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ashbury

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Everything posted by ashbury

  1. ashbury
    How I think my measured and thoughtful response on this topic will look: What it will really look like to others:
  2. ashbury
    The economics of baseball make "worth" hard to quantify when a player gains control over his own contract negotiation, since the instant comparison with all players includes young productive guys being forced to play for under a million. So, John's analysis is quite proper in light of the choice to pay Buxton market rate or not have him at all. He's "worth" the money. Still, a couple of things bother me. One is that having a player you are forced to expect to be "part-time" puts pressure on your roster (both 40-man and the active major-league one), and while I don't know how to quantify what that costs you, it's got to be something. Also, that $100M over seven years could be deployed some other way, such as on non-draft prospect acquisition or simply on pitching (which our FO seems averse to). Using $8M per WAR is a neat and easy analysis, but I don't think a general manager can afford to look at it quite that simplistically. Still, the bottom line almost surely is for that GM to say yes to Buxton.
  3. ashbury
    Ray Miller passed away last year, and in any case has had no impact on this team for some time.
  4. ashbury
    You never played against us in beer league.
  5. ashbury
    Took my first look at Fedko's bb-ref page. He's an interesting sleeper pick that might pay off!
  6. ashbury
    Concur on Cave, but Garlick doesn't even belong in this sentence. The only CF he ever played in the pros was 22 innings at the major league level last year, for some unearthly reason I choose to forget but surely was dire. True, he played CF in college (baseball at Cal Poly Pomona must be a laid-back affair), but the Dodgers in their wisdom did not invest one inning of his five-year development with them in center.
  7. ashbury
    Projecting young players from their minor league stats isn't an exact science, but it isn't that hard either. Someone looking only at MLB small-sample stats in an age-22 season and saying "that's all he'll ever be" is likely to be surprised time and time again.
  8. ashbury
    We missed you.
  9. ashbury
    Watching Pagan is a guilty pleasure. In a season where I have low expectations, I can tolerate the eventual blown save. He isn't a world-beater but seems to have the necessary makeup to just plow ahead, bulldog like, not getting flustered and not giving in to groove a game-losing pitch, and when he gets the job done (possibly with the aid of a favorable strike call) I just have to smile, expecting that it won't last. To this point I find him entirely admirable. It's like not being able to look away from the crash you know is coming.
  10. ashbury
    Donaldson has displayed a reverse-platoon split this year. We know that won't last.
  11. ashbury
    Funny because it's true.
  12. ashbury
    Twins today amassed 7 hits in 34 AB. Not going to win many games hitting like that - a .206 batting average. It's yet another demonstration of why BA is an incredibly important offensive stat. I can do one of these by hand for OBP too, or even OPS, if you like. I'm not versed enough to eyeball WOBA or WPA, but they probably are poor looking numbers as well. This was a bad, bad game. Any reasonable form of analysis is going to confirm that.
  13. ashbury
    I think we can safely chalk it up as a jinx, the question mark format of this article's headline.
  14. ashbury
    Is that not a trait to be desired in our players?
  15. ashbury
    No question, they've banked some wins they have to have. I don't know how certainly that pattern of winning can carry forward. This roster is constructed to give hope and then dash it via a bunch of "aw shucky durn, the injury bug has hit" outcomes.
  16. ashbury
    Taking care of business against the weak opponents the schedule has gifted us, should not be confused with being for real. It won't surprise me if they are below .500 at the trade deadline, and yet that might still be enough to be in contention for the Central title. Or they may continue to whale against the bad teams and breeze to first place. It still won't mean success against a quality opponent in the postseason. That's my benchmark for being for real, and right now I don't see it.
  17. ashbury
    Always fun. Thanks Tom!
  18. ashbury
    Who else is looking forward to that June 7-9 series hosting the Yanks?
  19. ashbury
    Having just gone through covid myself (which hardly makes me unique here, or in any audience), I'll just say that in early onset you may still test negative, and the symptoms can be mild enough to make you question your own judgement. In the space of a few hours physical weakness can begin to overcome you. Bundy testing positive right after the game leaves a very wide range of possible scenarios for how that day went. Lacking more information than we have, I'm inclined to give him a mulligan, and hope that he's recovered fully so that his next start can be taken at face value. Sorry, we've gone completely off-topic here. Pagan. Pagan. Right. Yeah, I have the same general problem with him, except as I've said elsewhere, I've chosen to be philosophical about him, and treat his appearances as theater. High theater, low comedy, burlesque - it may not matter which, and I willingly give him credit for the first while accepting it may devolve into either of the other two. But in no case is he killing me. Emilio Pagan's tightrope act is entertaining me. You're entertaining me, Smalls.
  20. ashbury
    Don't know how you got ahold of the team psychologist's paperwork, but it's illegal.
  21. ashbury
    Gordon has proved his worth. And it seems to be pretty minimal, relative to other equally inexpensive options one could acquire.
  22. ashbury
    I'm clicking Like because I don't actually disagree with a word you say. But your response was not really relevant to my point. If he's put in to pitch the ninth, I've resolved to enjoy watching how he approaches his work. And then cheer in the unlikely event he succeeds. But my calm over the process stems from not really seeing this as a championship caliber season. Things change if it starts to look like we can beat the good teams - because I don't think Pagan can. Farting around while disposing of the likes of Baltimore and Oakland doesn't really register one way or the other.
  23. ashbury
    I'll say again, as with the last time he pitched... I don't like Pagan pitching critical innings, in comparison to some theoretical ideal that could be had... but given his limitations, I have some grudging appreciation for his approach. (As long as it works.) In the game thread, I gave the outline of how I expected the inning to go, and except for a flyout to end the game rather than a strikeout (on what should be ball four, I added for amusement) it pretty much went that way. I believe, for better or for worse, he pitches to a plan - specifically he aims to finish the inning before reaching the top of the order. Today the first batter was the #5 guy, and he went after him, but (I infer) only in a way to allow the batter to get himself out. If that works, great, on to the next batter. But he seems always to have an eye toward the next batter, who will be easier. And the next one easier still (not taking into account pinch-hitters), On down to the #8 guy, if he hasn't got two outs yet, then he goes after him. Ditto for the #9 guy with two outs. You can view it as playing with fire, because such a plan involves being okay with putting on baserunners. And quite possibly his game plan is not as I have stated - I'm not a mind reader. But for his past couple of games, it has worked well to check who leads off the ninth, and work out the logistics. A lot easier on the nerves to accept that he'll put a couple of guys on because he doesn't want to give in.
  24. ashbury
    Disconcurs.
  25. ashbury
    Your headline confused me, about a AA debut for Jordy Blaze.
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