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Willihammer

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Everything posted by Willihammer

  1. Willihammer
    I bet they get Gurriel or Freese at the 11th hour. Maybe Uribe. 3B is an obvious weak spot and there are so many guys available.
  2. Willihammer
    He had the highest walk rate of any pitcher to throw 120+ IP. He's not going to be a #1 or 2 unless he gets that under control. He's still young, he could turn it around and be the next CC Sabathia. Personally I see Gio Gonzalez as a more likely ceiling. Maybe a floor of Trevor Bauer.
  3. Willihammer
    The Sox have some pretty trashy pitchers on the roster. Matt Albers, Scott Carroll, Danks, Duke, etc. They might score a couple more runs but the pitching looks bleak IMO. Catching is weak, Navarro can't block a pitch to save his soul. Ro-daahn walks too many to be more than a #3. Back end of the rotation could be ugly. Like MN Twins cca 2013 ugly.
  4. Willihammer
    They got Brantley, Kipnis, Santana, and Gomes. Those are 4 pretty good hitters. Almonte is an interesting wildcard, he's pretty dynamic when he's on. The lineup has a couple question marks but they could be okay. The starting pitching and bullpen should keep them in most games. I look for Zimmer as a possible mid-season OF call up if he rakes in AA which he easily could.
  5. Willihammer
    Gardy's the strength and conditioning coach?
  6. Willihammer
    Merlins Rest is THE whisky spot. 36th and Lake. Keys and Hell's Kitchen are both good brunch choices. Keys does not take reservations IIRC so you'll want to get there early. At the slightly higher end/classy scale, Lucia's on 31st St just west of Hennepin is a good spot. That's a good place to make a dessert run too if you want to eat somewhere elsewhere in uptown.
  7. Willihammer
    I wish Baseball-reference broke down reliever splits by pitch# into more granular increments. Seems like Perk's stuff played fine against LH and RH hitters for the first 15 pitches or so, then he quickly started hanging sliders and losing velo on his FB, and that's when he got into most of his trouble.
  8. Willihammer
    Love Arcia's swing. Park's got a happy front foot. Will be curious to see if that's still around in 6 months. Walker's swing, IMHO, looks like it should be torn down and rebuilt.
  9. Willihammer
    Graham was the long reliever. Stauffer at the early part of the year. Obviously if the starting staff improves, a lot of this is moot. I hope that's the case but I'm not as optimistic as you about that. I think we need to prepare for a lot of games that don't finish neatlyi with LOOGY, setup, closer, etc. That means flexibility from relievers. That means a lot of lefties facing righties and vice versa. You can only shuttle players to and from AAA so much to compensate for that. And the strength of the org quite clearly is RHRP, not LHRP. So if a LH reliever isn't among the 7 or 8 best relievers, so be it.
  10. Willihammer
    I'm just annoyed with the fixation on being lefthanded. If Chargois or Burdi or Meyer or one of the other RH pitchers can do a better job, overall, they should have the roster spot. That seems like that would be best for the team.
  11. Willihammer
    Cards starters also threw 60 more IP than Twins starters last year. Or the difference of about one full time reliever. I know its technically possible to deploy a strict loogy, on a team with a good starting staff. But that does not describe the Twins and it also comes with tradeoffs (namely, a shorter bench).
  12. Willihammer
    O'Rourke presents the same problem Duensing did. Sure he's good against lefties but he's gonna have to face righties, and he can't get them out. Neither can Rogers actually, at least not as a AAA starter (.830 OPS against). There just isn't enough roster space for a true LOOGY.
  13. Willihammer
    Where's Bark? Bark!
  14. Willihammer
    TR mentioned Rogers in his convo with Atteberry on GO last week. I'm ~75% sure it was in reference to the LH relief situation. Did anyone else hear that?
  15. Willihammer
    To tweak a phrase from Winston Churchill, Capitalism is the worst form of economics, except all the others that have been tried.
  16. Willihammer
    No, they will be lost permanently. Just like there is a permanent variance between unemployment and participation rates between China and the United States, and another permanent gap between the US and Europe. Raising the federal min. wage would push the US towards a higher, permanent unemployment rate.
  17. Willihammer
    Good post. Its worthwhile to step back and look at things in a historical context. You are wrong about one important thing: the middle class. As capitalism has gone global, poverty rates are at their lowest. The middle class Is stagnant here (where the baseline was highest to begin with), but its growing in in China and other developing countries. Re: the challenge of coping with plenty, I think a lot of people including myself believe that's something each person has to grapple with, and not something a higher power should decide for them (including "the collective"). Lost too often in the current conversation is all the philanthropy and good that some (definitely not all) in the 1% are doing.
  18. Willihammer
    It wouldn't put everyone out of business, but it would cost jobs and hours. You and others need to acknowledge that as a tradeoff before we can start weighing the costs/benefits. The conversation has been very one-sided so far. "How can ANYONE live on $7.25 an hour, that's outrageous! Raise the min. wage to (pulls number out of ass) - $11!"
  19. Willihammer
    We are talking federal policy. Thousands of companies will be impacted. Small businesses that don't have vertical integration like Costco or Wal-Mart will be hurt most. That's the irony of it all really.
  20. Willihammer
    We are not talking about wine, we are talking about labor. Employment has an inverse relationship with price floors, its not exceptional in this regard like wine is.
  21. Willihammer
    We do know. We know the relationship between price and demand is inverse, not direct. We know labor is not exempt from this. This is fact. That's half the reason we have an outsourcing problem in the first place. Look at Europe's unemployment. The question of unemployment and min. wage is settled. The only thing up for debate as far as I'm concerned is the possiblity that despite the increased unemployment, places like the United States and Europe have achieved a more desirable outcomes. I'm skeptical but willing to listen on that. I mean, obviously the situation here is still better than China, but is Europe better still? Again I'm skeptical.
  22. Willihammer
    You are really cherry picking. I don't know what's going on in Seattle, but there is at least one Forbes article suggesting Seattle's restaurant employment is growing less than the rest of the state's. Who knows, there other factors than min. wage, obviously. To suggest that controlling the price of anything, labor included, leads to a more sufficient outcome than the market, well the burden of proof is on you to prove otherwise, and I don't think you've proved anything with this Seattle example.
  23. Willihammer
    As opposed to throwing solutions at the wall and seeing what sticks? I think the break-even question I'm asking is very fair. More than fair even, since I'm not even asking you account for social costs of putting *more* people out of work. Which is what would happen in minimum wage sectors (ie. the restaurant biz). I understand that's happened in Seattle actually.
  24. Willihammer
    Raising the minimum wage will lead to a reduction in jobs and hours worked, that is a fact. It may lead to other negative things too. On the positive side, perhaps the overall wage gain will offset the loss of jobs and hours. I'm open minded to hearing about where that breakeven point is, and where it can be expected to be in 10-20 years time.
  25. Willihammer
    Sorry for making this personal, I will back off. But, you are downplaying the positive flipside which is skyrocketing wages which have lead to concrete improvements in the standards of living for millions of people. Why doesn't Sanders ever mention that? Because they don't have a free press? Liberals should be elated about that. Another flipside of the trade deficit is that a stronger US dollar leads to cheap imports. We have free trade agreements to thank for that too. The loss of jobs is painful, I agree, and probably temporary. In the interim though everything is cheap. *Another* flipside of the 1% talking point is that the rich pay about half of the income taxes collected by the IRS. Revenues used to pay for medicare and insure low interest home loans, things like that. While the bottom 80% pay only 15%. So the system is already rigged in their favor. But Sanders would raise taxes more and create new social programs (free education, etc). Not to mention the $15 minimum wage which is basically a payroll tax. If you do the math, it works out to well over $.50 cents of every dollar earned going to taxes. People should be more cautious about testing the limits of rationality.
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