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ashbury

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Everything posted by ashbury

  1. ashbury
    Good. There was a year that Nolan Ryan led his league in ERA with plenty of games started and innings pitched. His WAR and WAA and WPA and any other alphabet soup you happen to look at confirms his good season. And yet he went 8-16. It can happen. I won't go so far as to say ignore W-L record for a starter in the modern game, but it should be looked at in context. If all else looks solid, and the W-L isn't there, maybe the rest of the roster let him down. By various measures, Sonny Gray is one of the top 5 starting pitchers in the league this year. The only knock is he doesn't go as deep into games as some, and that's as much the on-field staff's decision as his own performance. The innings he has pitched, he has delivered.
  2. ashbury
    What tipped you off? The little smiley face?
  3. ashbury
    If Gray alone is going, then Rocco needs to be in the discussion for Manager of the Year for leading this ragtag pitching staff to essentially a tie in the majors for ERA. And they need to institute a similar award for pitching coaches so that Pete Maki can bask in the limelight of making a silk purse from his collection of 23 (and counting) sows ears.
  4. ashbury
    Concur with Rod both on his kudos and on his insights. Some observations... Tom Kelly is often quoted that you need to give a hitter 1000 PA. People sometimes assume that to mean you need to give any prospect that long of a leash, but I think he meant that you can tell pretty quickly if someone isn't going to hit, but when someone succeeds you still need to allow it some time until you conclude he's for real. Probably for pitchers you could use a similar criterion like batters-faced. A general manager long ago, let's say Branch Rickey though it could have been Bill Veeck or Frank "Trader" Lane, said that it's better to trade a veteran a year too early than a year too late. It used to be thought that a player reaching age 30 was just entering his prime. We now expect that at that age he has already entered a decline phase. While we remember the long careers like Musial and Ripken and Cabrera and Spahn and Ryan and Verlander, the truth is that most players, even the stars, have a relatively brief career. Sometimes that's due to injury, sometimes to circumstance. By the time you have figured out someone's any good, he's already showing signs that he won't be for long. Part of being a Hall of Famer is defying that trend. Players get hurt, and sometimes can play through it all season, and heal up in the off-season. Might that be the case for Burnes? Who knows? As Rod said, very difficult questions. That's why the GM gets paid the big bucks.
  5. ashbury
    Normally I like OPS as overall offensive stat as well as any other. But recently I was looking around and comparing Wins Above Average, which to my eye correlates well with OPS (except when defense is either end of the spectrum), to Win Probability Added, and Gallo is a huge outlier. WAA about zero (average player), negative WPA. (Both stats take .500 performance as a baseline, unlike WAR and OPS, and think in terms of where wins come from.) Career wise his WAA is positive, his WPA negative. His contributions don't come often enough when the team needs him, if you buy WPA's logic. He had a couple big homers this week. But his negative performances are death by a thousand cuts. His OPS is kind of suspect IMO.
  6. ashbury
    Who are the other ninth round pitching draft picks from 2022 who are at AA? I haven't taken the time to look - maybe there's a bunch and the other franchises are running rings around us.
  7. ashbury
    Several times today I have encountered a failure message. At the moment when I click on... https://twinsdaily.com/forums/topic/62951-buxton/ ... I get a screen that says "Sorry, there is a problem. Something went wrong. Please try again." Before I go digging into what could possibly be different about my browser (both Firefox and Chrome) or internet connection today I thought I should ask if anyone else if having ths type of problem on TD? / edit - this page, for whatever reason, loads just fine for me
  8. ashbury
    I totally missed the link and reference in the article. Learn To Read, they tell me. Live And Don't Learn, is my standard response. Colt Emerson it is. Book it. 🙂
  9. ashbury
    Yes. I didn't want to be Captain Wetblanket after that first game, but the breakdown of run scoring jumped out at me right away. It seems like the same old pattern, which of course applies to any team but somehow seems more extreme with the 2023 Twins than I ever remember: fatten up on a pitcher who is clearly not having a good day, get shut down by any competent major leaguer who has a good plan and the command to carry it out.
  10. ashbury
    I wonder if any of the lower ranked players on this list will fall and be available at #34? Or, if one does fall, will the Twins have someone else they like better? I wanted this list to be a top 34 not top 25.
  11. ashbury
    Can you please stop putting jinxes on our good hitters? Thanks in advance.
  12. ashbury
    So have I. It affected my mountain hiking. It did not affect my slow-pitch beer-league career.
  13. ashbury
    The rooster crows, therefore the sun rises. But, keep up the good work, batters. We need games like that one more frequently.
  14. ashbury
    That was my question. Who?
  15. ashbury
    Not sure who this soliloquy is aimed for (or against). Who is saying batting average is unimportant? What you may be reading here and there is that batting average is not the only important thing for a batter. Batting average is indeed important enough that it figures prominently in both components of OPS, for example.
  16. ashbury
    On a team with post-season ambitions I see him as a spot starter, bullpen, AAA shuttle, type. Of course he could slot into Oakland's rotation and give them a steady 5-6 ERA at the moment. Maybe at age 25 he hasn't quite peaked yet, I dunno.
  17. ashbury
    He was a nice find in the 15th round but is profiling as a supplemental arm at best. "Bad" is such an unpleasant word.
  18. ashbury
    Once again the b-r.com link leads to the wrong player with a similar name. The one we want is https://www.baseball-reference.com/register/player.fcgi?id=gonzal006jac Anyway, let some other team take this prospect. The bat would be interesting for a SS, not as much otherwise.
  19. ashbury
    I still feel elite catcher is a rich team's luxury for when all other needs are filled. I don't remember why Teel is not in the consensus top five, but the Twins need to be really sure of their player evaluation skills relative to other competent organizations if they take the catcher. As others have said, don't try to get cute at #5.
  20. ashbury
    Replying to my own post, just for simplicity, the current CBA is found online here and Appendix A contains a uniform player's contract. (Any important contract no doubt contains unique language beyond this.) There are many clauses of course and amateur legal sleuths may enjoy digging through them all, but I found 7(b)(2) in that appendix to contain the language regarding skills, notably, "fail, in the opinion of the Club’s management, to exhibit sufficient skill or competitive ability to qualify or continue as a member of the Club’s team" (my emphasis) This specifies contract termination, so like I said. Nuclear Option. And of course the distinction between "exhibit" versus being injured is going to be fraught.
  21. ashbury
    I think* it's the case that MLB contracts of any significant value carry a clause regarding so-called "diminished skills." It's not often brought into play but here is a link to what happened with Frank Thomas a couple of decades ago. link I'd imagine the current contract does not specify that Buxton has to play CF specifically, so it depends on how exactly the diminished skills clause is worded. It's kind of a nuclear option, and the FO would want to think extremely carefully before trying to invoke it; not only could it result in a grievance hearing or a lawsuit, but they'd have to feel sure of where the teammates stand on the matter. Perhaps "only" $15M for several years isn't enough to justify the risk. However, actually invoking it is not the only value the clause carries for the team. It could also be the basis for starting a frank discussion, where a renegotiated contract would be the outcome. * okay, for all I know, such clauses could have been banned by more recent Collective Bargaining Agreements.
  22. ashbury
    If Willi Castro is your best position player,
  23. ashbury
    Firing Popkins won't accomplish anything unless it marks an organizational change in how hitting is approached throughout the system. Waiting for mistakes from the pitcher, if that sloganized summary suffices to explain the philosophy, is of course where a lot of every team's offense comes from, but taken to extremes it will produce hitters who look great in the minors but then fizzle when facing the elite arms who reach the majors and stay there.
  24. ashbury
    Shutouts are by definition "complete game shutouts." This important information was passed along unsolicited by an MLB official scorer so I take it more seriously than some distinctions.
  25. ashbury
    I live to serve.
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