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Everything posted by nicksaviking
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Castile shooting, police violence, race, etc side discussion
nicksaviking replied to Willihammer's topic in The Sports Bar
Well the picture is still famous today: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/kummwn/picture7402148/ALTERNATES/FREE_640/Selma%20march%202.jpg Looks to me like Selma was having a few traffic issues that day too. -
Castile shooting, police violence, race, etc side discussion
nicksaviking replied to Willihammer's topic in The Sports Bar
Well Rosa Parks can sit in the front of the bus now at least. Something about who can use which schools and which water fountains too if I remember right. -
Castile shooting, police violence, race, etc side discussion
nicksaviking replied to Willihammer's topic in The Sports Bar
Law enforcement can prevent plenty of crimes with their presence in a patrol car, how much additional prevention is really happening by them getting out of a car to confront someone for a minor traffic offense? And why would recruitment fall because police are putting civilians and themselves in a safer environment by reducing these roadside confrontations? Both police and civilians would be safer and I'd argue that the only people this would turn off from law enforcement are those that CRAVE confrontation which is exactly the type of people who have no business being a cop. This would prevent altercations, I don't know why someone would think this makes it more dangerous for police or the communities they are charged with protecting. This wouldn't stop an officer from protecting him or herself, it would lessen their need to do so. -
Castile shooting, police violence, race, etc side discussion
nicksaviking replied to Willihammer's topic in The Sports Bar
As to the unreported but stolen car, I'd assume 99% of them aren't solved by a "random" traffic stop. As to the second part, if a judge wouldn't give a warrant to the detective based on a patrolman's gut intuition, the patrolman sure as hell shouldn't be using his "gut intuition" on a traffic stop. Just as with the example with the stolen car, hardly any major crimes would go unsolved just because a detective went to the suspect's house instead of patrolman interrogating the guy in his car. And I'm AOK with a minimal number of extra crimes going unsolved if it means less cops shooting people they pull over and less people pulled over shooting cops. If keeping people out of unsafe situations isn't part of what law enforcement is about, than law enforcement needs to be about something else. -
Castile shooting, police violence, race, etc side discussion
nicksaviking replied to Willihammer's topic in The Sports Bar
How about we just get rid of traffic stops except in cases of auto theft or obvious cases of driver impairment? Why do we need traffic stops? We certainly have the technology to read license plates and take dashboard video of the traffic violation. Upon the officer witnessing a violation an officer can flash lights and pull over the car as normal. Than an electronic notification can be sent to the driver advising of the infraction and advising that an ensuing ticket and video evidence of the infraction will soon be provided, but both parties can remain in their vehicles with no worry of a physical interaction. There should be no need for a police officer to get out of the car for simple traffic violations. If the officer suspects the driver of something more malevolent than a broken taillight or illegal lane change, a detective can be dispatched to the residence corresponding to the license plate, which is how most violent crimes are investigated and solved anyway. -
I liked the Twins drafts during the first decade this century, they usually went after HS bats and went with some pretty good upside with some college arms. Quite a few guys didn't pan out, but quite a few did. The Wimmers and Michael picks really bothered me, and if I had to guess, the Twins liked Wimmers because they thought he might be fast to the majors and they knew they needed all the help they could get as their pitching pipeline had dried up. There were so many high upside HS arms picked after Wimmers, I was really disappointed they played it "safe" and didn't have the patience (or were unwilling to pay) for the younger guys with better stuff. However it's hard to complain too much about two isolated picks, and the team clearly changed courses after the Wimmers bust going with HS pitchers much more frequently. There is plenty to complain about, but I'm not going to hammer them for drafting "safe" picks since they appear to have made a concerted effort to change that.
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I'd like to see a comprehensive study on the Twins pitcher development compared to other organizations. I'd like to see a comparison of how many pitchers get drafted each year, how many are HS and how many are college, what round they are drafted and where they were drafted from. I'd like to see what level the draft picks start at, their promotion rate and how many guys increase velocity and how many decrease velocity upon being drafted and throughout their minor league apprenticeship. I'd like to see how many innings these guys pitch comparative to both their age and when they were drafted. I wonder if any clubs are doing a peer study like that? While it would probably be difficult to quantify, I'd also like to see a comparison of mechanical adjustments the Twins request of their new pitchers compared to other clubs. Do the Twins draft more, fewer or the same number of guys who they ask to change. Are the adjustments major, moderate or minor and would other clubs request the same adjustments from a similar pitcher? I would suspect the Twins are probably in the normal range for most or all of these, but it'd be nice to get a baseline and see if the Twins have any outlier development practices that may be tipping the scales against them.
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Castile shooting, police violence, race, etc side discussion
nicksaviking replied to Willihammer's topic in The Sports Bar
Aside from the still lingering Antisemitism, every country has just as big of anti-Middle Eastern demographics as America and most probably have more. And that says nothing of Scandinavia's huge neo-nazi culture that doesn't even bother to stay in the shadows like they do here. -
In a vacuum he would, but this team has a pretty big veteran conundrum to figure out. If someone had told us in February that the team was terrible, Milone would get DFA'd, Hughes would be out for the year and terrible, Nolasco/Gibson/Duffey were healthy and terrible and with ERAs over 5.00, May was still banished to the bullpen, Taylor Rogers was newly banished to the bullpen and Alex Meyer got lost during an African Safari, we'd say no way would Berrios be in Rochester at the All-Star break unless he was clinically dead. These logical expectations don't seem to work out as we'd logically expect them to.
- 34 replies
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- stephen gonsalves
- levi michael
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Free Hidenberger! Hmmm, when vocalized that's more of a mouthful than I anticipated. And my co-workers are confused.
- 34 replies
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- stephen gonsalves
- levi michael
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There you go again, saying the Twins need to rely more on analytics and less on the scouts
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Castile shooting, police violence, race, etc side discussion
nicksaviking replied to Willihammer's topic in The Sports Bar
Europe still has huge race and ethnocentric issues also. I'm guessing the US gets more publicity world wide for ours, but that surely has more to do with the fact that it's the media hub of the world. -
Jepsen's 2015 in TB wasn't particularly good. His K rate was plummeting and his walk rate, FIP and WHIP were all rising. He had one really nice year in LA and a couple pretty good ones. The Twins struck gold when he put on a career best performance for them last year, but he had no track record of that kind of pitching prior and he was on the wrong side of 30. At the time of the trade the Twins really should have had no illusions about what kind of pitcher he was and where his numbers were trending. I mean in isolation, if his ERA had matched his FIP of 4.19 along with the high 4.3 BB/9 and the poor-for-a-reliever 7.3K/9, wouldn't he look closer to a DFA candidate than a get-another-team's-top-15-prospect candidate?
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I'm through episode 4 of Season one on Amazon Prime and Season 2 is set to record on my DVR. I'm surprise because typically USA doesn't have intelligent shows, I had no intention of watching it last year because USA had always put out network quality junk previously, though admittedly, Burn Notice was a guilty pleasure for a couple seasons. I'm guessing there is going to be a huge twist at the end of season one. I'm only guessing and I won't state my hunch in case I'm right. I hope I'm wrong about the nature of the twist (if there is one) because I'd like to be surprised and the twist I have in my head has been done before, but even if it's the one I'm thinking of, it still would fit really well with the direction the show seems to be going. Also, great to see Christian Slater back! (again, only up to episode 4 and I'm not checking IMDB to see if he's in season 2 as well as I don't want to spoil anything for myself. I assume he is, but this is a bit of a dark show.)
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Castile shooting, police violence, race, etc side discussion
nicksaviking replied to Willihammer's topic in The Sports Bar
But the problem is nobody (aside from the lunatic fringe) are arguing that killing police or anyone else is fair and justifiable. However there is a large contingent of people who are claiming that these killing of black men and women are simply the price of doing business in 21st century America. Killing police doesn't need to be staunchly protested because it garners a collective "Duh, that's terrible", killing African Americans is not getting the same response. -
This is a bummer. Now there is absolutely nothing for conspiracy nuts to get excited about anymore.
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Castile shooting, police violence, race, etc side discussion
nicksaviking replied to Willihammer's topic in The Sports Bar
I agree, and I don't get the police walk out. Nearly everyone, including those who support Black Lives Matters agree that what happened in Dallas was awful and shouldn't have happened. Why doesn't everyone agree what happened to Castile was awful shouldn't have happened? Not all police action needs to be uniformly defended and supported. They're just people, people do stupid and terrible things on a daily basis, why would police be exempt from normal human failings? Does anyone think the Browns are going to show universal support to Isaiah Crowell after his terrible Tweet about a cop getting killed? -
Fangraphs (and other national publications) on the Twins
nicksaviking replied to Mike Sixel's topic in Minnesota Twins Talk
After watching last night's game, Odor might have gone and Knoblauch'd himself up already. -
Fangraphs (and other national publications) on the Twins
nicksaviking replied to Mike Sixel's topic in Minnesota Twins Talk
Well the Twins just need to give Fangraphs a reason to write about them more often. Preferably for positive reasons. -
What 2nd half record saves Terry Ryan's job?
nicksaviking replied to Everyday Eddy's topic in Minnesota Twins Talk
Two paragraphs later he backtracked on that though. I don't think Pohlad knows what he will do, but the fact that he's talking about it after NOT talking about it for half a decade is a good step. Perhaps a good 2nd half will allow Ryan to feel as though he "righted the ship" and he'll be OK with the idea of retirement. Of course that makes it all the more likely a replacement is internal. -
Examining Potential 40-man Additions
nicksaviking replied to Jeremy Nygaard's topic in Twins Daily Front Page News
The Twins are currently flush with middle infielders who can hit, why would the put one on the 25 who can't? Defense is secondary to offense for this club, and in this situation, I completely agree. No need to intentionally make a black hole where one isn't currently present. It seems everyone wants a defensive first SS, yet when the team gets one, the leash is about ten games before the complaining starts; see Florimon and Punto.- 71 replies
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- felix jorge
- fernando romero
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(and 1 more)
Tagged with:
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Castile shooting, police violence, race, etc side discussion
nicksaviking replied to Willihammer's topic in The Sports Bar
He got pulled over because he had a big nose. That's cool with some people? -
Castile shooting, police violence, race, etc side discussion
nicksaviking replied to Willihammer's topic in The Sports Bar
I know several local officers, and they are fantastic people and if they did something like this I'd be shocked to the point that I'd have to consider an ideological shift. On the other hand, I remember three guys from school and another guy I worked with after school who all wanted to be police officers. All four of those guys were terrible people who craved either physical or verbal confrontation and wanted to be viewed as an Alpha at any cost. I know most officers are great people and I suspect the academies try to weed out the kinds of guys I described above, but there is no doubt that a job where you get to carry a gun and exert your personal authority over everyone is an attractive job to some very awful individuals. Maybe academies need better evaluation, however it's possible that you can't get enough decent people to want to be a cop so some of these guys who profile as trouble are hired because the alternative is a short staff. -
I guess my opinion is that Polanco has shown himself at least worth of a shot going on two years, and now they've basically wasted those two eval years and left themselves only one crack at it.
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Agreed. I find it hard to believe this front office doesn't see the corner they are painting themselves into with Polanco. Also, even if Dozier profiles as a better overall player, Polanco's superior OBP potential may be more valuable to this team considering its current make-up.

