TheLeviathan

Super Nintendo of course.

We should be viewing this as a 1A and 1B situation, but the investment is leading us to think otherwise. It likely is for the Twins as well.

We're two pages in and no one has talked about Ken Griffey Jr. Baseball the video game? For shame... Glad for Griff, was hard not to appreciate the way he played. Helluva talent, well deserved honor.

Oh for sure, Rubio has a lot of value and that makes it clear. I'd just like him to be a threat driving the ball. Or to create three point opportunities that way. It would help so damn much.

Yeah, I still see a ton of value for Rubio for the other things he does. But good god, how can he be so bad at finishing layups and drives inside? He'd be amazing if he could just force people to collapse on his drives but there is so little fear of him that it's crippling at times.

I was responding to the absurd contention that Ryan's bullpens had been our issue winning a world series. That blame would fall on utterly choking time and time again. But Ryan's bullpens have rarely been the team's weak point.

Their bullpens were actually pretty good back then. From 2002-2008 they ranked: 9, 10, 12, 4, 1, 11, and 12th in ERA. Hardly a track record of failure.

Metrics that are likely to not be as sterling very quickly as he ages.

I think I could tolerate Ricky's horrific outside shooting if he didn't suck so terribly to finish inside. He'd be a pretty damn dangerous player if he could sink any shot, but he's terrible from pretty much everywhere.

I think Ryan does a pretty good job dumpster diving on bullpen pieces. He's pretty good at that. He also overly relies on that strategy, the two aren't mutually exclusive.

Except, clearly, as was the case with Buxton. Or Hicks. Or, hell, maybe even Arcia. Or the case for many, many, many other players for the Twins and many other teams. Teams call players up all the time who refine their game against big leaguers. You sort of have to, there is no lineup in AAA that prepares you for the Blue Jays. There is no pitching staff that prepares you for Cardinals. Arcia had a strikeout problem and he needs to adjust to that against major league pitching, all nick is saying is that we should have been giving a talent like Arcia as many at-bats as is humanly possible to see if he can translate his minor league success to the majors. And we still should be.

This, we are really right-handed heavy.

You think that "history" is really any different? She was very clearly pandering from the get go. Cheap, stupid things like this just stink of a candidate being an empty husk.

I don't know, as a single issue no it shouldn't sway you, but it does say something about her character.

I don't care how long ago she was rooting for them, this is pretty obvious pandering.

You're conflating issues - you can't take public perception and turn that into a statistic of how much it's actually happening. Those aren't the same thing.

If you haven't watched The Walking Dead, you should know that Berenthal is about the best possible Punisher casting you can imagine.

I'm not saying it's a good or bad move, just that "cutting" like that doesn't happen in baseball. It would be extremely unusual. But I agree, at this point I don't see how it's a bad thing to dump him with cash just to open a roster spot.

Trade with cash, yes. Cut....no.

Businesses do this all the time, but it is uncommon in baseball.

I was speaking about pre-college education in this remark. Demand is only inelastic because we created that problem 50 years ago. We should make vocational training free, that's fine because that's the sh-t we're stuck in now.

Great show, but I prefer Fisk/Kingpin to Killgrave personally. But Jessica Jones and the hero characters were fantastic. I'd put Daredevil a slight bit ahead, but I tend to focus on the villains.

Injuries happen. So do regressions. And, most importantly, kids need time to adjust. Thinking this team can just call everyone up and win a World Series is naive and, frankly, unfair to these kids we're hitching our wagon on to. Let's be excited, but also patient and realistic.

I highlighted some of the thoughts I most wanted to respond to. The first one is spot on. People wonder why car sales and house sales are down....well you've basically deprived a generation of buying power until they are in their 30s and 40s. We've pushed that whole picture of purchasing power back at least a decade. It's having a tremendously negative effect on the economy as you rightly said. I would push back on the second point. I think people not in education hear this sort of thing and think it's more relevant than it is. Standardized tests are not that big of a deal. There are too many stakes attached to them for sure, but the truth is some form of standardized assessment is a necessity. We just have to stop attaching dollars to it and a number of other consequences to both schools and students. But we are also teaching things sooner to kids now than they ever were previously. The issue is more societal - what is truly important for a college student to know? How do we teach that? Don't kid yourself into thinking that universities have been dumbed down by necessity. They've purposefully dumbed down the rigor of college. They have softened the content, told teachers not to push back on students, encourage teachers to pass their students regardless of their performance. The truth is, they realize they have to keep handing out degrees or people will stop dipping into the trough to hand them money. This isn't a "we had to dumb down, kids just can't handle this", this was "the only way we can keep bringing in these escalating tuition costs is to embrace a lower quality student and ensure we never get a reputation that your money was wasted" I mean, think about it: What do college invest all this money in? Their assistant professors? Higher quality teachers? Or into big stadiums, fancy dorms, spiffy signs, and other cosmetic crap that makes it seem like a good investment? This is almost entirely university driven in terms of the problem we have. As for that last point, I was in the same boat so I appreciate the need to ahve money available to those with the ability and the need. The problem is we have to tailor that available money in such a way that it doesn't encourage exploitation and misuse. Handing all universities and students a federal subsidy is the exact opposite of that. We have to go back, undo the Great Society model of stupidity, and start with something that makes both fiscal sense and allows us to maximize the intelligence and ability of our populace.

Yeah, there should be a variety of contingencies that ensure it's being used for a higher education and not a place to get drunk. More than anything though, we've fed colleges more money than they deserve and all they do is keep bleeding us year after year for more. That's the problem. Sanders federally subsidizing it would be an outright disaster in this climate.