ashbury

This is the kind of deeper dive I totally support, and I agree that just quoting an ERA without the context doesn't give the whole story. I was offering shorthand but 2023 was an outlier. I'll go a little deeper still and suggest that the OPS he put up in AAA of around .760 doesn't support the 3.98 ERA he accrued there. I feel that OPS-against is a more stable way to gauge a pitcher than his ERA, but ERA is the more familiar number so it's worth converting back and forth for best understanding. Doing equivalencies is a bit of guesswork based on larger samples that may not hold up well for an individual season; a year or two ago I drew up a table of league OPS and league ERA, for a sampling of seasons over the decades, and I use that table when thinking about such stuff. So, in my experience, a .760 OPS could be expected to lead to an ERA around 4.40, not the 3.97 he wound up with. ERA fluctuates more than the underlying factors that go into it. As you point out, because of the context of AAA this past season, Varland's OPS-against might be a bit inflated. Overall, the International League had an OPS of .794 in 2023. In 2022 that figure had been .750. Let's use round numbers and suppose everyone's OPS should have .050 deducted to be meaningful. For Louie that's .710 at AAA, and that might correspond to a AAA ERA more like 3.90, coincidentally close to his actual ERA - luck giveth, luck taketh away. But the majors are harder than AAA. My rule of thumb, again not something "official" but just what I use, is that you can expect a batter's OPS to go down .100 when moving up a level; a pitcher's goes up .100 likewise. That's not supported by published research, I've just found it useful (it's helped me identify prospects like Polanco and Kepler in their first years in the minors as better than their numbers indicate, using age as a factor). If Louie's "adjusted OPS-against" of .710 is bumped up to .810 for the majors, that's darn close to the actual .791 he put up while in the majors. Greater precision isn't possible from rules of thumb, but for me, his 2023 stats in both the majors and minors hold together to paint a consistent picture. Your comparative stats for other pitchers in the IL are well taken, but I want to point out that no one is sent to AAA to be dominant for a full season. Without checking, I'm inclined to expect that many dominant performers came and went, either being promoted to AAA from AA because of good performance, or being promoted to the majors from AAA, who failed to reach the 15-start threshold precisely because they were performing well and didn't hang around. That leaves us with a greater problem of "small sample size" than usual, and I don't have any solutions to offer except to advise caution. Basically, no, I think saying Louie "dominated" at AAA is a mild stretch. Unadjusted, the league OPS was .794 and his was .760. Pitchers who don't dominate at AAA may not be great candidates for the rigors of being a rotation mainstay in the majors. That's not to say that Varland can't take that next step. But I'd rather have him do that in a few starts, say 5, at AAA, and if he dominates, then he too can be one of the pitchers who fail to reach the 15-start threshold because he performed well and didn't hang around. Meanwhile, others have pointed out that my preference to have Louie start at AAA would be more supportable if the FO had succeeded in landing a more solid "#2 type" starter instead of DeSclafani. I don't disagree with that either. I do believe that Desclafani is not a mediocrity, but a quality starter who's been beset by injury causing his numbers to suffer. The gamble the FO is taking is 1) that he's over the injuries enough to be ready, and 2) the past injuries haven't robbed him of the abilities that make him a quality starter. I don't especially like the FO's gamble. But until Disco turns out to be a no-go, I really prefer to ride him and stash Varland at AAA for his final bit of development and seasoning. Sorry for all the verbiage, but the short version apparently didn't suffice. 😀

Everyone's ready to appoint to the rotation a player who had a AAA ERA of 3.93 last year, and was at 4.63 in the majors. I really want Varland to get several starts at AAA and dominate, before getting another major league start. This isn't a rebuilding team and we want to rack up the wins. Don't rush the young guy.

If you look at Kranepool's b-r.com page it's remarkable that he could carve out a career of that length, because it took him basically until 10 years in before he was even an average player. That was the era when even their manager would say things like ""The only thing worse than a Mets game is a Mets doubleheader." Kranepool was a case of being in the right place at the right time, to become a beloved Mets legend.

His b-r.com minors page shows 333 starts at SS in the minors and 203 games started at 2B. 2016 was a weird season for him, his last up-and-down year in the minors before coming up to the Twins for good. For the first time he played almost exclusively at 2B, while at Rochester, and then almost exclusively SS for the Twins, that year. I interpret this as them desperately wanting him to blossom at SS, but hedging their bets at 2B.

I have NEVER had a bad experience going to ballgames in Oakland, including walking to and from a motel half a mile away from the park. I attend games during daylight hours.

This likewise is a clarion call to... hey waiddaminnit!

Thank you for posting this voice of sweet, clear logic.

There is usually a reason a 36-year old hasn't hit arbitration yet. Late bloomer seems pretty low on the list of possibilities. 😊

And a cheery Vaya Con Carne to you too, amigo.

Good thing they haven't turned their sights on Swiftian satire yet, or I'd be a goner.

The only negative reaction I've ever had to wearing my Twins gear to a game was in KC. K freekin C of all places! 2019 maybe, when they were en route to 103 losses? Weird team to flex over, bro. 😀 Jake Cave had something to do with the scenario that afternoon. I think I've told that one before. Jake is dead to me.

If Greg Maddux could bottle what he knew how to do and sell it to others, he'd be a millionaire. Oh wait, he already is. 😀 Oh, and I agree, good chat.

Pretty sure Chief doesn't need a smiley emoticon, in a game thread of all places, to tell him when I'm kidding.

I'm not going to knock the "other poster" (bean) per se. I generally enjoy their posts. And I actually think they perceive correctly the general direction our FO takes regarding defense - namely that in the eyes of most fans it's overrated, and you can get more wins out of a great bat by coaching up his defense a bit, than by starting with a great glove and coaching up the hitting a bit. It was a long post I responded to and I took issue with one particular aspect. I hope (as always) it was taken constructively, even if (as too often) a bit blunt and direct.

Sounds a bit like the really old Pitching In A Pinch strategy, which certainly has its merits. Purposely throwing "just off the plate" starts to sound like "nibbling", which is a similar strategy that has fallen into disfavor, at least in TD-land. And a typical pitcher's command/control isn't as fine as we might hope, for that to work. The more you avoid clipping the strike zone, the higher the pitch counts become, which may become an issue - throw enough of the low-stress pitches and it's a question of how much if anything you are saving in terms of wear and tear, because every pitch causes some stress. Getting a swing and a miss outside the strike zone is of course to be desired, but maybe you need to display a bit of your "stuff" to make that happen, and now we're back to wondering about which pitches cause the least stress. If a low-stress pitch has the stuff and gets outs, sure, great. I suspect the catcher and/or the bench already take your ideas into account when calling the game, and moving too far from their mix would end up counterproductive, not just in terms of game result but also arm health. Throwing 120 pitches per start and wriggling out of jam after jam to eke out 5 innings could be bad for the arm even if most every pitch is nominally "low stress." Of course I'm painting the opposite picture from what you're proposing, but I think it's in the realm of possibility. Depends on the pitcher.

Benchwarmer even at AAA? Harsh assessment.

Julien played nowhere but at 2B in Wichita during 2022. He played nowhere but 2B at St Paul in April 2023. He came up and looked stiff and awkward - "adequate" would be a kind description. By the end of 2023 he was perhaps "serviceable" and maybe approaching "average". We saw improvement though I fear we are overstating it due to wishful thinking. But I also don't believe it's as simple as "practice and repetition at a single position" since he was doing that for more than a year, and yet something rapidly seemed to click when coached daily by the major league staff.

Still no, Do I have to pull this car over?

No.

He pitched a capable three innings and then Rocco left him in too long. Maybe Rocco will learn to rely on his strong bullpen and quit overtaxing the starters.

Tony's the only HoFer in that group, by a long ways. But all four had significant major league careers, which you can't take for granted on an old Topps card, so by that measure Tony's in pretty good company. Strong incoming Freshman class. (There are others of course. Wally Bunker, Rico Carty, Richie/Dick Allen, and Jim Ray Hart earned RoY votes alongside our Tony.)

Don't forget Dylan Questad whom they took in the 5th round after snagging Soto; they had to overspend a little to sign him, so I guess they really wanted him. Like Soto, he hasn't pitched yet; they clearly have a process in place for the young'uns. Marco Raya from the very short 2020 draft is also a high school draftee who is very well regarding around these parts. / edit - I see he was mentioned above, with a minor misspelling that caused me to not notice earlier.

It is good to think in terms like this, and I'm no medical expert, but I think the issue is micro-tears in the muscle tissue, and it takes longer than 60 seconds, or whatever period of time you seem to have in mind, for those tears to knit back together. Less stress to result in fewer tears would be one avenue, but then I suspect the hitters tee off on those cripple pitches - then the pitcher goes to the showers sooner where he can begin to rest up, so I guess there's that.

Get the leadoff guy on first (huh, I thought everyone on this team strikes out), then three sac bunts bring him home - or for style points, two bunts and then a sac fly. Oh wait. Baseball really is a beautiful game when you think about the various way it's balanced.

Guess that makes Winder an even longer shot. 😊. Thanks for the correction.