ashbury

No. Regardless of context, it still does not.

You may be thinking of Brian's brother from another mother. 😀 The Twins' VP of Strategery & Innovation, Josh Kalk, also took part in the panel, and some of what you related may have come from him (I didn't take notes). One addition I want to point out is that in each post-game review, they took special interest in learning where Rocco deviated from the plan they had jointly put together for the game, which would happen multiple times in most games. Kalk's implication was that the analytics team wanted to learn from these instances, not vice versa. So much for managing by a static spreadsheet.

A player who our front office will express surprise and great pleasure was even there for the taking at number 16. 😊

Someone willing to devote more than the 30 seconds I've invested may come up with a better take-off on the classic Who's On First routine. "And then it was a long fly ball in Rate Field for Luis Robert Jr." "So Kepler grabbed it?" "Nah. Easy play for Castro. He was the left fielder today." "Must have been quite a shift they were playing. I thought that was illegal." "No, no, Castro was in straightway left, just like he's supposed to be." "But you said the batter hit the ball in Rate Field." "He did." "I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT!!!"

Closely related concept to Dollar Cost Averaging, which is a proven win in a decades-long market upswing and is a risk if the economy totally tanks until after you are ready to retire.

Here's an idea for an article: sort the Twins' 2024 season by Batting Average on Balls In Play, choose the 3 with at least 200 PA at the top of the list, write it up without ever actually mentioning BABIP. ?????? PROFIT !

I had the fantastic good luck of being there at Oakland Coliseum for this one. Most enjoyable ballgame I watched all season.

He didn't, a couple of years ago anyway. 😀

The worth of any long term contract is tied to the perceived risk. Two years of solid health and high production on the field would have greatly mitigated that risk. The combination didn't happen, so I really don't see a change. No one is going to give the Twins any prospects or valuable veterans to obtain a player on a contract they could have freely offered themselves two years ago. Instead 29 other GMs are nodding and saying to themselves, this is about what I expected, when I said no, two years ago.

#we_got_him.gif

Concur. I had this on my mind too. A lot of people think that the key to success for a GM is being a wheeler dealer, always outsmarting the other GM and buying low while selling high. Overlooked entirely is the value actually delivered on the field. Sometimes the best use of a player with a guaranteed but expiring contract is to just let him play. In the case of Kepler, the team was in the hunt for the postseason, at the trading deadline, and some lottery ticket prospect would not have been worth losing an average but reliable right fielder for two additional, final, months. In other words, being the best player to walk "for nothing" is kind of a fluke stat.

I'm not a big believer in trying to choreograph the events that will happen during an inning, so I'm in the camp that says just put your best hitters up top and the worst down lower. The best hitters get the most chances, that way, while Christian Vazquez gets the fewest. Batting clean up in this scenario amounts to a fluke of whoever happens to be fourth best among the hitters you plan to use that day. Yeah probably a power hitter who strikes out a lot. IOW, color me uninterested. 😊

Would you have outbid Cleveland, as events have in fact unfolded? To the tune of $13M or so? (For all we know, Falvey did make a competitive bid for Santana, and the Guardians went to twelve and he threw in the towel only at that point. One can presume that Cleveland wasn't bidding against itself.)

I wonder if those here who advocated for him, on general principles, would have outbid Cleveland to win the actual bidding. That's a pretty rich contract.

Sir, you have my curiosity. But now you have my attention. "I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation." -- George Bernard Shaw Delmon was only 9 years old when Manuel was born, but denizens of the underworld do have capabilities beyond those of mere mortals, so I suppose the claim is possible.

I wouldn't want to get down into the weeds of what exact multiplier to use, but in general, I concur. BTV is a very valuable way to look at trades, normalizing around a dollar value that surely at least resonates with one manner in how a front office would look at things; it's a step up from fans saying "these two guys are both good, make a trade of one for the other" if the contract statuses are unequal. But when it comes to well-above average established players, there is an additional factor that must be considered: "we have him, and you don't." There are only so many difference-maker players out there. If a contending team wants one, to put them into serious championship contention, then they need to expect to pay a premium for the privilege; the team who holds that player's contract might also have aspirations too. IOW an overpay. National baseball writers and front offices have a symbiotic relationship. When I read of an item like this one, I choose to assume that the FO opted to give the writer a minor "scoop" that fits with their own aims. It's like placing a want ad, one that you know 29 other front offices will read, to encourage some additional bidders. Of course you are right that any FO will listen to another FO at any time. But a source within a FO giving out information implies a little bit of active intent.

He might not have been "good" defensively, but if an important game is on the line and an opposing runner is rounding third while the center fielder is getting ready to fire the ball home, there is no one else I'd rather have behind the plate. 😀

She's gonna find out when she decides to upgrade her MegaYacht to something nicer.

I steal all my material, but my special sauce is that I steal from the best.

That was the polite fiction which veteran shill Sid Hartman, may he rest in peace, kept running in his columns. She may have liked the sport more than her hubby did, but it's doubtful a good word from her affected the team's balance sheet materially.

Forbes lists Justin at $4.9B net worth. That seems actually a bit light in this day and age, where you don't want a market downturn to suddenly cause team management to sell assets or whatever because the owner's wealth is highly leveraged. Still, it's a good start - a billion here and a billion there and pretty soon you're talking real money. 😀

I play more than my share of the game Out Of The Park, and it interests me that several years ago they added a Personality feature to their game. Most players are labeled as Normal, but a few are Captain, Prankster, Humble, Sparkplug, and of course a few negative ones are labeled Disruptive, Selfish, etc. Underlying this are user-visible traits including Intelligence, Work Ethic, Leader, and a few others. Reputedly, there are additional traits for these players, under the hood, that the human player can not see - this manifests most notably when a player turns out to be Outspoken and seeking controversy, despite none of the normal/visible traits showing red flags. It's just a game. But I find it intriguing, because reputedly the game designers have gained insights from insiders who work as consultants to them. This tells me that front offices do more than simply label players "clubhouse cancers" but try to dig a little deeper. Not all analytics involves numbers to three decimal places, and good analytics can be simply to break down something into smaller components to understand them better, even if on a simple "red/green" scale. In the game, if you can't form a team of boy scouts for players, the other approach is to hire a manager and staff who are Temperamental or Controlling, rather than Easygoing or Personable (yes, the game has personalities for managers too). Rocco Baldelli (yes, the game has him as Personable, getting along best with Easygoing co-workers) in real life allowed himself to be quoted long ago for OOTP's marketing purposes as saying their game is "more real than not." Even if major league teams don't use exactly the database that OOTP offers the game player, where the unknowable is just a little too certainly known, I have a feeling most of them try to address the question of personality in a systematic way. Games like OOTP aside, I think Rocco might indeed be the wrong manager if a front office thinks truly disruptive players are a market inefficiency to exploit. But they could experiment at the margins on this.

"If you play against him, you hate him. If you play with him, you hate him a little less." 😀