Brock Beauchamp

I don't worry about that too much. The Twins won't be too concerned if he struggles and that's the opinion that really counts. There isn't enough minor league coverage for the kid to be put under too much pressure out of the gate, I think. Sure, message boards like this one might go a bit off the rails (some people just expect too much from these kids), but who really cares about our opinions anyway?

It certainly is after this ST. While I argued that it might be a good idea to stall Gibson's clock a bit, most of my argument was based on the fact that he hasn't pitched much since TJ surgery and his time in AAA before surgery was completely mediocre. Too many people were counting on the guy to come back and be dominant too quickly. He's not Scott Baker. He's not even Mike Pelfrey. He has never pitched an MLB inning in his life. I'm still really high on the guy but I don't expect him to return to competition, vault to the highest level, and thrive in it right away.

http://media.oregonlive.com/pbeavers_impact/photo/rodneymccraycrashjpg-5fe8b577d62980fe_large.jpg

Dozier's 2012 was so baffling. The guy was never renown for his ranginess. But he was known for sure-handed, smart baseball. Too many people were putting all their stock in Dozier on his 2012 play and not enough stock in what basically every scout and coach had said about him in the past few years. He simply isn't the guy we saw last year. That doesn't guarantee MLB success, but it does mean he won't be as bad (defensively, at least) as he was last season.

If you see a white block next to the forums, clear your browser cache. After you do that, you'll see that large white space next to the forums disappear. Also, check your browser zoom level. If you're on a 4:3 monitor, this site should be consuming no less than 80-90% of your screen. And I bumped the forum posts per page back to 40. I didn't intend to cut that down.

Spring Training games do not track pitch counts.

Dave, are you using the mobile theme or the full site theme? If it's the full theme, I'd recommend clearing your browser cache. There are bound to be some leftover caching goodies from the old templates that could screw up the new site.

Pitching duel!

Well, he is.

Except that most of his track record isn't very good. I'm not down on Parmelee but I'm not terribly high on him, either. He had a lot of mediocre games under his belt before he broke out in AAA. It's hard to say which is the "real" Chris Parmelee.

Interesting. I had no idea.

I have not heard a single thing about Buxton that portrays him as anything less than stellar... It doesn't matter if the person is talking about his talent, baseball mind, work ethic, or general "human being-ness". Hopefully it's not a lot of hot air.

Not all hope is gone in regards to Michael but more and more, it's looking like he might have the ceiling of a futility infielder.

What is the difference between a minor league and major league ball? Do they not slather the minor league balls in that special mud? Why would the ball move differently?

Whoa, you guys just got me thinking about this and I found where I can change the settings for "hot posts". I bumped them waaaaaaaay higher. Now the forum makes a lot more sense. Thanks for bringing this up because it never would have occurred to me to dig into the settings and find how to change it.

Part of the reason you find it confusing is because vBulletin's post hierarchy is ****ing obtuse. Don't feel bad. I had to look into the code and check every icon before I understood their meanings. Grey: no new posts. Orange: "hot post" with a specified number of replies/views (really, I don't even understand why this exists but to remove the code powering it would be... ungainly). Red: NEW POSTS! READ ME! Orange with an open envelope: "hot post" with new posts inside! (Really? Why is this even here? Why not red?) Then there are other variables such as the green arrow, which means you've posted in that thread. Really, the entire thing just makes me want to scream. Two colors would be fine with me. Read and unread. But to make that happen, I'd have to go change waaaaaay more code than I'd like to change, as every internal code change I make means more troubleshooting, more difficulty when updating software, etc.

The Twitter/Facebook icons are large to promote clicks. Social media is the easiest and best way to stay connected with a userbase and until now, our attempts to crack Facebook have been... lackluster, at best. We're slowly working to change that. Large icons to help sway users to follow/like us is just one step toward that goal without cluttering the page with a Facebook feed (which I generally despise on sites). I still need to work on the IE10 problem with the avatar opacity. I would have done it already but like I mentioned earlier, I don't have a copy of IE10 for testing yet. When I procure a laptop that will run it, I will make the change. Overall, the design on those is still somewhat up in the air. I'm not tied to the existing design but I have other priorities right now that push that particular element to the background. If you pick up a 7" tablet, you'll see why the current design trend is toward larger fonts. While you may be an advanced enough user to operate the zoom feature, as a designer I cannot assume that is the case with the vast majority of users (after all, 9% of our users are still clicking away under IE8, the worst browser with significant marketshare). I have to design for stock configurations as much as possible with the assumption that the average user will do nothing to make a site more or less readable in their browser settings. One year ago, our tablet traffic was 2-3%. Right now, it's a little over 10%. By the end of the year, I expect it to be 15% or better. And over 50% of tablets sold today are 8" or smaller while the biggest tablet sold in any quantity is just 10.6". A full 25% of our traffic now comes from tablets and phones. By this time next year, I expect that to be 33%. It's the fastest growing segment of the internet and those form factors have to go into any modern site design.

I vacillated on the orange quite a bit. That is definitely something I'm open to change, I'm just not sure what color to use. Now, the "importance" of a thread is logically hierarchical. Grey is "null", orange is "hot", red is "new post superhot". I'm not really sure where to go from there.

Glad you changed your mind. I didn't want to have to drive over there and teach you a lesson.

That's a pretty big leap to assume that Rosario will be manning second base for the Twins in 2014. 1. There's a good chance he won't be in Minnesota in 2014. 2. There's an even better chance that if he is, it won't be at second base.

i r understend teh simpel things

It's pretty simple. A guy doesn't face the same amount of batters in every inning. If he K's 5 guys in a nine inning game, that's a 5 K/9 ratio. But let's say he pitched two nine inning games and struck out 5 guys in both. But in one game, he walked 8 batters, gave up 10 hits, and hit 3 batters. That means he struck out 5 of a possible 48 batters (27 outs, 8 walks, 10 hits, 3 HBP). In the other game, he walked 4 batters, gave up 5 hits, and hit no one. That means he struck out 5 of a possible 36 batters (27 outs, 4 walks, 5 hits).

Excellent point, Parker. I tend to fall back in K/9 and BB/9, even though I know it's wrong. I need to stop doing that.

Ugh. I hated those icons. I put them together in a rush and couldn't get rid of them quickly enough for my liking.

I'm going to chalk this up to auto-correct hilarity.... Brilliant.