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ashbury

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Everything posted by ashbury

  1. ashbury
    Je suis encore Charlie.
  2. ashbury
    Balance is important, once you achieve general competence that is. If you skew towards high OBP but without power, you need 3 guys to get on base just to score 1 run (or 0 runs if that third baserunner is a walk). High ISO alone leads to too many solo HR, as you suggested. The Twins were at the AL bottom in OBP and almost at the bottom with BA. Their isolated power ISO was near the middle ranks, but still below the mean. So it's not a bad thing in and of itself to go after some more power, such as with the Park signing. But there will be diminishing returns on such investment, if getting guys on base isn't addressed. With several key players being still young, it's not unreasonable to hope/expect OBP improvement simply with experience. But adding one or two "ignitor" types could pay dividends out of proportion to usual expectations; success in this way may get attributed by beat writers as being due to some kind of special moxie that sparks the whole team, but really it will be from having guys on base in front of the boppers. Escobar seems like a candidate that we already have in-house. I do like his balanced approach to power that leads to a bit of punch from an unlikely location on the diamond; but for this team, maybe his better contribution could be to forego the power (situationally of course) and turn himself into a genuine leadoff hitter. I just sense that he's a smart hitter, and maybe could.
  3. ashbury
    Now that catcher is apparently taken care of, what kind of offer would be one that can't be refused? I imagine he sees Gibson as an integral part of the starting rotation.
  4. ashbury
    We're sitting on a gold mine with Josmil Pinto, then.
  5. ashbury
    Kubitza is old enough that it strikes me either the Angels would rather just put him at third and not have to give up a relief pitcher, or else he's not good enough for the Twins to want to trade for.
  6. ashbury
    Up the middle and starting pitching, is vastly more valuable than corner players and relief pitching. You can usually find a trade partner if you're willing to give up the former and willing to accept the latter. Not to say I don't like the trade. Getting something, in exchange for someone you would have to DFA, is good. And the deal fills a hole, of sorts - first base at our high-A affiliate was manned the most by 25 year old Bryan Haar who OPS'ed .640. But as I said elsewhere the other day, corner players and relievers represent to me a kind of "path of least resistance".
  7. ashbury
    Ryan made specific comments leaving Mauer at first base. That removes one "moving part" in this exercise.
  8. ashbury
    I did not know this term. Looked it up. Old Lady. LOL.* * I'm of an age where LOL used to mean Little Old Lady
  9. ashbury
    This is where the majority of Nishioka comparisons are coming from, IMO. The Nishi signing was a classic case of scouting failure, because reportedly the Twins were caught by surprise at his mechanical flaws when he showed up at camp. That was under the Bill Smith regime, and it was (for me) as much of a firing offense as anything else that happened during his term, the lack of accountability from the scouting staff. Now, under Terry Ryan, I would expect a tighter ship to be run in this department of the front office. But some fans are going to draw comparisons, and indeed if I had a chance to talk with Ryan I would ask him to compare/contrast the team's scouting in Asia 5 years ago to now, just for some reassurance. Ugh, I DON'T want to see this turn into a Bill Smith thread. But I at least had to invoke his name to make the point about the connection to this thread topic.
  10. ashbury
    You didn't sit through the whole thing? Then you missed the Rickroll somewhere in the middle of it! I didn't bother to write down the time-mark for it, so you should sit down and watch the whole thing now.
  11. ashbury
    Thanks. His being from Louisiana, I was trying to think of any way it could be Cajun, Creole, French, ... coming up with nothing like that.
  12. ashbury
    "maybe even spot-start at third for a day" Adding a qualifier like "for a day" to an already backhanded term like spot-start really makes it sound like it has nothing to do with the overall strategy of what they're going to do with the lineup.
  13. ashbury
    I dunno. USAFChief is what's on your birth certificate but we just call you Chief.
  14. ashbury
    As one of the Sano pessimists* you are probably referring to, I would like to also point out that Polanco's arm is what is holding him back at shortstop. So I'm not sure the team would want to stretch his capabilities even further with a move to 3B. He has logged zero innings at third base in the minor leagues, for whatever that tells you about their thinking. (Of course Sano has logged 0 innings in RF, and Ryan is talking that up, so never mind, maybe. ) * It's a short term pessimism, not necessarily long term
  15. ashbury
    In addition, Ryan himself throws cold water on this notion. In a video mentioned in a different thread, Ryan is quoted specifically as Mauer staying at first if the negotiations for Park are successful. Sano to RF, Park to DH, those are the moves. http://video.startribune.com/ryan-if-twins-sign-korean-slugger-sano-would-move-to-outfield/344132022/
  16. ashbury
    18 walks in 89 PA. I don't see anybody else on the GCL team with a rate that high. So he was able to lay off some of the more egregious stuff off of the plate. Maybe when he starts facing better pitchers on a regular basis, the hits and home runs will come - an offshoot of the effect Sano talked about when he came up to the majors.
  17. ashbury
    Also, I think what Sano "will be" eventually in the field is a different matter than what he "will be" in 2016. I forecast the word "adequate" being used a lot in 2016, out of kindness, if he plays much at third. I think there would be some managers who would say, "he can't play there, for me," at present. Hopefully by the end of the season he will have smoothed out a few of the rough edges and progressed to being about average. He does some things well already, and I'm far from believing he's a lost cause. But he has to continue to dedicate himself to improving this part of his game, for him to have a future at third.
  18. ashbury
    It's a long season. A result like that would be after pitchers adjusted to him, and adjusted again.
  19. ashbury
    This explains the lack of a copy editor to catch "he is not the universal cure for what ills[sic] the team". How many individual signings *are* a universal cure, anyway? Terrible article from just about any angle. I feel I now know less about my team than when I started to read it. // and the first TD poster to say "is it even possible for you to know less"...
  20. ashbury
    Mein Gott, I hope nobody takes anything I ever posted in a game thread as being meaningful.
  21. ashbury
    You wrote up a good counterpoint. I think the problem with it is that the deal can't be judged alone. We kind of need to see where Ryan is going with this. And since the signing (if negotiations are even successful) can't occur extremely soon, and any further moves hinge on this, I'm personally going to have to suspend judgement for a while. Maybe Ryan will explain sooner rather than later. But in the meantime it's fun to speculate. If by New Years Day the logjam of corner infield/outfield players is still there, shades of Ye Badde Olde Days of Doumit and Willingham, then I'll join you in disliking the deal. And if it lingers into Spring Training then we're in WTF territory. I have long been very tired of hearing "and, if nothing else, his bat will play at DH" about player after player. We obtain them because they are easy to obtain, up-the-middle players (and starting pitchers) being the coin of the realm. It's the path of least resistance. My guess when all is said and done is that Ryan is angling for a significant starting pitching acquisition, with a lot of moving parts to make that happen. I like Ryan and think well enough of him to look for something that isn't the path of least resistance. But if all we do as a result of this signing is trade Plouffe for a late-inning reliever who throws gas, then I'll be underwhelmed, because acquiring such a reliever could probably have been accomplished a lot more simply.
  22. ashbury
    What becomes of Trevor May in your plan?
  23. ashbury
    So you advocate replacing a second baseman with no stick part of the year* with a second baseman with no glove all of the year? * Playing along, for the moment
  24. ashbury
    Of more pressing interest to me is how you talked him into going back to catching again. Apparently as an in-game platoon with Wieters, which I'm not sure has been tried before.
  25. ashbury
    LOL. Retirement rawks.
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