ashbury

Oh, ha ha! Yes! Because Cleveland's success with pitching is not luck at all! You say the opposite. Is funny!

If Gio could be traded for pitching, the Yankees like any team would surely have done so. Playing a video game such as OOTP, I'll trade Gio for whatever small value I can get, preferably in some kind of package trade for a stud (because the AI in games always makes other GMs vulnerable to that kind of offer). In the real world, though, I don't believe Gio would be a part of a trade for Montas or Castillo, and I'm not even sure you can get a stud reliever for him. And then there's the PR hit for trading away a player that fans seem to like, in the middle of a winning season. For this season I think we just muddle through with Miranda and get him as many ABs as possible in the environment.

So the two one-run losses were due to nothing but their own ineptitude and lack of heart, but the win was luck. Fun.

(Psst, now, you wanna feel real old? This movie turns 50 years old in a couple of years.)

Has he? I have no idea about the eye-test, but in Martin's statistical splits June so far has been much more worser than either April or May.

I am intrigued by Evan Sisk putting up good numbers at AA and am perplexed that he hasn't been bumped to AAA before now, in preference say to Strotman who might benefit from AA tutelage (or might be a lost cause). At this point I'd roll the dice and jump Sisk up to the majors the next time they decide to open a 40-man spot - which IMO could and should be soon. He's the only one that I feel that way about, though. The Vaunted Pitching Pipeline (tm) is not gushing for the major league squad as yet - the past couple of years have dribbled out just enough to replenish a below-average pool of talent, not to sustain a winning roster, to speak nothing of making up for lost time. What we have at AAA is not blowing away even the AAA batters, and at AA guys like Varland, SWR and Canterino would IMO get their brains beat out if thrown into the major leagues right now.

You liked the lefty-lefty matchup?

If only Buxton and the team had access to a doctor who could take a look, as was done for you. He could probably get similar results.

Fixed that, because you aren't getting anything in return by trade for any of these players, unfortunately.

And yet, stats are available to anyone with an internet connection. I know you know how to look them up, but let me provide a couple of quick links, to the Twins season and to MLB as a whole: https://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/split.cgi?t=b&team=MIN&year=2022#all_bases https://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/split.cgi?t=b&lg=MLB&year=2022#all_bases Toward the middle of the "Bases Occupied" table, there is a line for 3rd base occupied and fewer than 2 outs, exactly the situation you are thinking about. Our 2022 Twins are batting .402 (!) in 107 PA in that situation. Sac flies numbered 18 (17%). OPS total is a robust 1.008, with 75 RBI (.70 per opportunity). Compare those numbers to MLB-wide: .316 BA in 3699 PA. 528 sac flies (14%). 834 OPS and 2329 RBI (.63 per). In comparison to other teams (click on the "on 3rd, <2 out" link itself), we're 3rd in the majors in BA, 6th in On Base Percentage (which arguably means we're not taking many walks leaving that runner at 3rd), 3rd in slugging and 4th in OPS. In terms of super-clutchy-magicalness with a man on third, our guys stack up very well. But this line of the table does reveal a problem (IMHO): we are 22nd in plate appearances, in those situations. Those 107 opportunities with a man on third do not reflect a good offense getting men on base for the boppers to drive in. There are 8 teams with over 140, with Boston leading everyone with 156. Shouldn't be a surprise, if you look at the top of this Bases Occupied table. We're batting .230 with the bases empty. With runners, it's .279. League wide it's .232 and .254 respectively. So we're just middle of the pack, not above average, at getting men on. And somehow, based on the number of men-on-third opportunities, we seem to be streaky in that way. The bases start empty, and too often they stay empty. We give opposing pitchers way too many comfortable (and probably clean) innings. Feast or famine, but we already knew that.

Slow starter? For his career, August and September both have been his worst months. https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/split.fcgi?id=correca01&year=Career&t=b#all_month It's true that June overall comes out best, but his Aprils taken together have been all-star level for a SS. If we're challenging for a playoff spot, let's hope this trend doesn't play out. (His actual post-season numbers for his career look just fine.)

I noticed the news of his demotion and wondered the same thing, but man, his minor league record doesn't suggest much potential there, to me. How often have teams benefited from sifting through the Dodgers' discard pile?

Depends on whether you believe the difference in 0 runs and 1 run is important.

The Twins are a respectable 38-29 and that's all that matters. It's a team sport. / I mean, analytics is all about breaking things down to understand them better. If you dislike analytics, why go for half measures?

"How do you like my data entry error value now?"

I keep wanting to like Fangraphs, but when their take differs from someone else's and I then look deeper I usually like the someone else's. In this case the only "deeper" I am doing is look at seasonal results since the trade.

Small samples for individual pitchers, but league-wide the samples are large enough - yet still carry the same fundamental problem of bias each time through the lineup.

I think that's an underappreciated point, but not in the way you probably mean, because of the reason the samples get smaller. Any study of data needs to be on guard for bias in that data. And here, we have a situation where a guy isn't allowed a second time through the lineup if he's having a truly terrible day (in the first or second inning and gets pulled). And he certainly doesn't get a third chance through the lineup if the first two trips through were pretty bad. So the data is biased at each step *toward* the pitcher; and yet, at each step, he does worse. It's worse than the raw numbers tell us, IOW.

The day of the trade, a fellow poster pointed to the trade-values website for confirmation: The upshot was a trade value of 11.4 for Ryan and 2.4 for Strotman. Those respective values today? 32.2 and 1.5. Even that paltry value for Strotman seems a little high, but it may not have been updated too recently, plus some trading partner might value him as a buy-low candidate.

I wanna watch a cage match between two elders, and see them both hauled off to court as a consequence! Being so young myself, and all. Sorry but you have to blame Rocco. I just checked b-r.com and on the Twins page it shows this: Manager: Rocco Baldelli (37-29) So yes, those 29 are all on Rocco.

Impossible to spin that year's draft as a success. A success would be coming away with better than a backup infielder with the #5 pick, and/or with some other draftee over-achieving to compensate. Seattle picked next and didn't wind up with a better player, although they turned him into something by trading him early. So that suggests a little bad luck was involved for our Twins. But then multiple picks soon afterward demonstrated there was high-end talent to be had, if the evaluators had taken a different view. Gordon's main selling point was that he had no obvious flaw that would hold him back, even if he lacked any obvious strengths that would propel him to stardom. Bad luck or bad design by the talent evaluators? I lean toward the latter. Bad luck or bad development by the minor league coaches? I lean toward the former.

I don't care for those comps. If they think they can precipitate a Tommy John Surgery on Marquez, if I'm the pitcher I'd be asking my agent to look for any loopholes that would allow me to block the trade or file a grievance.

I think the pattern is this: the team is using logic similar to what you use at the poker table. Resources are not infinite and you can't use your bullpen like it's the 7th game of the World Series, every game. So, some "hands" you bet the minimum you can (there's not quite an equivalent in baseball to folding, until you bring Nick Gordon in to pitch), and other "hands" you compete to win. Once you're down by a run or more, even early, your odds are less than 50/50 even if you pull out all the stops. If your offense explodes in the middle innings, you re-evaluate, but based on what actually happened, not on what you hope. Hope will kill you at the poker table (and I'm not enough of a player to go beyond that bit of basic insight). You can argue against this. Baseball isn't poker for starters (no pun intended), although the gradual "reveal" as the games go forward in their respective ways have a least some parallels. But I think this is the pattern you are looking for. "Delicate" arms like Archer's you protect by using a short leash in terms of innings or pitch count; other arms you allow a longer leash and if a given game doesn't go well you still leave them in there (within some other limits) to try to save the bullpen. There's also the "third time through the batting order" factor. Et cetera. I believe the accusations that the manager is merely a robot reading some spreadsheet are groundless, but they do seem to operate from certain guiding principles which vary from pitcher to pitcher and thus seem inconsistent.

Good way of looking at him. He's got all three minor league options remaining, near as I can tell, so they can stash him at essentially zero cost, waiting for him to finish developing, and/or an offer they can't refuse. But has there been the slightest rumor that the Marlins would be open to dealing him? Even if so, them wanting to move him, a former first-rounder, would signal that we shouldn't want him. I mean, I know that sounds unduly pessimistic, if not downright circular, but then 99% of all possible trades would be bad, so I think I'll stick with that. We want him only if he's off the table.