ashbury

I see that Twinkie Town has an article titled, "Welcome to the Cron Zone." Your headline-fu is weak, Grasshopper.

I think the flaw here is that not all chances are equal. It's true that a majority of RF chances are cans of corn. But the majority of chances at 1B are also routine. The batter at least is trying to hit something that a RFer can't get to; the shortstop throwing to first is trying to give the 1Bman something he can handle. Also, the consequences of a poor play at 1B are not as great as in RF. The batter could easily end up on third base with a muff in RF, or sometimes go all the way home. Also anyone already on base has a better chance of grabbing an extra base if the missed ball has to come in from the outfield, than if the first baseman can somewhat corral it or if (say) the catcher is backing things up. If I can't have both, I'll trade 1B prowess for RF prowess any day of the week.

Cody Bellinger is not a very good comp for Kepler. Bellinger's a first baseman who hits like one; if you put him in CF as a tactical move, say to get Max Muncy's bat into the game, the hope is that Bellinger's bat really outshines other CFers and compensates for a marginal glove. (I still don't understand LA's roster well enough to see why you wouldn't put him in a corner OF spot and use someone else in CF, but it may just go to show that all of this is second-order effects.) Kepler may yet achieve that level of hitting, but right now he's pretty much the opposite player. If he's not using his OF skills, a lot of his value is wasted. I am all for positional flexibility. But from a given player's perspective, it's to give him somewhere to play when the team has 3 better outfielders, say, than himself. We aren't close to that in the case of Kepler, or at least I don't like Cave or Rosario better than him. Flexibility is good in the abstract, and if (say) Cron goes down with an injury mid-game, and Austin is DHing already, telling Kep to go grab a first-baseman's glove for the remainder of the game sits just fine with me. But while an overall flexible strategy is fine, it still comes down to specific games. And if I'm writing out a lineup that has Kep at 1B, an instant improvement is to swap him to an outfield spot and let the other outfielder be positionally-flexible and handle 1B duties that game. That will remain true, even if Kep improves at bat and starts to hit like a first-baseman too, until the day his OF skill eventually erodes.

I wouldn't pay this chart a tremendous amount of heed. I said this in another thread, but it seems to reflect some kind of snapshot of thinking during early-September, and then updated (by an intern? or someone at MLB.com but outside the organization?) in the off-season to reflect moves like Cron being added and Santana not having his option picked up. Slegers with an asterisk in the rotation appears to indicate an injury, which was the case for him in September but he recovered and made an appearance late in the month. And Romero made a lot of starts for the team but wasn't called up in September, and doesn't show up in the starting rotation grouping at all even though iffy guys like Gonsalves and Littel and Stewart do. Sano is not listed at third base, and indeed during September he was held back from there, although mid-month he had one game at third. Garver was limited to non-catching duty due to the concussion but I've seen nothing other than this chart to indicate it's a permanent decision. All in all this chart looks like it contains misinformation from misunderstandings by someone without real authority. As always, I Could Be Wrong.

Try this: https://www.mlb.com/news/top-prospects-eligible-for-the-rule-5-draft/c-301040298 ... which provides a link also to this: https://www.mlb.com/news/top-rule-5-eligible-prospects-for-all-30-teams/c-300531350 I'm not sure I'd advocate for my Twins taking anyone. I'll stick my neck out to guess that none of our exposed players is taken. Reverse order of W-L record, regardless of league. That should put the Twins 12th. I can't find a definitive source that shows this year's order, though. Last year they were 20th.

They aren't going to get to last year's payroll. They will say revenue is down, they will adjust payroll accordingly. That aside, my concern is that whatever payroll headroom currently exists will be frittered away $5M at a time on players whose ceiling is league-average at best. Each move will be justified by price-performance; at no point will performance by itself be the priority. And thus we end up with a roster that aspires to .500. That was what frustrated me with the previous FO too. Paying the same eventual aggregate sum for a smaller number of actual difference-makers, and relying on the young players making up the rest of the roster to step up, seems like the better chance for excellence if we want to contend. CJ Cron achieved a career year in 2018. It resulted in only about league-average performance, so he needs to take an additional step like that to become a real asset. $4 or $5M would be about a league-average salary (25 players, $100M or so). Everything about this waiver claim is in alignment. It's just... such low aspirations.

Insubordinate, this front office. Insubordinate.

If we wind up paying Cron $5M it's because our farm system isn't yet churning out the bat-only guys that other teams seem to be able to. That's why Cron wasn't worth literally anything on the trade market and he was simply DFAed - most teams looked at him and said "we have someone just as good". Tyler Austin for that matter is probably worth nothing on the trade market either - we accepted him as a fig leaf (along with a lottery-ticket young arm) in order to get a little salary relief from the rest of Lynn's contract, helping that signing look better. There's always guys Cron's age at AAA who OPS .800 or .900, about .100 higher than they will in the majors, and they can be obtained nearly anytime you want one. "Trader Frank" Lane and Bill Veeck used to joke about their "cat and dog trades" in the 1950s. When the hot stove wasn't to their liking, they would trade a CJ Cron type for an Aaron Slegers type, just to have something in the newspapers for fans to talk about. Your cat, for my dog. It was good marketing in its time; it had little to no bearing on team performance. Teams that are firing on all cylinders have a Brent Rooker type of player ready and developed when needed. (Tampa has theirs, Jake Bauers, making Cron expendable.) I am willing to give our FO some more time to get the pipeline going like it should. For now, we're still in bottom-feeder mode, watching the waiver wire each day, making claims on players that no one else wanted to trade for. On a related note, I'm not entirely sure why arbitrators are expected to award someone like Cron $5M when such a player has no trade value and would surely obtain much less on the free agent market.

We Unix computer geeks will call it a Cron Job and get nothing but crickets and weird stares for our effort.

The corollary to "never let a good crisis go to waste" must be "never get caught short on crises."

The depth chart also lists Garver only at first base. I would interpret all this to mean we're looking at a database that is based on somebody's idea of intended player usage at the end of September, augmented by player transactions (Cron added, Forsythe gone, etc) since then. I wouldn't read much of anything into it other than interns being in charge of some web pages.

My snap impression, which is usually wrong, is of a side-armer's motion except coming over the top (or at least three-quarters) for the actual delivery. A bit unusual.

If this is hitting on all cylinders, it doesn't bode well for making much noise in a post-season run.

This is apparently making the rounds - some cooking tips that will make your meals more delicious... looking.

Washington got a couple of productive years out of Span in return for Meyer.

Baby steps. Let's aim for 2017 first.

He has a lifetime OPS of .400 against the Twins, so I guess I have 3, the times he struck out.

What was your favorite Paul Goldschmidt moment?

Dispatching a guy rather than let him be taken via Rule-5, for... who? An infielder who will not be considered by Rule-5 selectors? I'm not sure the point. MLBTR indicates "more to come". I hope so.

I'm going to stick my neck out for him and project high .500s or even cross the .600 OPS line in the majors, in a couple years.

Clayton Kershaw without the fastball but a little better bat.

If they leave room for a Rule-5 draft pick and then actually select someone, it says to me that they aren't aiming to contend in 2019. We'll find out their intentions a little better in 3 weeks. In that case, I can at least understand the rationale for not trading for a Paxton now - pitchers are seen as a risk to implode at any time, and 2019 isn't the year to shoulder that risk. There is always someone available like this each off-season. Mind you, I don't WANT a Rule-5 pick, nor the rationale that predicates it.