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ashbury

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Everything posted by ashbury

  1. ashbury
    OK, but tell me at least this much. Suppose the team puts out what they think are signable contracts that use all the pool to the very last penny, then all the draftees do sign, except one, who unexpectedly drags his feet but strings the team along, and then decides at the very last day to go to school. The team can't un-sign all the other contracts, so then their bonus pool is reduced and they are in a penalty situation despite their intentions, correct?
  2. ashbury
    Because he was aware of the wall.
  3. ashbury
    At this point we can confidently say that this is The Best Twins Team Since 2017.
  4. ashbury
    My take on that play, which I already stated in the game thread, was that he's very good at tracking flies, and if the park were a little larger he would have snagged it, instead of a clean miss. So to me that's evidence he was very aware of the wall. Sometimes it can't be fine-tuned better than that. I just hope he's OK and doesn't wind up missing time. I don't recall seeing any updates about this, and unless the news was bad I wouldn't necessarily expect to. As I also said, I wonder if Smeltzer wasn't lucky that Buxton didn't get the ball in his glove. The way the glove went flying at contact, the ball might have popped out and gone over the fence for a homer. The breaks go either way.
  5. ashbury
    That could be how it plays out for a few days. I was probably looking more at the big picture, two position players coming off the IL and two going down, and if the discussion was the inside-baseball aspect of taking advantage of a momentary lull in the need for pitching, then I whiffed.
  6. ashbury
    Michael "Wally Pipp" Pineda.
  7. ashbury
    Managers like their 13-man pitching staffs. Maybe with the off-days Rocco is willing to let go the safety blanket. I guess I just discount that possibility. If Smeltzer goes down, Thorpe or somebody comes up. It comes down to minor-league options remaining for the player. Adrianza has none. In general you do the reversible move, before you do an irreversible one.
  8. ashbury
    My take is pretty simple, in comparison to what I'm reading here. I don't believe today's pitching moves have much to do with the position players. Ehire stays. When Nelson comes off the IL, Luis goes down. When Mitch is ready for duty behind the plate, Willians goes down. If Mitch happens to be ready first, you could send either one down, and then the other afterward.
  9. ashbury
    The starter can't get credit for a win unless he goes 5 full innings, but he can get tagged with the loss for any small number of innings. The '5' part of 2-5 doesn't tell you much - Trevor Cahill is also 2-5 at this writing and has had nothing like the season Max has had.
  10. ashbury
    The only saving grace for Jay is that his BABIP was a bit high, at .395, during those 7 games. Take away three or four hits and maybe his numbers look better? In any case, his being 25 says to me, get him to AAA pronto, and let's make some final decisions on him. It's not like he's being blocked by an entire staff of high-performers at Rochester. Wouldn't it also be at least a little intriguing to let the major league coaching staff have a crack at him soon?
  11. ashbury
    I think someone said that Odo sounded terrible after the game, whatever that meant. Perhaps he had the flu bug and gave the team all he had.
  12. ashbury
    Every time I read people say we should go out and acquire a controllable ace, I look at Syndergaard's numbers this year..... And wonder why anyone thinks anyone is a sure thing.... I don't have the numbers, but perhaps prospects do flame out in greater numbers than established veterans suddenly fizzle - and then either one bounce back. But that's why you have bundle more than one of the good youngsters to get the good veteran. There just aren't any sure paths to acquiring the top-end talent we all want.
  13. ashbury
    One can sincerely celebrate the wins in a starting pitcher's record, without at the same time believing it makes as good a forecasting tool as a lot of other stats at our disposal. Scherzer has already been mentioned - 6 really good starts, 4 league-average starts, 1 stinker - 2-5 W/L record.
  14. ashbury
    Also too, no other team will take the Twins lightly from here on out. The tests get a little tougher now.
  15. ashbury
    Most teams don't have 30 wins total, so, yeah. If you mean as a percentage, it looks as if Baltimore starters have 14 of the 16 team wins, so they might be a little higher. By being lower.
  16. ashbury
    Only thing wrong with this strategizing is that every team already has a certain number of guys just like the ones we are willing to part with. It's the ones we don't want to part with who will attract attention. Opinions in front offices will vary, but you could probably acquire a couple of very top-end players with our very best prospects, and if you could bundle up all the rest you couldn't get a third and fourth one. And if we totally gutted our farm, on the idea that we can restock in the next couple of drafts, well guess what, the other front offices will view it that way from their POV too, and not bother with our mid-tier guys. You can never have too much pitching, so someone will take your prospects if your asking price in terms of MLB stars isn't too high. But pitching's what I don't want to part with either. It's not that I over-value prospects and want to clutch them tightly, it's that you literally can't get that much for most of them unless you are willing to take talent that doesn't really change our 25-man roster. So I'm back to peddling Larnach and then various guys like Celestino. Weak sauce for acquiring multiple difference-makers.
  17. ashbury
    Your hawt taek stylings could use some work.
  18. ashbury
    Injuries make me so angry!
  19. ashbury
    He's had 10 good starts this year, and one stinker. That stinker was Opening Day. By good starts, I mean 6 or more innings with 3 or fewer earned runs; 8 of the starts have been better than this minimum. Season-long, opposing batters have an OPS under .600 against him, versus a league OPS above .730. He strikes out plenty of guys, and walks hardly any. He goes out there every fifth day, just like a young pup. I really don't know what standard you are holding pitchers to. Sure he's expensive and I'm not completely sure we should go after him for this plus 2 more years. But as 2.5 year gambles at $35M per year go, he remains a pretty good one.
  20. ashbury
    The beautiful part, to me, was this: my attention was split between TV and keyboard, taking part in the game thread. Buxton gets a double, which I watched out of the corner of my eye while typing something. Nice. Good for him. Wait... how was that a double? The dawning realization as I turned to watch the replay meant that this is basically routine for him. In this aspect of the game, just as with tracking the ball on defense, it's the cliche where he has come down from a higher league. He has great instincts/experience with these, which is why it's so baffling that he has had trouble with low breaking pitches for so long.
  21. ashbury
    Ditto for the one Tim Anderson hit in the second inning.
  22. ashbury
  23. ashbury
    So my paragraph wasn't a masterpiece. What else is new.
  24. ashbury
    Comparing 1988 to 2018 on baseball-reference.com, I don't see much difference. Gary Sheffield came up at 19, Juan Soto came up at 19. Roberto Alomar along with 2 others was 20, Ronald Acuna along with 3 others was 20. For pitching, the Royals and Dodgers brought up a 20-year old each in 1988, the Braves (and no one else) had 3 20-year olds last season. And so on. If you rank hitters/pitchers by season-age, the top 30 look pretty similar to me in these two seasons. League-wide, average age (weighted by appearances) for batters went from 28.3 to 28.1 in that span. For pitchers, 28.5 to 28.4. You get that much variation just randomly year to year. If there truly was a difference in philosophy, with a greater weighting of young'uns, it ought to show up. If you mean something further back than 1988 when distinguishing "today's" game, well, 30 years is a long time, to me. Maybe a deeper analysis would turf up something, but these simple rankings and arithmetic-means don't. Batters 1988: https://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/MLB/1988-standard-batting.shtml 2018: https://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/MLB/2018-standard-batting.shtml Pitchers 1988: https://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/MLB/1988-standard-pitching.shtml 2018: https://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/MLB/2018-standard-pitching.shtml
  25. ashbury
    Three of the last four first-round picks by the Twins have been outfielders (at least nominally, in the case of Rooker). If you're not going to draft pitchers until the third round or so, as a strategy to avoid the risk when developing arms, then you need to use those outfield bats as trade chips for the pitchers who have proven themselves. So, Larnarch first plus probably that draft pick second jump out at me as candidates for trading. The trick may be to find a trading partner who values corner outfielders, though...
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