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ashbury

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Everything posted by ashbury

  1. ashbury
    The "not good" hawt taek could come from a pitcher every second game he plays, who mutters to himself, "great, an extra baserunner I didn't deserve."
  2. ashbury
    Errors have been a decreasingly useful stat since the early 20th century. MLB has of late taken pains to regularize the calling of errors by Official Scorers, generally in the direction of calling things base hits that look like errors to most of us, to the point that I don't find it (or its close relative, Fielding Percentage) a useful stat at all. I do see that, in roughly similar innings so far this year, Julien has about 20% fewer total chances than Polanco per 9 innings. Perhaps that reflects an unequal number of balls hit their respective way, or reflects a significant difference in range, or just reflects scorers' decisions on plays not made that take Julien off the hook by calling them base hits. I don't know. There are other measures of defense than this simple "range factor", and all of them have flaws. The eye test for most of us seems to be consistent with the range factor for the year, and that is where I choose to stop thinking on this topic. If the range factor is close to meaningful, then every couple of games, Polanco would make a play that turns into an out that Julien could not.
  3. ashbury
    I don't know. I mean I didn't. At least until now. Thanks, I guess. This site is kind of a chore sometimes.
  4. ashbury
    The worst trade in Twins history!™ is whatever trade our idiot FO made most recently. Ask just about anyone here. You're welcome. You picked a good one, though. I mean, a worthy one. A series of trades anyway.
  5. ashbury
    "Oops, I wasn't supposed to say that part out loud, was I? ... Oops, and now I said that last thing out loud too about not saying things out loud. Quick, someone, are my vocal cords in operation right this minute too?"
  6. ashbury
    Please tell me you were having a bit of fun with your response. Please also tell me you're giving me a million dollars..
  7. ashbury
    All righty then. You just saved me some time constructing a counter-argument or two.
  8. ashbury
    If you remember the phrase "necessary and sufficient condition" from anywhere in your education, I am treating success against Oakland as necessary, nothing more.
  9. ashbury
    Just as long as the lessons they learn are the right ones. I don't want to find out that the tactics that work for them against lesser opponents magically stop working when they face the better teams, and especially if they make it into the post-season.
  10. ashbury
    How quickly they forget Joey Gallo. I hope to forget Joey the minute after he is traded.
  11. ashbury
    Sure, always, but that isn't the choice we'd prefer to be offered against a cellar dweller. There's no doubleheader scheduled today in Oakland. I'll take one nice easy laugher for the good guys, TYVM.
  12. ashbury
    Usually context-neutral tells you what you need to know, but if by "situational wins" you mean the WPA/LI column in b-r.com then look at the next column over, Clutch. Gallo ranks among the bottom of the team. This matches the "eye test" that a lot of us here have been seeing with him. I don't remember ever finding as much discrepancy between OPS and its relative stat WAR (WAA actually), versus the situational WPA. WPA has its flaws but usually it tracks with WAA. Gallo has for the most part come up small when the situation is big. That's been a trend in his career stats, which I never looked at until now that he's on the Twins, but it's even more pronounced this season. I dislike questioning clutch ability in most cases and I don't think he lacks heart, but pitchers seem to be able to manipulate his production and the numbers in Gallo's case just aren't good.
  13. ashbury
    Of course home runs are a small sample, that's kind of the problem with him. I was trying to be nice, but the data didn't even support me on that when I split them out. Would you prefer to discuss the larger sample size of his strikeouts instead?
  14. ashbury
    Strikeouts don't simply happen on a 2-strike count, either. They are built from the ground up.
  15. ashbury
    He had a memorable impact in the post-season. Tie-breaker RBI in the first game against Detroit just about pays for itself. Then there's Game 6 in the World Series. That's small sample size and no one will claim it was a certainty before it happened. But it worked out fantastically and I'm glad we got him. I like to pretend 1988 didn't happen for him, and he capped off a fine career with that performance at the end of '87.
  16. ashbury
    The Twins haven't taken "positional flexibility" to extremes, but the FO certainly prioritizes it during roster construction and it shows up at times like this. They do apply some foresight.
  17. ashbury
    I think a gift for understatement can sometimes mislead when it is abandoned without warning, and obscure the actual point.
  18. ashbury
  19. ashbury
    Ditto, more or less. The game clocked in at 3:28 I believe, a throwback to Ye Olden Times of 2022 and before. Both teams together made quite a few mid-inning pitching changes. Time of game contributed to making it unwatchable. I tuned away twice, and came back just in time for the 9th inning hilarity which was at least entertaining.
  20. ashbury
    That's not the only reason to dislike his performance this season. Insurance runs are nice, but they don't turn the tide like his ninth-inning blast last night can do. And unfortunately he hits more of his homers (9 at present) when his team is already in the lead than when tied (4 now) or behind (3). Meanwhile the strikeouts in situations where his team needs him mount and mount, while somehow the K rate goes down when the team is ahead. It's not that he can't win a game for you - he does that occasionally, including last night. It's a long season, so the question instead is how often he does so.
  21. ashbury
    IMO prioritize Pittsburgh and Cincinnati. The former just for the all around atmosphere including walking across the Clemente bridge from downtown, the latter if you're up in the RF area to get a view of the river. I guess proximity to water is always a plus since I like San Francisco for that reason too. Remembering who I am talking to and where you live, let me be clear: "water, n.: a transparent, odorless, tasteless liquid, a compound of hydrogen and oxygen, H2O, freezing at 32°F or 0°C and boiling at 212°F or 100°C, that in a more or less impure state constitutes rain, oceans, lakes, rivers, etc."
  22. ashbury
    It's just faintly possible that striking out and leaving loaded bases untouched are correlated....
  23. ashbury
    No question. But this one was a good acorn. Baseball-reference.com posts a daily list of top performers. Obviously neither Oakland nor Minnesota had a top pitching performance; among batters it turns out that there were plenty of multi-hit and multi-homer games across the majors yesterday. But the single biggest play anywhere, in their terms of game outcome, was Gallo's. Let's hope that our FO keeps perspective and doesn't accept a once-a-month outcome like last night's as reason by itself to keep him. My preference is to thank Gallo for his contribution last night and then move on. While watching the game, I interrupted Mrs Ash's needlework to announce, "my least favorite Twin just won the game for us." (And then our star closer just about gave it right back to the As.)
  24. ashbury
    Do check it out. But check out the entire body of work. A home run occasionally wins a ballgame like last night. But it's a long season. Any given strikeout doesn't lose a ballgame on the spot except with two outs in the ninth. With Gallo the strikeouts with men on are more like death by a thousand cuts. IOW the number of small negative cases outweigh the few positive ones for him. Saying this doesn't mean there aren't other culprits to scrutinize as well.
  25. ashbury
    I've been down on Gallo for his low OPS when tied or behind, so he gets props from me for the game winner. Lotta missed opportunities by the rest of the team.
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