ashbury

That's sort of a free-and-easy delivery, for someone reaching 100 (first video), isn't it? May or may not be textbook form, but looks kind of good to me.

You're surely on the right track there, but the terminology might be tangled. Insurers LOVE highly predictable outcomes - as you go on to point out. If it's predictable, then they'll offer insurance on just about anything, allowing you to smooth out your own risk because you're just one individual, while they let the law of large numbers work to their favor to provide steady profits. It's not the predictability, it's the frequency. In the case of term life insurance, young people die infrequently, and even when you're getting on in years the majority in your age cohort live to see another January. That makes it possible to offer affordable rates, that increase only gradually until you hit your 60s or so. The Twins could ask to smooth out their risk on Donaldson, but Lloyds of London (or whoever offers that kind of policy anymore) would charge so much to reflect the 50% probability of a claim, to just pull a number out of the air, that the policy itself would be a huge burden. Lloyds would charge 50% of Donaldson's $21.7M salary, plus a markup for profit. Paying say $13M for a policy that pays out $21.7M if the injury hits is like betting on Red at the roulette table except with worse odds. Actually the policy would be pro-rated as the season goes along, so the policy premium would likely be smaller than I said, as it might pay a smaller fraction of the salary if the injury hits in August than in April, but I don't want to get further lost in the weeds than I already probably am.

I'm liking the decision to give Thorpe just the one inning, at this point in the Spring. Let him bask in the glow of that inning for the next few days.

I am less concerned than some about Buxton's speed. I expect he'll still be a fine defender when he's much older and is not even major-league average fast, because his reputation is for getting a good read on the ball. Wasn't Celestino just quoted as saying he picks Buxton's brain about that? As for his proneness to missing time, I am more concerned than some where it comes to things he may not be able to protect against. Lacking first-hand knowledge, I am guessing that there is a correlation between his migraines and the periods of time when he seems unable to lay off low breaking pitches. Vision is a tricky thing. I'm not sure he can be more careful, in the usual sense we mean of getting hurt.

And if the other teams see the same risks the same way, and the bundle offered isn't very big...?

I said in another thread I'd be surprised if Byron was receptive, but I'm all for the discussion to take place.

Excellent thought-provoking post, old-timer! Now Twins Daily staff, your challenge is before you: convince Tom Kelly to write a counter-point article for you.

"Not the One. NOT the One. The One is hurt. Must find. Zathras must find, help. The One leads us. The One tells us to go, we go. We live for The One. We would die for The One. Zathras trusts... the One. The One Who Was. The One Who Is. The One Who Will Be."

Man. Sam Dyson, the gift that keeps on giving.

I see Buxton as a "bet on myself" type. It seems impossible to me that the FO would offer a contract sufficiently lucrative, in view of the greater than normal risks, to entice him to commit long-term in exchange for being set for life.

Wait. I have just been informed that this article was Satire. ZOMG! This is the greatest article on Twins Daily ever! Please extend my subscription 1000 years, payable in advance! The writing is sublime! The nuances are so... so... nuanced! I am literally not worthy to write this praise, and I have already deleted it, then typed it again, and deleted it, and finally this! RandBalls Stu is a stu-pendous human being whose boots I would gladly lick clean until holes wore through my tongue, a man who is so totally and utterly wonderful that I would rather be sealed in a pit of my own filth than dare post in the same thread! And yet, here I am, stealing from Monty Python in my own abject loss for words! Thank you, kind sir, for breathing the same oxygen as the rest of us, that we might have some minuscule chance of one day inhaling a single atom that was ever in your bloodstream!

This is the worst article on Twins Daily ever! Please cancel my subscription, and refund all membership fees dating back to 2012! The article was penned by a hack writer who wouldn't know how to avoid a trite cliche or mix of metaphors if it bit him in the butt! A remedial English 101 student would churn out better insights than this! The author should be optioned to a website one minor-league classification down, IF THERE WERE ONE! There are two ways of disliking baseball; one way is to dislike it, the other is to read RandBalls Stu!

Phew. Spring is the time for dreaming, but those Zips confidence levels look like the narrow range you'd assign to a veteran player, not a guy who hasn't really proven yet that he can hit a major league yakker in the strike zone yet lay off the breaking stuff that's in the dirt. A projection that says it's hard to fathom him hitting less than .279 right out of the gate is... hard to fathom. I'll be happy if he establishes that he belongs in the major leagues, and go from there.

That's not good enough from a corner outfielder, no matter how good the defense. I think a change would be brewing if he performed at that rate for the first half of the season.

Donaldson, if I'm picking one name.

Thank you, TD staff, for reaching out to someone who has this kind of in-depth experience, to help us sort out fact from fiction.

Fastball location, curveball, and change. Yup, those are three things I will definitely want to watch.

It takes a village.

I hope Gordon can unlock the missing piece or two that's holding him back from success. Limited sample size is always the risk for a fan watching a prospect at a game or two, but I never saw anything much from him at the plate against AAA opposition, and on defense he's one of those players who "makes the tough play look difficult."

Sparse crowds or not, I am SO. FREAKING. JEALOUS.

Oh, I've said it before, and it's almost a self-parody by now. But i do think they put in some time and effort, not on primary scouting themselves, but synthesizing scouting reports from somewhere. They do not state exactly how they create their scouting ratings (and I've asked). I find that their ratings track pretty well, when I compare them for instance to individual articles about players or whatever. The big thing is it's comprehensive, for every player in every major league organization, plus a lot of upcoming prospects for the June draft - so I can look up any player on a moment's notice and get a sense of their skill set. Without further coyness: Out Of The Park Baseball I find OOTP worth the $35 or so for each year's new version, just for the scouting insights alone. (I might also have devoted an hour, or two, or more, to playing the game during the past year. ) Scoffers, scoff as ye will - I deserve it and I own up to it.

My money is on Known Agenda, once he retires.

No. According to the quick and dirty source I go to, the ranking on defense might be Larnach > Kirilloff >> Rooker. None has good range, Rooker's being "adequate" only.

Separating cause from effect is always a hidden snare when looking at stats. The leverage was spread around. Was this due to an organizational philosophy, or the manager's philosophy? Or did they envision a by-now traditional closer/setup arrangement, and the individuals slated for such duty disappointed often enough to cause a change in plans? Or maybe there is an additional explanation I didn't think of. I don't see how to tease this information out from the aggregate stats. Possibly some kind of game-by-game analysis from the game logs will reveal strong trends in the early season that became reversed midway through, or not, which I guess is what's coming next. Fortunately for discussion purposes, the concept of the leverage index apparently isn't unknown to at least one of the relievers on the staff. Perhaps the concept is even widely discussed among players and coaches, if in slightly different terms than hard-core analytics uses. Maybe someone with access at Ft Myers, hint hint , can mention these aggregate numbers to an insider and ask about their perception of the cause. Or maybe that is coming in Part 3.