ashbury

Two runs when facing Alcantara? Must be nice!

Deceptive speed, as they would say of me in my slo-pitch days - "slower than he looks".

Box score can be found here: https://www.milb.com/gameday/cubs-vs-saints/2023/04/06/722874#game_state=final,lock_state=final,game_tab=box,game=722874 (And in general if fans want to follow a day's minor league game for the Twins affiliates, bookmark this: https://www.milb.com/scores/all/all/twins )

Trevor May currently has both of Oakland's wins to his credit. He's 2-1, the team is 2-4. Has any pitcher ever accounted for 100% of his team's wins for a full season? Rooting for you, Trevor!

Looking forward to getting to know our team better with how these games go.

Don't know why you think the 27-year old is on his way up yet the guy who's still 25 can't improve. Personally I think both "are what they are" pretty much, and we might have seen Gordon's career-year in 2022. Admittedly I've been slow to embrace Nick as a fixture on a major league squad, and every little bump on the road has me diving off of the bandwagon for safety.

I'd try to spread the opportunities around at SS, but mostly I don't think this will be Dinkelman's strategic decision at all The front office will lay out the playing time they want, and the manager will implement that plan.

Aw, what's the point of a nice straw man argument if you go and knock it down right away?

Baseball didn't start out as a spectator sport, merely a pastime for children, farm boys, or city folk with enough open park space to play in. Three strikes were the rule and fastballs weren't permitted, to allow rank novices to have a chance at putting the ball in play for some healthful fun and a little light competition. In early variants the pitcher was required to suit the batter's preference as to low or high pitches. What if we were devising rules made for spectators and played by experienced professionals, though? How about, One Strike And You're Out? If you put the ball in play, you take your chances on the bases, as now. If the pitcher doesn't throw you a strike, you take first base. If you swing and miss, or otherwise fail to put the ball in play, that's an out. Yes, foul balls are outs - next batter please. Home runs? For the moment I think we can allow them as they are now (fan favorites when not to excess) - but I'm open to every ball out of the field of play being a foul ball and thus an out, if this variant turns out to raise the number of homers versus now by too much. Same basic design to the game - still 3 bases to run, still 3 outs to retire the side. For the spectator, it goes beyond what the current pitch-clock does to reduce the time between pitches, and eliminates the pitches that don't decide anything - we diehard fans may enjoy the pitcher-batter chess match but the casual fan is usually oblivious and is texting on their phone. Unsure what constitutes a full game in this fast-paced variant - 9 innings would be over with in under an hour. In early baseball the teams would play to a run total, but I don't think that's wise now. So, 27 innings? (I like powers of 3.) If the games are short enough, complete games come back into the realm of everyday occurrences - is that desirable or not? (One ace pitcher could dominate the league outcome to a greater extent than now.) There wouldn't be stolen bases (or its variants like hit and run), perforce - are there new and entertaining strategies that could emerge? The pitcher-batter dynamic would be different, with every pitch essentially a 3-2 offering - no nibbling, no waste pitches or defensive swings. You can still walk a dangerous hitter if that seems strategic, and go after the weaker hitters. Does this version favor the present-day batter, or the pitcher - I mean would batting average and OPS go up or down? What say you? Better? Worse? Simply "different"? "Too different"?

Possible. I'm thinking it goes the other direction, though, and it might even be too many slugfests. I think for instance the 1-ball-1-strike rule would increase the number of fastballs. Off-speed pitches in general are harder to control They are devastating in part because the pitcher doesn't have to come in with a strike. As for situational hitting, take a look at the splits from last year's season, arranged by the balls-strikes count: https://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/split.cgi?t=b&lg=MLB&year=2022#all_count Keep in mind that the overall OPS for batters last year was .707. I'm not sure which line in the above chart is more relevant, the PA where matters are decided on the first pitch, i.e. the batter saw a pitch he liked and put it in play, to the tune of a .909 OPS (and that number doesn't even have walks since they are impossible). Or when the PA reaches a full count, at which point the aggregate OPS is .777. Either way is higher than with the current rules. The change I sketched out would be more far-reaching than that, of course. Built into the present-day stats are the strategies that have built up over time - currently an all-or-nothing approach by the batter until two strikes (and often even with two strikes), and a keep-away strategy (AKA nibbling) by pitchers until three balls; sometimes pitchers get their outs without even throwing a strike because batters are over-eager. New strategies would be devised and I don't know with any certainty how it would play out. The pitcher has to come in with something to hit, or else walk batter after batter. The batter needs to swing a little more defensively, in part because fouls are no longer protected. But who knows, if the games do wind up low-scoring, then maybe home runs are what wins games, and the all-or-nothing approach continues, and pitchers will respond by risking walks against the power threats - much as now. Heh, if you are concerned offense will be squashed, maybe my idea of starting every plate appearance at 3-and-2 needs to be tweaked. Make it 2 strikes for a strikeout and only 1 ball for a walk. That's in essence a 3-1 pitch on every batter. Now you'll get some hitting! Shrug. I don't claim to know.

Is it still the case that if they fail to sign a player they draft, the money assigned to the slot where that player was taken is lost? If they plan to overpay for some other guy, this detail becomes crucial.

40-man roster considerations make even St Paul as far away as the moon for those players not on it. Besides that, for me the need is neither an infielder nor an outfielder, but a bat, plus Buxton in CF and Taylor in a backup role.

IMO the reason comes back to Buxton not playing in the outfield. If he's the fulltime DH, and Taylor's playing every day, there's no room for a bat-first guy like Wallner. But put Buxton in CF and Taylor on the bench, where they respectively belong, and then Castro's the one with no real role and Wallner can be up. (Or Garlick the Lefty Killer, for a game like today, if that's the preference a week ago when the decision was made and there was the 40-man spot open.) Just to be clear, I bow to the team's and Buxton's collective decision about this. But this is the cost.

baseball-reference.com provides a daily summary to subscribers, and today's shows both Alcantara and Maeda among the top 4 pitching performances of the day. Miami's guy was #1 of course.

I started reading your post thinking we were in disagreement but with your closing sentence I see us as aligned. I don't want to see the game changed to have 3 or 5 bases, or make it 2 strikes and yer out, and my fantasy that out of the park home runs (usually borrrrring!) should be foul balls had its last real chance of happening before the turn of the 20th century*. No need for something as annoying as the Offside rule in soccer which takes away the thrill just as something interesting starts to happen.** But less radically than that, I think the problems plaguing the game of baseball (Three True Outcomes being IMO the worst) can be dealt with gently and subtly. I'll quibble that I don't see the direct connection between the new pitch clock and analytics. Batters and pitchers alike recognized (and still do) that their best performance comes when they take time to collect themselves. No need for spin rates and exit velocities to accept that, and to then take steps to limit both competitors equally. * USAFChief is probably the last one among us who could have lobbied for it, so I blame him for short-sightedness ** In both futbol and American football, when an attacker is midway through an exciting long play, you are looking with one eye at the player and with the other eye for indications from the ref that it's all coming back.

There's no question that today's analytics* has figured out some new things. But just as infielders long ago figured out how to get cheap double plays on popups, leading to the Infield Fly Rule, the solution is always to adjust the rules and/or playing conditions if it's ever felt to have gotten out of balance. If batters and pitchers and fielders figure out methods to increase the chance of winning that also makes the game boring, change the conditions they're operating under. And it doesn't have to be drastic in most cases. If an absolute newcomer watches a game today and asks why the shortstop is positioned where he is rather than a few feet even farther over, you can tell them the rule and they'll go "oh, okay." Soften the baseball, lower the pitcher's mound or move it backward to 62 feet, change the strike zone slightly - things like this have happened through the years and can be done again, and years later you don't even remember that it was ever any different. * Longtime SABR member and yet I more or less hate the term sabrmetrics. SABR's about the study of baseball, the majority of its efforts being in research to establish the historical record or correct it, and Bill James's co-option of the organization's name was short-sighted. In business they call the same thing analytics, so I go with that.

Bingo. They used to give the batting title to the player who had the most hits in a season. Then someone stopped to wonder about frequency, and batting average was born, and I imagine some diehards took it hard.

I'm all for correlating any information that makes a team better. "The good face"? "Looks like a young Barry Bonds to me"? An analytics team should at least look at what goes into a statement like that from a veteran scout, and see if either they can break it down to something with predictive power, or can be validated as meaningful and not simply something an old guy says about every hitter of a certain build who happens to hit the ball over the fence the day he's watching. Inside the player's head? I'm optimistic that sound conclusions can be drawn. But those will come from trained professionals who know what they are looking for and then can specify it in a way others can recognize - if it were easier than that then it would already be done. I take a very broad view of analytics, and a table that has a column containing simply "yes" or "no" for a given player, or "low", "medium" "high", and so forth, can be of very high value to a front office making decisions. It's all about breaking down intractable problems into smaller ones that can be more easily tackled. A never ending process, and I disagree strongly with Manfred that it's in any way harmful. It's what problem solvers (managers, team executives, whoever) do.

Pagan has enough service time to refuse a minor league assignment. And he's out of minor league options anyway. St Paul fans will be spared the annoyance. Trade or cut, those are the alternatives (either of which I support).

Is your complaint that the OP doesn't have insider knowledge on the players' actual personality traits? If I were a GM, I would be salivating at having an additional database of information on player personalities, assuming it's collected by knowledgeable people actually in the game and who understand from experience the dynamics inside a clubhouse. The methodology is intriguing to me, even if one knows going in that it's a subjective area, and is qualitative rather than quantitative. The "data" provided in the graphs above are just placeholders for discussion purposes, and are basically beside the point. Even the exact choice of 3 dimensions of leadership, C I and P, represent just a working model based on one study, that surely would be refined with use.

Ortega vultures a win. Presumably Schulfer was in line for it (official scorer's discretion, but realistically he'd be it), and he must be so pleased.

Note to Rocco: use Pagan before the ninth inning, even when you anticipate the ninth to be low-leverage. That way, if his usual antics occur and you have to warm someone up, it can be one you were presumably going to use anyway in an inning or so.

Came here for an obligatory straw-man argument. Leaving satisfied.

Seth, just a heads-up, it appears that USAFChief has hacked your account.

Then we're talking analytics. Aren't we? I'm satisfied if I've broadened your perspective a little.