ashbury

My tiny sample size of watching Buxton in two games in Oakland is that he remains at a Pat Dean level of battling each plate appearance, each pitch. I didn't get a sense of mastery of the strike zone, in a way that I do sense from Sano (even though the latter's results are still spotty). Trouble with laying off the breaking pitch in the dirt or the low outside fastball, still swinging through pitches that were probably in the strike zone... but, a little better success (than I remember before) at battling with two strikes, and making contact with the ball to ultimately achieve a couple of hits, plus he legged out a FC that by rights should have been an easy DP. Still very much a work in progress and the outcome could go either way.

Pat him on the butt, say to him "nice job," and hope for the same good fortune five days hence?

Ironically, the person being corrected took it better than a bystander did. Moderator's note: in any case, please avoid descending into bickering.

I got to watch Dean in person yesterday. Not that I would gain that much less just from watching him on teevee. He has learned the art of pitching, I suppose, given the lack of overpowering stuff, and as a lefty he has some value to an organization. But he clearly showed trouble yesterday putting batters away. And so, when bad luck hits (a couple of two-out two-strike hits that I recall, being just barely too difficult for an infielder to convert to an out), he's prone to letting a run in that a pitcher with better stuff might have stranded or never put on base in the first place. I don't remember right now who the higher-upside choices might have been for his 40-man spot over the winter, but adding him seemed a bet with very little to win except bragging rights of spotting another marginal major league piece that no one else recognized.

How many guys get to make a spot start five days after their previous start?

So. Just another standard Game Thread, then. Carry on.

Left field, especially, was gross, man.

I guess it's time I put behind me the initial skepticism of the drafting of Jay, and accept he's a legitimate starting pitching prospect. A long way to go until fruition as a major leaguer, same as with any legitimate prospect, but a good pick.

With an offensive WAR of 21.7, that's one heck of a drag his defense at first base causes. Good hitter back in the day, wrong league.

And what's the deal with pop tarts? Well, this.

I was there at the game today, great seat on the first base side with a perfect view of the third base line so that fair/foul calls were no mystery to me. I may write up a report, but at the moment I'm wracking my brain to think of any other positives than the ones you mentioned. Grossman in left is a disappointment; I couldn't spot anything in particular that he did wrong, but baserunners seemed to be gunning for second as soon as the ball made it past the infield into left, and they always wound up making it. His arm's not that bad, at least not Revere-bad, but every throw was just barely not in time to nip the runner. I decided May is the laziest player in the universe. See, Pat Dean battled his tail off for five innings, resulting in three strikeouts. May got his three strikeout allotment in one inning, and sat down. Lazy, I tell you. Source: Game Thread: Twins @ As, 6/1 - 2:35pm

I was there at the game today, great seat on the first base side with a perfect view of the third base line so that fair/foul calls were no mystery to me. I may write up a report, but at the moment I'm wracking my brain to think of any other positives than the ones you mentioned. Grossman in left is a disappointment; I couldn't spot anything in particular that he did wrong, but baserunners seemed to be gunning for second as soon as the ball made it past the infield into left, and they always wound up making it. His arm's not that bad, at least not Revere-bad, but every throw was just barely not in time to nip the runner. I decided May is the laziest player in the universe. See, Pat Dean battled his tail off for five innings, resulting in three strikeouts. May got his three strikeout allotment in one inning, and sat down. Lazy, I tell you.

Quick report from Oakland: Sano trying to swipe at that one flyball "triple" by Burns in the second inning didn't look any prettier from a seat right behind the fair-foul pole than it must have from the normal camera view. In fairness, the A's right fielder (I think it was still Coughlan) returned the favor almost identically, in the fifth as a favor to Grossman. Ragged game.

The GM is responsible for so many things, and Seth touched on them so completely, that a full answer would be quite a treatise. The GM can't be an expert on every aspect, but that's why he gets to hire assistants. Ryan has seemed good on many of the nuts and bolts aspect of the job. But the area mentioned above, loosely considered as "statistics", is the area I would like to focus on.. I think it's a misconception to believe that the team needs better statistics, per se. A purely sabrmetric approach wouldn't be very likely to succeed. But what I see missing from the team, and seems to be present with other teams, is a broader area called Business Analytics. I take for granted that areas under Dave St Peter's purview, setting ticket prices and so on, use some measure of this. But I have gotten nothing from what little I've read from Jack Goin, and definitely not from Terry Ryan, that suggests Business Analytics has much role in the baseball operations side of their business, nor that they are abreast of the state of the art. Business Analytics can be broken into roughly three areas, in increasing sophistication. Descriptive Analytics. "Where are we now?" Predictive Analytics. "What are the trends going forward?" Prescriptive Analytics. "What steps can we take?" Businesses in areas as varied as Airlines, Forestry, Petroleum, Finance, Logistics, yadda yadda yadda, make use of these tools every day, to manage their valuable inventories. If you've ever heard a corporate sponsor called The MathWorks mentioned on NPR, that's the general area. The analogy to a baseball team stands out a mile, in my mind. If you don't even have the first level, Descriptive Analytics, there's a huge value in catching up to the state of the art. A lot of the value is just in seeing what data you don't already have, and going out and getting it. The ability to process large amounts of data has exploded in my lifetime. I think the Twins probably are OK in this regard, although it may be that further improvements could be made, such as in keeping tabs on every player in professional ball. (I don't mean just the stats, but internal scouting reports and so forth, sortable and searchable to any desired degree.) Basically if the GM can ask his analytics team, "find me every power hitting first base prospect with a decent eye and OK contact skills, and no red flags on his makeup" when he wants to construct a trade, he's fine. Not that trades are the main aim - you mostly want to know how your players stack up, especially in terms of dollars and cents - what do each stats do to create wins, and what are wins worth in terms of dollars. The second area, which also can be loosely thought of as Forecasting, is where the better organizations start to separate themselves from their industry peers. Modify the above trade scenario, to add "show me first basemen with latent power that may develop later on". I can't help but harp on the Phil Hughes contract extension, as evidence that they do not seem to have a good handle on baseball forecasting - a good year from a pitcher with an inconsistent record should be cause for rejoicing because of the favorable contract, and result in at most a 1-year extension, bringing the risk back to what it was when the contract was originally signed. Note that it's not simply forecasting the future, but tying it to dollar value. Ryan is a good man, and his sense of how to deal with the human side of the game is not to be ignored, but I gather from his public statements that he doesn't trust predictive analytics, much to his detriment. The third of these areas gets to be even more arcane, but again holds rewards for those who can apply the tools. Prescriptive analytics can be tied in with Systems Analysis, and attempts to go beyond looking at individual components (players etc in the case of baseball), and tries to formulate solutions of an entire system. For example in the trade scenario above, "which of the first base prospects I can go after in trade will give me the most bang for the buck based on our forecast lineup 3 years from now, or would I be better off going after a catcher? Give me a dollar and cents answer." Obviously there is no exactitude in the answers you get, since the input data is so probabilistic, so you run scenario after scenario and eventually see what pattern develops. And it depends on the quality of your Predictive Analytics, since it does you no good to plug Ricky Nolasco into an "equation" to see if he's a fit and what size contract you should offer, if you're penciling him in for a steady ERA of 3.50 every year. In my posts at Twins Daily I sometimes throw in words like "constraint" to describe the effect that a 25-man Active Roster has on planning - you can't sign 200 0.25 WAR players and win a pennant. Buzz words like constrained optimization, linear programming, stochastic processes, all require more than simply assigning an average industrious MBA to master. I am convinced that some of the better teams are at least dabbling in these areas, and I think that adopting some of the mindset behind these techniques would benefit our team. Terry Ryan brings a lot to the table, but in this day and age I think he's better suited as a nuts and bolts assistant, to a GM who understands baseball inside and out but also is fully immersed in the use of Business Analytics. That's the kind of guy I'd like to see the Twins bring in as GM, because I'm very confident they do not have anyone remotely fitting this description in-house, unless Jack Goin surprises me greatly, or (God forbid) Rob Antony reveals some unplumbed depths. And then they need to hire an assistant GM with potential as good as Terry Ryan, and keep Antony doing contracts or whatever he does. Questions raised here in this thread, e.g. of how to proceed with the current roster, or attempt a complete teardown keeping only a few key parts, derive from this, so I would not jump the gun by presuming an answer at the outset. Just for grins, for anyone who made it this far in a "tl;dnr" kind of post: take a look at this guy's resume on LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/in/arikaplan I'm not advocating him as the guy for GM. But this phrase caught my eye: "Optimized $110M payroll". For the Cubs. Prior to Epstein, apparently. People often use the word "Optimized" loosely. As an analytics specialist, his use of the word might not be quite so loose. I'd be a little curious to chat with him. And I want the GM the Twins hire to be comfortable relying on a Caltech guy like that, instead of assigning a St Thomas MBA to get up to speed. Source: Article: Your Turn: What Do You Want From A GM?

When I tried grindr.com first, all of the candidates seemed overqualified but for a different role.

Moderator note: some will not recognize this as a quote from a movie. More humorous than the average personal swipe, but please everyone keep to the topic and stay away from characterizing one another. "This is too stupid to rebut" is not a rebuttal.

In the small sample size from watching yesterday's game, he doesn't go all out for flyballs like he does for an infield hit.

I hope my initial post in reply to the thread didn't get things off on the wrong foot. My purpose was to give it a try, and immediately discovered it's not as easy as it looks, so it took a tongue in cheek turn. A lot of times people think the process goes like this: Find some guy with a good OPS. Promote him. ??? PROFIT!!!You can disrupt an organization pretty good, doing it that way. The original post was a good challenge.

Quick report from Oakland: Sano trying to swipe at that one flyball "triple" by Burns in the second inning didn't look any prettier from a seat right behind the fair-foul pole than it must have from the normal camera view. In fairness, the A's right fielder (I think it was still Coughlan) returned the favor almost identically, in the fifth as a favor to Grossman. Ragged game.

Moderator's note: http://twinsdaily.com/forum/13-questions-about-minncentric/

I promote catcher Andrew John Murray from CR to FM, because at 23 he's old for his league and I want to get him to the majors (if he proves capable) before he turns 30. I cut catcher Brian Navarreto from FM because I don't think he's ever going to become a hitter. Then I sign free agent catcher Brian Navarreto and assign him to CR rather than promote someone I don't know from extended spring training, because I changed my mind and am not quite ready to give up on a toolsy 21 year old catcher after all, and want him to try, try again at an easier league level. (Our AA catchers aren't beating down the door for AAA with the bat as yet, and John Ryan Murphy needs to be given as much playing time as necessary to re-establish himself as a viable candidate. Thus, no major ripple effect up the organizational chain, stemming from a Murray promotion.) / edit - I just checked Navarreto and he's batting .351 since May 16. I quit this game. Even if his BABIP in this period is .414.

This point of view makes more sense than the "missing the tired out starter the last time through" version. Thanks for clarifying.