ashbury

I'll beat the rush and start missing Brooks Lee now! And I already miss Connor Prielipp since I don't think he pitched an inning in 2022.

I didn't see that one before. It's a fun one!

Good analysis. I'd be unhappy with a major-league commitment to Castro, but he's not so old that he can't find that one last tweak to his game that makes him a viable major-leaguer, so let him devote 2023 in St Paul to that, and see what happens. Welcome, Willi, and I never thought I'd say that.

You're right, that's not very realistic. You can't improve on our Pitching Pipeline™.

I wish they would go back to playing the 7 other teams 22 times each season. 1961 ruined everything.

My freshman English teacher might look at that same sentence and deduct half a grade due to the mixed metaphors.

57 games? Pffft. Big deal. Emilio Pagan all by himself attended 59 games. (58 of which were losses, going strictly from memory.) Seriously, kudos on the season summary from up-close.

"State of the Art Analytical Market Research Concludes that One, and only One, Satire Writer Needed at TD." The next RandBalls Stu headline.

Finally! A strategy we all can endorse. Easy peasy!

I'm quibbling only on a side comment, but for me the Berrios trade was all about SWR, and Martin was the necessary sweetener. Pitching is the coin of the realm in MLB and if you continually trade your pitching talent for hitters you'll always be standing at the train station wondering how you missed the express yet again. I'd have preferred two pitching prospects in return for 1.5 years of Berrios control but evidently Toronto stood firm. If SWR flops, which is the risk for any prospect, I don't care about Martin unless he turns into the next Jose Altuve or similar. The "new" FO has been in charge since the 2016-17 off-season. So this is now their seventh go-round. FA signings are always needed, but it's time for some results on young controllable difference-makers to be the basis of sustainable success. The two pitchers you named are as good as any if that success is to occur.

RandBalls Stu draws his share of earnest rebuttals from readers who don't recognize the satire, which ironically is one hallmark of good satire. Another important trait of satire is picking worthy targets, never "punching down." His weekly series never fails to disappoint his most ardent critics.* * Yeah, I like to try a deadpan humorous turn of phrase now and then too, but not at his level.

Just remember "Coulombe's Lawe" from that Physics class you loved in high school, and you'll be fine.

Gauging injury risk is a thorny problem. I have a suspicion that some teams' analytics staffs have made greater progress than others, in working out a rubric for placing players into one bucket or another in terms of injury risk. The way you phrased it here sounds like there is only "injured" and "not injured," or at least that's what you think people here are asking for. I think everyone accepts that injury is a part of every player's life at some point. But as you go on to say, some pitchers do log 30 starts. Figuring out a way to improve your odds of locating those guys is not the same as demanding totally accurate prediction. Not trading for players with an injury history means sorting into two buckets, red and green for stop and go respectively. Instead, if you have buckets labeled 20% injury risk (there being no such thing as 0%), 40%, 60%, 80%, and 95% (with 100% almost certainly meaning "retired"), you'd have an edge over teams with poorer assessment. Possibly there are much finer-grained ways of sorting risk than that, across multiple dimensions rather than simply ever-smaller ranges of percentages. And at the time of the trade, I was looking at Mahle as an 60%er or maybe an 80%er. A lot of us were. I don't think Monday-morning quarterbacking is involved. However, guessing on one player certainly isn't the same as having a professional level of forecasting firepower. Still that's what I do expect of our professional FO. And they disappointed when acquiring Paddack, Mahle, and (for me) even Sonny Gray, not to mention Archer and Bundy who everyone understood would need to be handled with extreme care.

I saw the headline and felt there was a lot of gray area to the phrase "will win" - personally I save that wording for making noise in the post-season. After skimming through the article I see that the benchmark is an 82-80 record. They won 78 games last year. Teams make that kind of dramatic 4-game turnaround every season. So sure, it could happen. Better health from guys with a track record of injury could bring a surprise, and some young'uns breaking out would also do the trick. They also lost 84 games and it wouldn't take much for them to lose 90 this time. I dunno, there's always a wide range of reasonable outcomes for a given roster, and I guess this is the time of year to look at the upside, but I'm having a hard time.

For Twins fans I think that guidance came from Tom Kelly (and others before him, no doubt) and he said it in the context of a batter who started his career hot. I don't think it's meant to say give everybody 1K at-bats just in case they might become good.

Sometimes the low-hanging fruit is the sweetest, and RandBalls Stu also gets mad props for the timely Waffle House Brawl reference. Missed seeing Kim Jong-un worked in as another reference, though.

Our new trainer Nick Paparesta, lately of the A's himself, probably has some useful opinions regarding Laureano, since the player was apparently banged up in a couple of ways last season. I wouldn't want to give up much for Laureano. While I'm not high on Austin Martin as some kind of uber-prospect anymore, I'd still rather see a trade chip like that go for something of a more pressing need.

Hope his hip injury is healed. His injury status in 2022 made it look like a chronic thing and for his sake I hope it doesn't keep flaring up.

Of course there has to be a threshold and a discussion. I just want the heated discussion to be about Brian McCann and not about Joe Mauer. About "just a guy who played" and not a lot of fans' favorite player. And no, it shouldn't be just a popularity contest either. I'm fine with a panel such as the BBWAA taking a measured look at things. Just... open the doors a bit. Let fans have fun looking back.

Is it possible these are different posters typing different things at different points in time?

Pick a lane. Going down the middle like this is just going to get you honked at from both sides. ?

Baseball made a mistake by not including the concept of an Inner Circle when they started the HoF in the first place. So the writers feel the responsibility to make that Inner Circle designation themselves by voting a guy on the first ballot or not I think it's silly, but I also wouldn't revoke a voter's privilege just on that account - the thought process has its own internal logic. But if Joe doesn't get in on the first ballot, I'll be pulling for him to get the needed votes on the second go-round, or thereafter, as opposed to demanding that voters remain "consistent" from year to year. For me he's an easy first-ballot Yes vote. But then (see first sentence above) I'm a Large Hall guy. Baseball should celebrate its best players to the maximum extent possible, and not be constantly downgrading them with arguments amounting to "well, but he wasn't THAT good." Save that for the informal Inner Circle debates.

I could not find a source for this quote, after a short web search. I don't suppose you have a link to what you remember reading/hearing? I suspect that the quote is off by a little bit or is lacking in context. What I expect he was trying to say is that momentary results should not sway your plan if you still believe the plan is sound. To think that someone in charge would literally believe results don't matter is so ludicrous that one should re-check the source of that belief.