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Otto von Ballpark

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Everything posted by Otto von Ballpark

  1. Otto von Ballpark
    Too bad Jepsen didn't pitch around him a few weeks ago...
  2. 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.
  3. Otto von Ballpark
    I know that the TK-Gardy switch is a convenient marking point, but Gardy's lineup through 2004 was largely the same at TK's last few years. Did those players just forget their fundamentals under Gardy? Also, the mid 1990s Twins were a pretty bad team, and unlike the early TK teams, not all spots were staffed by quality veterans. Are we to believe that TK still received a high level of fundamental play from that motley bunch? I realize it is all qualitative, but it seems like one of those things where we take our subjective evidence and fit it to our favorite theory.
  4. 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.
  5. Otto von Ballpark
    Mauer leadoff is very interesting -- but Dozier 3rd, Plouffe 4th? With Sano and Park lower?
  6. 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.
  7. 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.
  8. 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.
  9. 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.
  10. 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.
  11. 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?
  12. 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?
  13. 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!"
  14. 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.
  15. Otto von Ballpark
    Hicks did hit a game winning HR the other day. Has had some web gems too, although I don't know if they've led to any wins...
  16. Otto von Ballpark
    Actually, it was "an offer he couldn't refuse" Given his service time and the fact it was his first time being outrighted, he had to accept it. Fien had been outrighted previously, so he would have had the right to accept or refuse had he not been claimed.
  17. Otto von Ballpark
    Mastro leading off in his second day here seems to be substantial evidence that the Twins latest roster moves are more of a random shake-up than any reasoned effort to improve the team.
  18. Otto von Ballpark
    Does this change the prevailing evaluation of the Fuld trade? I mean, literally no team in the league was willing to give Milone a roster spot for ~$4 mil, even just temporarily in an effort to sneak him through waivers themselves later. Have we been overrating his value this whole time? Not saying it was a bad trade for the Twins or any such thing, but maybe it wasn't the fleecing that many have suggested, and maybe it shouldn't go into TR's record as any great accomplishment...
  19. 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.
  20. 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.
  21. Otto von Ballpark
    Fien claimed. And to be fair, Graham and O'Rourke quite likely haven't been waived yet, so they can't be claimed by anyone (yet).
  22. Otto von Ballpark
    Dean and Kintzler. Ha! Yeah, this org is really turning over a new leaf, making room for all those young flamethrowers...
  23. Otto von Ballpark
    We've been over this. The players get MLB salaries while in DFA limbo, and they get higher salaries while they remain on a 40 man roster. If you make it harder for another team to claim them for their own 40 man roster, they will just drop off the Twins 40 man but remain property of the Twins, getting a lower salary in AAA and be further removed from a return MLB callup. It would hurt the players financially.
  24. Otto von Ballpark
    What exactly did they recognize and address earlier than usual here? They optioned Milone at end of April last year, and they swapped Hicks for Schafer early last May. They picked up Fuld in April 2014, etc. It seems like folks are really straining to give the Twins credit for something here.
  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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