ashbury

If we cease the analysis, does that bring back more action?

Rocco and staff are paid to find answers, and this starts with the offense. Time to earn their pay.

No question Gordon is a whiff by the scouting/evaluation staff at the time. Choosing him seems in retrospect the triumph of bloodlines & projectability as the dominant scouting techniques. I wouldn't be surprised to learn "has the good face" figured in on at least one scouting sheet.

Probably that is optimal, for a non-optimal situation to have to deal with. To do otherwise would be to intersperse the guys who get on base with rally-killers too much of the time.

They sometimes would end the skit with Lou muttering "**** you" as they strolled off the stage, and Bud brightening up to say "oh! that's the umpire!"

First Is Played By Whom, as performed by Bud and Lou when the vaudeville circuit visited Oxford. Lou Costello: Well then first base is played by whom? Bud Abbott: Yes. Lou Costello: I mean the fellow’s name. Bud Abbott: Whom. Lou Costello: The guy assigned to first. Bud Abbott: Whom. Lou Costello: The player the shortstop throws to. Bud Abbott: To Whom. Lou Costello: The guy covering first. Bud Abbott: First base is covered by Whom! Lou Costello: I’m asking YOU by whom first base is covered. Bud Abbott: Yes. That’s the man’s name. Lou Costello: The name of whom? Bud Abbott: Yes. Lou Costello: Well go ahead and tell me. Bud Abbott: That is he. Lou Costello: That is whom? Bud Abbott: Yes. PAUSE Lou Costello: Look, you gotta first baseman? Bud Abbott: Certainly. Lou Costello: First is played by whom? Bud Abbott: That’s right. Lou Costello: When you pay the first baseman every month, the money goes to whom? Bud Abbott: Every dollar of it. Lou Costello: All I’m trying to find out is the name of the fellow first base is played by. Bud Abbott: By Whom. Lou Costello: The guy the money goes to. Bud Abbott: That’s it. Lou Costello: The money goes to whom? Bud Abbott: It does, every dollar. Sometimes his wife comes down and collects it. Lou Costello: The wife of whom? Bud Abbott: Yes. PAUSE Bud Abbott: What’s wrong with that? Lou Costello: Look, all I wanna know is when you sign up the first baseman, how does he sign his name? Bud Abbott: Whom. Lou Costello: The guy. Bud Abbott: Whom. Lou Costello: How does he sign it? Bud Abbott: Not How, but Whom. Lou Costello: That's what I want to know. Whom? Bud Abbott: Yes. PAUSE Lou Costello: All I’m trying to find out is WHAT’s the guy’s name on first base. Bud Abbott: Now you are making no sense at all, my uncultured friend. 'What' would be an utterly stupid name for a baseball player. Good day to you, sir. <exeunt>

Call me any Friday afternoon and I'll read his column to you, complete with my standard h'yuk-yuk-yuk lafftrack, so you don't feel quite so lost.

Jeffers has been a pro only since 2018, but every season up to now he has displayed a reverse-platoon split, hitting righties better than lefties, both in the minors and in his brief 2020 callup. It's not crazy to treat him for lineup purposes as a lefty batter, until he proves otherwise. This year it's more of a normal direction for the split, but his numbers are just so ridiculously bad against righties that that is more the story than the split itself. Only 4 PA against lefties which is not anything to draw a comparison to - if his one hit had been guided just a little differently for an out his OPS would be worse than against righties, and you never want to draw conclusions where one plate appearance changes everything. Hopefully it's merely a slump that he'll work himself out of - either that, or the opposing teams have rewritten their book and him and he needs to respond accordingly.

Very nearly so, if not for Kepler's timely hit.

There already was a Pinky Higgins, long ago.

From the MLBTR article : "Simmons won’t occupy a spot on the 40-man roster while on the Covid-19 list, so an additional corresponding move to accommodate Riddle isn’t necessary." ... for now. Something will have to be done when Simmons returns. Ten days (or whatever) is an eternity in roster management, though.

Yes.

Acceptable if his bat continues at a .750+ OPS pace and is inserted strategically into the batting order while minimizing the exposure of the glove, to the tune of, say, a third of what a regular's playing time would be. (More than that, or course, if the bat were to continue at this current remarkable SSS pace.) At the other extreme if you seek to have him in the lineup essentially all the time like a supersub, it starts to be death by a thousand cuts - every single inning he plays in the field you are giving away a relative advantage on defense to the other team, and while defense isn't the most important attribute for a player in the modern game, it still counts for something. But yes the pendulum might have swung a little too far toward a belief he can't play on defense.

Don't forget the websites - Minnesota's got quite a few. I particularly recommend Twins Daily to any visitor walking around with a cellphone wondering what to do next.

Concur.

The dummling has a batting-average-on-balls-in-play of .500, exemplified by today's seeing-eye single, which is indeed an aura of luck that no major leaguer has ever come close to sustaining. I don't hate the guy. He's fun. I hope he has unlocked something he didn't previously have - players do that now and then. I'm just not too confident that the aura of luck won't go away, in which case he'll be replaced by another flavor of the month.

I think you are conflating decisions with outcomes. Suppose you're playing poker and you decide to raise against a player who will have to draw to an inside straight. Suppose then he hits his straight. Was it a bad decision? Just a bad outcome. Baseball, as with most athletics, involves uncertainty. Decision-making under uncertainty is the essence of management. The probabilities aren't nearly so straightforward in baseball as in poker. But at the moment I'm allowing for this situation with Baddoo being simply a "bad beat".

A lot of dimensions to the decision whether or not to protect. Each off-season there will be two or three bottom feeder teams with no hope to compete and therefore the roster space to take a gamble on an outfielder. However there are 28 other teams besides just the Twins that such a team can choose from. If you leave a top-100 type of talent exposed, it's easy to predict you'll lose him, but below that it is much less likely. Where you project a prospect playing is a huge factor. Up-the-middle talent always will catch someone's eye, increasing the urgency to protect. Baddoo has major-league CF range, I believe, but it's the arm that scouts have questions about (even before surgery). If you envision him as a left fielder, you'll prioritize him one way; if you view him in center, then the other way. A bad team may be more likely to gamble with a marginal center fielder, than the team losing him. This ties in with my unease with all the corner outfield talent the team has been drafting in the early rounds recently. Had the Twins not drafted Rooker, who is knocking on the door, maybe they would have made room for Baddoo? Emphasizing bat-first guys means less latitude for "tweeners" if Baddoo is viewed that way. Finally, could we have gotten something for Baddoo? Not much. Even though the Tigers liked him well enough to Rule-5 him, they would have gone to some other Plan B strategy had Baddoo been unavailable. For the Twins in November to approach the Tigers, saying that they heard they liked Baddoo so what would they offer in trade, would likely have resulted in some lottery-ticket arm in rookie ball, at best. So then, say, next year, when Baddoo comes up in a more normal progression, and shines like he's doing now, the second guessing would be exactly the same. The Twins have a strong farm system at present, and losing someone like this is probably unavoidable now and then. Though, you do want to keep the losses to a minimum, with the guys you lose not clearly superior to whom you keep, and not have talent evaluation become an actual detriment.

He certainly was a pesto the TIgers.

Repeatedly seeing the third base coach windmilling doesn't get the pulse rate up any?

Don't overlook Capital Appreciation.

Whom?

Pretty sure no baseball saying ever involved the word "whom", except if Roger Angell was writing it.