ashbury

Mid-March is the time for me (sadly, not this year). By then the minor league schedule has started, and you can geek out all afternoon in addition to the morning activities JB outlined. Two, perhaps three, games are running simultaneously, and those back fields are arranged so you can pivot from one to another with minimal effort, for instance to watch key prospects bat in both games. Even better is when one of the major-leaguers gets left behind for extra work, when the big squad is off to a road game - the games are umpired but the ground rules are uber-loose, and so you might see a veteran bat leadoff every inning against a succession of the other team's AA hopefuls - or an inning may end abruptly with two outs and runners in scoring position as the pitcher reaches a pitch count, no one wanting to bother warming up a reliever prematurely to finish the inning. You can get right up close, for the best photos you are capable of taking. I prefer that environment most days, even on the days the big club isn't on the road.

The breaking pitches to Buxton that I remember, I want to be laid off, not swung at.

I suspect you're going to be equally wowed by every contract extension of a not-yet-FA-eligible young player you read about, by any team, then. The reason $7M for a good season will be a great deal is that the contract blends also all the risk of not-great outcomes into the price. You're looking at the upside but not the downside. Which... is fine for our team to do. They, being the ones who sign a few dozen player contracts every year, are better placed to absorb the risk, than the player who has only one life to live and values the certainty. Kepler's now set for life - the tradeoff being that he could have bet on himself and possibly gotten more, but just as possibly ended up with almost nothing if the worst were to happen. So, good deal for both sides - just like life insurance is a good deal for those at certain times in their lives - the individual has the risk smoothed out, the big company comes out ahead on average. But way short of "incredible," the term you chose, for the team.

You've aged a lot in recent weeks.

I'm not sure if the story was actually buried. I believe that Kodiak brown bear received some MVP votes the following November in recognition of his contribution to the team. We've collectively just pushed Clete out of our memory.

It was of course Seth who brought up FG, in the first reply. While well-intentioned, and casts the new contract in a favorable light, I think it is a serious misuse of the notion of dollars-per-WAR. And not for the reasons already brought up. I wouldn't quibble about the exact value per win - you'll find differing values depending on which FG article you look at and which years were looked at, and whether the methodology was forward-looking or backward-looking, among other things. The bigger problem is that the number pertains to free agents. The Collective Bargaining Agreement is structured a certain way. As it has evolved, the premium paid to free agents amounts to the Stupidity Tax you pay for not having developed your own, young, cheap talent, for whatever spot on the roster you have decided is below par. Every team has to pay this Stupidity Tax now and then (so I use the word Stupidity as mildly humorous); on the other hand, no team is now willing to pay also the Luxury Tax that comes on top of paying the Stupidity Tax for every player on the roster. All teams are somewhere between the extremes. Max Kepler was not a free agent. Full stop. Using the free agent Stupidity Tax, as a benchmark, is what one boss of mine used to call "interesting, but not relevant." The CBA makes it so that good players are vastly underpaid their first several years, and maybe marginally underpaid for the next several as well. Your (John's) charts demonstrate this quite well. Any contract extension that is reached during these years of a player's career is going to be shaped partly by the years remaining under team control, partly by the years of free agency being bought out, and partly by the security it gives both player and team. EVERY such contract is going to look good, compared to paying the Stupidity Tax. That doesn't mean an individual contract is good, by itself. Free agency is the wrong benchmark to use. Max Kepler wasn't a free agent. (Yes, that bears repeating.) What difference does it make? None, really, to us fans. But if our front office is congratulating themselves to the degree that Seth suggested, saying that the contract is a steal? Then it's a problem. If I were in Dave St Peter's or Jim Pohlad's position, I'd be very concerned about their acumen and would walk into their champagne party to tell them so. Anyone could load up on players with contract extensions like this, and still not have a very good, or particularly cost-effective, team for competing to make the post-season. I'm sure FalVine are not actually breaking open a bottle of the bubbly this week. Max is entitled to - he's now set for life, as he deserves to be in this economy. Like any long-term contract, Kepler's has enough uncertainty that it could turn out to be a steal for the team, or could turn out to be a bust - either outcome won't in retrospect make this any other than what it seems to be, a contract that's about market-correct. If someone with a sharper business eye than mine, or has better forecasting tools, thinks it's team-friendly, it's got to be only by a smidgen. Sprinkle IMO everywhere in the above, to taste.

Great article, and in return I offer mere quibbles: - Max's baseball experience in Germany is often mischaracterized like that. There is a small but strong American influence there, and he played as a young child, and attended the best baseball academy in that country. Maybe the instruction wasn't quite as good as he'd have gotten at the best places here. But it's far from him having been discovered on a Pacific atoll throwing coconuts into the ocean to conk distant dolphins, and having a tourist show him a baseball and ask, "y'ever seen one a these?" - Age 27 is about when a player had better already have established what he's going to establish, and not hope for further upswing. That's about the point where further learning and experience starts to collide with Father Time eroding the physical gifts. - This off-season free agent market has been a wakeup call for players in their thirties, and additionally with the CBA coming up for renegotiation it's really unclear what the market for Max will be when the time comes. Yes, he'll find employment if he's still capable, but it may turn out in retrospect that players in his age cohort had better have made the vast majority of their lifetime earnings during the period this new contract covers. The times, they are a-changing.

The Sophomore Jinx was a common trope when I was growing up, and back then we didn't know to look for signs like a high BABIP that might not be sustainable. Nowadays we spot these things in advance, and guys like Danny Santana don't catch us by surprise as often. This is what has people looking skeptically at Cave this year - though he might still defy this sign (his bat is better than Santana's). Think about how good rookie seasons occur. If a young guy does poorly in April, he may get sent down to AAA before his rookie status is expired, rather than let him see whether the breaks might even out for him over the course of the full season. They also don't suffer the nagging injuries that can torpedo a season. Only the guys doing well stay up long enough to qualify for Rookie of the Year discussion. So there's a bit of a statistical bias built in, where there's more to lose than to gain in the following season, if luck happens to even out in the other direction. Tampa's relatively unheralded Joey Wendle got RoY votes, and his BABIP was .353 - guess who I'd put money on suffering some kind of mild Sophomore Jinx? I don't have the database chops to do it, but I bet if you went back to the era before sabrmetrics took hold, you could take the guys with good rookie seasons and find a strong (negative) correlation between BABIP and how well they did the next season. The same study done on more modern players might not show as strong a correlation because front offices are paying attention to that, putting a different kind of bias into the data. Anyway. Jake Cave. Yeah.

Nice tidbits - his close tie to Polanco was something I don't recall seeing. Also, did you know his parents dance ballet? (yessssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss)

“We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it and stop there lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove lid again and that is well, but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore.” -- Mark Twin [sic]

That's a whatever-is-the-opposite-of-scorching Tepid Take, man!

I too am hoping for an under-the-radar pick at #1. I mean, how strong a minor league system would you have, if Royce Lewis is ranked #21 or lower?

Um, isn't that somewhat the exact definition of what a good change is?

If he'd spend more time in the weightroom and less in the darkroom he might have a better chance for success. / yes, I am old - darkrooms? Also, in case anyone would be misled:

There's an opt-out for the player about a week before Spring Training ends, so it puts some tiny bit of pressure on the team to give him at least some solid hope, if not add him to the 40-man right then. I expect a good FO to deal with pressure, particularly when self-imposed pressure. But, still, it's not just like every AAA signing.

Someone posted a tidbit about Kyle Gibson losing a lot of weight due to a bacterial infection, shortly after the signing, and I couldn't help wondering about that connection, if true.

I wouldn't say that. His metaphor really was that poor, the more I think about it.

I wander how many more of these puns we will see.

Yeah, if he's going to use that metaphor, my response is that maybe it's time to stop messing around with fingers and just pay for the heavy duty crowbar that's for sale, to pop that sucker wide open.

Yeah, the second mound visit followed by the tapping of a left or right wrist is kabuki theater whose time has passed. "Which wrist will he motion toward, oh which wrist will he motion toward... oh wait, there's a lefty cleanup hitter in the on-deck circle, maybe I can guess."

Welcome! Now don't be a stranger.

This seems indirect. Is it a comment you'd apply to every prospect, since there's no such thing as a sure thing and yet lots of us attach our hopes? Or, do you have specific concerns about Duran, going as far as likening him to a dead dog? If the latter, would you elaborate?

An investigation probably will reveal that Thad Levine leaked the story to the press in order to get his boss fired, so that he can swoop in and take over. I never take this kind of stuff marked Satire seriously anyway.

The marketing guy who decided to do this is no doubt long-dead. But he sits now at the Right Hand of God.