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ashbury

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Everything posted by ashbury

  1. ashbury
  2. ashbury
    It's like some Bizarro Universe Lake Wobegone, where all the team managers are ugly, and all the batters are below average.
  3. ashbury
    There is much to be said for Keep It Simple, Sweetheart.
  4. ashbury
    I don't see why the latter style isn't analytics, maybe even more acutely so. It's what an airline does when faced with probabilistic changes in the weather forecast, for example. I keep thinking that people use the term Analytics to mean Analytics done in an elementary and perhaps lazy manner and thus badly.
  5. ashbury
    Whoever our hitting coach is, sign him to a long extension!
  6. ashbury
    Of interest is who the A's would draft at #6 if all 5 of the consensus top 5 are taken, and is that someone the Twins should be targeting if they really don't want a high school outfielder? The mock drafts I see show Kyle Teel (C), Chase Dollander (SP), and a late candidate in Arjun Nimmala (SS). First, who do you think? Second, would the Twins go that route?
  7. ashbury
    I almost never get involved in this kind of discussion, when the measuring sticks are left entirely to each poster. Still, here's my crack at it, where I'm going by cumulative stats but only as a Twin and with a bias toward peak rather than pure longevity. If we are going on best single season, or fan favorites, or whatever, then it will be very different. SP Santana $3 C Mauer $5 1B Killebrew $5 2B Carew $5 3B Castino $1 SS Guzman $1 LF Ward $1 CF Puckett $5 RF Allison $4 DH Bush $1 Closer Reardon $2 I would always like to save a dollar but I can not bring myself to include Ron Davis in any list, even though it cost me Oliva
  8. ashbury
    I've been on a Win Probability Added kick these past few days. Three games in a row now, the Twins have been in a game where a reliever posted a negative WPA among the leaders for the entire season so far (bottom 40 performances by any pitcher). First, Cimber for Toronto gifted us with a -0.754 (keep in mind that a game is won or lost with just .500 aggregate among all a team's players), Pagan returned the favor the next game with -0.679, and last night Devin Williams told those two, "hold my beer," and served up a monstrous -0.907, basically turning a very likely win (up 2 runs in the bottom of the ninth is apparently a 90% shot historically give or take) into a 100% loss with the walkoff. Good times, good times. It would take some research to locate a span of three games on a par with these bullpen antics.
  9. ashbury
    Approve:
  10. ashbury
    I don't think a market like Minnesota pays someone $3.5M to pitch mopup. They clearly thought his stuff can be harnessed for better than that. Plus, they have beaucoup candidates for the role you are suggesting; every team does. Now that the money's spent, of course, he's as good a candidate as the others. Unlike some others, he can't be sent at will to St Paul as part of a shuttle, and that in turn makes him a DFA candidate in order to send him down. WIshful thinking, failure to execute the plan, bad player evaluation - one way or another, it hasn't worked.
  11. ashbury
    But but but but Spahn and Sain and Pray for Rain....
  12. ashbury
    "That we know of." I am certain that Pagan has single-handedly lost several other games for the Twins and the FO just sweeps it all under the rug.
  13. ashbury
    The trend has been toward 4-man playoff rotations, hasn't it? Houston and Philly both ran that many starters out there in the World Series last year. That gives Ober a spot, as he currently deserves. Also, a potentially unpopular hawt taek here, but I don't think Varland is a lock to even be on the post-season roster. Which unfortunately solves the last part of your dilemma.
  14. ashbury
    WPA is nobody's idea of a perfect stat, and is more about situations than about "how good" a given player is. I do like a couple of things about it, one of which is that it tracks well with the fan psychology. The way WPA works, a 9th inning meltdown is more costly than one occurring in the 8th, since confidence in a lead increases as the end of the game approaches. That's what makes Pagan's most recent loss especially noteworthy. I looked on b-r.com's Stathead tool the next day, and his was only about the 39th worst (negative) game-WPA for a pitcher this season. But 31 of the ones farther up the list occurred in the 9th inning. Special recognition must go to Josh Fleming for his outing against the Dodgers on May 28. You may remember the game. He started and pitched 6 full innings, at which point the score was tied 10-10. His Rays kept scoring runs, piling up positive WPA totaling .849 by game's end, and he just kept giving runs right back (assisted a bit by defensive mistakes), racking up a total of -.713 WPA. Fleming's number is really hard for a starter to achieve, worst for a starter so far this year. Since the Rays were the home team, and it was tied, they still had an estimated 57% historical chance of winning after he finished the top of the 6th, and they did push across a run for an 11-10 thriller; his two relievers justly earned nice WPA ratings. Weird game.
  15. ashbury
  16. ashbury
    Milwaukee got swept by the Oakland juggernaut. Riding a six-game winning streak now, will the A's ever lose another game?
  17. ashbury
    The Twins' magic number this morning stood at 93 according to the RIOT tool which takes into account contenders playing against each other. I don't see how anyone else catches them, given this fact.
  18. ashbury
    No, because you're expecting me to proactively ask also about Buxton's and Correa's seasons so far.
  19. ashbury
    Wallner will also launch someone's fat pitch toward the stands in RF and you'll say "Kepler would not have caught that," in either sense of the phrase.
  20. ashbury
    Star light, star bright. First star I've seen tonight. I wish I may, I wish I might, have this wish I wish this night: "Have TD get the correct player consistently when they link to baseball-reference.com" Dang it. I forgot to wait until tonight to post this.
  21. ashbury
    Varland has pitched very much like a #5 in the rotation, his past two starts. His seasonal OPS-against indicates the league finds him hittable, with the longball his bugaboo in particular. I hope he puts up a splendid game against the weak-hitting Tigers. Otherwise it may be that the pixie dust has worn off of this lightly-touted prospect and he needs to go to AAA for another application of the magic. Maybe that will coincide with Maeda suddenly being ready to pitch like a rotation asset for the big club; otherwise, we're starting to look at choices like Aaron Sanchez or Brent Headrick, holding our breath each start. Pagan rightly gets vitriol for blowing the lead, but Varland's short start led to Pagan being in the game at all. Starting pitching has been the team's strong point this season, but the supply is not infinite.
  22. ashbury
    Concur. There are times when WAR is a useful measure of a player's contribution, but when the discussion involves words like "greatest" I prefer the related measure, Wins Above Average. On b-r.com this change in view knocks Kepler down to 10th from 8th. This was setting at 80% the number of total games when in the outfield - if I lower it to 60% then I get reminded that Tovar played a lot of CF and should be in the discussion. My Mount Rushmore for Twins outfielders would be something like Puckett, Oliva, Allison, Buxton. For a franchise like the Twins, going much beyond 4 (Mack? Span?) starts to get into a Local Hall of the Very Good, not "greatest." Max Kepler certainly was Very Good.
  23. ashbury
  24. ashbury
    Clean sweep in the minor league system today? A welcome tonic after getting basically skunked yesterday (maybe one low-minors win?). Kudos to Mr. Soularie for a good game. It would be nice to see something develop from the top of that 2020 draft. Granted, the later rounds* of that draft are working out well. * I jest a little. It was a short draft that year.
  25. ashbury
    75% blame to FalVine for bullpen construction. 25% blame to Pagan for being Pagan.
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