ashbury

I just about did that maneuver too. Glad I stuck around.

Ashbury: Want me to come along, save you some driving? ....yadda yadda yadda... some hours later ....yadda yadda yadda... Ashbury: I have only myself to blame for this escapade. It's the Law.

I had no role in this story except chauffeur, and now scribe.

He missed the sign from third base. 500 dollar fine for getting the runner over to third.

Oh, a fashion noose takes twice as much.

I may have rounded.

"1-0 lead, going into the bottom of the 7th. Remind me again, why I signed with this team?"

Quick, Brian! What's the dirtiest joke you know?

100 yards of that. Now we're talking.

The panel would also have accepted, "FTFY".

Bought 'em from some store in Texas. They build 'em big there.

This surprise party y'all threw me is really touching. / not in that way, Gibby

That's what we're replacing. She wants to find something dowdier.

/ still looks like a misprint to me

And in the likely event it's still nil-nil after that, Rock Paper Scissors. I like our chances if we get that far. / yes, Fuld's bomb is noted, just playing along...

I spark more conversation when I am away than when I post, apparently.

I didn't need your wife's keen insight to tell me that. / nttawwt, my friend

Oh criminy. It was the opposite of fruitful, productive, useful, effective, rewarding, .... I'm groping for just how un-good it was. Did I mention? Mrs Ashbury plans to make the curtains. She wants to buy, oh, 100 yards of fabric, and then she will no doubt consume the rest of 2014 and into 2015 stitching fabric and backing and lord knows what else together. She had found the fabric she liked at Jo-Ann's (a company name that will strike fear into any husband's heart), but the Reno store had only something like 11 yards of it. She checked Carson City. 15. She went to their on-line store. 22. So she hatched this plan: she would drive the 120 miles to Sacramento, where there are 5 Jo-Ann stores, all of them presumably bigger than the ones in northern Nevada, and one by one visit them and determine how much they had, asking them to hold the bolt under her name for the rest of the day if they didn't have the full 100 yards themselves. If any one had enough, she would just buy it, otherwise if she had reserved enough among them all then she would go back to them each and buy the odd lots (and hope the colors were from approximately the same batch and would match). I volunteered to come along. It was a nice day, I like driving better than she does anyway, I-80 is very scenic through the Sierra, and I always enjoy the drive if it's not been too soon since the previous trip (or when it's snowing). Remember the Donner Party from your history text books? That's their Pass. We arrive at the first Jo-Ann's in Roseville (CA, not MN). They have the pattern but the bolt only has 8 yards or whatever. She approaches a store clerk and asks to reserve it. The clerk, one of the finest Jo-Ann employees I've ever met (I met two others after her), took a look at her hand-held device and said "let me check the other stores and save you some trouble". None of the other 4 stores had enough to add up to what was needed. "We can order it from the warehouse." My wife protested that she had already checked on-line and there were only 22 yards. "No, the warehouse has over 1000. Just the on-line store has only 22." Oh. We went to the front of the store to Customer Service and asked the manager if we could have the order shipped to our house. No, it has to come to the store. We persisted, and found that shipping to our house was possible, at extra cost. Fabric being heavy, it was probably going to be $200 if we did that. Can they order it from the warehouse and have it delivered to the Reno store? No, the fabric has to be delivered to the store that orders it. We stopped at Baskin-Robbins for a cone, then headed back up the hill in the 100 degree weather; a cold front had apparently passed through the Sacramento Valley making it that nice. That was 10 days ago, I think. Mrs Ashbury will be visiting the Jo-Ann store in Reno later this week after she drops me off at the bus station so that I can ride down to San Francisco to pick up our other car from our daughter who needed to borrow it after her visit to us over the Fourth. But that's a story for another time...

And I just explained why it doesn't. It's a trailing indicator, not a leading indicator. Just as the unemployment figures tell you too late that a recession is happening. Just as the timer going off tells you the cake is done. Just as the rooster crowing tells you the sun is about to rise. But if you decide these are important to the actual process, and you decide to move the timer up to make the cake bake faster, or somehow trick the rooster into crowing at midnight to make the sun rise, it will lead to disappointment. Because it's the wrong metric. You can sign all the young AAAA and failed prospects you want, it won't accelerate the rebuild.

Florimon, Fuld, Presley (Alex, not Ryan two-ss), Albers, Walters, ...? Zero as well, and there is griping about them all the time. "Oh, not them, though. The good ones."

Twins Daily. Come for the baseball, stay for the musical encyclopedia. She might consider a gym membership to tone up just a little. / oOo - wife jokes, better tread carefully from here on

I disagree. Based on the Babip I saw, he might never have a better chance.

That's the measure I saw being proposed to tell whether the rebuild is happening and on schedule. To me it's more about what's the best way to get the true talent ready - bringing more up to the 40-man and the 25-man doesn't seem like an obvious improvement versus letting them learn in the minors. Which is bringing us pretty far afield from the topic of Worley's spate of success.

That's why the placeholders are needed until the true talent is ready. People are getting hung up on the ages of the placeholders. You could've artificially dropped the age of the major league roster for 2014 by stocking up on guys who didn't make it out of single-A and are now trying out for the Saints, but it wouldn't accelerate the actual rebuild, because guys with high upside aren't available for the asking. Average age of the present roster may not be meaningless, but it's the wrong metric.

Moderator's note: Let's please not let this tangent divert the original topic of the thread. Moreover, trying to characterize groups of people is one of the red flags that signal a post is likely to generate more heat than light. Defining who is a "real" fan is another.