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ashbury

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Everything posted by ashbury

  1. ashbury
    WAR, What is it good for? Absolutely nothing. Say it again, y'all.
  2. ashbury
    Am I right that WPA is defined in a way such that 0.0 is league-average? And it's not in any way positionally adjusted? Then it's not a surprise if both Span and Revere show up with slightly negative numbers per PA - their offense is good for defensively gifted players (as they indeed are), but they would be quite disappointing at bat (and wasted on defense) if stationed at first base. As Seth points out, what's probably missing from WPA is an "opportunity" adjustment, if for instance a decent hitter like Doumit comes to bat with fewer opportunities for large-leverage results due to someone ahead of him in the lineup doing his own job well. I took a look at Fangraphs, and there they say: "Cumulatively, season-long WPA is not predictive, making it an ineffective number for projections of a player’s talent. ... A fun way to think of WPA is as a storytelling statistic." I guess I can go with their judgement on that.
  3. ashbury
    I like the little almost-grin just as he reaches around the net, then he puts his game face back on.
  4. ashbury
    The amount of hitting talent in the farm system doesn't seem extraordinary, and a nearly complete lack of pitching drags the overall score to no better than average, IMO. Hard to see a top-10 ranking.
  5. ashbury
    That would be the "Oy vey!" scenario. Or "2012", in English.
  6. ashbury
    The key is not simply to trade good players - that can result in a zero-sum (or worse) game that fixes a weakness by creating another one. Instead, you trade where there is oversupply at one position to address a weakness at another. The classic was trading AJ when Mauer was ready, resulting in some good talent coming back and no loss at all in the catcher's slot. Trading Span looks like a similar case, with minimal dropoff, and for that reason I support a favorable trade involving Span, but not simply trading him because he's good.
  7. ashbury
    I'll take Rhetorical Questions for $200, Alex, and try "who is Denard Span?"
  8. ashbury
    Gee, between Dumb and Dumber, and Alfred E. Neuman, you've got quite the roster of experts to turn to.
  9. ashbury
    The lineup is league-average offensively and about average on defense as well. The bullpen has been good but there are soft spots that I think might get exposed worse in a real pennant race. If Ryan works hard and builds a "moderately decent" rotation, that also smacks of .500 ball. Where is the upside to push above that into actual contention? I don't see it. Even more is needed.
  10. ashbury
    Would be a little ironic if Hermsen embraced the Pitch To Contact as strongly as anyone in the system, and then they left him off the 40-man.
  11. ashbury
    Mmmmhhhhhh, Doumits.
  12. ashbury
    Butera and Slama take care of the 2013 rotation needs, IMO.
  13. ashbury
    Morneausie!
  14. ashbury
    looooooooooooool
  15. ashbury
    I suppose it's possible for a team to take someone else's pitcher who gets good strikeout ratios in the minors but can't translate it to major league success, and find the key to unlocking the potential. But not the Twins. They keep mining other teams' fireballing slag heaps, they keep finding fools gold.
  16. ashbury
    But yet there aren't enough bullpen innings to go around. /deadhorse Say, have you heard about this hot young stud of a pitcher at AAA named Anthony Slama?
  17. ashbury
    Really? I think that's pretty elite. Particularly in a pitcher's era.
  18. ashbury
    I'm with you mostly when it comes to OPS from a team perspective. However, if you are careful, you can get a lot of value from a table-setter or two who brings only a stellar OBP to the table. A .700 OPS like Pierre could be acceptable if it comes from .350 OBP. But fill up your roster with too many table-setters, and you end up with, well, some of the troubles we saw the Twins go through this year, where it takes 3 hits/walks to score a run while more powerful lineups get the job done with 2 successful plate appearances or even just one. Even worse is when you have a couple of guys in the lineup such as Carroll and Casilla whose upside is only as table-setter but can't even really achieve that. Anyway, with Span still on the team there is not need for much more in the way of pure table-setting. But if he's gone next year there is room for someone with Revere's ceiling as a hitter, if he can improve his walk rate.
  19. ashbury
    HOF voters tend to discount players who start out with a bang and keep it up for 6-8 years, then fizzle out (even if due to injury). Fred Lynn's another one, who was neck and neck with Jim Rice when he came up and was considered the more electric of the two, yet Rice is the one who made it in. The pitching-heavy era Oliva played in works against him now, if there were some kind of new movement to put him in. Voters don't look at OPS+, they just look at BA and HR totals and compare to guys in other eras without compensating for it. I didn't live in MN during Oliva's heyday so I don't have the personal connection to his candidacy that some do, but I see him as a clear choice for induction. He's not an inner circle guy, but seems on a par with Jim Rice, Eddie Murray, Paul Molitor.
  20. ashbury
    If you are an opposing GM who wants an outfielder, why would you not make the same assessment, and offer less in trade for Span than you would for Revere?
  21. ashbury
    > outside of a geriatric doctor in Sarasota performing physicals Ew.
  22. ashbury
    Minnesota = State Twin Cities = Town, more or less I actually do remember the difference from when I lived there.
  23. ashbury
    Al Newman has two rings as well. Newmie >> Mauersie
  24. ashbury
    That implies to me a great reluctance to throw your best pitch with a lot of movement, on 0-0, or whenever behind in the count. If you're known as a PTC pitcher, doesn't that give the batter some advantage in reducing the possibilities of what's coming? (Conversely, there's something to be said for saving that breaking ball in the dirt for your strikeout pitch, with 2 strikes but less than a full count.) Also, assuming it's really true that Joe Mauer takes a lot more first-pitches than the average batter, doesn't that mean Joe expects most pitchers not to be PTC believers? Finally, I wonder what a pitcher like Samuel Deduno would do when embracing PTC. If your only non-crazy pitch is a meatball down the middle, what do you do on 0-0?
  25. ashbury
    Slama's 28 years old, right? Not wasting a year on the 40-man thus prevents his prematurely reaching the free-agent market when he's, what, 32, 33, 34? I'm never sure.
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