cabiness42

Our main office just got the order to start printing furlough letters.

I used to ride that train quite a bit. Pretty scary.

Just do home-and-home series with away runs as the tiebreaker.

No, tanking is unlikely to magically net you a franchise-saving player. As much as we've focused on that #3 pick in the first round, remember that the Sox also get the #3 pick in every round, along with the additional slot money that comes along with those picks. While it doesn't carry the magnitude of the NBA, having the #3 pick is still better than having the #19 pick, and you get to play the exact same number of postseason games. Also, I think the thing the 99 losses did more than anything was magnify the lack of offensive talent, especially in the area of OBP, that this organization currently has. In 2012, scoring the 4th most runs in the AL and being in a pennant race until the last week of the season was a total fluke, and it blinded everybody, myself included, as to how little offensive talent was actually there.

16 hours until I'm on indefinite furlough.

UConn has lost their coach and their conference--they're no longer a Top 20 program.

OK, poll shows up now. Not sure what went wrong earlier.

I figured if I just made it one Stanly Cup everybody would pick that choice so I gave the Hawks a bit of a handicap. I also gave baseball a better chance by lumping both teams together, because, well, look at their records. I voted for the Bears. EDIT: I screwed something up--the poll isn't showing up.

So it's Japan's fault that the Royals suck.

I don't care how far you just hit that ball, talking trash to a team that's 22 games ahead of you is dumb.

Axelrod's ERA+ is 75 and Keppinger's OPS+ is 62. That wasn't my rationale for every grade, but relative to the norms for their positions, Keppinger was much more of a failure.

Only graded 25 players: A: Sale, Crain A-: AGarcia, Quintana, Lindstrom B+: Rios, Santiago, Reed B: Dunn, Peavy, Thornton B-: Viciedo, DeAza, DanksI, Jones C+: Gillaspie C: Beckham, DanksII, Veal C-: Konerko, Ramirez D+: Axelrod D: Keppinger D-: Flowers, Phegley

One more I just thought of: Scott Radinsky, because he was the first South Bend White Sox (now SilverHawks) player to make it to the majors.

Ross Gload

I'm not asking what a bunch of corrupt politicians would have approved--I'm asking what would have been a better plan than the current one.

AJ was the freest swinger on a team that included Alexei Ramirez and Dayan Viciedo. That's saying something.

No, not setting up new exchanges. Using the existing exchange for Federal employees and allowing any American to participate in that exchange. Also, instead of mandating coverage by employers (which is worthless since it creates tons of loopholes), just give tax incentives to businesses to provide coverage to the point where nearly every employer will want to provide coverage. Also, by being able to participate in the Federal employee exchange, the cost to businesses should be lower.

I don't remember if I've mentioned this idea here before or not. Federal civilian employees can choose from dozens of different plans from a variety of providers, with the employer (government) picking up 3/4 of the cost and the employee paying the other 1/4 via pre-tax payroll deduction. Because the workforce is so large (> 2 million), the prices are lower than what some random person could get buying directly from an insurance company and also lower than what small employers could get for group plans. Why could the government not just pass a law requiring insurance providers to offer the same prices to every American that they offer to Federal employees? Then, even if private employers aren't providing it to employees, at least the employees have affordable options. Then you could throw in some kind of incentive for employers to cover some/most/all of the cost.

If you have 29 friends to hold guns to the heads of the other GMs in order to keep him from getting a better offer, that's a great plan.

Don't see any way Floyd gets re-signed, but he's on the 60DL so he's not taking up a roster spot.

6 days

So, 4 days from the end of the season, is there any surgery that isn't season-ending?

The extent of unfair advantages is impossible to measure, but you have to admit that at least some recruits are swayed by illegal gifts, and I also think you have to agree that it would be impossible for the NCAA to have any sort of system where it tries to measure the amount of advantage in each specific case.

You must have missed the part where I said it isn't fair. The problem is the NCAA can't do anything to the booster. The only leverage the NCAA has is to make the booster unhappy by penalizing the program.

But the university knew what was going on and they could have stopped it regardless of whether or not others were involved. I'm talking about situations where people outside the university are providing money/stuff directly to players. The NCAA doesn't have the reach to sanction those individuals so penalties to the school are the only option.