ashbury

And, with strikeouts. He even led the entire American League in strikeouts one year. Why, did you know, he struck out in fully 17.3% of his plate appearances during his career! Intolerable! If Matt Wallner did that in the present day, who knows how the fan base would react.

Yeah, well, you know, that's just, like, uh, your opinion, man.

Those eyes. Like he just disembarked from the spaceship.

I found the quote attributed variously, but if it's indeed Mauch, he certainly had plenty of experience losing. 😀

I don't want him on the infield dirt either. There was that ball he fielded at second base but then hesitated, one-hopped the throw to the catcher, and failed to get the dead duck at home. I don't know how to use the site you linked to find that one. The poor guy is an indecision/bad-decisions machine out there. He's Jake Cave. I kind of feel sorry for him, but you just can't have him out there like that.

Was it Gene Mauch who said, "most close games are lost, not won"? Or Casey Stengel, or John Wooden. Anyway it's a common philosophy.

Fact-checking isn't really a thing at Spring Training, but I'm still gonna say it was 15-3.

Wait. We are to accept that a 1.346 OPS isn't sustainable? 😀 BTW, this thread turned into a referendum on Joey Gallo so gradually, I almost didn't notice.

Calling Gasper a catcher reminds me of the riddle Abraham Lincoln was said to like: "How many legs does a dog have if you call a tail a leg?" (I'm sure most here know the answer. Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg.) You didn't provide a link, but I think one of them is this: FanGraphs . There, I see also their projection for Aaron Sabato as an OPS of .269+.325 = .594. Considering that his AA OPS last season was .653, it makes me question their methodology - maybe that's what they think he'll do if given a chance at AAA. Mind you, I'm an old-time Bill James acolyte (I was in attendance at the committee meeting where he launched Project Scoresheet) and I do believe that minor league numbers have a lot of predictive value. But I don't worship at the altar of FanGraphs and I'm not at all persuaded by this table that it's likely for multiple catching prospects to out-hit Vazquez at this time, and the ones who might are not in Vazquez's category for defense even at his advanced age. And this isn't the place for a deep-dive into projection systems so I'm going to leave it at that.

Took me several days to go back and review the early comments, but this is exactly how I feel. There was a similar issue over in the Vikings thread a few days ago, concerning whether to place a Franchise tag on Sam Darnold and then trade him. Weighing against was that maybe no one would trade for him at that salary (a fear that looks borne out with the contract he actually signed). But the bigger issue was the salary cap. While Darnold was on their books, they could miss out on signing about $40M worth of other talent. Those were crucial days, in the NFL version of free agency, and the Vikings look like they did well to not put the tag on Darnold. MLB payrolls and free agency and everything else work differently than the NFL. But I still can't help seeing the parallel with Vazquez. His relatively piddling $10M stood in the way of some different use of those funds, during the off-season. Now in Spring Training, rosters are much more locked in. Getting salary relief from the Mets wouldn't have the same effect. We already paid the price, in terms of roster construction, by hanging on to Vazquez all off-season. Now, the one exception could be this: they save $10M for the coming season, and apply that to a real star at the trade deadline, paying the remainder of someone's expiring $30M contract. I could support that, if the FO would promise to actually do it when the time came. "Ugh, nothing quite fit for us" - that would be my expectation come August, unfortunately.

People seem to assume that ".575" represents some sort of lower bound on what a catcher might OPS as a backup. That's not true. Last year Tampa put up with Alex Jackson's .439 in 46 starts, and Cleveland suffered with .422 in Austin Hedges's 46 starts. And this reflects selection bias in that the team does have some say in whom they stick with - if you do a Stathead search with a lower criterion on games played, you get some pretty ghastly offensive numbers to weed through. Maybe if given the chance, one of Cartaya/Camargo comes through. What's the plan when both lay eggs at the plate, though?

If we'd be just as well off to trade Vazquez to the Mets and go sign someone still on the free agent market, then the Mets would be just as well off to go sign that other guy in the first place. Catch-22, it seems.

Riverbrian: Can I have a Guitar? Dad: No Riverbrian: Why Not? Dad: That time eighteen months ago in the guitar playoffs when we let you borrow a guitar for six days in a row and you went practically hitless in terms of guitar playing. That's why.

For possible reference, my nearest team, the Reno Aces, just announced a similar pass that admits you to the outfield grass seating area, for $1 a game across the entire season, except that the July 4 game is excluded. So yeah, I'd say you are reading the tea leaves correctly for the Twins. These teams understand the concept of variable/demand pricing. From a marketing/messaging standpoint, maybe the Twins would be wiser to keep up pretenses and exclude Opening Day anyway. Not sure whether I'm kidding about this or not.

You taking my bit of humor seriously is even better. Your entertaining rant (I likened it to Belushi's classic one, after all) raised an interesting question, though I don't know an easy way to ask b-r.com's Stathead tool to answer it. / edit - but by using that tool and sifting around a bit, I found that a slow start isn't as limiting as I thought. Steve Finley, for instance, finished with 304 homers, which by itself I find astounding - and through his age-26 season he had a mighty total of 13. Jeremy Burnitz slugged 315 in his career and through age 26 had only 16. Stormin' Norm Cash, 377 and 22 respectively. Andres Galaraga, 399 and 25. Edgar Martinez, who I should have thought of without searching, 309 and 2 (!!!!). Raul Martinez, 305 and 3, only slightly less of a slow start than Edgar. And, probably the champ I am looking for, "our own" Nelson Cruz: 464 HR and 16 at age-26. Either a more systematic way of searching, or a flash of further insight, could confirm or deny there is someone else. So maybe 500 isn't out of the question for Wallner. Who knows, if he plays deep into his 50s, he could reach that 800 mark after all! 😀

"Canton?" Also, Waller just turned 27 last December. He has 29 career HR. I wonder who holds the record for most home runs in a career, with just 29 of them through his age-26 season.

Surely Rocco meant concrete, not cement, when talking about Wallner's bone strength. Cement is brittle. Concrete is what's strong.

I took another look today, and in addition to the Texas hat being not available I now find the Houston one gone. Some intern probably lost their job over this.

Is Boston over the intestinal flu, or whatever it was, that had swept through the roster a week or so ago?

A couple years later he closed out his career in an Independent league, and didn't even hit well when there (I speculate injuries after his Rule-5 stints played a role). But what did both St Louis and the Twins see in him, at the time, that vanished so quickly? His hitting stats at AA at the advanced age of 23 don't stand out, for example, and I don't remember his defense being touted so highly that offense wouldn't matter.

Owl's Well That Ends Well The Hunting of the Shrew Much Ado About Hooting Romeo and Juliet, or The Tragedy of Two Young Lovers Who Happen To Be Owls

I took a look at Jeffers's minor league game logs, several years' past by now, and just a spot check of games didn't reveal a problem at the plate when he caught a second game in a row. (No idea about whether his defense stayed up to par, of course.) It's been 18 months now since that 6-game blip in the post-season, so maybe it would be worth trying again. But it seems like an overstatement born of optimism to call Camargo and Cartaya untested. Both were tested last season - in the minors, where both gave strong indication they would have had difficulty matching even Vazquez's offensive output at the major league level. Maybe Cartaya's glove is as useful as Vazquez's, but Camargo's probably isn't. There is a very large chance we'd have a downgrade for a backup if we dealt Vazquez away. This isn't a rebuilding year so I'm not advocating to take that chance. The $10M paid to Vazquez represents the Failure Tax* for not developing another catcher besides Jeffers in the years this FO has been in charge; and part of the sum is also the failure to forecast Vazquez's production better than they did, because they could indeed have scouted and signed someone else for less money and similar production to his. I do give them full credit for scouting and drafting and developing Jeffers, but success needs to happen more often than this. The pickings after Vazquez remain slim. * Riverbrian caught me once or twice calling it a Stupidity Tax and I won't quite disavow it, although it's much ruder.

There's some belly there, and pretty robust thighs.

I couldn't find the full movie on Tubi and I'm too cheap to have a good streaming service. But there are some clips of the movie on YouTube which gave me the flavor, including what may be the ending you referred to. I'll draw a parallel of that scene to the Warner Bros classic Baseball Bugs and leave it at that. Looking forward to when my grandson may be old enough to enjoy it (and Bugs, too).

He had the opportunity to at least suggest more than a half-share of the playing time, in very small sample size in the 2023 post-season when Vazquez didn't get a single plate appearance in 6 games, and gave a miserable showing.