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ashbury

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Everything posted by ashbury

  1. 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
  2. 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...
  3. ashbury
  4. ashbury
    My "book" on Polanco has always involved questions about the arm, not the range.
  5. ashbury
    I didn't get around to saying that third base was the area that I was a bit concerned about. Thank goodness I kept quiet until after today's game, otherwise I would have sounded like a fool!
  6. ashbury
    I could move one to the Fun With Numbers thread, if you like.
  7. ashbury
    Concur. When I said visiting team's hotel, I meant the one that other teams typically use, not that another team would be there. On days where there's no game, the team can maybe even save a few bucks due to lower demand*. Sweet. * I bet the hotel's revenue-management software eliminates that particular market inefficiency though. Oh well.
  8. ashbury
    I was thinking the same thing. Many top prospects have never set foot in Minnesota. So why not put a guy in a first-class seat on a plane a day after his start, have a limo driver meet him and bring him to the ballpark, give him a taste of the major league clubhouse and food, put him up at the visiting team's hotel, have him pitch off the Target Field mound instead of some grubby bullpen for his between-starts work, and send him home in similar style a couple of days later with a keener sense of just how close he is to never having to travel an inter-city charter bus* to a game again, if he continues his rate of progress. * I guess AAA uses aircraft a lot of the time. Poetic license.
  9. ashbury
    Bechtold's play was so good! Sano had better be looking over his shoulder.
  10. ashbury
    Not so new(ish). I'm not very young, and one of my favorite early bosses used to say that her job was to "bring water" - a metaphor I didn't precisely understand but took to mean a certain humility in the role. No single management style works, in tech or in baseball. As the old saying goes, you need to know who needs a pat on the back and who needs a kick on the rump. At different times I needed and deserved either.
  11. ashbury
    I'm repeating myself to say, "concur." A couple of publicly visible moves - the placement of Buxton in the 9-slot despite improving numbers, and removing Berrios just short of collecting a Win during a laugher - could easily be viewed as saying to his best players, "this is my team." If so, I have little doubt he does this in other little ways. It's easy to overplay that, but it also probably has to be done by every manager now and then. There's no art to doing it to a bad apple, but letting every player know "you're not above reproach" is healthy. Difficult to imagine a guy named Rocco who doesn't. (He reminds me too much of my gentle-natured son for me to be serious about that.)
  12. ashbury
    You probably shouldn't wait several more seasons before your next post.
  13. ashbury
    IMO Rocco is doing little things here and there to tell his players, "this is MY team."
  14. ashbury
    Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.
  15. ashbury
    Or guessing better, with experience. I think he mentioned looking for a fastball which he hit that grannie the other night. Of course, "looking" and "guessing" aren't quite the same thing, more of a continuum.
  16. ashbury
    It would probably be too small of a sample to slice and dice, but I wonder about this in relation to the count. I don't hold a bad swing at a low outside pitch totally against a batter when it's two strikes - sometimes there's no good choice - and in my "eye test" I might be discounting those. It's the "unforced error", where a batter swings lamely at a first-pitch slider in the dirt that I felt to be the Buxton trademark last year, and I think that's where he's now able to lay off. But that's why people keep the numbers on these things, to avoid the selective memory that I am relying on.
  17. ashbury
    He's laying off the pitches down-and-away. He's not swinging through pitches down the middle. Let's see LaVelle dispute that.
  18. ashbury
    In the postgame interview, the way Byron looked at Miguel when the latter was speaking, followed by Byron calling Miguel his brother, pretty much can not be faked. Just two of the guys, so I'm extrapolating, but looks like the chemistry you want after a big win - everyone happy for each other, not just for themselves.
  19. ashbury
    If you can please now turn your attention to the Red Wings' W-L record ....
  20. ashbury
    Larry King? More like Cherry... uh, Bing Cherry. / I'll keep working on it
  21. ashbury
  22. ashbury
    Marwin finished 19th that year, Schoop was #12, and Nelson Cruz was 10th. We're working on collecting the whole set! Hope Mookie Betts (#6) and Francisco Lindor (#5) show up on the trade market soon. (Craig Kimbrel was #6 for Cy Young, hint hint.)
  23. ashbury
    He's not going to stay in the 9th spot forever, if he continues to produce like this. I'm not getting too worked up over exactly when the manager moves him, if it's before the All-Star break.
  24. ashbury
    Not unless he makes the last out of every game (or, more accurately, the last out occurs during his PA but before the next guy's PA is complete). I look at it this way. Suppose you had a lineup of equally talented hitters. The odds would be 1/9 in any given game that any particular hitter makes the final out. So, one out of 9 games, #1 gets an additional PA relative to #2, and so on down the line. 162 / 9 = 18. Moving someone up from #2 to #1 would get him 18 more PA. Moving up from #3 to #1 would be 2*18=36. Moving all the way up from #9 to #1 would be 8*18=144. I think that's the '8' you were looking for. Of course talent is not equal, and is purposely not distributed randomly through the lineup. But as a first-order approximation I'd go with that. "Your leadoff man gets 18 more PA in a season than the 2 hole." And on down the line.
  25. ashbury
    She is obviously not up on all the nuances and intricacies of Sportsball.
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