ashbury

I took my information from the MLB web site about the AFL: http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/events/winterleagues/about/?league=119&id=player_elig One foreign player is allowed, as long as the player does not reside in a country that participates in winter ball, as part of the Caribbean Confederation or the Australian winter league. But, truth is, they have failed me before, as they no doubt leave out all the fine print. You are probably correct in how it works in practice.

In the short run, it could either go lower or else bounce back up. Over the long haul, the reverse is true.

I am struggling to find the "fun" in that note about Braxton Davidson's foot. Maybe I am Braxton and don't know it.

This is a complicated aspect. Back in the 70s or 80s, investment firms started hiring Physics majors with no background in finance - the so-called Rocket Scientists. This paid off handsomely, as those noobs brought in a fresh perspective that the old guard didn't have the mathematical chops to carry out. Actual ignorance of the field they're being hired into isn't an actual positive. The idea was that it's easier to teach Finance to someone with a background in applied Calculus, than to teach Calc to the Finance guys. Nowadays pretty much any MBA program involves exposure to the "Quants", and those who go on and specialize in quantitative methods need to be pretty good at higher math. Same here. To a degree, it's probably easier to teach the rudiments of baseball talent evaluation to someone with highly evolved stats skills, than to teach what's in the linked research paper to baseball experts. Eventually, there will be a meeting somewhere in the middle, where future front offices take this particular skillset for granted as necessary to their jobs. My view is that there doesn't have to be friction. The master's thesis in that paper looks like it used data available from SABR, stats concerning measured performance. But, you could just as easily use data from an internal database, involving quality judgements like swing quality, or even just "The Good Face" - even if the numbers have no precision, someone with a 10 on the Good Face scale and another with a 1 conveys some meaning. The statistical tools are good at locating correlations, and it might very well be possible to capture some value out of what scouts have always instinctively felt. If that initiative panned out, scouts would continue to use their expertise to judge prospects by their Face, or (more likely) by their swing. The Parker Hagemans of the world actually should fit in very well with the framework a good analytics team would construct. All the statistical methods in the world won't buy you anything if you lack quality input.

Is that what wins ballgames, though? When you see it on the field, you know it played a role - but what you don't see is that if instead we had a big bopper who plays sloppy, lackadaisical baseball, you might have 3 more runs from his homer that would have made the run saved by a fundamentally sound play irrelevant. I just don't know.

Anyone who is expert in modern statistical methods may want to have a look at this fellow's master's thesis: https://www.retrosheet.org/Research/Calzada/CALZADA-THESIS-2018.pdf I'm pretty versed in certain areas of math, but am relatively weak in stats and this paper on forecasting baseball players is well beyond my pay grade. He comes from a strong computer science program, so I consider this a little better vetted than the average collection of formulas and tables. I am intrigued by the visualizations he provides, although not able to fully absorb what they intend to impart. If I can't understand the pretty pictures, what hope is there for the actual content. My main point in posting this is to say that the cutting-edge in baseball analytics is a lot farther out there than people sometimes realize. It's not just a matter of whipping together some formulas, tweaking the coefficients to attain some new level of precision. Moreover, the guys who can do this are not inexpensive to hire - this guy's LinkedIn Page suggests to me that a baseball team can't hire him for an intern's wages, which has been my impression of past hiring practices by the Twins in the area. It seems to me that a minimum standard for the Twins' analytics staff is that they have someone who can understand this paper - preferably several who can at least debate knowledgeably on the methods that this author uses. If they can't, they will continue to play catch-up with the teams that can do this. Maybe this paper is where the cutting edge is, maybe it isn't - but I want my Twins to know. Small differences in player evaluation will determine who makes the winning offers for the right free agents and trade acquisitions, and who pounce first during the amateurs draft. If Twins personnel browse through this site, I urge them to pay attention to this paper. The subject matter concerns only major-leaguers, but the methods look like they could be applied to young'uns too, and that might be a bigger payoff.

These certainly haven't been "safe" picks, and could be career killers for the higher-ups if they collectively work out badly - whereas you can kind of survive more traditional picks who don't work out, for a few cycles. So give them credit for courage.

If they find no takers for the straight transfer I suggested, then yep, that might be where they turn next. I'm guessing it will stop well short of that.

They apparently will give Greinke and his contract to the team that offers the nicest supply of pitcher's rosin or sunflower seeds. They won't, however, pay $30M for Stewart and Littel, methinks.

A debate on metrics, which this invites, belongs in a new thread rather than in this one about player acquisition possibilities.

Consider upgrading to Backyard Baseball. It may guide you toward the youngest prospect studs.

You've put my OOTP off-seasons to shame!

I'm kidding. He gives the impression of thinking he's given the opposition an unsolvable problem.

His offers to help Pelosi gain the needed votes for the Speakership, on the other hand, are pure Trump, demonstrating his ability to play chess while his opponents are merely playing checkers.

I'm unable to decide between the fold-lock top, or ziploc, option.

I hope your fingers weren't hurt when the cat knocked that dictionary onto your keyboard while you were typing.

That's a good question. Players living in countries that have winter ball aren't eligible - hence Luis Arraez isn't an option.

So we don't make acquisitions during the off-season? And then we make decisions on small sample sizes? I think choices have to be made now, and not deferred like that. "Givens" need to be identified.

"State of Minnesota, Respondent, vs. Jason Lonnie Gabbert, Appellant" Appellant, or Repellant?

So a feasible plan would be to flush them all and go to Opening Day with 8 new guys? If not, then whom would you hang on to? Those would seem like the givens.

Hope that book contains a chapter on when to send the runner, and another chapter on when not.

I became less enamored of this tactic after watching how my teens interacted with their peers.

I don't have two X chromosomes but I didn't let that didn't stop me from failing. One of these days, someone will come along. It will take more persistence, to start with, but that's a trait in common with most major leaguers anyway. Mo'ne Davis appears to have chosen basketball over baseball. That may be more of an obstacle to seeing someone soon in "our" sport. Let's put that to a vote.

With Wes Johnson reportedly getting more than typical money for a newbie pitching coach, I imagine it was not simply the manager's decision in that particular case.

With John Beresford Tipton, Jr. for an owner, who hired Michael Anthony as his GM to hand out those large paychecks, those were golden years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Millionaire_(TV_series)