ashbury

By George, you've got it! / Oh why can't a Royal be more like a Twin? / / Come on Castro, move your bloomin' arse! Buxton's the tying run, right behind you.

Get 8 innings out of his 100-pitch game allotment, as my Adopt-A-Prospect Aaron Slegers did this afternoon, instead of just 6?

http://tiltteens.weebly.com/uploads/2/9/4/4/29448475/414594_orig.gif

Small procedural note, Tepesch is out of minor-league options if I have counted correctly. I can't picture a front office selecting a player's contract only to expose him to waivers a few days later, if you mean sending him down to Rochester. Tonkin likely is the one they would ask waivers on.

Headline: Slegers Bounces Back This afternoon in Rochester, Aaron Slegers found his big-boy stuff again, and stifled the Looieville Bats as the Red Wings won 7-1. That solitary marker in the sixth of his eight innings of work was unearned - although I'll offer the unsolicited editorial view that giving the pitcher a break by the rulebook is not completely sensible when it's his own muffed catch at first base that was the cause. First baseman Matt Hague still got credit for his assist on the play, so the rulebook at least metes out that much justice. Aside from the error, there was also a wild pitch and a passed ball by Garver that moved runners up here and there - in all honesty Slegers worked in and out of moderate trouble at times - he did have 1-2-3 innings in the third and the fifth. Seven hits, one walk, four strikeouts. Most impressively, perhaps, he needed only 92 pitches - fewer than 3 pitches per batter. All in all, with a light breeze blowing out, it was a nice day's work. This brings his season ERA back down to 4.37.

This Day In Baseball HIstory April 28, 1957: Bob "Hurricane" Hazle is still playing for AAA Wichita and has not yet registered his first of 155 PA for Milwaukee, en route to a 1.126 OPS contribution to the pennant-winning Braves.

That's not an accurate reflection of the post you were responding to, either, since the bolded part was in fact, "if he's one of those 5% of guys that truly maximizes their talent". Please do not put words into people's mouths.

Ever? I am curious what you base such a statement on. Looking only at the International League, only in 2016, limiting it only to 22-year old seasons like Berrios's, I see Tyler Glasnow and Luis Severino who have minor league resumes better than Berrios's. Couple of other guys had better years at AAA than he did. I don't see a reason to dig farther. He's a valuable prospect, no question, but why go overboard with the superlatives? Oh, and the post you were replying to had him as mid-rotation with a ceiling at #2 - not "marginal".

No, but three of his opposing batters were: Hosmer, Bonifacio and Gordon all walked. Also, Moustakis surely must be pedestrian by now, because he has completely lost his wheels.

http://memeguy.com/photos/images/still-one-of-the-greatest-gifs-of-all-time-imo-49611.gif Lemme think. A game WHIP of 1.5, leading to a game ERA of 5.06, if I did the math in my head correctly. Sounds about right for our Kyle.

Unless you are referring to an inside joke I am forgetting, I'm pretty sure the observations may also objectify beer bellies, bad haircuts, unfortunate Hawaiian shirts, and overly preppy people on expense accounts in the luxury seats, to name but just a few.

Another ten days, another update. Ben got a hit yesterday against Peoria. Hopefully, this is a better harbinger than my last observation, which presaged this present five game stretch in which his season batting average actually decreased, to an even .100 at this writing. He's seeing more bench time, and is not being used as DH on his days off from behind the plate. I want to mention "Batting Average on Balls In Play", the notorious BABIP. Bear with me. Excluding strikeouts and homers, and maybe a couple of other outcomes I'm forgetting, experience has shown that major leaguers as a group come close to batting .300 when a fair ball is struck. And with few exceptions (extraordinarily speedy batters, for instance), neither batters nor pitchers show much ability to deviate from this norm for season after season. I don't like calling high or low BABIP (or a lot of other things that happen on a baseball diamond) "luck". If I were inserted into a professional baseball lineup, my BABIP would likely be a flat zero, and it wouldn't be a matter of luck. Let Mike Trout have some swings against high-schoolers, and expect a BABIP like .500 or .800 or maybe simply 1.000, and none of the kids would give him the stink-eye and mutter "lucky". But high or low BABIP has not been shown to be a reproducible skill in most cases for people, like major leaguers, who have some demonstrable skills, against opponents with skills. If a batter is struggling but his BABIP is .200, give him time; if a pitcher is struggling but his BABIP is .400, give him time. If the reverse is the case, expect the player to come back to earth. *cough* Danny Santana *cough*. I don't know whether this .300 benchmark carries over to the low minors or not. All this is meant as a lead-in to say: Ben Rortvedt has a BABIP this season of .125. He hasn't been striking out a super lot (10 out of 51 PA), and he hasn't hit any homers. (He's also walked only once, a very low number, but that has no bearing on BABIP.) So he's putting the ball in play frequently, and he's coming away with next-to-nothing to show for it. Probably what I'm seeing in the stats is due to frequent weak contact. But grounders do bleed through. Flares drop in. Opposing fielders zig when they should have zagged. Except for Ben, who apparently is getting none of this, uh, luck or whatever it is. Last year his BABIP was .235 in the GCL, where he batted .203. Brought up to the Appy League, his BABIP was .263, and his BA was .250. That's low, but not weirdly low. These numbers all reside in "Small Sample Size" territory, so I don't think it's wise to draw deep conclusions. What I'm suggesting is, 2017 Ben may not be that different from 2016 Ben, except for the hits not dropping in. If I'm management, I'm staying the course (assuming his work behind the plate has remained good), particularly since the rookie leagues don't start for a while yet (so there is no alternative way to demote him to easier competition for a little confidence-building except Extended Spring Training). None of this is meant to say that Brian Dinkelman, his hitting coach, doesn't have his work cut out for him regarding Rortvedt. My armchair analysis is to suggest not worrying so much about striking out, and accept a higher K rate (for the time being) in exchange for maybe stinging the ball a little harder when he does make contact. But maybe it's something more specific, like getting fooled into weak contact on breaking pitches or whatever. In any case don't over-coach; make your best suggestion, then sit back a few weeks and let him work through it. In any case, bottom line: better luck going forward, Ben! Or more to the point: better BABIP, Ben!

Too often writers use a watered-down version of "struck out the side". The pitcher can give up a double, and later walk a guy, but as long as all three outs are shown as 'K' in the scoresheet, he struck out the side. Not so, in this case. Three up. Three down. And, even better, all three were of the swinging variety on strike three. No Anthony Slama Syndrome here. Now I wanna see the scoresheet, to know how many pitches that inning.

At least it's a better situation than a few years ago when guys like Albers were DOA.

Just watched the first two eps. Very very good. I'll probably have to watch in irregular doses because I won't subject Mrs Ash to that kind of entertainment, just as she doesn't insist I watch Gray's Anatomy with her.

I have in the meantime gotten my bifocals fixed. It turned out that Polanco was throwing the ball straight and true to the first baseman the whole time.

As I've said probably too often by now, I based my worry on personal observation at the back fields at spring training a couple years ago. He was scattering or short-hopping routine throws as often as making accurate ones. I was not optimistic he could improve by now - my concern was that his arm strength might have maxed out that that point. I am glad to see he has indeed improved - he's making major league plays, not merely routine ones. (BTW I am sure I, as just some guy on the Internet, am not the "original source" for anything whatsoever.) And conversely, the mistakes Sano makes look correctable with experience, while his ability to come in on a slow roller and fire to first always told me he has all the tools needed to succeed. Improvement comes down to his commitment to work at it, which so far this year looks promising. He may not achieve complete reliability in time before his weight becomes the deciding factor some year, so that's the other worry for me.

Do we know which coach(es) worked with Polanco and Sano on their defense? Teams identify pitching coaches and batting coaches, but seemingly leave defense to whoever has a spare moment during workouts. I know that's not really the case. Molitor was a middle infielder, so has it been him?

This brings Palacios's career low-A OPS to somewhere around .667.

Aw, geez. The Tennessee Smokies raised an ugly lump on Felix Jorge's season, in their game Wednesday, April 26. He gave up 6 runs on 10 hits, en route to an 8-4 loss to the Cubs' AA affiliate. He did strike out 4 in his 5 innings of work while walking only one. Three doubles were painful enough, but third-baseman Jason Vosler hit not one but *two* home runs off of Felix. (That jerk hit a third, later on, against Ryan Eades.) Maybe the 11 a.m. start had Felix's timing off. Better luck next game.

I've seen this before but never had looked at the details. Apparently the two variables on the graph, the distance needed to cover and the time to do it, are the entire essence of the metric. If it doesn't take account of the wind, and maybe glare from the sun and other sundry factors, then there will remain gray areas, which is why the stars are defined as percentages of such plays made - not just for the universe of players trying to make that play, but the same player under different conditions. So it's not an absolute metric, but nevertheless it looks very useful, and I'm glad if MLB is embracing something like it.

I have to speculate that your Annual Performance Review is comedy gold, each year.

I don't think anyone here was saying otherwise. There was the side issue of perceived inconsistency: either a hometown effect, or just capricious scorers. But putting that aside, as I for one have, racking up the errors that are called is meaningful. It's just that there are many more ways for a play to not be made, besides a couple dozen clear-cut muffs over the course of a season. Not racking up errors is what's not meaningful, at least by itself, and that's why there's the call for things like zone ratings. MLB has made clear they are happy with how errors are now being called. Fine. I want to know who's actually, you know, good. And some guys just have a knack for making plays, while other guys earn nicknames like "Pasta Diving".

It also helped that they won those games.

You rang? http://thumbnails.cbsig.net/CBS_Production_Entertainment_VMS/2014/11/12/357014083965/CBS_PERRY_MASON_040_CONTENT_CIAN_cpd_575059_1296_1280x720_501461571547_611589_640x360.jpg