ashbury

Brian Navarreto sure put a charge in the ball when he hit it over the Southern Green Monster late in the game.

They're just getting started. Remember that guy who traded a paper clip for (eventually) a house?

I. Did. Not. Know. That.

Teams are already using 13-man pitching staffs. This idea puts pressure to go to 14. Maybe MLB is close to going to a 26-man roster (or other changes that amount to the same). Using 6 starters doesn't have an obvious way that it gets more innings out of your starters - the conventional wisdom is to be ready to bring in the first reliever based on how many times through the opponent's lineup you've gone and what kind of success the starter's having that day, moreso than number of days' rest the starter has had. Bullpen usages are unpredictable enough that you'll probably run into trouble if you name any of your 6 starters as the potential long man for that game - once you bring him in, you're likely committing to a disruption in the rotation for the coming week. I'd almost go the other direction, and identify one of the starters, who is somewhere in the middle of his rotation cycle, as a LOOGY/ROOGY, if indeed that's the manager's style at all in this era - guys throw bullpen sessions between starts, although probably not at max-effort., so maybe this would be a substitute activity that actually gets some value out of the effort. All in all, a manager and his pitching coach will have their work cut out for them to make such a thing work. Again in the spirit of going the opposite direction, what about returning to a 4-man rotation? Accept that you'll get fewer innings per game out of your starters - 5 innings times 40 starts gives you 200 innings which few reach anymore - but you'll give fewer overall innings to the fifth best starter you would have used. 4 starters, 9 relievers - get innings out of your 4 horses and then muddle through.

"What was your favorite Xavier Moore moment?" Mine is that one time.

Manipulated? Such an ugly word. Let's say courted. The Russians were patient in developing Trump as an asset, for example.

Moderator's note: References to Shawshank Redemption aside, let's please stop calling one another names, or suggesting intentional dishonesty.

Does this mean closer to fruition, or further?

One thing people sometimes have a hard time seeing is that a moderator might suggest that the heat be dialed down, e.g. bleeped out profanity, even to someone he or she is in agreement with on the issue at hand. At the time of the trade I was cautiously optimistic that our FO had acquired a starting catcher, in return for a five-tool player who wasn't ever going to unlock his potential. Oops, squared. If that is consistent with your view both then and now, then yes it sounds like we're agreeing. I hope you don't find that too remarkable.

Samuel L Jackson's role in Tarantino's movie Django Unchained is an illustration (not proof) of how there have always been individuals willing to buck conventional wisdom. It doesn't make it a good thing. Propaganda has never been more central to political discourse, and by no means will I claim it doesn't occur on both sides (of any issue), but this video strikes me as comfortably in that vein - someone willing to be used for propaganda purposes for reasons he alone may know. It's a datapoint but not a very important one IMO. There are always outliers in any kind of data. In my lifetime one of the amusing constants has been the hard right thinking that politics is mostly about the "latest trends," and that these swing back and forth, and that it'll be their turn soon. Videos like this one being embraced as proof of something big building up seems squarely in this tradition.

By month, Buxton has been good at the plate only in Sept 2016, August 2017, and Sept 2017. Rosario has also been good in those same months (and others), but Kepler was bad in two of them and pretty good only in August 2017. August 2017 happens to have been the one bad month for Hicks that season. So, "four good outfielders is a nice problem to have" wouldn't have necessarily manifested itself even yet. The problem boils down to the Twins deciding Hicks wasn't ever going to improve. Oops. I had seen enough of his shaky routes in the outfield and streakiness at the plate, and went along with their judgement at the time. Oops again.

7 down, 323 to go. It's a marathon, not a sprint.

Here's an interview with Harper from a few years ago which I just stumbled upon. Might be of interest. It was from 2016 when he was new to the Mariners organization and with the Jackson Generals AA team.

The majority of the post you replied to was to correct a demonstrably false statement Howie made, that criticism of the trade is purely hindsight and no one was critical of it at the time. As someone with a cautious wait and see attitude about the trade when it was announced, at least from a quick scan of what I posted then, I take a little issue with Chief saying that anyone should have seen it was a terrible idea - but not enough to get that worked up over it. In retrospect I was way too deferential to the team's talent evaluators. I had never seen Murphy and chose to accept that they saw a starting-caliber catcher. But let's please dial down the rhetoric. It doesn't do much good to throw around terms in anger that even the site software automatically bleeps out.

I guess a good test would be to go to Ft Myers this month, and tell him in person that you've read he has a great smile. If he stops smiling, you may be onto something.

He was probably afraid you would outright him to Rochester where they get 10 feet of snow a year.

Journalists and others making note of things like a smile are probably alluding to either of two things: a potential strong contributor toward good clubhouse chemistry, or the makings of a fan-favorite. (Or both, of course.) When it's someone like Revere, who lacked a couple of tools, it's just for fun. When it's about a five-tool player, then side notes like this pertain to whether he might become a big star, a national celebrity even, on top of whatever talents come to fruition when he reaches the majors. Part of Kirby Puckett's story is his effect on fans. I read a similar anticipation here. It's not a big deal - and then again, now and then and here and there, maybe it is.

Catcher is such a tough position. I don't feel as though my own rules of thumb necessarily carry over to catchers. I used the b-r.com Play Index tool to list all the players 2009-2018 who qualified for the batting title (502 PA) and played 75% of their games at catcher. There were 69 such seasons during those 10 years. Molina had 9 of those. That's only about 7 players per season who play enough to qualify - so fairly elite company to start with. And if you further limit the search to 3.0 offensive WAR or better, there were just 33 seasons in those 10 years. Molina had 5 of those 33. That's a lot of offense coming from the catcher position in the lineup. If you increase the threshold to 5.0 oWAR, there were seven such seasons, and Yadier had one. (Posey and Mauer each had two.) Change the position studied, to 3B, and the population size and the top oWAR all go a lot higher. 165 players qualify. 32 have an oWAR of 5.0 or higher. Shortstop, 182 qualify, 12 have oWAR of 5.0. And SS is considered a glove-first (sometimes glove-only) position. I dunno. Catchers play fewer games so it's harder to rack up the "counting" stats, which WAR basically is. There may be other factors at work as well. Molina is one of the top catchers of his era. He's not Inner Circle HoF but deserves consideration.

What advantage does it bring?

Don't know if I recall ever hearing that exact phrase before. Seems like a good one. A quick google search for it turns up usage for players all over the baseball field, not just catcher. At core, it probably reflects just a variation on the age-old "five tools" metric - if you have a couple of tools, you can carve out a major league career although not be a star. The implication I took from the various usages is that you say it when the defense is a given, and so all that's needed is one more tool, and if that's power without a stellar contact tool, then so be it. With power plus contact, if the defense is also good then we're talking three-tools and a regular spot in the lineup. So, "power over hit" is the polite way of saying "profiles in a backup role" I guess. It's all just guesswork anyway, since for a young guy one tool might not develop while another tool might pop up unexpectedly. Here's hoping Jeffers is the one who surprises positively.

Is that to rhyme with the Rhine River, or a nice Rhine wine, or the Rhine province in Prussia?

Good silly fun.

I'm a Big Hall* guy, so for me Mauer is an easy yes, and Molina would be a likely yes also. Molina is closing in on top-10 for innings caught, all-time - he's above 15,000, and the record is 20348 by Pudge Rodriguez - probably out of reach, but who knows. While some dislike inducting a player merely for longevity, it's not like Molina is just hanging on and being given playing time as a courtesy. There is something memorable about that kind of ability, and to me the Hall of Fame should be memorializing (among various others) guys who perform at a very high level for a very long time. The HOF should recognize fame, and also confer it - it is capable, like Double Duty Radcliffe (sadly, not a HOF member himself), of doing more than just one thing well. * What I want, in addition, is an officially sanctioned Inner Circle that is a fair bit smaller than our current Hall of Fame and which we can argue about until kingdom come.

Perhaps this discussion can be tabled until May, then.

Yeah, I hope that was all with nobody on base. In the other game I saw him in briefly, he was dropping a knee down also. It's not like he's super tall (5'10"), but I assume he is trying to give the ump an optimal view of the pitch. Sometimes it's one knee down, sometimes both... not a real fan of this technique, but I'm willing to learn more. Some catchers (Junior Ortiz?) have been known for one leg splayed way out, which I always thought had to have some real drawbacks. "This is how you catch a baseball, son..." http://www.rantsports.com/mlb/files/2013/09/Minnesota-Twins-Joe-Mauer%E2%80%99s-Concussion-Could-Lead-to-Less-Time-Playing-Catcher.jpg