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Otto von Ballpark

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Everything posted by Otto von Ballpark

  1. Otto von Ballpark
    Stewart's start seems promising, but I'm not that sure about Harrison. His BB% is a career low, his K% a career high, and his bump in ISO is thus far pretty minor -- Niko Goodrum and Levi Michael both managed higher ISOs in the same league/park just last season. Meanwhile, Harrison's BABIP is nearly 100 points higher than his previous career high since rookie ball. His start could certainly be worse, but he has so much work to do just to suggest this performance level is sustainable based on his rate stats, so it's hard to get terribly encouraged thus far. For that matter, his OPS is only .759. He had an .812 OPS on June 1st last year, and later had a .747 in August, with better rate stats backing them up. It will be an achievement if he can avoid the slump he had in June-July last year, but his current performance level and rate stats don't offer any additional evidence to suggest that he will.
  2. Otto von Ballpark
    And Kingman's stat line supported a 15 year MLB career, not "pumping gas in Altoona in 4 years" as you claimed. That would be more like Buxton's current MLB stat line.
  3. Otto von Ballpark
    Stewart participated in 8 "Perfect Game" events too, which are basically elite national amateur baseball scouting combines. The Twins weren't limited to seeing him pitch in high school game action.
  4. Otto von Ballpark
    That is true, but part of being a good GM is knowing who to listen to, when to overrule them, and how to make your opinion known effectively. Some of the Twins worst highest-profile decisions actually came when Antony arguably had the most power (2007-2011), suggesting that he was partially responsible or at the very least was ineffective at preventing them.
  5. Otto von Ballpark
    Antony may have this respect, but he also has a track record -- he assumed his current position of assistant GM way back in 2007. Given the Twins poor record of high-level decisions since that point, that has to be a big negative point on his candidacy.
  6. Otto von Ballpark
    Who told him to ditch the leg kick in the first place?
  7. Otto von Ballpark
    Meyer probably should have been up, at least to get his feet wet, in 2014. As you state, he had a good season starting for Rochester, he needed to be added to the 40-man after the season anyway, and even if they wanted to shut him down and cap his innings around September 1st, we were effectively out of the race by the beginning of July yet proceed to waste a lot of innings in July and August on Correia, Pino, Deduno, Swarzak, Burton, and Kris Johnson, all of whom were gone from the organization for zero return by November. In 2015, Meyer probably should have tried starting again in the season's second half, after it was determined he wasn't going to help the 2015 Twins bullpen, just to get more opportunities/innings.
  8. Otto von Ballpark
    Nothing about Meyer in the Red Wings game notes for today either, but it did reveal that Chargois has been promoted to AAA: http://www.milb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20160510&content_id=177309386&fext=.jsp&vkey=news_t534&sid=t534
  9. Otto von Ballpark
    Any word on Meyer yet? The Red Wings home page has starters listed for the rest of the week, and they're Milone, Albers, someone called David Martinez, Jason Wheeler, and Logan Darnell. Sunday is TBD.
  10. Otto von Ballpark
    A simple ranking like this will never be exact science, but I think prospect lists have gotten a lot better since the days of McCarty. For example, there is no way Todd Van Poppel would be rated #2 and #7 anymore after his performances of 1991 and 1992. Heck, he probably wouldn't have been #1 after his draft year either -- Buxton was only #10 at that point, and Correa #13. Same with Brien Taylor -- #1 before he even threw a pro pitch! McCarty is another one -- a college first baseman who posted a .785 OPS at AA. You don't see that kind of player ranked in the top 20 anymore.
  11. Otto von Ballpark
    FWIW, Hicks hit his second HR last night, and added a sac fly in a Yankees win. He has basically doubled his OPS the past week, although it is still poor, he has put some distance between himself and Murphy in their "competition". Although I suppose Murphy has shortened the distance too, in a way, by moving to Rochester.
  12. Otto von Ballpark
    Chief, if you are looking at the career by level section of his B-Ref minor league page, note that they only list the levels there if the player had multiple seasons at the level. So Buxton indeed had a .990 OPS at regular A ball (not high A) that is not reflected in the level breakdown because he only spent part of one season there. That is why his career minor league OPS is still .873 despite only his career AAA OPS being above that figure in the level breakdown area, in a relatively low number of AAA PA. Because that also includes that .990 that doesn't get its own career at level line.
  13. Otto von Ballpark
    Mauer leadoff is very interesting -- but Dozier 3rd, Plouffe 4th? With Sano and Park lower?
  14. Otto von Ballpark
    That's fair, and we can agree to disagree there, but next time please leave the comments like "Byron Buxton's career was already over at that age, pretty sad!" at home, okay? That's just flat out rude to knowingly mischaracterize someone's statements like that. I'm done with this.
  15. Otto von Ballpark
    Buxton is still young, true, but it's not like his promotion schedule is on the extremes, like Goldschmidt going straight to MLB would have been. Buxton had 1200 PA in the minors, and got called up after a half season of AA ball to debut at age 21. Rushed a bit, sure, but not enough to invite counterfactuals like this. Before I go any further in this, please state for me what you think MY position is. I think you are primarily arguing with a strawman and not with me.
  16. Otto von Ballpark
    Seriously, do you people even read my posts? Find anything I have said that remotely resembles a statement that Buxton's career is on the brink. I am actually on the record as saying a reasonably attainable upside is Carlos Gomez's career path.
  17. Otto von Ballpark
    Internet baseball commenters. Seriously, though -- you don't think Buxton's epic K rate over 187 PA wouldn't get trotted out every time an elite hitting prospect scuffles out of the gate? Look at how often Trout's 2011 season gets bandied about, and that wasn't even a bad performance. Or even Mike Schmidt's poor BA and K rate, some 40 years after the fact. End of season stats are perceived differently, though, so if Buxton can come back in 2016 and make a meaningful reversal of his stat line, that would make a difference in this perception. His 2015 wasn't good but it wasn't all that terrible.
  18. Otto von Ballpark
    It wasn't meant to be a definite sample, as evidenced by the "etc going back through history" part. I feel like my simple point is getting deliberately twisted here. The point is, some folks here are not worried about Buxton becoming an elite MLB hitter, presumably over a meaningful 5 to 10 year stretch. To my knowledge, no hitter has ever achieved that level of sustained success with as poor of a start as Buxton's over a comparable sample (187 PA). I think it's fair to worry a little bit over that fact. Again, it is not impossible for him to achieve that level, and the worry probably doesn't rise to any actionable level, other than noting it on an internet forum, and maybe not as readily plugging him into projected lineups as an offensive savior. But it seems odd to me to deny it completely. Baseball is a game of adjustments, true, but we have a long 100+ year history of no one making an adjustment of this particular degree.
  19. Otto von Ballpark
    I'll reiterate: if Buxton winds up becoming one of the best hitters in MLB over a 5 to 10 year stretch or whatever, a level some here are still not worried about him achieving, will his first 187 PA in MLB go down as the worst first 187 PA among players in that group? That doesn't mean it is impossible, of course, but doesn't it suggest that maybe his odds aren't as good as they were, say, 187 PA ago?
  20. Otto von Ballpark
    Sure, age is a factor, but if Buxton's rough start is nothing to be concerned about at all in terms of his odds of becoming an elite MLB hitter, certainly there must be another elite hitter who debuted at 21-22 at a similarly poor level? Buxton debuted young but not exactly unusually young. Trout, Machado, Harper, Correa, Lindor, etc., going back through history. Did none of those guys have as rough a start as Buxton?
  21. Otto von Ballpark
    TR looking out of his office window overlooking Target Field: "One day, lad, all this will be yours." Rob Antony: "What, the curtains?" TR: "No, not the curtains!"
  22. Otto von Ballpark
    Schmidt was almost a league average hitter his rookie season, and an above league average defender at 3B. No, ballplayers with that level of performance don't get cut to pump gas. And if you are reading "firm conclusions" into what Chief or I have posted, you might be misreading us. The only "conclusion" I've drawn is that the start of Buxton's MLB career has been worse than any elite hitter's. Which probably lowers the odds of Buxton becoming an elite hitter. If Buxton does become an elite hitter, I guarantee it will referenced as one of the great early career turnarounds of all time, and that his special talent and pedigree helped him overcome a disastrous start. Which sort of proves my point about the challenges he is facing.
  23. Otto von Ballpark
    To add insult to injury, we had a quick hook for Meyer in part to turn the ball over to Milone while the game was still close -- and Milone put the game out of reach, and two days later was waived and outrighted to AAA in favor of everybody's favorite fringe 40 man guy, Pat Dean. Who the heck is making decisions right now for the Twins? They are all over the map.
  24. Otto von Ballpark
    I am pretty sure no one would have said Meyer was rushed if we promoted him late in 2014, when he was 24.5 years old and was very successful in AAA. For example, no one said May was rushed under similar circumstances, or Gibson, etc.
  25. Otto von Ballpark
    Promoting him to be an emergency reliever, or Kepler to be a bench player, is almost the definition of not giving someone a chance. And pulling him early in his debut start, at the exact point you let Berrios work through it the night before, is also a pretty poor effort a giving someone a chance.
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