TheLeviathan

I just don't think they view May as part of the bullpen. I think he's in some sort of weird limbo because they don't know what to do with him. I don't know who is to blame for that. And again, he can't pitch Perkins all night. At some point he's going to have to call on someone else who is highly likely to suck terribly at pitching. Get the man some better options and then it's fair to evaluate him.

Right, keep Lawrie off the bases or at first and we don't even have to see Casey Fien take the mound tonight.

I honestly don't think May is really part of the bullpen.

His closer blew his first save and his second best reliever blew the game. The problem is the quality of his options.

His closer blew his first save and his second best reliever blew the game. I don't put that on Molitor, I put that on ****ty options. I don't think May is really a reliever. I think they just don't know what the hell to do with him.

Double Dammit

Dammit

Probably, but we are running out of time with Arcia and we may be boxing ourselves into a really tough decision very soon given his options.

Watching the A's play (and Lawrie play awfully) reminded me of this thread. Damn I should've taken this bet......(And that's with Plouffe having a damn fine year too!)

In an effort to audition replacements for the Duensing Rule (let's face it, this is our last hurrah, it's been a good run), I'd like to suggest the following..... We need a catcher? Let's just move Rosario there. Problem solved! We'll call it the Rosario Rule. (Has good alliteration too, that's a bonus)

You know what I meant. I think the Norris deal was the one smart move he made in a sea of stupidity. Time to see if we can get him to revert to his stupidity again. He's the ideal target.

School choice is the free market and it will necessarily cause wide swaths of inadequate educations for children with no choice. It is one of the most fundamental parts of our society and every time I hear someone say "let the market decide" on schools - I want to kick something. It's unconscionably stupid. Schools won't just die overnight. You'll have years of diminished education that will harm millions of children every year across the country. Worse yet, in time, the motive of profit will override the motive to be the best at educating. This is precisely what happened with colleges - they didn't shift overnight. But as the money became a bigger and bigger factor in their motives the education element eroded. If you turn primary and secondary education into a "competition" for parent dollars you will transform the primary motivation of those schools from "education" to "money". It will happen. Hell, that's the basic idea behind the free market - profit as a motivator will make the "best" survive. That is going to create a HUGE problem. Centralizing funding will help considerably. Paying people enough to justify the difficulty of the profession and the work that goes into it will help considerably. (We'll actually keep some people around instead of losing half our teaching force before they're experienced enough to get really good at it) But no one said "more of the same". There are a variety of other things we need to fix, such as: no longer worrying so much about age and worry more about ability for class structure. We need to shift the focus from spending such an inordinate amount of time and money on the lowest rung of ability and more into the middle. (Not abandon the lowest rung, but shift some of those resources) We need to break apart the bureaucratic hierarchy of schools and stop wasting so much money on big projects and spend it on day to day help for teachers and students. We need to understand that unions today are not what they once were - they have too much power to keep people employed and dictate money spent. (This goes for police, labor, and every other major union) All of that will go much farther than giving parents "choice" with their tax money. The only parents with "choice" will already have choices available to them. The ones that will be hurt the most will be the ones that never really had a choice. Rural kids will still have no choice. The poorest kids will still have no choice. All that will happen is a diminishing of their education. And for a very few lucky ones from those areas it might mean sitting on a bus for two hours every day to get there. And, worst of all, in time schools will worry more about their bottom line than their effectiveness at educating.

Jesse Hahn had a history of health issues too (SDP sold high) and RJ Alvarez was considered by many to be a blown elbow waiting to happen. Either way using ill-advised SDP trades from this offseason as a gauge of value is probably a poor methodology. Is that package in favor of the Twins? Yeah, probably. Spitballing trade ideas and hypotheticals is never going to be much of a science. Way too many variables, so don't miss the forest for the trees.

I still have a lot of confidence in Arcia, he's only 24. He just seems way older. As for Norris' greatness, relative to the catching situation in MLB I'm not sure how there can be much question he's upper echelon.

I disagree and that's coming from someone that isn't a fan of having Arcia in the field. But it definitely sets this team up beautifully when Hunter is gone and Buxton is in at CF. It's the kind of move you make for the future.

The more I think about this the more I'm on board and hoping it could happen: Dozier Hunter Mauer Sano Plouffe Arcia Norris Rosario Santana Sign me up.

You may be right (especially about it being an offseason deal), my biggest hesitation is opening up CF. I would assume we would move Rosario to CF and call up Arcia to play LF in the scenario of doing it before the deadline.

I honestly believe we could land Norris with a Hicks-led package of players. It's one of the positions they have the most need at.

http://knickswag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/lloyd.png

Here's a tough one..... What if their price is something like Aaron Hicks (they desperately need a CF) and Jake Reed? Would you do it? I'd lean yes, due to Buxton and our glaring hole at catcher.

On what do you base that claim? I can literally pull quotes from dozens of influential leaders in Iran that explicitly state things like "cutting out the cancerous tumor" or "wiping them off the map". It is all but the national damn motto in Iran's government. The thing is, if Israel wanted to kill Palestinians in droves - it could. Tomorrow. But they don't. Have they been reckless with some of their retaliations? Hell yes. Have they overreached and been belligerent? Yes. But they are also a progressive, westernized society that treats people decently within their borders. Their neighbors? Not so much. We're talking about the difference between a nation that allows gay marriage and their neighbors who toss gay people off buildings. This is not an equal stance of hate and oppression. Do I feel for the Palestinians? Hell yes. A bunch of Western beaucrats put them out of a home and started this whole mess. But Israel anywhere near the threat of hate and violence of Iran? Or Syria? Or Hezebollah? No, that's just a gross misunderstanding of the situation.

They might not be - but the Padres are a dumpster fire with a young catcher that may be ready to step in soon. It's one of the first places I'd call about a catcher.

Well, for starters, those nations that have openly admitted publicly that it is their mission to annihilate, massacre, and destroy the Israeli state. It's been openly declared many times since the foolish decision to plop Israel there that many of their neighbors would love to commit genocide. (It doesn't take much time on google, for example, to find leading public officials from Iran calling for the extinction of Israel) I would put most of the hate burden right there.

I don't have a problem with brush backs. "It's the way it is and always has been" is as weak an argument for anything as can possibly be mustered. Being a butt hurt jerk doesn't have to be the way it's played. It could, and bear with me on this crazy notion, actually let some guys have some personality! God forbid though....it's not the "way it is".

So that excuses acting like 6 year olds? And even if people are irritated by small things, it's only baseball that has a whole series of rules justifying physical retaliation for it. Let Chris Archer be himself. Let Gomez be himself. The game is FAR better for it. And it's fine to be competitive, but there is nothing competitive about beaning a guy for having a showy home run trot - that's just sour grapes. That's just being a jerk. Competition is going back out the next time and sitting his butt down with a strikeout.