ashbury

Nik Turley vs Cleveland batters:

We are Hamlet, prince of Borg. Prepare to be or not to be.

It goes farther. Tonight's Weather Outlook (TWO) includes a chance of Thunderstorms With Occasionallightning (TWO). The omens are everywhere if you know where to look.

Gah. I feel bad for him; I feel bad for us.

True. But any smart team will have various benchmarks as to what a million dollars is worth. For instance I've seen a guideline that buying free agent costs about $6M per win. Free agency is kind of steep, but even if it's more like $3M per win when running a team ($250M total revenue, 81 wins is about par), then the FO has to ask themselves if spending an extra mil gets them a 1-in-3 chance at an additional win sometime down the road. If they believe a draftee has that potential, i.e. a decent chance to have more than a cup of coffee as a career, they ought to pony up the dough.

It would be easy to joke they should rebuild the warning track about 10 feet shallower because Buxton's so fast that he needs more warning. But he missed that ball, so I infer that he was aware of the fence - it looked barely catchable if there were no obstacle. He just seems to have a Plan B that he'll cushion the impact somehow. Somebody needs to explain to him that he's not indestructible.

4. About three years of additional playing experience for the young studs you are counting on. In their current incarnation, I think this lineup would get carved up by the elite pitching you start to see exclusively once playoff time rolls around. One-and-done this year, were they to sneak into the post-season. Maybe the same in 2018. Of course you could get lucky, but legit WS contender, no. That said, I'm not against acquiring the pieces you named, if they are controllable for more than this one year, and don't cost an arm and a leg. Which means, probably, it's very tough.

The top guy on your board is going to be some over-slot guy every time. That's why (apart from the 1:1) pick) they are still available - nobody else felt they could afford them either, nor take a chance on drafting but not signing them. Nobody has the draft budget to do it that way, not because of cheapness by the individual team but because of the draft pool process.

If so, this strikes me as something that will correct itself, once management notices that their attempts at strategery are backfiring.

I didn't catch on that that was what you were doing until you pointed it out. Of course we are.

Fudge. I was having network troubles, thus had a backlog of posts to check, and I took the shortcut of doing a search on "Hale". Next time I'll include spoonerisms too, and maybe anagrams.

I held off because it was LaBombo's video, but I still don't see an answer from him, so: Chip Hale.

I did not know that one, but looked it up. Good one!

The chapter on hydrogen is da bomb!

I was expecting the section on carbon to be taxing, but not so far.

Some of these Mariners look like they should be on Milwaukee, with that defense.

All Buxton is missing right now is his offense, if he starts to succeed in that department he is a Hall of Famer.

I saw only Buxton's double last night, but if the closed stance is giving him a better chance at outside pitches, he certainly isn't giving up anything on being able to turn on inside strikes. Nice!

HAY MIKE HOW YA DOIN THAT WAS A GOOD GAME LAST NITE TO BAD WE LOST oops sorry didn't see that first part

If you believe volatility is an issue, regardless of a bullish longterm view, then paying off the mortgage lets you apply your old mortgage payment to buying new stock, taking advantage of dollar-cost averaging. Rather than ride out a bad patch with your portfolio, you say, "hey! they're having a sale on stocks this month!"

A couple/three problems I see with this. I consider myself on the more analytic end of the spectrum here, and I want numbers to back up my management decisions, but I find it hard to believe a ranking of amateur baseball prospects is absolute enough to do more than put them into rough groupings. The 1:1 pick can be a little special, in that some years one player may stand out alone. Otherwise, even at the top you have a group where the best forecasting is still just "well, one of these [four, whatever] guys will probably turn out to have the best Career WAR* [or whatever metric] out of everyone". And then after the team's first pick, the fuzziness only increases; there's not a lot of daylight there between a dozen or more choices. Second, and maybe more importantly, the draft pool money system MLB instituted has a huge impact. If you have identified a few top choices, as the Twins no doubt did, and had a guess for both Career WAR and signing demand, it may be wiser to do as the Twins did. Say your WAR estimate** for Greene is 50 (borderline HOFer) and for Lewis it's only 30 (everyday player for years), but Greene will cost a lot, then clearly you should just go ahead pick Greene anyway, because you can't make up the lost 20 WAR by picking up one or more high schoolers who drop, and whom you can lure with a million additional dollars, with your next picks. But I'm betting that a competent probabilistic forecast would put the candidate prospects much closer in estimated career WAR than that, this year at least. Suppose the best minds in your front office guesstimate Greene 50, Wright 48, Gore 47, Lewis 47, McKay 42, but you've also got your eye on Enlow at 30 who you think may drop due to signability, and anyone else likely still there at your second pick is more like a 20 at best, such as Rooker, then (as actually occurred) picking whoever in that top group will sign cheap enough could give you 47+30 instead of 50+20. I think the disagreements here (or anywhere) on whom to pick 1:1 come down to an assumption whether there is a lot of separation or a little. Precision, separation, and draft pool. These are what lead me away from expecting to construct a predefined ranking of prospects and then just pick the top one at each turn. * Just to be clear, I'm referring to "WAR" very generically here, and not a specific implementation seen anywhere. Simply, "how many wins do you think this guy will add to your standings over the years?" As the analytic type, I do think you have to look at it in approximately those terms. Accomplishing it is the trick. ** And by WAR estimate I mean an average over all reasonable outcomes, including injury preventing a career at all, but also the faint chance of a 120 WAR meaning an inner-circle HOFer. Expectation value, for those who think in those terms. Not simply best ceiling, or best floor (whatever floor means for an untested amateur).

Any list in which Matt Belisle ranks high is not one I feel very interested in researching further.

Yes.

How do you factor in the inherent uncertainty when scouting young players? Literally no franchise consistently picks future major-leaguers in the second round and beyond. They're all trying to pick the "best player". The misses outnumber the hits, and yet gold is found in the later rounds. How does "pick the best player" provide any guidance? I don't mean to be belligerent, I'm just trying to understand what you're offering.