ashbury

Frank Robinson?

Did any of these video clips demonstrate his arm from CF? My impression is that it's going to be deemed unsatisfactory at the major league level.

Yeah, that tracks pretty well with reality.

And now you know the special importance of Rick Monday! (Other than being a good player, I mean.)

What happened to those '61 Yankees? No M&M Boys taking a run at Ruth's record? "Your" Braves really blundered leaving Mack Jones available for Rule 5. Real World Jones played for the Real World Braves in '61. Niekro may be a reach at his age, but a good get if he can stick, obviously. (Really sticking my neck out about a future HoFer, there.)

A reasonable approximation of his age. Hoping for the best. You do realize that one other aspect of reality they've folded into this game is that the older the owner, the more likely they are to croak*. Don't know if they'll let Chief get close to seeing a World Series. BTW, what's up with a home town of Boston? I trust that Fictional Chief will use that top-4 farm system as nature intended - to trade for major league talent! * One thing I like to do when my meddling owner pisses me off is to go into the editor and change his age to 99, and let nature take its course.

What, are you saying I'm old? I guess I'm curious about the differences between 1961 and 1962, in which essentially the same team went from bad to good. Lots of incremental changes, rather than a few guys who suddenly came out of nowhere.

Happy you made a deal with my close personal friend Sid Hartman. I think your goal of more than 2 WS is possible. There were some really good teams down through the years.

At the moment I count 17 position players and 19 pitchers on the 40. And this includes the two prospects recently added, Severino and Camargo. So they can add 4 more prospects if they wish, before needing to move someone already on the 40. However there are rules about the young'uns once they are added, so if they want to leave room for free agents they may not add too many more - again as you say they can certainly treat Gordon (or someone else they deem expendable) via trade/dfa when that time comes, but I wouldn't expect this week. Ronny Henriquez could conceivably be on thin ice rosterwise too, if they find they need a spot.

I would love it, finances permitting. Maybe "finances permitting" shall be my off-season disclaimer to every transaction proposed here, just as "barring injury" was my get-out-of-jail-free card for pre-season predictions. I.e., I would love it, but we'll be outbid by several teams, true any off-season but especially so when the FO is letting it be known that the TV situation is the deal-breaker for them.

Don't think that's true. He has to show up. If he gets a team doctor to certify he's injured and belongs on the IL, then that's a different thing. To allow players to say "nah, I think I've played for long enough" in the middle of a contract would open things up to terrible abuse.

Many still feel burned by Tsuyoshi Nishioka and ByungHo Park. These two disastrous signings came from multiple causes: failure of scouting, failure of projection, and failure of vision. The scouting is apparent only in retrospect, to us outsiders anyway. Nishioka showed little ability at shortstop, and it was said that his major injury was due to improper technique during a double play attempt, which is definitely adding insult to injury - bad news when he hit like a glove-first AAAA guy at best. Park, the bat-first one, showed flashes of power but not often enough. The projection of stats maybe was foreseeable. Neither of the Asian leagues they played in are at the major league level overall, so stats there must be translated in order to be meaningful. Both players went back to their respective leagues and put up batting numbers about like they had before they left. So it's not like they suddenly got worse when they came to the US, and conventional wisdom that those leagues were about like our AA should have been scrutinized by the analytics groups in the FO - oops, back then (2012 and 2016 respectively) those groups aren't like they are now. Were these players both outliers in some way, or was the translation of stats too optimistic? The vision thing amounts to reaching contract agreements in the $2-3 million dollar range, and not stopping to wonder why other teams weren't trying to outbid them. You have to trust your own scouting department (though, see above), and maybe they've spotted someone no one else has (so, hush-hush until the ink on the contract is dry), but it can't hurt to listen to what 29 other teams' departments are trying to tell you implicitly - especially the successful ones. It's like the proverbial dog that didn't bark. The past is past, and the Asian leagues may be different and perhaps better now. Our FO is different too, and hopefully better. I pray they have completely cleaned house in all these respects. What's needed now is scouting of players' fundamentals, accurate projections from past stats that hopefully confirm the assessment of fundamentals, and then context within what rival MLB teams are also trying to accomplish. Aim high, i.e. the ones mentioned in the article that won't come cheap. If the information is true that the Twins are scaling back their roster budget, that's going to be nearly impossible to achieve. If we sign one or two off-shore guys for key positions, and the salaries are bargains like Nishioka and Park were portrayed as, I'm going to be really skeptical.

OOTP is a video game, and even they won't let me try to trade Correa.

Because I like this point so much, I want to go even farther. Players get 4 or 5 pitches per plate appearance to demonstrate their skill, by picking and choosing, and then giving the ball a ride if they can. Usually defenders get to demonstrate their skill just one or two ways on a ball in play - go get the ball, maybe make a contested throw. Fewer Total Chances than Plate Appearances. Fewer granular actions within. We'd call a batter's 100-PA resume small sample. That's kind of what every defender's full season is. You can draw useful conclusions from small samples, but there's a lot more art to it. It's been a long while since I looked at how the variations on defensive stats are arrived at, to remember what I think is the most artful approach of teasing out information from small samples.

I'll make Kenta Maeda my benchmark. Whatever he ends up getting on an annual basis, the Twins won't exceed that. If they get him, that's their limit for anyone; if they don't get him, it will be because they weren't willing to go even that high for anyone. Depending on whether you look at the TD handbook or MLBTR, that could be anywhere from $12M (1 year) to $18M (times 2 years). I'm prepared to be surprised of course.

"Payroll is 100.00% over budget " You broke the system. Seven million million dollars is an overpay for Bader.

You left out the list.

For me that's backwards. I want my backups to be ready to go when called on. That's why most backups are less talented, it's the tradeoff in return for more solid health.

Satire is a risky genre because you have to play it straight and readers may take you at your word.

If the lack of credible competition within the division dissuades the Twins' FO from making moves that strengthen them for a post-season run, I'll be very disappointed. So this insight into the Guardians' plan really doesn't move me.

I'm waiting for the North Stars' season to start.

Yeah, can't quite put my finger on it but there could be some form of statistical bias going on there. But yeah, nothing wrong with what others prefer, at least in this one single solitary regard.

True. And if RF is properly covered already, as it is, there's nothing wrong with throwing out an arrogant runner at the plate from LF too.

I was skeptical at first but I looked deeper into this and the math checks out. Great to see a summary like this, all in one place.