ashbury

Across the majors last year, aggregate DH output was an OPS of only .710, compared to the overall .707 OPS. (Best by position were 1B and 3B at .746 and .725 respectively, worst unsurprisingly was C at .663.) Apparently the majority of teams must be rotating their DH too. Seems like a dedicated DH is one of the few opportunities for a lower-budget team to find a competitive advantage, even at the cost of a shorter bench for the position players in this era of 13-man batting rosters.

Will our DH be better than the opponent's DH, most games? If not, then I don't like this rotational strategy. If a key player needs a day of rest, rest him. A hitter like Nelson Cruz wasn't simply a great DH, he was a cost-effective DH. Because you aren't paying one penny for a glove. When a position player fills the role, his salary doesn't drop for that game, but whatever you're paying for his glove is wasted anyway. Of course it's not easy to find and sign a guy like Cruz, because other teams are in there bidding for his services as well. Having him was good while it lasted. To be clear, given the roster we have now, rotation may be the way to go. I'm talking about roster construction, dating back a few months now. But unless Nick Gordon (for instance) steps up his offense a bit further than he already has (and maybe he can), very many games with him as DH is going to look a lot like that time in the post-season where Jason Tyner DH'ed. And in that case I'm back to criticizing the roster construction. Literally any major league player is capable of filling the DH slot, but that's a low hurdle and I want a DH who excels, same as every spot in the lineup.

I dunno. Now we may have gone from Mount Rushmore to Mount Everest. All alone up there.

Concur. OTOH multi-tool players typically need for all their tools to click, unless you have the fabled 5-tool player like Correa or Buxton who go high in the draft and aren't available anyway where Sabato was chosen. Nick Gordon is the poster child for having no one tool being bad when drafted but no one tool that stood out, and he almost got buried in the minors before finally putting it all together (arguably it was his high draft slot in the first place that caused him to get the long leash, otherwise he might be bouncing around). There's more than one way to reach the majors, and also more than one way to not quite make it. If the talent evaluator really believes in one tool that a player has, it can be a reasonable move to draft that player and hope that one or two additional tools emerge as at least adequate. The "hit" tool, more so than "power" or any other single tool, would be the one I'd bank on, so in that light Sabato was kind of a reach.

Does being on Cedar Rapids and Wichita amount to playing in the Styx?

I got a contact high just from watching that video, you jerk.

So then to achieve roughly comparable numbers at the same age and league level, he must be more talented and/or accomplished than Duvall was. Cool beans.

17 HR by a 23-year old at High-A ball, followed by 5 more in short duty at AA? Seems like nothing to sneeze at. I decided to take a look back, 10 years ago, and see what happened afterward to anyone with similar age and numbers at high-A in 2012. At first I was going to look at the Twins own farm system, but High-A back then was in Ft Myers, and the Florida State League is widely considered a pitcher's league. Certainly no one on that 2012 squad approached those figures. So I opted for a different franchise and picked the Giants at random. Their High-A team in 2012 was in San Jose in the higher-offense California League. On that team was Adam Duvall, who at age 23 hit 30 dingers. He used 598 PA in which to accomplish that, while our guy Aaron had his HR in only 348 and 99 at A+ and AA respectively. Duvall's BA was .258 while Sabato's was .226/.179, but adding in walks Sabato's OBP was actually a tad higher of the two. Not a perfect comp but close enough to suit me. Lots of minor leaguers fail, regardless of their pedigree or resume up to a given point. So I'm not going to continue looking for additional comps *cough* Kennys Vargas 2013 *cough*. If Sabato turns out like Duvall, for a few seasons, and it looks like he does have a chance, then our late first rounder will have worked out OK.

Quite rightly.

If nothing else, RandBalls Stu thoroughly understands the age demographic he is writing for.

The comparison offered between Arraez and Solano would embarrass both ballplayers if they were made aware.

Anthony Slama turned 39 last month.

I wonder if it's got so much movement that batters will be more able to recognize the pitch and lay off it?

Jason Tyner being unavailable, you do what you can.

The existence of this article shows that the Yankees are getting free rent in our heads.

Long shot (which maybe you factor in, with your word "could"). He just turned 29, and using WAR again as the quick-and-dirty measure he is behind all 4 of the incumbents through age-28 seasons. I'll always root for him, but he's lost a ton of time for this kind of all-time thinking.

The panel would also have accepted "Brylcreem."

Not really encouraging. b-r.com (first Google hit I found) explains WARP as having a baseline of about 25 wins if a team was composed of all 0-WARP players, i.e. replacement level. You need about 50-60 WARP, team wide, to achieve a .500 record. Given the WARP projections for the batters and now the pitchers, this isn't a sunny forecast. Very odd given the favorable ERAs - it doesn't "add up," at all.

I basically agree. The problem with a 6-man rotation to start the season is that it's predicated on the idea that nobody's really ready and you need to ease them all into the season. But that means 4- or 5-inning starts for a week or two, and that in turn means you need to rely more on your bullpen and not less, and that in turn means you'd rather not have to operate with a 7-man bullpen when you could have 8. Plus why would the 7 relievers be in mid-season form already and geared up to pitching on consecutive days when needed at times? Now, if your 6-man rotation allows them to roar out of the gate throwing 6 or 7 innings apiece, it'd be a different story. Here's a crazier idea? Ober's your Game 2 starter in Kansas City, after the day off following Opening Day (let's say that is Sonny Gray). Let Ober do his 4 or 5 innings, then send him down to St Paul and bring up that 8th bullpen arm ASAP. You go through the rest of the rotation against the Royals and then Marlins, and our graybeard Gray can now do the Home Opener too, having had a full week's rest. Then there's that additional off-day (cold-weather teams seem to build that into their early schedules), and the other 4 starters get their 6 days of rest. I don't think you can bring Ober right back up, according to league rules, so you can't play musical chairs with him at will. So maybe someone has to do a spot-start, or maybe the rotation is in good shape by now and are into their rhythm. Weather postponements and injuries are going to throw any of this planning off, by this point anyway, so just go with a plan to begin with and then expect to adjust and improvise.

Pete Maki sounds more than a little like Chris Parnell, of SNL and Archer and other entertainments. Parnell has the gift of smoothness that sounds like a parody of TV commercials without even trying, but dialed back just a bit he's soothing. I have no idea what technical chops Maki brings to the job but I bet he is good at talking pitchers down from the ledge after they've blown a save for a second game in a row. Speaking of blowing saves, I had looked at Pagan's monthly numbers recently too, and felt it best to view the good final month as merely a SSS blip in the context of a terrible month that preceded it (and not very good ones before that, nor the season before). But baseball is a game of constant tinkering and adjustment, and it's interesting to know that there is a reason that the pitcher attributes to this difference. Trouble is that the batters are allowed to tinker and adjust too, when facing him, and I imagine that Pagan is willing to talk about the curveball because he knows that the "book" on him already has been updated to include this addition. He's not a young man and I'm sure he's tried new things here and there many times. I'm skeptical but I'll never root against a Twin. Wait and see, and I'll hope he proves my skepticism to be unfounded.

As others have said, those ERA look systematically too good, especially when compared to those WARP numbers. A starting pitcher with an ERA in the low-3's? Most WAR-type numbers would be a lot higher.

A mean that varies as we go, of course. It's not like flipping coins or drawing cards from a deck. I don't quibble with the phrase really, but I wish there was another one.

It's always been known as a pitcher's league, even when it was high-A. By contrast the Texas League and the PCL are known as hitter's leagues. When looking at stats it's wise to adjust by as much as .100 for the OPS you see in hitters, and (I dunno, maybe) 1.25 for ERA. (Those are just my own back of the envelope numbers, TYVM.) I think it's the altitude - everyone accepts that offense is inflated at Coors field due to the thin air, which not only lets the ball carry a few feet farther but makes it harder for breaking pitches to have any bite. Down in Florida where the ball travels through a mixture of oxygen, nitrogen and molasses, the pitcher is in his element.

Interesting point about Mahle's L/R splits. I see now that the first 3 years of his MLB career he had rather extreme splits in the traditional direction - lefties tattooed him. Then suddenly it flipped, and for 3 years running it's the righties who make him look bad, and for the past 2 seasons like maybe he doesn't even belong in the majors when facing them, he's become that much of a LOOGY in disguise. Reverse splits aren't usually sustainable, so this has been mighty weird. Obviously it hasn't escaped his attention and he wants to do something about it.

You encouraged reading the Dan Hayes piece in The Athletic, and I just want to say that the photo of Joe Pohlad sure has him rocking the Brian Dozier style pompadour hairstyle and audio headset.