ashbury

Approves:

This is the kind of statistical analysis that just drives me bonkers. It's a long season full of ups and downs. If you cherry pick away a portion of the season that was bad, then I want to see a remaining ERA down in the 2's for a reliever. There was still a lot of baseball for Colomé after April 2021, still with ups and downs, so a 3.51 ERA is going to contain a lot of downs mixed with the ups. And was there any useful predictive power from that 3.51 ERA to finish 2021? Not really. Colomé's ERA this past season was in the high 5's. "Ah, but he pitched for the Rockies." Yes, but his ERA on the road was worse than at Coors. So, please don't show me a 3.67 ERA for a cherry picked portion of the season for Emilio, and expect me to buy in. That 3.67 contains some ups and downs (otherwise it would be 0.00), after a bunch of the egregious downs are already removed. If you can't make a better case for him than that, there isn't a case to be made, statistically. Except, roster filler, and we shouldn't pay millions for that. The rest of the article? The nuts and bolts of his game? It's interesting to know that he's working on something - better results will have to come from some kind of change, after all. Baseball played at a high level is a cat-and-mouse game, between pitchers adjusting to what batters do, and batters adjusting to what pitchers do. Baseball's also a game of mistakes - you try to make fewer than your adversary - and a small sample may not show that the mistakes are gone, merely in hiding. A few games with a new toy in Emilio's arsenal are all well and good, but the batters get to adjust. Surely this isn't the first time he's tinkered. I don't see him turning some corner, at age 32 next May. Anything's possible though and if he's still with the team I'll be rooting for him when he's out there, in whatever role. I'd love to eat crow.

Almost everything about this site is wonderful, but my hatred for losing the ability to delete one's own reply posts is on a par with the heat of a thousand fiery suns.

Expos Le Base-ball. ? Some nearsighted people just saw a capital M for Montreal, though.

I used to annoy Expos fans by asking what the "elb" on their caps stood for. ?

I'm not a roster expert but I was asking about the same questions too, and I think I might have an answer. The rules governing rosters are arcane sometimes, and I think one of the lesser-known rules is at play here. First, no, a player is not more valuable after being added to the 40. Indeed it's the opposite, because when off the 40 you can do anything you want with him (except protect him from Rule-5 after the requisite number of years, or prevent him from declaring free agency after a few years more), while when he's on the 40 then he's taking up a limited resource and you have to expose him to waiver claims if you decide to take him off. Prospects who are still years away from Rule-5 decisions are more valuable in trade than prospects who are Rule-5 eligible, all else being equal, unless their talent and development are so high that their place on the 40 is obvious. It was Rule-5 draft considerations that caused Legumina to be added, as we all have discussed by now, and there is one proviso that gets mentioned now and then - a player added to the 40 in advance of that draft (and I don't know if this applies to every player) must be kept on the 40 until some time after the off-season (again I don't know exactly, maybe it's the same date as when the 60-day IL opens up again in Feburary). The purpose seems obvious, to keep teams from "hiding" a player specifically for the Rule-5 draft, then DFAing him shortly after. And so we have a third detail I'm not certain of, but which may be important: does this restriction carry over if that newly-protected player is traded? Based on nothing more than the sequence of events we've just seen play out with Legumina, I am betting, "no." If this chain of guesses and suppositions and half-remembered facts holds up, then it looks like the two teams agreed in principle to the trade some time ago, and the Reds asked the Twins to do them a favor and add Legumina to the 40 in advance of the trade. The Twins had room so they did it. After all the dust has settled with Urshela and Legumina leaving and Farmer arriving, the Twins are back to having one extra spot available on the 40. Look for Legumina to be quietly passed through waivers sometime this winter, at a time of the Reds' choosing when they think everyone's roster is full. If he's not then I'm back to being puzzled why the Twins made the roster move themselves. I hope someone chimes in if they have any corrections to offer.

Fooey. Started to say something, then fact-checked and it's not worth trying to save. Never mind.

My thinking is that the team acquiring Max might demand the highly random outcome player as the sweetener. ?

I dunno. Doing that may have raised more questions than it answers. ?

The off-season is barely started and there are gaping holes to fill in the current 40-man roster, so more moves are a certainty. I don't see jettisoning Urshela as particularly key to some soon-to-come move, though. I believe today was a league deadline, to tender or not tender players. This trade just clarifies matters for the Twins and the Angels alike.

Would you be happy with some other team's #22 prospect in exchange for Max? Do you think any other team is willing to offer that much? ?

Quite the range of projected outcomes. ?

A live 19-year old arm in return. Probably a good trade. #22 on MLB.com's prospect list for the Angels; at the moment probably a bullpen candidate. We knew Urshela wasn't without value; the question was whether he was more valuable to the Twins as insurance at 3B if Miranda doesn't make strides, versus prospect capital. / edit - on re-reading, I mean he probably has a live arm. I didn't mean to damn with faint praise by suggesting he's 19 and alive. Nor to imply his arm might be of a different age than the rest of him.

That sums it up, for the specific question posed by the article. I like the idea of an everyday DH. One benchmark for contending is looking at your typical lineup and assessing whether or not you have an advantage over Opponent A, Opponent B, and so on, at each spot. E.g. if you have an average starting shortstop, you'll have an advantage some days, a disadvantage on others, and to contend you'll have to find your advantage somewhere else in the lineup. If the opponent is running the typical "rest a guy by DHing him," there's a good chance that your dedicated DH will be exactly the advantage you want, on most days. I like the dedicated DH also because you're not paying for a major league caliber glove sitting the bench. Just because it's a different idle glove on each of the 162 days doesn't mean it's not a waste. When Cruz was in his heyday for us, we were getting a bat that normally would cost us $25M a year, for the low, low bargain price of $12-14M. For a team with budgetary constraints, that's an advantage. Unfortunately, Nelson isn't that guy anymore. I'd be in favor of someone else though, except.... To roster an everyday DH, you can't also have your roster peppered with "and if nothing else, he can DH" types. This is different than the "whoever needs a rest can DH" philosophy. When your roster starts to suffer from sclerosis of the veins, from an oversupply of "corner" defenders who in reality are stretched even for that duty, a full-time DH is the opposite of what you want. I'm not a fan of that approach to roster construction, but it's what we've got, so I don't want to sign a DH this off-season. So that's two reasons for a no vote on Nelson.

All right, this line leads me to ask. The tag at the end of the article says, Steve "Stu" Neuman. Local copywriter, husband, father of two, inventor of the atomic bomb. Most of that sounds legit, but is the part about being the father merely a bit of satire that Mrs RandBalls snuck in? PS. My two benchmarks for satire are 1) the target must be worthy, not simply punching down, and 2) it needs to be written plausibly enough that it reels in a few who take it seriously. This week's installment is pretty good on both counts.

In Rocco's eyes, I think. Can't quite tell.

Ladies and gentlemen, your 2023 Turn City Turns! Also, just a guess, we see five players who will not be traded this off-season.

Why would that other team trade for Kepler? They should just outbid us for Haniger and save the prospect capital.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.