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ashbury

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Everything posted by ashbury

  1. ashbury
    Just to be clear, what you wish is for the rule book to give the scorer that discretion in more games. Currently the only time the scorer has discretion is when the starting pitcher goes less than 5 but leaves with a lead that is never relinquished - so the only "pitcher of record" when the lead is taken for good is that starter, but he's ineligible.
  2. ashbury
    For a last place team? Definitely. His 2020-22 more or less bore that out. Maybe for a .500 team, as his ceiling, if other parts of the team are clicking. He was very little factor in the Nationals' World Series team, 2019, their last good season. In 2017 the Nationals also had a very strong year with 97 wins - that coincided with Taylor's career year to date at the plate, and I'll submit that that looks like no coincidence at all. And I feel it necessary to repeat that, by saying any of this, I'm not trashing him as a player, and especially not in a backup role. I'm happy he's on the team and happy that he's pulling his weight during Buxton's absence from CF. He absolutely gets credit for 2017, it's just that it was a long time ago. Also if his OPS is trending back up to above-.800 like that one magical year, my opinion changes. He's at .743 at this writing and that is NOT the .700 ceiling I was discussing. Baseball is a game of remarkable balance and equilibrium and synergies - above .800 is a lot different than below .700, and MAT has literally never finished a season in-between those two numbers, so it's uncharted territory for him. He's had good months through the years - can he keep it up? We saw with Andrelton Simmons that saying "defense is key up the middle and any offense is icing on the cake" just leads to misery. Our point of disagreement is about team aspirations, not simply getting by (team, or player) in the majors.
  3. ashbury
    They're surely not just adding him to the 40-man, but also the major league roster. Is it stated who goes down? Moran, I assume. I'm not sure what success to expect from Stewart, but his good AAA stats are despite an astronomical .467 BA on balls put in play. Good thing he struck out so many!
  4. ashbury
    Going to see them this Saturday. Maybe I'll bring them good luck that game and put them on a 36-win pace.
  5. ashbury
    The cool spring temps had nothing to do with the Yankees' difficulty on offense. That is an excuse we reserve for ourselves.
  6. ashbury
    That's where averages can sometimes fool you. He's got one of those weird careers where all but one of his seasons (until this year) have been below his career average. 2017's OPS of .806 looks like a blip now. On the other hand all his other seasons have been remarkably consistent, in the .638-.676 range. Now, .020 is not very much variation so .700 isn't "unreasonable". Players oscillate by that much, routinely. I'm just pointing out the historical record. The last time he was above .700, he was 26 years old. He's 32 now. That's a lot of track record to overcome, by this point. And .700 really isn't very good, no matter how stellar the defense is, so if that's what he achieves, my main view on him doesn't change anyway. "M.A.T. can't OPS .700" isn't some hill I would want to die on, because it doesn't matter if he does it. He's a desirable backup and he will have his moments over the course of a season.
  7. ashbury
    How do you propose to do that? He has 0 minor league options remaining.
  8. ashbury
    Pretty sure he meant What's His Name.
  9. ashbury
    It never bothers me to see people misspell the names of players on other teams. I mean, it's hard to keep them all straight.
  10. ashbury
    My view on trades is a mix of "process" and "results". The players involved are human beings and each part of the trade may, or may not, turn out as hoped. I don't particularly care if my team "wins" a given trade (trading away relative peanuts in return for blue-chip talent, say), but results do matter, and what I want is that the original aims eventually pan out. So what we trade away doesn't matter to me very much, in terms of results after the trade. That's true whether we're the one acquiring proven major league talent, or we're acquiring prospects. In the case of Berrios, we traded a very valuable, established, starting pitcher. That remains true even if he turns into a pumpkin after he's gone; at the time of the trade is what matters to me, for what we send out. He started out very well for Toronto, then things went kind of bad, but he finished 2021 with a string of 7 highly professional starts. So things in 2022-23 are more on them, than on us. But trading for prospects is ALL about results, and you can't know for several years. But at the time I would have preferred the Twins hedge their bets, assuming they really liked SWR as the best arm available in trade, with a couple of other good quality pitching prospects in addition, instead of Austin Martin. I am guessing that Toronto held firm on giving up additional arms, and apparently the Twins thought Martin was can't-miss with the bat. Oops. He could still be a productive major leaguer, but that's not a good return when trading away pitching.
  11. ashbury
    I want a lot more than this from SWR. I nearly don't care what Austin Martin does, short of building a Hall of Fame career, but if SWR doesn't pan out then the Berrios trade counts as a failure in my book. Pitching is the coin of the realm and when trading away 1.5 years of control of a very good pitcher you have to get excellent future pitching in return. Accepting just one talented prospect arm in trade means all your chips (for that trade) are on him. He still doesn't turn 23 until September, so maybe he can develop further, but almost 100 pitches and not completing 5 innings isn't "sharp", as the article described the outing.
  12. ashbury
    "The food at this restaurant tastes terrible. And, such small portions!"
  13. ashbury
    That's my concern. If he's lost much weight, and my guess is he has, then he's going to need time like it was spring training all over again, to get into game shape. He seems to be a tough guy but self-discipline will only carry an athlete so far. A 60-day IL stint still seems like it's not out of the question after a beaning like that. Now watch him prove me wrong and start playing again on May 2.
  14. ashbury
    A .700 OPS would be better than he's achieved in any season since 2017. Starry-eyed optimist, you.
  15. ashbury
    I see a goodly number of walks in his recent game logs for St. Paul.
  16. ashbury
    Didn't Larnach make bad throws on consecutive plays?
  17. ashbury
    You might have to sit through a few seasons to ever get to test out this hypothetical.
  18. ashbury
    Farmer looking badass in that video. I guess he's thinking, "hell NO, Castro, you can't just have my job."
  19. ashbury
    Given the weather, are there actually ANY good seats except the luxury boxes?
  20. ashbury
    Make sure to dress him in one of the red jerseys from seasons past, when this happens.
  21. ashbury
    A sweep, barring injuries.
  22. ashbury
    I liked the acquisition of MAT as a good backup CF. And I'm happy with his start to the season, as detailed here. But if he winds up being the team's MVP of 2023, something will have gone very, very wrong.
  23. ashbury
    I did not enjoy Pagan's Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly™ in today's game. ™ 2023 Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX), all rights reserved
  24. ashbury
    "Gabriel, Will, Xzavion, go have dinner together somewhere nice, on us, and let us know your Yelp review. of the place."
  25. ashbury
    Last year the Dodgers had the best runs-against total in the majors with 513. So yeah, pitching probably can be expected to regress.
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