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LaBombo

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Everything posted by LaBombo

  1. LaBombo
    Yep, that and some huge turns around first on singles that are so not in any danger of being stretched into a double. We love fake hustle!
  2. LaBombo
    Yeah, more spinsanity, but less dreadful coming from a player, at least. That's been enough to keep players with less talent on the roster. In the absence of a worthwhile alternative, I'm all for Dozier going all Jedi mind trick on Gardy in order to hold his spot on the roster.
  3. LaBombo
    In the movie As Good As It Gets, Nicholson is a writer who is asked how he 'writes women so well', to which he replies "i think of a man. And I take away reason and accountability". That's pretty much the Twins. A professional sports franchise, minus the reason and accountability.
  4. LaBombo
    Fair enough, although the stat is much, much more useful than the juvenile, nonsensical song it shares a name with. Correlates to wins at about an 85 or 90 percent clip.
  5. LaBombo
    In the absence of reason, consistency will have to do.
  6. LaBombo
    Back when he was still being scorned by nitwits like Joe Morgan, Bill James observed that in any give season, about 10 percent of the pitchers in the majors had been "left for dead" at one point or another in their careers. Harden's odds of pitching effectively may be worse than that , and his upside no longer what it was at his peak, but rooting for a comeback of some stripe from him beats rooting for Kevin Correia to keep being Kevin Correia for another season.
  7. LaBombo
    I don't place much stock in spring training, and I'm occasionally disappointed when the Twins do. But with the freak show of question marks the Twins will be assembling their rotation from, it seems pointless to speculate who gets the nod until we've seen them pitch. That's assuming that, as mentioned above, Diamond isn't ready.
  8. LaBombo
    So Vodka goes off topic and you're blaming it on jokin?
  9. LaBombo
    In what way? In single season serving size and unadjusted for age and other factors, it's not a very good predictive tool, but then it wasn't meant to be. As far as quantifying what a player did to help his team win in a give season, it's awfully good.
  10. LaBombo
    The Indians basically got Bauer, Stubbs, and two relievers for a year of Choo and 3 years of a middle reliever. Ryan gave up three years of Span for Meyer, who is by most estimates a lower upside pitcher than Bauer.
  11. LaBombo
    http://images4.static-bluray.com/reviews/852_1.jpg Farley: "I've...got... a plan". Spade: "Yikes".
  12. LaBombo
    They sucked and then got better in the offseason. The Royals sucked and then got better in the offseason. The Twins sucked and then got worse in the offseason. That's how. Cleveland added a net 8 wins above replacement or so just to their outfield alone, while snaring one of the better pitching prospects in baseball. Shields has a good chance to give the Royals more wins above replacement than the Twins will get from their entire rotation. I liked the Revere trade, and respect at least the intent of the Span trade, if not the result. It's a rebuilding year despite Ryan's refusal to admit it publicly, so who cares whether they lose 90 or 100? But I liked the Cerano thing. Time to dig that out for the annual spring training screening.
  13. LaBombo
    Doumit's 2012 .781 OPS would rank 4th among DH's with at least 300 PA's, behind Ortiz, Encarnacion, and Butler. Of course, if you compared Doumit to that group using the .858 OPS he posted while batting as a DH in 200 PA's, he moves into pretty much a tie for third with Butler. Argument supported?
  14. LaBombo
    Thanks. I assumed there was some sort of reason, but missed the LEN article. Your question about end-of-season physicals is a very good one. You can't catch everything, but would seem that with very specific stress points like sore knees or elbows, imaging or other methods might provide early diagnosis for conditions that require surgery, therapy, or even just preventive measures like a re-tooled offseason regimen.
  15. LaBombo
    +1. And it wouldn't have cost even 700,000 to replace Butera, at least in the case of Luis Martinez, would it? Martinez was waived three weeks before the Twins "avoided arbitration" (thank goodness, imagine the payday one of the worst hitters in the history of baseball may have scored there) by signing Butera. Assuming Martinez plays for the minimum, the Twins actually would've spent less.
  16. LaBombo
    Are you sure? Yes, Gardy not having an extension in place beyond 2013 is superficially ominous (for him, anyway), but reconsider the other factors in play. Nobody, least of all the Twins front office, expects the Twins to win in 2013. The word 'rebuilding' is bad for ticket sales, but we all knew that's what it is when Span was traded. Gardenhire was (rightly) not held significantly accountable for lousy 2011 and 2012 seasons that were less clearly rebuild years, so why would 96 losses in a 2013 season that definitely is a rebuilder get him fired? So you can take it as a positive about his character that upon hearing of the loss of Revere, he's more upset about losing more games in 2013 than he is relieved that his job may be more secure due to low win expectations. Or you can take it as a negative that he's not sharp enough to see, at the moment of the comment at least, that he won't be held accountable for another bad season. My guess is that he knows his paycheck, if not his role, is secure as a soldier in the Pohlad family. He really likes managing but won't be crushed if he gets moved to a new 'job'. He doesn't like losing, but he was even more upset at the prospect of watching either a lesser veteran than Span, or a rookie, toil in center all year. And I think he hates bad defense and poor fundamentals even more than he dislikes losing. That, and I think he dislikes umpires more than losing, too.
  17. LaBombo
    Was there some sort of explanation why the surgery didn't happen until December?
  18. LaBombo
    Hey, you got me there. But I love that you think that a hypothetical Gardy observation like that, even given 'Blackie's' absence, would be way out of line with the other bombs of crazy that randomly issue forth from his sunflower seed hole.
  19. LaBombo
    This is getting crazy. First of all, the argument about the value of any given one-stat yardstick for almost anything in baseball is sort of pointless, given the fact that any casual fan can sort players according to multiple metrics in a matter of seconds. Second, shorthand measure of what? Yes, major league pitchers tend to be better than minor league ones. So you're saying that the primary value of innings pitched as a performance, as opposed to predictive, stat is that it tells us what we already know, but in statistical shorthand? Also, when minor leaguers are called up, a combination of any decent rate stat and the situation (emerging phenom or AAAA guy called up when CY candidate goes on DL) usually tells us more than a simple IP sort. Third, in the spirit that the original argument was obviously intended (sorting major league pitchers), all IP does in most cases is what Alex said (including your Twins staff example) which is to do a rough separation of the very best and very worst starters or rotations in baseball from the majority in the vast middle. In other words, IP doesn't look very useful for evaluation unless you construct some sort of abstract, hypothetical 'desert island, message in a bottle after each season, rank all minor and major league starters by one stat and guess who's good or not' thing. Thank God, one more day til pitchers and catchers. Then we can freak out about how serious Gardenhire is in LEN3's interview saying that he really loves how Blackburn is throwing the baseball so far.
  20. LaBombo
    I think that most people would agree that the Twins had weak starting pitching depth in 2012. If their only concern in choosing between your options was to prevent runs, it should be a no-brainer even for them. In order to match the 190 IP horse (Correia?), all the Twins would have to do to supplement 130 IP man's inning deficit is find 60 innings from a starter with an ERA lower than 6.55. Six point five freaking five. Let's get crazy and set the bar even higher. What about a lights-out replacement starter with an ERA of 6.00 or lower in at least 60 IP? Take away the top five pitchers on the Twins games started list, and you still find five guys who were at least that good, and a sixth on pace to do so when the season ended. In other words, if the Twins have a half-dozen of those guys just waiting to be dug out of the couch cushions, then any team in baseball could replace those 60 innings from a talent standpoint and get better results than 190 IP man's. There are other factors (possible 40 man roster issues, whether the 60 inning guy is a swing man more valued as a reliever, like Duensing, etc), but there are intangibles on both sides. There's a certainly a place on most teams for a guy like the generic 190/4.35 one in your comparison, especially if he sustains that year after year. But starters with 3.35 ERA's are usually pretty damn good, even when they throw only 130 innings.
  21. LaBombo
    And then you will complain about all of it, whether it happened or not. And that is the nature of you. Ok, just kidding, but is it really so terrible to put Gibson in Rochester to start the year? He's coming off an arm rebuild, has all of 100 innings in AAA, and with the exception of a nice K rate, kind of got his butt kicked there. I think he'll be good, but probably not in April or May. I'll take an extra year of team-controlled prime, even though he's already reached the ripe old age of 25. And as not interested as I was in Saunders, Joe > Kevin in their careers so far. If you agree with Ryan's decision to blow smoke up the ticket base's tail pipe, that's fine, it makes sense from a 'what's he gonna say, "we'll get some scrubs and suck again"?' standpoint. But why can't you make that point without making out the people who don't care for the liquid fertilizer sales pitch out to be anti-social powder kegs of rage?
  22. LaBombo
    Good find. Should make for an interesting season for a leftie who allowed an opposing right-handed hitter slash of .307/.349/.500 in 2012. That big 2014 payday from a season of Safeco mirage stats looks even less likely now.
  23. LaBombo
    Agreed. Allison played in the shadow Killibrew and Oliva, but he was an excellent player in his own right. If his peak years had coincided more closely with theirs, it would have been an incredible trio. My choice of Molitor is based on the literal "memory" idea of the thread. But it's nice to see that younger posters are up on their Twins history by bringing up some of first generation of Twins.
  24. LaBombo
    Thanks for posting. Should make for an interesting year for a lefty who allowed a .307/.349/.500 slash by righties in 2012. Good luck with that chase for the big dough in 2014, Joe.
  25. LaBombo
    My point was that it's silly to say, as the Baltimore reporter did, that Saunders is going to pitch in what everyone knows to be an extreme pitchers' park, hope it boosts his numbers, and then get a nice contract because everyone suddenly forgot that Safeco is an extreme pitchers' park. But if anyone could fall for it, I'd like the chances of a franchise that chose "makeup" over a decade of evidence of mediocrity in evaluating Correia, or one that employs a personnel guy who doesn't like Edwin Jackson now because of what he saw as a scout when Jackson was in high school 12 years ago. I didn't want Saunders. I wanted a front office that would make offseason moves that, not for even a moment, would give cause for anyone to feel just the slightest disappointment that we didn't get Joe Saunders. And I haven't even hoped for the Twins to be 2013 contenders since before the 2012 season ended.
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