Monday, January 9, 2012
Tribe Prospect Countdown: #15 1B Beau Mills
Bats: Left, Throws: Right
2011 Stats (AA Akron/ AAA Columbus): .289, 18 HR, 67 RBI, .860 OPS, 1.84 K/BB
What? Who? I thought that we had declared this guy a bust long ago. So, how did the 2007 1st rounder put himself back on the map? Mills got healthy, screwed his head on straight and, most importantly, the kid hit. Beau remains a line drive hitter with power to all fields and a serviceable defender. That sounds awesome, but wasn't that also true during the two full seasons (one middling, one truly dissapointing) that the kid spent at AA? Well, Mills had a wicked 2008 at Kinston (.293, 21, 90, .880) before pushing through an adjustment year at Akron (.267, 14, 83, .724) in 2009. 2010 was riddled with injury and incident as Beau fought a nagging intercostal strain all year and dealt with an assualt charge (Bar brawl, Josh Tomlin was charged as well, everything was eventually dropped) leading to just an awful season (.241, 10, 72, .689). 2011 began inauspiciously as well, with Mills in extended Spring Training rehabbing an Achilles strain. Then, Beau got into game action and simply tore the cover off of the ball. His .880 OPS at Akron matched his career high and the .822 he posted after his promotion to AAA was nearly a hundred points higher than his first AA campaign. It seems as if he has figured it out. The strange thing is Mills projects offensively much like Jason Kipnis. There will be bursts of power, but the bacon will be made on fighting off tough pitches and consistently driving the ball to the gaps. If you are looking for a single statistic to define this son of an MLB skipper (see Brad Mills), that is RBI. Even when he was struggling, Beau found a way to bring the runs home. He is, sadly, a left handed batter, but if Mills can produce again in Columbus, he will be on speed dial when Matt LaPorta hits .220 and/or Travis Hafner sprains his eyebrow.
Up Next: #14 OF Thomas Neal
Here, Please, Take My Money
I hate insurance companies. For the moment, however, let's leave my personal feeling that all types of insurance are akin to a Mafia protection racket. Instead, let's examine how the insurance industry is a nearly perfect analog for practical (not theoretical) socialism. Now, Americans generally dislike socialism, choosing instead to hitch their shiny horses to the star of almighty capitalism. Part of the American Dream is that if you work hard enough, then you will be rewarded with riches compensatory to such work. The dirty underwear of this is obviously greed. Americans feel that it's their money and that it would be sacrilegious to divvy any out to those of lesser economic means, because, obviously, they are simply lazy. There is also the prevailing theory that only material rewards engender innovation, although I would say that new ground is continually broken in the highly socialized fields of law enforcement and fire fighting. Still, Americans rail against the very notion of any program or idea that smells even vaguely like the big S.
If, then, socialism is so distasteful on an academic level, then why is it so blindly accepted in practice? A portion of the above thinking is rooted in the basic assumption that human beings are self-serving. Sure. This quality has manifested as corruption in many a socialist state leading to an eventual downfall. In a nutshell, those in power give preferential treatment to a select few and embezzle their fat asses off. This, my friends, is exactly how the insurance industry works, except that it is perfectly legal.
We can break this down into 3 distinct components - (1) The Redistribution of Wealth. At zero, everyone pays the same amount of money into an insurance pool. This gives the agency the funds to pay for the claims of those "in need." Let's look at health insurance. Everyone pays in so that insurer can cover the medical bills of the ill. That is, the allocation of wealth is based on need, classic socialism. (2) Cronyism. Eventually, if any one individual places too many claims, his insurance premiums will rise. The tacit rationale for this is to maintain some sense of equality, to create a nominal distance from what is described in point #1. The actuality is that the insurers simply want to give preferential treatment to those that allow them to reap a larger profit. By raising the rates of the sick, the insurers both lessen the relative burden on the healthy and weaken the already frail ability of the enfeebled to regain their health. It's all about the King Harolds, which brings us to... (3) Government Sponsored Embezzlement. So, we have the vast majority of the population paying into a pool that is used primarily to maximize the income of the insurer. So, where does that money go? Of course, there is overhead and, for all publicly held companies, the payouts to shareholders. Still, the biggest piece of the pie goes to (drumroll, please) the corporate CEOs. I won't bore you with the numbers (go here if you would like to see some), but suffice to say that 8 figure salaries could be used to lessen the burden on the entire set of insured. If this were a socialist state and those in power were hoarding the wealth instead of distributing it to the masses, we would call that corruption. Instead, in the great old US of A, we call it living the dream.
Yep, capitalism is much better.
Cheers.
Eat the Rich.
If, then, socialism is so distasteful on an academic level, then why is it so blindly accepted in practice? A portion of the above thinking is rooted in the basic assumption that human beings are self-serving. Sure. This quality has manifested as corruption in many a socialist state leading to an eventual downfall. In a nutshell, those in power give preferential treatment to a select few and embezzle their fat asses off. This, my friends, is exactly how the insurance industry works, except that it is perfectly legal.
We can break this down into 3 distinct components - (1) The Redistribution of Wealth. At zero, everyone pays the same amount of money into an insurance pool. This gives the agency the funds to pay for the claims of those "in need." Let's look at health insurance. Everyone pays in so that insurer can cover the medical bills of the ill. That is, the allocation of wealth is based on need, classic socialism. (2) Cronyism. Eventually, if any one individual places too many claims, his insurance premiums will rise. The tacit rationale for this is to maintain some sense of equality, to create a nominal distance from what is described in point #1. The actuality is that the insurers simply want to give preferential treatment to those that allow them to reap a larger profit. By raising the rates of the sick, the insurers both lessen the relative burden on the healthy and weaken the already frail ability of the enfeebled to regain their health. It's all about the King Harolds, which brings us to... (3) Government Sponsored Embezzlement. So, we have the vast majority of the population paying into a pool that is used primarily to maximize the income of the insurer. So, where does that money go? Of course, there is overhead and, for all publicly held companies, the payouts to shareholders. Still, the biggest piece of the pie goes to (drumroll, please) the corporate CEOs. I won't bore you with the numbers (go here if you would like to see some), but suffice to say that 8 figure salaries could be used to lessen the burden on the entire set of insured. If this were a socialist state and those in power were hoarding the wealth instead of distributing it to the masses, we would call that corruption. Instead, in the great old US of A, we call it living the dream.
Yep, capitalism is much better.
Cheers.
Eat the Rich.
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