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ashbury

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Everything posted by ashbury

  1. ashbury
  2. ashbury
    Fooey. Started to say something, then fact-checked and it's not worth trying to save. Never mind.
  3. ashbury
    My thinking is that the team acquiring Max might demand the highly random outcome player as the sweetener. ?
  4. ashbury
    I dunno. Doing that may have raised more questions than it answers. ?
  5. ashbury
    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.
  6. ashbury
    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? ?
  7. ashbury
    Quite the range of projected outcomes. ?
  8. ashbury
    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.
  9. ashbury
    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.
  10. ashbury
    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.
  11. ashbury
    In Rocco's eyes, I think. Can't quite tell.
  12. 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.
  13. ashbury
    Why would that other team trade for Kepler? They should just outbid us for Haniger and save the prospect capital.
  14. 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.
  15. 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.
  16. 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.
  17. 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.
  18. ashbury
  19. 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.
  20. 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.
  21. 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?
  22. 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.
  23. 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.
  24. 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.
  25. 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.
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