ashbury

I never metaphor I didn't like.

I seem to recall reading that the Players' Association had set up a mock spring training camp for unsigned players, so as to give them reasonably professional facilities to get into playing shape. It wouldn't be the same, but actual game play is arguably not a crucial aspect of spring training. I don't know whether Lynn is one who has taken part. Then I don't think we, or anyone, will sign him. *groan*

"Twins outfield prospect Ryan LaMarre tries to keep it simple in a complex game" Prospect? He turns 30 after the season. Picky picky picky. The headline writer should have said "Twins outfield hopeful Ryan LaMarre..."

Then make sure to follow Austin Bizzle.

Two years is probably the most I'd go on him too - maybe an option for a third year based on 170 innings in 2019? Someone needs to offer more than the lowball $10M AAV, but he is unfortunately one of the casualties of the sudden (seeming) analytic turn of events that has dried up the demand in front offices for long contracts to pitchers in their 30s.

I just want to speak up to say that I have taken part in this project for a few years now, and it's been a lot of fun. I'm not a prospect guru or anything, just a Twins fan. Looking after two or three players a year, especially if I manage to pick guys at differing levels of the organization, gives me a good excuse to check up on recent box scores and to see how the farm system is coming along. This is mostly to entertain myself, with a hope that a few readers at least get something out of it. Bringing out my Inner Sportswriter is one aspect of doing it. For different players, I may take different tacks - for instance my log of Aaron Slegers's progress last season included a lot of ripe puns regarding his unusual height, while with my quixotic choice of Austin Bizzle (2017's final draft pick) I indulged in wordplay regarding his unusual name. Others take a more straightforward approach. I've made it to Spring Training once or twice, so the opportunity to snap some action photos came in handy when I got around to adopting a prospect. But there are plenty of photos on the internet, of practically any player out there, to enliven the page you create. I find it fun to read the daily box score, with my adopted player in mind. Most days, there is also a professional writeup of the game (newspapers online, etc), and I can glean nuggets about my player from it. Sometime before the minor league season starts, I should collect and share the various little tools I've bookmarked to make this kind of analysis possible. Basically, the idea is to think of ways to make it fun - and then it really is! Maybe some fellow "adoptive parents" will want to share their thoughts on this project, as well.

The difference between fastballs and breaking pitches becomes more nuanced and elusive to me, not less. Just like all the important issues of the day.

MLBTR is better sourced than my flippant post was.

Mike Trout has no rings to date. Just sayin'.

An extension of the negotiation process, then. The negotiations that lead up to it may be key. And I believe that there is time to come to an agreement once both parties submit their offers to the arbitrator. It's more of a spectrum, than a refusal to negotiate. Being overly risk averse when arbitration approaches, as John Bonnes seemed to be saying was the word on the street, would not be good negotiating tactics. Neither would the other extreme, but that wasn't the topic John brought up.

Reaching arbitration doesn't imply a refusal to negotiate. Indeed it's another form of negotiation, coming after the first rounds didn't reach agreement, assisted by an arbitrator who follows certain rigid rules. Maybe Bonnes will circle back here to amplify a bit on what he meant by "Players’ agents have mocked the Twins perceived unwillingness (or inability) to risk arbitration", and maybe my characterization that they were viewed as "poor" negotiators was going too far; to me it indicated a lack of conviction by the team as to their own numbers, from the POV of those agents.

I should have added: there's the old quip, "don't quit your day job." John Bonnes probably should quit his. I want more of this.

I'm surprised you're surprised. Maybe you are assuming the wording meant it was to their faces - I took it to mean behind their backs but word eventually got to them. There are all kinds of areas in life where poor negotiators get made fun of behind their backs. Starting in middle school, I guess.

We're dealing with fuzzy terms now, but a Best Picture film is unlikely to be not well written, not well directed, not well acted, etc, so at worst it's likely a film worth seeing unless it's in a genre you detest or you have learned it contains triggers or something like that. It's virtually certain to be "good", in fact usually quite good. Winning an Oscar in some category, sure, the other parts of the movie could conceivably be unwatchable. I harken back to when The Sting won Best Picture. I thought it was not that great, and was very surprised, although I don't remember now what would have been a better choice. But, it was good.

Very enlightening. I didn't understand why they had to go to arbitration. Now I do.

Moderator's note: Let's don't turn "do you need an ace" into a protracted steroid discussion.

These nominated movies are all so different that I find it impossible to rank them. Just see Shape of Water and enjoy it for the vision the creators delivered, rather than try to compare.

A market based prediction project using futures-trading for elections has been tried before: https://now.uiowa.edu/2016/09/buying-election If you read the article you'll see it didn't work any better than other methods of prediction.

League-wide, the batting average when the ball is put in play (BABIP) hovers around .300 every year. I suppose a perfect defense would turn everything except a fly ball over the fence into an out, for a BABIP of .000. Even achieving a team-wide BABIP of .200 against you would be stellar beyond belief. Last season's Twins squad had a pretty good defense by most measures. The pitching staff's BABIP was nevertheless .298. So acquiring an Ace who strikes out a lot of guys and doesn't surrender many walks and limits the HR would be worth doing anyway.

Well you've stated the conclusion that to my mind isn't proved, if an increase in runners on base were to turn a lot of high inside pitch homers into low outside pitch groundouts. Two factors in play - number of opportunities (bases empty, men on), and then what the batter does with them. Dozier, as a leadoff hitter, has a career percentage of PA with bases empty higher than MLB average, as might be expected. MLB-wide (2017), SLG tends to go up slightly with men on, but for his career Dozier's goes down. I haven't dug any deeper than that, but it leads me to think that batting leadoff might be about optimal for him, or at least the benefit of batting him lower is less than for other good hitters in the lineup. https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/split.fcgi?id=doziebr01&year=Career&t=b#all_bases https://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/split.cgi?t=b&lg=MLB&year=2017#all_bases

We're getting kind of far from the topic of Jorge Polanco, but I do buy it. Now, I consider myself as analytical as the next Stat-Drunk Computer Nerd*, but I've also confirmed to my own satisfaction the observation made by others that Dozier basically feasts off the high inside fastball. I don't know how to quantify it, but I suspect that Dozier may be more dependent on the opposing battery's choice than any other 25+ HR hitter today. If men are on base, he doesn't seem to get the pitch where he wants to drive it; when the stakes are lower the pitcher may opt to challenge him. I don't value solo HRs overly highly, but they do score a run immediately, and are hard to beat as an outcome from your leadoff hitter. Rickey Henderson was (a bit) similar; his 297 career HR may have harmed his SB numbers a bit, but his teams surely didn't care. I've mellowed out regarding Dozier's spot in the batting order. * Any USENET alumni reading?

I don't think they would do very well. Cuellar, McNally and Dobson have passed away, and according to rumor Palmer can barely reach 84 MPH on his fastball anymore.

Perhaps. But when the total contract values being offered are for less than the prior team was willing to commit to for a single season QO, the length of contract starts to be not relevant to the question of how the market collapsed that much.

It's instructive to look at these instances of signing below QO, but I still wonder whether a grievance filing is in the offing if some of these players continue to get only lowball offers. It's not like the players alone mis-judged the market - the teams who issued the QO apparently were comfortable at that price last fall, and a few months later the market has changed THAT much? I'm not ready to embrace any collusion theories yet, but at the dollar values being bandied about via the rumor mill my antennae are up.

Good article!