ashbury

Louisville Slugger did make him a braille baseball bat. That could make the difference. Stevie would probably tell you himself that he could also do some damage as an umpire.

I usually like advanced stats and can find a use for most, but IMO FIP (the X variety or otherwise) does not achieve its aim. There is nothing in FIP that, for example, depends on whether Buxton or Cave is in CF. Simply put, it doesn't eliminate defense, it eliminates from consideration the part of the game that makes it baseball and substitutes average performance in its place. Much simpler for me is to look at OPS-against. League-wide, you can draw a rough comparison of OPS to the ERA that you could usually expect. Pineda for instance has an OPS-against of .809, and over the years that has worked out to an ERA somewhere a little north of 5.00. Not good, which we already know. Gibson's OPS is .750, and ordinarily that should result in an ERA like 4.35. Perez, .700, for an ERA equivalent around 3.75. Berrios, .666, which I'd expect an ERA around 3.20 or so. Odorizzi? Batters have a BA against him of .181 coming into this game, built on an unusually low BABIP of .243. The OPS is a minuscule .511, so low that I'm not even confident what ERA it translates to on a league-wide basis, but let's safely say it would be under 2.00. Which is where he is. Really, all our starters are giving up runs about in line with the underlying hitting stats against them. xFIP says that a certain percentage of flyballs go out, and Odorizzi hasn't given up his fair share so xFIP reflects skepticism. BABIP usually doesn't stay as low as .243, so there is another reason to expect more hits to fall in. But he's leading the league in ERA right now. Simple "regression to mean" logic would point toward not keeping up the pace for the rest of the season. xFIP doesn't win any points from me for merely predicting that. Meanwhile Jake has logged another very good 6 innings today. We keep expecting regression, but so far, he just keeps chugging along.

And not to belabor the point, but I've seen comments that it's premature to assume the division and look toward the post-season. I'm not assuming anything - we could still finish out of the money. But the parameters for planning on June 9 have changed for our FO from some equivalent point six months ago. Then, we were coming off a mediocre season and didn't know what to expect in terms of higher performance we've all been awaiting for almost a decade. Now, we're contending. Let's prepare for success, as opposed to another lame "just glad to be here" appearance in a divisional series.

It can't be anything due to the performance last night, so I trust he has taken the AAA start as a positive, and will redouble his efforts to keep moving up.

I'm fine if our FO determined that Kimbrel isn't the guy. But they need to get a guy for the bullpen. They need to get two, and I wouldn't be opposed to getting three. If their off-season plan was "let's play April and May to see what we've got among our large backlog of young arms," they have their answer by now and it's mainly in the negative. It's good to stay the course, but there comes a point where you can't. Last year the Dodgers got to the World Series because they had a deep bullpen. That allowed them to survive a 4.1 inning start by Ryu and a 4.2 inning start by Buehler and a 5 inning start by Rich Hill and still win those games against the Brewers - losing any of them would have been curtains. The Dodgers led their league in runs per game, but in the post season you can't count on that. In two of those games they used 8 relievers! In the regular season whoever uses the most relievers usually is the losing team. But the post season is a different game. (And yes, one of those games was 13 innings. But do you want to lose in 11 because your last guys just can't cut it?) If we got three new reliable arms, we still wouldn't have what the Dodgers found necessary in order to stagger into the World Series. But it would be a huge improvement to our chances on the big stage. Our bullpen is woefully unready for what we hope is to come.

The last few seasons tell me that it's really difficult to do .400 OBP for an AL season without 25-HR power. Maybe Arraez will develop into that, but for now I don't see it.

Not only was it a walk Astudillo drew, it was on the first four pitches they offered him! Apparently Pawtucket came into the game with an obvious plan for him, and he laid off. After that, it was vintage Tortuga, with him reaching a bit on some of his swings, but obviously things were going his way last night. Dobnak was perfect through three innings. It's often said that every no-hitter has one stellar play that keeps it intact, and I was wondering if that might prove to be the case after second-baseman Jordany Valdespin made a spectacular horizontal leaping grab of a liner by Sox batter Cole Sturgeon for the first out of the third inning. The no-no was broken up in the fourth, of course, with a no-doubt hit to left field and a wild pitch and a double to center which scored a run. Then Dobnak settled back down and pitched a clean fifth, and got the first two men in the sixth as well before giving up a couple of base runners and then finishing his night's work with a swinging strikeout. Early in the game his fastball seemed to be sitting at 92 MPH, but nearer the end I saw a couple of pitches at 94. He seemed to rely more on the offspeed stuff (curve or change, I couldn't tell you) to put batters away, though. Preston Guilmet needs some recognition for pitching two clean innings of his own in the seventh and eighth. I didn't have high expectations when Hildenberger took the mound, and I saw nothing to give me hope. He was workmanlike, and a few pitches fooled batters but mostly it looks like it's going to be a struggle for him to make it back to the majors. Arraez played shortstop and Rooker was in left, but neither of these players whom I was hoping to get a read on defensively was particularly tested last night. Astudillo continues to be the slowest player to go out to his position, reaching RF later than Cave managed to saunter out to CF. (Only Rooker trotted, FWIW.) Speaking of Cave, I thought he got a terrible read on that ninth-inning HR to left-center, not that there turned out to be a chance to catch it, a few feet beyond the fence. We've gotten pretty spoiled by our current starting outfield for the big club. Earlier in the day I got to see a couple of Red Sox players from the past. Catcher Rich Gedman (now hitting coach for Pawtucket) hosted a Q&A session - here's a poor photo but it's the best I thought to take: And here's '75 World Series hero Bernie Carbo, again a poor candid shot, of him listening to a presentation (he wasn't nearly as grumpy as this moment of concentration would imply): At the game, here's Wilin Rosario taking a cut at a pitch from Brian Ellington: I like their ballpark; sadly in 2021 it will no longer be used for AAA, as the team is moving to Worcester. Anyway it was a beautiful night for a ballgame in Rhode Island!

I watched Willians go 3-for-4* in Pawtucket tonight, so I can confirm your hypothesis. * Plus a walk on 4 pitches, his first time up!

A losing team that wants to try out a sequence of OF prospects might like the flexibility to send Cave down next year if 3 of them click.

I don't think I know you well enough to run with the funny, funny joke I have in mind.

Molly: You didn’t even hear what I said, did you? Scott (to himself): Gee, what a strange way to begin a conversation.

I like the WPA chart, for games I didn't get to watch. I can get a lot from a box score and a line score, and a 5-run fourth obviously will turn many a game - but sometimes a 0 in the linescore will contain a ton of drama, and WPA can show that. Instead of perusing an entire PbP recording, the chart tells me which part of the game to look at in detail.

I think he even has one minor league option remaining* after this year, and that's part of his value - his stashability at AAA for this season and next. That would be of value to another team too, so maybe his trade value is a little higher still, because of this, than for a typical 4th outfielder like Robbie Grossman who is out of options. He won't bring back a difference-maker by himself, but should be more than a throw-in, for the right team. He's valuable, so to answer your question, I'm not in a hurry to dispose of him. But I'd make him super-available, if that makes sense. * Cave seemed to be injured soon after signing, and missed a couple of years before playing minor league ball in earnest, and I don't know the rostering rules well enough to know for sure that this is the reason he apparently didn't have to be added to the Yankees' 40-man roster sooner than they wanted.

Except this one from me.

Don't give up, son.

USAFChief takes one look at these dates and says, "1900, 1901? They might be experienced enough to make a contribution."

For the past several years, a team's draft money goes into and out of a pool of funds, the size of which varies from team to team. The Twins will likely spend every penny of their allotment. $4M to one player comes out of what could go to other draftees, causing them to refuse to sign, which in turn has a negative effect on the size of the pool. If as you say this one guy fell to the third round, then all 30 teams went through this exact calculation, one or two or three times. It's not reasonable to chalk this up to ownership.

Nevery. https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/g/gonzama01.shtml

Cedar Rapids pitchers did best, holding the opposition to only 6 runs while their counterparts up the chain all allowed 9. Yeesh.

I always heard it the other way around.

The research may have been conducted in 2017.

A lot of hitters stall out at high-A in the Florida State League. Slow your roll. Time will tell.

Moderator's Note: If you don't find the insights of a medical doctor interesting, move along to another topic. Heezy's disclaimer at the top of the article made clear the limitations of what he would write.