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ashbury

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Everything posted by ashbury

  1. ashbury
    Regular season results are interesting, but it's a long season and no team approaches each series as must-win. Come October, the perspectives change. Don't expect Pittsburgh to succeed when both teams are trying their best. Of course, that's the frightening part, what if the Dodgers weren't trying their best against our Twins?
  2. ashbury
    This seems like good information, but I'm not sure what the correct measurement ought to be. As you point out, an MLB injury summary goes only so far, as it fails to take into account if a "prospect pipeline" is more injury prone than most and thus the output is a fraction of what it otherwise ought to be. As for the MLB part, value of contract can be misleading, when young cheap talent like Kirilloff and Lewis make it seem like it's no big loss. And then there is the question of, not strictly time lost, but reduced effectiveness by a formerly elite player. These are all hard to measure and boil down to a single number for ranking, but they matter in their individual and varying ways. I think the FO has to be asking big, big questions of itself during the off-season - no, preferably, now. It just feels like there is a gap in their process, either that they are behind other teams in forecasting which prospects (or veterans) are less prone to injury, or that they are accurate enough but just undervaluing having more iron men (I think they really believe it's their Secret Sauce as an organization to ride out injuries better than others and save money in the process), or that players come into the system about as injury prone as any other team but something in the development process is different and leaving the players open to catastrophe, or something in the medical approach is letting small things snowball into big injuries. There is the (perhaps apocryphal) story taught in business schools, from WWII, of aircraft getting extra armoring when they would come back with bullet holes after aerial dogfights, and they still were losing planes, and finally it occurred to the maintenance guys to put the armor plate where the bullet holes weren't - because that was where the planes that didn't come back were getting hit. It somehow feels like this with our Twins - that everyone is basically competent at their individual jobs and they keep fixing the perceived problems as they arise, but there is some missing insight about the whole Big Picture of injuries.
  3. ashbury
    I had the team pegged before the season as a little below .500 (about on a par with last year until they acquired Correa), and that's approximately the pace they've been on for a while now. They over-performed for a while but at this point they'll do well to finish above .500. Still hoping for the best, and a playoff appearance would be great.
  4. ashbury
    I'm extremely surprised. I came into this season expecting no meaningful games by this point.
  5. ashbury
    Another Betteridge's Law of Headlines headline. So, no. Next headline question?
  6. ashbury
    I've heard some arguments against analytics, but not the left-right platoon concept that Casey Stengel was using before any of us except Chief were born. And Stengel was hardly the inventor of it.
  7. ashbury
    Matt Braun Stays Up So You Don't Have To ™
  8. ashbury

    75 RBI or 75 RBIs?

    ashbury commented on Greglw3's blog entry in Greg Allen

    Stanford athletic teams are represented by a color, not by a mascot. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_Cardinal#Nickname_and_mascot_history
  9. ashbury

    75 RBI or 75 RBIs?

    ashbury commented on Greglw3's blog entry in Greg Allen

    Do you take umbrage at Harvard Crimson? Cornell Big Red? Dartmouth Big Green?
  10. ashbury
    Leave out that first 'r' and I just learned a new word today! (And a way to get my nose punched if the other person has a stellar vocabulary. )
  11. ashbury
  12. ashbury
    Lee. Four games in the Coast League. There's been injury rehabs that lasted longer.
  13. ashbury

    75 RBI or 75 RBIs?

    ashbury commented on Greglw3's blog entry in Greg Allen

    It never occurred to me until now to check, but SABR produces a lot of baseball publications each year and they have a style guide online. The guide is unambiguous that the plural form is RBIs. * The SABR Style Guide is conversational in spots, and any amateur who is interested in aspects of how serious copy editors think, may find it interesting reading in its own right. RBIs happens to be used as an example of the different needs of different kind of writing, up near the top. * That frankly surprised me. I thought I knew differently. But what does anybody but me care about that?
  14. ashbury
    It's fascinating to dissect the crucial play at the plate. However the headline of this TD article buries, if not the lede, at least the true story. Blue Jays 3, Twins 2: Bad Offensive Showing Costs Twins. Again. Score more than a couple, and this good outing from the pitchers isn't wasted. Again.
  15. ashbury
    Yesterday the complaining was about complainers after a win. Today the complaining is about complainers after a loss. Where is the manager of this establishment? I wish to lodge a complaint concerning this inconsistency.
  16. ashbury
    Doctors generally try the less invasive approaches first. Cutting off some bone? Pretty much anybody's last choice.
  17. ashbury
    Henriquez got taken deep in his first inning of work last Thursday, by Brent Rooker. So much for "better as of late" Not an option in 2022, in my book. Ditto for Strotman, and he isn't even young anymore and should be offseason trade/dfa fodder. "Moran, then Sisk, after that you're taking a risk."
  18. ashbury
    And probably for the last.
  19. ashbury
    Back when his batting average topped out at .359, his BA on balls in play was an unsustainable .479 (league average normally around .300). During the cold stretch you mentioned, BABIP has been .240. Getting the bat on the ball and putting it in play is definitely a skill, but the knack for dropping base hits at will when putting the ball in play isn't, or at least few have demonstrated it over the long haul; I don't like the word luck, but let's just say neither trend away from .300 is generally sustainable. He's neither as good as he seemed during his hot stretch, nor as bad as he seems now. Overall he's a work in progress and is marginal as a major league contributor today, but he's still only 23 and stands to improve in seasons to come if we are patient. His up-the-middle skills mean patience is called for.
  20. ashbury
    Just like the image below, my post aged so very, very well.
  21. ashbury
    I pointed out when he was called up that Beckham's "hot bat" was built on the foundation of a .522 (!!) batting average on balls in play, Now in the majors, the BABIP is a below-normal .222. Odds are that his traditional numbers with the Twins may come up a little from where they are now, but there's no way his numbers with the Saints were anything but an unsustainable mirage. (With no definable defensive skills anymore, he's no longer a major league player, but there was a roster need. But I digress.) So yeah, the opponent should go right after a bat like his, in that situation.
  22. ashbury
    Arraez is another who could be included in someone's Not Hot list. OPS of .522 in 77 PA since July 10 (cherry picking) though he doesn't meet your July 1 threshold. Correa is obviously a disappointment lately, and I always figured Sanchez would at least hit if not defend.
  23. ashbury
    Twitter, Instagram and/or Facebook.... do you also do LinkedIn? But, slightly more seriously, if maybe irrelevantly: when you do a screenshot, like I see for Tyler Duffey, do you give credit to baseball-reference.com, which is where it looks like it came from?
  24. ashbury
    Not to mention, unsupported by facts. His lifetime OPS on the road is .817, versus .846 at home - not a big split at all since the average batter does better at home. All but this season was as an Astro, but this year as a Twin his home-road split is even larger, .839-.724. You can look up the individual seasons when the scandal was in operation, and if anything his road numbers were better than at home those two years. So, is there more can-banging actually going on at Target Field? But, hey, don't let facts get in the way of a comfortable narrative.
  25. ashbury
    It can be said that Cave taking second through defensive indifference didn't matter since his run wouldn't be decisive, but maybe it was that little thing that put the contact play on? At that point it was a much lower risk play, since an out at the plate just results in a new and decent runner at third with still fewer than two out. I like it, and maybe the Jays should have been a little less indifferent with 0 out.
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