ashbury

Moderator's note: Please avoid making things overly personal. Don't try so hard to place a poster's comments in some larger context. Particularly with the offhand comment about another site, it almost comes across as stalking. We know each other and it's hard sometimes, but try to keep things to the subject at hand. Conversely, it would be well to avoid banging the same drum in thread after thread, about the team's pace in promoting prospects.

Chief ran a pool here last season to guess over/under on a sports book's line of win totals for major league teams. He could weigh in on the ability of us John Does. / disclaimer: I won. And I wasn't very darn good.

I know you asked for optimism. But if you're delving into realism, I have to respond that baseball is still a business, and (to oversimplify only slightly) teams sign a player for more than major league minimum only when they expect to get more in revenue than the outlay - butts in the seats, jersey sales, and so on. The Twins expect to get more than $10M revenue from signing Torii Hunter than if they didn't sign him, etc. Signing Scherzer and getting "a lot" of the money back is a non-starter.

Yeah, but you're allowing yourself an "if" there, while you are denying it to the GMs.

Yet another love that dare not speak its name. I've got no sympathy at all for the second guy. He knows he's crossed the line, as evidenced by his transparent lying about taking money in the venture. I have a little more sympathy for the family with the pet, as it's possible to run afoul of zoning ordinances etc without realizing it. Still, if it's known that the authorities are turning a blind eye to this case, it can become harder to enforce a similar case that involves less knowledgeable people than this guy appears. Or simply the nuisance factor. "They didn't take away that guy's alligator, but you're hassling me about a small flock of chickens in Beverly Hills?" I wonder what his home/liability insurance premiums are? Wait, he didn't mention the gator to the insurance company? Uh oh....

Speaking for the others, I'm sure I speak for myself when I say that we all thank you. I think.

I've never seen a print edition of the publication, and I doubt anyone else here has either. I took a look at the online version yesterday but since I remember little of my high school French I got only a little out of it. The recent collections of cartoons in major media have been helpfully captioned in English, but I have to rely on a faithful and nuanced translation because French (like most languages) has idioms and shared experience that IMO can lead you astray if you're not well versed in it by spending significant time there. My sense is that the publication is all about satire. That they do not tolerate any sacred cows.1 This can be mistaken for racism, when the actual intent a) can be the opposite, or b ) can be a weary above-it-all and cynical point of view of the world at large. It's widely pointed out they make fun of the Pope, for example. Religions tend to take themselves seriously, making for traditional targets of satirists. Being generally anti-religious wouldn't be the same as specifically racist. For that matter, Islam crosses a large sampling of different races. Again, I would be afraid to judge this magazine's actual intent for myself due to the language barrier, and have to rely on others, and I have read varying interpretations; perhaps its main thrust is just the one topic of religion and all else is a cover. My older son took part in a campus "humor" periodical, nearly a decade ago. I was appalled, not because of the highly offensive material (running the gamut from sexism to drugs to, well, sexism), but because it wasn't crisply done and funny. I kept pushing my old National Lampoons into David's line of vision, as encouragement to set his sights a little higher if he wanted to keep pursuing this. You can imagine how much effect dear old Dad had in this regard. (You can also imagine his mother's view of the whole period of his life.) Anyway, as these recent events unfolded, I can't help thinking about his old magazine which shall remain nameless. The individual contributors each had their own point of view, but the overall POV of the publication was simply no sacred cows. That's the freedom-of-speech aspect of the current tragedy for me, not the attempt to defend any specific article or cartoon. 1 A common metaphor that we almost forget in daily usage is taken from another religion, but it seemed to fit - see what I mean about idioms of a given language/culture being ripe for misunderstanding by someone only partially fluent?

Clearly, WORLD SERIES baby!

There's two concepts in play here. One is, can you win (vaguely defined) with a team full of X? I share the view that Dozier fits this bill. The other is one Bill James proposed many years ago as one measure (out of very many) of HoF-worthiness: can you win (I forget if he said World Series or not) if player X is the best player on the team? This supposes a typical range of players worse than him on the 25-man, and I don't personally see Dozier as good enough for that. I think most of the discussion here has been about the first measure, but there was a smattering of the second and I think it's equally worthwhile. The second one is more about whether you can build around the player, for example.

I invoke the California Math exception.

If Corcino is just half as successful as Chris Colabello was, why, that will mean Colabello was twice as successful as him! / in other words, put me down for "meh"...

Along the same lines as the strategy of cutting one of the tires on your car and buying a new one, just before a long trip, because, come on, what are the odds of you having two flat tires?

OK, but note that the instructions given to the BBWAA voters each year explicitly includes "character" as one of the criteria. 5. Voting: Voting shall be based upon the player's record, playing ability, integrity, sportsmanship, character, and contributions to the team(s) on which the player played. http://baseballhall.org/hall-of-famers/bbwaa-rules-for-election IMO it would be unfair to judge one person's character against the standards of another era, but it's completely OK to judge it against his contemporaries. If we need to pursue this tangent, I'd suggest starting a new thread in an appropriate place, of course.

At higher salary, probably, than the Astros will be paying Gregerson. And for roughly similar reliable results, but maybe Beane likes him better (Fangraphs projection for him is a little better too). EIther that or Gregerson simply would not consider re-signing with the A's, which I suppose a player might do if he doesn't like the ultra-small market dynamic there. Kind of a loss for Beane, all told, considering he gave up Seth Smith to get Gregerson, whom the Padres flipped for starter prospect Brandon Maurer. With perfect hindsight, and ignoring the 2014 contributions of the players, Beane could have acquired Maurer, and still had the salary room to obtain the Yankee Nat Clippard.

Painstaking research1 reveals it to be the 2012 Oscars. 1Meaning, I googled for 45 seconds and made the call

Every Costello needs his Abbott to set things up.

Least optimistic scouting report I've seen on them to date.

Yeah, that's the problem. In effect, a minor league contract will still end up with a 40-man decision by Opening Day, in all likelihood. You can say that the 40th man on this team isn't worth worrying about - but is an aging Johan the guy you want to trigger such a move?

That little crow-hop at the end of his delivery, in the "Before" picture, can't signify anything good either, can it?

Yep, by cracky, you're right.

Pure AAA contract, that's a no-brainer. But even a AAA contract with a March 30 opt-out (or April 15, or April 30...), that starts to represent an opportunity cost (even if a minimal one), where innings that go to him during the critical decision-making time in Spring are taken away from someone else who might be more relevant to the team's future. As always, it comes down to the fundamental scouts' opinions, and if they say he can still bring it, as opposed to "maybe he'll get better by Opening Day", the potential benefit starts to outweigh the small cost. A guaranteed major league contract? Whew, the scouts need to be right about him then, because there really is no room at the inn.

http://media.youthink.com/images_quiz/2014/07/26/full_698552038.jpg

Baylor had a nice postseason though. Memorable, even. In a 7 game World Series, tiny differences could have swung it a different way.

My snap reaction would be to reach out to people who have been working on defensive metrics for a long while. Two names that come to mind are Chris Dial, and Vince Gennaro. Both are SABR members so I could put you in touch with them if you wanted. The purpose would be to ask if this is a computation that has been looked at in the past; it's not good to be trapped by the orthodoxy of the "experts" but neither is it good to ignore their experience. Just as things like BABIP are in principle supposed to even out but sometimes don't, I think a year's DP and TC totals could be skewed for an individual player if the total opportunities are far from the norms, and I don't know how to easily get the number of situations where there is a man on first and fewer than two out.