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ashbury

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Everything posted by ashbury

  1. ashbury
    Nice to see a counter-example to "Betteridge's law of headlines," discussed earlier at this site.
  2. ashbury
    Wow. That Zuul guy or whatever his name is is unreadable. Talk reason to him in response to his hawt taek, and he just doubles down.
  3. ashbury
    You may love the image he chose to project. Personally, I got a bellyful of him walking to and from his position in LF at the game I watched in Pawtucket a couple years ago. And then there was that brawl in a winter league game. Miami loves him so deeply that he is stashed in AAA, despite their major league catchers batting .171 and .000. (OPS .491 and .154.) So apparently the Marlins are blind to the value that Astudillo brings. But, true, you can't spell WINS without some of the letters of WILLIANS.
  4. ashbury
    Finally! Fun With Numbers that's actually fun!
  5. ashbury
    I was about to say something similar, because I tuned in late due to other activities, and all I saw was the top of the ninth. And I found it compelling, fundamental baseball. I'm repeating myself to say more about the inning itself, but I do wonder why baseball is held to a different standard than other spectator sports. Basketball is famous for being interesting only in the last five minutes, as you say, and even American football is watched only sporadically during a game except for the most diehard of fans until the two-minute warning where you check to see if the QB can put together the needed drive. And I don't begrudge those sports' their following, but the idea that baseball alone must be uniquely riveting from first pitch to final out is slanted. I allow myself just enough paranoia to look at the unholy alliance between ESPN and the NFL, and see where a portion of the constant drumbeat about baseball being sooooo booooooring comes from.
  6. ashbury
    It seems to me maybe you actually don't.
  7. ashbury
    Well said. I feel like adding, the same "criticism" could be leveled against good ol' ERA - at the end of the inning, his ERA for the game is 0.00 just as if he had pitched 1-2-3. Different stats have different purposes, and one big divider is "descriptive" versus "predictive". Even though WPA is modern, for me it sits directly in the "descriptive" category that tries to tell you what happened, in the context of thousands of other games in history where a home team took a one-run lead into the top of the ninth. At the end of that adventure, Pagan collects his winning-probability-added, for getting that clutch final out (and the maybe-more-clutch popout after the string of foul balls). The ninth isn't easy, even if many of the top closers lead you to think so.
  8. ashbury
    Fair question. After pondering for all of ten seconds, I think think I would feel the same way, but would be too polite to post it. I've posted before that I think he's an average reliever at best, at this stage of his career. This game really defines him for me.
  9. ashbury
    I'll throw out an unpopular opinion, that after the leadoff double, Pagan really pitched. Strategically he didn't let the better hitters beat him, and went basically after the #8 and #9 guys when the guys before those didn't get themselves out. He's not good enough to blow them away, as witnessed by the sequence of foul balls, but he went with a plan. It was bend but not break territory, and of course it could have come out much differently, but I want to give Pagan credit. He didn't simply luck into the result he got. He worked hard and smart for it. He had just enough.
  10. ashbury
    "We tell the kids, 'Grandpa has his spells, and if he forgets to take his medications you don't know what he might say. Just smile and tell him you love him.' At least he's not telling them about those so-called astronaut moon landings 100 years ago or whenever."
  11. ashbury
    Dear Forum Friday; I have read Forum Friday for years and years and I have seen people write "I can't believe this happened to me" but I am writing to tell you a story that actually happened to me but I can't believe it happened to me. ...
  12. ashbury
    I'm not gonna judge any team, even one that I hate, on messages from That Guy On Twitter. There are much better reasons to hate the White Sox anyway.
  13. ashbury
    You're gonna make him blush.
  14. ashbury
    Yeesh. Another big arm that can't find the strike zone. It's the Twins' catnip, or maybe their kryptonite.
  15. ashbury
    Only 11 episodes, with some clear closure at the end, plus three "vignettes" probably worth watching first just to get a feel. So it's not an open-ended commitment. I knocked it all off in 3 evenings. Mrs Ash disguised her bemusement as best she could. It checks many little boxes for longtime fans without ever descending into satire or parody; neither does it take itself so seriously that it loses its sense of humor where called for; it's a semi-pro production but never feels like community theater or college skits; it goes beyond even homage, and feels for all the world like a bunch of lost episodes. It's real. I loved the J. J. Abrams movie reboot but I think all in all this is finer. I could imagine people rolling their eyes at this undertaking, for any of several reasons including that 1960s TV wasn't as good as more recent stuff, and I could pick things apart too, but I wouldn't say that any episode is entirely dispensable. My admiration for it is unreserved - as Sarek might say, my logic is uncertain where this series is concerned.
  16. ashbury
    I acknowledged at the outset that every bullpen gives up runs. I'm not holding them up to some unrealistic standard like a WHIP under 1. And even a good WHIP will be a blend of clean innings and some stinkers over the course of the long season. Someone can check my numbers, but starters' WHIP this year is 1.04. Relievers have 1.55. Normal fluctuation means that it's too soon to take seriously any individual pitcher's numbers (so I won't list the ones that for the moment are good, any more than I expect Duffey's 2.00 to remain that high), but overall, it's inescapable that our bullpen is currently giving us no peace.
  17. ashbury
    This isn't TV, exactly, but the episodes on YouTube could fool a person. They date from 2012-17. "Star Trek Continues" A quick search on TD doesn't reveal a mention of this fan-fiction on steroids. Has anyone run across this way back when it came out? I am just flabbergasted by all aspects of this ode to 1960s SciFi.
  18. ashbury
    Keep in mind though, "I never said half the things I said" is another Yogi reference.
  19. ashbury
    Ha ha. Like it's an either-or proposition.
  20. ashbury
    The pitcher doesn't always do well. That is true.
  21. ashbury
  22. ashbury
    That's across all starts, isn't it? Some starts, the pitcher gets injured early and comes out. Gray the other day for instance. Some starts, the pitcher is doing badly and comes out after two or three or four innings. Paddack for instance. (We've actually been pretty free of such games.) Some starts, the pitcher is clearly gassed and comes out, as might be said of Archer yesterday or Bundy the day before. I wonder if you let out those games, what the average is when the pitcher is doing well? I think those are the cases people are questioning.
  23. ashbury
    I'm not as down on Pagan as Szymborski is, but the ceiling is effective middle innings reliever, I expect. He has the experience, and presumably the make up, to set up or close, but not the chops. There will be late inning disasters if he is overexposed.
  24. ashbury
    Socrates long ago perfected the art of asking questions and letting his students puzzle out each step of the syllogism themselves. This article follows in an honored tradition. Tomorrow: "Should Miguel Sano Shift to Center Field?"
  25. ashbury
    You.
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