Brock Beauchamp

How does this blog entry not have comments? This is really a fantastic take and nails exactly how I feel about this team. I'm frustrated as hell by the Twins' play since starting the season 5-2 but people are scapegoating way too fast and way too readily without a lot of evidence to support these takes. The point I keep hammering at is "how do you explain a team of veterans losing 10% of their OPS in the last third of the game?" These aren't young players being "tainted" by a coaching staff or clubhouse cancer. These are guys with thousands of PAs each, guys who have been in the league 5+ years, guys who never had this problem until roughly five minutes ago. The Twins are unlucky, shades of bad (seemingly different every night), and unlucky. Josh Donaldson, one of the best third basemen of this generation, had three errors in two nights. To that I say "WTF" and there are so many instances of that kind of completely nonsensical situation in the Twins 2021 season.

xBA doesn’t take into account park factors or any number of things that affect a single ball. All it does is take the exit velo and launch angle data and outputs a number with the batting average on balls similar to that one based on historical data. There will always be fringe cases like this one where a ball doesn’t have a great historical record but goes for a home run in certain parks and certain conditions.

Out of curiosity, I wanted to see if Baseball Savant tables will copy to the site. Jose Berrios Pitches Swings Pitch Velocity Exit Velocity Pitch Type Count % Swings Whiffs % CS CS+Whiffs CSW% Fouls BIP Max Min Avg Yr-Avg +/- Avg Min Max Curveball 41 40 18 4 22 7 11 27 6 8 85.1 80.9 83.1 83.9 -0.8 ↓ 79.0 38.4 99.0 4-Seam Fastball 28 27 15 1 7 6 7 25 8 6 96.2 92.3 94.1 94.2 -0.1 ↓ 97.3 73.0 113.7 Sinker 23 22 13 1 8 4 5 22 6 6 95.0 92.2 93.5 93.9 -0.4 ↓ 92.2 76.6 102.9 Changeup 11 11 7 3 43 0 3 27 1 3 86.5 84.0 85.2 86.2 -1.0 ↓ 90.3 66.3 103.5 103 53 9 17 17 26 25 21 23 96.2 80.9 88.6 88.7 38.4 113.7 Pitches Spin Vertical Break Horizontal Break Pitch Type Count % Max Min Avg Yr-Avg +/- Max Min Avg Yr-Avg +/- Max Min Avg Yr-Avg +/- Curveball 41 40 2600 2244 2394 2349 45.0 ↑ 49 37 43 42 1.0 17 6 12 14 -2.0 4-Seam Fastball 28 27 2463 2200 2296 2288 8.0 ↑ 19 12 16 16 0.0 17 9 11 10 1.0 Sinker 23 22 2345 2033 2178 2181 -3.0 ↓ 24 16 20 20 0.0 19 14 16 17 -1.0 Changeup 11 11 1703 1480 1563 1490 73.0 ↑ 38 28 32 32 0.0 19 12 14 14 0.0 103 2600 1480 2230 49 12 30 19 6 13

I'm heading there in a couple of hours and will feel completely safe... just as I've felt every time I visit downtown Minneapolis.

I don't know how much this means but maybe it's possible Shoemaker could be an effective reliever. The first inning is the hardest to get through, as it's the only inning the opposing team can control who bats. And Shoemaker's OPS against tells a pretty damning story of what happens when batters get multiple looks at him in a game. Those OPS against numbers in innings 4-6 are just brutal. Of course, this could also be statistical noise, but it's enough that I think putting Shoemaker in the pen is worth a shot, if only because it's so hard to be worse than what the Twins have been putting out there in relief this season. By Inning Split G IP ER ERA PA AB R H 2B 3B HR SB CS BB SO SO/W BA OBP SLG OPS TB GDP HBP SH SF IBB ROE BAbip tOPS+ sOPS+ 1st inning 7 7.0 4 5.14 30 25 4 5 3 0 0 0 0 2 5 2.50 .200 .267 .320 .587 8 0 1 0 2 0 1 .227 39 62 2nd inning 7 7.0 2 2.57 25 23 2 4 0 0 1 1 0 2 4 2.00 .174 .240 .304 .544 7 1 0 0 0 0 0 .167 28 57 3rd inning 7 7.0 3 3.86 31 29 3 7 0 0 2 1 0 2 4 2.00 .241 .290 .448 .739 13 1 0 0 0 0 1 .217 70 101 4th inning 7 5.2 7 11.12 29 26 5 9 2 0 2 1 0 3 4 1.33 .346 .414 .654 1.068 17 0 0 0 0 0 0 .350 145 207 5th inning 5 5.0 3 5.40 22 19 3 6 0 0 2 0 0 2 6 3.00 .316 .381 .632 1.013 12 0 0 1 0 0 0 .364 131 180 6th inning 4 2.1 6 23.14 14 13 6 6 1 0 3 0 0 1 0 0.00 .462 .500 1.231 1.731 16 0 0 0 0 0 0 .300 278 369 Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table Generated 5/15/2021.

IIRC, at the time I thought it was a pretty good trade, though obviously a controversial one. It still looks that way on paper, though there's a lot more that needs to play out to see how the Twins fared in that deal.

It's an interesting idea but I wonder how many already-vaccinated people would take a second dose just to watch a free baseball game.

I’d rather see Shoemaker in the pen and Thorpe in Shoemaker’s rotation spot. If this team is going to be hot garbage, they should do it using young players in key roles so they know what they have in 2022.

Garver's season is a tale of two players. Since his OPS bottomed out at .517 on April 27th, this is what he's done. It's basically a 2+ week snapshot of the 2019 version of Mitch Garver. Mitch Garver Batting Gamelogs for Career Games 259 to 269 Date Tm G GS Rslt PA AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB IBB SO HBP SH SF ROE GDP SB CS BA OBP SLG OPS BAbip aLI WPA acLI cWPA RE24 DFS(DK) DFS(FD) Apr 28 to May 13, 2021 MIN 11 8 3-8 37 32 5 9 0 0 4 7 5 0 9 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 .281 .378 .656 1.035 .263 .86 -0.234 .52 -0.07% 1.82 89.00 118.50 per 162 games 162 118 545 472 74 133 0 0 59 104 74 0 133 0 0 0 0 15 0 0 -3

Duffey is having more than a down stretch. Look at these swinging strike percentage. Yikes. And that zone contact %. Double yikes. Season Team Level O-Swing% Z-Swing% Swing% O-Contact% Z-Contact% Contact% Zone% F-Strike% SwStr% CStr% CSW% 2015 MIN MLB 32.4% 62.3% 45.5% 63.0% 88.7% 78.5% 43.8% 63.6% 9.8% 18.3% 28.1% 2016 MIN MLB 33.1% 65.6% 47.3% 70.5% 89.6% 82.0% 43.7% 63.8% 8.5% 17.6% 26.1% 2017 MIN MLB 32.9% 67.4% 49.3% 63.1% 86.1% 78.0% 47.4% 63.9% 10.7% 17.0% 27.7% 2018 MIN MLB 36.4% 65.0% 48.4% 64.8% 90.4% 79.3% 42.2% 57.0% 10.0% 16.5% 26.5% 2019 MIN MLB 34.6% 71.9% 50.6% 50.5% 81.8% 69.6% 42.9% 67.2% 15.3% 14.9% 30.3% 2020 MIN MLB 40.3% 59.1% 47.0% 54.7% 78.2% 65.3% 35.9% 68.5% 16.3% 18.5% 34.8% 2021 MIN MLB 26.9% 60.4% 40.4% 58.3% 94.5% 80.2% 40.4% 59.3% 8.0% 19.6% 27.6%

@chaderic20 SUN MON TUE WED THU TOT Anderson 0 0 0 54 0 54 Did not pitch Thielbar 0 0 41 0 0 41 1-20 Pitches Law 0 0 19 13 0 32 21+ Pitches Alcala 0 0 12 0 16 28 Rogers 0 0 0 0 20 20 Duffey 0 0 0 16 0 16 Colomé 0 0 0 15 0 15 Robles 0 0 0 0 12 12

I agree with most of this, except that I believe the chance of Cruz being traded is close to 100%. No matter if the return is good or not, he'll almost surely be moved. There aren't many teams that need a DH but literally every single playoff team wants Cruz on their roster, if only for pinch-hitting duty.

I'm always fascinated how players develop these reputations and why people believe them. We have numbers to verify/disprove these narratives so let's use them. Polanco's career tOPS+ with RISP is 136, which means he's 36% better with RISP than he is overall. Polanco's 2021 tOPS+ with RISP is 126.

Frankly, what does firing Baldelli accomplish? I don’t think he has done a good job of field management this season but literally every player he puts into a critical situation, either offensively or defensively, just flat-out fails. Firing him may make a statement but right now, the players are the ones who need to be fired because they suck at their jobs when it matters most.

I feel like this inning perfectly represents the 2021 Twins. They get a break, hit a few balls nicely, load the bases, then make the third out on a .640 xBA ball that's nearly a grand slam. Smell those RBI, boys. Statcast Metrics Batter PA In. Result EV (MPH) LA (Deg.) Dist (ft.) Pitch Vel (MPH) xBA Kyle Garlick 31 4 Flyout 100.0 27 390 95.4 .640 Willians Astudillo 30 4 Strikeout 95.2 Max Kepler 29 4 Field Error 97.0 -7 15 91.6 .240 Mitch Garver 28 4 Walk 94.2 Trevor Larnach 27 4 Double 105.3 17 268 89.2 .570 Nelson Cruz 26 4 Strikeout 89.1 Jorge Polanco 25 4 Pop Out 70.6 81 43 94.6

I noticed there was a problem with the blog display of tables. I have added a side scroll to the tables on mobile so they don't extend outside the page wrapper, you just scroll right/left to view part of the table.

So I watched all of yesterday's game and my big takeaway was "I regret doing this".

Yep, this should be fixed now.

I suspect that's a code problem, I'll take a look at it later tonight.

It's probably because I got so fed up with him several days ago that I referred to his hitting from the left side as "hot garbage". You know what else is hot garbage? The entire Twins roster. #fingerscrossed

I don't want to start a conversation about this but I *only* hear this message from people who don't go to downtown Minneapolis. I know *so many* people who go to a ton of Twins games and/or live downtown and they move around down there without a bit of trouble. Hell, our own John Bonnes lives downtown and (obviously) goes to a bunch of Twins games. He walks back and forth and has talked about it on the podcast a few times. Never had a lick of trouble, nor has one of my best friends who literally lives two blocks from Target Field. Don't buy into politically-driven narratives from people who don't actually live or visit the place in question. With that said, I have no interest in pursuing this line of conversation or arguing about it, as I've been there, know people who live there, and no one has reported any difficulty or worry so let's end the discussion here and move on.

Every few days, I'm going to try to cover some of the features of the new site in a few paragraphs. Using the old site, as I'm sure many of you are aware, tables were basically unusable. That has changed! I'll tackle B-Ref tables quickly in this post but you can do similar things with FanGraphs or other sites that use table data (which is how almost all stat sites display their content). First, pop on over to Lord Byron's B-Ref page: https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/b/buxtoby01.shtml I'm going to grab his 2019-2021 season stats. Just above his stat table, you'll see Share & Export. Click and then select Modify, Share, & Export Table. Boom, you can then select what stats you want to display and which you want to remove. I've removed all seasons except the last three. I also removed team and league because "duh". Then click the big X in the top right of the yellow square and you have your filtered table. Grab that table by moving your cursor to the top left of the table (just to the left of Year in this case) and while holding down the button of your mouse/trackpad, drag toward the bottom right of the table. The table will begin to highlight in yellow as you select the cells. Grab them all and let go of the mouse/trackpad. Then copy what has been selected (control+c on Windows, command+c on macOS). Pop over to Twins Daily, start typing a comment, and paste your content (control+v on Windows, command+v on macOS). Year Age G PA AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI SB CS BB SO BA OBP SLG OPS OPS+ TB GDP HBP SH SF IBB Pos Awards 2019 25 87 295 271 48 71 30 4 10 46 14 3 19 68 .262 .314 .513 .827 116 139 3 2 2 1 1 8/HD 2020 26 39 135 130 19 33 3 0 13 27 2 1 2 36 .254 .267 .577 .844 127 75 2 1 0 2 0 8 MVP-16 2021 27 24 98 92 19 34 10 0 9 17 5 0 4 23 .370 .408 .772 1.180 236 71 0 2 0 0 0 *8 7 Yr 7 Yr 456 1602 1472 223 363 87 17 60 189 67 9 95 467 .247 .297 .451 .748 99 664 10 13 14 8 3 162 162 162 569 523 79 129 31 6 21 67 24 3 34 166 .247 .297 .451 .748 99 236 4 5 5 3 1 And that's it! Note: you can use this method for most websites and spreadsheet data so whatever table data you have available you need to copy and paste, this method will likely suit your needs.

I've been pretty unimpressed with Garver's defense this season for many of the reasons you listed but in fairness to him, that first failed block that scored a run was some pretty lousy baseball luck. The ball hit something - possibly the edge of the plate - and bounced the opposite direction it was tailing (and the direction Garver was moving to block). Happ is a lefty and the ball hit the opposite side of the plate. It then bounced back to Happ's arm side of the plate, which isn't something a catcher can expect to happen or have time to react to it happening. https://www.mlb.com/gameday/twins-vs-white-sox/2021/05/12/634160#game_state=final,lock_state=final,game_tab=videos,game=634160 Blech, MLB doesn't want to let me easily link to a specific video. Look for the video "Hamilton Scores on a Wild Pitch" after scrolling.