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ashbury

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Everything posted by ashbury

  1. ashbury
    So did I. 😀
  2. ashbury
    Ober's got 9 more starts maybe? Will he reach 20 wins?
  3. ashbury
    Did you know that an anagram of the name Eduardo Beltre is "Eduardo Belter"? It really makes you think, doesn't it?
  4. ashbury
    Tying the DH to the starting pitcher makes some conceptual sense, and is implemented through a minimum of word changes in the rules (unlike all those other proposals which have to watch out for loopholes). Aside from the straight disincentive to removing the starter until he's not effective or is gassed, the teams will feel pressure with their 26-man roster, probably being uncomfortable with only 13 bats on the roster, and a decision (rather than a rule) to go with a 12-man pitching staff has the reinforcing effect on lengthening starter innings. The extra-innings runner rule is IMO helpful here too, to reduce the number of boring marathon game where the pitcher would be batting a lot of times. I'm also in favor of deadening the baseball, turning a lot of would-be sluggers into Warning Track Power Kings who will need to shorten their strokes (and in the process reduce the strikeouts) or make way for someone who will. Pitchers in turn will be a little less incentivized to go max-effort on every pitch. In my more radical moments I would 1) invest billions to move outfield walls (and the stands behind them) back by 75 feet to make the game more athletic and entertaining, and 2) admit that Babe Ruth Was A Mistake and make every ball that goes out of the playing field a foul ball. Eh, I'll settle for the slightly deadened ball, if I can get that.
  5. ashbury
    Bet the team trainer and rest of the medical staff didn't think of this neat trick! 😀
  6. ashbury
    Margot's defensive skills seem to have eroded from his previously fine reputation, and his offense has been subpar. I suspect the Twins could have gotten similar offense from DaShawn Keirsey and better defense as a bonus, without consuming the precious payroll headroom that Margot cost. So no, he's not been worth it. The swap of infield prospects is a head-scratching add-on that we won't see play out for several more seasons, likely.
  7. ashbury
    What in the world are you talking about? I was responding to a post about Dobnak. You quoted Dobnak's 7.2 innings. Someone else replied that that's a small sample size. Suddenly you are quoting Varland's minor league stats for some reason.
  8. ashbury
    Was his name by any chance "Totals"? I saw him in the box score. He's been around a while now.
  9. ashbury
    So are you actually disagreeing with anything I said? I carefully compared the teams in 1987 and except for Detroit and Toronto the Twins had an advantage on offense versus every other team when Gagne played. Thus he was underrated offensively because people fail to take into account that shortstops often get a pass on offense because the position is so important. OPS+ is useful to know but it has to be in the context of what other teams are putting up against you. The same number from your shortstop can become a liability if it's your left fielder or DH, every time you look at the lineup card your manager sends out there versus the other team's.
  10. ashbury
    No one can claim him. The waivers are a formality. The player in this case has control over his own destiny. The league's rules cover this case - otherwise there could be subterfuge in getting around someone's NTC. He's released, and then he can choose the team he signs with. Or, just sit at home and count his cash that continues to come in. His choice.
  11. ashbury
    I'll go you one better. Gagne was a lot more effective hitter than most folks give him credit for. Most games, he gave the Twins a competitive advantage at bat over whoever the opposing team was running out there - all except obvious exceptions of Detroit and Toronto in 1987 for instance. And his defense being top-notch made the advantage just that much sweeter.
  12. ashbury
    Why are we talking about Varland?
  13. ashbury
    He IS a bargain at $5M. No question. The fallacy is thinking that's a good thing. Contending teams don't build the free-agent portion of their roster $5M at a time, though. And the only reason analytics shows a high value like $18.5M is because teams have to outbid each other for average talent.
  14. ashbury
    Not sure, but I assume you mean that as the compliment it would be if I had said it. 😀 Greg Gagne had a lot to do with that team jelling. And I'm not quite as high on Noah as that, but you never know.
  15. ashbury
    I've definitely warmed up to Miranda's defense and currently feel a bit more comfortable in any given game when Jose is there. I've seen Jose make difficult plays there, and I've seen Royce make difficult plays there. Both have flubbed plays that on a different day they might have made. They're very different kinds of defenders but the net results have been similar. Neither of them is exactly an asset at third, quite yet. Royce is maybe considered to have the higher defensive upside there, but that's for the future. So I'd actually be okay with the combination you named. Or vice versa at 1B-3B if the team can unlock more out of Lewis than he's currently showed. Second base is another story, also with intriguing options. Infield is a team strength; I wish the outfield were coming together as nicely. The key is one of Miranda or Lewis stepping up just a bit and making 3B his own. The other's bat will play at 1B, probably, though Miranda's bat doesn't have quite the pedigree Lewis's does.
  16. ashbury
    I don't know if I'd even go that far. There's probably an upper limit on how good a truly bad hitter not nicknamed Hurricane can be in 40 at bats. But I agree there is practically no lower limit to how bad a good hitter can be during that stretch.
  17. ashbury
    I doubt you'd find anyone competent in a major league FO holding to such a mistaken view. What they might say is that where you stand on defense gives your team more (or less) flexibility in finding more base hits elsewhere on the diamond. The fallacy, if there is one, is spending $5M on a Carlos Santana and declaring him to be a bargain. I personally aim higher than his current .754 OPS, because you can find first basemen who hit far better than that. It's much less easy to find someone who plays SS as well as Carlos Correa does and who also hits like a first baseman is expected to. The jury's still out whether Royce Lewis can be that kind of player too, but if he is, he gives the Twins a chance to add a third masher "who hits like a first baseman," and then actually play him there. The tragedy is the players they've tried there (like Kirilloff) who haven't performed, and then settling for a $5m bargain. The hits count the same, but you can get more of them than they currently are.
  18. ashbury
    Concur. Willi didn't just show up on planet Earth this year. He had over 500 plate appearances against lefties before this stretch of 38 PA, with an OPS above .700. The lefties across the majors since 2019 were mystified how to reduce this bum to tears, until they all had a meeting a couple of months ago and finally figured it out? If you look at just the one player, you may think you've discovered an insight. But if you slice and dice the stats for every player in the majors, you'll come across 38-PA oddities all over the place Lord knows I'm not a Manuel Margot woofer, but this business about his inability to get a base hit as a pinch hitter is a similar construct. Nothing else about his 2024 suggests a lack of clutch-y-ness - his OPS with bases empty is actually just slightly worse than his OPS with men on base, etc. Early in his career he was fine in a pinch-hitting role, so it's not plausible he's suffering from nerves now. He's just suffering from slice-and-dice-itis. I'm not saying slicing and dicing is bad. It can be how problems get identified. The charts in this article are interesting, but baseball is a cat-and-mouse game at all times, and this looks to me like something that will get corrected in the normal course of events anyway. I don't think Willi Castro is dumb.
  19. ashbury
    b-r.com shows his 2024 AAA ERA as 3.61, in 99.2 innings. Not sure where you're getting your information from. Anyway, a post applauding the mention of a player actually on the 40-man roster in an article about "starting pitching depth" somehow got construed into me touting his awesome abilities. SMH.
  20. ashbury
    He's on the 40-man.
  21. ashbury
    Like button simply for including the name of someone plausible (in comparison to others not even on the 40-man) who was omitted in the article.
  22. ashbury
    The quote you mentioned was good. I also enjoyed the observation that after each game they go over the turning points (plural) in the game where Rocco deviated from the plan. Heh, one person's plan is another person's spreadsheet. You can't go into any contest without a plan, and you have to have confidence in that plan, and you also have to be ready to diverge from the plan - just like the quote attributed to Mike Tyson about getting hit in the mouth. They were speaking plain sense with that one. But you know that people will intentionally misconstrue; it's more fun to say that a manager with 2000 MLB plate appearances of his own and who finished third in Rookie of the Year voting has "no feel for the game." Not so coincidentally, my younger son Cashbury was in attendance also. See you in Dallas next year, maybe?
  23. ashbury
    Yes I was (see my response to Chief, above). Now I regret not mentioning it before I traveled there, but, well, you know, it's kind of a polarizing topic in these parts....
  24. ashbury
    Derek Falvey, Thad Levine, and Josh Kalk were all incredibly generous with their time after their respective sessions there last week, and I enjoyed a few minutes of one-on-one conversation with each of them in the outer hallway, when they could have simply high-tailed it to the parking lot and moved on with their day. (The conversations weren't of particular general interest as I was touching on aspects of what I did in my career and how it could carry over to their issues.)
  25. ashbury
    I just wish to point out that with his blast tonight, Salvador Perez now has 268 career home runs. I'm still researching how many of those have come against our Twins, but it might be around 270.
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