ashbury

I read Carew. Maybe all the old stars are unanimous on this!

Talent development, and talent evaluation. Two separate issues and yet joined at the hip.

Low-end elites trying to finagle what the true elites accomplish with the endowment of a building or a professorship. Imagine the nerve of these nouveau-riche trying to go above their station!

I really think the issue you are getting at is abstraction, not subjectivity. A subjective stat would be if I created Ashbury's All-around High-performers (AAH!), which is batting average, plus a value that I choose for each player. Bryce Harper batted .249 last year but his AAH is .749 because I think he's a hell of a player and I give him .500 more. Ehire's AAH is just his .251 BA because I think he's only OK. You don't want to know what AAH I assigned Pedro Florimon a few years ago. Harper had exactly 100 RBI last year, which sounds like a made up round number but is actually computed in a way that MLB has defined for over a century now. Harper had a bWAR of 1.3 because of a formula some guy developed in 1995, or 2007, or maybe 2013. (Actually RBI has gone through changes in its time too - I'd have to go back and check the specifics but runs scored on sac flies and double plays counted or didn't count depending on which season you are looking up.) If you accept the framework, you can verify the numbers in each case. What both of these objective stats leave unanswered is, "... and this is important, why?" RBI is situational, so that for instance a player who was hurt for half a season will appear less valuable, and a guy with weak-hitting teammates will get fewer chances. WAR tries to figure out how a player correlates to his team's chances of winning. The importance of either stat depends on what you want to use it for, and subjectivity definitely comes in there. As a different example, FIP has importance to some people, because studies have shown that it is a better predictor for the next season's ERA, than is ERA itself. FIP is also not subjective, as you can check any website's number by computing it yourself, but its use certainly is subjective, as we saw for instance with Ricky Nolasco. The difference, to me, is that RBI faithfully records what happened. It's extremely concrete. WAR and FIP are both abstractions. There's no such thing as an actual Win in the standings being allocated to anyone but a particular pitcher (unless you are a Bill James acolyte) so WAR tries to remedy that - and there are other similar remedies to consider instead, for instance BJ's own Win Shares. FIP tries to recognize that pitchers sometimes run into hard luck, and again there are other remedies for that if FIP itself bothers you, or you can stick with ERA and its ability to record what demonstrably did happen. Sorry to wax philosophical. My recollection is that you aren't averse to peeling back the layers of the onion a bit, now and then.

Where it comes to libertarians I choose to reverse the quote attributed to Churchill about socialism: “If a man is not a libertarian at 20, he has no brain. If he still is by the time he is 40, he has no heart.” Obviously an oversimplification. Mostly it just reflects my own path.

I'm not surprised if they walked that statement back. It was amateurish.

I have almost no beforehand opinion on any of the ideas, given the knowledge they will be tried out in live tests. I can wait to second-guess, just like any fan. But more seriously, it's great to try them out, and we'll have some info to work with in a few months. I doubt the time between innings is due to players dawdling, the current amount of time being for advertisers, so I'm dubious what we'll learn from that particular change in an independent league.

No minor league options get exercised until Opening Day, correct? So cuts like Stewart can be undone if conditions change drastically? These early moves are just clearing the decks so that the harder decisions are done with a little more clarity.

This for me is key. One of FalVine basically threw the one-year guys under the bus, in explaining the disappointing season - if they feel the clubhouse chemistry was impacted by guys who were playing only for themselves (the rationale given), how are Kimbrel's or Keuchel's personalities different? If anything, I see their personalities as basically similar to those signed last year.

That video of Kohl inadvertently confirms my view that Wade should not be in the discussion for CF unless in a real emergency. I like him. Just not there.

What tribute or sacrifice is required, to avert this fate? Would Tyler Jay's left arm on a platter suffice? Or does it have to be something still of value?

You should always be wary. OPS is quick-and-dirty. WAR is quick-and-dirty. RBI and ERA and Wins all have extenuating factors. Including defensive wins into WAR tells you something additional, even if it's staticky and sometimes even misleading. You teach your kids to watch their step on ice - you don't tell them not to walk on ice.

I asked only because an old boss of mine used to ask me, "what would you do with that information if you had it?" and I'd be stuck for an answer sometimes.

Probably should go find an Orioles fan site, if you are talking about 2019 and want to find out. You can find a sip here or other places, but that would be the well you can drink deeply from.

Suppose the answer were "flipflops". It being a celebration, well after the games were over. How would that affect your view of things?

Last 30 years, playing 80% or more at SS and having WAR of 2.0 or better (basically MLB average SS or above), there are 10 such seasons for the Twins. Bartlett twice(!), Florimon once (and just barely), Gagne three times, Guzman once, Meares twice and now Polanco once. I think you'll agree I set the bar low enough that I didn't miss anybody important. Across the majors there were such 418 seasons by shortstops, out of 900 possible of course. I don't think we got our fair share. Positional weakness for this franchise since Versalles and Cardenas, with only Smalley providing a break in a long stretch of futility.

I didn't go on to spell out the rest of my point, since I had already said a lot. But, naturalized citizens do not just parachute in (like I did) and then get handed citizenship papers and a ballot. It take years and years while they wait for eligibility, and then they have to take a test that probably makes them better versed on the Constitution than many of their neighbors. They probably remain in the same hometown afterwards, with kids integrated into the school system etc. They're good to go. Proposing a waiting period on top of that implies some level of not-readiness that just doesn't exist. Likening the process to starting from a newborn is, well, infantilizing to them, if not downright dehumanizing. The motivation to make them wait longer seems rooted in their otherness. I mistrust the motives of whoever you heard this 18-year idea from, regardless of whether it gets negotiated down.

I thought Brian's story would end up with the cat trapped in the box, sort of like the cat in our apartment would.

Ron Cey retired some time ago.

Most of us have probably moved to a new town in our adult lives. I moved 3000 miles east about 3.5 years ago, and at my first election for local constable and the like, I was all "why am I even bothering?" I didn't know one name from another, and the small bit of research on these lightly-contested races didn't clarify a whole lot. I just went with some underlying principles (vote against the nerdy guy who seemed to want a low-level job like constable too, too much) and hope for the best. But I think it would have been silly to limit me to only national races for that first couple of election cycles. The old-time locals I talked to didn't have much of a clue whom to vote for either. And the number of newbies like me was a drop in the bucket compared to the old hands. And that last point is what brings me back to the original question regarding our newly-minted citizens. What exactly is the problem we are trying to solve? Their numbers don't amount to enough to make it worth taking any steps at all. I'm pretty well integrated into my town's self-governance by now, taking part in trail-maintenance committees and so forth. It didn't take me 18 years. We make our newborns wait that long to vote because we're waiting for their brains to finish growing. I got up to speed in our little New England town in under 4 years. IN YOUR FACE, INFANTS! WOOT! WOOT!

First post? Welcome!

What more proof of the conspiracy do you need, man?

The good news may be that it's less important to be able to make the distinctions between good and so-so defense, for the same SSS reasons that make the analysis harder: Robbie Grossman in the outfield doesn't get a chance to affect the game's outcome as often as we sometimes think.

Are shifts leaving third base uncovered common in that scenario?

Understanding why they are different (and I offer no guarantee that I do) allows one to judge when and how much to trust the defensive stats we do have. It's not, for instance, all subjective on the defensive side - that's not the core problem.