CubinNY

While securing a new stadium is great news for the Marlins they still have to fill seats. It's still debatable that people will support this club on a daily basis and fill the stadium. Obviously, if the revenues from the stadium allows them to keep the young talent they have that will help, but I have my doubts about whether or not Miami will come out for the Marlins. This is especially true as no one wanted to go to the Orange bowl to watch a game for fear of what might happen to them as they walked to their car. I hope this stadium will bring with it a revitalization of that part of Miami, but knowing the level of corruption in Miami, I highly doubt it.

I'm not an idiot, so I know this issue doesn't actually affect me. But, yes, I'm personally annoyed that violence between animals, which is organized and instigated by humans, is seen as entertainment. That watching pain/destruction/death can be fun for someone. Kind of like hearing that a serial killer used to burn insects and kill small animals. Not all violence-enjoyers are on that level, of course, but that's generally what the "enjoyment" of such a thing is, isn't it? Not to sound rude, but isn't that a pretty clear issue someone could have with it? As crazy as this sounds, I think we have to make a distinction about the activity. We eat chickens. We can pretend that the food in front of us was not previously alive. We can also be ignorant to the fact that the food was pumped so full of antibiotics and growth hormones that it could barley walk. We really don't want to know that it waddled around in its own feces for 6 to 10 weeks then was stuffed into a cage with 20 or 30 other birds as freight. We cannot think about the fact that the end of this life was a beheading. That doesn't change the fact that that's the way we get our meat. We don't eat dogs. Dogs are our pets. I would get no joy from watch cockfighting. I was invited to many while I lived in Jamaica, but it doesn't make those that do bad people.

I'd like him to also write an article about how horrible and sadistic meat companies are that he most likely buys his food from. On the subject of Chickens (and steer), pretty much all meat eating Americans have no moral high ground. God I sound like a PETa person. I've never understood this. Is there really a connection between eating animals and enjoying their pain and death? That would be like Ultimate Fighting fans being okay with cannibalism . . . okay, now I'm using extreme example. But do you see that point? Honestly, there's a disconnect between animal death and meat-eating -- I know this. It's a neccesity that has evolved. We feel better about it having not seen the death or presided over it. I can see the problem with that. But you're bringing morals into it. I think it's nothing more than squeamishness. Saying people who disagree with you are going off on some "moral high ground" can be a pretty easy way to seem like you're right. (not saying you aren't; i just want debate -- and that's a bad argument tactic.) And the "pretty much all meat-eating americans" . . . what's that mean? How are you qualifying those who are logically reconciling this paradox and those who aren't? I'm not even talking about eating them. The point I'm getting at is that before they are killed in whichever manner they are, many live in deplorable, pain and suffering inducing conditions. I honestly don't see the real disconnect between that and cockfighting. Hell, I'd even venture to guess some of those roosters live way better lives (up until the fight at least) than the majority of animals that get to wander through our meat processing industry. So to judge the situation from the American cultural view ends up seeming a bit asinine. Why is it asinine to judge it from a cultural view? You brought morals into it . . . how are we to judge what's moral and immoral? And you may be right that the eating isn's the important part. It's the enjoyment of the suffering. A chicken that suffers is just that . . . an animal whose life sucks a bit more than the average animal, which lacks reason and any semblence of a meaningful existance (other than being eaten by an animal that is superior, a la food chain). A person that enjoys said suffering is far worse, and thus the point of the matter. It's irrelevant how enjoyable the lives of the roosters are in regards to other chickens unless your argument favors cockfighting for the animal's sake. My point has been that one animal dying versus another animal dying is not an equal outcome, if one served bloodlust and the other violence. So your problem is that people get enjoyment out of it?

I just sent him an email asking what he was having for lunch. I also asked if his quest against Aaramis was tiring.

Ruth

I try to discover A little something to make me sweeter Oh baby refrain from breaking my heart I'm so in love with you I'll be forever blue That you give me no reason Why you're making me work so hard That you give me no That you give me no That you give me no That you give me no Soul, I hear you calling Oh baby please give a little respect to me I love that song!

I disagree. Just because it might prove to be the longest thread ever (and for whatever reason, posters are trying to do that), does not necessarily translate this thread into being "the best ever". If you ask me, there's too much fluff in this thread for it to be considered to be one of the best. It's the "fluff" and not the actual on-topic discussion that makes this one of the best. Hmm. Interesting. I guess everybody's different. How do other posters/members feel about this? The thread is a metaphor for the actual pursuit of Roberts. It's full of nonsense without much substance, therefore it is a perfect existential allegory. There will be none better. We haven't seen the likes of this since the famous Treebeard thread circa 2004.

I'm sure the Orioles fans appreciated it when he majorly scooped the Tejada trade! Since then, it's been a whole bunch of nothing though. I think it is real, real, hard to say he scooped the Tejada trade when everyone whose been paying attention knew that the O's were trading Tejada and almost every major sports media outlet posted Tejada to Houston rumors for 48 hours before the trade was consummated. You can believe what you want. Stupid spelling!

Yeah, stupid mods. Where are they anyway? Probably post padding some transaction thread or sumthin. make me a mod, I'll sort out the riffraff Am I riff or raff?

Any engineer/mathematician would laugh at the statement that unit less numbers aren't allowed or are somehow bad. Excellent post. I never looked closely at how most of the stats are generated and assumed that the stat guys had a handle on this...but some of the coefficients do sometimes seem arbitrary, and maybe rightly so for the reasons stated in one of your previous replies. It seems there might still be some room for some improvement. There's LOTS of room for improvement in the quantitative analysis of baseball, but it sure does beat the living tar out of subjective evaluations. Agreed completely. I guess I just imagined it was closer to "truth" than it actually is. That's one of the problems IMO, many are not looking for the truth. Many are trying to create models that approximate the truth then when the model disagrees with the true value they criticize reality and blame luck instead of looking for why or where the model went wrong.

Any engineer/mathematician would laugh at the statement that unit less numbers aren't allowed or are somehow bad. Excellent post. I never looked closely at how most of the stats are generated and assumed that the stat guys had a handle on this...but some of the coefficients do sometimes seem arbitrary, and maybe rightly so for the reasons stated in one of your previous replies. It seems there might still be some room for some improvement. There's LOTS of room for improvement in the quantitative analysis of baseball, but it sure does beat the living tar out of subjective evaluations.

EqA is like sausage, you don't want to see how it's made, you just want to bask in its goodness.

To quote Bruce Miles: And so it begins... You can't spell GRIT without Ryan Theriot.

I thought Michael Myers was a homicidal maniac who was invulnerable to death?

Bickering, but worth reading. Probably more so than any news on the Roberts trade would be. My guy says that with Peace21 out of the rumor business this entire thread will be nothing but bickering. However, my guy also says that Peace21 may just be posturing to get a better deal on the inside poopl from his guy .

Agreed. Rep. Burton's questioning of McNamee was just ridiculous. He had an agenda to pick him apart and did it in a dramatic fashion just to smear his credibility. He had no intention of getting to the bottom of the discrepancies. Roger appears to be full of it and now that the potential witness tampering has come out it just makes him look that much worse. Also the legal analyst on ESPN just said that it appears Republicans were siding with Clemens and Dems with McNamee and Mitchell report. I thought i was just blowing that out of proportion in my own mind. WTF is that about? In general, the right thinks that govt. has no business butting into this mess. I don't think they are pro-Clemens as much as they are anti-govt. involvement. The business reporters on CNBC are treating this affair like it is the Spanish Inquisition. They just have an overall dislike of any kind of oversight as they've shown for the last 7 years. In this instance, I tend to agree. It seems as if they have better things to do than this. Better things like protecting citizens from unlawful data mining and making sure that telephone companies don't get immunity. But, hey that's just me.

Lofton and Bruce both bat left-handed. How are they going to platoon? Lofton vs. all veterans, Bruce vs. all 1st or 2nd year pitchers. Close. Bruce would get all of the tough veteran pitchers who would make him look bad. can't trust Bruce to face the young pitchers, as we don't have the book on them yet Gotta give Kenny a rest dude. It's like you have an old dog and a young dog. You let your old dog run around with the young dogs, he's just gonna get tired out. Can't teach him new tricks or somethin. How does it go? It's going to be so much fun to have Dusty in the NL Central and not managing the Cubs. Reds44 will be banned by June 2.

It's like multiple VH1's....they call them VHs. Booooooo..... Hahaha, but no really that was funny. When you graduate will your blog be postgraduatecub.blogspot.com.org?

Hardin has also mocked the entire process. They have disdain for any Federal authority. DON'T MESS WITH TEXAS!1111!!!!111!!!

I'm actually quite surprised he's not listed in the article.

Pie would really have to suck for Payton to be a viable fall back plan. PECOTA projects an OPS for .697 for Payton. I just have a really bad feeling Pie's not going to hit. I think it is important to have realistic expectations of how he'll preform. I think it is realistic to expect a league average CF production from Pie with well above league average fielding. To me the problem is not putting Pie in CF it is that the Cubs don't have a strong enough team to let a talented young CF learn to be a major league player. They need Pie to produce.

Farnsworth was a 47th round draft choice. When used properly he was a pretty damn good relief pitcher. He's probably going to have a 10+ year major league career. I'm pretty sure he reached his potential. I think the fact that he had off-the-field issues is beside the point.

Not getting Roberts in ST might be the best thing for the Cubs. I'd really like to see what Sean G. can bring to the table. If he's as good as his pops says (increase in velocity, better control of secondary) he may be an important piece for the 2008 Cubs to hang on to. I really have little faith in Lieber, Marquis, or Dempster. Maybe in a few months Roberts won't look so attractive to the Cubs.

On the other hand they pretty much hate each other too which is rather amusing. I really have no problem with Desipio, they're kind of the WSI of the Cubs world. I'm glad there is an outlet for those type of people who are also Cub fans. It does keep out the riff raff. In all seriousness I wasn't casting aspersion on Desipio. I've gone on and read their board and some of the stuff is funny, but much of it resembles the Pedro Martinez Thread that just got locked. That type of thread would have gone on for weeks over there. It's just not my type of discussion.

He's taking a spritz and getting his nails done first. Then he has a high-colonic set for 3:00pm. After that it is off to the chiropractor, then the astrologer. It should be done sometime tomorrow or the next day. Are you telling us that shortly afterwards you'll be "DelmarvaShorebirds39"