ashbury

Wow, Parker, just wow. Is that an old one?

It might have come out harsher than it should have, my brother. Carry on.

Definitely an interesting correlation if it proves sound.

I'm never forced to go to a public park or to a store (depending on whether you view this site as a shared resource or a private venture) if it's overrun with litter or graffiti that "someone" thought was OK, either. But the world is a slightly less good place for me when it happens.

> Now, as you may have noticed I had not. Which probably explains why I voted "Rally Monkey". Mainly I want to see a good selection of recent articles, combined with the list of recent forum responses which your team expanded from the inadequate 5 in the previous design. Whatever format supports that, is fine with me, as long as it keeps the number of accidental rollovers of ads to a minimum.

I'll try this as a blog entry instead of a forum post. The Tigers continue to shop Rick Porcello to no avail. MLB Trade Rumors states that the Padres turned down a chance to trade either Huston Street or Luke Gregerson to get him. Other deals have failed to materialize. I suppose the equivalent from the Twins standpoint would be Glen Perkins, factoring in the NL and the Padres home park. Would you make that deal, if the Tigers also saw it that way (and were willing to trade intra-division)? Porcello was a hotshot coming out of HS who had a very promising major league season as a 20 year old, but has failed to progress (or regressed, actually), sporting an ultra-Twins-like K/9 in the 5's the last two years which actually lifts his lifetime average a bit. Few walks but very hittable (Pitch To Contact?), with not overly many HR. He's in his arbitration years but can't be a free agent until 2016, according to baseball-reference.com. Based on his track record he'd not be much of an improvement over what the Twins rotation already consists of, but at age 24 there is still seems the chance of a breakout, in which case you have him for three years, at increasing cost of course. My own take is that I'd be on the fence and would want my scouts to have a consensus that Porcello can still improve before I'd go for such a trade. (Which is hardly different from any proposed trade, but even more so than usual.) It's tempting, but you'd want to have a clear idea what it is you think you can fix, which is always a risky proposition when other people have already tried.

I'll try this as a blog entry instead of a forum post. The Tigers continue to shop Rick Porcello to no avail. MLB Trade Rumors states that the Padres turned down a chance to trade either Huston Street or Luke Gregerson to get him. Other deals have failed to materialize. I suppose the equivalent from the Twins standpoint would be Glen Perkins, factoring in the NL and the Padres home park. Would you make that deal, if the Tigers also saw it that way (and were willing to trade intra-division)? Porcello was a hotshot coming out of HS who had a very promising major league season as a 20 year old, but has failed to progress (or regressed, actually), sporting an ultra-Twins-like K/9 in the 5's the last two years which actually lifts his lifetime average a bit. Few walks but very hittable (Pitch To Contact?), with not overly many HR. He's in his arbitration years but can't be a free agent until 2016, according to baseball-reference.com. Based on his track record he'd not be much of an improvement over what the Twins rotation already consists of, but at age 24 there is still seems the chance of a breakout, in which case you have him for three years, at increasing cost of course. My own take is that I'd be on the fence and would want my scouts to have a consensus that Porcello can still improve before I'd go for such a trade. (Which is hardly different from any proposed trade, but even more so than usual.) It's tempting, but you'd want to have a clear idea what it is you think you can fix, which is always a risky proposition when other people have already tried.

Huh? That's how I read every post in these forums. / Especially my own.

What I'm reacting to is that early in the thread you said that bringing Colabello north would be a novelty act on a par with the Saint Paul Saints. And then near the end of this thread you say "lets actually see him get some real (ST and/or WBC do not count) MLB AB's, before we start making declarative statements about how he will hit." Can't do that if he's cut. And you have to make some guess about how someone will hit before he ever gets his first chance at some MLB ABs.

Edit: I'm cutting out my criticism of this article, because one of their articles finds it necessary to say: Just to be clear: The poker hands are intended to represent the rotation as a whole. We are not assigning individual cards to individual pitchers. So I guess they've been told it's dumb, already.

Someone's going to make declarative statements about all the players who don't make the final roster - that's how these decisions get made. Granted, "we" won't be making those statements, but if that's your point, just about 99% of the forum threads here could face the same criticism.

Superb article. Thanks for the link.

I don't enjoy Wellman at all.

I've seen Florimon bat, but not Escobar. Escobar is still so young, and his minor league hitting progress (until 2012) was good enough, that I don't lump them together, unless you're telling me that he flails at good pitches the way Florimon does.

Was planning to mention these two as I worked my way down the thread, and would like to throw Hrbek in as another guy who seemed to exemplify the team and continues to be in the public eye after retirement, which I think is part of being Mr. [YourTeamHere]. I give these three Honorable Mention as being worthy of being "in" the discussion, even though I'd go Harmon/Kirby/Joe more or less for my actual vote.

Amusing Freudian typo, my brother. At some point it comes down to room on the 40-man, and not even just the money. Which mediocrity do you cut from the 40-man to add another mediocrity in his place? If it's pretty close to a wash, why bother? You can't just add up 0.5 WAR from 90 players and get where you need to be.

The Twins dislike knuckleballers too.

Why does he think it's *called* a changeup, if it doesn't have to do with expectations? Sheesh. Perk's either miles ahead of the rest of us, or miles behind, and I know where the smart money is placed, but still, sheesh.

They should promote Anthony Slama.

That and his lack of pop in the bat.

Back when Who Wants To Be A Millionaire was first on, I was talking with someone about how far to go in the game versus walking away with the cash. There was a marked difference of opinion, based on perceived change in lifestyle at the various prize levels, such as down-payment on a house versus finishing paying off one's house. I think something similar is going on here too, although at a higher level of money, with each ballplayer having his individual upbringing and expectations in the mix.

It is also interesting going to the other articles linked in the comments section, with interviews with Lohse and Uggla and Mathis about actual arbitration; what stands out to me is that Lohse couldn't at the time and still can't seem to get past the personal aspect of arbitration, while Mathis and especially Uggla seemed to be very mature about it. Risk and uncertainty can take simple calculations and make them so there is no clear-cut mathematical "right answer", sometimes not even if you are willing to define how much risk you are willing to accept. Among the many things I lack is an understanding of how much money of a large contract actually can go into a player's bank account. There's the agent's cut, there are taxes that are hard to shelter against (unless you take on risk of another kind), and I don't know what else. When you see 4 years for $16M for instance, is it fair to estimate that about $6M of that will actually be the guy's nest egg for after his playing days? It would be an interesting study to somehow correlate a player's upbringing (poverty versus middle class versus uppper-middle) with the willingness to go the safe route at this stage of the career.

According to MLB Trade Rumors Matt Capps will not make the Indians' major league roster and has the option of free agency. I suspect the consensus is that the Twins will/should not pursue him at this point - any dissent?

I'll get the mods mad at me again if I speculate on what kind of movies have given you this idea. Here's the straight poop: Colonoscopy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Unless your doctor has fingers 1200–1500 mm in length that can take pictures, I recommend staying with established medical art.

There might be a greater percentage of the really young batters getting 50 plate appearances or pitchers getting 20 innings, I don't know; but when evaluating Colabello's performance those smaller numbers for comparison end up being noise. I re-sorted by plate appearances and innings pitched instead of the defaults, and the counts I quoted remain essentially the same. Colabello at 28 is significantly older than his competition. As I said, my observation was only a quibble - characterizing the league as "many" being under legal drinking age is not false if that word means under 10%.