PseudoSABR

Who goes to AAA--dare I say Buxton? I say keep that fire lit under Hicks.

Prophetic thread, Nick.

It all depends on the unstated reasons for his lack of promotion, doesn't it? If those aspects of his 'game' haven't been substantively addressed--even in spite of his recent AAA success--then it wouldn't do Hicks or the Twins good to promote him. That said, I hope he's up soon enough. Let's hope he can count the outs when he's here.

In the beginning, there was the game thread. -- I'm surprised Rosario hasn't gotten a chance in center, he can't be any more mediocre than Schaffer.

I flipped on Baseball Tonight when I got home today, and I noticed the format may have changed since I had last watched (or paid attention). Ravich, Kruk were gone. Tonight, Tim Kirchen acted as moderator/host with a table of Stark, Keith Law, Buster Olney, and some other guy. And I find myself actually paying attention. There's still plenty of hokey stories and self-congratulatory laugh lines, but the show is actually tolerable. My question: has the format really changed, or is this just an every once in a while thing?

The whole picture is this: these aren't isolated bad cops or poorly behaving Black people. The problem is systemic--we have a social and police structure that allows for this kind brutality to consistently happen without impunity. I don't know how anyone can deny the racial component of the police brutality--no needs media to cram that down our throats, reality should have done it long ago (one wonders why not?). Police are representative of the rule of law and the authority of our society in general; when the police fail--so consistently--to rid their ranks and their policies that disproportionately affects a certain population--well that population isn't going to put much onus in the rule of law or authority in general. When the police--whose role should be a noble one--abuse their authority, break the law, and undercut our constitution the penalties need to be far more severe than they are for a regular citizen, because the opportunity and authority to cover it up is widespread, and the social costs of that abuse are very, very severe. The media--of course--sensationalizes the reality unhelpfully, but the media is what it is. The fact that we are all paying attention to police brutality is a good thing. The alternative, where the media has been silent for so long, cannot be the preferred course. I think some of the worse things we can be saying is "Not all cops are bad" or "Not all Black people are discriminated against"--that just serves to disguise the reality that too many cops are bad, and too many Black people are discriminated against. These contentions have already been dominant in our culture to the point that we've ignored the issue; bringing them to the forefront only will erode what effort we have to reform.

http://i.imgur.com/l8fAR18.jpg

There's going to be no respect of the law, if the law is carried out in a way that neglects common decency. A society cannot expect deference from a population its laws seem not to serve. While I agree, in the ideal, the filpside would also be true--that every population would show respect of law--but in this instance, I don't think having that expectation is realistic or fair.

Right. That's pretty impressive. It begs the question who do the police work for? Who does the law work for?

Just some quick thoughts. Anytime there's civil unrest and/or public assembly with large masses of people, there's plenty of other people who direct that public energy towards destruction and looting. These aren't the same people, though it's presented as such in the media. Often the populations that suffer the most, that have the most need to assemble and protest, lack the organizational expertise and infrastructure to manage such large masses of people without incident. I just hope some people don't use the destruction and looting to justify inhumane police tactics. No one--not even the guilty--deserve the casual brutalities that have become commonplace law enforcement techniques.

Still the right call, even with the poor result.

Good thread, OP! The Twins mediocrity thus far allows them to tread water and reassess who they should keep and who they should promote. I'm sure the Twins had some fuzzy if-everything-goes-right feelings, but really the outcome we have is the one they probably had planned on. Hopefully in a month, some promotions will be in order and it will be clear whom to jettison.

Utterly boring to think about Hillary Clinton's second candidacy. Josh Marshall gives a fair situation report. I say this with dismay, but it's hard to see anyone beating her either in the primary or the general.

Late in Spring Training, don't starters go pitch in the bullpen after they are pulled from the game to get their pitch count up?

No, it's still an opinion, supported by some facts, but could be disputed by a bunch of other facts. I blame the four-year run of 90-losses on bad luck (concussions to Morneau, Mauer; injuries and ineffectiveness of Baker, Slowey, and Blackburn; TJ for Gibson and Wimmers, etc.) and drafting for so many times at the end of the first round (and largely not hitting on those), add some Bill Smith trades and wa-la. What's important is that both takes are supported by facts, and there is a debate to be had. You might feel that the evidence weighs in favor your opinion, but that's hardly determined by realism. What's also "realistic" is that the Twins will be competitive in the next two-to-three years, and it will because of the same vilified people in the front office. Most of the negative complaints are really at the margins that won't effect our most competitive time frame. Perhaps a better move here or there, the team is slightly more competitive slightly sooner than planned, but really, the FO evaluations are pretty short-sighted.

I just want to emphasize no one has an exclusive claim on realism. I think we should avoid characterizing our own responses as realistic, which of course, begs the question that everyone else is simply being unrealistic. Example, while it is 'realistic' to suggest the Twins won't be very good this year; it is not 'realistic' to say that is because the FO is horrible at their job--the latter is an opinion.

This sounds like the reasoning of Indiana lawmakers when they passed their recent, popular law.

I didn't intend to single you out, so no need to defend yourself. My point was that it's far more common for negativity to pervade than optimism; what optimism does emerge, well gets dashed pretty quickly, whether that's the crux of any one poster's intentions.

1) No one is doing that. No one is posting about rainbows, which should tell you something. There was a post that linked to an article predicting Mauer to win the batting title. The very first post said it was laughable. The raincloud makers are poised to roll over any rainbows should they emerge. 2) Rainbows are dumb; but so is adding a dig about the Front Office in unrelated (or tangentially-related) thread; not all of us feel the same about it; and the exasperation some posters have about the FO is gratingly arrogant 3) Just stop justifying the negativity. We get it. No one in this thread is myopic to the negative aspects of the FO decision making. We get it; we really do. The problem is that every negative outcome (May being sent down; Santana's suspension; etc.) is used to trumpet that justification. And these justifications are taken as objective, as opposed to just an opinion, which is what they are.

It's fine to be negative or skeptical, but it's annoying to relate every issue and thread back to how horrible the front office has been for so long, and how the poster has been right this whole time. Especially when the poster doesn't try to put a lot of thought or effort into an obviously inflammatory post. I certainly hope the tone will change when we have actual baseball to talk about, but I imagine the same culprits will still spin their negative ideological takes. I just don't see anything productive by allowing such latitude for the same posters to post mirror negative assertions in each and every thread. If a poster has communicated the same idea in a different thread, I think that's grounds in and of itself for moderation, in spite of the negativity. Whatever happened to optimism Springs eternal? The fact is that there is not the corollary amount of optimism here. Not that there should be, but without that balance, the place seems awfully gloomy for the beginning of a season.

Or maybe it is? Relapses that are short in duration and separated by years make clear the struggle of addiction and the capacity for the addict to rise above that addiction whose draw is constant. I'd be more inclined to agree with your presumption, if Hamilton had not come forward, or demonstrated behavior more than a discrete relapse. However, the tough-on-addiction model is pretty foolhardy and divorced from the reality addicts face.

The Left may have some unifying underlying belief, but the problem is each individual liberal has a different idea of how to go about realizing those beliefs and where to begin. The Right is largely on the same page--esp. with the emphasis on small government and deregulation. Policy that limits government action (e.g. policy-making) does not require the same bureaucratic depth that social program policy or regulation. I think the Left wants higher education to be free, without the need to go into debt. It's certainly not a liberal idea to get the banks involved in the pursuit of higher education. The loan-higher education thing is more consensus/appeasement thinking. It's not a comprise between liberal and conservative values, rather it's each side appeasing to base continents (the poor and the banks respectively). It is probably true that liberals would support loan-financing for higher education than choose a system that would provide no, or little, means for low-income kids to attend college. But that doesn't mean that choice represents liberal policy as they would have it.

A few points: The left is ineffective at policy largely because they are divergent group; the ideology on the left is extremely diverse and not necessarily universally held. Not all animal rights people are socialist, not all war-on-poverty people believe in gun control, etc. etc. The right--either by religion or economic belief--has an incredibly uniform ideology which allows for more refined policy. The elected-Democrats are appeasers, they champion the comprise not a position. Take ACA, no one on the left really was for a marketplace with a individual mandate, the Left wanted single payer; but the elected-Dems already pre-comprised and presented the comprise as their position (a Heritage foundation idea no less). It should have been no surprise that the Right vilified ACA ever as much as they would have single-payer. Appeasement makes for bad policy; just like consensus does. Consensus type policy pleases everyone who votes for it but the policy consensus makes is not designed to actually function either efficiently or efficaciously. (Another example, welfare. The Left doesn't want to give a man fish (the handout/food stamps), the Left wants to teach a man to fish; the former however is far cheaper (in the short term at least) than the latter. Handouts are cheaper than training or WPA programs or day care or actual policy. That's were consensus leads us, cheap policy to fix expensive problems). What makes Warren so attractive is that her candidacy probably has real policy behind it that isn't cowed to appeasement or consensus. But the thing is, the liberals that actually can write (or champion) functional policy don't get elected, and the mechanism of congress would dilute whatever policy might stand a chance of passing. I think the best thing for this country might to have Cruz has the GOP nominee; let's actually expose the ideas of teh far right to public debate, rather than the echo chamber. I under why so many can get behind the value system exposed by Cruz and his ilk, but I doubt those who champion Cruz realize how poorly such ideas would play out, and how unpopular they would be to the majority of Americans.

I figured as much. My sarcasm must have been lost, as I think it's pretty clear there's reasonable distinction between injuries that certainly require invasive surgeries and those injuries where rest and rehab are more appropriate path for the human being that happens to be a baseball player.

Why No Rest & Rehab!?!