ashbury

Yeah probably. At this point I don't know if there is a lot of incentive to make the move. It being Halloween season, I'll mention the words "consistency" and "hobgoblin".

Leadership: Some of the items Seth raised tie into it, but I'm thinking of something a little hard to describe - just that "it" quality that you see in a leader and immediately recognize. More than just charisma although that is usually part of it. Even without a job title, he's the guy people always came to. Intelligence: I don't mean book-larnin', of course, but the ability to rapidly synthesize information coming from all angles and turn it into a plan of action in the moment - both big-picture strategy and small-detail tactics. Baseball IQ is probably another term for it, which Molitor was reputed to have in spades and is necessary for the job. Baseball IQ can sometimes be replaced by just tons of experience so that the manager has seen it all before; but even by age 35, some minor league lifers will have seen an awful lot and if they have the intelligence they will have a vast database in their head to work from. Heart: the ability not to get rattled under pressure. This is hard to demonstrate, until the moment comes. So the people deciding whom to hire will have to infer. Humanity: You've got 25 human beings on your active roster, and the decisions you make as manager have to be cold-blooded in terms of what's best for the organization while never losing sight that the players aren't just the numbers on their baseball cards. Toughness: Some players will pose an unsolvable challenge and yet must be dealt with. This overlaps with decisiveness so I won't open a separate bullet item for that. Results: Our new manager doesn't necessarily have to have prior experience in the role, but should have a track record of finding answers.

If I could interview Tom Kelly, the single biggest question I would ask him is to state for the record what this quote of his really is. My recollection is that it was almost the opposite meaning of what is usually attributed: that when evaluating a phenom who starts out hot, you need to give him 1000 PA, to see if you've really got something. Almost certainly he's not advocating to give 1000+ major league PA to every decent prospect so that he can try to figure things out. There aren't enough games in a year for that. Anyway I make no claim to know. Maybe if I go to Spring Training he will be well enough to be there and I will try to corner the poor guy and ask.

Bread and milk disappearing from grocery shelves when a major snowstorm is approaching has been part of the experience for as long as I can remember.

Some of the qualities in a good manager probably overlap the qualities in a good psychologist. Are you thinking of a case where this has been an actual problem, where a manager has tried too hard to be like a shrink?

This is self-evident, but also not very useful for armchair-GM planning purposes in 2019. Certainly if a bluebird flies in the window, you graciously accept the good fortune. But the Phillies aren't going to swap us Aaron Nola for Berrios, ditto the Rockies and Kyle Freeland. So, for all practical purposes, Berrios is not "expendable".

Concur. An answer I'd probably like to hear is, "some players need a pat on the back and others need a kick in the butt, and even this can change during the course of a season. I believe I have the ability to tell the difference, so let me tell you about several examples from the last couple of on-field jobs I had..."

If the FO isn't ready to sign off on just about any coach the new manager wants, then they probably picked the wrong guy. (The converse statement might also be true, except that few rookie managers will turn down any opening at the major league level, so they have less leverage throughout the negotiation process.)

Yes. https://www.baseball-reference.com/bio/Germany_born.shtml Oh, and I see what you did there:

What you describe sounds a little like George Springer (.265 and 22). Houston doesn't bat him in the 7 or 8 hole real often. 45 players in MLB this year hit 20 or more homers and batted.265 or better. Of these, all but 5 OPS'ed .800 or better - the laggard among them was Marcell Ozuna at .758 (because he hardly ever doubles). OK, that's unfair, because it counts guys who hit way better than you're asking Kepler to do. So take just the guys between .265 and .285, and with 20 to 27 HR (actually I went to 30 but no one happened to have that combination at 28-30). 18 guys, again all but 5 with .800 OPS or better. I didn't exhaustively check, but spot-checking the lowest OPS guys, I found only Maikel Franco batting (occasionally) 7th. Kepler elevating to .275 while watching a few of those additional balls-in-play go out of the park would be HUGE. If he got there (still a big "if"), he wouldn't sit at 7 or 8 for any team.

Well, sure. Even Ehire has started 5 games at 1B in his career. In a purely backup role, Kepler could be part of the mix at 1B. What I seem to see people saying goes beyond that, that 1B is a desirable role for him. And I disagree with that. If you want him in the batting lineup, you usually will want him playing in the outfield; conversely if he is squeezed out of the starting outfield because of acquisition of significant talent, his bat (at present) probably will not be better than other 1B options you have. Finally if his bat improves from where it is at present to being an asset at 1B, we're back to the first scenario, because you want him in the outfield as a starter. It would be one heck of a team, where a productive Keplerbat* finds itself at 1B on defense. * My Germanic coinage of the day

He gets an RBI* for that, right? * Run Balked In

Did he start late? That had always been my assumption, but I ran across an article about him that said he played a ton of baseball in Germany as a youth, starting at age 6. His mother is an American, so apparently he embraced that side of his heritage. Obviously the level of competition in Germany wouldn't be high, but it's not like someone handed him a baseball bat at age 17 and said, "here, give this a try - no, hold it at the knob end". http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/15206207/max-kepler-big-move-germany-minnesota-twins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Kepler

Defense matters at every position. I appreciate a slick play at 1B as well as the next fan. But there's a reason a lumbering DH-type is played at 1B - it's the best place to hide him. Guys like Kennys Vargas make scoops too. The differential between what Mauer can do on top of that is pretty small. And not every baserunner from a failed scoop turns into a run. And not every un-prevented run turns into a win. You need a whale of a lot of defense at 1B to even move the needle.

I went to bed with the Astros trailing 4-1. Imagine my surprise when I woke up this morning. I mean, I'm a Twins fan - so imagine my surprise at two bullpens throwing zeroes for the final two innings.

The Republicans have long had a winner, with the "their candidate looks down on you" theme. It didn't start with their latching on to "deplorables" in 2016 - there was more than a whiff of it way, way back, when The Silent Majority was their battle cry. This Onion visual captures that.

By the way, I am still butthurt over the inside-the-park HR Jake Cave gave up in KC this season, so when I saw the catch Benintendi made in LF to close out last night's game, I ask: "Cave would have made that, right?"

Took me 11 to think up the second sentence.

Shirley you can't be serious. Although, he is so good that they named an entire Fort after him.

You're crazy. Dang, that felt good.

In a close decision, I'm in the camp of "the athlete should be allowed to try to complete the play". Joe West gets a lot of crap for how he does his job, but in this instance he spotted something in that play that didn't look right to him. It may be that replay would have not overturned the call, whichever way he made it, and I doubt he could tell in real-time that Betts's glove closed up at the last second, but kudos to him for noticing that there was something fishy about how the play went. The easy call would have been, "it's into the stands, home run". It was a stellar but makable catch. Astros fans would have been better served to let Betts try and maybe fail. Not exactly a Steve Bartman situation, but catching a souvenir has to take a back seat to witnessing a play you'll tell your offspring about forever. (Of course, the way it did unfold, they still will. )

Everybody else is still on Daylight time. I think that makes it 11:24, just like PDT. Still way too late for Chief of course.

Concur. Next straw-man argument?

When all is said and done, I don't mind the pace of the game, while I am watching it. It's just the cumulative effect, that results in a bedtime after midnight, that I can't agree to. If I happened to be on West Coast time during the post-season, I'd be watching it from start to finish, anytime circumstances allowed.