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ashbury

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Everything posted by ashbury

  1. ashbury
    Not to mention Palacios, who is by no means on a par with the others but is a significant part of contingency planning for 2022. At least, mine, not that I have any say.
  2. ashbury
    I have little doubt that prior to the trade, Levine had a discussion with Baldelli - "look, we have an opportunity to trade Rogers for some younger arms - what will your plan be if he is off the roster next week?" And then Levine listened, and formed the rest of the plan accordingly. This FO and their manager surely don't engage in the kind of passive-aggressive behavior you described.
  3. ashbury
    Yeah. Imagine how good he'll be when he learns a bit of plate discipline.
  4. ashbury
    The opposite of 1/30 isn't 50/50.
  5. ashbury
    I'm not Otto but I play him on TV. Julio Rodriguez is a rookie and had not faced him. As stated in the article, this was his first major league hit. J.P. Crawford was 0 for 2 with a strikeout. Despite playing for several years (sparingly with Colorado, a couple of years in tandem at catcher with Seattle), Tom Murphy does not seem to have ever faced him before. The fourth guy, Adam Frazier, had struck out in his only previous attempt against the Duffman.
  6. ashbury
    Please don't ever play poker with Chief for money. But, if you do, please let me know so I have a chance to hustle up some side bets. Play me for money. I never can remember for sure whether a straight beats a four-flush. But, in your own realm, if you had to construct a short playlist for mainstream/AOR radio, and your boss handed you a list of 30 songs with the initials HC* to choose from, if that list included Hotel California and Holiday in Cambodia, you wouldn't flip a coin between those two on the presumption that past performance wasn't predictive and that all 30 songs in the list were 1/30 to be what won't cause listeners to tune out. I don't know what it means that you'd assign 1/30 to both the Dodgers and Pirates before game 1 of a season, either. * I hope you'll entertain us with your list.
  7. ashbury
    I still do not care about naming one guy "Closer". Teams focusing on that are trying to thread some needle that can't be threaded. I do want a bullpen populated by shut down guys. If you want to call one of them your closer and go to him every time he's rested and maybe sometimes when he's not, bully for you, but you could do it other ways when you have the horses. If all you have is one horse, you're going to lose the Kentucky Relay Derby when one of your burros takes its turn. It's not reasonable to expect every single member of an 8-man pen to be good enough to close, to say nothing of the 10-headed monster we'll carry until May 1. But I do think it's a reasonable ask - for a team with World Series aspirations - to have 4 or 5 shutdown arms - guys you would feel confident sending out to close out a win in the ninth. Some teams have that. So we don't have the horses ===> we don't currently have World Series aspirations. Probably that was true before trading Rogers. It will remain true until 4 or 5 guys step up. Data point - in 2 games, the Twins bullpen has begun 9 innings of work (not counting Thielbar's fireman work in today's fifth inning). Of these 9, a grand total of 1 inning was clean - no baserunners, accomplished by Coulombe in one of his two innings Friday. We can be thrilled about Duran striking out the side after having put two baserunners on yesterday, if we want - but Fernando Rodney used to do that sometimes too. A non-contender can put up with tightrope acts over and over, while waiting for a prospect to put it all together, because eventually those baserunners will get driven in, probably for crooked numbers that won't wreck their season anyway. A contender.... can not. Duffey today isn't what convinced me that, in the early going at least, we've got evidence of weakness. It's those other 7 innings. It's only 2 games. But no, I wasn't confident before and I'm not confident now.
  8. ashbury
    Jhes.
  9. ashbury
    Seems to me yesterday's game was exactly the type that Bleed Dodger Blue Tommy was talking about, in that "other third" category. It was anybody's ballgame right to the very last out, and our hitters were just one run worse. Miss the playoffs by one game and this one will loom large as a difference maker. The Blue Jays' game with J.O. Berrios unable to get out of the first inning was more the type to be philosophical about - you're gonna lose a third of your games because even your stars are human and occasionally produce an absolute clunker. Except - oh wait - they won. LOL. You're going to win a third of your games even when you try your darnedest to give one away.
  10. ashbury
    I'm glad that you are capable of maintaining this crystal clarity.
  11. ashbury

    Twins union rep

    ashbury commented on ashbury's blog entry in Left Coast Bias

    Good points. With regard to that last one, it makes it all the more, well, "interesting", that they traded away two of those intangibles. Maybe intangibility is both ephemeral and fungible.
  12. ashbury
    If the object is identify one guy who is better than the other relievers, anoint him "closer", and then try to time his usage exactly right to extract the maximum wins from a limited bullpen, then I could see your point. If the object is to have a bullpen full of capable arms, then trading away your best arm is a step backwards, and I take Chief's comment in that light. On the third hand, a pitching staff is not just the bullpen, and starters generally pitch more innings as a group than the bullpen does. Getting a capable starter is a worthwhile aim and could be worth the sacrifice. On the fourth hand, because of a known injury risk and the downward trend of his past two seasons, I'm not sure we targeted the right guy. My feelings about this trade are very mixed.
  13. ashbury
    Uffda. I do NOT remember this from when Cavaco was drafted. Second Best Shortstop On Your High School Team (to a guy younger than you, on top of that) does not equal Major League Shortstop, 99 times out of 100 - even if that "other guy" is legit. Seems to make Cavaco's draft slot even more of a reach than I understood.
  14. ashbury
    Wichita was on the losing end, misfortunately.
  15. ashbury
    Greatest article so far in 2022! Even better than Steve Lein's masterpiece last Tuesday!
  16. ashbury
    If those 11 guys are bringing back significant prospects in trade, won't it mean they are performing well enough to entice a contender, and that kind of performance should indicate we're in a pennant chase?
  17. ashbury
    The Twins wanted to go after a good starting pitcher. Those don't grow on trees. Those of use who have scratched our heads over the front office's propensity to prioritize bat-first players with questionable defense, and concluded that maybe they hope to flip them for pitching, continue to scratch our heads. To land starting pitching in trade, the Twins have now three times (Maeda, Gray and Paddack) had to give up a live arm, not bats - the bats in two of these cases were a throw-in. So, why trade Rogers? To get controllable pitching. Simple as that. It can't be accomplished otherwise.
  18. ashbury
    This descriptor had a short shelf-life, didn't it? As for the meat of the article, I fear you have both Kepler and Sanchez considerably too high. Got my fingers crossed that you have Urshela and Kirilloff too low.
  19. ashbury
    You might have Larnach's numbers reversed. I don't think you can OPS 0 if there's a batting average that isn't.
  20. ashbury
    Target Field is my favorite ballpark that exposes good and true fans to this monstrosity. Every other park in contention for best... does not. / I'm trying to imagine the booing that would break out at Fenway if management did this.
  21. ashbury
    Y......yes?
  22. ashbury
    Two blog posts in one day. But I ran across this, and in honor of Opening Day I just have to share: Credit where due, this is apparently the work of Nathan W. Pyle: https://www.facebook.com/nathanwpyle2
  23. ashbury

    Twins union rep

    ashbury commented on ashbury's blog entry in Left Coast Bias

    Probably a pertinent data point. Thanks for the insight.
  24. ashbury

    Twins union rep

    ashbury commented on ashbury's blog entry in Left Coast Bias

    My God. They're ALL off the team! This goes deeper than I thought! Thanks for digging. Nothing to be gleaned from this, as far as I can guess. I mean, I'll reply to further responses if it seems called for, but this is as far as I ever had in mind going. It's just... interesting.
  25. ashbury

    Twins union rep

    ashbury commented on ashbury's blog entry in Left Coast Bias

    I don't know either. There is a document called MajorLeagueRules.pdf, which is different than the usual Official Baseball Rules that tell you what the Infield Fly Rule says, documenting the processes that govern rosters and so forth. The most recent copy I found online is dated 2021, and it's not surprising to me if they haven't had time to update it yet. However, that 2021 version still makes reference to the actual CBA, so the Rules do not actually define anything in the CBA, they merely reflect it. Bottom line: see my first sentence.
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