Jump to content
Twins Daily
  • Create Account

ashbury

Verified Member
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    40,838

  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    463

 Content Type 

Profiles

News

Minnesota Twins Videos

2026 Minnesota Twins Top Prospects Ranking

2022 Minnesota Twins Draft Picks

Minnesota Twins Free Agent & Trade Rumors, Notes, & Tidbits

Guides & Resources

2023 Minnesota Twins Draft Picks

The Minnesota Twins Players Project

2024 Minnesota Twins Draft Picks

2025 Minnesota Twins Draft Pick Tracker

Forums

Blogs

Events

Store

Downloads

Gallery

Everything posted by ashbury

  1. ashbury
    Ladies and gentlemen, your 2023 Turn City Turns! Also, just a guess, we see five players who will not be traded this off-season.
  2. ashbury
    Why would that other team trade for Kepler? They should just outbid us for Haniger and save the prospect capital.
  3. ashbury
    What to do with Urshela may be an open question. Non-tendering him is not. He has value. Maybe he doesn't have trade value, in terms of getting a key prospect. But you wouldn't have to give up anything of value to have someone else take him off your hands, if events play out a certain way. And at worst you have third base covered. May sound like faint praise, but in this case it's still praise.
  4. ashbury
    I want to believe. 31 starts is not easy to do in the majors, and he averaged nearly 6 innings doing it this year. Past injuries should count less than recent history. And yet... it keeps being that left shoulder. At the end of 2022, again. Not fluke injuries you can explain away. Elbows and shoulders are the career killers, duh. I was nervous about Mahle's record of shoulder woes when that trade was made. I probably should be leery now of committing multiple years to Rodón, which is what will be required given there will be interest from all directions. And an incentive-laden offer won't win this auction. The old cliche that the best moves are the ones you don't make, seems to apply yet again. I've been critical of the FO, but I don't envy the decisions they have to make either. This one is tough. But I say no, unless there is some financial ace they have up their sleeve that I can't anticipate, that makes the last years of any contract not matter.
  5. ashbury
    Wasn't Addison Reed a 2-year contract? They had to eat the second year, in effect, so I suppose one could find an alternative phrasing that works.
  6. ashbury
    At the end of the day, b-r.com and FG place him around 8 WAR for his 8-year career. 1 win above replacement per year means he's not a bust, and contributed to the major league squad. But for his career he wasn't above major league average - he needed about double, for that. When the defense is not good, the bar is set pretty high for your bat making you a positive contributor, and in only 3 of his 8 years could we call him an above average player. Injuries account for the gap between potential and performance, IMO, and I doubt there can be a definitive assessment whether the injuries were bad luck or a chronic physiological thing or somehow could have been avoided with difference choices of one kind or another. If the latter, then his career right now looks like something out of a Greek tragedy.
  7. ashbury
  8. ashbury
    Do we know of a cause for his poor 2022? Do we have reason to think that cause is gone? If it's just a hope that 2019 Joey still exists, I say no, he doesn't make sense.
  9. ashbury
    Is there enough of a track record with mutual options to have a feel for how they work in practice? When I hear about a mutual option in year N of a new contract, I always assume it's about 1% to play out in that way. Too much can happen in years 1 to N-1, for $X million to be the correct number both sides will still agree to.
  10. ashbury
    So, to go back to what you were actually replying to and to summarize: how does Max Kepler move the needle for Miami? Also, now that Frank Quilici has passed away, I guess we get to spell his name any old way?
  11. ashbury
    The roster's now at 40, and the pitcher-hitter split is 24-16. Arms are what's valuable and with all the shuttling in and out sheer numbers are needed. Nobody does a 20-20 split anymore. With only 1 catcher on the roster, there is still work to do - I mean, of course the off-season is not over, it's just barely begun, but apart from the individuals they still will bring on board, the overall shape of the roster is a bit unsettled.
  12. ashbury
    That's a nice idea, depending on how much Baltimore wants for this waiver-wire pickup they polished up and now maybe want to flip (where have we heard THAT before? ? ) The trade analyzer site puts a pretty low value on him, so maybe? OTOH he was their starting shortstop all year and the analytics on him put a pretty good value on his contribution in 2022. Is Henderson for sure a shortstop? He seems to have been given a lot of time at 3B, as though the Orioles are hedging some bets with him.
  13. ashbury
    We saw only the upside of Correa's opt-out arrangement. A few players that demonstrate the downside will cure us of thinking it's a panacea.
  14. ashbury
    I should have left out the word "merely", because I share the same genuine concern she expressed and which you amplified. No one in the analytics community believes WAR provides much if any useful or actionable information in the last digit normally published, say 4.2 versus 4.1, any more so than the holder of a .268 batting average is with any certainty a better hitter for average than a .267 hitter. One 3-for-4 day in the last game of the season can reverse the rankings of two players. But it could be both, and your second paragraph is a different solution to the issue I raised. The current arbitration system is surely expensive in terms of the lawyers who must argue for and against the player's cause, and the arbitrator gets paid too. If it now comes down to some formula, win-win for the owners and for the players union - except FG and B-R may or may not reap any of the benefit that they help produce and for which MLB would have to hire some people to implement (and take the heat for). It comes down to whatever contract they already have with MLB for use of MLB's trademarks, MLBPA's players likenesses, and/or the data systems that provide the overnight game stats, and it's possible that, as smaller businesses, the lawyers they hired allowed some language that allows MLB to exploit them now for wholly unanticipated use of their IP. I'd love to know more but we may never learn the details, and obviously all I'm doing is speculating. It will piss me off no end if it comes out that MLB plays hardball and tells these small fish, "you signed a contract, if you don't like it we'll find someone else." Which... I don't put past them whatsoever. A contract IS a contract, but the bigger fish usually have the advantage when that contract is negotiated. And, circling back at last to the points raised in the OP here - MLB is dealing with two sources, not a sole source, which is a huge advantage to them. Say FG tells them, "fine, we'll just stop publishing WAR for anyone, unless you subsidize our efforts going forward." MLB perhaps says in response, "fine, B-R isn't being so obstinate, we'll just throw in with them." Or, vice versa. Getting two suppliers fearful about what the other will do is always good business.
  15. ashbury
    Is her statement merely an indirect way of saying, "hey! You're gonna use our intellectual property for your own palpable benefit, and not pay us?" Terms of Service "You agree not to reproduce, duplicate, copy, sell, trade, resell or exploit for any commercial purposes, any portion of the Service (including your Fangraphs I.D.), use of the Service, or access to the Service." (My emphasis added.) Of course, FG and BR license the data they use from various sources, including no doubt MLB itself.
  16. ashbury
    Either Jefferson Davis or Alfred E. Neuman would be my guesses.
  17. ashbury
    Spring games aren't about winning, so I can't imagine any tactical decisions are made about who the pitchers face and how many times. It's all about "getting the work in."
  18. ashbury
    He's been an effective but not lights-out reliever for a couple years now. At age 30-32 he might be a good risk for a three year $15M guaranteed contract, or some variant on that with options to raise or lower the risk/reward to both parties. If some other team wants to guarantee him $20M, I'm thinking the Twins will find someone else. Above-average pitching is not a commodity in oversupply, though, so maybe my offer is a little light in the present market, and if there were nothing but green flags from the on-field staff and the FO talent evaluators during his short stay with the Twins, I wouldn't pinch the last penny if he wants a little more.
  19. ashbury
    You didn't mention Twins farmhand Jon Olsen who started for the Dogs. Unfortunately he gave up 3 runs in his two innings, but Glendale roared back and got a 6-3 win. Francis Peguero also worked and had a scoreless fifth with a strikeout. Austin Martin singled in the seventh inning to drive in a run and then scored on a double, plus he got a walk earlier. Julien just had the one single mentioned earlier,and struck out 3 times. Alex Isola homered in the fourth. and also walked once What next?
  20. ashbury
    Martin grounds out. Julien singles. Batting .500. So far so good.
  21. ashbury
    I've been rooting for him since watching him last year in the Fall League, but sadly concur. His 2022 lefty-righty splits are off the charts absurd, with an impossible .286 OPS-against versus the lefties, and while a .677 OPS-against when facing right handed hitters isn't monstrously bad, add another .100 for when facing major leaguers and he'll be at best a mild liability. At least, that's my rule-of-thumb forecast. Add to that a rather bad walk-rate, and I can see why the FO was averse to calling him up despite a revolving door of other pitchers.
  22. ashbury
    Regarding the Boy Geniuses, Thad Levine turns 51 tomorrow. He still can't grow facial hair. I chalk up his sterling reputation to that.
  23. ashbury
    Only because we traded away our previous workhorse with 2 months remaining in that season, who wound up throwing 192 in aggregate. ? A healthy 2021 for Mahle would be very important data, IF in conjunction with a healthy 2022. Unfortunately, we were left with hoping our FO had guessed correctly about the shoulder woes preceding the trade. Events didn't bear them out. Newer data is almost always more important than older data, when you're trying to forecast performance and the two happen to be at odds.
  24. ashbury
    IMO the likelihood of injury was baked into the roster from the very way the roster was constructed. We had guys like Ober who spent time in 2021 on the injured list. We acquired more guys who had varying degrees of susceptibility to injury in 2021. Insert the Surprised Pikachu meme: we had injuries in 2022. I'm not claiming mine is a sophisticated form of Analytics for player health, but sometimes simplicity is a virtue. Injuries are a part of the game and will happen to every staff. But I want to see a conscious bias when the 2023 roster is constructed, toward reducing the injury risk. If inordinate injury then occurs anyway, I'll either begin to offer more sympathy than I do now, or else I'll call for yet another head trainer. ?
  25. ashbury
×
×
  • Create New...