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ashbury

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Everything posted by ashbury

  1. ashbury
    This. We remember trading AJ when Mauer came up and getting a haul. But 3B is not the high-demand position catcher always is. Another difference, which doesn't affect the quality of the trade itself, is that no one had doubts about Mauer's offense OR defense being MLB-ready, making the AJ trade a no-brainer (even if Mauer then went out and hurt himself early on, making us wish we had a big-time catcher for one more year). But the jury is still very much out on Sano's glove. You trade Plouffe, and then have Sano's fielding pct be .880 in the month of April, even if he shows flashes of brilliance on certain plays, and you have a big problem on your hands, especially if the DH slot is currently productive. / I'm not a proponent of fielding pct as the measure of fielding value of course, but the nature of Sano's problem would show up in that traditional and easy-to-explain way
  2. ashbury
    That's the classic cherry picking technique of making overly specific requirements. Broaden that to 28-30 year old corner infielders and outfielders converting to catcher. Oops, still got nothing. Tools of ignorance, wasn't that the phrase? Who the heck would try that? Unless told that one's MLB career was otherwise at an end. And even then... uh, no.
  3. ashbury
    Plouffe? Because, he'd be, well, terrible?
  4. ashbury
    The Massachusetts game. Soaking the runner. Closer to Town Ball than the New York game was. Good times, good times. Find a local vintage baseball team and sign up to play. You'll gain an appreciation for a lot of things about the game then and now.
  5. ashbury
    http://asirtu.eu/foto/1379963563.jpeg http://cdn-www.airliners.net/uf/135508/1328293601gf7edq.jpeg http://cdn.playbuzz.com/cdn/bc694e5a-6674-4d4f-8c4d-567388161087/340d014e-16c5-4516-88ff-1ec6707ea992.gif
  6. ashbury
    I downloaded a copy of the MLB official rules, and then did a text search on the string "slide". (No other variations, so maybe I missed something.) There are a number of references, maybe a dozen, to be found there - reflecting a natural expectation that sliding will occur during baserunning. What I was looking for, though - and found in only one place - was any wording in the rules to describe what acceptable sliding was like. That one instance was in the rule concerning home plate collisions. You will probably recall, that rule is brand new. It specifies acceptable slides both feet first and head first, such that if the runner does this, he won't be guilty of an illegal collision. Nothing like it anywhere else. So when a new rule is written to deal with second base, it will no doubt contain similar wording. It's a new sentiment to try to define this specific aspect of the game, but precedent is now in place. Maybe they will even generalize to what legal slides are like at any base. I also expect that umpire judgement will be removed to the extent possible - so that the ump doesn't have to read between the ears of the players to know what their "intent" was. I'm not in favor of the suspension for Utley for this collision, but I presume that next season it will be obvious and automatic.
  7. ashbury
    The Error stat just isn't the sabrmetric stat everyone wishes it was. Call it a hit, call it an error, it can still be a play that another player (or the same player on another day) makes. I don't worry about the official scorer's call on that.
  8. ashbury
    "DH, Catcher, Left Fielder" Gattis > Doumit? Doumit > Gattis? Can't decide. / Doumit circa 2011 I mean
  9. ashbury
    Plouffe plus _______, plus Arcia as a sweetener. Maybe we have found our new Duensing.
  10. ashbury
    And a potentially game-losing play at short to follow up!
  11. ashbury
    I bask in the reflected glory.
  12. ashbury
    Plouffe plus Arcia. Not enough, but a conversation starter in the slightest?
  13. ashbury
    Arcia for Salazar? A guy can dream, can't he?
  14. ashbury
    In case your comment reflects any doubt, TD ownership has made clear that this kind of cross-promotion is OK and desirable, and it's stated as such in the Comment Policy.
  15. ashbury
    They were a 90 loss team last year. They made big strides and got a winning record this year. This year's team was not yet ready to win a championship. I don't see any contradiction among these thoughts, nor a lack of appreciation for the progress we saw this year nor a lack of enjoyment of the brand of ball when it was good.
  16. ashbury
    Exactly. "Collateral Damage From Maintaining Our Liberty", please.
  17. ashbury
    +1 for the nested parens. Few thoughts worth sharing can be adequately expressed (In My (Not So) Humble Opinion) without this valuable technique.
  18. ashbury
    Souhan's proposal makes this trade unwise.
  19. ashbury
    You think trying humor in this medium is bad, go for full-on satire as I sometimes make the mistake of doing. Yeesh. Live and don't learn.
  20. ashbury
    The article is behind a paywall so I haven't read it. Is the above a direct quote from it? If so, I have to suspect the writer has misunderstood something about this research. It may be true that 24% are likely hits and 62% are likely outs, leaving 14% as essentially go-get'em balls. But not all the 62% of outs are cans of corn, and when there are runners on base there will be significant opportunities for fielders to distinguish themselves. Likewise not all the 24% hits are Texas Leaguers where the outfielder retrieves the ball and underhands it to a middle infielder - if the ball is hit a long way, there is scope for a Ben Revere to do less with it than someone with a major league arm, for example. Cans of corn, with nobody on base? Routine singles, and even certain kinds of doubles, with nobody on base? Deep fly with a man on third, so that even God himself couldn't save the run? Home runs? Sure, they happen a lot. It does represent a reduction to the value of seemingly non-SSS quantities of fielding chances. The problem with assessing defense is indeed the radically fewer true chances, compared with the thousands of pitches that a batter sees each season. But simply tallying the initial touch of a ball in play, which is what these raw percentages imply to me, leaves an awful lot of defensive skill un-assessed. I hope the researchers didn't fall into that easy trap.
  21. ashbury
    Le Petit Orange?
  22. ashbury
    He hit acceptably in AAA at 22, but back when the discussion was him versus Florimon it was difficult to persuade that this was a useful datapoint.
  23. ashbury
    In the Southern League this year he hit about the same as our Stuart Turner. Both were in their age-23 season. Turner's pretty well thought of defensively - I assume O'Conner must be too. In that case, I don't quite see the point of paying a significant price to acquire him.
  24. ashbury
    So, I went ahead and tuned in anyway. My gripe is with the wild card format, not with the caliber of play I expect to see. It's baseball! I can't just hang up and listen. Doesn't look like anyone is inclined to turn this into a game thread. I was thinking, does Byron Buxton catch that double by Springer in the third inning? I haven't paid attention to Brett Gardner lately, but he sure doesn't seem very fast for a center fielder. True, that ball was scalded and didn't have a lot of hang-time, but he also wasn't anywhere near the warning track when it landed.
  25. ashbury
    How about the setup they have for the NL? Where a 98-win team and a 97-win team play one game to settle matters? Second and third best teams in the league, by a pretty good margin, and one goes home after 9 innings. OK, I'm off topic. Thanks for taking my call. I'll hang up and listen.
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