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ashbury

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Everything posted by ashbury

  1. ashbury
    I didn't even realize the minors had a 60-day IL. It's needed in the majors in order to remove a seriously injured player from the 40-man and add someone else, with the downside being that the player can't be activated again for those 60 days (to cut down on roster shenanigans). But what's the purpose when it's a young minor leaguer, relative to just putting him on a short-term injured list?
  2. ashbury
    TD should probably adopt this as their new motto.
  3. ashbury
    Twins alumnus Doctor Mike Marshall was a proponent of biomechanics way back when he pitched, and claimed that it was the secret to his being able to pitch a hundred games a season. Who knows if his theories really bore scrutiny and he was shunned by the baseball establishment (due to his brash/cocky personality as much as to the merits of his ideas IMO). I'm sure there has been a lot of progress since his day. He's 78 now but I bet would welcome a chance to say I Told You So.
  4. ashbury
    You reacted strongly to just one of the possibilities I laid out, and FWIW that's the one I consider to be least likely as the major source of shortfall relative to other teams. I listed all that came to mind, simply for completeness. Apart from that, I referred to "medical approach", while you extrapolated to "incompetence", which grossly distorts my (emerging) view on the subject. Maybe I used an additional turn of phrase that was misleading that way. While no one claims that players are machines, the WW II analogy was based on the idea that managers of any chaotic and stressful process have to make decisions under fire using incomplete information, and despite extreme uniqueness and variability in individual cases, forecasting methods over large numbers tend to emerge from the better organizations. It's just too critical not to. The military was an early practitioner of what we consider modern analytics. Indeed, the final sentence of that analogy paragraph essentially takes the medical staff off the hook. Said another way, the FO may be dealing the development staff and the medical staff a losing hand. Said still another way, it's a mantra of those in systems analysis for failure to be only rarely due to individuals, and more often to the process. I am inclined at the moment to believe that the team's analytic forecasts are not nearly as solid as the FO believes, and that they are placing bets on players that other teams' FOs are saying in effect "sure, you can have him," whether during the draft process, or when acquiring FA, or when considering trades. You can see it directly in trades for a non-workhorse (Gray, in recent seasons) and an acute injury risk (Paddack), or signings of Bundy and Archer whom they surely understood would tax the bullpen because they themselves should not be overtaxed, or drafting Prielipp who is coming off surgery and may or may not be the same as before. I don't think it's even arguable whether the FalVine regime is consciously going against the grain where it comes to injury risk. (I named only pitchers, above, but signing Buxton to guaranteed money would be another instance, granting that the marketing circumstances may have dictated leaning toward that decision.) My only question at this point is whether it's a reasonable calculation that may or may not work, or is reckless. I, like virtually everyone else, appreciate the insights you bring that few of us are qualified to come up with.
  5. ashbury
    It's definitely a big concern. It also explains why teams are fine with letting the last several FA signings occur during spring training when the 60-day opens back up. Correa, Smith and Archer were like that, I believe. They get back up to 40 pretty quickly, and not simply with roster-filler no other team would want. Regarding Opening Day, as a newcomer in 1978 it took me a while to learn that in Minnesota that phrase has a widely understood double meaning, since it pertains to fishing and/or hunting too. In fact for possibly a majority of people in the state it's the latter meaning that's understood first.
  6. ashbury
    There. You. Go. "See that guy? We want a car-load of him." (Not that that necessarily is the missing piece to the solution, but it's a form of thinking I sure hope they are doing already.)
  7. 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?
  8. 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.
  9. 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.
  10. ashbury
    I'm extremely surprised. I came into this season expecting no meaningful games by this point.
  11. ashbury
    Another Betteridge's Law of Headlines headline. So, no. Next headline question?
  12. 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.
  13. ashbury
    Matt Braun Stays Up So You Don't Have To ™
  14. 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
  15. 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?
  16. 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. )
  17. ashbury
  18. ashbury
    Lee. Four games in the Coast League. There's been injury rehabs that lasted longer.
  19. 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?
  20. 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.
  21. 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.
  22. ashbury
    Doctors generally try the less invasive approaches first. Cutting off some bone? Pretty much anybody's last choice.
  23. 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."
  24. ashbury
    And probably for the last.
  25. 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.
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