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ashbury

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Everything posted by ashbury

  1. ashbury
    Either way it hasn't been too useful IMO.
  2. ashbury
    Bold prediction there, or maybe a hawt taek, since I think the draft is being held on Wednesday.
  3. ashbury
    This thread predictably became a discussion of semantics of a word in the headline rather than baseball.
  4. ashbury
    To paraphrase Oscar Wilde only slightly, the cynic is one who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing, while the sentimentalist is one who sees an absurd value in everything and doesn't know the market price of any single thing. We need the Twins' leadership, from owners on down, to be somewhere in the happy medium between these two extremes, neither cynical nor sentimental.
  5. ashbury
    People seem unwilling to break ideas in two, and say that this is a talented but injury-plagued core. Demanding that players with track records like theirs "prove they can play" comes across as smug.
  6. ashbury
    Some of this is needed, to replace the lately departed Maeda, Meada, and Madea.
  7. ashbury
    Came here to say mainly the same thing after seeing the headline then reading the story. Chris Paddack is an option, and possibly a very good one. Wait and see how he bears up to the workload. No dilemma in that.
  8. ashbury
    Aw, ya caught me. I stole it.
  9. ashbury

    Seattle wants Polanco

    ashbury commented on Brandon's blog entry in Blog Brandon

    Yes, I can see the values, and they actually kind of line up with my back of the envelope way of valuing the players being discussed. (You'll note that I said I'd rather have Kirby, of the two pitchers mentioned, for example.) Really all I was doing was responding to our three young infielders being mentioned in the same breath, to say that Julien is the one I'd part with most willingly in such a deal. Which, again is borne out by BTV. Not that BTV is meant to be taken as gospel, and any two front offices may value their respective players much differently than BTV or any of us can know. What BTV does is reinforce how difficult it will be to obtain controllable and truly top-tier pitching via trade. Close to impossible, even. If BTV is right and the whole league views our assets as mediocre, then let's keep everyone and go win some World Series with them - Shock The World!
  10. ashbury

    Seattle wants Polanco

    ashbury commented on Brandon's blog entry in Blog Brandon

    If Julien could be the headliner for Kirby, plus a good pitching prospect that we only hope becomes as good as Kirby, plus a couple of low-minors lottery tickets, I'd be really aggressive about making it happen. My interest in Gilbert would be only slightly, slightly lower due to one less year of control. Of course I'd defer to my player evaluation team for more in depth insight as to which one I want. But I especially see no black marks regarding injury or durability (*cough* Mahle *cough*).
  11. ashbury
    For the 3 current contracts named that are on the 40-man, we don't know yet. Acquiring top tier players who have any choice in the matter will always seem "not cost effective" because the collective bargaining agreement makes it that way. Multiple teams will bid up anyone perceived as above average, creating the classic s-shaped curve (here, money spent on the horizontal axis, value on the vertical). I'll go along with others that Donaldson's contract was bad for the Twins, because it cost them significant resources in trade to simply get out from under it. Buxton's contract has simply cost money, so far; the terms of the contract were meant to protect against injury but "oh, I can only DH today" for weeks on end proved to be a loophole, and if that persists through the life of the contract I'll change my view. Correa and Vazquez, I foresee them delivering more value than they have so far, so the jury's out. Dobnak is looking like a failure of player evaluation, with the finger injury being merely what triggered it. It bothers me more than it should, because the contract is the least consequential of those named.
  12. ashbury
    If the ground rule is to construct the 26-man from the current 40-man, I think I have to put Miranda in St Paul and roster Gordon. Limbo is for dancers from Trinidad.
  13. ashbury
    In 2023, the Twins averaged 4.6 runs a game while Pablo Lopez was on the mound. They averaged 4.7 for Joe Ryan. For Sonny Gray? 3.3 runs. Imagine that much difference in ERA - you think that might affect how often a good pitcher will get a 'W'? After the starter departed the game, the Twins averaged .9 additional runs in Pablo's games, .7 runs for Joe. In Sonny's games they averaged .4 more runs. So not only were they less likely to support him during his start, but they were less likely to come back to take a lead. There needs to be some context when looking at game results for a pitcher. There's wide variation in what goes on that's out of his hands, unless his name is Shohei and he picks up a bat.. https://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/MIN/2023-pitching.shtml#all_players_starter_pitching
  14. ashbury
    To let us Sell High, duh.
  15. ashbury
    They offered him a one-year, $20.325 million deal. He turned it down. It was in the news.
  16. ashbury
    Haven't seen a roster in a while, I guess. Why did we trade for Foy?
  17. ashbury
    History is important, but no team can ride nostalgia forever. The AL Browns have been gone from St Loo for longer than they were there. Stories of those days don't carry relevance now. Keeping a place a "good baseball town" is not automatic. The Cards are doing something right, and their accomplishments in a market comparable to the Twin Cities should not be dismissed out of hand.
  18. ashbury
    Stealing from one = Plagiarism Stealing from many = Satire
  19. ashbury
    Most of the time I'd opt to keep the superior player. If it's a question of truly elite talent at up the middle positions, with starting pitching as exactly in the middle as it gets, I widen my horizon a little. It also depends on what we could get for Julien. Wheels within wheels here. Good discussion.
  20. ashbury
    You selected that second decimal value with care, did you not. Straight out of college, excelled at high-A, not rookie league* or single-A. Next season, didn't miss a beat at AA. Acquitted himself decently at AAA, with a low enough BABIP to suggest his performance there will trend upward almost immediately next season. The Twins have been criticized for slow promotion of their prospects. Damned if they do, damned if they don't. Lee possibly could have OPSed 1.000 in rookie ball and then repeated the feat at single-A in his second year. But who the heck would want that? That's what you do with a Nate Baez type, who I see has put up nice numbers at single-A after college. Brooks Lee, you want to keep challenged. Brooks Lee shows all the earmarks of a keeper. No prospect is a sure thing - neither is an established veteran - human beings are like that. We "do know" about Lee, almost exactly as well as any player. Of course being a keeper makes him great trade bait if the target acquisition is significant enough. I'm on the fence, thinking we should keep him, but open to a trade for a great pitcher with years of control. * Okay, 4 games there
  21. ashbury
    Cheaper in the long run to just hire some mid-level FO person from Milwaukee or St Louis with 10 years' experience, and then listen carefully each time he or she says, "well, that's not how we did it back in...".
  22. ashbury
    Not only that, but they have to be careful how they tweak it. To avoid getting into two-strike counts at all, they could opt to go for less power (let's say), and then end up with an offense like Cleveland or Washington had this year - low strikeouts, but not a lot of runs scored despite that advantage. CLE and WAS had decent batting averages but low walk rates so their OBPs actually were below league average and they neither one hit with much power. The difficult dilemma is that if you cut down the strikeouts the wrong way, you apparently might cut down on walks and power at the same time, and then that's questionable progress. The solution is to have low strikeouts combined with good OBP and SLG like Houston and Atlanta did. Yes, get some good hitters. Why didn't somebody in the Twins FO think of this before? As you said, not sure how easy it'll actually be. That's why the on field staff gets paid the big bucks.
  23. ashbury
    No team does well at the plate when there are two strikes on the batter. OPS across the majors was .734, but once 2 strikes happen the OPS drops to .523 (in large part because, yes, that's when strikeouts can happen). It's not as if a change in approach with two strikes will turn our hitters into Babe Ruth - the Braves led the majors in two-strike OPS at .596. The Twins' two-strike results in 2023 were under a double whammy. First, they were near the league bottom in OPS at .482. So yes, doing more like the Braves, or even just reaching league norms, would help some. I notice for instance a large dropoff in HR rank with two strikes, compared to their lofty HR total overall. And second, they led the majors in plate appearances that reached two strikes. You're not going to really succeed, operating at a disadvantage more often than your opposition. So, they were in the unfavorable situation too often, and did badly when there. Fix either, and there'll be some improvement. Fix both, and they might really unlock something. (They've taken one good step by parting ways with Joey Gallo, who OPSed a mighty .406 with two strikes. He batted .087 in those situation. Cut the Mendoza line in half, and he was still under that.)
  24. ashbury
    An ace would be nice, a mid-rotation arm should be the aim, but my minimum standard is for acquiring someone who can be reasonably forecast to do better than Louis Varland's 2023 in the majors. That allows Louis to start 2024 at St Paul, and find whatever additional tweaks will let him dominate at AAA, which he didn't do in 2023 either. And while he works at his development, we have someone better to hold his place. Not to mention, you can't get through a season with 5 starters anyway.
  25. ashbury
    I'll wish good luck to all the players involved and hope that they meet expectations better in your gameplay than they did in real life. Milt May makes an obvious trade chip given the other catchers you've mentioned being in the system, but I'm not sure if Foy is going to be the straw that stirs any drinks. (That particular phrase won't come for another decade anyway.) Far be it from me as GM to micromanage, but has anyone in my field staff considered installing Pete Rose at 3B instead? They could be visionaries far ahead of their time. Permit me to still have optimism for Mack Jones to really break through one of these years.
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