ashbury

I have a hard enough time walking 7 miles, so I think I'll continue driving when it's 750. 😁

I heard someone say that the AFL is now a showcase for players a team would consider including in a trade. That might be true, but it may also be that other teams look and say "we don't want your castoffs."

I used to drive the 750 miles to watch the AFL. I will again some year, if they resume sending players of note. I missed this article when it first came out. Turns out, I didn't miss anything.

No one started a Fun With Numbers thread for 2026, so this goes here. September 15-19, this year, the Phillies scored exactly 3 runs in five consecutive games. They won 2 of those games, requiring consecutive shutouts. Managers ask for consistency from hitters, but perhaps a higher level of achievement than 3 runs is assumed. This isn't any kind of record though. In July 2003 Cleveland scored 4 runs seven times consecutively. This level of offense did them no particular good, as bad pitching led them to a 1-6 mark in this period (one loss at home in extra innings). Of note is the three game streak the Pirates put together against the lowly Giants of that season, 15 runs each time. On the road, no less; the Giants' faithful surely took these drubbings well.

The BABIP gods giveth and the BABIP gods taketh away. Nothing to see here, folks - regression to their level of actual hitting ability.

While the Twins are tied for 3rd most steals-against in the majors, no team has even as many as a stolen base per game against them these days. Their caught stealing percentage is low, but even that means that the number of attempts against them isn't very high, fewer than a lot of teams. This seems like about a third-order effect, compared to much bigger fish to fry.

Do you want your DH batting 7th if you aim to be competitive? Do you want Larnach patrolling the outfield when you have Buxton, ERod, Roden and perhaps others available? That's the dilemma I see with Larnach.

I expect every MLB front office is capable of estimating a player's arbitration salary a year or so out, so Ryan's trade value isn't suddenly affected by this. It's affected by there being only a year of team control before a market-correct salary has to be offered, compared to an additional third of a season plus a post-season a couple of months ago.

I thought injuries and under-performance would bring the roster down like a house of cards, and offered a 61-101 prognostication, and instead they survived the amount of injuries I was roughly expecting and achieved 16 more wins than my scenario. Guys like Clemens and Ober out-performed my expectations, while Taj Bradley and Luke Keaschall showed signs of reaching good, high ceilings. And across the roster, Twins batters ended up with better than average hitting with RISP, which helped get the most out of the opportunities they had.

Signing Caratini as a free agent to fill this transitional role, with Lackey or Tinney or Tait taking over in 2028 or 2029, was never as good a plan as this one. Paying big bucks for a mediocre catcher, or even bigger bucks for a difference maker at the plate, is simply the Failure Tax for not having developed a good one since, well, drafting Jeffers himself in 2018.

Home Run Abreu is the reliever we could have had in return for Larnach at the trade deadline, yes?

Or, perhaps, shall we say Mr Willis met YOU at that Hooters? 🙃

Almost all of which were accrued this very season. Maybe it's a fluke or career year. But is it implausible a player might simply continue to improve while maturing from age 23 to age 25?

Sawx probably weren't going to win regardless of managerial moves, but I thought removing Tolle was premature and therefore I lol'ed when the first batter homered against the lefty reliever. The parade of relievers who followed might have been curtailed, keeping the game closer.

Pohlad's words are less important than actions. But nevertheless I'm tired of the particular words I keep seeing spewed out. This may not rank up there quite with Joe Pohlad's infamous "right-sizing" the payroll, but it's cut from the same cloth. Truly successful people know how to shift gears from the corporate audience to the general public. If they can't do it, they need to share some of their salary with people competent in public relations. PR earns snickers when it speaks in hollow generalities (as hollow as the remainder of Tom's quoted remarks, actually), but good PR is worth a great deal - relationships with the paying public are vitally important. With Joe it felt like we were hearing a deeply insecure person trying to convince anyone within earshot that he's an insider on a par with other business heavyweights. Tom doesn't seem the same, but slipping into manager-speak is no less off-putting.