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ashbury

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Everything posted by ashbury

  1. ashbury
    Let him be on a plane where the hijackers say "all the Americans raise their hands," and see how he feels then. / USians being well known for pretending to be Canadian in such situations...
  2. ashbury
    This is the brilliance of the Trump campaign. Throw a lot of innuendo. Some of it will fit close enough to say toldyaso.
  3. ashbury
    I ran across this thread again by accident. When this post was written, Polanco had 37 major league plate appearances in the season. Since then, it looks like the youngster will finish the season with something in the neighborhood of 250. Let's give credit for him getting his chances; he's starting nearly every day in a lost season.
  4. ashbury
    I lived in the Pacific time zone, and therefore was behind the curve on this one. All the events had already happened. I got in to work, and it being a short commute I apparently hadn't turned the car radio on. It was a small office and my door was nearest the front. I had no clue as I sat down to my desk and began going through my work email inbox. Several minutes later a German colleague walked in from a few doors down. He was agitated and not terribly coherent. "Horrible, horrible" was just about the gist of it as I remember it. "What?" I asked. My addiction to checking Yahoo News first thing when I get on the computer continues to this day.
  5. ashbury
    Molitor has failed to prove himself irreplaceable, and that for me is enough grounds to replace him after this kind of season and try to find someone who will do better. Only a few managers exist who have a markedly positive effect on their teams. Many candidates exist who would have a markedly negative effect, but the great majority of reasonable candidates will turn out to be virtually indistinguishable in terms of their impact. Molitor looks like he's establishing himself within that group; you're not risking a real lot for the team by firing him. You'd be eating a year of his 3-year contract by firing him at the end of the season. But that's part of how you construct a contract - you don't want players tuning him out in the second year by thinking he's going to be replaced soon anyway. A year of wasted pay is a frequent cost of doing business. If Pohlad is thinking he'll be "smart" by saving a few bucks another owner would waste, by telling his new GM that Molitor is here to stay, he's not smart after all. What's that old penny-wise saying?
  6. ashbury
    Small sample size. I want to see another game before jumping on the bandwagon.
  7. ashbury
    Picky picky picky, but the run-scoring has been on a pace worthy of a .500 team. Nothing about that scoring jumps out as fluky in regard to the underlying hitting stats. The 100+ losses are coming from the run prevention. A run worse than league average. In a class by themselves.
  8. ashbury
    It's not even new news, as the numbers have been known (and have remained similar) since the Internet was young. http://www.nssl.noaa.gov/users/brooks/public_html/feda/datasets/expectedruns.html
  9. ashbury
    I am sorry I missed yesterday's game thread, as I could have dragged out my occasionally effective Rally Avatar from a year or three ago.
  10. ashbury
    I LOLed too.
  11. ashbury
    He's got everything he needs, except the arm to play short. His brief stint as a regular SS this past month hasn't done anything to change my opinion there. Too many throws are an adventure until if they arrive in Mauer's mitt.
  12. ashbury
  13. ashbury
    It's the Must Read portion of the site every day. Thanks!
  14. ashbury
    h/t to Mrs Glunn / note to fellow mods: if my knowledge of idiomatic Spanish is so shockingly low that this insult is even worse than I already think it to be, feel free to take it back down.
  15. ashbury
    13 losses doesn't even register on the Wikipedia list of losing streaks. A spot check of 20th century instances: 1959 Washington Senators, 18 game losing streak. Manager: Cookie Lavagetto. 1960 manager: Cookie Lavagetto. 2005: Kansas City Royals, 19 game losing streak. Manager (during the streak): Buddy Bell. 2006 manager: Buddy Bell. 1975 Detroit Tigers, 19 game losing streak. Manager: Ralph Houk. 1976 manager: Ralph Houk. This search is tedious. Montreal in their inaugural 1969 season lost 19, but Gene Mauch was back for 1970 - but an expansion team is a special case no doubt. 1961 Phillies had an epic 23-game streak; Gene Mauch (again with him) survived to manage for quite a while longer there. OK, I used a tool at b-r.com to look at it another way. Last year Cincinnati suffered through a 13-game streak like ours; Bryan Price was manager then, still is. In 2013 the Astros lost 15; Bo Porter kept his job until deep into the 2014 season. I'm sure if I keep going I'll find someone who got replaced the following season. I'm not cherry-picking - not omitting anyone who got fired - although my process of sampling could be at fault. But I think it's safe to say that a "mere" 13 gamer, repulsive as it was, is just part of a manager's resume and is not the be-all and end-all.
  16. ashbury
    Chief's is a keen mathematical mind, and he looks at these things from the perspective of rigorous Set Theory, perhaps Differential Geometry as well. In this view a winning streak can even consist of zero wins. He can be forgiven for overlooking the vernacular meaning of this particular term.
  17. ashbury
    It was a heftier task than they could accomplish.
  18. ashbury
    I'm not sure what conclusion to draw for the Twins. The forecast is a 60-73 record this year instead of 49-84 (from a couple of days ago). That says we lost more talent than we gained. OTOH that still wouldn't be a very good record; so we weren't amassing enough talent to be close to competitive. It could be caused by poor talent assessment when acquiring players, or poor development, or both. Not enough by itself to indicate Total System Failure, but it does suggest two out of three phases are deficient, while not ruling out all three. The other conclusion I draw is more general: this way of looking at it doesn't have any outliers. That's a bit surprising to me, in that ordinarily the components of some larger system are more extreme than the full system. No team here is at a .600 winning percentage, no team below .400. So no 100 win or loss teams, based on draft choices (by this analysis). In this view the draft is an equalizer, thus working about as intended.
  19. ashbury
    I don't know the purposes behind this rule governing the AFL, but a move like this one to circumvent it suggests that the rules may get changed next time the powers-that-be sit down to think about things.
  20. ashbury
    Here's the link. http://www.twincities.com/2014/08/28/minnesota-twins-jordan-schafer-happy-to-be-on-board/ Oops. Wrong manager. Wrong Schafer.
  21. ashbury
    It was momentary fun and I got caught up in it too. In fact it was the play that had the most statistical impact on the game's outcome. But his other two plate appearances were easy outs to the outfield. I didn't pay enough attention to his swing, but if he's still uppercutting the ball, he's going to finish out the season as he started it, with a low batting average that doesn't produce power often enough to compensate. With his speed, line drives ought to be the goal, so that the occasional ball goes out of the park when he hits it a little too high and he has a chance to leg out a single when he hits it a little too low. I think the problem continues to be pitch recognition - is the uppercut intended to partially compensate for the ball being perennially below where he thinks it will be? I'm no batting coach, though.
  22. ashbury
  23. ashbury
    Welp, three innings or so, still to go. These West Coast games are too much for me. Have to leave it to the rest of you to bring this game home.
  24. ashbury
    Zuke with a nice AB for the rib!
  25. ashbury
    Gah, Bremer going on and on about Buxton's speed getting to that flare that pretty much any outfielder except Willingham would have reached.
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