ashbury

/ Swiftian satire, this

This is going to make pickoff throws problematic. / I'll see myself out

Ten-tions.

What happens if the World Series game has a delayed start due to rain?

Hired!

Leadership: Some of the items Seth raised tie into it, but I'm thinking of something a little hard to describe - just that "it" quality that you see in a leader and immediately recognize. More than just charisma although that is usually part of it. Even without a job title, he's the guy people always came to. Intelligence: I don't mean book-larnin', of course, but the ability to rapidly synthesize information coming from all angles and turn it into a plan of action in the moment - both big-picture strategy and small-detail tactics. Baseball IQ is probably another term for it, which Molitor was reputed to have in spades and is necessary for the job. Baseball IQ can sometimes be replaced by just tons of experience so that the manager has seen it all before; but even by age 35, some minor league lifers will have seen an awful lot and if they have the intelligence they will have a vast database in their head to work from. Heart: the ability not to get rattled under pressure. This is hard to demonstrate, until the moment comes. So the people deciding whom to hire will have to infer. Humanity: You've got 25 human beings on your active roster, and the decisions you make as manager have to be cold-blooded in terms of what's best for the organization while never losing sight that the players aren't just the numbers on their baseball cards. Toughness: Some players will pose an unsolvable challenge and yet must be dealt with. This overlaps with decisiveness so I won't open a separate bullet item for that. Results: Our new manager doesn't necessarily have to have prior experience in the role, but should have a track record of finding answers.

If I could interview Tom Kelly, the single biggest question I would ask him is to state for the record what this quote of his really is. My recollection is that it was almost the opposite meaning of what is usually attributed: that when evaluating a phenom who starts out hot, you need to give him 1000 PA, to see if you've really got something. Almost certainly he's not advocating to give 1000+ major league PA to every decent prospect so that he can try to figure things out. There aren't enough games in a year for that. Anyway I make no claim to know. Maybe if I go to Spring Training he will be well enough to be there and I will try to corner the poor guy and ask.

Some of the qualities in a good manager probably overlap the qualities in a good psychologist. Are you thinking of a case where this has been an actual problem, where a manager has tried too hard to be like a shrink?

This is self-evident, but also not very useful for armchair-GM planning purposes in 2019. Certainly if a bluebird flies in the window, you graciously accept the good fortune. But the Phillies aren't going to swap us Aaron Nola for Berrios, ditto the Rockies and Kyle Freeland. So, for all practical purposes, Berrios is not "expendable".

Concur. An answer I'd probably like to hear is, "some players need a pat on the back and others need a kick in the butt, and even this can change during the course of a season. I believe I have the ability to tell the difference, so let me tell you about several examples from the last couple of on-field jobs I had..."

If the FO isn't ready to sign off on just about any coach the new manager wants, then they probably picked the wrong guy. (The converse statement might also be true, except that few rookie managers will turn down any opening at the major league level, so they have less leverage throughout the negotiation process.)

Yes. https://www.baseball-reference.com/bio/Germany_born.shtml Oh, and I see what you did there:

What you describe sounds a little like George Springer (.265 and 22). Houston doesn't bat him in the 7 or 8 hole real often. 45 players in MLB this year hit 20 or more homers and batted.265 or better. Of these, all but 5 OPS'ed .800 or better - the laggard among them was Marcell Ozuna at .758 (because he hardly ever doubles). OK, that's unfair, because it counts guys who hit way better than you're asking Kepler to do. So take just the guys between .265 and .285, and with 20 to 27 HR (actually I went to 30 but no one happened to have that combination at 28-30). 18 guys, again all but 5 with .800 OPS or better. I didn't exhaustively check, but spot-checking the lowest OPS guys, I found only Maikel Franco batting (occasionally) 7th. Kepler elevating to .275 while watching a few of those additional balls-in-play go out of the park would be HUGE. If he got there (still a big "if"), he wouldn't sit at 7 or 8 for any team.

Well, sure. Even Ehire has started 5 games at 1B in his career. In a purely backup role, Kepler could be part of the mix at 1B. What I seem to see people saying goes beyond that, that 1B is a desirable role for him. And I disagree with that. If you want him in the batting lineup, you usually will want him playing in the outfield; conversely if he is squeezed out of the starting outfield because of acquisition of significant talent, his bat (at present) probably will not be better than other 1B options you have. Finally if his bat improves from where it is at present to being an asset at 1B, we're back to the first scenario, because you want him in the outfield as a starter. It would be one heck of a team, where a productive Keplerbat* finds itself at 1B on defense. * My Germanic coinage of the day

He gets an RBI* for that, right? * Run Balked In

Did he start late? That had always been my assumption, but I ran across an article about him that said he played a ton of baseball in Germany as a youth, starting at age 6. His mother is an American, so apparently he embraced that side of his heritage. Obviously the level of competition in Germany wouldn't be high, but it's not like someone handed him a baseball bat at age 17 and said, "here, give this a try - no, hold it at the knob end". http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/15206207/max-kepler-big-move-germany-minnesota-twins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Kepler

Defense matters at every position. I appreciate a slick play at 1B as well as the next fan. But there's a reason a lumbering DH-type is played at 1B - it's the best place to hide him. Guys like Kennys Vargas make scoops too. The differential between what Mauer can do on top of that is pretty small. And not every baserunner from a failed scoop turns into a run. And not every un-prevented run turns into a win. You need a whale of a lot of defense at 1B to even move the needle.

Took me 11 to think up the second sentence.

Shirley you can't be serious. Although, he is so good that they named an entire Fort after him.