ashbury

From Seth's daily report on minor league results, the 16-inning May 7 game in Toledo: Joe Benson was 2-6 with a walk and two doubles. Nice.

Coming soon to the Amazon.com best-seller list: "Don't Sweat The Big Stuff" by R. Clyde Gardenhire

Gardenhire establishes who is in charge in the dugout, no different than a manager on his first day on the job, or a manager in the middle of a decade-long run of last-place finishes. "Until the day the GM tells me otherwise, this is MY team." Choosing to give a public tongue-lashing to a rookie has nothing whatsoever to do with his W-L record. The axe-grinding forum is down the hall.

It's a fine art to know how to treat each player. But, this is the majors. If a tongue-lashing over a minor defensive miscue (a false step back) plus a bit of hotdoggery (the flip) puts Hicks in a funk, then the check-box for "good make up" on his scouting sheet was in error. I don't know the young man, but I'm with the opinion stated elsewhere here that the outcome could very well be a nice game for him tonight rather than a black cloud of depression.

Shoot. The one double-header I got down to Reno to see, and Shipley wasn't pitching. I had meant to get down there once more, with him in mind, but I'm heading out of town for a couple of weeks and it ain't gonna happen. TD is going to have to suffer without my in-person scouting report.

Back in December when the Sanchez signing was current, I did a bit of casual research and wrote it up. I didn't blog it at the time but have done so now: Would you have gone 5 years and $80M for Anibal Sanchez? - Blogs - Minnesota Twins News & Rumors Forum . I didn't purposely cherry-pick but maybe there's a flaw; still, the guys that turned up make me think twice.

This is a repeat of a forum post I made in December 2012. I'm blogging it now mostly for my own convenience; I took the time to look up several pitchers and I don't want to have to search again when I try to remember what I learned. The question was, if you were GM would you have matched the 5/$80M deal for Detroit's Anibal Sanchez? The context now is, when if ever would you sign a pitcher to a long term deal, given that there is room in the budget until the rookies start to earn big dough ... My snap reaction was yes I would sign Sanchez. Then I tried to think about how Terry Ryan sees it, in terms of risk. Sign him to 5 years, then the last year of the contract you'll be paying him (say) $15M or $16M in 2017. This is right in the heart of the new window of competitiveness, right? Will that $16M be part of the winning formula? Or will it be a boat-anchor preventing you from making a deal to push this juggernaut team to a second straight title? Well, roll the clock back 5 years to 2007. Not that all of these pitchers were available to sign at the time, but let's focus on who was completing his 28-year-old season, just as Sanchez is now. Limit it to guys who clearly were established starters. These 28-year-olds were: Carlos Silva Johan Santana Gil Meche John Lackey Jeremy Guthrie Mark Buehrle Erik Bedard Isn't this kind of a Murderer's Row of pitchers who teams actually *did* make an investment in? And with the exception of Buehrle, aren't they the ones that, 5 years later, fans of their current teams wail and gnash their teeth over? Now put yourself in Ryan's shoes. Are you really going to pull the trigger on Sanchez for 5 years? As I said above, I would. And this quick little bit of research reaffirms my reminder to myself, that when Terry Ryan and I disagree about something, take another good hard look.

This is a repeat of a forum post I made in December 2012. I'm blogging it now mostly for my own convenience; I took the time to look up several pitchers and I don't want to have to search again when I try to remember what I learned. The question was, if you were GM would you have matched the 5/$80M deal for Detroit's Anibal Sanchez? The context now is, when if ever would you sign a pitcher to a long term deal, given that there is room in the budget until the rookies start to earn big dough ... My snap reaction was yes I would sign Sanchez. Then I tried to think about how Terry Ryan sees it, in terms of risk. Sign him to 5 years, then the last year of the contract you'll be paying him (say) $15M or $16M in 2017. This is right in the heart of the new window of competitiveness, right? Will that $16M be part of the winning formula? Or will it be a boat-anchor preventing you from making a deal to push this juggernaut team to a second straight title? Well, roll the clock back 5 years to 2007. Not that all of these pitchers were available to sign at the time, but let's focus on who was completing his 28-year-old season, just as Sanchez is now. Limit it to guys who clearly were established starters. These 28-year-olds were: Carlos Silva Johan Santana Gil Meche John Lackey Jeremy Guthrie Mark Buehrle Erik Bedard Isn't this kind of a Murderer's Row of pitchers who teams actually *did* make an investment in? And with the exception of Buehrle, aren't they the ones that, 5 years later, fans of their current teams wail and gnash their teeth over? Now put yourself in Ryan's shoes. Are you really going to pull the trigger on Sanchez for 5 years? As I said above, I would. And this quick little bit of research reaffirms my reminder to myself, that when Terry Ryan and I disagree about something, take another good hard look.

Rebuilding is exactly when it makes sense to acquire short-term talent. You can't leave the fans with nothing to come to the ballpark for; revenue will dry up and it's very difficult to get it back even with good teams sometimes. Here's a good article that in part covers what happened in Cleveland: Felix Hernandez, Superstars, and Frictional Costs | FanGraphs Baseball

I sit ashamed, here the next morning, to see that I completely missed that.

All us old farts with empty nests have finally found our true calling.

For sure. I was slow to catch on that he might be pretty good, when they first got him.

I don't wanna think about the lady in your avatar either, but I have to, game after game.

I can resist anything but peer pressure.

Methinks youthinks hethinks right. / someone had to say it

You are a gentleman of great Enlightenment, sir.

Is my PbP just running slow, or are you seriously trying to jinx them with a 6 run lead?

"Son. You need to chalant those."

"I understand if you didn't like that joke. You get a pass. I know Riverbrian's not for everyone. But you should probably read more" -- Anthony Jeselnik

Deep into the sky, that's cool.

What's the highest number of errors in an inning this year?

I greatly admire your puffed wheat, brother.

Love the scoring, but we got a real station to station team here, folks.

Good job against a crafty lefty.

Think of the 12-year-olds. I think?