ashbury

Mrs Ash and I happen to be about to embark on a driving trip west, which happens on top of that to go through Bartlesville OK and then to Denver. Wichita is right on the way! Unfortunately it looks like we will pass through there on July 4, and the Surge is in Amarillo that day, and then Monday is an off day. Don't know if I can stall to when they host NW Arkansas by offering to sit through two extra days in Chicago with my inlaws.

Of course the expectations explicitly set ahead of time might (always) be, "you're done when the skipper says you are done." I just got done expounding elsewhere about good organizational practices, baseball or otherwise. But there are some ways that baseball is vastly different from the businesses you and I worked at. You and I are pretty good but not at a level that each and every MLB player is. Managing a clubhouse of egos to match the talent may mean wide latitude in certain areas and narrow rigidity in others. I would not presume much about this instance beyond what we see publicly.

I have established an account at FriscoGiantsDaily.com to register my views on the Total System Failure that their front office has presided over.

PerHAPS???? 14 hits and 4 walks in 3.2 innings doesn't require ornamentation. I'm glad he turned it around and showed us his best. (No J.A. Happs were harmed in the making of this post.)

Am I stupid, or do I just keep walking into these?

Most gobsmacking in team history. Also either unluckiest or worst evaluated during the off-season. Every "plan B" type of pitcher failed when called in to clean up after the "plan A" guys who failed or became unavailable. Waddell, Law, Anderson... at least the FO has shown willingness to pull the plug on some of what hasn't worked. There are smatterings of success with the "plan C" guys they have brought up from the farm system.

Give Ober a 4-year guaranteed contract with 3 option years like Dobnak, or just go ahead and guarantee all 7?

Not Seth, but here is what I found. It seems that the June draft is being held in July. The 2021 MLB Draft will be held in Denver, Co., as part of the league’s All-Star Break festivities. The 10-round spectacle, which is set to kick off on Sunday, July 11, will span three days.

I already had forgotten about Littell, when thinking about this debacle of a season. They simply dropped him from the 40-man by outrighting him to AAA last season, and he opted for free agency instead of agreeing to a minor league renewal with the Twins. His good numbers this year are definitely Small Sample Size as yet, and last year was a disaster for him due in large part to the longball which oftentimes will correct itself. But he seems like a good example for consideration. So, was it fundamental talent evaluation, marking him as simply not good enough to keep on the 40-man? stats analytics, downplaying his potential for a rebound from high BABIP and ridiculous HR rate? coaching, not finding him a way to succeed last year, taking into account injury? medical staff, judging that his elbow was a deal breaker? Levine and/or Falvey, improperly synthesizing the above information being given to them? Would one person in the above web of experts saying "no, no, we need to keep him" have been enough? (Maybe one did, and was outvoted/overruled.) I'd also love to have insight about Littell's own decision to accept a minor-league offer from a different franchise. Just a clearer path back to the majors? Or was there something in the Twins organization he found distasteful? Can't ever know, of course. Was it just bad luck? Or Total System Failure? I'm really concerned about the decision making.

Recently a side comment came up about why modern pitchers don't start 40 games a season like they used to. The question intrigued me so I did a little searching. The results surprised me. Mostly I used the Stathead tool at baseball-reference.com, and the most useful table I constructed is this: https://stathead.com/tiny/SBDaM Since the modern era, 1901 and forward, it's never been the case that pitchers in general were regularly making 40 starts. For periods of years, the major league leader would regularly reach 40. A few years, there would be more than just one, but never ever as many as there were teams, meaning less than one per team. So it wasn't part of the job description, it was an achievement. There was kind of a peak of 40-game starts around 1904-08, another 1914-17, then it picked up again after expansion in 1962 (when the season got a little longer), then quieted down and peaked again around 1973, then basically died out around 1979. The last 40-game starter was knuckleballer Charlie Hough in 1987, who come to think of it had that in common with other "recent" 40-game-starters Phil Niekro and Wilbur Wood. In those 87 years, there were a total of 140 such pitcher-seasons. One or two a year. Zero since then of course. The individual pitchers weren't doing it for years and years without end, either. Only 31 such seasons were logged by pitchers over the age of 30 (despite the myth that that was when a player would enter his prime). 8 by anyone 35 or older. Starting 40 was always a young man's game. For another perspective, Sandy Koufax in 1965 holds the record for season strikeout percentage, 29.5%, among pitchers who started 40 games in a season (and of course Sandy led his entire league in that regard that year, among players who qualified for the ERA title). By contrast, in 2019 there were 16 ERA qualifiers who had a higher percentage than that. And even though Sandy was a "unicorn" of his era, and also a prototype for today's pitcher, he was finished before his 31st birthday. Most of the guys who ever started 40 games weren't striking out the side. Today it's 5-man rotations. Divided into 162 games, that's about 32 starts per season. Used to be 4-man rotations. Divided into 162, that gives you 40. Divided into the older 154-game schedule, that's 38 or so. Of course in really olden days, back into the 19th century, you might have 3 or even 2 workhorses who handled the bulk of the chores. But back then the schedules could be more erratic too, and the game was just played differently. Anyway, major league teams settled into an every-fourth-game routine a lot quicker than people sometimes remember. Well, remember reading about. That made 40 an uncommon feat. Managers would love to have their best pitcher get as many starts as possible, so they'd be sending someone out 40 times if they could. The tImes changed, not the intestinal fortitude of the players.

Larnach exudes so much confidence. I wouldn't say Kirilloff lacks that, exactly, but whenever I see him I feel as though he's wearing his older brother's baseball cap. Larnach somehow fills out his own hat better.

Seems like there is a shortage of arms at AAA St Paul, due to injury or whatnot, so why not bring Cano up a level? Chandler Shepherd would have appreciated an early shower in Thursday's game, I believe.

ISWYDT. I could be wrong but I have seen his face before He was the man that I saw at the bullpen door We owe him money and he gave us something more Two more runs Two more runs He will be what he is just the same

There's considerable opinion here that the FO does carry the ultimate blame for the lack of options in yesterday's game. If so, it's asking a little much of Rocco to throw his bosses under the bus.

I assume the AAA staff is in a depleted state too, and the manager warned his starter, "if you run into trouble I'm not coming out there to get you and bring in a reliever. You'll just have to relieve yourself on the mound." The b-r.com "game score" was a rousing negative-fifteen for this start. Considering it's based on an intended zero-to-one-hundred scale with fifty being average, that is quite a feat.

He is hitting .450 when he puts the ball in play. I don't expect that is sustainable.

He can? His appetite for innings was missing, his previous time out there. If a guy's going bad, he's going bad. Now, if you put him in the bullpen and tell him to change his approach, "go as hard as you can for as long as you can," in the hopes he'll have better success, well maybe. But then you're not telling him to eat innings. "You're a reliever now, go hard on every pitch, but still give me innings," is about on a par with "throw strikes, but don't give him anything good to hit" as pitching advice If he could do either of those, he'd be in an asset the rotation. I don't claim my view is constructive. We now have Colome and Shoemaker both worthy of only mop-up duty. Modern bullpens can't function that way.

Probably doubly painful for the third-base coach to watch. Did he suddenly get struck mute, on that play? Is "get back, get back, get back" no longer a thing?

Then again, I like pitchers who respond well to pressure.

Came here to say something similar. Article didn't age well.

Concur that a mere $2M signing like Shoemaker can't be the problem. You could sign an entire roster at that price and spend only about fifty million. You could flush him the day after signing him and not feel a budgetary pinch. The problem is how many innings he's been asked to pitch, given the poor results; said differently, the problem is they stopped after this $2M signing; said differently still, a $2M veteran stands a good chance of being merely a roster clogger since you have only 26 spots.

I meant to add, we enjoyed Q39 for barbecue on our most recent trip there in 2018. My son had heard that LENIII swears by the place. We didn't know what to expect and it might be a little too slick and polished, maybe trendy, for some tastes, but the food was good. Arthur Bryant's has the long-time reputation, but this morning I see that it has bad Yelp ratings. Then again, it is possible that BBQ is exactly the wrong category to rely on Yelp for.

No no no. It's just this stutter I've de-de-developed.

Concur concur concur. Kauffman Stadium is in my upper echelon of ballparks. It's got character, for sure.