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ashbury

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Everything posted by ashbury

  1. ashbury
    My sons are half your age - not especially Boston fans either - and I would be disappointed in them if they didn't react the same way.
  2. ashbury
    Really good statistical nugget to remember. It caught me by surprise. For a moment I thought the assertion about "hitters" could be reconciled against "PA" - in the sense that LH PA might be more valued by manangers and maybe a statistical bias arises so that both statements could be true. I used b-r's Stathead tool to count the number of major league batters with at least 1 PA in 2025. There were 368 right-handers, 235 left-handers, and 70 switch-hitters, for a total of 673 (confirmed by Stathead if I remove the handedness qualifier, so at least these numbers add up). How to count the 70 L/R guys? Count them twice and you have 438/773 and 305/773, and we're back to 56% righties. Leave the switch hitters out entirely and it's 368/603 and 235/603 and it's 61% righties. I can't see a way to come up with 75% hitters batting right-handed. I suppose "hitters in today's game" could include the AAAA types who can't quite make the grade, or even the guys in the lower minors, and perhaps across the pro game the count of players could come out that way. Could. Or maybe the count comes from including pitchers (Chafin for instance is listed as batting right) as players, in a raw count of bodies. Maybe. But PA are the better way to understand how the game operates anyway. Well played, Chief.
  3. ashbury
    Have no fear - Ding Dong Kreidler to the rescue!
  4. ashbury
    Not only that, but the pitch count would support him going deeper into the ballgame. Later in spring when the limits go higher, if this holds up if could be significant. (And might keep Topa out of the game.)
  5. ashbury
    The arm falling off doesn't explain the visibly bad footwork and awkward reaches Kirilloff displayed shortly before having to retire.
  6. ashbury
    He was batting .000 in 7 plate appearances before injuring the hamstring. It would take some kind of miracle now for him to make the 26-man roster for Opening Day, and unless there are no worthy RoY candidates they won't award it for a partial season by Jenkins. Barring a Hurricane Hazle* kind of debut, I don't see the award going to him. ERod has a better chance of going north in April and if he starts out hot to garner attention and completes a good campaign, he could be the Twins' hope. *Jack Sanford won RoY in 1957 anyway
  7. ashbury
    This preface would be more relevant if he actually hit better when DHing, but in 2024 his OPS as a DH was .674 while as a LF it was .896(!). The trend was similar in 2025, .702 vs .760. Not that I believe very much in slicing and dicing numbers this way - divide data in a million ways on a computer and you'll eventually turn up something that is probably stupid such as a propensity to hit better on Tuesdays. But if a correlation is offered, there ought to be at least some evidence provided. It's really wearying to feel the need to fact-check everything in certain writers' bodies of work.
  8. ashbury
    Yes, and just to be clear, I am not laughing at the player, but at the projection.
  9. ashbury
    We still have one of those. How about him being the new Alex Meyer or Kohl Stewart?
  10. ashbury
    I'd be simply repeating myself to address your valid concerns - just go back and look at my post regarding Klemens on the first page of this thread.
  11. ashbury
    You need to put "catcher" in quote marks for at least a couple of those guys.....
  12. ashbury
    I like both sides of this discussion. To buttress Arby's point I was about to bring up Pete Rose, who rather bravely took on the 3B role with almost zero prior experience there and it was instrumental in the Big Red Machine finally breaking through for a WS win in 1975, But the upshot of moving Pete from LF was to replace not-ready-for-primetime (and miscast at 3B) Dan Driessen in the lineup with George Foster. Like you say, the move has to be for a bigger purpose than optimizing some Terry Crowley / John Vukovich type's usage. If Clemens has a breakthrough 5+ WAR season at age 30 I'll happily eat those words, of course.
  13. ashbury
    Outman and Roden, who is also playing himself into coming north, lead the team with 5 RBIs apiece. Enjoy the spring.
  14. ashbury
    By early March, it would seem that contenders might as well be quoted as saying they don't want to pay the asking price for someone with chronic shoulder and knee inflammations..
  15. ashbury
    If Cody Klemens is in the starting lineup then it's because a right-hander is pitching, and in that case if Keaschall is the preferred option in left then something has gone terribly wrong with the Left Hand Corner Outfield Pipeline™. If Luke's bat has proven to be strong, even against the righties*, then I play a good-hitting outfielder and sit Klemens - and then I really question the latter's role on the roster even as a backup (but then I already do). * In 2025 MLB action Keaschall showed a remarkable reverse split, which I don't take to be sustainable, but the good results against RHP seem more sustainable than the terrible ones against LHP. Who knows, though.
  16. ashbury
    Your post prompted me to look at his b-r.com page, which shows a 2026 projection. What are the odds Randy at age 31 can put up 29 full innings in the majors with a 4.03 ERA? LOL.
  17. ashbury
    "Use the Force, Royce. Wait, no, no, not on yourself! Welp, that's a stint on the 60-day IL - bilateral self-destruction." That's all I got; RandBalls Stu already used the Bad Feeling line.
  18. ashbury
    Did Prielipp just punch his ticket to St Paul with today's outing?
  19. ashbury
    Unless he brings down the strikeouts, his high BABIP this spring is going to come back down and he'll be the same old Wagaman as before.
  20. ashbury
    Heh. They've ended games in ties for a while, but "let's stop, we're out of pitchers needing any work" is the line you draw? Go to the back fields sometime and watch the games. When a major leaguer stays behind on a day his teammates are on the road, and plays against the AA guys, and leads off every inning followed by a courtesy runner if he gets on - will that prompt you to storm out and demand* a refund? 😁 * You won't be given a refund since they do not charge to watch games on the back fields. Life is good in Ft. Myers.
  21. ashbury
    Hilarious satire. We're all going to look back on this with laughter during the World Series Championship parade.
  22. ashbury
    Prediction is hard, especially where it comes to the future.
  23. ashbury
    Your fate is now tied to his. I won't be able to read a headline like "Banda Coughs Up Another Late-Inning Lead" without thinking of you. I wonder if that autographed ball you're receiving is the one where Royce sprained his index finger signing it.
  24. ashbury
    A dinger every 7.9 AB when the game was already pretty much decided. One every 18.7 when the score was within 4. That's basically the difference between being a 30-HR guy if he ever got 600 AB, and a 40-HR guy. Not that 30 is bad, but combined with a low BA it ain't all that, either. And when the game's not close, that 7.9 rate will fool us into thinking he's a 75-HR guy if we just give him the chance. (And no, not every batter has splits of that magnitude. Byron Buxton had a good 2025, and when the game was within 4 runs he homered every 13.67 AB, while when the lead for either team was 5 or greater, his homer rate was every 16 AB - the opposite direction of Wallner. I'm not going to invest more time looking at other individuals, but across the majors those rates are 29.4 and 26.8 respectively - not especially different, one from the other.) His ordinary splits with men on base look reasonable, but it could be that they're inflated by the meaningless situations. I don't know where to find further splits, of results with men on base versus bases empty, divided into the size of the lead when it happened. The one useful split b-r.com provides to go to this extra level, is what they term "late & close". In those very limited situations (and I don't know how they're defined), Wallner hit 1 HR in 33 AB, for a rather high ratio of, well, 33. It's dangerous to slice and dice things into small samples, but if those small samples are congruent with what looks like an overall trend, I'm more inclined to consider them. My working hypothesis is that Wallner is far more susceptible than most batters, to falling prey to the pitcher's strategy for the game situation. Which reduces his value far below what the raw numbers would suggest. I can't recall a player with such extreme splits in this regard - Joey Gallo maybe, although his unfavorable splits were of a different nature. I want, want, want the coaches to help Wallner figure this out.
  25. ashbury
    Oh sure, tout the gaudy seasonal batting average. But it was pumped up by a BA of .255 in the plate appearances when the score was already at least 5 ahead or behind. In all other situations when it mattered he batted .192.
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