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ashbury

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Everything posted by ashbury

  1. ashbury
    Yeah, "roving" is not a synonym for "brownian". (Yes, it hurts my eyes too. Sorry.)
  2. ashbury
    The 2017 June draft was well-regarded, I thought. In addition to Lewis and Rooker, Enlow and Leach seem like they might move the needle - maybe moreso than Granite for instance, but I'm not super high on him so I dunno. Who else in that draft might offer a little traction in trade talks? Baddoo in the 2016 draft seems like he ought to be on this list somewhere. Rortvedt maybe? 2015, Lamonte Wade? Non-draft signings like Wander Javier? What about the two guys we got in the exchange for International money after we whiffed in Japan? If only someone somewhere kept a ranked list of Twins prospects.... If the Rays are in full rebuild mode, simply loading far-off prospect after far-off prospect might eventually get their attention, moreso than the typical deal where you have to offer a real high-end prospect to get them to answer their phone. What if we said Nick Gordon, one of Enlow/Leach, Wade, and any FIVE guys in the 2017 draft of their choosing not named above?
  3. ashbury
    My guess is that you'd have to be really careful not to run afoul of the players' union. A lot of the safeguards they have negotiated are to prevent teams from putting a strong-arm on players to give back anything. While your proposal may seem favorable to both sides, I could foresee some hidden obstacle very easily.
  4. ashbury
    I could quibble with Rooker too low and Rosario a little too high, but this ranking doesn't seem outlandish. As trade bait, pretty much everyone below #10 amounts to a sweetener, and I don't want to trade many of the names at #10 and above, so this is a little disheartening. You left Dozier and ESan and other established veterans off the list? Maybe the Rays don't want them for Archer, but as trade value they still rank somewhere, at least in principle.
  5. ashbury
    Had he pitched in the 1970s everyone would know who he was.
  6. ashbury
    With a lot of guys like this I keep coming back to the word "tweener". In basketball it's a pretty common concept, e.g. a guy not quite fast enough to play guard and not quite strong enough to play forward, yet a pretty good player if you happen to have the right niche for him. Blankenhorn is too young to be worrying excessively in this regard, but you'd like not to be thinking about fallback plans like corner outfield quite yet.
  7. ashbury
    If that happens, he can be moved. You might not get a lot in trade for him, but unless you think Esco will get worse, his contract would be market-correct and you could get some other team to take him off your hands, with a C-level prospect in return as the fig-leaf. Meantime, you have him to cover your present needs. New prospects pushing their way to the majors - that is generally a good problem to have. But you can't count those chickens until they actually finish hatching.
  8. ashbury
    Hot stove talk is fun but I'm not sure that general fan interest hinges on front offices having widely diverging business models.
  9. ashbury
    I forgot to add the "new favorite" song I was introduced to, this year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8MEX1XnD-I
  10. ashbury
    O Holy Night always gets me - that's my #1. It Came Upon A Midnight Clear rates pretty highly. Hark the Herald Angels Sing. Silent Night. Joy To The World. Any of these done well will please me. Lately I can't get Holiday Road out of my head. Pretty lowbrow, but it's just so *happy* and catches the mood of the season for me.
  11. ashbury
    The game was ruined in 1906 when they instituted the forward pass. They're still sorting out the inconsistencies. / Sometimes, I talk like I'm older than Chief...
  12. ashbury
    Merry Christmas and/or Happy Holidays cheer to all! Here's a conclusion I reached during this season of beloved holiday music, which a little googling revealed was not an original notion after all: http://78.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ldlax3anje1qa2ojyo1_400.jpg From now on I'm calling it 99 Bottles of Cheer on the Wall.
  13. ashbury
  14. ashbury
    He's come a long way since the Florimon/Escobar debates. Pay the man.
  15. ashbury
    Not to disagree, particularly, but to elaborate: There's a limit to how much farther the present trend of bullpen use can go anyway, at least with 25-man rosters. Every season you need to cover about 1450 innings (162x9, approximately, plus or minus 8-inning losses and extra-inning games), so even if you expand your pitching staff to 14, that's about 100 innings each. It's not too hard to find guys that can give you 60 good innings a year from the bullpen - that comes out to an inning every 3 games or so. Max effort guys will do this for you, but then you need 24 of them. You can ask more from a given pitcher, and in most cases the quality will suffer. Whether you designate your 3+ inning guys to start the game or come into the middle, there is a premium to be attached to those who can do what it takes to last longer than an inning and still get guys out. They are not plentiful. Starters can't "eat up" much fewer innings than they're doing now or you're going to run out of capable pitchers to cover the innings.
  16. ashbury
    My aim was a lot more limited than yours seems to be. To discredit "the best translation to successful W-L outcomes" (my emphasis) doesn't require much of a study, just a few compelling counterexamples. I didn't cherry pick, just said, OK, what about the WS winners like KC, and convinced myself that the next two years didn't fit this narrative of there being some kind of new rule that KC ushered in. A contending team usually needs to be balanced, and the deeper into the post-season you want to go, the better each phase of your team needs to be. To win it all, you shouldn't plan on having gaping holes. The Twins didn't measure up to Houston in 2017 in any phase of the game - hitting, starting pitching, or relievers. (Maybe defense.) Lotta work still to do. I didn't get the impression kab was staking out a position too different from mine either. Since none of us is advocating to pump up just the bullpen massively and call it an off-season, nor to ignore the bullpen, I think I can stop belaboring my point.
  17. ashbury
    I'm not sure who's asking what anymore. But yesterday when I weighed in on looking at recent WS winners, I was responding to a specific claim: "multiple dominant bullpen arms as the best translation to successful W-L outcomes." This comes across as trying to position the bullpen as the single most important component to winning. It seemed like something a few examples should confirm or deny. I often start getting skeptical as soon as I see "as we all know". I'm hardly the only one posting, but by no means do I think a bullpen isn't important. Is anyone taking that position?
  18. ashbury
    Here's a recent study by someone who went looking for this connection and didn't find it: http://www.jameshbuffi.com/tommy-john-pitch-selection/
  19. ashbury
    I have no idea how to gauge the frequency, to discuss this more meaningfully. Anecdotal evidence won't suffice, and baseball-reference.com fails to keep proper stats. I'll stand by my take, for now.
  20. ashbury
    Players in the upper salary echelons sometimes set up charitable trusts and the like. An extra $3M to feed some additional hungry children might still get such a player's attention.
  21. ashbury
    But if it's unpredictable then your prediction is not likely to come true. But if your prediction does not come true, then prediction is possible. But if prediction is possible, then another unpredictable year will come. But if it's unpredictable then your prediction is not likely to come true. But if your prediction does not come true... Illogical, illogical. All units relate. All units. Norman, coordinate!!!
  22. ashbury
    Mod note: Please don't turn this thread on "minor league transactions" into another debate on the old front office. The comment that triggered this was from 2+ weeks ago - at some point, things need to be left to rest.
  23. ashbury
  24. ashbury
    I just took a look at the last 4 WS winners. Either by Wins Above Replacement, or Win Probability Added, two measures that are constructed pretty differently from one another, the Royals stand out as winning because of their bullpen, and the Giants, Cubs and Astros do not. You can win a World Series by bludgeoning the other team with your bats, or by shutting them down with your starters, or by shortening the game via your bullpen. I like baseball.
  25. ashbury
    Perhaps, but I don't think this is the thread... (Ditto to the replies that followed.)
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