Willihammer

I'm curious- how do we know these animals were abandoned? edit: your dog, chitown's cat etc. We had animals when I was a kid, seems like they were constantly trying to escape.

Way to squander a leadoff single Mollie.

So after the sac is executed successfully, the open base results in an IBB to our best hitter, and a lefty-on-lefty matchup. I suppose that's exactly what Molitor hoped for.

!!1!1!!!1!QWE Kqhkrq9 asoa09 @n2in

I wonder if Manship is good at trying knots. Or folding large blankets. Or paddles.

I think you can do better.

Did you just find my new avatar for me?

No explanation on the CLE broadcast. I'd guess it was the rocky first couple innings, pitch count, score, etc.

Speaking of Deduno, last seen relieving in the O's organization. 2016 numbers- 10 games, 1 start, 18 IP, 1.5 BB/9, 11.5 K/9. Only thing is they had him in the GCL!

Garner's FB is Deduno-esque

I want to see Clevenger, and his "windup" face off against Kevin Youkilis, and his "batting stance." The most annoying PA in history.

Wow, ok. Looked a couple inches in.

I honestly think he forgot the score, which is inexcusable. I'm glad Mollie actually did something about it.

LOL Rosario. He thinks he can get everyone out. I like that attitude.

Sanoooooooooooozie!

There are two sides to that coin for sure. I also don't miss Gardy calling players out by name to the media. I doubt that was very helpful. But, I think there is probably room for Molitor to be more of a nagger. The team commit way too many mistakes on almost a daily basis. Its worse than any year of the Gardy era IMO.

I've also asked myself how much credit/blame managers deserve for something like fundamentals. On the one hand, what are the minor leagues for? After thousands of innings in the system, players shouldn't need more than a fine tuning by the time they reach the show, right? Maybe we are seeing poorer fundamentals lately because of a breakdown in the minor leagues at teaching them. On the other hand, Gardy had to deal with rookies who didn't play smartly too, and at least visibly, he seemed a hell of a lot less tolerant of it. How many dugout interactions and outright benchings did we witness? A lot. With Molitor, we see no reactions, ever. I know its a difference of philosophy but I'm not sure its a better one. In Molitor's two seasons so far, the Twins have been bad/awful defensively. In the Gardy era, they were above average. My gut feeling is the two managers each deserve a good slice of the credit/blame for that, but I couldn't pin an exact number on it.

I suppose Dick will chalk 100% of that up to Buxton's speed right, about, now...

What is it, new avatar day?

Polanco got a new glove? Forgot to double bungie wrap, under the mattress, hot oil, 425 degrees etc.

Are you saying they were organized?

I suppose you can quantify the damages differently. I may not be giving due weight to the non-fee damages like any identity theft that might have resulted from it. If I were a shareholder, I would be less concerned about punishing the grunts who did the deeds and more concerned about what is going on that 5300 employees are independently breaking the law. Perhaps the sales quotas are unrealistic. Maybe the gr-eight objective is flawed, etc.

It was fraud but I doubt prosecuting them would do much. First of all, from an ethical standpoint consider the scale of damage. 2.1 million fraudulent accounts were opened, of which 100,000 incurred fees totalling $2.4m. An average of $452 of damage per employee. Termination seems more than proportional for that level of damage I'd say. Prosecution would be unnecessarily punitive. But, this has been going on since 2011. It went on for four years. The ghost accounts inched WFC towards its "Gr-eight" goal of increasing customer accounts by 33%. Middle management was certainly aware of it and it seems likely upper management was too to some degree. It was a systemic failure, not a case of 5300 bad apples.

Saw that. This is a sad story really. Not letting those 5300 employees off the hook, what they did was unethical. But, I reckon the vast majority of those employees setup the fake accounts with the specific goal of them not incurring any fees or impact the customers in any way at all. You have to understand how many customers still refuse to take their accounts online or do anything above rudimentary banking. Employees no doubt thought they could achieve the benefits of the incentive program without causing any actual harm to anybody. And if you look at the report, of the 565k ghost credit card accounts opened, only 14,000 incurred fees. Those fees included annual fees (which don't apply to all WF credit card account types), overdraft protection (which again doesn't apply to all account types). Thus I believe this small percentage (2.45%) is explainable by user error in opening the accounts incorrectly. The other 97.5% incurred no fees. (There were also late fees on some accounts which I can't explain). Its sad because the punishment of termination is going to be made to appease shareholders, but I guarantee the vast majority of those who participated caused no actual harm to their customers, and were just trying to achive the bonuses of this program. Again, what they did was wrong but clearly the punishment doesn't fit the crime for those employees. Full disclosure, I have a brother who works in retirement accounts for WFC. I'll just say, if you think your boss micromanages you, talk to a WFC employee sometime. Their account reps endure an extreme minute-by-minute tracking of their output along with regular performance reviews and quotas which impact their ability to schedule decent working hours, among other things. Its a hyper-corporate management structure and I think this type of thing is going to keep happening for WFC as long as they put the blame on employees and not this management style.