ashbury

I happened upon this nice leaping stab by Polanco from a few days ago: https://mediadownloads.mlb.com/mlbam/mp4/2018/07/03/2224124283/1530583378940/asset_2500K.mp4 Question: on a ball hit to the left side, does Brian Dozier have anything better to do than make a beeline for second base, on the small chance it's caught and they might try to double off the runner? The runner has to change direction, Dozier could have been close to full speed by that point. Seems like he was napping there.

Nine times out of ten, these 50-50 chances never seem to work out.

And I was also going to add that the reason Littell's on the 40-man is that it's preferable to losing him via Rule-5. He has enough years as a pro. Once you have your 40-man roster set, that's who you have to work with, during the season when little urgencies arise and callups are needed. That's why Polanco got spotty MLB service for a while. I don't believe they think Littell is quite ready, but he's an arm and sometimes an arm has to be called up for a day. This notion that the front office is mismanaging player options is basically incorrect.

6. The ball was hit to left field. I mean, sure, judge each play on its own merits; but the default should be stop at second unless you are very sure. 7. ??? 8. PROFIT! 9. Logan Morrison is very, very, very slow.

Nice to see my Adopt-A-Prospect son, Ben Rortvedt, continue to get some love in these rankings. I don't think he's established a floor as a major league backup quite yet, but in another season if he's promoted to AA and puts up these relatively modest numbers on offense then he'll have himself a career of sorts. And his ceiling remains "good starting catcher". As Tom alluded above, once Ben can legally buy himself a whiskey he'll start to develop his man muscles. I mean, that's how cause-and-effect works, right?

"What trick is there to talking? Any fool can do it." I'll shut up now.

If Kirilloff could be the centerpiece, as this article started off having me thinking was the suggestion, I'd be all for it. Corner outfielders are valuable but not critical to a team's plans. And this team's rosters have been sclerotic for several years because of an overabundance of corner types - "and if that doesn't work out, he can always DH". You can only have one DH per game, and the roster gets clogged. We saw it in The Ryan Doumit Era, we still see it now. Up-the-middle prospects are a different story, and starting pitching in particular is the coin of the realm. And I'll keep repeating, IMO a stud catcher is a luxury for only the richest or most complete teams. The best catcher in the world doesn't play every game, and if he's that good then you'll want to DH him for his days off, and then you can't house a full-time DH, and pretty soon you're juggling the 25-man roster, with 3 catchers as the end-game the manager wants to reach. A stud catcher is great, but needs to be the final piece to the puzzle, such that the rest of your roster is good enough that he can be benched on his days off - and a part-timer being paid full-time wages is, as I said, a luxury.

Well, never mind. MLBTR explains that his stint on the DL came at an inconvenient time and the rules apparently don't allow waiving, only re-add to the 40-man, or release. Or, trade? Maybe you can't trade someone on the DL. I think someone here even explained this recently. I have an excellent memory - but it's short.

Why was releasing and re-signing Jorge preferable to waiving him once he's off the 40-man? Seems like the latter limits the chance of his departing, since the other team would have to have a 40-man spot and be willing to use it (even if only temporarily). Or, if they didn't care either way, why re-sign?

I second that, wholeheartedly. Sunday I blogged* about watching Yankees prospect Justus Sheffield carve through Pawtucket's lineup like a hot knife through butter, getting guys out with his heater and not necessarily with his off-speed stuff. He weakened in the fifth and was out of the game after one out in the sixth. His pitching line that game looks good but unremarkable. But man, a coaching staff can do something with talent like that - work on pacing himself just a little more, work on building up endurance instead, work on special tactics for when he's tiring, and if all else fails, you may have a stud reliever at very worst. But, if a guy can't get guys out in the first inning? What can you do with him? * waxed eloquent, some will say, others will say droned on and on, still others will say tl'dnr

I can still smell 'em. They were that potent.

Haven't seen that movie either, sorry.

That would have been the correct answer had she asked, "Anyone seen 'Ant-Man OR the Wasp' yet?", wouldn't it?

Pretty soon, you'll have every man, woman, and child with an internet connection in America posting on Twins Daily. Plus a billion Chinese folks, I suppose. What are you trying to do, give your moderators a heart attack?

I was being a little generous for discussion purposes but basically agree. We could keep scratching around for other reasons against, for instance it being an intra-division trade, too.

Cleveland. Bieber's too MLB-ready and probably too good, to be had for someone's super-sub infielder. His stock has surely risen this year. It could be the starting point for a discussion, if the Twins are willing to include a good pitching prospect, and the Indians throw in a so-so position player prospect to re-balance the deal. But then the Twins probably say no.

Aside from my inability to distinguish a slider from a curve from a straight change, from the baselines, the Twins are missing a trick by not signing me up as their pitching bird-dog for New England. If we trade someone like Rodney for any of these guys this month, I'll either end up eating my words, or saying I Told You So.

Red Sox relief prospect Ty Buttrey came up in one of the discussions about trade talks. As luck would have it, I could drop Mrs Ash at Logan Airport today and head down I-95 in time for the last game in Pawtucket before their All-Star Break. So I did. The pretext is scouting a trade candidate, but of course I am not a scout. I'll tell you what I saw, and offer some opinions, and hopefully keep the two straight, one from another. Even better luck: the Yankees AAA affiliate in Scranton/Wilkes-Barre was the opponent, and their #2 prospect, Justus Sheffield, was the starting pitcher. And a ranked prospect also closed the game for them. So there's more to tell. The PawSox starter, Fernando Rodriguez, doesn't show up in MLB.com's top-30 for the Red Sox. The righthander's fastball touches 92, but his out-pitch seems to be offspeed. My seat was not located anywhere I can even pretend to tell you whether any of the pitchers use a curve, slider, straight change, or something exotic. From my angle down the first-base line, I could pretty easily tell when something off-speed was being delivered by Rodriguez (with the radar display to confirm or disprove my guess), but of course the batter has a tougher challenge. It was my impression he was getting away with deception, which possibly stops working so well at the major league level. If someone were to tell me we were thinking of using one of our trade chips to acquire him, I'd be disappointed. Then again, perhaps I wasn't seeing him at his best: he seemed to be working annoyingly slowly, and then had to come out of the game barely into the third inning. I haven't looked for an announced reason, but a blister would be my guess. Anyway he gave up a run in the second inning on a homer. He struck out 5 in just 2.1 innings, which sounds nice, but as I said, I'm skeptical. Sheffield, by contrast, was solidly in command for the first four innings or so. His fastball sat consistently at 94 and it was his out pitch, something good to see. If this lefty's rapid pace was any indication, he pitched with confidence. I was less able to guess his pitches quickly as they came out of his hand. The first hit he gave up, in the fourth, was just a squibber toward the third baseman who didn't even bother to attempt a throw. However, Sheffield weakened in the fifth, but managed to wriggle out of two-baserunner trouble with some apparently nasty stuff to get the last two batters out. But it got worse for him in the sixth - I noticed his fastball was around 91 - and a visit to the mound didn't seem to do any wonders, although the fastball ticked back up to 93. He was gone after another batter or two reached base and a run scored. His pitch count by that point had ballooned to 89, whereas it had stood at only 42 after 3 full innings. His pitching line was a fairly pedestrian 5.1 innings with 5 hits plus two walks and one run, earned. But he struck out 7 in that time, and I'm here to tell you, he looks like the real deal to me. Those first 4 or 5 innings indicate to me that there's something to work with if he's called up. He's high ranked, and there's no way I would expect to pry him loose from the Yankees with any conceivable deadline deal, which someone on the forums here floated recently. Back to the PawSox. 26th ranked Williams Jerez came on in relief of Rodriguez. He's a multi-innings left-handed reliever this season and served in that long-relief capacity of necessity today. He finished that third inning and went two more, surrendering a two-run blast in the top of the fifth. His fastball sits at 96 and he struck out five, so he's got a live arm and overall I was impressed enough to believe the ranking (which is a matter of taste, when it comes to relievers). He's 26 years old so his time is now, if ever. Righty Kyle Martin pitched the next two innings for Pawtucket. His 94-MPH fastball helped account for 4 Ks to surround a hit and a walk. He's not ranked, where I looked, although I thought he had good swing-and-miss stuff. But he's 27 and got his cup of coffee last July - apparently he's organizational depth at this point. Robby Scott, 28 years old, pitched the eighth. He was with the big club all last year, but I don't know his story in 2018 and he is at AAA. With only a 90 MPH heater, he's a sidearming lefty junkballer in today's world. He did more than OK today, striking out all three of the batters he faced, twice swinging, once looking, but my impression today before looking him up was smoke and mirrors in that inning. Ty Buttrey took over in the ninth, to keep the deficit to only 1 run, and I thought he lived up to his billing. His fastball clocked 97. The right-hander's got a somewhat high leg kick, which worried me that it might indicate control trouble, but he likewise retired all three batters faced - although only one was a strikeout, neither ball put in play was much trouble - requiring merely an efficient 8 pitches. OK, I'm out of chronological order now, because the Yankees RailRiders were offering up relievers too, today. 28-year old righty Tommy Kahnle took over from Sheffield in the sixth, and retired the two batters he faced to escape further damage. I didn't think to mark down his fastball speed - he's Tommy Kahnle. They brought in another portsider in Stephen Tarpley to pitch the seventh and eighth. He had a 93 MPH fastball and his off-speed stuff seemed to be effective. He did give up a run, which he might be kicking himself over - after a leadoff double, followed by a sac bunt (questionable strategy to me, behind by 2 runs, but it worked out), Tarpley seemingly foiled the strategy by striking out the next batter. But then while working toward the eventual third out, he uncorked a wild pitch, and then failed to hustle to the plate to receive any throw that the catcher, who had retrieved the ball, might have wanted to make. Don't they go over this in spring training (said, every fan ever )? The ninth inning was handled by 15th-ranked Cody Carroll. Like his Sox counterpart, I felt he lived up to his billing, with a fastball in the 96-97 range. The righty started off the inning with a bit of chin-music to PawSox catcher Dan Butler, and as a consequence or not, the home team went down meekly, 1-2-3. As an aside, they play baseball differently in the minors. No pinch hitter by Pawtucket, for any of their number 7-8-9 batters coming up with a 3-2 deficit to overcome in the ninth. I have seen this annoying strategic non-feature and others, over the years. Minor league ball is strictly about developing prospects, not about winning individual games. So, you haven't heard me say much yet about the position players. Frankly, not much jumped out at me, for good or for ill. Ivan DeJesus Jr at second base for Pawtucket made a poor attempt at a grounder up the middle. It was scored a hit, and rightly so because even if he had come up with it, it would have required a stellar throw to nip the runner, if possible. But he flubbed it so that the question never came up. For Scranton/WB, right fielder Billy McKinney made a nice diving catch. The Yankees farmhands had only 5 hits in total, with Tyler Austin accounting for 2 of them. Six Sox batters shared the hit total evenly. As previously alluded to, homers accounted for all three Yankee runs, the two-run shot being by Austin and the solo job by Bruce Caldwell. Both of these guys are 26 and neither of them shows up in the MLB rankings for the Yanks. One last note. Lots of people criticize McCoy Stadium, but I like the place. It's an older park, and I suppose would be uncomfortable in the rare cases they sell out, but today's attendance of 5639 was hardly bursting at the seams and concession stands were convenient and spacious and well-staffed, and I enjoyed a craft brew and a good sausage-and-peppers-and-onions on a roll, and it was a beautiful sunny 84-degree day and the grandstand roof offered shade if you wanted it, so what's not to like? Well, too many Yankee fans, but that was just for this series. Oh, and I want to tell you, instead of the usual mascot race between innings, they had an eyeball race. It's sponsored by a local vision clinic, and you get to watch a green, blue, and brown eye race from first base to third. A wonderfully weird spin on a classic. So that was my afternoon. Was yours as good?

Forgotten what a 2-game winning streak feels like? Good, isn't it? I keed, I keed...

Probably we are not far from an extended WPA which does. We now have percentages reflecting the chance of any given fly ball being caught. Take the WPA that would have been added, if that fly ball had been a leadoff homer, apply the percentage chance as a multiplier (subtracted from 100%), and that's the defensive WPA for that play. We Can Rebuild It. We Have The Technology.

I don't feel like Molitor is a bad manager, but I do agree that he seems to be single-minded about making lineup decisions as though it's September in a pennant chase, even when it's April and May, and even when the course of the season by June or July tells us that post-season contention is not possible. Starting Bobby Wilson is evidence of that - even if you disagree with him as to whether Wilson gives the team a better chance to win this particular day's game than Garver or Astudillo, his choice gives a view of Molitor's relative weighting of today versus tomorrow and beyond. With his multi-year contract, you would think he wouldn't need assurance that the W-L record going forward from here won't be held against him as evidence he didn't try. But I think his boss, Levine, needs to tell him in clear terms how he'll be judged for the rest of the season, namely for teaching and for player evaluation, and let Molitor then manage accordingly. I wouldn't have thought this would even need to be debated, but apparently it is. I think I've seen it said that one of Molitor's positive attributes is that he's humble, but maybe the flip side of that is a little bit of insecurity. Odd, if so, for a Hall of Famer, but people are who they are. It's conceivable that a "never good enough" attitude drove him to his success, yet may hold him back here.

I always look skeptically at PCL numbers. OPS in the .800 range two out of three years there, and another above .900, doesn't inspire me too much. Fresno's not at high altitude, but his road numbers the past two seasons look inflated. He won't get the same helium in major league parks. But, perhaps, we have found our next Robbie Grossman anyway. A Houston farmhand who walks a fair bit and plays only corner outfield. I can't wait. Don't mistake these views for outrage. Teams sign minor leaguers all the time. It's no biggie.

I was young once, too.

Oh, sure, he had that gaudy .143 batting average with the Cubs. But, with the Twins luck, he'd probably go into a slump as soon as they acquired him.