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About this blog

Random musings from a transplanted midwesterner

Entries in this blog

Miscellaneous

What's the best logical fallacy?

I started to be snarky and post this to a particular thread that was annoying me.  But I thought twice, and will post it here, in a vacuum. What's The Best Logical Fallacy? A famous Logic professor told me the Appeal to Authority Fallacy is the best. Anyone who doesn't say the Ad Hominem Fallacy is best is a poopyhead. Argument from Repetition Fallacy is the best. Repetition. Argument from. Best. Begging the Question Fallacy is the be
Front Office

Managerial selection: a broader opportunity

The Twins are in search of a new manager.  Regardless of whom they pick, I'm glad they are interviewing a bunch of people.  Hopefully most of them, in the process of explaining how they'd run things in the dugout and in the clubhouse, will give their frank view of "what's wrong with the Twins at present?"  I wish they had done a similar interviewing process when they elevated Zoll to the (meaningless) GM title on the nameplate on his desk, instead of apparently reflexively hiring from withi
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ashbury in Front Office

8
MLB Draft

The FalVine Draft Record - First Round

Derek Falvey and Thad Levine were brought on board to head the Twins front office in late 2016.  We have nearly a decade of drafts to look at now.  What might have happened under other leadership?  I took a look at the first rounders picked by the Twins 2017-25 and then checked which player was taken next.  That's hardly an infallible way to look at it, but resembles a kind of "crowd sourcing" among the dozen or so other GMs in the majors during the same era as to how it might have gone had
ashbury

ashbury in MLB Draft

16
Twins

A very OOTP trade deadline

Regular readers here will recall that I enjoy the computer game Out Of The Park.  Since it's a game and I'm not hurting anyone, I abuse some of its features terribly.  In particular, there is often no sense of there being 24 hours in a day.  So, as GM in the game, my typical style is to do a top-to-bottom assessment of every level of my franchise's farm system and 40-man on the first day of the off-season, then I use the trading interface to sell off every questionable asset that has trade value
ashbury

ashbury in Twins

0
AFL

Salt River Rafters game thread 10/9/24

Where's the game thread for our AFL team today?  Guess I have to start my own.  J/K.  Here's a photo though.  That's Kala'i Rosario in RF in case you can't tell.  😊  Had a good time watching a bad, sloppy game last night, with USAF Chief. / edit - and that's Rosario with a HR swing in the 5th in the cover photo   
ashbury

ashbury in AFL

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Analytics

Good Judgment with Numbers

I ran across an article, in a completely non-sports context (ethical choices), that fairly well sums up my view on using analytics wisely. Have a read, see what you think.  I'm not going to short-circuit discussion by providing a summary; if no discussion occurs, so be it. https://www.goodthoughts.blog/p/good-judgment-with-numbers
ashbury

ashbury in Analytics

37
Rocco

How many wins has Rocco cost the Twins in 2024?

We all know Rocco is costing the Twins a chance for a win, every time he fills out the lineup card or comes out to make a pitching change.  And don't get me started on his pinch-hitting choices.  So, put a number on it. How many needless losses are on Rocco, so far this season?
ashbury

ashbury in Rocco

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2024

Does this 2024 Minnesota Twins team actually platoon a lot???

You bet your sweet bippy they do.  They do platoon.  A lot.  My apologies for the click-bait subject line.  (It's fun.  Almost went with "One Weird Trick Your 2024 Twins Use To Platoon") How do the Twins rank versus the other 29 teams, in plate appearances by batters in same-arm matchups? LHB-vs-LHP:   29th  (64 PA, OPS of .759 which is 5th in the majors) RHB-vs-RHP: 23rd  (752 PA, OPS of .680 which is 15th in the majors) They try their darndest not to let it happen, especial
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ashbury in 2024

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Wild Card

Top Ten wild card moments

So much was packed into two games!  A day later, I've put together a Top Ten list of moments, with no particular metric except my own sense of drama in the moment.  Ranking is influenced by impact on the game's outcome, but there is an "Oh No He Didn't!" factor that counts for a lot.  You will argue with some choices I am sure - I would probably have ranked them slightly differently yesterday and might change my mind tomorrow.           Game 1 Inning 4: Carlos Co
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ashbury in Wild Card

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The Hypothetical Baseball League

One Strike an' Yer Out!

Baseball didn't start out as a spectator sport, merely a pastime for children, farm boys, or city folk with enough open park space to play in.  Three strikes were the rule and fastballs weren't permitted, to allow rank novices to have a chance at putting the ball in play for some healthful fun and a little light competition.  In early variants the pitcher was required to suit the batter's preference as to low or high pitches. What if we were devising rules made for spectators and played by
2023

Spring Training 2023

As is my custom, I've taken a few pictures during this visit to Fort Myers.  Well, a few hundred.  Most are crap and I don't know yet which is which, and I won't be able to sort through until I'm back from vacation, probably.  But yesterday on the back fields, during an away game for the big club, was a lot of fun because of whom they left behind.  Buxton, Correa, and Kirilloff all batted (DHed) during one of the two mixed AA-AAA games.  And there were other players to watch as well. David Festa
ashbury

ashbury in 2023

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2022

Arizona Fall League 2022

The Glendale Desert Dogs had several representatives from the Twins' farm system.  Denny Bentley, Francis Peguero, Jon Olsen and Ryan Shreve were the pitchers, and the position players were Alex Isola, Austin Martin and Edouard Julien.  Here's a few photos from my trip in late October.  For two of the three games I was joined by the illustrious USAFChief. Driving there meant going through some dusty desert miles.  Here is one of the denizens of the town of Beatty NV where I quartered for th
ashbury

ashbury in 2022

6
Cartoons

The Old Orb Match

Two blog posts in one day.  But I ran across this, and in honor of Opening Day I just have to share: Credit where due, this is apparently the work of Nathan W. Pyle: https://www.facebook.com/nathanwpyle2  
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ashbury in Cartoons

0
Players Union

Twins union rep

Does anyone here remember who have been the Twins' players union representatives in years prior to Taylor Rogers? Rogers was the team's rep, Garver was the assistant rep.  Both gone via trade.  After the CBA was finished up. I wish I had a history of the past several years, for this role on the team, before drawing conclusions from a Small Sample Size of 2.  OTOH the recent CBA renewal was contentious, and perhaps recent history of the quiet years before the present wouldn't tell us mu
ashbury

ashbury in Players Union

15
2022

Risk vs Reward

Disclaimer: Despite the photo, no Byron Buxtons were used in the preparation of this blog entry. Do I have to say it? Okay, I will, just to get it out of the way: I love the Correa signing.  Teams should be trying to get good players, and we just got one of the best baseball players on the planet, in the middle of what should be his prime years - a center-cut slice, as they say.  But ever since I heard about it, TWO LONG DAYS AGO, there's been something on my mind.  Risk versus reward.
ashbury

ashbury in 2022

14
2021

Scorpions Stomp Solar Sox

Thursday afternoon's game in Mesa was marred by an injury to Matt Wallner due to an errant pitch high and inside.  I wrote up what I know here.  I find it disquieting that we have not quickly heard a simple "X-rays proved negative" by mid-evening.  The 11-4 drubbing administered to the home Solar Sox by our Twins' Scottsdale Scorpions pales in comparison to the concern I have for Matt, but here is my game summary from a Twins fan perspective. In attendance along with me at Sloan Park was Tw
ashbury

ashbury in 2021

2
2021

Matt Wallner hit by pitch

Matt Wallner was hit in the face by a pitch in this afternoon's game versus Mesa.  Looked like his lower jaw.  I happened to be taking photos during that plate appearance - it's a bit out of focus and blurry but I can't help uploading and posting it anyway.  Matt was able to make his way to the training room at the far end of the ballpark under his own power, so I'm hopeful that he escaped serious injury.
ashbury

ashbury in 2021

9
2021

Your 2021 Scottsdale Scorpions!

I'm in Scottsdale for 3 days in the late-autumn sun.  Well, no sun tonight, but it was a nice evening for a ballgame despite a sparse crowd of under a thousand, with the always convivial baseball fan Mrs Ash attending with me at Salt River Fields at Talking Stick tonight, where we witnessed the Rafters at home defeat "our" Scottsdale Scorpions 3-2.  Two Twins prospects were in the starting lineup, Andrew Bechtold playing third base and Michael Helman in left field.  Bechtold showed a willin
ashbury

ashbury in 2021

0
Historical

40 Starts a Season

Recently a side comment came up about why modern pitchers don't start 40 games a season like they used to.  The question intrigued me so I did a little searching.  The results surprised me.  Mostly I used the Stathead tool at baseball-reference.com, and the most useful table I constructed is this: https://stathead.com/tiny/SBDaM Since the modern era, 1901 and forward, it's never been the case that pitchers in general were regularly making 40 starts. For periods of years, the major
ashbury

ashbury in Historical

1
2021

Woo! Worcester

Mrs Ash and I went to Worcester last night to see their brand-new AAA team, the Worcester Red Sox (known almost exclusively as the Woo Sox).  It's part of our farewell tour in New England as we prepare to move back to Nevada. We took a train scheduled to arrive an hour early, so as to have time to take in the sights, but mechanical troubles had us traveling about 5 MPH for the last 5 miles, meaning we arrived about when the next train was supposed to (though it became delayed too, in a ripp
ashbury

ashbury in 2021

4

Arizona Fall League 2018 - Nov 1 & 2

I feel like posting a little bit on my trip to Phoenix for the Arizona Fall League.   I arrived Thursday and was picked up at the airport by ashburydavid. Nice that he could take a day off from work to join his dad for a long weekend of baseball watching. Salt River, the team all the Twins prospects are on, had played earlier in the day, so we contented ourselves watching the evening game in Scottsdale. You can get good seats at the AFL:     The game itself between Scottsdale and Peoria was ver
ashbury

ashbury

3

The Cheapskate goes to a parade

The Red Sox won the World Series on the road, so my tentative plan to be a Cheapskate and lurk the Fenway environs in anticipation of a fourth win proved impractical. Next best thing was to pencil in Wednesday the 31st, when a parade in the team's honor was scheduled.   Large crowds were anticipated for the 11:00 start, so again I relied on public transportation. And again I was concerned that the commuter train might already be full before it pulled into my station, but again it was easy-peasy.
ashbury

ashbury

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The Cheapskate's Guide to Attending the World Series

I'm a five-minute walk away from the east-west commuter train that also stops at Fenway Park. So with Game 1 of the World Series being held at Fenway, Tuesday night, despite not being a diehard Red Sox fan and despite the forecast of iffy weather I felt like I'd be a fool not to take advantage of the logistics.   The title for this blog entry is deceptive because I didn't actually "attend" the game. I didn't have tickets, and of course no way was I going to pay scalper prices. But I thought I'd
ashbury

ashbury

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