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ashbury

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Everything posted by ashbury

  1. ashbury
    As a long-time lurker you might know that in the TD Comment Policy we discourage in-thread discussion of moderation, as it tends to divert from the given topic of discussion. There is the Questions About MinnCentric forum area at the site for that kind of discussion, or you can PM one of the moderators, or take it up with ownership. I will take the bait here only to say that the moderators have been keeping each other apprised of our actions, and I think it's safe to say our actions have been toward keeping the threads clear of disrespectful clutter or overheated rhetoric or trolling, for precisely the reason of fostering a balanced discussion of this important but difficult subject. Balance comes from what people collectively choose to post. And with that, I ask that further response on this topic of site moderation be directed to one of the appropriate places.
  2. ashbury
    This would be nice to believe. Falvey has been on-board for only the past year, and it's possible that Sano received some stricter guidance during 2017, and the hope was that past misdeeds would be put behind him and the resolution would be to "go ye and sin more". The public allegations make that (speculative) approach no longer viable. We're going to learn something about our front office's backbone in the coming weeks.
  3. ashbury
    Unicorns.
  4. ashbury
    Mod Note: The moderators have had to remove two locker-room comments this morning. Knock it off.
  5. ashbury
    Also the coach has been gone for a season now, while the player is still employed by the team. It would be great for it to come out that this kind of malarkey factored in any way to his being replaced. OTOH it only would spell out that capable coaches are somewhat a dime a dozen, while a top tier talent can't be so easily replaced if there are character issues dogging him. I hope the investigation looks into all these troubling aspects of the organization. The Chattanooga ushers' pragmatic approach to handling the situation (and I don't fault them entirely for resorting to it) suggests the culture runs deep. I bet the same could be said for 29 other organizations. Time to clean house. Which means baseball gets another black eye while other equally culpable sports quietly clean their own houses too. (Perhaps.)
  6. ashbury
    Moderator's Note: The discussion in these Sano threads has been basically constructive, but please don't bring in straw men arguments that create an extreme point of view to argue against, one which no one is actually proposing. Constructions like the one above lead nowhere. Not just the post I'm mentioning here, but in several other posts I've seen, and it leads to pointless digressions. Thanks.
  7. ashbury
    Moderator's note: Please avoid making references personal, or trying to read what's in people's minds. This is often where bickering starts.
  8. ashbury
    He had TJ surgery in 2013. Presumably we're past the timetable you might have in mind.
  9. ashbury
    The moderators are feeling their way on this, same as everybody. In general we lean toward combining threads that talk about the same topic, to make it less necessary to check multiple places to continue the discussion. OTOH long threads get unwieldy, and it's possible in this particular topic that every new day brings new information to consider. If a multitude of threads gets in the way of having good discussion, we'll probably take some steps to consolidate after a while.
  10. ashbury
    I find myself wondering the same thing when prospect rankings come out. "A prospect ranked higher than another, means he... what? Would bring more if offered in trade? Has the higher ceiling? Has the higher floor? Has the larger expectation for total career WAR? Profiles to have the higher career earnings?" Usually the reply is "probalby a smidgen of all of those", which really makes me question the value of bothering to construct such rankings. A ranking suggests a precision that doesn't really exist unless there's a metric. Glad you indicated your metric here.
  11. ashbury
    i picked him in TD's annual Adopt-A-Prospect project, and he didn't do anything to disqualify himself in his 2017 pro debut, so sure, I'll give some love.
  12. ashbury
    My dad is 95 and he persists in offering unwanted comments on their appearance to the young women working at his assisted-living home. You wouldn't think someone that age has much in common with a guy like Sano, but I see a common thread, of the men believing that the women need the validation, and value the attention as a compliment. (The women at the home graciously wave off my apologies on his behalf when I'm there, saying "oh, he's just so sweet" - but he's no physical threat to them either. At 95, it's more pity than anger that results.)
  13. ashbury
    He probably wishes he had tipped his catcher onto this, since he wasn't hitting his spots with his breaking pitches.
  14. ashbury
    I use my blog space here only sporadically. That area seems to draw fewer readers than the regular forum area. When I think to use it, it's when I feel like writing something I may want to refer to in the future - e.g. when I visit Spring Training. I messed around one time recently collecting a few of my posts of the past week for a little polishing up, but it didn't really go anywhere for me and I didn't repeat the attempt. Doubtful if I'd ever want to write on some deadline. I don't recall any of my postings being promoted to articlehood, and it was never a priority for me so I never inquired as to why-or-why-not. Now that it's being stated as a priority for a healthy site, I would try to do my part. Maybe "I don't know what they'd be looking for" sums up why I haven't approached this more systematically. As ThejacKmp stated, finding an un-met need is probably key. This thread starts to answer that question, and maybe John's followup post will clarify.
  15. ashbury
    There are 14 hitters on the 40-man. That means, if I did the math right (I could not spare the time to count them all manually), 26 pitchers now. I would not expect Vargas to be the first or even second to go, even if the next add is a hitter.
  16. ashbury
    I echo everyone else's kudos on the content. The covers? I have no eye for style but the 2012-14 "era" was a big step forward from it looking too much self-published, and starting with 2015 the cover looks really quite polished, with the photos slightly overlaying the text making it really pop out at you. I could imagine one of those sitting on a display table at Barnes & Noble fitting in with other top-notch publications. Brock was behind those, right? This year's, I have to say, seems like a small step backwards; but since my style sense is so bad, that probably means it's pretty good.
  17. ashbury
    "Tom Hackimer loves Driveline, uses a Motus Sleeve..." I looked these up and they sound like terrible video games. I'll stick with Out Of The Park, thank you.
  18. ashbury
    Poor Phil. It's rarely good news when you get verbed.
  19. ashbury
    That's pretty cynical. Front offices view players and prospects as fungible assets. Being fungible means (in part) that where the asset came from doesn't matter, just its value in the marketplace. You don't just let an asset slip away willy-nilly - certainly not in an organization owned by someone named Pohlad. I've stated ways I am skeptical of some of the front office's moves, but sheer ego wouldn't be among them, at least not manifested this way about prospects. Off-field staff might be a different story - someone like Kinley or Bard won't pitch better or worse due to loyalty (or lack of same) to FalVine, but perhaps a mutual comfort level with scouts or player development staff or contract negotiators is necessary.
  20. ashbury
    We probably differ on how competent evaluators do their job. Years ago we kept asking for Anthony Slama to get a fair shot, and we would see snippets in the press that said the evaluators were pretty sure his strikeout stuff wouldn't play up in the majors - and that seems to be how it played out for him. I don't compare Bard to Slama; I compare the process, which says that you can look at a prospect's body of work through the years, and use direct observation, to gauge his chances. Very few guys show up out of nowhere and make a big contribution. I think we're in agreement on the larger issue that losing a near-ready prospect should occur only if the FO felt they had a bead on someone who would be even better. I don't see that as very likely in this year's draft outcome. I would need to know more about their evaluations of these two players in particular, and also who they had on their radar who apparently got snatched away from them, before forming a firm opinion on whether this is a failure of evaluation or what.
  21. ashbury
    I've gotten this game for Mrs Ash as a stocking stuffer... we'll see how she likes it.
  22. ashbury
    Lacking any information on what the FO likes in the new guy, this is where the problem is for me. The Twins had a good 2017, so before the Rule-5 draft even starts your slot in the draft almost rules out any chance of someone really worth the investment of a 25-man spot. Better to just pick the one "bubble" guy of your own that you like best, and add him to the 40-man anyway. It is technically legal for a team to pick their own guy in the rule-5 draft, and they were one pick away from potentially being able to do that with Bard. That would have been interesting either way - take their own guy and give us something to converse about, or pick Kinley and then have Bard get selected by the next team, giving us even more to converse about.
  23. ashbury
    The Twins had four relievers in 2017 who had numbers showing they were able to get guys out. Busenitz, Hildenberg, Belisle, and Kintzler. The latter two have been let go (I suppose Belisle could still be brought back), Busenitz had an ultra-low BABIP of .212 suggesting he had a little good fortune in his short time, leaving Hildenberg alone as someone who might already be a shutdown guy in small doses. Three other relievers, Rogers, Duffey and Pressly, had numbers saying they can have a place on a major league roster but are nothing special. Curtiss and Moya maybe look ready to contribute, right away or sometime into the season. Signing Fernando Rodney counts for me as just another guy who deserves a place somewhere on a major league roster. I don't even want to delve into the Buddys of the present roster. It seems to me that a multitude of things (FA signings, emerging prospects, steps forward by the holdovers) would have to all come together magically, during this off-season or spring training, for this team to have any kind of a super bullpen, coming out the chute for the 2018 season. I don't even see how to contemplate it at this time.
  24. ashbury
    Here's one idea how: opposing batters compiled a .582 OPS against him. Nowadays we measure batters more by the components they provide toward scoring runs, rather than the runs and runs batted in themselves, but somehow for pitchers we have moved beyond ERA with things like FIP rather than the underlying components. I don't know for sure which is better, nor do I believe OPS is more than a quick-and-dirty measure of offense, but a pitcher with an OPS like that should be expected to hold the opponents scoreless often enough to rack up some saves. As others have noted, Rodney gave up crooked numbers 7 times in 2017, which inflates a reliever's ERA, but in 48 of his 61 games he shut out the opposition, the vast majority of the time for a full inning which suggests he did the job he was called on to do. I'm not enthused by his signing, and age most surely is not his friend at this point, but the more I look the less outrage I feel.
  25. ashbury
    Measured by WAR, ESan delivered the 13th highest value of any pitcher in the majors last year. So I'm with you, I'm not particular, so long as they nab one of the top dozen pitchers in all of baseball this off-season. I wonder if the Yankees are ready to shop that Severino fellow by now. (No, I don't think Ervin is actually an ace, and I don't expect him to put up nearly as good of numbers this coming season...)
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