ashbury

He's got about as large a gap between ceiling and floor as anybody on the 40-man roster. Could still turn out to be an above average major league center fielder, could definitely be a total bust. I'm going to split the difference and guess that the change in regime is especially beneficial to him and he contributes enough to be a starter by August (and then Buxton threatens to come up and take his job away in September). BA in the mid-.200s, OBP .080 above that, modest power, OPS+ just shy of 100, WAR 2 or so if he's up for long enough to rack up the counting stats. I will refuse to profess shock if he falls flat though.

Runs and RBI are created by a mixture of what the player does and what his teammates do. OB and hits are more nearly determined by the player himself. Since Joe is pretty good, you might expect these denominators to be large compared to his teammates, leading to lower ratios. To make a ratio that teases out the player's contributions to runs, I'd be interested in denominators that have more to do with the teammates' contributions, such as some kind of measurement of numbers of opportunities, like how many PA were with men on base. Said another way, you're normalizing against Joe's successes and calling them the opportunities.

Moderator's note: please let's not continue the Yet Another Retrospective On Bill Smith's Reign tangent in this thread.

So after the 1983 season and its 92 losses, on the heels of a 100+ loss season the year before, you'd have backed up the truck and cleared out the Twins roster of all those losers, and tried a new direction?

What, and overstimulate him?

My apologies if I injected confusion into the proceedings. As JB said above, the moderators don't always get a heads-up prior to postings like these. At times we've gotten a certain amount of spam at this site. As I said, if TD ownership has worked something out with you, then my disclaimer is moot anyway. The rest of the disclaimer was just a bit of fun, nothing more. Again, I'm sorry if it looked like your post was the butt of some joke. As others have said, your team looks like fun. I used to live in Eagan; too bad I moved 2000 miles away.

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What corresponding move would you make to recoup the lost advertising revenue on teevee, which is why the breaks are as long as they are now?

I thought it was pretty clear that Chief was responding to the post just above his, which had said in part, "I'm starting Schafer in CF. He's got the defense and has shown that with AB's, he can hit." The question of sustainability was already implied. Not that it matters, nor that Chief needs or wants me to clarify, nor... oh, meh.

What will they do? I think they don't know for certain either, aside from expecting one of the options you named to pan out. Maybe they are banking on scooping up 2015's version of Sam Fuld on the waiver wire again. As for should, Hicks succeeding is the most desirable outcome, therefore it's what I'd be focused on. My impression was that last season they tried hard to reduce the pressure and hoped he would blossom. That can work. But there's something to be said for not worrying about a guy who thrives only under low pressure, so I'm half glad the effort didn't work. With a new manager and some new coaches on staff, I'm going to hope for tough love and increased pressure on Hicks from Molitor, that this is his year, make-or-break. http://media.giphy.com/media/ZiQp2QhsFKPyo/giphy.gif Because of the risk that getting Hicks going doesn't work this time either, I want a better backup plan than we currently have, probably via a minor trade. Schafer is the least lousy of the ones we currently have.

Or it could just signify they are now good.

Enough with the false modesty. The rooster doesn't get nearly enough credit for predicting the sunrise each morning.

Tommy Lasorda's winning edge came from never growing a beard? Who knew?

The complicated answer: an awful lot more has to break right than break badly in order for them to contend. The ceilings are there at most positions, the risks of under-performance are there too. The simple answer: Starting Pitching. Starting Pitching. Starting Pitching. If this highly variable commodity comes through, weaknesses elsewhere could be finessed. If you're looking for a key, a few weeks into the season, pick a stat you like, even a crude measure such as Quality Starts, and see if 4 out of 5 starts are solid each time around. OK, so it took me a few more words to express my simple answer.

That would be progress, of a sort, I suppose. The best thing they can do is win as many as they can, and if the stars are aligned against them in some way such as a stacked division, well that's baseball. In the meantime you'll have been treated to a high level of ball being played during the season.

I'll get to work writing a song about that.

Contraction also makes the numbers come out.

ITYM "Bye Bye"?

The rumor contained the names of two players who can be ruled out. Come on, they're practically doing your homework for you!

He only led you on in order to get the sweet sweet TD marketing machine going with that retrospective of his career highlights. Suckers.

Maybe if they included cash... oh wait, I see what you did there.

Jack Goin and his team need to be ready to study GráficosFanáticos for useful nuggets of information.

http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/l/lolicmi01.shtml Height: 6' 1", Weight: 170 lb. Ell. Oh. Ell. Maybe at Durham in 1959 when he was 18. Also this photo caption: "DID MORE THAN JUST EAT INNINGS."

Read the article I linked. We've listened to Terry Ryan say things for a long time now. What he said didn't strike me as a long way of saying "I can't talk about this now". And he's not the kind of person who shows a lot of guile in his public pronouncements, IMO.

The link you provided goes to a page discussing Duquette and the Jays.