ashbury

I just gave you an ironic Like on my own laptop.

Next year you can.

This embraces a view of scouting that is a lot more accurate in its ability to forecast than I believe in. That aside, if we do ever reach a glut of #4s, that will be a better situation we have now.

I think this pretty much makes it official: Adam Brett Walker II is the 1201st most desired player in all of baseball.

C'mon. Who is going to object to "Make the Twins Great Again"? "Drain the Swamp" could work too. "It's Going To Be YUGE! Big League, I'm telling you." "We're going to build the wall". Hey, bringing in the fences a few feet might result in more HR for Mauer. And if "we're going to make the White Sox pay for it" can work, I'm all for it. "Lock Her Up." OK, I got nothin'.

Backing up an earlier comment, I'm not sure there is even such an official entity during an offseason.

Fair enough. Pedro had a little bit of pop. He must have used a different approach at the plate than when I saw him, though.

I didn't think I was making a value judgment. I gave some explanations for the low RBI.

There are stats that show performance with men on base. Edwin Encarnacion led the league in RBI with 127 and Joe had 49, so I'll compare them. As an aside, nobody in either league got to 100 RBI without hitting 25 HR or more - Joe had 11 - so I'm not heavily cherry picking by looking at the AL RBI leader. Here is one breakdown of "opportunity", from b-r.com: Encarnacion (160 games and 702 PA total): Bases empty: 356 PA, 22 RBI (homers, obviously) Any runners on: 346 PA, 105 RBI (these two lines add up to the season total) RISP: 198 PA, 80 RBI (a subset of the second line) Runner on first: 148 PA, 25 RBI (subtract the two above lines) Mauer (134 games and 576 PA total): Bases empty: 346 PA, 10 RBI Any runners on: 230 PA, 39 RBI RISP: 140 PA, 34 RBI Runner on first: 90 PA, 5 RBI There are further breakdowns, to exact bases occupied and numbers of outs, but that gets you further into the weeds of Small Sample Size, which already is in play with samples like 90 PA above. Notice that Mauer had almost as many appearances at the plate with nobody on, as Encarnacion did, despite the disparity in games played. Joe's teammates weren't getting the ducks on the pond. If you pro-rate Encarnacion's opportunities with men on base to Mauer's number, while still keeping his good production, he doesn't reach 100 RBI either. Mauer's OPS was actually better with runners on than with bases empty, while Encarnacion was slightly the opposite. However, Mauer's OPS with men on is bumped up greatly by the walk rate, while Encarnacion's walks stay about the same. My summary: there is something to both sides of the discussion. Mauer had many fewer opportunities with men on, and did far less with them. I think Joe's paucity of homers, and walks with men on base, are both key. But even Babe Ruth might have had trouble distinguishing himself with so many fewer choice opportunities in reduced playing time.

Shocking and horrifying.

I really want to pay attention to Vielma in Spring Training. I share your memory of the Florimonster - I have flashbacks of him sticking that bat out and hoping to dump the pitch into short right field. It would be nice to find out that Vielma has more going on than that.

Most of you don't know my wife. She's pretty conventional in most visible ways. But, had we not had a prior commitment today, she says she would have boarded the commuter train into Boston and taken part in the women's march held on the Common. I often joke, and she agrees, that in so many ways she is Everywoman. When she decides to go to a sale or to an entertainment event, she encounters more crowds than she was led to expect, because everyone else winds up going too. You could do useful and helpful market research, by interviewing only her. Donand Trump should learn the lesson I learned long ago, that one ignores Mrs Ash at one's own peril. He's wrong if he characterizes the participants as unrepresentative.

Like, Ron Paul says to buy gold. I think I saw an ad about that somewhere.

Catching up: I would give the perfect weather scenario a try, I would like to capture and experience forever the sensation of eating a perfect cherry pie after fasting for 48 hours, I would go along with the vampire story because hey I'll only be married to this wacko for the rest of my life, and I would develop exactly the same technical skills I already did (plus a few related ones like database expertise) because in your scenario I will be able to do it correctly by age 26 which was a lot better than I was able to accomplish in real life.

I did some careful Internet research and determined that there actually exists an Episode 2. I would not have predicted this in advance.

The fishwrap in Boston has an exploration of the difficulty free-agent sluggers are having in finding new contracts. It focuses on low-OBP/defense-challenged guys, which in 2016 wasn't Dozier's issue, so the point of looking at it is just the insight that home-run power currently is not as highly esteemed by front offices as we would hope, where it comes to getting value in return for our guy.

Came here to see this. Leaving satisfied.

Moderator's note: Inviting yet another retrospective upon the old front office's late-first-round draft picks goes pretty far afield of the topic of this thread: two minor league signings of veteran pitchers. Please start a different thread if such a discussion appeals to you.

Coming next: the Oakland Raiders will announce their move back to LA. Coming soon: the Minnesota Vikings will announce their move to LA Coming thereafter: the Los Angeles Division Coming later: the Los Angeles Football Conference Coming in 2018: the Los Angeles Football League

I asked F.X. Flinn, one of the members of the group that created SDI, to comment on this discussion. Here are his remarks: This is a blend. A weighted average (the percentages adding to 100). It's not merely a sum of uncorrelated numbers, measured in differing scales. While there exists no definitive measure of defense, this is an attempt by various knowledgeable practitioners to achieve a consensus-metric reflecting today's best understanding. It's better than just stumbling around in the dark.

Despite my request not to threadjack the intent of the original post, a couple of additional posts debating SDI have occurred. I have moved them to a brand new thread, in the Other Baseball forum: http://twinsdaily.com/topic/24669-sabr-defensive-index/ Please take any additional disputation of the Index itself there.

We know that the Dodgers made an offer of one sort or another, and it's very unlikely they would be floating this kind of narrative had they acquired him. Therefore, this sounds an awful lot like, "meh, the grapes were sour, anyway." A surprisingly bitter take, from professionals.

Doesn't the pool get reduced when the 2nd round pick is taken away?

Komrade Molotov was partial to gasoline. Left a hell of a hangover, of course.