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ashbury

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Everything posted by ashbury

  1. ashbury
    You might have missed this part.
  2. ashbury
    I don't think it's that dire. The June draft is covered by a bonus pool for each team to distribute amongst all their draftees. The pool is computed by adding the slot bonuses for each pick the team has. Failing to sign a given draftee reduces their pool by the amount of the slot the player was drafted at. Conversely, going over the total pool limit is taxed punitively by the league, including loss of draft picks for going as little as 5% over. Within this structure, there's some game theory involved. For example, it's harder to sign high-schoolers than college players, for a combination of reasons, and thus the bonuses necessary to sign them tend to be higher. Saving some money on the early-round draft picks gives the team flexibility to lure lower-round picks to sign. The Twins are likely to spend their full bonus pool, or close to it, as will every team. As the #1 picking team, their pool is the largest. They will spend the most. There are various reasons to be critical of the Twins' spending pattern, but I don't think draft bonuses are one. These two links show this year's pool sizes, and the rules governing them, respectively: http://www.baseballamerica.com/draft/2017-mlb-draft-slots-bonus-pools/#PZVTGOX2RXUPsp7Z.97 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_League_Baseball_draft#Bonus_pool
  3. ashbury
    In which case, no significant MLB implications either.
  4. ashbury
    Moderator's note: even more so than usual, it's important to stay on the topic, and not make fellow posters be the topic. Do not scold people for having opinions.
  5. ashbury
    1) Never take for granted that your interpretation of a word is the same as your spouse's. Couples can go for years without realizing that they don't mean the same thing by the word "vacation", for example; one likes to spend a week reading under a beach umbrella, while the other talks the first into seeing every sight that the area has to offer, and the entire time goes by and the first one keeps waiting for the actual vacation to start. Family gatherings at holidays, financial choices, sharing of housework - all of these things can require talking out, and sometimes require you to realize you had assumptions you never dreamed weren't absolutes. 2) Respect for your spouse is expected in everything you say, and personal attacks are not allowed. Do not be disruptive through trolling, flame-baiting, and thread-jacking.
  6. ashbury
    Beetlebaum? Any friend of Spike Jones is a friend of mine. Like Spike, several of us here are too corny for sophisticated people, and too sophisticated for corny people. I am guessing you and USAFChief will cross paths and swap stories about serving as senior officers in the Spanish-American War.
  7. ashbury
    Earlier I expect it was the high walk rate. His last 7 appearances have been pretty clean in that regard. I'm guessing a promotion is in the offing at last.
  8. ashbury
    Relief pitcher is the fallback option when you draft a pitcher. If Plan A and Plan B both fail, plan C is pretty low probability for success either.
  9. ashbury
    1 walk in the last 7 games (8+ innings). I was on the go-slow side (a small faction here) due to earlier walks, but now the last obstacle is removed. Move 'im on up.
  10. ashbury
    This is why I don't like On Base Percentage. It fails to reflect the additional value of taking second after a walk on a sleeping defense. / My younger brother, like many Little Leaguers I'm sure, used to employ this play. One of his proudest youthful moments was during the playoffs when the opposing catcher shouted to his infield after he received ball 4, "watch out, he steals".
  11. ashbury
    Someone good at data-mining the vast amount of genealogy online and elsewhere could probably make themselves useful with a ballclub. At age 15 I'd go with bloodlines plus demonstrated interest in the game.
  12. ashbury
    Not merely height, but overall physique. Without bothering to check, I will guess that before/after photos of Ervin Santana in his teens/30s are not nearly as hilarious as of Kent Hrbek. It's not totally unpredictable, especially with some family history to look at, but you can't know for sure at age 16.
  13. ashbury
    It's an expensive strategy. Not in terms of salary, of course. But, except for the smallest-of-market teams, the constraining resource is not money, but space on the 40-man and (especially) the 25-man rosters. There is a lot of opportunity cost while you sift through the candidates, each year you try to bottom-feed, and you never have a strong enough roster to compete when you carry the candidates that turn out not to do well. It's a fun way to root for a doormat franchise to pick itself up while beefing up the lower minors. You can get to about .500 if you're good at it. That's about the only time it's fun, though. I want us to be past that by now, but apparently not.
  14. ashbury
    I never heard that particular formulation of the principle. Into my handy-dandy quotes file it goes. Very nice.
  15. ashbury
    Well this spiraled quickly.
  16. ashbury
    I see that Byron Buxton hasn't taken a walk since May 31. Me, I get kind of antsy if I don't get my exercise. He might want to consider a walking regimen again, one he seems to have given up during his 23 PA in the month of June.
  17. ashbury
    In college we had students from all over the place, so when a Professor in one of my classes said as an aside, "it's all Greek to me," probably because he had written some math symbols that were squiggly Greek and he didn't actually know what he was writing, he paused and put Nick, our token Greek guy, on the spot and asked what people back home said in that situation. The reply was "it's all Chinese to me". Well, we had no shortage of Chinese guys in the classroom, so we asked them. "It's all Russian to me," was their response in unison. I guess my school wasn't hot stuff, because we didn't actually have a Russian, or maybe it was the quaint custom in those days to not invite our adversaries to learn secrets along with our students. But I bet they had some other language to blame, and so on, and so on, and eventually it would have circled back to "it's all English to me" if we had kept at it.
  18. ashbury
    Not high school, but I guess you know what they traditionally call the student with the worst grade point average in the graduating class at Harvard Medical School? "Doctor"! Just like the rest of them.
  19. ashbury
    This is a fun one. I scanned the official rules and there are many regulations on what the catcher must do. But I don't see where it's specified that a catcher must be employed.
  20. ashbury
    I took a look at his 2012 Adopt-A-Prospect page. Back then, at 17, he was 6'4" and 175. He shrank.
  21. ashbury
    Phil Hughes suffered a major injury last season that required surgery. I was not counting on him at all for this season, and though I admire his courage in coming back I have not felt comfortable with what he can produce when he takes the mound. My top 3 are: 1. Santana 2. Berrios 3. Mejia These are the ones where I expect 5 (or more) good innings that keep the team in the ballgame. None of the bullpen guys are lights-out enough for me to put them on a par with these 3 starters. They are all just "parts" that fit in with better pitchers (that we do not have) to man a good staff. Duffey is the one who could turn out to be better than that conservative view.
  22. ashbury
    What happens if Heston pitches well in Santiago's absence? If he's kept on the 25-man, who goes down when Santiago returns? He can't be optioned, so do we DFA him after a good game or even two? I can't imagine Heston being a long term answer, but even a AAAA guy can surprise you in the short term, and the optics of then discarding him would be bad. This roster is still a nightmare.
  23. ashbury
    Conservative talk radio yesterday was already in damage control; one guy was calling Comey's testimony a "smoking water-pistol". I love visiting Indiana.
  24. ashbury
    I'm not local to the Twin Cities anymore, so I don't know of Joe personally, but I'm so sorry that your connection to him makes this even more painful news.
  25. ashbury
    Moderator's note:I needed to remove a couple of posts that weren't relevant. As always, respectful discussion is expected, but especially so when we have a guest. Bear in mind also that the Official Scorer does not write the rules of baseball, so there is no value in arguing that a given rule is "bad".
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