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ashbury

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Everything posted by ashbury

  1. ashbury
    I'm with the voices who are saying "other". I can't expect steps forward from pitchers in their 30s (Pineda is there, Odorizzi turns 30 one day after Opening Day) - maintaining their established peaks would be enough to ask because they are pretty good. The Twins have assembled a cohort of pitchers who will be in their age-24 seasons (Alcala, Thorpe, Littell, Smeltzer), age-25 (Dobnak, Romero), or age-26 (Poppen, Stashak, Berrios). The other 10 on our 40-man are either older than this or else so young (and/or unaccomplished) that 2020 will be a year of maintaining/tweaking or else developing at AAA, respectively. Our front office seems to be banking on these nine to take another major step forward. I'm not nearly as optimistic, so I find it hard to pinpoint one of these, thus I'm hoping for "two or three of them". Among the hitters, I am also with the ones hoping for "health" as the means for stepping forward. A full season of healthy production from Buxton, Sano, and Rosaio (the latter of whom I believe was nursing a nagging injury or two) would make up for possible regression from some others who may have enjoyed their career year in 2019.
  2. ashbury
    This is for me a completely unacceptable starting point for analysis (by the front office, no fault of this article's author). Missing from any discussion I've seen so far in this thread is "what about injuries". A lingering pulled hammy for Berrios or Odorizzi makes this already-shaky scenario a full-fledged disaster. If it's how the off-season plays out, and I was in charge of anything, I'd be telling my FO that their jobs are on the line if 2020 results in anything less than the post-season.* I can accept not making the post-season, but not if Opening Day has just two established starting pitchers on the active roster, and the rest of our innings are going to be covered by hopes and wishful thinking, plus one more established starter making his grand entrance later on. Failure to win due to insufficient resources from the start, to cover a grueling season, is not a valid excuse. If I counted correctly there are 19 pitchers on the 40-man (18 position players), and way too many of those bodies are not to be counted on to contribute in 2020. We were barely able to scrape together a representative 25-man roster, for the post-season series against the Yankees, and this has not really been corrected yet. The off-season is not over. Our head honchos have two months to get this straightened out. I hope they do. * Of course, they just got their contract extended, but I'm not in charge.
  3. ashbury
    If I still wanted to submit to annual performance reviews, I probably wouldn't have retired.
  4. ashbury
    Ok, but to be actually helpful ... b-r.com shows his career rate at 30%, and for the past several years he's been close to that value, except that this past season he threw out 11 of 21 attempts for 52%. That's your Small Sample Size for ya. NL average in 2019 was 26%, so he seems at least average in this regard. As always, pitchers have a lot to say about whether a catcher can throw anybody out.
  5. ashbury
    Yes.
  6. ashbury
  7. ashbury
    Don't you think Penn State fans are saying something similar, from their perspective? I took a look at a site called Lions24/7 - here's a thread the day after that game: https://247sports.com/college/penn-state/board/18/Contents/report-card-penn-stateminnesota-138249612/ "I'm tough on some of these, but I'll bet the players and coaches are going to be even tougher on themselves when they go over things tomorrow." "We came out flat and paid for it. Minny played like it was their super bowl" "Look at our talent vs their talent. Should we have lost? Horrible coaching as usual." Same thing as we're saying about Iowa, pretty much. Every team has their coulda/woulda/shouldas.
  8. ashbury
    Not really. They still pay the $100M he's worth to them. They just add a $25M Stupidity Tax for not having developed their own Wheeler themselves. Free Agency is all about paying the Stupidity Tax.
  9. ashbury
  10. ashbury
    In what way? A reasonable question on a summer night: "Hey, wanna take in a Miracle game?" But we are in agreement that it's now worse. Hey, wanna take in a Mussel game?
  11. ashbury
    I'll gladly debate any number. The slight negative defensive projection they have for Kepler looks odd. Both he and Buxton are projected to play nearly full seasons, which puts Kep in RF most of the time. I'm OK with defensive metrics that ding him when he is in CF - I have no reason to believe based on my eye-test that he's an actual asset there, not compared to all the centerfield talent in the majors. But in right, he can really go get 'em. Mookie Betts is clearly better, perhaps Judge and Bellinger, otherwise I can't think of many who top him. Give him his due in RF and I think FanGraphs' WAR for him would be around 5.
  12. ashbury
    I'll go with "nobody gets taken", and maybe hedge by adding "and lost permanently". Other teams with good farm systems also have players like these, or probably better. It's not as though the bottom feeders will gang up to try to harvest the Twins' system specifically. And all the players exposed by the Twins represent a struggle to keep them on a roster all year.
  13. ashbury
    I refrained from clicking on this link. It's just an ad for shooz, right?
  14. ashbury
    People always flock to the state-of-the-art facilities, at least for the first few seasons.
  15. ashbury
    If you want Andruw Jones in the Hall of Fame, it's probably best to spell his name correctly on the ballot.
  16. ashbury
    He'll be 28 by Opening Day. I'd be surprised if there are any angles the coaches can try by this point.
  17. ashbury
    i jumped in on this too, but may I suggest that this tangent be allowed to die now? It wasn't central to anything in Nick's article, I don't believe - just a side comment. Nick has adjusted his position, and I for one am fine with that.
  18. ashbury
    This seems like revisionist history. From some guy in 2016: http://twinsdaily.com/topic/24542-article-the-brightening-future-of-the-twins-rotation/?do=findComment&comment=567411 Looks like this guy was right when everyone was wrong. Or at least, less wrong, less high. He wins teh Internets. Still, depending on what one means by "prospect", Jay seems to have been one - included as a high ceiling arm in a list of impact talent concerning a brightening future for the Twins.
  19. ashbury
    Does this soothe or stoke the Fears of White Sox Competency mentioned in this article?
  20. ashbury
    Of course not. First base, and first base only.
  21. ashbury
    Uh, thank you?
  22. ashbury
    Is that the most points scored by Northwestern in a Big Ten game this season? Worrisome.
  23. ashbury
    In the interest of keeping the discussion on the topic of the article that was posted, I'd like to ask you to go back to something contained in the headline: Why Aren’t There More Women in Baseball? You see it as a matter of qualified candidates. Do you see it as a lack of qualified candidates? Or do you see it as qualified candidates not being chosen? And do you have a solution to either of these causes, beyond the Invisible Hand of the marketplace that for the history of baseball doesn't seem to have worked its normal magic?
  24. ashbury
    It's more than just happenstance, too. The front office's two first-round draft picks in 2019 were a SS and a RF. Their first-rounder in 2018 was a RF. In 2017 it was a SS and corner OF./1B I don't believe they think front-line pitching comes solely after the first round, so it has to be their strategy to trade surplus corner OF/1B for pitching. It has to.
  25. ashbury
    Parents, give your kids an extra hug today, when you send them off to school. You can't know whether this will be the day we see the news bulletin that Chicago has signed both Cole and Strasburg. Kids, give your parents that hug, too.
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