ashbury

Amnesty International might have a few choice words in case any children were forced to listen to that concert, either.

All my friends say that about you too! / there, I've set you up for about eleventy bazillion different ways you may want to go

http://images.scribblelive.com/2015/10/10/25c24092-ccec-46e1-bb3e-0c80eb16a632.jpg

Dad jokes.

I just noticed, it's 21 K, not 11. Should have been more but that 2 strikeout game against Scranton was good except for that detail.

With an 8-2 lead the job of the bullpen is to get outs. OBP is more important than SLG. Give up a few meaningless runs - who cares, get the game over. "You had one job. Get six outs." Pressly: 6 batters faced, 1 out - .833 Breslow: 4 BF, 1 out - .750 Belisle: 4 BF, 1 out - .750 Rucinski: 8 BF, 3 out - .625 All of these are unacceptable. Some are worse than others. Combine Breslow and Belisle and compare to Rucinski, and he got 1 more out in the same opportunities. Or compare Pressly directly to Rucinski, and he gave up the same baserunners except got 2 more outs. Rucinski did the best of the 4 relievers Paul ran out there. Make of that what you will. Boshers was not an option when Paul had to decide, and is irrelevant to the discussion. Unless, if Paul had a temper tantrum about who was called up, and didn't put in the "fresh" arm he was given, as some kind of passive-aggressive message to the FO, then that looks even worse. I've said previously that it was more important to get the bullpen rested so as to be better prepared to face the next several games, than to focus on this one game seemingly in the bag. But even if you do focus on trying to win that one game, the decision that day looks poorly conceived.

Pff. Ozzie Smith would make plays like that in his sleep.

I'm holding out for gobsmacked.

It's still Small Sample Size territory, I think, when it comes to splits like this. I took a look at the 7 pitchers who have started a game this season. Maybe a bunch of little skews have combined. Tepesch - his 1 start was at Target Field - that can't help the numbers there, right?Berrios - split his 4 starts - his 1 bad start out of 4 was at TFMejia - 4 starts at TF, 2 on the road - he's been surprisingly decent, but his one best game did come on the roadGibson - 5 starts at TF, 4 on the road - only his last start, at LAA, was above par, so if he's turned the corner (ha!) a 5-3 split is going to skew toward bad home numbers, badlyHughes - 4 starts at TF, 5 on the road - he has gone from shaky to putrid in his last three starts, two of which were at home, so the apparent skew toward hurting road numbers actually works against TF a bit if there's a new/renewed physical problem that emergedSantiago - 8 out of his 12 starts were at TF, so whatever he does skews TF numbers, and sometimes he's given up a lot of runs compared to what you'd expect from hits and walksSantana - 7 of his 11 starts were at TF, but his only 2 bad starts were at home - fluke or something about the park, I don't know.Bottom line, I don't have a specific explanation, except that when you break it down by the pitchers it's kind of hard for me to avoid saying to give it some more time.

Partially, meaning the part of the day you're posting to TD?

I have high hopes for Curtiss and he's close to ready for a promotion, but I have qualms. Until a few games ago he was walking a lot of guys. He retired the bottom of the order yesterday. Not his fault, because that's when the manager put him in. There's something about pitching the ninth inning that is good practice for a prospect. But I want to see him against the best AA hitters for a little while longer, too. I tried to look at other game logs for him but bb-ref.com seemed to be missing the recent few I wanted. Maybe after I can look in detail, I'll feel better about him.

Felix got his month of June off to a good start on Friday night, leading the Lookouts to a 3-2 win over the Birmingham Barons. He carried a 2-0 lead into the 7th, but weakened and gave up a solo homer to Cameron Seitzer, then a Mason Robbins two-out single; Jake Reed was summoned for relief help, but he allowed the tying run to come in, on three straight walks, before registering the final out. Chattanooga came back in the top of the 8th to retake the lead, and Raul Fernandez and John Curtiss each pitched scoreless innings to secure the victory. Reed thus vultured the win. The stat line for Jorge shows just 4 hits and a walk in his 6.2 innings of work. In four of the innings he faced the minimum 3 batters. This very strong showing, despite the two earned runs, left his season ERA at 3.39. As a side note: a lengthy game recap, authored anonymously by "Birmingham Barons", hilariously managed to completely omit any mention of the name Felix Jorge! In a related note, MiLB.com this year has computer generated games stories, and the one for this game did a better job in relation to Felix, although the little detail about 3 consecutive walks resulted only in "Jake Reed (1-0) got the win in relief". If you want to complain about the coverage in the STrib or PPress, just remember that it can always be worse.

As the Adopt-A-Prospect monitor for Aaron Slegers, on his behalf I'd just like to thank all the little people who made this award possible. (I'm sure my guy Felix Jorge sends along his thanks for Honorable Mention, too.)

Aaron received highest honors as Twins Minor League Starting Pitcher of the Month for May 2017!

Felix Jorge's body of work earned him Honorable Mention recognition in the Twins Minor League Starting Pitcher of the Month for May.

We just can't have nice new things.

Tuned in late. Mentioned leadingly to Mrs Ashburyjohn that the score was 6-0 in the third. "Gonna keep watching?" she inquired. She's a good knowledgeable fan, crossed up in this case by hubby.

I hope you have some nice anti-jinx medicine on hand.

Have your TV monitor checked. I see him in left.

We don't moderate this part of the site as strictly as other parts, but this jumped out at me as being unhelpful to open discussion among friends.

Hi, baseballmom15, and welcome to the site, as I see it's your first post. (Perhaps you've "lurked" for a while but never felt motivated to post.) If you're new, I should start out by saying that this is a moderated site, and I'm one of the team of moderators. This typo completely slipped past my attention today - there are a lot of posts every day and I just hadn't gotten here. If I had, and if no one else had already commented on it, I'm sure I would have fixed it without mentioning it to anyone. Given the several comments in response already here, I'll just leave it alone. But I know Seth well enough that he would not have been making a wisecrack like that - not even close. As already noted, it looks like an auto-correct snafu, from a device where a mistake can slip past. Similarly, the responses chortling over it don't seem mean-spirited, and were rooted in the incongruity of Seth ever making such a wisecrack on purpose - but, in those cases, it is well for posters to think when making such comments, as they can be prone to misinterpretation by someone not among the community of regular posters. I can see how someone might think the laughter was over the offensive term itself, and I hope the posters see the problem too. The site has a Comment Policy, and if you look there you'll see a section on Inappropriate Language that covers, in particular, "Please be sensitive to the fact that comments relating to racial, cultural, national, gender and sexual identity can be offensive, even when there is no pejorative intent." The owners and moderators at the site take action at even a first offense in a baseball discussion thread. (We do have daily "Game Threads" where the banter is a little more free-wheeling, but even there a malicious comment would not escape moderator attention.) In summary, I am confident the offensive term was completely inadvertent, but I am also very embarrassed that it happened and that the ensuing reponses were ambiguous, and I hope you accept our apology for it and won't think badly of the site.

I want to add another angle: HS draftees don't cost more because you get a better prospect as a result of their age and status. They cost more because you have to buy out their college degree. You alluded to it, and indeed many of these kids relish the excuse to skip further schooling and start making money. But if they are getting good advice, from family or from professionals (shhhh!), they have to take into account that if they ruin their ACL/UCL/lats/whatever at age of 22 say, what will they do with their lives? Starting college then would be less than ideal, although of course it's hardly impossible. With more money in the bank, the player assesses his chances differently. At 1:1 the dollars are higher than for the rest of the team's picks, so the internal calculations may not be typical. But no, I don't advocate drafting high schoolers just to show my willingness to spend to field a winning team. Paying a high schooler is like deciding to pay to drive on a toll road. If the road takes you where you want to go, it may be worth it to you. If it goes somewhere only close, and another road is more direct and gets you there better anyway, why would you?

That isn't what I meant. I meant that money takes a back seat to getting the guy you want. And of course it can be a close decision. If the top brass sees, say, 3 guys as indistinguishable, when all the fuzz of risk and upside and floor are combined, sure, you could pick the one who agrees to sign cheapest. I am just saying that the bonus should be a completely secondary consideration - nearly an afterthought, once the choices are ranked for potential. At the end, yes negotiate hard. But, if you see even a sliver of daylight between your choice and the also-rans, then at 1:1 don't be penny-wise pound-foolish.

But what's not being discussed here is that he's not very old. Seriously, though, at 24 his resume suggests a future, and he's not had his career year yet to cloud judgement. He has enough stuff, to my untrained eye. And I liked the composure he showed yesterday in a tense game. My one worry is his weight. BB-ref.com lists him as 6'3" 195. No way. Is he 220+ now? Will he continue putting on weight? It's easy to name many bulky but successful pitchers, still I hope all additional pounds prove to be of the productive variety.