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ashbury

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Everything posted by ashbury

  1. ashbury
  2. ashbury
    I can't argue with facts.
  3. ashbury
    What you are probably thinking of is that there is a AAA phase to the rule-5 draft. After the major league phase, teams also protect players on the 38-man AAA reserve roster. An additional 37 are protected in the AA phase. Don't ask me how they picked these numbers.
  4. ashbury
    So he left Twins money on the table, so as not to languish in AAA? That's a lot of dough.
  5. ashbury
    No, we call our ridicule parties ridicule parties. We're a straight-shootin' crowd. ModCon'12: ModCon'14: ModCon16: ModCon'18?
  6. ashbury
    In the straw poll at the SABR Rhode Island chapter meeting today, only Chipper Jones achieved the necessary 75% vote, among the fifty or so codgers who attended, and none of the Veterans Committee candidates made it. Thome came close at around 70% and I think Vladdie was above 50%; Tiant was the biggest vote-getter in the other poll, not surprisingly given the audience.
  7. ashbury
    FTFY.
  8. ashbury
    Unlike most of us, Brian keeps a notepad beside his bed and remembers to jot down his fever dreams when he wakes up from them at 3 a.m. With no game threads to start, he has to find other uses for these gems. Man, I wish I had sweet dreams like that one.
  9. ashbury
    A Kohl Stewart thread isn't really the place to debate a bigger-picture thing like this, but I think you've said it before, and I don't understand why. Other teams can see the 40-man dilemma approaching for such players, just as we can.
  10. ashbury
    I'm repeating myself if I say that that was my plan at Y2K too. I got out and in at the two red markings. Looks kind of good, but I left a lot on the table percentagewise at the cash-out, and because I allocated more aggressively when going back in, the final gut-wrench was more painful than it looks. Better luck to you.
  11. ashbury
    I don't disagree in absolute terms, but we can't dispose of all our lefties, and so long as Buddy Boshers holds a roster spot I see Rogers as safe.
  12. ashbury
    I did that, back in the tech bubble of 2000. Got out when the valuations became too rich for me, gnashed my teeth as prices went up another 25%, felt vindicated when prices eventually declined and even went below the level when I had sold, got in more heavily than ever at a certain point, and proceeded to absorb yet another 25%-or-so downturn. Market timing can be right and still be wrong - if the market becomes brutal. My advice to my former self would be to wait, in an overheated market, for the top to be manifested by an actual downturn. There's a lot of money to be made during irrational exuberance. Calling a market bottom, in the same vein, probably is best left to the experts, and missing out on the very early weeks of the next bull market isn't the end of the world. Dollar cost averaging, rather than all-out then all-in, might be a decent strategy during the uncertainty. Regarding the rest of your message, I've told you before I like your general plan.
  13. ashbury
    Heh, I thought about including Parms as an example that anyone is "capable" of playing CF, but I was already piling on. I think we are approximately aligned as regards Wade's future. If the team carried five outfielders, and if his power comes in for real, then he and Granite might be complementary enough to serve as #4 and #5, with the ordering being more a matter of terminology than anything. Both can potentially do a lot, and one can make up for the holes in the other's game.
  14. ashbury
    I don't rule out the Twins picking someone with the intention to flip him to one of the bottom feeders for some kind of consideration (Int'l signing pool money, etc). Mostly I just wanted to use the term bottom feeders to describe some other team for a change.
  15. ashbury
    Wade is IMO "capable of playing center field" only in the sense that lots of talented all-around athletes can. Heck, he'd probably do very well at shortstop for your slow-pitch softball team, too. But, on a team that wants to win it all, I don't see him as a major-league center fielder, except on an emergency basis, and Byron Buxton is not relevant to his destiny. Watching him go after foul fly balls while patrolling RF convinced me, at least as far a watching a couple of games is able to give any insight, that his speed is just not sufficient for center. Some things can be taught, but what he lacks probably can't. His power needs to become legit too, or else he's not even a starting major league corner outfielder. I like him (he hits for average, and his AFL concussion demonstrates he wants the ball on defense), but my optimism is guarded.
  16. ashbury
    For most of the names being discussed, no. Separate rules determine free-agency for the guys originally signed by a franchise. http://www.milb.com/milb/info/faq.jsp?mc=business#24 "All Minor League Uniform Player Contracts between either a Major or a Minor League Club and a player who has not previously signed a contract with a Major or a Minor League Club shall be for a term of seven Minor League playing seasons." It takes a long time to work off your indentured servant status.
  17. ashbury
    A nitpick that doesn't have bearing on how to use him in 2018, but he must have had one of his options used when they brought him up to the majors in mid-August and then sent him back to Rochester, no?
  18. ashbury
    As with any well-functioning organization. I doubt either of us could muster evidence really demonstrating either way. This organization has always been good at keeping rumors to a minimum. I don't imagine any ownership quibbles about payroll allocation over a short term. But when it comes to a contract that might be an albatross for the next GM, if things were to turn sour with the present braintrust, an owner would be remiss if not downright derelict if they operated according to that third sentence I was responding to. A heavily-backloaded contract for instance might get a thumbs down. Especially since the Pohlad family is not renowned for a loosey-goosey attitude about money, as opposed to some ownerships that seem more motivated by sportsman/hobby motivations, I formed my conclusion. YMMV.
  19. ashbury
    I count myself on the optimistic side of this offseason and go along with the first two sentences, but boy, I'm not sure I see this ownership as quite so hands-off where it comes to the contracts we're contemplating here. It's probably a given that any franchise has ownership sign off when the contract is above a certain total value; franchises will vary on what that threshold is, and how close to a rubber stamp the process is. Chances are that our ownership has a relatively low threshold, and that they look through the due-diligence in very careful detail.
  20. ashbury
    And this demonstrates why I didn't even bother constructing sample hands. Next analogy I'm working on: Hannibal crossing the Alps. It'll be a good one, if I can just work out a couple of pesky final details about what elephants eat. Stay tuned.
  21. ashbury
    I can just see Chief wringing his hands and saying "pleasepleasepleaseplease let me play these guys here for MONEY."
  22. ashbury
    Argh, in poker you don't pay to try to obtain better cards, you pay to go to the next reveal. Not to mention that all players' cards are more or less face up in baseball - no one is wondering "maybe the Twins have Mike Trout". So it's not a good analogy, and I give up on that. But the point is the improved information at each reveal and a revised estimate of your chances - that's where there's a similarity, and where there can be a sudden turn for the worse in your calculation of your chances that (later on with hindsight) turns out not to be decisive after all. You still have to make your decision at the time, with much still uncertain. And if the decision at one stage is close, the next card will easily reverse that decision.
  23. ashbury
    Also, the term "contention" is a fuzzy one. A great many arguments arise from people assigning different meanings to words. Maybe Falvey and Levine had in mind some threshold, like 10% odds of reaching the post-season, and decided to make a middling move such as for Garcia. A mere 6 days later, the same calculation looked more like 4% to them, and they went with their convictions. Chief likes Texas Hold 'Em. I'm sure he's had plenty of hands where his first two cards were worth betting but then he rightly folded when the flop came down, and then (against the odds) exactly the right turn card came which would have made the hand worth seeing through after all. Unlike poker, baseball doesn't require (or allow) you to completely fold, on the other hand after a certain point not very near the end you can't make meaningful additional bets. But under baseball-like rules, maybe you'd like to re-open that folded poker hand and pay to see the river card. I don't know poker well enough to construct a very good analogy, but that's how I see it. Each card that gets played gives you new information and new odds. That one week in July, five very poor "cards" were revealed to the Twins and they took a little bit out of the pot. It happened that the remaining cards for the rest of the season were a lot better. That's cards; that's baseball.
  24. ashbury
    39-0. The way you're carrying on, I was thinking it was a rout or something.
  25. ashbury
    I think I get where you're coming from. Vacillation will blow leadership credibility in a hurry. That's important in any organization, and I suppose especially so in a sports org. Even though I just got done explaining why I was OK with the trading deadline about-face, as an interesting case-study in Analytics, I recognize you can't do that very many times.
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