Brock Beauchamp

Pro tip: never listen to Chief.

By the way, some of you may have noticed your achievements aren't appearing yet... that's because I didn't realize the system needed to rebuild ALL 1.1 MILLION POSTS AND ARTICLES before they'd appear. So yeah, gonna be a few hours before the system can process all those pieces of content. At the very latest, all of this should be wrapped up by the afternoon of July 4th.

Welcome to the brief rundown of Twins Daily’s newest feature, achievements! I’ve been waiting a *really* long time to roll this feature out to users and have spent a rather unhealthy amount of time developing it for the site. I hope you enjoy experiencing it as much as I enjoyed making it. Achievements, or awards, or gamification… you’ve probably run into it before in other avenues of your digital life. Achievements are most common (and were largely born out of) the console video game world, beginning on the Xbox platform in the mid-2000s. Basically, it boils down to this: do stuff, get (sometimes silly) awards and badges for doing it. Over the past month, I’ve designed over 60 custom badges that you can be awarded for performing sometimes mundane, other times complex, tasks across the Twins Daily platform. Comment on a post, get a badge. Write a blog post, get a badge. Vote on a poll, get a badge… you get the point. Do some of these tasks multiple times and sometimes (many times) you’ll get additional badges. If you visit your user profile page, you’ll see it now looks different, with achievements being prominently displayed near the top. With over 60 badges available right now, some of you older, veteran Twins Daily users will start accumulating achievements the moment you begin participating in various aspects of the site, as many (as many as possible, but not all) of the achievements are back-dated to the time you began using the site. So explore the site, try completing some random tasks like post a status update, and see if you get a badge for doing it! As you "achieve" new things, on top of badges, you will also be awarded points. Once you hit certain milestones in points, you raise in rank (out of 14 ranks in total). In the image above, my rank is "draft eligible", the third rank you will achieve. Here is a sampling of a few of the badges you can be awarded right now: Some achievements will be won seemingly at random but I assure you, there is a specific set of items that awarded you the badge (and sometimes, those items need to be completed in a specific order). And some badges will be awarded manually for “exceptional” things done on the site. Those will be the hardest to collect and the rarest achievements available on Twins Daily. And if anyone manages to get them all or one of the *really* difficult-to-uncover achievements, Twins Daily may have some special prizes available to users who can accomplish those rarest of feats on the site…

You didn’t miss anything. Really.

Multiple Twins over the years have been accused and/or convicted of domestic violence so if Donaldson is anyone’s “least liked” Twin, perhaps it’s time to log off this baseball forum and perform some personal reflection on one’s life choices.

He can be a bit of a loudmouth and a lot of a red ass but overall, he irritates me at roughly the same rate he makes me chuckle. So no, he’s not even close to the most unlikable Twin.

He also had no control, which makes me suspect he couldn't grip said ball for *whatever* reason... who knows? What could make someone suddenly lose the ability to grip a baseball?

Nice list. I really like the bite-sized snippets and length of the list to catch up on these guys mid-season. A tip, though… if you include a feature image on each blog post, you’re more likely to get clicks from users browsing the site. The featured image field is just below the content field on the editing page, I believe.

I’m really happy for Gibson but it’s hard to say the Twins gave up on him too early when he was absolutely terrible last season. The Twins didn’t have the luxury of entering 2020 with a reclamation project that had a good chance to be (and was) really bad at baseball.

Lynn was a one-year rental that was traded years ago and Gibson left via free agency over 18 months ago so it's a bit late to be hollering about them leaving the team.

@Squirrel @ashbury This should be fixed now, let me know if you continue to see those kinds of ads.

I think it might take a little more than that (probably a sixth season) but that’s a very reasonable starting point.

@Squirrel Thanks. I started seeing those a couple of days ago but didn’t know if it was widespread or not. I’ll contact the ad provider this week about it. I don’t mind if those pop up on *extremely* rare occasions but I’ve seen them often enough to aggravate me.

This is a reasonable offer in 2008.

I’ve been waiting all season to use this quote except the team refuses to, you know, win any games.

It's an interesting battle for me... do you pay a guy long-term who works so hard and stays on the field, or are you still worried about his lack of size and how that will impact him as he ages? I tend to lean toward the former but the latter still lingers in the back of my mind.

The White Sox were also in contention last season.

We usually don't discuss moderation in threads but I'll make a small exception here because your post was thoughtful and we had a previous discussion recently about something else (if you wish to respond to this further, please PM me). One of our core missions here at Twins Daily is to raise the level of discussion. The world already has Twitter and I think we've all seen what happens to the typical conversation over there. For every decent response, you have to wade through several posts of sewage to find it. We have no interest in participating in that world. In this specific instance, any salient point about Baldelli can be made without a snarky nickname. If a point is good, make the point and let it stand on its merit. But being intentionally antagonistic without substance is not an arena Twins Daily wishes to participate in and there are literally hundreds of places a poster can go to satisfy that desire. Maybe everyone ignores "Mr Spreadsheet" in this one case (though that's generally unlikely) but it creates a tone where everyone raises their hackles and conversations become about antagonistic posters instead of the subject at hand. And that antagonistic attitude bleeds into the next thread... and the next thread... and the next thread. Pretty soon, that's the tone of the forum itself, just as it's the tone of pretty much everything on Twitter and Facebook. As for censorship, we're a private entity and we never claimed to be a place for open discussion on every topic nor are we a place that allows all voices equal footing. We're very intentionally attempting to carve out a specific niche, curate both our content and its resulting discussion, and create a place where people don't want to vomit after reading "the second half of the internet". The banning of pejorative nicknames is just one of many measures we take to reach that goal.

Wheeler is the logical starting point. Here are Wheeler's stats with the Mets: Year Age Tm Lg W L W-L% ERA G GS GF CG SHO SV IP H R ER HR BB IBB SO HBP BK WP BF ERA+ FIP WHIP H9 HR9 BB9 SO9 SO/W Awards 2013 23 NYM NL 7 5 .583 3.42 17 17 0 0 0 0 100.0 90 42 38 10 46 2 84 4 0 6 431 104 4.17 1.360 8.1 0.9 4.1 7.6 1.83 2014 24 NYM NL 11 11 .500 3.54 32 32 0 1 1 0 185.1 167 84 73 14 79 3 187 11 0 9 794 97 3.55 1.327 8.1 0.7 3.8 9.1 2.37 2017 27 NYM NL 3 7 .300 5.21 17 17 0 0 0 0 86.1 97 53 50 15 40 1 81 3 0 1 386 79 5.03 1.587 10.1 1.6 4.2 8.4 2.03 2018 28 NYM NL 12 7 .632 3.31 29 29 0 0 0 0 182.1 150 69 67 14 55 0 179 9 1 2 744 112 3.25 1.124 7.4 0.7 2.7 8.8 3.25 2019 29 NYM NL 11 8 .579 3.96 31 31 0 0 0 0 195.1 196 93 86 22 50 4 195 2 0 5 828 104 3.48 1.259 9.0 1.0 2.3 9.0 3.90 7 Yrs 53 43 .552 3.53 151 151 0 2 2 0 916.2 835 391 360 85 308 13 897 39 1 26 3844 109 3.54 1.247 8.2 0.8 3.0 8.8 2.91 162 Game Avg. 12 10 .552 3.53 34 34 0 0 0 0 206 188 88 81 19 69 3 202 9 0 6 866 109 3.54 1.247 8.2 0.8 3.0 8.8 2.91 And Berrios' stats through today: Year Age Tm Lg W L W-L% ERA G GS GF CG SHO SV IP H R ER HR BB IBB SO HBP BK WP BF ERA+ FIP WHIP H9 HR9 BB9 SO9 SO/W Awards 2016 22 MIN AL 3 7 .300 8.02 14 14 0 0 0 0 58.1 74 56 52 12 35 0 49 5 0 1 281 53 6.20 1.869 11.4 1.9 5.4 7.6 1.40 2017 23 MIN AL 14 8 .636 3.89 26 25 0 0 0 0 145.2 131 71 63 15 48 0 139 13 1 7 616 114 3.84 1.229 8.1 0.9 3.0 8.6 2.90 2018 24 MIN AL 12 11 .522 3.84 32 32 0 2 1 0 192.1 159 83 82 25 61 1 202 13 0 2 797 111 3.90 1.144 7.4 1.2 2.9 9.5 3.31 AS 2019 25 MIN AL 14 8 .636 3.68 32 32 0 1 0 0 200.1 194 94 82 26 51 0 195 9 1 8 842 122 3.85 1.223 8.7 1.2 2.3 8.8 3.82 AS 2020 26 MIN AL 5 4 .556 4.00 12 12 0 0 0 0 63.0 57 28 28 8 26 0 68 3 0 5 271 107 4.06 1.317 8.1 1.1 3.7 9.7 2.62 2021 27 MIN AL 7 2 .778 3.49 13 13 0 0 0 0 77.1 64 32 30 10 20 0 81 4 0 1 311 116 3.68 1.086 7.4 1.2 2.3 9.4 4.05 6 Yrs 55 40 .579 4.12 129 128 0 3 1 0 737.0 679 364 337 96 241 1 734 47 2 24 3118 105 4.05 1.248 8.3 1.2 2.9 9.0 3.05 162 Game Avg. 15 11 .579 4.12 34 34 0 1 0 0 195 180 96 89 25 64 0 194 12 1 6 825 105 4.05 1.248 8.3 1.2 2.9 9.0 3.05 Those are close enough that I'd consider them a wash, though Berrios has a one year age advantage over Wheeler, which is worth noting. Also, Berrios' injury track record has been phenomenal in today's game.

I’m not even saying you’re wrong, I’m only saying it should not be assumed Ober cares about a W in this era of baseball and having come through this farm system. Even if he does care, I’d hope there are plenty of clubhouse conversations happening between him and the coaching staff that explains their reasoning and brings everyone onto the same page.

I probably would have left Ober in but, as I said, the decision to pull him is quite defensible for a few reasons. As for "getting that first win and boosting confidence", I'm not sure that's a thing anymore. Ober was drafted by and has spent his entire professional career in an organization that has essentially told its players (either directly or indirectly, not sure) the pitcher win is a worthless stat. So would Ober care about getting a W? I'm skeptical, to say the least.

The bullpen gets a day off today, that wasn’t really an issue either way. I don’t think I would have pulled Ober yesterday but the move is definitely defensible. It’s a lost season in mid-June. The Twins will want Ober to get as many starts as possible in his rookie year before they’re forced to pull the plug on his 2021 season. It’d be nice to see the kid get his first win but in the grand scheme of things, an Ober win yesterday doesn’t matter in the slightest bit. It’s entirely reasonable for the organization to care more about whether he gets a couple more starts in august than whether he goes 5+ innings a few times in June.