When someone like JeDi talks about 'top targets,' 'dream outfields,' or employs any other quotables, he's tipping his hand--like a fox.
It always boggles me that netizens (present company *GENUINELY* excluded here) will take public statements as de facto TRUTH and then build entire arguments around them being 100% representative of the speaker's thoughts. And if there happens to be some sort of apparent conflict/incongruity between those statements and potentially laudable 'contingencies' then said netizens *generally* wrinkle their noses and point emphatically to the public statements (*seemingly* to quiet the cognitive dissonance generated between said public statements' *apparent* intent, and the reality of such contingencies--and they ALWAYS circle back to the public statements in an effort to discredit the possibility that, yes, this was All Part Of The Plan... /HeathLedger'sJoker).
I like (not hate) to be the one to break it to such people: public statements are just that, P U B L I C. Did the British RAF *actually* believe that eating tons of carrots improves eyesight, or were they playing a misdirection game to hide how heavily they were leaning on radar at night to snipe German planes in WW2? When MacArthur said 'I shall return,' do we take that to be a foolish declaration on his part--one which makes his eventual return not only predictable, but more easily contested--and a sign of slow-wittedness or do we take it to be the tip of an iceberg the rest of us can only guess at, in terms of how many contingent decisions stand at hair-trigger readiness to be made?
So when someone like JeDi says 'This is my DREAM outfield!!' I take it with rather less enthusiasm than most. I don't DISbelieve him at all; I simply afford less *weight* to the statement than the commenters at other sites seem to, while firmly believing that he's only tipping the part of his hand that he thinks is beneficial to tip. I'm not saying he *IS* lurking beneath the waves, trying to sucker unsuspecting 'unsinkable' passenger liners by exposing *just* enough of his plans and thoughts...I'm just saying that I wouldn't put it past the man, or any of his contemporaries, to do precisely that.
It's one thing to call shots, to make bold declarations, and to do one's best to follow through on seeing a given plan to fruition. It's quite another to survive first contact with the enemy, at which point we all know the fate of even the best laid plans...
If you're in it to win it, you've got to be flexible. I'm not following as closely as y'all, but JeDi has given me no reason to suspect he is somehow deficient in flexibility. Personally, I've never SEEN a GM who appeared as flexible as him--not in Seattle, anyway.