ashbury
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Everything posted by ashbury
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The fork has now been officially stuck. Book it!
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Through lots of drills, and Grapefruit League game time, during spring. Then at the start of regular season, if the results are promising, aim for about half his games at 3B and half at DH. Shuffle Plouffe and Mauer among 1B/DH to allow for this. At whatever point the on-field staff feels he's become solid enough (and the bar doesn't have to be super high, maybe it will be during spring training), you can pursue trading Plouffe. While, if Sano's looking shaky at 3B, either coming out of spring training or sometime early into the season, then you've still got Plouffe to man the position while you decide what Plan B with Sano needs to be. If Sano hadn't suffered the injuries that limited him to batting-only during the last weeks of the season, maybe there would be better progress in his fielding, and thereby confidence, to allow for trading Plouffe during this off-season. But it is what it is; he looked raw in the field and then didn't get the chance to adjust to the major league level with his glove. I don't think what I'm proposing is super-cautious. The injuries to our best prospects have thrown a monkey wrench into the team's plans.
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It'll show up as outs, bases gained (or not), etc. Or if hitting the cutoff just right isn't resulting in these things, maybe we're overthinking the intangibles?
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You're referring to Sano's two half-seasons in AA and the majors, OPSing .918 and .916 respectively? Aside from smaller sample size when cutting a season in half, recall that he was coming back from very major surgery. He started slow in AA - OPS .686 through May 6. (Willfully but not exhaustively cherry-picked dates*, I'll admit. ) Give him a little slack for that? Afterward his AA numbers, even smaller sample sized I'll also admit, is a more Herculean 1.034. Allow for a little drop-off when facing MLB pitchers, and I'll stick with my original rough analysis regarding Polanco thankyewverymuch. * His final 4 games in Chattanooga Sano OPSed 1.937. Quite the MLB drop-off. Now THERE's some cherry pickin', when I start to put my mind to it.
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Anything's possible, and eventually I think he will, but Polanco's OPS at double-A in 2015 was only .739. The AL average OPS was .730, so don't you think jumping him two levels next year might suppress his numbers just a little (or even a lot), to well below league average?
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Are the in-house candidates (holdover pitchers and minor league prospects) sufficient to construct a strong bullpen for 2016, or will high-end talent from outside need to be brought in to supplement?
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Polanco's bat is probably not ready. Sano's glove is probably not ready. I wish it was instead like the situation when Mauer came up, glove and bat both ready, and trading AJ was obvious. But it's not. Trading even Plouffe is IMO a bigger gamble than many fans see, and trading both these veterans invites some kind of infield disaster that makes 2016 a lost season. Midseason 2016, maybe Polanco has used his bat at AAA to knock on the major league door, and Sano has settled into making most of the plays we've finally become accustomed to seeing at 3B for a couple of seasons now. That'll be the time to look into trading either of the two vets.
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D'oh! See Emily Litella post, above.
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http://media.cmgdigital.com/shared/lt/lt_cache/thumbnail/187/img/photos/2015/02/11/c5/b0/emily_litella.JPG "Oh. Never mind." / "What's all this I hear about protecting our national race-horses? Is someone going to pick them in the Rule-5 draft?"
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A much different projection? Then it's not pretty much the same situation, is it? It's not only projection, but also how close to MLB-ready both the bat and the glove are. IMO Kepler's bat last winter looked a lot more MLB-ready than Engelb's does now. Max would have been overmatched frequently. Engelb would be overmatched by major league pitchers all the time. I'm not saying not to protect Vielma. Maybe there'll be room for him on the 40-man. I'd just want to check who #41 was, in that case, before deciding finally. (Fixed the "lots of caps" thing for ya, BTW. )
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Moderator's note: I am closing this thread, as the discussion has gone well beyond the range that the Adopt-a-Prospect forum is meant for - the latest goings-on with one's prospect during the season. The discussion itself is not wrong, but belongs either in the Twins Minor League forum, if you want to talk about Mat specifically, or perhaps in Other Baseball if you want to talk about the economics of being a minor leaguer. Feel free to resume the discussion there.
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Every play is tracked these days. If a shortstop's skills are translating into additional outs, that information can be teased out from the data. If his skills aren't translating into additional outs, I'm not sure what value you might be referring to.
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Everything's a factor. I don't know why batting stats in particular wouldn't be. There's a threshold of hitting below which even the best glove can't stick; in an era of 12- or 13-man pitching staffs, 25-man spots are too precious to use on a guy you can only use on defense or as a pinch runner. Vielma is currently under that threshold by a lot. The three infield guys who got drafted last December were basically raking in 2014, leading to hopes they'd do at least OK in the majors.
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A fair point and maybe the distinction I made between pitchers and batters isn't right. However all three of the infielders you listed were at AA or AAA in 2014 (before being drafted), and all OPSed at least 100 points higher than our singles-hitting Vielma who played at high-A.
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Pitchers are more likely to be taken by a major league team, as they can be stashed in the bullpen. And I too would protect ABW. But even though I think Vielma has a chance to be a major league player in about 3 years, I can't envision another team grabbing him and holding on to him on their 25-man for a full year; he's one I'd consider risking leaving exposed, unless a 40-man slot is just sitting there unused. And even if he's taken, chances are 50/50 he gets offered back before the end of the season.
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I rib someone about taking the low road. You rib two people about taking the low road. Welcome to another (dare I say finer?) pod!
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I'm assuming you have in mind teams with hitters who operate independently of each other (otherwise your "inconsistent" team will get no-hit 50 or 100 or 120 times a year ). Also, that even the steady hitting team scatters its game's allotment of hits randomly through the game, otherwise you will have 9 innings of one-baserunner "rallies" and no runs except for homers. Without applying any particular mathematical machinery or simulation software to this, and in a league like 2015 AL with an average R/G of 4.39 with Toronto at the top with 5.50 and Chicago at the bottom with 3.84, I'd guess this: if you have Chicago's offense, you want to bunch your hits, and accept some games where several guys all have outages, since 0 runs isn't much worse than your par; if you have Toronto's offense, you would like a steady production from each hitter, game after game, accentuating your built-in advantage, and not "waste" your hits in too many 17-3 blowout wins; for an average offense (The Twins happened to be 4.30 R/G), I'm thinking it's close to a wash where it comes to wins, but maybe steady production is still a little better since one 17-3 blowout win is going to have to be balanced out by about 3 shutout losses. -
Are you mad????!?? In what universe is Gordon ranked ahead of Gonsalves????!?? 'N' clearly comes ahead of 'R'!!!!?!! / i keed, i keed
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If you take this job, Smerf, get ready for the jokes. Get ready for lots and lots of jokes. People standing in line, to give you the jokes. People standing in line, to get into the joke-giving line, to give you the jokes.
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I thought that's [one place] where market inefficiencies come from.
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- phil hughes
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If you read his article, it's not just something he woke up to last week and turned in his resignation letter to the boss. And I think it's unfair to say he didn't think it through. He clearly did. And came to a different conclusion than expected, due perhaps to different base axioms in his life than you or I might have.
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PE, maybe. D, I imagine so.
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- phil hughes
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He just turned 24. That might be the difference.
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Seth's Preliminary Top 50: Part 1 (41-50)
ashbury replied to Seth Stohs's topic in Twins Daily Front Page News
Wow. He wrote that nicely. Guess he's found the right job to be in. His reasons echo mine when I retired, but I didn't expect that from a 24 year old. A very surprising choice but I can see why, now that he's explained. -
Sounds like a technique that would make a catcher a little vulnerable to the passed ball. And when I looked, sure enough, he led the league in passed balls with 12. In 2014. Whereas this season he had only 1. Somehow he's found the magic combination.
