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ashbury

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Everything posted by ashbury

  1. ashbury
    Mod note: I'm not sure which pages you mean by "these", but if you mean Twins Daily, then I don't foresee TD mods or admins placing this topic off-limits to other posters in the way you seem to imply. Readers are always entitled to move to the next thread that may interest them more. No different than practically any topic, really. The accusation against Sano is fair game for discussion - post respectfully, don't troll others, don't bicker, don't keep repeating the same points - business as usual here IOW. The Twins Daily Comment Policy is designed in large part for exactly these kinds of discussion.
  2. ashbury
    Why? Because it's not harassing? Or because it's not sexual?
  3. ashbury
    I have a bad memory for specifics, so I just now went back and looked at the first scene we ever saw with Marion. You probably remembered: she smiled, then socked him in the jaw. He replied, "I never meant to hurt you." I can chuckle, while still recognizing the disgust if that were really part of the background info we carried about any of the artists involved.
  4. ashbury
    I like these. Clicking Like wasn't enough.
  5. ashbury
    Concur. Minor league contracts with an invite to Spring Training are minor. Filling a 40-man roster spot means, at minimum, some kind of decision would have to be made in order to change course later. Especially the last 40-man spot. The evident intention with this signing is to include the pitcher on the active roster on Opening Day. It's not a signature signing, but it's not a thoughtless/offhand one either.
  6. ashbury
    Yeah, don't get me wrong, there is nothing the matter with the uncertainty inherent in any of these rankings (prospects or established major leaguers). You're calling it subjectivity, but really it's no different than the descriptive and predictive analytics that any business has to include in their planning, in the face of uncertainty. Baseball front offices used to be behind in these areas but probably have essentially caught up by now. I think I'm just saying that a ranked list makes the most sense when a metric has been decided on, no matter whether the way you carry it out involves a range of forecasts rather than (unattainable) certainty. When it's a blend of too many things, though, ranking stops making sense to me. It would be more like tiers - "prospects likely to make big contributions or even be stars", "prospects who have somewhat of a chance to make big contributions or even be stars", "veterans who could be the key piece in a big trade", etc etc.
  7. ashbury
    I don't know. I doubt I would be able to watch Indy's interaction with Marion the same way with that subtext. Not at all, now that I think about it. Ish, Ick, Ptooie.
  8. ashbury
    Moderator's Note: The discussion in these Sano threads has been basically constructive, but please don't bring in straw men arguments that create an extreme point of view to argue against, one which no one is actually proposing. Constructions like the one above lead nowhere. Not just the post I'm mentioning here, but in several other posts I've seen, and it leads to pointless digressions. Thanks.
  9. ashbury
    He had TJ surgery in 2013. Presumably we're past the timetable you might have in mind.
  10. ashbury
    I find myself wondering the same thing when prospect rankings come out. "A prospect ranked higher than another, means he... what? Would bring more if offered in trade? Has the higher ceiling? Has the higher floor? Has the larger expectation for total career WAR? Profiles to have the higher career earnings?" Usually the reply is "probalby a smidgen of all of those", which really makes me question the value of bothering to construct such rankings. A ranking suggests a precision that doesn't really exist unless there's a metric. Glad you indicated your metric here.
  11. ashbury
    i picked him in TD's annual Adopt-A-Prospect project, and he didn't do anything to disqualify himself in his 2017 pro debut, so sure, I'll give some love.
  12. ashbury
    He probably wishes he had tipped his catcher onto this, since he wasn't hitting his spots with his breaking pitches.
  13. ashbury
    I use my blog space here only sporadically. That area seems to draw fewer readers than the regular forum area. When I think to use it, it's when I feel like writing something I may want to refer to in the future - e.g. when I visit Spring Training. I messed around one time recently collecting a few of my posts of the past week for a little polishing up, but it didn't really go anywhere for me and I didn't repeat the attempt. Doubtful if I'd ever want to write on some deadline. I don't recall any of my postings being promoted to articlehood, and it was never a priority for me so I never inquired as to why-or-why-not. Now that it's being stated as a priority for a healthy site, I would try to do my part. Maybe "I don't know what they'd be looking for" sums up why I haven't approached this more systematically. As ThejacKmp stated, finding an un-met need is probably key. This thread starts to answer that question, and maybe John's followup post will clarify.
  14. ashbury
    There are 14 hitters on the 40-man. That means, if I did the math right (I could not spare the time to count them all manually), 26 pitchers now. I would not expect Vargas to be the first or even second to go, even if the next add is a hitter.
  15. ashbury
    I echo everyone else's kudos on the content. The covers? I have no eye for style but the 2012-14 "era" was a big step forward from it looking too much self-published, and starting with 2015 the cover looks really quite polished, with the photos slightly overlaying the text making it really pop out at you. I could imagine one of those sitting on a display table at Barnes & Noble fitting in with other top-notch publications. Brock was behind those, right? This year's, I have to say, seems like a small step backwards; but since my style sense is so bad, that probably means it's pretty good.
  16. ashbury
    That's pretty cynical. Front offices view players and prospects as fungible assets. Being fungible means (in part) that where the asset came from doesn't matter, just its value in the marketplace. You don't just let an asset slip away willy-nilly - certainly not in an organization owned by someone named Pohlad. I've stated ways I am skeptical of some of the front office's moves, but sheer ego wouldn't be among them, at least not manifested this way about prospects. Off-field staff might be a different story - someone like Kinley or Bard won't pitch better or worse due to loyalty (or lack of same) to FalVine, but perhaps a mutual comfort level with scouts or player development staff or contract negotiators is necessary.
  17. ashbury
    We probably differ on how competent evaluators do their job. Years ago we kept asking for Anthony Slama to get a fair shot, and we would see snippets in the press that said the evaluators were pretty sure his strikeout stuff wouldn't play up in the majors - and that seems to be how it played out for him. I don't compare Bard to Slama; I compare the process, which says that you can look at a prospect's body of work through the years, and use direct observation, to gauge his chances. Very few guys show up out of nowhere and make a big contribution. I think we're in agreement on the larger issue that losing a near-ready prospect should occur only if the FO felt they had a bead on someone who would be even better. I don't see that as very likely in this year's draft outcome. I would need to know more about their evaluations of these two players in particular, and also who they had on their radar who apparently got snatched away from them, before forming a firm opinion on whether this is a failure of evaluation or what.
  18. ashbury
    Lacking any information on what the FO likes in the new guy, this is where the problem is for me. The Twins had a good 2017, so before the Rule-5 draft even starts your slot in the draft almost rules out any chance of someone really worth the investment of a 25-man spot. Better to just pick the one "bubble" guy of your own that you like best, and add him to the 40-man anyway. It is technically legal for a team to pick their own guy in the rule-5 draft, and they were one pick away from potentially being able to do that with Bard. That would have been interesting either way - take their own guy and give us something to converse about, or pick Kinley and then have Bard get selected by the next team, giving us even more to converse about.
  19. ashbury
    The Twins had four relievers in 2017 who had numbers showing they were able to get guys out. Busenitz, Hildenberg, Belisle, and Kintzler. The latter two have been let go (I suppose Belisle could still be brought back), Busenitz had an ultra-low BABIP of .212 suggesting he had a little good fortune in his short time, leaving Hildenberg alone as someone who might already be a shutdown guy in small doses. Three other relievers, Rogers, Duffey and Pressly, had numbers saying they can have a place on a major league roster but are nothing special. Curtiss and Moya maybe look ready to contribute, right away or sometime into the season. Signing Fernando Rodney counts for me as just another guy who deserves a place somewhere on a major league roster. I don't even want to delve into the Buddys of the present roster. It seems to me that a multitude of things (FA signings, emerging prospects, steps forward by the holdovers) would have to all come together magically, during this off-season or spring training, for this team to have any kind of a super bullpen, coming out the chute for the 2018 season. I don't even see how to contemplate it at this time.
  20. ashbury
    Here's one idea how: opposing batters compiled a .582 OPS against him. Nowadays we measure batters more by the components they provide toward scoring runs, rather than the runs and runs batted in themselves, but somehow for pitchers we have moved beyond ERA with things like FIP rather than the underlying components. I don't know for sure which is better, nor do I believe OPS is more than a quick-and-dirty measure of offense, but a pitcher with an OPS like that should be expected to hold the opponents scoreless often enough to rack up some saves. As others have noted, Rodney gave up crooked numbers 7 times in 2017, which inflates a reliever's ERA, but in 48 of his 61 games he shut out the opposition, the vast majority of the time for a full inning which suggests he did the job he was called on to do. I'm not enthused by his signing, and age most surely is not his friend at this point, but the more I look the less outrage I feel.
  21. ashbury
    Measured by WAR, ESan delivered the 13th highest value of any pitcher in the majors last year. So I'm with you, I'm not particular, so long as they nab one of the top dozen pitchers in all of baseball this off-season. I wonder if the Yankees are ready to shop that Severino fellow by now. (No, I don't think Ervin is actually an ace, and I don't expect him to put up nearly as good of numbers this coming season...)
  22. ashbury
    Yeah, "roving" is not a synonym for "brownian". (Yes, it hurts my eyes too. Sorry.)
  23. ashbury
    My guess is that you'd have to be really careful not to run afoul of the players' union. A lot of the safeguards they have negotiated are to prevent teams from putting a strong-arm on players to give back anything. While your proposal may seem favorable to both sides, I could foresee some hidden obstacle very easily.
  24. ashbury
    Had he pitched in the 1970s everyone would know who he was.
  25. ashbury
    With a lot of guys like this I keep coming back to the word "tweener". In basketball it's a pretty common concept, e.g. a guy not quite fast enough to play guard and not quite strong enough to play forward, yet a pretty good player if you happen to have the right niche for him. Blankenhorn is too young to be worrying excessively in this regard, but you'd like not to be thinking about fallback plans like corner outfield quite yet.
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