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ashbury

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Everything posted by ashbury

  1. ashbury
    Probably better if I'd said "never had secure possession," the criterion for making the putout. He wheeled around for the tag, as though he thought he did. Jansen apparently is a sound defensive catcher, who had a rough tenth inning that you don't really wish on anyone except to the degree you need it for the win. Happy for the win, and it's very often sound strategy to push the opponent into having to make a perfect play. Especially when the downside risk is only an out at home but a runner replacing him at third and still only one out. In retrospect that "defensive indifference" letting Cave take second may have tilted the odds on Gordon making the break for home, though someone would have to ask him because it's probably just instinct and experience.
  2. ashbury
    No disagreement there. I guess my point is that whatever the rules are, it's the pitcher's job to stop any runs from scoring. The extra inning rule makes it harder, but some pitchers do the job better than others. So I want some stats that tell me who's who, over the course of the long season. ERA becomes useless too - reliever in the bottom of the tenth gives up a leadoff single, the runner on second scores in some routine way, boom, game over. Reliever strikes out two, give up that single, game over. Reliever does a little better, his team lives to fight another inning. OPS-against probably does the job, maybe OBP is even more pertinent, but I want it extra-innings only.
  3. ashbury
    It already is. That runner is treated for scorecard purposes like some sort of weird two-base catcher's interference. So, there are a lot of losses pinned on pitchers who gave up zero earned runs.
  4. ashbury
    Exactly. That's the key thing about the contract the Twins offered him: a $70M guarantee beyond the first season, in case he's catastrophically injured this year, but with the opportunity to negotiate a better deal, in case he's not. But the calculation changes after each of the first two seasons. So, this coming off-season, assuming he reaches it in full health, now his decision becomes to accept another $35M payday for 2023, but with only a $35M guarantee beyond that season, in case he's catastrophically injured. That is less of an inducement to stay. Almost anyone will offer a better guaranteed total contract value than that. Maybe this past off-season he had visions of a $300M megacontract (which proved non-existent for him), but Boras will assist him in looking realistically at the potential market if he opts out for 2023, and if it's (say) only $200M after a non-All Star 2022, it is what it is. Boras might also forecast that a 2023 similar to 2022 could reduce the expected contract to only $100M, a year hence - in which case he'd better grab whatever $200M contract is offered. Boras is portrayed by many as some sort of charlatan, but to me he's nothing but a pragmatist. So Correa's chances of opting in are not greatly improved by 2022 being not among his best seasons (and we still have many weeks to play, before that is determined). Only something really dire would make him see staying as the smart choice. Something dire, or the Twins offering something nice of course.
  5. ashbury
    I'm not against the man-on-second rule in extra innings, but MLB needs to figure out a way to segregate the extra innings stats from the regular stats, or at least for the pitchers. Under regular rules a pitcher can get a screwy loss (or win), but oddities a little less weird than this come up all the time, it seems.
  6. ashbury
    If Jansen comes up with the ball cleanly, and you can tell he thought he had from the way he continued the play, Gordon is out by a step (or however you measure it when he's sliding). Chapman's throw wasn't perfect, arriving on a short hop it looks like, but that play gets made more times than not. Nice sweep of the plate with his oven mitt by Gordon, but that was after the drop. As for Rocco's lack of emotiveness on the HR photo, he and one of his coaches he was conferring with about something might have been the only ones in the dugout with something better to do than spectate. As for the top of the tenth, Fulmer's strikeout of the leadoff batter was key. And kudos to Contreras in center for being enough of a threat that they didn't send the runner, because I thought the book on him was to test his arm any chance you get.
  7. ashbury
    I guess so. He didn't look like much when I saw him at AAA that one time. But I guess that's why they pay scouts to look a second or third time*. * And to have better knowledge
  8. ashbury
    Gordon for me has been the surprise of the season. I didn't think he had it in him. But he's a major leaguer.
  9. ashbury
    Chances are that no amount of rest will keep it from flaring up just as soon as he puts the knee under any stress. I am guessing off-season surgery is the plan.
  10. ashbury
    Ever been to the back fields? Opportunity for Total Fan Geek Out Mode like that is a lot of fun.
  11. ashbury
    Schobel has an OPS of 0.000000000, rounded off. So that's another high pick we'd like to have back.
  12. ashbury
    They miss Harmon Killebrew in his prime.
  13. ashbury
    Not TJ, apparently, so the recovery time will be shorter. But not far off.
  14. ashbury
    Once we had a prospect, and it was a gas Soon turned out, he had a wrist of glass Seemed like the real thing, only to find Mucho mistrust, power's gone behind
  15. ashbury
    29 other teams are doing it wrong too. #fireroccoanyway
  16. ashbury
    Going to hazard a guess that Chief is more sure of his words than he's letting on.
  17. ashbury
    How's his fielding?
  18. ashbury
    Getting a very good starting pitcher and giving up only one pitching prospect, not a top one really, and filling out the offer with a couple of good bats who don't handle up-the-middle defensive positions and likely would be blocked for a while at their respective spots, is the kind of package I hoped for. I wish a similar reliance on excess corner bats would have nabbed us either of the relievers, but oh well, pitching talks and bs walks.
  19. ashbury
    Otoh trading for him means adding him to the 40 but then having as many as 3 option years before he must be on a major league roster. Rule 5 forces you to roster him that first year, all year. Wheels within wheels.
  20. ashbury
    He turns 25 in December and had success at high-A and then not success at AA. His start last week was good. He'd be eligible for Rule-5 but IMO not a cinch to be snapped up as there are others with similar profiles I'm sure.
  21. ashbury
    A waiver wire pickup. This is what our FO keeps trying for. Instead, they have to part with non-trivial prospect capital. In the moment, a reasonable trade. A little nervous that Lopez turns back into a pumpkin, reliever versus starter notwithstanding.
  22. ashbury
    And then getting to keep them for about half the seasons that an actual draftee might be available to the team. IOW, not really that comparable. Greater certainty, for a shorter burn time. We cashed in one kind of thing, for a very different kind.
  23. ashbury
    On a big day like this, we need grade-A snark about the one minor swap? Okay, I've always got plenty to spare, here you go:
  24. ashbury
    Probably you already found it yourself when you asked, but in case it saves someone else from looking: https://www.baseball-reference.com/register/player.fcgi?id=rodrig106jos These TD articles don't generally seem to get an editing pass the day after. It's not quite a Newspaper of Record, where people will refer back to it years later.
  25. ashbury
    No one wants injuries, and every team gets them anyway. I don't give them a pass, though. They courted injury, arguably counted on it and thought they had a plan to work around it, presumably as a way to exploit a perceived market inefficiency. This FO has a reputation for conservatism, as did the last one. But just as the regime under Terry Ryan at times took on some unaccountable risks (Sano in RF? Tyler Jay?), the FalVine regime has too. Injury risk, for example. The present organizational philosophy, exemplified by Wes Johnson, aims to gain extra MPH from pitching arms - that can't come for free or else everyone would have done it long ago, and has to be a calculation on their part that the increase in injury frequency will be tolerable. So we're in the sixth year of their regime and the pitching pipeline still has a clog in the spigot; a few arms have graduated during those years. Turning to the here-and-now, they constructed the 2022 pitching staff by beginning with some young arms that have an injury track record; they supplemented that by signing Archer and Bundy who have similar recent resumes and would have to be handled gently, trading a key prospect for Sonny Gray who has been less than a workhorse the previous couple of seasons, and topped it off with a trade for a TJS candidate that the Mets looked over and turned down in Chris Paddack. They've threaded the needle with Archer and Bundy and Gray about as successfully as possible, which means not actually very much contribution from them by analytic measures due to short outings each time, Gray being by far the best of this group. (And, credit where due, Joe Ryan has been the exception to this entire narrative. That trade last July was a coup.) Sorry, but I'm not buying the "ohhhh, if we can just get some arms back from this unlucky spate of injuries" message. This has gone about like they constructed this roster to do.
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