ashbury

Up is down, good is bad, and Red is Yellow (when it's not being Green). What a world we live in today.

If this is the only RandBalls Stu piece you have sampled, I hope you give him a bit more time. His comedy stylings might still grow on you. As for your comments on the medium in particular, one measure I use for good satire is that it provokes thought, and your lengthy post suggests Mission Accomplished in that regard. It seems that this is your first post here. Welcome and I hope you continue to provide nuanced thoughts; those can be in short supply here. 😀

Good start. Let's hope Taj is ready to take advantage of the good fortune.

Yep, the concept I am trying to get at is really difficult (for me anyway) to define. "We scored 6 runs off their bullpen - they must have all been AAAA callups." "We beat Skubal - we beat Crochet - they must have not been on their game that day." These could be legitimate explanations - or just typical BS after the fact. Maybe some important factors are just unknowable. Or maybe Big Data techniques have ways of teasing out the meaning from scads of conflicting data. I tend to believe that if an effect is important, then evidence for it can be found if you look at the evidence correctly. (You can also find evidence for your supposition by looking incorrectly.) It's a bit like, we all believe a .300 hitter is better than a .260 hitter, but when you come down to individual games, anything can happen (and often does). Maybe that .260 hitter has just as many multi-hit games as the .300 guy, but he suffers more o-fers while the .300 guy plugs along with more 1-for-4 days. That kind of variance is completely missed in season-ending averages, but might affect how you value the two players. I spent my career in a small corner of analytics, but I never had the technical chops to tackle a statistically-oriented question involving variance for sets of data (like in baseball) that are a bit unruly to start with. Uniformity is lacking - some days you get 3 plate appearances in a game, some days you get 5, and how do you do a "variance" study of how many hitless days you have, in that environment? A bit of spot-checking along these lines a few days ago didn't turn up the pattern I was hoping to be able to demonstrate to others in support of my view, so I didn't post about it. 😀

"-est" in a word is kind of a tipoff to that. 😀

The basic statistical concept of "mean" (i.e. "average") predominates the rate stats on every site, but I don't know of good sources for the next-level concept of "variance," which is the issue that I've long felt plagues the Minnesota offense. It would take massive research, I think, to track down evidence to support my contention that, to a greater extent than most good teams, we feast when the opponent on the mound is subpar but regularly starve when someone of major league talent is on the mound. Maybe such a study would convince me that my supposition is wrong...

The lefty "starter" today could be out of the game by the time the lower half of the batting order comes up. Look for Gonzalez to perhaps pinch hit if another lefty is brought in to pitch later in the game.

Jeffers belonged on the same stud-tier as Ryan and Buxton even before the season started. The bar is just set differently for catchers. But as for your basic point, I've had the same concerns too, for a long while now. I could quibble in a few cases, such as Ober panning out as "just average" after being a 12th round draft pick, as a development "hit." But a low-revenue team like the Twins needs to make the flat-out misses on high draft picks really low, and they don't.

We're still talking about baseball, right?

Relievers from a hat - "Pitchers You Don't Want To See In A Clutch Situation" - resulting in an aggregate ERA of 5.00.

I'd expect his fastball to have good movement, considering his throws from RF often are not usefully on-target.

The way the Twins won that series was extremely fun and should never be diminished.

Those would be interesting to see.

History could repeat. Hurricane Hazle that one year kept it up on offense for 155 PA. When Kreidler starts to approach that sample size, I'll start taking notice. And even so, Hazle's OPS in his other seasons was .462, .583, .482 and .681. #baseball

This "new" philosophy is remarkably similar to the time-tested internet Search Engine Optimization strategy of Get More Clicks.

The panel would also have accepted .788

Don't exaggerate. At this writing the overall OPS in the PCL is only .789.

If Jeremy Zoll has kids I'd be more concerned about them seeing me slip the needle to their dad.

This article is a nice demonstration of how irreplaceable Tristan Gray really is.

Get your nose out of the spreadsheets and watch a game. 😀

No offense, but this team has no offense.

No to taking a catcher at #3 overall. Top tier catchers are a rich team's corner of the world.

For long enough to then go on the losing streak that breaks our hearts? Sure. Why not?

If the Dodgers aren't overworking him ask Rocco whether he can fill in for you.

Not to get all serious or anything, but for things like regular batting titles I believe they still have a rule that covers situations like that if it played out that way at the end of the season.