ashbury
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Everything posted by ashbury
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I was gonna this year but other commitments have precluded it.
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Comparing his 2023 to 2024, one thing that jumps out at me is his success when putting the ball in play on the first pitch. In 2023 that OPS was 1.452, and in 2023 it was .709. Across the league it's typical to elevate your OPS on those first-pitch swings (.905 vs an overall .711 in 2024), but for Julien it was extreme on the plus side in his first year and then it was more than gone the second year. Now, this is statistically lacking in significance for an individual player, with 43 and 33 PA to work with respectively in the case of Julien. And another poster noted his elevated BABIP in 2023. Still, small-sample data can be in support of the eye-test, which in the case of Julien is an almost pathological lack of aggressiveness at the plate. There's a similar eye-test regarding his defense at 2B, which by my recollection is he did okay when the play was within his range and needed to be quick, but if he "had time to think about it" the throw could go astray. I'm not fond of applying the term head-case very frequently, especially because only an insider can make that judgment, but for Julien I think there's a chance that a specialist in sports psychology could do as much good as any of the coaches in their specific skill domains. -
🝄, 🝄 Oh, no, said me gotta go Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, baby 🝄, 🝄 Oh, baby, me gotta go
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As with the old cliche about sausage, I do not actually LIKE knowing the details about how projections are made, as it reduces my confidence in the process rather than increasing it. 😀
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- emmanuel rodriguez
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She's just a spokesperson. She doesn't actually own Lancôme.
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This year, like many under the FalVine regime, I see a very wide range of possible outcomes. By contrast, teams like the White Sox are a potential 100-loss team with zero chance of achieving 100 wins, while the Dodgers are a potential 100-win team with zero chance of suffering 100 losses. With these Twins, I think either outcome could occur - if everything falls right into place with no key injuries to veterans and with some breakthroughs by the young core we've been waiting on they could match the 2019 win total and breeze into the post-season, while lengthy IL stints for each of the Usual Suspects and continued stall-outs or regressions of the young'uns could bring us back to Total System Failure times again. Put me down for 78 wins, but I'm prepared to be way off by season's end.
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They want to view it as a revenue center, and are coming around to the view that it's a cost center. Or at least, that view is congruent with what we are seeing. Hopefully a new ownership sees it as the marketing tool that it is.
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Listing Jenkins and Keaschall as DH makes me wonder what it is we're seeing here.
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LA Dodgers: "Only? Cry us a river, please. The most by anyone in our rotation either year was 25 Games Started." 😀
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Video: Does Cole Sands Deserve to be in the Rotation
ashbury replied to Marissa Voss's topic in Twins Daily Front Page News
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Until May 9.
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It's possible he can keep his ERA around 4.5 in his age-24 season, and if he accomplishes that then there could be room for a little additional growth as a pitcher, namely into a very useful piece a couple years down the road. Can't rule out a starter's slot in the rotation someday. It's a risk to carry him for the full season, and I'm of the opinion the Phillies will not make it easy to keep him via a trade, so pitching coach Maki has his work cut out for him.
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High five to that.
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Is Chris Paddack still on the Twins?
ashbury replied to Brock Beauchamp's topic in Minnesota Twins Talk
This feels unbalanced. I hope someone presents the other side of the issue. -
What if Philly wants him back, which they probably do? Might have to give up a good pitching prospect in return.
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- yunior severino
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The factory's not going to be especially impressive, either. Was it over when the Swedes bombed the Germans at Pearl Harbor???
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Been there a handful of times, can't say it was ever an unalloyed good experience. One time was ironically fun - I was explaining baseball to some European visitors and the first inning had the visiting team bat around, so at least there was plenty of action. The flagpole in CF was a stupid idea and I watched a visiting outfielder fall down on that hill trying to track a routine flyball, so I'm glad they got rid of that travesty. The cheap home runs in left field always annoy me. During their 100+ loss seasons I attended a ballgame where there was lively crowd noise at appropriate times because they were piping in the sounds to supplement what the actual crowd of about 6,000 people were making; the cheating scandal a few seasons later just fit in organically with the general bogosity of the ballpark experience. Even the model train in the outfield is annoying, I don't know why. Nope, don't like the place.
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I expect with every pitch you add, it becomes harder to avoid tipping the new one or one of the old ones. Major league hitters are talented and can usually wallop anything if they know it's coming. Having multiple pitches that all look the same until deep into the delivery can be effective; a bunch of clever pitches that all look different right away, maybe not so much. I'm sure this is factored into what the coaches teach, but putting it into practice is what's hard. On top of this is of course having command, as the article touches on. It doesn't do much good if you can't put the pitch where you intend to and then have to fall back on a get-me-over pitch.
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I'm putting you in charge of Quality Control when I buy a factory.
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It's a good first step. You want to find the strategery that has a chance of succeeding. But, it's incomplete. "What happens when you try the strategery? What are the odds that it actually works?" That's the necessary second step.
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Position Player Battles in Spring Training
ashbury replied to stringer bell's topic in Minnesota Twins Talk
Ford's a non-roster invite so he's even less of a likelihood than Gasper. Except for Keaschall who I don't think they will rush, none of the NRI position players look like should normally have much of a chance. Your analysis, which I mainly agree with, highlights how thin the 40-man actually is. Most years I don't like to put much weight on Spring Training hitting numbers, as it's inherently Small Sample Size and the level of competition is inconsistent, but this might be the year where someone has the right kind of success to earn a spot, including an NRI who might push someone like Gasper off the 40-man. Lee or Martin or Julien could do enough to make the FO decide that additional time at St Paul isn't actually necessary, and if all of them flop then it could be someone else getting the prize. I view Ty France as less of a lock than many here do. Falvey signed him with an escape clause for a reason. But if indeed France is let go, it just points up even more clearly how weak the 40-man is with batters, and someone with perhaps questionable credentials will make the club. Which in turn means... France has to be pretty bad in Spring not to make the club. Except... to me it's a strong possibility that it's how it plays out during March.- 27 replies
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- austin martin
- edouard julien
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Especially from the left-hand batter's box, lay down a bunt in your first PA of the season, and do it again late in the same game. Then every second game or so, for a while, do it your first or second time up, game situation permitting. Give the defense something to think about and maybe open up some real estate for your regular grounders to sneak through. Maybe not Wallner or Larnach though, LOL.
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Hoping for the best of course. But they could draft 100 Connor Prielipps and only about 3 would really pan out in a top of the rotation way, in my estimation.
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I was in attendance when Paul Castner was the featured guest at the Halsey Hall Chapter's Spring meeting, 1985. He was 88 years old and passed away less than a year later, so it was great to get a final chance to pick his brain for memories. He did tell the Cobb story, in response to a rather general question about memories of Cobb if I'm not mistaken. Sorry I don't recall the details of that story (and I reached out to a couple of fellow members who couldn't recall either), but what sticks out for me is that he prefaced the story with a quavering "Ohhhhh. He was a miserable fellow." Forty years later and the expression on his face is still clear for me, of the contempt this old-timer had for the Hall of Famer. A major leaguer is a major leaguer forever, and it was cool to interact with someone who was a contemporary of players so long before.
