Always will be at heart...the family house is right off McKee, a little ways down from Antipastos. I hang out with my brother and sis at the house a lot...but my house is in the soul-less Cambrian area now...haha... an area completely over run with niner fans....tough place for an old school raider fan...haha. The Westie Safeway at Union and Los Gatos/Almaden is my pit stop for bacon and eggs.
You must have got along well with the boys at Antipastos, I know they were big Raiders fans. And the little barber shop, The In Cut? on Toyon and Mckee? The guy that ran it had the walls totally covered in Raiders memorabilia, literally decades worth, and then one day it was all gone and I heard he went to prison.
Yeah, white is usually the most common/least expensive color, so it makes perfect sense. They did serve as a kind of warning sign, so they did serve some purpose. The jerks who drove them weren't the kind of people I wanted to hang around.
In the instance of white, lifted trucks? Yes. The boys who drove them where I grew up were very often the irresponsible, idiot sons of wealthy farmers in the area. Not people who were fun to be around then and seeing where many of them ended up politically, I stand by my decision.
How do you feel about Mexican-Americans with neck tattoos? Think they should be prevented from entering bars or restaurants? Because that shit happens in San Jose. Stereotyping based on superficial things is an ugly form of prejudice. Those are my politics.
You're engaged in stereotyping, which is a form of prejudice. Try to judge people on the content of their character rather than the color of their pickup truck.
which brings us back to Cade and his declining performance. what could explain it? who should be our starting LW going forward? and did Leitch blow it by paying Cade so much money while paying poor Benji so very little, even though Benji has been outperforming him now where it matters most, for three years straight? compelling questions for a Wednesday morning.
I don't have a problem with paying a promising young player who has already started for the senior nats and is one of the best players on the U20's good money to keep him around a few years before you collect what is anticipated to be a significantly lucrative transfer. Benji could improve his salary prospects by producing this year.
But you've missed the point, Cade's numbers are tanking hard here. Benij has outperformed him for the past three years...what could explain that? Coaching churn? Too much money too soon? We all want Cade to succeed here (although I couldn't personally care less about him being sold for a tidy profit) but it's not happening and I'm wondering why? Was he over-hyped to begin with? I'm not talking about his U-20 game, I'm talking MLS...playing for the Quakes, Benji has outplayed him every year, despite earning a fraction of what Cade gets. Seems like this has been mismanaged terribly between the two.
Benji has not outplayed Cade this year. His one goal (originally attributed to Beason) is nothing to write home about, and statistically insignificant. His malingering seems to have abated of late, but he's still underperforming.
data don't lie (where've I heard that)! In the category that matters most (goals), Benji has outpaced Cade for each of the past three years, despite earning a small fraction of what young Cade brings home. The question is why has Cade's productivity dropped off so sharply? And who should be our LW going forward and did CL blow it by paying Cade too much too soon?
I'm not missing any point. You are conflating 2 or 3 questions. 1) Was it a mistake to give Cade a big salary increase, 2) Why is his production going down, and 3) Why does Benji make so much less than Cade. I'll address 1 and 2 here, and 3 in the next post. As for 1), again, the idea was to keep him around so that they can leverage his performance and at some point leverage a significant transfer fee. It's still highly anticipated that he will be transferred, possibly at the end of the season, and that will likely render a good amount of $ for the Quakes. And even though his club production is down, he's had good performances with the nats so I think on balance his stock hasn't gone down. So no, I don't think it was a mistake. As for 2), his production, the numbers are down but 2022 relative to 2021 only a little bit, and this year, no goals yet, but assists about the same rate. And as for goals, he has almost 3 in xG, and that's about what he had all last year in 2x the minutes. So he's getting the chances, just not converting. Did he suddenly get much worse at finishing, like he's practicing non-finishing or something? Or is it just an anomaly and will resolve to the mean over time. I think it's the latter. So all things considered I guess you could say that his production over the last few years has been pretty flat - no real improvement. Has he improved overall as a player? I don't know. I think so, but I don't know. Besides the positive perfomances with the nats I feel like he is more secure with the ball, makes better decisions and has developed a move and cross to his left that is very promising. So on balance I feel like he's improved a bit despite the flat or falling production.
As for question #3, why doesn't Benji make more relative to Cade, he is in his option year, it was convenient and smart business to extend Benji at his current rate. Not sure if he is a threat to leave despite the unsubstantiated AEK rumors. If he produces this year he would likely be due for a pay raise, though Etnire's spreadsheet says he has "rolling options" past 2023 - I don't know what that means exactly. But if he performs he is likely going to get a good raise. As you know I'm a Benji supporter and was one of the few people if not only person here to have defended him thru his slow start to the season and I think he's picking up his swagger a bit again. So we'll see what happens. If it were me I would give Benji a greater percentage of minutes than he has been getting when Cade is around. It's been like 15 minutes a game as a sub. I'd give him more than that and rotate them in starts. Let them truly compete for the job. They both have things to work on. Benji has to show that he can beat players 1v1 if he's going to be a starting outside attacker in MLS. But he's good in the box with his head. Cade is not a threat with his head in the box but better at the 1v1 part and just needs to start finishing better.
I think both Cade and Benji are underperforming and I doubt their respective salaries have anything to do with it. There.
If goals scored is the metric by which we’re comparing these players, which has been my point, Benji has outperformed Cade over each of the last two seasons and he’s doing so again this year, even if his goal was a bit flukey (still counts). Cade’s goal scoring has steadily dropped off. Therefore, if you take the past three seasons and ask yourself “which player is most likely to score at LW” it’s Benji (this isn’t hard )…so Benji should be starting, clearly. The big hope for CL was perhaps that he could sell Benji for a sweet profit thereby impressing his boss by lining his pocket with some cash. As a fan (of a Fisher owned team no less!) I don’t care even a little about selling Cade…we know that means nothing in terms of strengthening our side, which is what I care about. I want to see Cade do well because he seems like a nice kid, but mostly I’m interested in seeing our team progress, creating a fair environment for players to develop (unlike this one) and giving the better player (Benji, so far) the time and support he needs to succeed, not grooming Cade for a Fisher pay day. Instead, for whatever reason, both of these players are struggling although Benji’s numbers have been better over the past three years now.
Goals scored is only one metric. For example Cade has 13 assists over the last 3 seasons. Benji has 4. I don't know if there was ever a "plan" to sell Benji "for a sweet profit". So far we have only one unconfirmed report (from a non-reliable source) about a potential transfer to AEK. If you're talking about Cade, you should care about the transfer because it will get reinvested into the technical team. It's not going to just "line the boss's pockets". The technical team gets a budget to work with, according to SeaJayBee it's a multi-year budget. Any money you make as the technical team is going to add to that budget. I'm sure that's already been the case with the Lima and Marcos Lopez transfer / trades.
I was doing a little camping in Big Sur and missed it completely. Are you suggesting Luchi is to blame? Coach #9?
Goals scored is the single most important metric. And sorry for any confusion, I meant Cade. And if we’ve learned anything at all over all these years, it’s that fisher is the single worst owner in all of sports. His track record speaks for itself.