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ashbury

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Everything posted by ashbury

  1. ashbury
    One solution to that conundrum would be to promote Rocco to the vacant GM chair. I think he'd have the aptitude for the job. And it's possible he'd hire someone as manager who was different from himself. This answer is mostly facetious (the commentariat here would go apesh*t), but I do think a FO role would eventually suit him. Working against that theory right now is that he probably is not ready to give up the on-field role. As for the actual question I'm responding to, others have said nearly the same, but it's my assumption that anyone hired as GM would accept the job on the understanding that removing Rocco from the dugout is off-limits until his present contract expires (whenever the hell that actually is). It's how things played out when FalVine themselves came on board in late 2016 and Paul Molitor remained manager until another losing season would give them cover for making a change. The idea mentioned in this thread that Falvey alone steers the ship now, without filling the vacancy per se, is one I hadn't considered. Certainly multiple shifts within the organization would need to occur, in effect promoting several to "assistant GM", with roles pertaining to contract negotiations and so forth.
  2. ashbury
    Are the Twins a baseball team? A railroad? A floor wax or a dessert topping? The Minnesota Twins surely are the Willi Castro of business enterprises.
  3. ashbury
    Joe Pohlad was born in approximately 1982. Those who think he's young and wet behind the ears, based on hearing of his awkward examples in the art of public relations, are mistaken. He's middle-aged and wet behind the ears.
  4. ashbury
    Flush him then, he'll never make it. 😀
  5. ashbury
    Small sample size, major league versus AAA, but Brooks Lee might be one of the reasons they moved on from Popkins as hitting coach - just never found a way to get the kid comfortable at the plate. The majors are harder than AAA, but not *this* much harder.
  6. ashbury
    I had a five-minute chat with him in a hotel/convention hallway in August, and he was personable and helpful with the specific question I asked, and basically generous with his time when he needn't have been, so that would be mine. 😀
  7. ashbury
    So Thad wasn't able to land a plum position in a few days, and now he'll pursue opportunities "inside and outside of baseball.". That's known as getting canned.
  8. ashbury
    I already replied once, but in the meantime I looked at the STrib* piece by Nightengale on the 29th, and there is this snippet: "Falvey declined to comment on the status of General Manager Thad Levine, whose last known contract extension expires this year." That's more than "conspicuously didn't mention." So the odds are really high that they are just waiting for the right moment, whatever that is. * they have a paywall up but I managed to trick it with my ninja-like stealth
  9. ashbury
    I dom't kmow. As for the OP's question, I don't know for that one either. Baseball is said to suffer from being too "regional," no longer a national sport, so maybe an ALC alliance that focuses on the competition and post-season run makes some tactical sense while making the strategic problem worse in the long run?
  10. ashbury
    For the other quote Brian was also thinking of either Oscar Mayer or Oscar the Grouch, both of which belong in a garbage can.
  11. ashbury
    For all his table setting, he tied for 39th in the majors in runs scored this year, playing for an above-average offense most of the year. Indeed the 88 he scored while still a Twin remains his high-water mark. After a while it stops being a fluke. And of course setting the table is only half the job of scoring runs. He does pretty much diddly squat at the other half, driving them in. I don't hate the guy - he was a lot of fun to have as a Twin - but as a run-scoring force he remains overrated.
  12. ashbury
    Everyone does that. Across the majors this year there were 3088 solo home runs. There were 616 home runs hit with two on base. You'd be hard pressed to find a team, or even an outlier player, who bucks that trend. Actually the Twins did better - a larger percent of their home 183 home runs were of the 3-run variety - than the majors as a whole.
  13. ashbury
    The ecosystem has been in place for many decades by now, and the present big-market owners paid a lot more for their franchises than folks like the Pohlads did. If the Pohlads now want even-steven revenues, they're going to have to do something to make those other owners whole. Much wailing and gnashing of teeth will ensue. Small markets giving an infusion of capital to big markets. I'm sure that will have no impact on payrolls. This Can Only End Well
  14. ashbury
    False. They would trade him to some other team for pitching, because you can always find someone who overvalues empty batting average. 😀
  15. ashbury
    Maybe it's just a spoof.
  16. ashbury
    Same, except I view a Levine departure as merely probable. You're exactly right about not knowing how they divide the work. If Falvey overruled Levine on something and insisted on negotiating with the Dodgers for Margot, for example, ditto the Polanco trade, then Falvey needs to fire himself. If they have separation of duties and Falvey merely said, "you're the GM, execute those trades if you believe in them," then it's time for him to put aside loyalty and the fact they joined the organization as a tandem. The delay may be due to letting Thad try and negotiate a landing spot in some other organization first, again as an act of loyaty - a deeper relationship exists than with Popkins for example. I trust that they won't let that drag on too long.
  17. ashbury
    Son Cashbury just informed me the Padres are his team this post-season.
  18. ashbury
    Your post wasn't harsh and there's no need to apologize. I was responding to just the first half and should have made that clearer, and the smiley face meant it's largely tongue in cheek. If anything, my making light of a life-changing concussion isn't a tack I might choose outside of this close circle of friends. Some stars can coach and some can't. Just like some players can be stars and some can't. Seems to be a different skill set and without a high correlation. Ted Williams was supposedly good at imparting advice and he had some success as manager; Frank Robinson likewise and probably more so. It's harder to get metrics for coaches than managers, so we're left with eye tests and reputations.
  19. ashbury
    DFA'd and selected off waivers each time is still arguably more promising than the dreck we DFA'd and no one took off our hands and we added again later on anyway. You pay a premium for that kind of desirability. 😀
  20. ashbury
    Yes, because a pitching performance that was noteworthy even in the context of the times, and was on the literal last day of the long season, is relevant to running a full pitching staff 30+ years later.
  21. ashbury
    His career OPS was .873 until the concussion. The league figured out, "get him to take a foul ball off the noggin," and it only took them 5000 plate appearances to do it. 😀
  22. ashbury
    That's not really the bar that a new hitting coach has to clear. Hitting coaches are pretty fungible, often with a short shelf-life even if effective at first. Let the next guy try to get more out of a generally under-performing crew of younger hitters. I don't usually lean toward psychological explanations for things but there might be a budding head-case or two in this group of players and perhaps another coach will do better in that regard too. Popkins isn't a Twins lifer and will move on gracefully to another organization and probably find some success, and the game of musical coaching chairs will continue, as it always has. This offense was pretty unacceptable during the later stages of the season and it's the hitting coach(es)'s job to help the players find answers. If the change is just a band-aid, sometimes first-aid is called for.
  23. ashbury
    I'd be fine with leaving the award vacant for 2024. The biggest positive contributors in terms of whichever metric you like (and the ones I like are contradictory this year) pale in comparison to the best on most other teams. No one on the Twins had the combination of high performance and season-long availability to stand out. Even in the woeful 2016 season, Brian Dozier and Ervin Santana managed to stand out among their respective peers on the team. If that team had been made up of several others at their level, 100 losses would not have occurred. If you replace either of these guys with anyone you choose from the 2024 squad, you wouldn't have any improvement. Very weird, considering that the 2024 squad finished above .500 by a hair.
  24. ashbury
    These grades must be based on expectations a year ago as baseline. No way was Cole Sands better than Jhoan Duran. Duran was given the tough matchups. The grades of F are well deserved. Knowing who in the FO advocated for the two individuals acquired via free agency would count in the grades for those people too.
  25. ashbury
    Baseball-reference.com lists Twins 2024 payroll at $135.76M. Depending on how all the pieces are counted, maybe there's room? https://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/majors/2024-misc.shtml
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