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ashbury

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Everything posted by ashbury

  1. ashbury
    This for me is key. One of FalVine basically threw the one-year guys under the bus, in explaining the disappointing season - if they feel the clubhouse chemistry was impacted by guys who were playing only for themselves (the rationale given), how are Kimbrel's or Keuchel's personalities different? If anything, I see their personalities as basically similar to those signed last year.
  2. ashbury
    What tribute or sacrifice is required, to avert this fate? Would Tyler Jay's left arm on a platter suffice? Or does it have to be something still of value?
  3. ashbury
    You should always be wary. OPS is quick-and-dirty. WAR is quick-and-dirty. RBI and ERA and Wins all have extenuating factors. Including defensive wins into WAR tells you something additional, even if it's staticky and sometimes even misleading. You teach your kids to watch their step on ice - you don't tell them not to walk on ice.
  4. ashbury
    I asked only because an old boss of mine used to ask me, "what would you do with that information if you had it?" and I'd be stuck for an answer sometimes.
  5. ashbury
    Suppose the answer were "flipflops". It being a celebration, well after the games were over. How would that affect your view of things?
  6. ashbury
    Last 30 years, playing 80% or more at SS and having WAR of 2.0 or better (basically MLB average SS or above), there are 10 such seasons for the Twins. Bartlett twice(!), Florimon once (and just barely), Gagne three times, Guzman once, Meares twice and now Polanco once. I think you'll agree I set the bar low enough that I didn't miss anybody important. Across the majors there were such 418 seasons by shortstops, out of 900 possible of course. I don't think we got our fair share. Positional weakness for this franchise since Versalles and Cardenas, with only Smalley providing a break in a long stretch of futility.
  7. ashbury
    I thought Brian's story would end up with the cat trapped in the box, sort of like the cat in our apartment would.
  8. ashbury
    Ron Cey retired some time ago.
  9. ashbury
    First post? Welcome!
  10. ashbury
    What more proof of the conspiracy do you need, man?
  11. ashbury
    The good news may be that it's less important to be able to make the distinctions between good and so-so defense, for the same SSS reasons that make the analysis harder: Robbie Grossman in the outfield doesn't get a chance to affect the game's outcome as often as we sometimes think.
  12. ashbury
    Are shifts leaving third base uncovered common in that scenario?
  13. ashbury
    Understanding why they are different (and I offer no guarantee that I do) allows one to judge when and how much to trust the defensive stats we do have. It's not, for instance, all subjective on the defensive side - that's not the core problem.
  14. ashbury
    I concur with all that Spy wrote above, but want to add that defensive stats suffer from an inherent small sample size compared to batting stats. Each plate appearance consists on average of around 4 pitches, these days. Even though only outcomes are recorded, there is a richness in the experience being measured that goes far beyond the basic numbers. How well does the batter lay off bad pitches, how often does he whiff on good pitches - all these micro-results wind up contributing to what we know of as a plate appearance. By comparison, defensive stats suffer the opposite problem. There is less to the data than meets the eye. An awful lot of Total Chances are on plays like cans of corn to the outfield and routine grounders to the infielders. Separating the wheat from the chaff is the first task of the data analysis, and there is an awful lot of chaff. That's IMO why it takes multiple seasons for defensive stats to take on the same meaningfulness of their offensive counterparts.
  15. ashbury
    Traditional scouts don't usually net six-figures either. Are the teams just rolling the dice with them? Sure, in a sense, but they also treat the information with respect and as having value. Baseball doesn't pay much, compared to other industries, for pretty much any except the top-end jobs, for all the reasons you mention. You're setting an arbitrarily high bar there. If the goal is player evaluation, then data mining and analytics being considered on a par with traditional resources sounds pretty good to me.
  16. ashbury
    It's like George Carlin's observation about breaking a crumb in half. You don't have two half-crumbs, they're just two crumbs now, in seeming violation of the laws of physics. Similarly, putting together small sample sizes remain small sample sizes, no matter how long you keep doing it.
  17. ashbury
    And I don't know either, and if I had thoughts of Kubel being my #1 guy for the question posed here (I was just throwing him into the mix among other good candidates), I'm definitely backing off. At this point I'm just contemplating the what-ifs for 2006.
  18. ashbury
    I thought he was considered to have pretty good wheels, but I don't happen to have a pre-ACL Baseball Prospectus on my bookshelf to re-check that. The 2005 Prospectus certainly is, ahem, measured in its description of his defense - "adequate" is often a left-handed compliment. He DH'ed half his games in his September 2004 callup, pre-injury, but that's not unheard of when breaking in a young prospect in September. With his minor league progression, accounting for underperforming at Ft Myers and overperforming at New Britain, and the fact he didn't embarass himself when called up to the majors at age 22, and I don't think it's a stretch to imagine him as an offensive force two years later at age 24, and thereafter.
  19. ashbury
    Moderator's note: While meant in good fun I'm sure, this kind of tangent doesn't belong in the baseball threads.
  20. ashbury
    When we play the Rangers my runners have the green light rounding third every time on a ball hit to the outfield, Castro and Cron and Cruz included. / edit - OK, except for when it's hit to that Gallo guy
  21. ashbury
    And not just that. We're looking back at 2006? Imagine having Kubel in the batting order instead of Tyner/Nevin (our bizarro-world DHs). And his pre-injury wheels in the outfield instead of Rondell (slide him to DH where he belonged). I don't think Kubel is the one guy whose absence stopped a WS march, any more than Liriano. But oh my, that makes two coulda-woulda-shouldas.
  22. ashbury
    Let me toss Jason Kubel's name into the mix as well.
  23. ashbury
    Major League Baseball to rename disabled list as 'injured list' ICYMI.
  24. ashbury
    I don't recognize this song.
  25. ashbury
    Do we ever find out the magnitude of the cash considerations in a trade like this one with the Rangers? Probably it's not as high as $750K, but if it is, and thus matches up with the bonus pool space the Orioles sent, it would be an awesome instance of something resembling arbitrage, or at least the brokering of two transaction partners who don't line up well themselves.
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