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ashbury

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Everything posted by ashbury

  1. ashbury
    The thing that somehow caught me by surprise is that the batting lineup was essentially the same for every game. A time or two, a couple of batters got swapped in the order. Playing the same catcher every game stands out, but the rest was pretty consistent, obscured by his heavy use of platoon-bat pinch-hitting. In the regular season Rocco employed 13 different leadoff batters to begin the game. Our opponent in the wild card had used 4. Houston used 6. And so on, down the batting order. It's easy to guess any of several reasons it played out like this, but I'd be interested in eliminating the guesswork by someone asking Rocco to spell it out.
  2. ashbury
    Ancient history What has Dusty accomplished lately?
  3. ashbury
    True dat. Doesn't even have to be for money. I never paid such close attention to an NFL season as last year when I got roped into a family fantasy league.
  4. ashbury
    Yeah, the headline to this post seems to have it backwards. The team exercised their half of the mutual option for 2024, and she turned hers down. She also turned down their offer of a contract extension aside from the 2024 option. She quit.
  5. ashbury
    By that rule, doesn't he come out? Ryan's last 3 batters faced were HR - single - groundout. Looks like a "first sign of trouble" to me. If that were part of Emilio Pagan's body of work for the game, you would be hollering "Next!"
  6. ashbury
    On the morning of May 5 Buxton sported an OPS of .920. Up to that point the experiment to let him DH-only was working. From that date to the end of the season his OPS was .629. His batting average on balls in play was in the low .200s, which could be bad luck except we were watching him and the quality of the balls in play wasn't at his normal level. That OPS isn't sustainable for a major league hitter unless he is playing elite defense (and even then it's marginal) - and he still wasn't playing defense at all. It's impossible to pinpoint from the batting record when exactly something happened physically, but we can be pretty sure that something did. Post-surgery he had been on what was apparently an upward trajectory, with hope that DH would transition to CF, but instead something went downward. People say he proved he shouldn't play DH, that the mental stress of sitting was too much, but all the season demonstrated to me was that trying to keep him healthy by DHing him was a miserable failure this time. Next year he needs to be either on the active roster and playing CF most of the time, or else on the IL. It's foolish to bank on the Best Case given his health history, but it's also foolish to say it can't happen, and if it does the rewards could be considerable.
  7. ashbury
    I just saw Montgomery get squeezed on an outside pitch that looked like it caught the black. But I haven't been paying attention most of the game, just listening, until now.
  8. ashbury
    Game looks a lot like the ones our Twins played. Rallies ending with a batter flailing at strike three in the dirt. Less compelling TV when I don't have a dog in the fight. I don't know a solution.
  9. ashbury
    The most difficult thing to find. Spot on. It may be fleeting and the FO obviously is always on the look. But at the moment, mission accomplished. Now get us one or two more.
  10. ashbury
  11. ashbury
    Yes, but the reverse is also often true.
  12. ashbury
    I don't know why the narrative doesn't die, but it needs to. Twins relievers pitched the 4th FEWEST innings in the majors in 2023. Starters pitched the 4th MOST; they were 7 innings across the entire season from overtaking Seattle for top honors.
  13. ashbury
    In a world where "what have you done for us lately?" rules, let's celebrate what Maki has done lately. Next year will come soon enough. PS. Are there teams for whom the pitching coach holds 90 minute meetings?
  14. ashbury
    Rocco stated after the game that they would have considered leaving Ryan in a bit longer if results had warranted it, and I'll take him at his word, that maybe another inning could have been possible. League-wide most pitchers do worse the second time through the order than the first, and Ryan's stats bear that out a little more strongly than average. So that's an argument for a short leash. If I want to second-guess, I have to ask which reliever would have not appeared, had Ryan soaked up the third inning successfully. (Or maybe Duran pitches just one inning.) With Thielbar's work the only place to second-guess the outcome, and with him being the only lefty, facing a lineup where some left-handed batters are menaces, I can't convince myself that the decisive home run would not have happened. The only way to have it not happen might be to bring Thielbar into the middle of an inning and let him register the third out against a lefty - the way he was used, by rule he had to face three batters, which included righty Abreu. "Correct" decision? I don't think that exists. But the decision is defensible, and in light of results I can't criticize. We lack knowledge of what would have occurred in a third inning by Ryan, facing the #9 batter and then the top of the lineup again. That kind of unknown always makes the discussion fun and pointless at the same time.
  15. ashbury
    That RBI was the only RBI in one of the wins versus Toronto. In games where runs were mostly at a premium, he was an asset.
  16. ashbury
    Who writes the headlines anyway? Replace "near-perfect" with "cohesive" and you capture the sentiment of the article IMO. / I am not an editor
  17. ashbury
    That team? Couldn't even get past one round of the playoffs.
  18. ashbury
    I was hoping for something like this. Surgeons usually prefer a conservative course of treatment, which in turn left hope for fans that those sawbones weren't out of ideas for Byron after last off-season's procedure didn't do the trick. Of course there's no guarantee this fixes him up, but it's better news IMO than "rest during the off-season."
  19. ashbury
    I want a World Series victory. So the players have to learn from this year and get better. Those who can't get better need to be replaced. I'm nowhere to the point yet of trying to play armchair GM for the coming off-season. But I'll never forget the two playoff wins I witnessed in person alongside my two sons. So I thank the Twins with profoundest gratitude for 2023.
  20. ashbury
    If you were inventing a sport from scratch in 2023, with a predictable activity that happened in a certain spot, oh, say, 250 times a game, you'd automate the judgment of that activity if you could. A hundred years from now if baseball's still around, fans could be told that in the early days balls and strikes were called manually, and they would be all, "whoa, didn't they even have motion detecting cameras back in those old-timey days? Dr McCoy had that quote about stone knives and bearskins in one of the better Star Trek episodes.
  21. ashbury
    He achieved two quick outs, expending 9 pitches. I would expect him to be available again today if the need (hopefully!) arises to protect a lead.
  22. ashbury
    Good for first place in the AL Central!
  23. ashbury
    He's not allowed to pick from Houston's roster. There are no difference-makers sitting unused on Minnesota's bench.
  24. ashbury
    Oh, for sure. And in that clip A-Rod tried to demonstrate (as a righty, which changes it somewhat) what good technique would be - I can't judge. He also gave Alex some cover, that maybe he couldn't see the ball. But then A-Rod has an annoying ability to say something trite (his closing comment) as though it is profound. It just hit me a certain way this time.
  25. ashbury
    ARod's insightful deep-dive closing comment about Kirilloff's error: "you can not let that ball past by you." Alrighty then.
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