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ashbury

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Everything posted by ashbury

  1. ashbury
    Everyday players are extremely valuable, and the "sample size" for Kirilloff this year is still pretty small, so I like the idea of giving him a chance to establish himself as a better option against lefties than other alternatives who bat from either side. Injuries have made his raw stats pretty chancy to interpret, but back when he was a hot young prospect in the minors his L/R splits weren't alarming at all. Then again the lefties he faced in the minors could have been sprinkled with "prospect" pitchers whose best credential was merely throwing left-handed, and in the majors those types are (mostly) weeded out.
  2. ashbury
    https://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/majors/2023-pitches-batting.shtml The Twins lead the majors in swinging strikes. They are 0.1% away from lowest in putting the ball in play, and last in making contact (in-play plus fouls). They are equal opportunity striker-outers. They lead the majors in swinging at strike three, and are second in looking at strike three.
  3. ashbury
    Every game counts, but for forecasting purposes you can throw out the first two games and see a really good pitcher going forward.
  4. ashbury
    Did a couple of threads get merged, to the detriment of both?
  5. ashbury
    jmlease1 already echoed my reasoning, but just to elaborate, for me it was a principle of greatest-regret, and/or a greedy heuristic. Of course the "value" of each player is left up to individual posters, but the prices are set by your article. For each of the 11 positions, decide a numerical amount of "regret" from having to go with the best choice versus having to settle for the value of someone else. Among these 11, start by picking the positions you would regret the most, lather, rinse, repeat. For me, those were CF, 1B and C. I used Wins Above Average for their Twins career; some other metric for value, where the differences at the top would not be so large, say a numerical value for how much you love each player, would result in very different choices. Anyway, to answer the specific question about relievers, the WAA for Joe Nathan was not enough higher than the others to exceed the regret for losing, say, Puckett, and the regret going further down the reliever list became even smaller. Davis would have been the logical choice, but as I said before, I had some fun with it. This greedy heuristic was key to success in one of the first analytics projects in my career, a military logistics problem, and so naturally I remember it well, and use it any chance I get. How a baseball all-star team relates to moving military units is probably best left for another time...
  6. ashbury
    Unintended Consequences dominate my life.
  7. ashbury
    Leaving out the math introduces a slight element of this.
  8. ashbury
    Small sample but since he's been back from St Paul his OPS has been .561. Maybe they have some specific things they want him to work on, out of the limelight. We read posters begging for "accountability" and, while maybe you aren't one of them, this move could be viewed in that light. Produce, or face replacement. Too much pressure, and only 7 games? Post-season play, should the team reach that point, is all about produce or go home. He'll be back, hopefully more productive.
  9. ashbury
    So if the season were to end today, there'd be no improvement. What more evidence do we need, to fire this FO?
  10. ashbury
    10th rounder from 2019 who's 25 now and mowing 'em down in high-A. Oh joy.
  11. ashbury
    I didn't see MAT's but the one Carlos hit was a no-doubter as soon as it left the pitcher's hand. What a fat pitch, and C4 was ready for it and got it ALL.
  12. ashbury
  13. ashbury
    It's like some Bizarro Universe Lake Wobegone, where all the team managers are ugly, and all the batters are below average.
  14. ashbury
    There is much to be said for Keep It Simple, Sweetheart.
  15. 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.
  16. ashbury
    Whoever our hitting coach is, sign him to a long extension!
  17. 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?
  18. 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
  19. 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.
  20. ashbury
    Approve:
  21. 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.
  22. ashbury
    But but but but Spahn and Sain and Pray for Rain....
  23. 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.
  24. 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.
  25. 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.
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