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ashbury

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Everything posted by ashbury

  1. ashbury
  2. ashbury
    That little crow-hop at the end of his delivery, in the "Before" picture, can't signify anything good either, can it?
  3. ashbury
    Baylor had a nice postseason though. Memorable, even. In a 7 game World Series, tiny differences could have swung it a different way.
  4. ashbury
    My snap reaction would be to reach out to people who have been working on defensive metrics for a long while. Two names that come to mind are Chris Dial, and Vince Gennaro. Both are SABR members so I could put you in touch with them if you wanted. The purpose would be to ask if this is a computation that has been looked at in the past; it's not good to be trapped by the orthodoxy of the "experts" but neither is it good to ignore their experience. Just as things like BABIP are in principle supposed to even out but sometimes don't, I think a year's DP and TC totals could be skewed for an individual player if the total opportunities are far from the norms, and I don't know how to easily get the number of situations where there is a man on first and fewer than two out.
  5. ashbury
    I was pleasantly surprised to see this post from my friend Dan, and just want to take this moment to recommend anything that comes from his word processor. You can expect a meticulously researched treatment of the subject; but you guessed this already from seeing his writeup here. Should be good reading.
  6. ashbury
    Old saying: nobody needs left-handed pitchers, what is needed is pitchers who can get left-handed batters out.
  7. ashbury
    And it does not include any information about opportunity. How often did his fielding chances come with a man on first and fewer than two outs? Without that additional information for comparison, we are in about the same situation as awarding the batting title to whomever gets the most base hits - that might be the right thing to do, or it might deprive the honor from someone who had fewer plate appearances or many more walks. None of which changes that I like Polanco a lot, too.
  8. ashbury
    I doubt you'd get much dissent from that view. So I am inclined to give the manager the benefit of the doubt that he believed he had a compelling reason to take action. That the team owner evidently disagreed doesn't change my view that the the situation wasn't cut and dried. It doesn't necessarily mark the player as a bad guy for life, and as others have said, we in the public will likely never know the full details. Just an episode to tuck away for future reference if need be.
  9. ashbury
    Welcome!
  10. ashbury
    tl;dnr
  11. ashbury
    With regard to Perkins specifically, the "book" on him is that he's unusually analytic and introspective about his job, and it wouldn't have to be weird if the manager brought it up as an idea. In general, you're probably right.
  12. ashbury
    More and more, I think the NFL has one part of it right. Every year they elect 6 or 7 guys to their Hall. That tends to make it The Hall Of Very GoodTM, but there is some value in that. Let the fans see their favorite players honored. Baseball diminishes its product by in effect arguing whether some of its best players are even "good enough". Football hypes their product, 13 months a year, and it works. What the baseball Hall would then need to do, on top of that, would be to have some distinguished panel (sorry, BBWAA, maybe the living HoFers themselves) vote 1 or maybe 2 players each year into an Inner Circle of the HoF; whoever gets the most votes is in (no years with nobody), second highest vote getter is in if it's above some threshold, say, for additional suspense. Probably that would be a little less restrictive Inner Circle than the Ruth/Cobb/Musial version we usually talk about, but would address the thirst for some kind of additional honor, currently satisfied approximately by notions of "first ballot" and "near-unanimous" and so forth.
  13. ashbury
    Robinson would have to be added to the 40-man, yes? Currently the Twins have 22 pitchers and 18 hitters, so presumably a pitcher would have to be exposed to waivers. Makes me even more perplexed that they signed Stauffer. But, along the lines Shane (Wahl) just said, Shane (Robinson) strikes me as more of an emergency guy stashed at AAA than a real option for Opening Day.
  14. ashbury
    Zero interest in collecting those. Zero. The grownups with their binders killed it.
  15. ashbury
    But "trading high" has the corollary risk that after awhile you accumulate a collection of players you can't trade because they aren't performing. I don't think a GM can go in with a strategy of trying to outfox his peers on the other teams, unless he is *very* confident in his talent and assessment. Because with one or two exceptions, the other guys know who is playing over their heads too.
  16. ashbury
    http://atheisthobos.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/128957852061370286.jpg
  17. ashbury
    The moderators are mindful of most mixed metaphors and make many measured moves. Although, alliterations are always acceptable.
  18. ashbury
    To the extent that a Colabello type is needed....
  19. ashbury
    You'll buy respected, but want honest specified too? OK, consider it added. Anyway, Ryan has been known to slip the needle, or at least damn with faint praise, so I'm inclined to take him at face value here. I'm certainly not enough of a fundamentals scout, to try to dispute his words.
  20. ashbury
    Anyone? An experienced and respected scout, albeit one who has an incentive to try to shore up whatever remaining trade value there may be?
  21. ashbury
    In this context Sam Fuld, who you didn't mention, winds up being just a footnote. But still a perplexing one. Though just a waiver wire pickup, he represents a third CF traded for a young starting pitcher. Unless Milone winds up being one of the 8 starting pitchers to lock up a spot in the opening day rotation, which IMO he is not an extreme long-shot to do, the Twins overall situation would seem a lot more settled if we still had Fuld instead. It seems as though the front office can't turn down an offer of starting pitching for center field; I wonder what offers Terry Ryan is mulling right now, in exchange for Byron Buxton.
  22. ashbury
    While I generally agree, it depends on whether the Braves would prefer Graham, the $25,000 it would take to get him back, or what's behind Door #3.
  23. ashbury
    This is basically the exact batting order for the final game of the season in Detroit, shut out by Price and the bullpen. Guess where we start the season next April, and against what likely starter? Do Hunter, Plouffe, Suzuki in place of Pinto, Escobar and Herrmann change the outcome?
  24. ashbury
    As ChiTown said, this thread has reached agree-to-disagree time, as points are being re-made. I am closing the thread now.
  25. ashbury
    For now I am fine with having 8 candidates for the rotation. I'm not focusing on which slots are currently "taken". This will likely sort itself out in a first phase by the end of spring training (and without having to give excessive weight to pitching records in spring games either), and completely sorted out in a second phase by late May. A guy or two or three will have to bide some time in the bullpen (if not the DL), and by June it is very unlikely someone both healthy and deserving still hasn't gotten his chance. The bigger challenge IMO is that only 7 out of 21 pitchers on the 40-man throw lefty, and at least two of those seem clearly destined for Rochester. That's going to force more decisions than who starts. My solution would be to tell a righty who's temporarily in the pen, "you want to be a big league starter? We can start with you getting this one lefty out today, and go from there. You're going to have to get guys like that out anyway."
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