hen3ry

Got no-hit twice, but they're still gonna play in October. Honestly, it's a shock we haven't been no-hit yet. Shoulda been earlier this week, though, so there's that.

Yeah, I don't trust any defensive metric that suggests Ben Revere is comparable to Matt Joyce. It just won't pass the smell test. Offensively, Revere is playing out of his mind right now. Nothing in his past suggests he's actually this good; he's an average hitter and a plus defender who's on a hot streak. Great for him. I'd rather tend to our own garden. We only have two arms in the bullpen we can sorta rely on, and one of them just gave up 5 runs in 4 minutes today. If we sneak into the post season this year, it will be despite ourselves, not because of our talent. One offensive upgrade isn't going to cut the mustard on that. So as far as I'm concerned Left Field is an off-season concern.

I will concede that if a fetus is a baby, you win the argument. The problem is that you can no more prove a fetus is a baby to me than I can prove that it isn't one to you. That's why we're in this position as a society in the first place. Personhood is a continuum. Somewhere between your parents' having sex and your first words, you become a person. Absent a mass extinction event, the abortion rate will never go to zero. Abortion existed before Roe, even in the states where it was illegal. People do illegal things every day. So we're talking about reducing the abortion rate, at best. The point I was making has to do with how your side goes about trying to reduce it. Standing outside clinics with posters. Cancer tumors are disgusting to look at too, but I'm not about to ban oncology. Waiting periods. Something which is oddly opposed when it comes to obtaining tools of violence is somehow good when it comes to a medical procedure. Mandatory ultrasounds. Unnecessary medical tests are opposed - except when it has the dual benefit of raising the price of an abortion, and making the pregnant woman stare at the lump of cells she wants to excise. (No one makes a person stare at a tumor and look at it throb.) This new "admitting privileges" argument. No emergency room in this nation has the right to turn away a patient because of what they were doing when they got hurt. And no dentist, dermatologist, plastic surgeon, or chiropractor is required to have admitting privileges in order to run a medical office, or perform procedures in their office, even though there is a chance of something going wrong in each of those professions as well. Not once, however, do we hear about doing things that would actually reduce the unwanted pregnancy rate in the first place. Instead, it's all about putting additional emotional burden on someone who's in a tough spot in the first place, in the hopes that they will decide differently, and increasing the costs and reducing the access to make the decision in the first place. It's extremely paternalistic. "Honey, make a choice. No you chose wrong, try again. No that's still wrong, try again." All of that said, I'm ok with people exposing pro-life views. Whether a fetus is a person or not is a matter of opinion, and reasonable people can differ. But if you're going to be pro-life, you better be pro-life completely. I have no respect at all for those who want to make the rape and incest exception. What part of the conception makes the resulting fetus less of a person?

What, "Holy Theocratic Empire" didn't get the point across? I suppose it really was a bit too subtle, in retrospect.

Abortion isn't the only issue that's 5-4 at the Supreme Court. It's just the one you all get all worked up over. The entire anti abortion argument from top to bottom is a pure appeal to emotion, theology, or both. I'll take your side seriously when you start actually proposing things that actually reduce the number of people stuck in the no-win situation of considering an abortion in the first place, rather than just put up emotional appeals and bureaucratic roadblocks in lieu of being able to throw people in jail quite yet for even talking about it. And yes, I'd choose Biden or Sanders in a heartbeat over any of the 17 clowns running on your side. Then again, I literally cannot think of anyone who I wouldn't vote for over allowing a Republican in the WH - except of course for another Republican. The Supreme Court is too important to allow someone who treats a book written by and for a bunch of desert nomads a few thousand years ago with superior weight to actual knowledge or scientific evidence on any issue.

All this thread reminds me is that we're potentially one election from the Holy Theocratic Empire. And that gives me all the reason I'll ever need to hold my nose with both hands and vote for Hillary (with my toe, I guess).

Ah, Muna.

Solution: Iannetta, our next manager. Two birds, one stone?

I like the wild-card play-in game. There should be an advantage to winning your division, and the second wild-card made being a wild card less safe. But I do agree it shouldn't be a pure coinflip. The top wildcard should have an advantage proportionate to their lead over the other one. My idea is, for every game ahead the first wildcard is, they earn an (implied) intentional walk to start the 1st inning. If they're up by 2 games, they start their half of the first inning with two runners on, nobody out, and the #3 hitter in their lineup up. (which might lead to weird-at-first-glance batting orders particularly the NL wildcard game - a pitcher batting second or third so they're standing on first base to start the game - but you just rotate the batting order according to who you actually want up, no big deal) So if the first wild card has a 7 game lead over the second, they start off with 4 runs already in, and bases loaded, off the top. Huge advantage. (But teams score 4 in the first and then lose anyway all the time, apparently) If their lead is only 1 game, its just one baserunner - still an advantage, but not as huge. Half-games get rounded down. Or you can start a batter with a 2-0 count. Whichever.

He's played SS 6 times in the minors (never played 2B). In those 6 games, he has a fielding percentage of .818. 4 errors in 6 games. We'd probably be better off with Pujols at SS.

Actually that's the problem. Do you have any idea how expensive it is to clean up hooker residue?

Featherston will probably be back next week. Yay?

Every hospital in this country is infested with drug resistant bacteria. Because, you know, sick people congregate there. So if you want to close a place for having lots of staph, start with every hospital built before September 2015.

I'm just glad this time California can't matter. If it gets to the point that California is actually close, the race will have been called before the polls even close here. Three of America's five worst Presidents will have served since 2000.

He was hated so much his name has become profanity. You have to change it to slip it past the censor. Like Hamultin.

The list is the most hated member of each franchise, not the most hated by their own fans. Some of the later ones are absolutely _loved_ by their hometown fans, and hated by everyone else. I've only been following since 83 or so. So yes, the answer is Hamilton. I'm surprised Rickey Henderson didn't make the list. Dude was a very talented d-bag.

You can't fire an entire MLB roster. So firing a manager becomes a proxy for that move. And, as a proxy move, it's overdue.

It's not that anyone thinks Grant Green is a future all star. But given some of the utter crap we've run out this year, if he could be adequate he'd be an improvement. How many times has Featherston come up in a clutch position because we don't have a real utility player on the roster. How many times have we seen Joyce or the Three Amigos who've been brought on to replace him flail. I'm not so down on Johnny Drama, but he has had a glove-slump of late to go with the entire team's bat-slump.

Only a troll would vote for Joyce. And if you're going to troll, there's a Hamilton option on the poll. Joyce - he can't even be the worst choice.

Robertson? Kubitza? Marte? we have a lot of pieces. just not a whole player.

There are rules already set up for up to four teams tying in a variety of scenarios involving one or more spots up for grabs. A five-way tie is not planned for, but the odds of one are pretty low. http://m.mlb.com/news/article/59527184/playoff-tiebreaker-rules

Being in the lineup makes you ice cold at this point, so lukewarm looks like a bonfire in comparison.

He's in the top quartet of major leaguers even with him sitting on the toilet for the entire month. So no, it's not lost to him yet.

I turned the page before our first hitter came to the plate, tbh.

I'd unfriend anyone who posted such a video to my feed just on principle. I'm not interested in viewing distorted hackjobs. Also, no one is going to violate federal law for, what, forty bucks per body? That barely covers the shipping costs of transporting biohazards (which any animal remains would be in the category of), to say nothing of the paperwork involved. Now, you find evidence that they're illegally selling to mad scientists for $500 per pound, ok, now I'll believe there's at least some smoke there. I have no idea what the black market price of fetal organs are, but I'm pretty sure if they're being used for organ transplants, as I've heard claimed more than once, their value would be at least five figures, probably six.