Hairyducked Idiot

Major league hitting is a skill that I'm not sure just attitude can help you develop. We're more than halfway to the significance threshold for K-rate and he's at 51.4%. It'd be a pretty amazing adjustment if he can ever get that down below 30%.

I don't see it. Isn't he the one with the ridiculous platoon split?

Jed takes the fall this year to cover up for Epstein's failures. Next year it's Theo's turn.

Are you really going to get multiple "first-round talents?" The "first-round talents" that fall don't seem like they are going to be all that impressive in the new CBA.

Except for the fact Boise is short-season A ball, Bruce. I've heard it referred to either way. "Rookie ball" can refer to both AZL and Boise, and "A ball" can mean Boise through Daytona.

That sounds like me. And I'm still sort of sticking with it. It takes more than 2/3rds of a season for me to say a guy is going to be durable enough to be a starter. But I'm a lot more excited than I was. Plus your opinion changes with a light breeze Which is how it should be. Baseball is too complicated and too fluid to not have ever-changing opinions. That's football. Baseball is neither complicated nor fluid. I agree.

That sounds like me. And I'm still sort of sticking with it. It takes more than 2/3rds of a season for me to say a guy is going to be durable enough to be a starter. But I'm a lot more excited than I was. Plus your opinion changes with a light breeze Which is how it should be. Baseball is too complicated and too fluid to not have ever-changing opinions.

That sounds like me. And I'm still sort of sticking with it. It takes more than 2/3rds of a season for me to say a guy is going to be durable enough to be a starter. But I'm a lot more excited than I was.

I like the way you think.

So, you're not in the camp that thinks Brenly is racist, no matter which way the racism is implied? Enough with this whole "this person is or is not a racist" duality. It's more complicated than that. Many people in the local media allow racially tinged stereotypes to color their views. It's more intellectual laziness than it is outright hostility toward people of non-white races.

Brenly calling players out has everything to do with hoping that if he acts meatbally enough, some meatball owner will give him a job.

You keep making inferences that aren't there to be made. The media has a habit of trying to run players out of town. Carlos Zambrano was shipped out. That doesn't mean I think the media ran him out of town. The two were coincidental. They're beginning to work on Castro, too, but he's not going anywhere. Huh? You said, "I don't care that Zambrano was traded. I care that he was made the victim of a ridiculous media campaign to run him out of town." Isn't that saying you think the media did or attempted to run him out of town? The media makes a player or two a scapegoat every year. They try to run that player out of town with the sort of coverage we've been talking about for the last two years. Whether that player actually leaves town or not is up to the front office. So the media doesn't actually run anyone out of town, despite their yearly efforts to do so that coincidentally have focused on a minority player pretty much every year since Todd Hundley.

You keep making inferences that aren't there to be made. The media has a habit of trying to run players out of town. Carlos Zambrano was shipped out. That doesn't mean I think the media ran him out of town. The two were coincidental. They're beginning to work on Castro, too, but he's not going anywhere.

It was originally about how writers and the fans treat certain players. I wasn't alive when Santo played, so I don't know how the fans felt about him. It probably can't be accurately described, as people are arguing about how players were perceived 5-10 years ago. But it's clear that the writers did not like him, as illustrated by the Hall of Fame votes. Most specifically, we are talking about the current, local Chicago media. This is a relatively recent trend that has been getting worse in recent years.

Nobody is misunderstanding anything but you. You tried to use a pathetic analogy stating that incidents, many of them isolated, by white guys, were ignored by the fans and press, while Zambrano was a victim of racism. I went on to cite that if a kid like you remembers the "white guy" stuff when he wasnt even alive to see much of it, it must have gotten, and continues to get plenty of press. I then went on to cite how your beloved white guys were treated as badly as Zambrano. Zambrano would have been gone from most organizations long before the Cubs finally cut him loose. . Lots of bad equivocation in that post. "Ignored" doesn't mean nobody ever heard of it (though some of the incidents were very sparsely reported on compared to what you would get today. It took some digging to find. Most casual fans will have never heard of it). It means ignored when forming opinions. Disregarded. Your "treated as badly" isn't applicable because again, this isn't about how the Cubs organization or Hall of Fame voters treated the players. I don't care that Zambrano was traded. I care that he was made the victim of a ridiculous media campaign to run him out of town. You are either misunderstanding or intentionally trying to obfuscate in order to turn a blind eye to the institutional racism. I was giving you the benefit of the doubt.

People are having trouble understanding what is being discussed. We are not talking about how the Cubs front office treats players, nor how national HOF voters perceive them. Well, we are now, but that's not what we were before those were put up as poorly thought rebuttals.

You have a very, very interesting view of how those players are perceived.

Also he can't really hit.

Binge drinking was Grace. Punching a concession stand worker was Santo. And that's not even half of Santo's list.

Several of them are Ron Santo, one is Ryne Sandberg, one is Mark Grace.

Count me among the banned. Did he proceed to DM you 5 times explaining how you're an idiot and how they have all deserved it and he talked bad about Prior on occasion, including links? All I got was a "what the hell are you babbling about" message.

Remember that time Zambrano retired because he was having a bad season, abandoning the team, without coming back? Remember when he wouldn't stop showing up opponents with a dance move on the field? What about when he kept taking out younger players on binge drinking session before day games? Or the time he choked his manager? Punched a concession vendor? Oh wait, those were beloved, untouchable white players. If you can't see it, it's only because you don't want to see it. I admit that I'm not a smart dude. So, I will say I don't understand what you are saying here. Athletes are almost universally jerks. People are jerks, and athletes are people who are put into lives where their jerkish tendencies are coddled and encouraged. The media in Chicago, especially that around the Cubs, tends to let jerkiness slide if they like the athlete enough, and being white is a great head start. Ron Santo had a list of bad deeds that would make Carlos Zambrano look like a candidate for sainthood, but one is run out of town and the other is still having his rigor mortised corpse lovingly caressed.

Remember that time Zambrano retired because he was having a bad season, abandoning the team, without coming back? Remember when he wouldn't stop showing up opponents with a dance move on the field? What about when he kept taking out younger players on binge drinking session before day games? Or the time he choked his manager? Punched a concession vendor? Oh wait, those were beloved, untouchable white players. If you can't see it, it's only because you don't want to see it.

This is going to be the most disappointing sweep ever.

At a customer site this week, so I'll be limited in my time for research. I remember seeing things on this quite a few years back, though. Heck, some of the mainstream guys even got hold of it. I had this argument the awhile back with someone, and when he asked me to produce the studies, it turned out... there weren't really any that I could find. A lot of "common knowledge" in stathead circles on pitcher abuse is based on a debunked Verducci column.