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ashbury

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Everything posted by ashbury

  1. ashbury
    You know who does know, though? The Mariners and the Dodgers. No team has more top-100 prospects than them. The Dodgers know better than anyone that the old adage "money isn't everything" remains true today. That's because they have both. They have money. And they have everything.
  2. ashbury
    It's not going to be what you think. Front offices will gladly trade you volumes of second-tier prospects for your MLB talent, but the very top echelon prospects are simply not for sale, or you have to bowl them over with your offer. If Joe Ryan's our best bargaining chip, he (in a package) may net us one sure-fire young guy, but everything else we obtain in a fire sale will be speculative guys who we might be able to "coach up" to a high level of play but more likely will be average players if they develop at all. "Loading up" is going to be with Roden- and SWR-level guys. In a few seasons we'll be back to .500 at best, and then the players will start to be expensive. Lather, rinse, repeat. This is the MLB of today for some franchises..
  3. ashbury
    Could well be; that often happens with players obtained on waivers in the first place. I'm planning to second guess the timing of this strategy if we lose someone via Rule-5. Meanwhile, "if the season began tomorrow...."
  4. ashbury
    Pretty lousy headline if you're planning to write an article; only one click, mine.
  5. ashbury
    If so, that wouldn't speak well of the mental capacities of the players the Twins go after, given that other teams don't seem to suffer the same overload.
  6. ashbury
    Only one team since 2014, not counting the Covid Season, has failed to score that many runs. That would be the legendary '24 White Sox, Are you suggesting we are entering legend-making territory?
  7. ashbury
    Under this ground rule, I would start with the 40-man roster. The roster that exists, as it is - not a different 40-man that I would wish. On that larger roster are Ryan Kreidler and James Outman. They do not have minor-league options remaining. If they're on the 40-man, then they're on the 26-man. I don't even see Kreidler mentioned in this article - presumably the author assumes he is in DFA land, but that opens up a spot on the 40-man that might play a significant role in this 26-man exercise*. By this logic, "if the season began tomorrow" Kreidler and Outman stay, Fitzgerald and (I guess) Roden go. Fortunately the Twins are not otherwise very constrained by players who lack minor-league options (or, equivalently, have sufficient service time to refuse a trip to the minors even if options technically remain). Buxton, Clemens, Jeffers, Jackson, Julien are the others besides Kreidler and Outman who would have to pass through waivers to be sent to the minors. On the pitching side there is Pablo and SWR and Topa - the team can play mix-n-match with everyone else. You know who has one minor-league option and only 4+ years of service time? Trevor Larnach. Is someone brave enough to construct a roster that has Larnach laboring in AAA for X million dollars this season so that, say, Roden can be up on Opening Day? 😁 * Or who could have been protected from the Rule-5 draft, and thus hanging onto Kreidler was a complete waste of a roster spot
  8. ashbury
    Not until October. You'll have plenty of time.
  9. ashbury
    "Do Articles With Headlines Ending In A Question Mark Trigger An Immediate Response Of 'NO'?" Wait. I may have miscalculated ...
  10. ashbury
    NTP - Ben Revere
    Memories? I remember a two-hopper he threw to his cutoff man. His arm was so bad that it was perfectly logical to play him in Right Field. Why? Because, opposing baserunners would take third base on him even if he were in left, so why not? Even though Trevor May never quite lived up to expectations for the Twins, it still seemed like a masterstroke by Terry Ryan to get anything for Ben in trade at all. Except... he did go on to provide value to the Phillies, and then the Blue Jays... which is not easy for a guy with essentially zero power (even for doubles). Some of which... makes it sound like I hated the guy, which I didn't. He had an infectious smile, as the saying goes. He could certainly go get the ball on defense, and he had a certain measure of productivity at the plate He was a disappointment as a first rounder only if you overlook that drafting late in the first round is hardly ever a sure thing - the five guys picked immediately after Ben amounted to less. Todd Frazier, Sean Doolittle and Josh Donaldson were drafted shortly thereafter, but that's verging into 20/20 hindsight - plus we made up for the oversight on Donaldson by signing him as a free agent later on - whoops, LOL.
  11. ashbury
    I looked at the list of major league players ranked by runs scored in 2025. To find someone with fewer than 10 HR, you have to go all the way down to the 33rd ranked run-scorer, Nico Hoerner, who amassed 89 runs; next on the list was Ernie Clement with 83. Everyone else with low HR totals did worse. Collaboration? Apparently, all the power hitters in the majors are failing to do their jobs and drive their small-ball teammates in. Remember the old timey saying that home run hitters drive Cadillacs and singles hitters drive Fords? Every one of the 12 players who did score 100 this year had at least 22 HR, and only two had fewer than 30. You want to find run-scoring, look for the HR hitters Singles hitters don't score at the rapid clip that people assume they do. It's not a matter of fame that decides what car a player drives, it's raw productivity. I'm not saying you can't have a player like Martin on your roster, but let's not elevate him to something that he's not; an on-base machine that generates runs. We should be looking to do better. And it's a sad state of affairs for this team that he's far from the biggest problem on offense.
  12. ashbury
    I think you just amplified my point. I was taking issue with BA being the be-all and end-all. I will make a similar argument the next time St. Luis de Arraez is mentioned in glowing terms, probably. They are incomplete hitters. People complain about analytics, but when actual run-scoring is brought up, it turns out that some of the folks here do like analytics just fine - just their own. BA was one of the first forms of base-ball analytics (in the earliest days the Batting Champion was the player with the greatest number of hits) and some people still prefer it to forms that take all the many facets of hitting into account, even when it's pointed out that BA alone without power to go with it leads to mediocre-at-best run scoring. BTW, I took a look and the 2024 Guardians were almost exactly league-average at scoring runs despite posting a below-par .238 BA, because their power numbers were also league-average. They had plenty of guys with Isolated Power (ISO) .150 or above. Martin last season had ISO of .083 - this is where his problem is, and Cleveland that season had exactly one regular or semi-regular at that level, Andres Gimenez, plus seldom-used backup catcher Austin Hedges (what is it about guys named Austin?). I'm not sure Cleveland's the team you want to draw connections to a team (nearly) full of Martins, because they weren't.
  13. ashbury
    Even with the gaudy BA, Austin Martin scored runs at a slower clip per opportunity (22 R / 181 PA) than Mickey Gasper (15 / 110). Gasper's not a LF candidate, in case you're going to latch onto that as your rebuttal, but I'm not ready to proclaim Martin anything yet either. At the plate he's still pretty weak tea and a team full of Martins would struggle to score.
  14. ashbury
    Just to be clear, I like the thoroughness of the thread. No, I would not change its title.
  15. ashbury
    The Twins just got done trading their ace closer at the deadline, in part for a 19-year old catcher of the future. You can never have too many good prospects, but another super-young catcher wouldn't likely pry ERod away. When I suggested a catcher, I meant major-league ready and under years of team control. We might be trading our starting catcher soon, or else lose him to free agency in a year.
  16. ashbury

    New CBA changes

    ashbury commented on Doc Munson's blog entry in Fantasy GM

    Because with!
  17. ashbury
    Platoons may be productive if viewed in isolation, but rarely are exciting, and often limit options for roster construction and (ironically) in-game strategy.
  18. ashbury
    My interest is piqued. I'm a member of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) - if you know of it at all you might think it to be just a statistical group, but it's more about historical research than anything. They have a Bio Project which aims to fill in the details beyond the numbers regarding major league players. You can have a look at the project at https://sabr.org/bioproject - if you type in names of your father's teammates you'll find several of them have biographies already, and not just the big stars like Carew and Oliva and Blyleven and Bostock but also some of the guys like Disco Dan Ford or Steve Braun or Dave Goltz or Jerry Terrell. It's a not-for-profit undertaking and these are not book-length bios, but they are significantly longer than the quick-start bios at Twins Daily, and go through a vetting/editing process to assure completeness and accuracy. I see that your father passed away about 8 years ago (condolences - I bet you miss him greatly), which removes the possibility of getting first-hand accounts that help fill out a good bio with a bit of "color", but perhaps you have enough memories from the stories he told you to make something like this feasible. This is just a whim on my part this morning based on you popping up like this, but if you are interested in collaborating, send me a note.
  19. ashbury
    Jolly good fun, yes indeed! Thanks for sharing. (The Buxton trade is appalling, the Ryan trade is highly intriguing. Neither one will occur of course.)
  20. ashbury
    Maybe the name of this thread needs to be changed from "Where Are They Now?" to "Who Are They, Again?" 😁
  21. ashbury
    Interesting insight about the 2023 Toronto Blue Jays. 😁
  22. ashbury
    Overstocked On Marginal Corner Outfielders seems like as good a 2026 marketing slogan as any.
  23. ashbury
    I was trying to be cordial to our friendly visitor. 😁 ERod would be on my untouchables list at this point.
  24. ashbury
    That's the hole we're trying to fill by finding Larnach a new home.
  25. ashbury
    That's fine for the Willi Castros of the world - players who have flunked another team's audition. It could be that ERod also flunks. I've long been skeptical of a walk-rate that far exceeds what anyone has maintained as a major leaguer - what becomes of the walks that disappear, strikeouts or meek groundouts or base hits? One way to find out. Playing part-time, especially in response to platoon issues, is a dandy way to minimize his long-term value.
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