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ashbury

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Everything posted by ashbury

  1. 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.
  2. ashbury
    I live to serve.
  3. ashbury
    Max Kepler to Byron Buxton: "Ha ha! This article says you're the new me."
  4. ashbury
    Keeping Ober's innings down means keeping someone else's innings up. The pitchers performing well are presumably already maxed out. You want more innings from Pagan?
  5. ashbury
    Part of me wishes I followed the Wolves more closely so that I would fully grok all the great analogies and references. The saner part of me reminds my other self that there's only room for so much aggravation in one's life.
  6. ashbury
    You hit several negatives, and to me they outweigh the positives. Except in rare cases, a six-man rotation's main feature is to give more starts to the sixth best candidate you currently have, the last thing you should want. Only if the extra day of rest will elevate everyone's performance will it pay off, because also the bullpen is weakened for the cases a given starter has a bad day. I'd sooner explore the potential of a four-man rotation, but that introduces different objections.
  7. ashbury
    No. Emptier.
  8. ashbury
    The subject line could have been clearer.* It's a game. I like games. Games can be arbitrary. Fun to play with friends, and that's why I bothered to participate, when usually I pass "all-time team" discussions right on by. * And I resisted until now to mention the spelling/grammar error. Whose on first?
  9. ashbury
    Yeah, every argument in his favor, whether counting stats or rate/percentages, is fueled by his first 15 starts of the season. Maybe he's capable of heating up again, but right now it's what have you done for us lately, Joey?
  10. ashbury
    It's cherry picking, but after his monumental home run against Cleveland, his OPS has been .577. No extra-base hits, only 2 walks. However.... he's hitting .273 in that span. It's the classic "empty" batting average, one that's powered by a BABIP north of .400. Still, he's putting bat on ball, and not being overwhelmed. If he was the worst problem on the roster, maybe send him down to AAA, but given his age and pedigree, I'd say to let him keep at it. Another week's worth of data might change my mind, if the BABIP goes down without an uptick in power or batting eye, and also to wait and see if Miranda's mild resurgence at AAA stands up a bit longer.
  11. ashbury
    James Paxton has had 1 bad start out of 7 so far this season. The Twins were not the team to accomplish this feat. As expected.
  12. ashbury
    At the end of the day, a 6-man rotation makes room for your 6th best starter, in the hope that extra rest elevates everyone else's performance and stamina. Better innings, more innings - if you don't get either of those, then you are putting extra strain on the 7 remaining bullpeners. I'm skeptical that it would pay off, either short term or long term. The plan is to give Louie Varland more innings in the majors when he needs to tune something up at AAA? No thanks.
  13. ashbury
    Stevenson has the misfortune to bat lefthanded, behind at least one likely-better and definitely-younger guy (Wallner), in an organization that prioritizes handedness at least as much as the average one does. His ability to play CF might be his one edge. If Buxton needs to go on the 60-day IL I wonder if he gets his chance, sooner than Celestino who I think is still kind of marginal despite one hot game out of 5 at AAA so far.
  14. ashbury
  15. ashbury
    Varland is a case in point for my view that there's really no such role as "#5 starter", not as anything permanent for a season anyway. That slot is for pitchers trying to establish a role - either a veteran trying to show he can still be a contributor in a rotation, or a young guy trying to establish himself. The difference is what to do with the guy if he's not making the grade: you DFA the veteran or maybe put him in the bullpen, you probably just option the youngster. Varland is our #5 guy, and right now it's time to send him to St Paul. The uptick in home runs might be just a SSS phenomenon, but it seems clear that whatever deception he brought in the early going has been scouted and adjusted for. So now it's his turn to adjust, and AAA is the place for experimentation and learning.
  16. ashbury
    This year Carlos Correa leads the Twins in total bases, with 97. Meanwhile Shohei Ohtani leads the majors with 175; Carlos ties for 103rd most. We don't meaningfully have a "best hitter" on the team. It's like declearing which of Snow White's little friends was the tallest.
  17. ashbury
    The outlook wasn't brilliant for the Twintown nine that day ... (yadda yadda - eighth inning instead of ninth, two other guys made outs after the bases were loaded) ... But there is no joy in Twintown —mighty Buxton has struck out. / edit - not to pick on Buxton, the whole offense was feeble yet again.
  18. ashbury
    Sounds about right for Max and Byron. I might have had higher expectations for Jorge than others did, and hoped he would establish himself as a shortstop, but his right arm just never would support him grabbing that role and keeping it. Jorge also has been beset by injuries, less than Byron but more than Max. I think I imagined more from him also.
  19. ashbury
    I always want to see a second season before pronouncing anyone (aside from a few top draftees) a top prospect, but this is the kind of progression you like to see from a college player right out of the gate.
  20. ashbury
    I'll ask my SABR researcher friends to try and name names as to why this particular rule was instituted.
  21. ashbury
    I see on Ronald Acuña Jr.'s Wikipedia page that his son was born in 2020. Are there any early scouting reports on this prospect?
  22. ashbury
    Both I suppose, but I'd probably explain it with percentages. In the seasons they were winning they'd win more when he was a starter. In their losing seasons, they lost less frequently. It's a bit laborious to dig up the numbers in his b-r.com game logs, because partial games carry a bias. And the last I looked might have been a couple years ago so I won't vouch for 2022. Right now 2023 is only closely in his favor, I think.
  23. ashbury
    This year? Now 28-24 in games he started. (Among those are 4 he didn't finish the game but the Twins won all 4.) In years past when he was in CF the W-L record was almost invariably better.
  24. ashbury
    "This guy's just a little bit better than you are used to, sir."
  25. ashbury
    I really hope there is more nuance to the plan than just that. Simple math: in an era of 13-man pitching staffs, a 6-man rotation leaves 7 relievers instead of the current 8. That makes it more important, not less, for most of the starts to be of the longer variety. A sequence of four-inning starts such as Sonny Gray gave us the other day will wear down a 7-man bullpen fast. And the guys who we think of as mop-up pitchers will be thrust into even more frequent high-leverage duty. And who is the one being added to such a rotation? A guy coming off the injured list, likely to be on a pitch limit, with a ceiling of 5 innings or so, at least for a while? Shuttling arms up and down from AAA is not a sustainable solution, due to roster rules that require minimum stays in AAA. Very little margin for error, with such a plan. So I hope there is another rabbit they can pull out of the hat. Or else that the plan is only a couple of times through the rotation in the expectation that something will sort itself out.
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