Kolten Wong And MLB Draft Strategies

I ’ardly know ’er!

I just assumed someone down the street had their speakers blaring with the bass shaking the windows. This makes much more sense.

I’m in Columbia btw so it was obvz very mild.

i was up and it felt like something slammed in to the house, kind of freaked me out. then nothing else happened, so i just went back to playing video games.

I had a dream last night about earthquakes,,, I just remembered upon seeing your post…

even stranger…

I live in Ct.

Ron Chernow’s newish biography of George Washington is pretty good, especially as a single volume. On a related note, his similar work on Alexander Hamilton is excellent.

SIGMA Force Series – if you’re a Dan Brown fan.

The Hunger Games Series by Suzanne Collins.

My personal favorite is The Ender’s Game Series by Orson Scott Card.

is a good one

by Cormac McCarthy, who wrote No Country for Old Men.

This is definitely his pinnacle work. Got a hint of Faulkner in it, but there is riveting plot/narrative.

by George Vescey

would be happy with more if you like the first one:

NONFICTION – Robert Caro’s biography of Lyndon Johnson – in progress (everybody’s hoping he finishes vol 4 before he dies of old age), but each of the 3 volumes out is pretty well free-standing. The best is vol 3, “Master of the Senate”

FICTION – LeCarre’s espionage novels. My favorite is Smiley’s People.
                   Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast trilogy (fantasy noir)
                   Dorothy Dunnett’s House of Niccolo series (historical)

He writes fantasy and a lot of short stories. Any of his Newford collections are always good.

the first book of the Wheel of Time (The Eye of the World) should satiate you. It’s pretty much the exact same type of writing, and the writer is as good as Tolkien if not better imo.

The Malazan book of the fallen. It’s epic, he does a fantastic job world building,And the Main series is best of all…….finished.

The Golden Compass is good, but the 2nd and 3rd are pretty incredible…

You should try Moby Dick. It’s an awesome, if a little unconventional, historical fantasy novel set in an embellished version of the American 19th century whaling industry. One man, swept up by the ineffable pull of fate, sets out on a journey… a journey on a boat!… a journey led by a mad captain’s drive for revenge against a god-like sea monster. There’s adventure, memorable characters, and wacky scenes where people cover themselves in this goopy white stuff that comes out of whale’s heads… OK, it sounds pretty weird. But it’s a fantastic book.

Across the Nightingale Floor (1st book in The Tales of the Otori series) by Lian Hearn – Pseudo Japanese feudal stuff’ so if you’re not interested in that time period I’d pass. The first book is short but they get longer as you get toward the fifth and final book.

The Alienist or Angel of Darkness by Caleb Carr – Both are about an early American psychiatrist and cases involving serial killers. Think Sherlock Holmes without the British schtick and in my opinion much better written. Good historical fiction.

The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant by Stephen R. Donaldson – 9 books in the series (3 trilogies) and the first 6 especially are good. I’ve had a hard time getting through books 7 and 8. Haven’t bought book 9 yet.

Any of Dale Brown’s book but especially the Old Dog series. Flight of the Old Dog, Sky Masters, and Night of the Hawk are some of my favorites. Good technical writing from a former Air Force captain and pretty good stories too.

called The Whiskey Rebels by David Liss that was pretty good. I like Inglis Fletcher as well. My people were in North Carolina during that time frame so it’s interesting to me anyway.

They’re like a less kiddie, more gritty-and-realistic, but still-whimsical-and-Dan-Browny version of Harry Potter.

The audiobooks are excellent.

DO IT OR I KILL YOU

…and are very good, if you like swords-n-sorcery fantasy. Udderwise, go for a classic history, Theucydides, Seutonius, etc. History + sword battles = good plane flight stuff!

:=8)

Prefect for this time of year.

Pretty good if you like history, especially military history. He’s done series/books on the Civil War, WW I, WW II, and I think just came out with one on the Revolutionary war.

If you’re going in the literary/classics direction, check out John Dos Passos, and perhaps some less dense Joseph Conrad.

“Fantasy,” check out Game of Thrones – it’s one of those things where you really can’t go wrong.

As for history, in more contemporary settings check out Jessica Stern’s Terror in the Name of God (an interesting look at the motivations of religious terrorists); going farther back, Candice Millard’s The River of Doubt is one of the most engrossing nonfiction books I’ve ever read, and incontrovertible proof Teddy Roosevelt was one bad mofo. As one other VEBer said, it’s the perfect time of year for Flags of Our Fathers (although there’s never really a bad time).

You should probably get started on George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series, aka the books that the new HBO series “Game of Thrones” is based on.

A couple of other suggestions. If you like Hemingway, a good contemporary (at least in my view) are Franzen’s last two books, The Corrections and Freedom. I just finished Freedom on a similar trip earlier this spring — it’s a fantastic read, and it’s paced nicely in that you can pick it up, read for a while, then set it down and get back to it later without having to skim the previous chapter to remember minute details of what is going on.

You like history! Be still my heart!

• Anything by Joseph Ellis is worth reading. Seriously, anything. He writes about the founding generation and manages to unpack their complicated lives in a simple, yet informative, style. He’s not hagiographic either, which is always good. Founding Brothers is his best-known book.
• King Leopold’s Ghost by Adam Hochschild is a good one about a window of history that isn’t talked about a whole lot. It’s about the Belgian imperial efforts in the Congo.
• Guns, Germs, and Steel is a pretty good introduction to world history (which is a distinct discipline of history and NOT merely the history of disparate places other than the US), if not a particularly scholarly tome. Still, it’s very interesting.
• David Brion Davis’s Inhuman Bondage is about the institution of slavery in the Atlantic world. It’s goal is to be scholarly but he writes in an easily accessible style.
• Finally, The Battle Cry of Freedom is a lenghty, one-volume look at the Civil War. It’s a long book, 800+ pages, but James McPherson is an engaging writer and the Civil War is an event that commands attention anyway.

So, those are my tips… Hope they are of some use.

It’s book 1 of the Kingkiller Chronicles trilogy (3rd book not available yet). Fantasy epic about the youth of a genius-hero.

But I really like Joe Abercrombie’s First Law trilogy, which begins with The Blade itself. Vivid, bloody and funny.

Espionage and resistance in the Nazi era; set in France or Eastern Europe.

Sensational novels and great, quick reads.

Is/was pretty much the Albert Pujols of modern literature/reporting. I would start with some nonfiction first, probably Consider the Lobster. I guess if you feel brave though and your trip is supposed to last a while, pick up Infinite Jest. I kind of carry it around like a bible or summat, reading passages whenever I need a lil pick-me-up.

Or my friend’s dad will hunt you down.

Americans go abroad in order to be shocked and humiliated.

That’s the traditional American greeting.

You should have known better than to ask VEB, Aranathor.

Other than the long line, she will feel like she is in America.

Take a picture of your junk and tweet it to her. That’s how we roll now.

remember to perform the traditional Alabama cartwheel dance with fried Twinkies

by DanUp!

His college stats from the University of Hawaii show that exact player, a career .358 hitter with 103 walks to 63 strikeouts and increasingly solid plate discipline. Wong had an especially strong adjustment to the weakened aluminum bats used in college baseball this season, improving his average from .357 to .378 while holding his power numbers steady.

• He looks pretty comfortable swinging wood already, much more than what I saw from Cox last year. I guess playing in the Cape Cod league probably helped quite a bit.
• The way he takes his rips you would think that he’d have quite a bit more power than most are projecting, and I can see where the Baerga comparisons come in — stocky, think build but whips the bat through the zone and keeps the front side closed to square up the outside pitch.
• I was really impressed with his quick release in the fielding drills. Most reports are that his arm is not all the impressive, but if he can pick it and get rid of it that quickly with at least some steam on it that would make up for having less than a cannon, one would think.

He did get drafted where he was projected to go. Most mocks had him between 22 and 26. So it wasn’t like the Cards reached for him.

Wong will be the next Pete Rose. Wanna bet?

someone else link to all the jokes previous to this. there are whole lineups of dick jokes already down.

http://m.youtube.com/index?desktop_uri=%2F&gl=US#/watch?v=RFHlJ2voJHY

or an edit button, it’s OK.

I would say that is a problem for me, not a problem for anyone else.

Because for the year we are below average on offense

Whoa… Wouldn’t have guessed that.

I mean, Descalso has had a lot of starts over there.

Good luck with that Shlubs.

Not that I’m a jean-salesman baseball fan but holy melting damn…

There seems to be sentiment that he may go to college.

"I think speed is my best tool," said Tilson, who ran a 6.54 60. "My game is to be scrappy and get on base and create a stir. I figure if I get on base, I can always cause some trouble on the bases. … I haven’t done much in speed training. We do a little bit in football. Football has helped a lot. It keeps me strong and keeps me competitive, most importantly. It keeps me from getting soft."

Link

Future Redbirds post on Tilson.

We’ll need to watch his walk rate. If his power doesn’t play, will he be able to sustain a good walk rate? My hope is that the answer is “yes.” (Actually, my hope is that his power plays.)

that Wong wanted to sign as soon as possible and start his pro career. So Quad Cities by season’s end may be a possibility.

That has solidified is that he leaves something in reserve. People latch on to the fact he looks a little timid on some balls hit behind him, and the fact he is streaky as a hitter, and use it to make character judgments at times.

The solution is simple. He just needs to dive into first a couple times, slam himself into a wall once and that will help a lot. Also, he is a really excellent baserunner in my opinion, but he makes it look a little too easy. He needs to start flailing his arms about wildly so it looks like he’s running faster, and if it slows him down a step or 2 that’s a small price to pay to earn the “winner” label.