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ashbury

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Everything posted by ashbury

  1. ashbury
    I don't like the 3-batter minimum. Too arbitrary, and too many unintended consequences would arise. Don't take more strategy out of the game, nor add incentives for subterfuge ("hey Meat, tell the ump, your shoulder hurts"). The complaint isn't that it's a different pitcher, but that the pitching change takes time. So, address that. Make the relief pitcher come to the dugout on his own time (maybe some logistics need to be worked out, given where bullpens sit in some ballparks), so that it's a short stroll from dugout to mound. Soccer and basketball require substitutes to wait at a designated spot, after all. And then when he takes the mound, he just starts pitching - he spent all that time warming up, right? The guy he replaced didn't throw warmup pitches between batters, the new guy shouldn't either. Warmup patterns in the bullpen may need to change, but they'll figure it out.
  2. ashbury
    I asked Ron Gant. He was less sanguine about this principle.
  3. ashbury
    Yogi Berra said that all pitchers are liars or crybabies, so since Kimbrel's clearly not a crybaby I'm going to choose to disregard his assurances.
  4. ashbury
    Our family had a running joke about Hal Reniff. Because, my brother and I seemed to always get his card one year, and we palmed them off on our little sister, probably age 5, who was happy to add to her collection. My brother gave her a framed Hal Reniff for her 40th birthday or thereabout. Elston Howard probably was about the first major card I remember getting. The back of a cereal box. Golden age.
  5. ashbury
    Who do you believe is doing that?
  6. ashbury
    GCL was in 2017, but yes his 2018 was a tale of two halves: April 9 to June 23: 4.43 ERA, .804 OPS built on .352 BABIP June 29 to August 29: 2.36 ERA, .671 OPS built on .287 BABIP If Batting Average on Balls In Play is taken as one measure of "luck" during a season, then maybe his first half wasn't quite as rough as the results would suggest. A more normal .300 BABIP would put his OPS closer to .700 and his ERA somewhere in the mid-3's, as a rough guess. (I don't know whether minor league BABIP has the same rules of thumb as for the majors.) OTOH as I review the game log, his manager/coach did pull him from the rotation briefly, for a couple of relief outings, around where his seasonal turnaround occurred, so quite possibly they did tinker with something. Looking at stats in the minors is a pretty crude tool.
  7. ashbury
    That weird 'W' or vulture stance before he goes into the set position is to help some balky body part not flare up, if I remember correctly. I always have viewed him as someone who will decline quickly or maybe catastrophically. Obviously it hasn't happened yet, but I'm in favor of a multi-year contract only if the team is willing to go over-budget on a future year's payroll to replace him if need be. And we all know what the odds of that would be. I pass.
  8. ashbury
    CB Bucknor could also have his moments. I think this was him ringing up Mauer for no earthly reason:
  9. ashbury
    In case of injury or bad performance by one of the position players.... you still have to fill the DH slot every game. I'd prefer that batter to have all his value tied up in his bat, than leave some glove value "on the table" every game. Of course that bat needs to be appreciably better than that of the more well-rounded player he replaces - say projected OPS .100 higher - or else I'm with you. And those are not common. Nelson Cruz is a risk in that regard, due to age. So if he contracts Logan Morrison Disease, I'm also with you, on pulling the plug somehow. If our anticipated DH was Ryan Doumit or Robbie Grossman or (*shudder*) Jason Tyner, then different story, as well.
  10. ashbury
    It isn't realistic to want the front office to sign someone with a better track record than what they already have? That's a pretty easy grading curve.
  11. ashbury
    Who?
  12. ashbury
    I thought maybe you were going for a Monty Python Spanish Inquisition take - "the two... no, let me start again, the THREE worst things...".
  13. ashbury
    No, I understood your meaning, which is why I threw in the "in any sense", though maybe that was too cryptic. But a bad year at 19 or 18 can send a prospect shooting downward in the prospect ranks too. Moreover, say Baddoo has a bad year at 20 and drops out of sight in anybody's rankings. He repeats high-A at 21, kicks butt, gets promoted to AA in July and kicks butt there too, and guess what? At 22, he's back on the prospect rankings, possibly higher in the rankings since he's then closer to MLB-ready. A bad 2019 would be, well, bad of course. I just thought the terminology was a little dire at this age.
  14. ashbury
    I'm pretty proud of my 40-35 forecast. Nailed it.
  15. ashbury
    Make or break year, in any sense, at age 20? Probably not.
  16. ashbury
    Reading TwinsDaily is part of the worst things in American life?
  17. ashbury
    It's a little frustrating to have all these 4th OF candidates on the 40-man, because they are all essentially 3-tool players but the tools differ from one guy to the next. Individually they each are useful players, and I'm not going to go into detail here about the exact tools as I see them, but ultimately we are clogging our precious roster slots on too many guys with too little upside and too much similarity. If, say, Chase DeJong turns out to be a good pitcher and we lose him because we couldn't decide which 3-tool outfielders to commit to (as spare parts, or as long shots to develop a fourth tool), I'm going to be pretty disappointed. Pick the one you think least of and trade him for the best lottery ticket you can get who is years away from 40-man decisions, or let the market pick the best in terms of what someone is willing to offer (on the theory that the rest are pretty close to as good anyway). But, pick! We really need one fewer.
  18. ashbury
    Those powder blue unis were polarizing, but I didn't arrive in the Twin Cities until the 1970s so that look feels like "home in Minnesota" to me, as they bring back pleasant memories even if the team was often bad. Glad to see you ranked them high.
  19. ashbury
    A student of history - I like it! The Rams having started in Cleveland.
  20. ashbury
    I was just winging it with that comment, but when I went back to look, Wilin led or tied the league in PB three years running, 2012-14. We snared the right Rosarios back then, though we let Randy go. It appears that though he might have felt Ready, Wilin just wasn't Able.
  21. ashbury
    That's a fun annual project, Seth. I don't take these post-season exhibition games too seriously, since the players never do, so I expect the defenses to take it easy and the offenses will roll up some yardage. Patriots 40-35 or something like that.
  22. ashbury
    Very fair take. Passed balls before games even start in Spring Training are less of a concern.
  23. ashbury
    Both of you send me five bucks in escrow now, and when you get this bet framed properly and a winner is determined, I'll send the proceeds real soon thereafter. Probably.
  24. ashbury
    You know, it's funny, I actually had typed a few words about game-to-game variability, and then took them out because the thread is about Romero and this additional insight applies to any pitcher. So I weaseled with "*a* chief obstacle" and kept my post briefer. But you're right, construction of your staff needs to take into account that "no plan of battle survives first contact with the enemy." The fact that some innings are going to be higher-leverage than others, and you don't know in advance which ones they are, is also a confounding factor. Covering all the innings with quality pitching is hard. And that's why I am hesitant to lean too far in the direction away from quantity.
  25. ashbury
    Not to mention, his "nice" numbers in the majors were inflated by good home stats in Colorado and an OPS in the .600s on the road. He has really low odds of being called up for any reason in 2019.
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