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Like maybe 28 million of it? And even then...
e: And does "sizable percentage" mean all?
I'm guessing a bottle a day.
But Pierre hit .283 with 40 SB
Swisher hit only .219!!!
You know a sizeable chunk of the MSM and main stream fans think Pierre is a better player
noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
(for the record, I know that was not the case)
Since Figgins is better than the package the Sox got for Swisher, Angels would have to demand Carlos Quentin in return. Paul Konerko just won't cut it.
If the Mets are looking to make a splashy trade, who do you see as their best chips? Does this mean Fernando Martinez is on the block?
Edit: Also, why would KW look to move Jenks. He's, you know, pretty good.
His K rate has been moving in the wrong direction for several years, and he's now arb-eligible. He's also roughly the size of a house.
Didn't he also have (or was rumored to have) a drinking problem, which was supposed to be part of why the Angels let him go? I admit that I could be wrong on this, but I seem to remember something like this being associated with him.
Jeez, you ain't kidding. 38 K's in 61 innings is a big, big drop off for him. Wow.
I think I could live with Pierre in CF, batting ninth, if it leads to a major upgrade elsewhere. But then where do you bat Alexei? They need someone to hit leadoff and someone to hit second. Maybe you go with Getz/Nix in one of those spots, but who is in the other?
That was a long time ago, but as I've said elsewhere, I don't see Jenks closing in the majors for another 10 years. And he's about to start getting expensive. Good for Kenny for moving past the "must have a name closer" mentality. Trade Jenks to the loser of the K-Rod sweepstakes, and let Thornton do the job.
He's also a closer which means he's going to be embarrassingly overpaid. Not only that, he's just not that great (great, he's still good, he's just not great) as others have pointed out.
Figgins is a damn good player.
For how much longer, though? He's 30, he provides zero power, and when he loses his speed he'll be a bench player. I'm not saying it'd be a bad trade, but the Sox can't give up too much to get him.
If you can get Pierre to man CF at practically $0, that could free up a lot of money to improve the team significantly elsewhere. Not saying Pierre is much of a player, but the Sox can carry one guy like that so long as they don't do anything dumb like lead him off every day.
I disagree. Owens and Anderson are making the minimum, or maybe in Anderson's case slightly above. So, at most, you'd be saving $1 million. That's just not enough to make a difference. Especially since that difference would have to be significant to make up a) the lack of performance last year from Swisher, Anderson, and Griffey and b) having Juan Pierre get 600 PAs in the leadoff spot.
But he won't bat ninth. Ozzie is a classic 1960's manager. He loves speed at the top of the order. This is a guy who batted Podsednik there in 2006 (when Pods was useless) and has batted Jerry Owens there. If they acquire Juan Pierre, he'll lead off the entire year.
Yeah, even if Pierre came free with a big red ribbon, the Sox still lose because of the opportunity cost. I wonder why Rosenthal reports some of this stuff.
You know, throw in a mid-level pitching prospect, and that's a deal I'd take. Vazquez just isn't good, he's nowhere near as good as his peripherals, and I'm sick of the "Which Javy is pitching today" game. To get a great defensive CF that is cheap, can hit a little, and a pitching prospect, I'd take that in a minute.
No GM would be dumb enough to acquire both Crisp and Lugo. Oh wait...
Please tell us what the hell this has to do with anything? So because Jenks had some issues half-a-decade years ago that's a potential reason why he'd get traded now? That's rather ignorant.
Well played, sir.
Also, I'm on page 528 of Ulysses right now, and really starting to dislike Joyce. Should've stopped after page 23, perhaps.
Don't give up. Finish it. Stew about it for a few months, and then read it again. It's actually a lot of fun and rewarding the second time. Trust me. Bu stay the #### away from Finnegan's Wake.
Players are the total sum of their experiences on and off the field. Jenks had a problem before, and he's apparently overcome it, which is good. That problem he apparently had, however, is one which can have long term effects on a person's health and well being. When combined with his actually decrease in K-rate, as well as his somewhat impressive girth, it's just another thing for a GM to be concerned about - not the previous drinking, but the long term effects of the drinking, and how it may manifest itself.
girth: 10% of the issue (I bet it doesn't matter much w.r.t. Sabathia either).
incredible shrinking strikeouts: 89.9% of the issue. His stuff still looks pretty ill to me, maybe it was just a blip.
Except that you wouldn't be getting a guaranteed great defensive center fielder, you'd be getting Coco Crisp. The defensive metrics had him as great, in the +20 or better range, in 2007, but closer to average last year and bleow average in 2006. His arm is a negative in any case. Yes, Fenway park is not handled well by the metrics, but that affects LF more than CF, and Coco did put up the great defensive season in 2007, so whatever adjustment you use, he looks significantly worse in 2008.
Coco as a great CF is as reliable as Javy Vazquez being a great pitcher.
Which Hemingway? "The Sun Also Rises" is a good one, if you haven't read it yet.
I'd rather take my chances on Coco being a great CF than Javy being half as good as his peripherals.
I really doubt the former has nearly as much weight to a potential trade as the latter two (the weight and the drop in K-rate, although I'd argue that the K-rate was somewhat mitigated by a pretty big increase in his GB%), which you seem to be giving it. If Williams trades Jenks I'd think it's more a case of trading a player at his peak value in addition to (perhaps) trade a player whose value is overrated by many. Then again, after the Swisher trade, I'm not sure that what I "think" means a damned thing, so...
I don't doubt it. People forget how good he can be.
I'm actually weighing the latter much more heavily than the former - K-rate first, weight second, and previous drinking problem a distant third since, as you note, it was apparently resolved quite a while ago. All I'm intending to say is that it is a minor point to consider for both KW in whether or not to trade Jenks, and for any team to consider when trading for Jenks.
As you note, I'd also think that the main drive behind KW's decision to trade Jenks is that he's a closer, and thus overvalued by many teams. The fact that he's hitting arbitration and about to start getting expensive is also undoubtedly a contributing factor.
Seconded. It also helps to read it in a class, for background and moral support. I first read it in a Newberry Library class -- we had a pretty leisurely pace, and lots of chances to commiserate with each other. Reading one of the companion books that annotates it can also help.
I read it solo, but I did look over an annotation between readings to help me out. The first time it was a slog just trying to figure out what was going on, but the second time you can just revel in the awesomeness of the language and even a few of the ideas start to seep into your noodle. I could probably find 3 or 4 fancy-pants handles on every page of the book. Sadly, I'm too invested in the Shooty persona to travel down that path.
Now teams will need to fork over talent to get him.
I could see a Jenks for Tatis deal any second.
I mentioned in a thread a while back that I didn't care for him as a novelist. Shooty recommended his shorts, so that's what I'm doing.
What's the problem with "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man"?
My god. You started with Finnegan's Wake? That's like introducing yourself to alcohol with a bottle of absinthe. I don't blame you for hating Joyce. I won't even try to talk you out of it.
True. He was really just working on one big book. You really need to read Portrait before Ulysses, at least.
Truly, I'm not sure that anyone truly enjoy's Joyce, rather, they endure it. I can see why critics rave over the man, due to his nye incomprehesible nature, but, critics are raving anyway.
I'll agree with you about Wake, though my girl swears she likes it. I really enjoy the rest of the books, though. Really and truly. Ulysses demanded a lot of me but, luckily, at the time I took it on I had the time to devote to it. I'm glad I did. Of course, I'd still rather read Dostoevsky, but that's another story. (I also really love Moby Dick, another book people always complain to me about. The chapter titled The Whale's Face is still one of my favorite passages in all of literature.)
Ulysses suffers from a lack of relevance to modern American readers. As Raskolnikov hints, it's full of reference to Greek and Roman classics which would have been a much bigger part of our educational background in Europe 50 years ago. I was "lucky" enough (ha!) to have studied liberal arts at a small college which still teaches the classics.
FW may have been comprehensible at some point in human history...
I hate Joyce including Dubliners.
That is...an interesting coupling.
I didn't miss Uly's references to classics, I just thought it was a mess of a novel.
FW might be comprehensible today if one achieved Joyce's state of mind (lots o drugs and alcohol.)
I have no problem with you disliking "The Sun Also Rises". I do think, however, that you owe the rest of us an explanation as to why you read "The Joy Luck Club".
Nope...
The Sun Also Rises is probably #1 on my Worst Book of All Time list, edging out The Joy Luck Club. I get irritated just thinking about it.
I haven't read either of these books. That said, they cannot possibly be worse than any book written by Faulkner.
Moby Dick is a good book if you ignore all the padding that Melville put in to ensure that he kept getting paid, since it was published in serial form. Just skip all the stuff about the importance of the curve of the harpoon, and the specific details of how whales swim, and so on, and it's an enjoyable read.
Also, Conrad is still one of my favorite writers. You need to tell your wife that she's wrong.
Maybe it turned him into a woman? After a week or two of experimentation, that would leave me ticked off.
I kid, I kid! It's Friday people, be happy!
Ryan, I'll let yo do that (she's got a master's in English, so she's very firm on her literary opinions).
Maybe it turned him into a woman? After a week or two of experimentation, that would leave me ticked off.
Only tangential to this, but I consider Austen's Emma to be one of my top 20 books of all time, and it's completely centered around women.
That's how I read Moby Dick. My dad went through and marked a bunch of chapters and told me to just skip them. I thought it was very good.
I actually like a lot of those filler chapters.
Jane Austen is, of course, great.
There's nothing wrong with those chapters - it's just that they were filler, and really slow down the pace. If you read them separately, they're well written and interesting, but they just destroy the pacing when read integrated into the rest of the novel.
Jane Austen is terrible. I'm probably not the person to ask though, as I hate most 18th and 19th century writing.
I really hate that book.
He did specify that he hated "most" 18th and 19th century literature.
Ulysses is a lot of fun, especially if you've read Portrait and are up on your Homer. Otherwise, it's best just to skip to the naughty bits. Or just watch Fionnula Flanagan in James Joyce's Women.
Not a Jane Austen fan, but I loved The Sun Also Rises. Why is it that all great authors have to be alcoholics?
And on that subject, I do have a one-friend support group on the Ulysses adventure. We have a planned afterparty featuring Bushmills and Guinness. The whole night will probably seem like this entire blasted dream sequence/extended hallucination the next morning.
Larry Bowa reads Joyce? Whooda thunk?
The only Joyce I've read is Dubliners, which I liked but didn't love. I've always meant to try Ulysses, but I've never got around to it. Moby Dick I also liked, even the boring, filler chapters. I can see how they kind of mess up the pace, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.
However, I pretty much dislike all 19th century literature not written by Jules Verne.
</quote>
Have you (or anyone) read House of Leaves? I don't have much time to read, so I tend to pick the books I do read with great care. Is it worth getting into?
And Moby Dick is the Babe Ruth of American novels--filler chapter included!
Wow, that's harsh. I guess I understand why people hate Faulkner, but man, do I love him. I've only read Absalom, Absalom! (best title ever) and The Sound and the Fury and a bunch of his short stories, but I assume those are the two novels that the most vitriol is spewed at anyway, since they're the hardest. I know the first two sections of S&F;are extremely tough, and all of A,A! is really tough, but there's a method to the madness. I think Quentin's section is the best chunk of literature I've read after the first section of Swann's Way, and just ahead of the section with the wolf in McCarthy's The Crossing.
In my exp people tend to either see it as pretentious drivel or as really freaking beautiful and wonderful. Joyce's unparalleled gifts for language and metaphor override the pretentiousness for me. It was also ahead of its time in many respects.
Faulkner is an acquired taste, I think, unlike Steinbeck and Hemingway who offer something for everyone (although I have met very few women who enjoy Hemingway, for obvious reasons). I like Faulkner a lot, but I think he is probably more fun to study than to just read.
Many agree, and it is brilliant. When people tell me they do not like Joyce, I always suggest that they read The Dead. It is accessible but intelligent, has great character development for a short story, has finely constructed detail, and offers one of the the best juxtapositions of the interior and exterior life of its protagonist in literary history.
I'm going out on a limb and guessing this involved more than one bus. Or is there a Madison-Mexico City express run? :-)
If Freel's involved, Chicago residents better stay off the roads at closing time.
"Ulysses" is quite good, if you're willing to put in the time and don't let it intimidate you.
I wonder if Freel's ever read Joyce. They seem to be kindred spirits in some ways... well, in the drunk-off-your-ass-most-of-the-time way, mostly, I guess.
So in university I saw a class on Joyce and jumped at the chance to get a better read in...it was like reading an entirely different book. I think Ulysses more than any other book is vastly improved when you read it along with a bunch of other people and discuss things along the way.
We did Dubliners, Portrait and Ulysses...I always wondered why we didn't do Finnegan's Wake
Then I bought a copy and read the first paragraph (I've never read beyond the first page)...wow
Bobby Jenks pitching from career game #141 (Jul 19, 2007) to game #153 (Aug 12, 2007)
W L G SV IP H R ER BB SO
1 0 13 8 13 0 0 0 0 11
Exactly what I did in my Joyce course too! I enjoyed it.
It also would lend itself nicely to a thoroughly annotated website, with an interactive map of Dublin at the time, etc. The guy who teaches the Newberry Library class collects things like old phonebooks from the time (which Joyce evidently used to write Ulysses), and the exercise book that Bloom uses. Of course, Joyce's nephew would never allow such a website. (There are some people who believe that Ulysses is not in copyright in the U.S. at all, but Stephen Joyce is so litigious that no one is willing to take the issue to court.)
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