass troll. Pathetic.

QUOTE (T R U @ Feb 8, 2011 -> 01:21 AM) I think you people are getting way too excited, ide be willing to bet he doesn't even make the roster I agree and would normally take that bet too, but we really are running out some crap this year from a 4th OF perspective. Teahen is the best bat but he's not an OF, DeAza can play CF but he's below average at best offensively, D2 has the D but can't hit the broadside of a barn, then there's Gartrell, etc. This is a midgets game and Little Lastings is tall enough to play.

QUOTE (OsweGo-Go Sox @ Feb 8, 2011 -> 03:55 PM) We already signed Lastings Milledge. Except Lastings Milledge is not a CF, he has only taken steps backward since 2007, and he is only pushing a career .269/.328/.394/.723 line to begin with. His signing is being overrated all over this board. He'll probably amount to nothing at all but a mediocre offensive 4th/5th OF who is a liability in CF. When it comes to a bench, go with defense first and then look for a bat IMO - especially when you have a s***ty OF like we do. Anderson gives us the defense and I don't see how he's any less of a sure thing offensively than Milledge is.

QUOTE (elrockinMT @ Feb 8, 2011 -> 03:52 PM) Found this on that: Tampa Bay Rays Sign Cuban Defector Leslie Anderson By Josh Alper MLB Blogger | Follow on Twitter: @JoshAlper Text SizeAAAPrint this page|EmailShare on FacebookShare on TwitterShare on DiggShare on Lifestream The Rays aren't leaving any stones unturned to supply themselves with options in case Carl Crawford and/or Carlos Pena leave as free agents after this season. They confirmed Thursday that they've signed Cuban defector Leslie Anderson, a first baseman and outfielder, to a four-year deal. Anderson, who will get $3.75 million according to El Nuevo Herald, was one of more than 20 players who defected from Cuba via a boat to Mexico just before last year's World Cup. The 27-year-old was part of Cuba's World Baseball Classic team last year and has been working out in Mexico. His lawyer, Jaime Torres, thinks he'll be in the mix for a major league job this summer. "I think this is a young man that can compete this year in the major leagues," Torres said. "Right now we're trying to see how quickly we can get him into camp." We're not so sure. For one thing, Anderson hasn't even arrived in camp yet and we're drawing ever closer to Opening Day. For another, the Rays just signed Hank Blalock, another lefty swinging corner player who has the added benefit of actually playing in the major leagues before. Chances are the Rays are going to want the 27-year-old to spend some time getting acclimated in the minors while they figure out just what they've got. On that front, it's worth noting that a February workout for major league teams left scouts unimpressed. Jorge Arangue of ESPN.com quoted one as saying that Anderson, who hit .320 in his eight-year career in Cuba, was "mediocre at best" without the necessary power to fill a corner spot with a big league team. Presumably that scout was either not from the Rays or was trying to clear the playing field for Tampa to get their guy without a bidding war. Jose Julio Ruiz, a 25-year-old Cuban outfielder/first baseman, also took part in that February workout and is believed to be a superior hitter than Anderson. Reports have several teams chasing him, but he recently switched agents and that has slowed down the process of getting him into a big league camp. People said similar things about Alexei too. It's important to note that the Rays gave him a hefty bonus, and that he was still just a prospect despite being nearly MLB-ready. These bonuses for most teams probably come out of different (non MLB team) budgets. As a result, a scout may, for example, have no problem calling someone like Leslie Anderson a nice 4th OF and a starter on a mediocre or bad team, but if asked about that player he would appear to crap on him, and that's because the scout would recommend that any 7-figure bonus be given to a prospect with a higher ceiling either in the rule-4 draft or elsewhere. But in terms of value to an MLB club, Anderson at his pricetag could end up being a nice little bargain.

Having Alexei and Dayan here with a Spanish-speaking manager and coaches, along with Omar, could make us an ideal fit. He can't be too awful expensive.

This is a nice potential opportunity for us IMO. The guy can play CF legitimately plus RF plus back up 1B and is a lefty bat to boot. He has a little pop and some speed, plus he can draw a walk. He makes a lot of contact too, and that could help coming off the bench. I wonder if the Rays would be interested in Teahen + cash? Or if not, Anderson actually makes Teahen a better fit on the ballclub IMO. Bench: S Vizquel 2B/SS/3B R Castro C L Anderson LF/CF/RF/1B ???

Kyle Drabek is probably my favorite pitching prospect, and he's ready now. If he can do what he's capable of doing, along with Romero, that's going to be a nasty 1-2 punch. The Jays are really looking great after the Wells deal. I still can't believe that. And watch them get a nice piece or two out of Frankie Francisco around the deadline.

I think Park went to Japan or something.

Texas would have been the team to fleece, unless of course Kenny decided to be a total dick and go straight to Hank Steinbrenner with a ridiculously Sox-favored trade proposal. Hank might be dumb/desperate enough to make a deal too good for the Sox to pass up. But that would never happen since Cashman and Kenny are buds, and Kenny's a pro as it is. We aren't trading a starter for anything close to equal value right now. In order for a starter to be moved Kenny would have to be approached with a deal so ludicrous that he'd fire himself if he didn't accept it.

Eh. I was hoping for a legitimate CF but can't really complain. At least he was once a prospect.