Brock Beauchamp

BTW, great blog entry, but I wanted to let you know you can now copy and paste tables directly into the Twins Daily text editor. Read this for a quick tutorial:

I also wanted Semien more than Simmons but if it's December of 2020 with pandemic worries looming over MLB, I completely understand the reluctance to pay for Semien when you can get Simmons for roughly half the price. But like pretty much everything in 2021, that decision is not working out for the hometown team...

Fair enough. I agree the Twins should be playing much better than they are while KC is performing close to where I expected. Any comparison between them is at least mildly damning to the Twins season.

My opinions can basically be boiled down to "does this rule change speed up the game and/or increase action?" If yes, I'm probably in favor of it. If no, I'm probably against it. The easiest rule to change that will make the game better without impacting the on-field strategy/play at all is "the batter cannot step out of the box during a plate appearance". If that's too much, then eliminate the rule where the pitcher cannot pitch if the batter isn't in the box (basically, force the batter to be ready and in the box at all times). And then actually enforce the pitch clock, for god's sake. Those are rules that have zero impact on game theory/strategy (though players will surely try to claim otherwise) but will keep the game flow accelerated and fans more engaged. Because while three true outcomes can be boring, what really drags down a baseball game is watching the batter and pitcher take 25 second breathers between every. single. pitch.

I'm not really sure why you included BABIP in that comment, as it's not generally regarded as something that can be controlled by the pitching/defense, at least not to a large degree. But toggle that page over to offense and basically the exact opposite is true (except even moreso). Offensive WAR: Minnesota: 5th, 8.3 WAR Kansas City: 26th, 2.4 WAR That's actually a much larger gap than pitching WAR. And besides, does this tell us a significantly different story than the stats I listed above? Both stat groups tell us the Royals have a pitching advantage and the Twins have a significant hitting advantage so far this season. And my post was originally a rebuttal to "Kansas City has looked like a much better team than the Twins this season" and your stats don't suggest that's any more true than my original stats. An interesting thing I just noticed, though, and I definitely didn't see it coming. FanGraphs has the Twins as the seventh best defense in MLB. The Royals are below average, in the negative numbers overall, at 18th in MLB. That's just more evidence the Royals haven't been a better team this season, though, or at least not a noticeably better team anyway.

Have they, though? KC is ahead of the Twins in the standings but their pythag record is worse (21-26 vs 23-26) and the BaseRuns gap is even larger (21-26 vs 24-25). The Twins have been woeful in very specific ways but the Royals haven't been good, either, they've just been more lucky. Ranks in AL: Bullpen ERA: KC 9th, MN 13th Rotation ERA: MN 10th, KC 11th Offense OPS: MN 5th, KC 12th KC can't even crack the top half of the AL in any of those categories and rank in the bottom third in two of them.

I stopped reading here because I'm pretty sure close to 100% of the Twins fanbase assumes this will be the case in pepetuity.

Eh, hard to say. If this group of walking wounded ever get back on the field, the Twins could be competitive (just Buxton by himself is a massive team upgrade). If they continue sputtering and getting injured as they have, I don't like their chances.

I don't think the game was terrible but there were a lot of plate appearances that just didn't look good from both offenses. Loads of misses on hittable pitches and weak contact on pitches that could have been driven. The Twins offense is going to have to hit those pitches when they face the Yankees and Astros or they're going to lose... badly.

Not a pretty win but it still counts in the column that matters.

I don't even have anything to say, I just wanted to post the obvious GIF.

Oh, I think pretty much everyone agrees he is underperforming, the only quibbling seems to be over to what degree he is underperforming. Everyone I know agrees that those errors have been killing the team but they're also wildly uncharacteristic of Donaldson and errors aren't something I really think of as the first thing to decline. In other words, I don't think the blundering stone handed errors we've seen continue going forward, though they sure stung in the moment. It should also be pointed out that Donaldson only recently stopped hitting. Until a week or so ago, his offensive production was quite good. Is he in a minor slump or something else? Hard to say and time will tell. Season Totals Split G GS PA AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI SB CS BB SO BA OBP SLG OPS BAbip tOPS+ sOPS+ 2021 Totals 36 34 143 119 17 28 7 0 5 19 0 0 21 22 .235 .343 .420 .763 .242 100 116 Last 7 days 8 7 32 24 4 2 0 0 0 3 0 0 6 5 .083 .250 .083 .333 .095 -7 -1 Last 14 days 15 14 63 50 6 8 1 0 2 9 0 0 11 11 .160 .302 .300 .602 .154 60 69 Last 28 days 26 24 108 88 13 17 6 0 4 15 0 0 18 18 .193 .324 .398 .722 .191 89 102 Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table Generated 5/25/2021.

That's fine if you don't use them but those are incredibly useful tools that are excellent predictors of future performance, far better than any human eye, which tries to trick us or write its own narrative on a regular basis. And nobody really cares about 100 vs 102... but 95 vs 105 is significant and often hard to discern based on different camera angles. Never mind that without that tech, truly useful stats like "barrels" don't exist.

It's all automated by the tracking equipment fitted into every MLB stadium. It's how MLB operates the Baseball Savant website with all its crazy cool data. Without that equipment, we wouldn't have exit velocities, reaction times, sprint speeds, launch angles, the list goes on...

Not a ton of gas on it, which is probably a big part of the reason why he's not really shortstop material, but it was perfectly accurate. I think they said it was an 82mph throw on the broadcast.

Sano has loads of discipline, probably the most on the team (only other real contender is Donaldson). Sano just has a lousy contact rate.

I haven’t thought about Wally Joyner in roughly 3.5 decades.

Also, things like batting average need to be mentally adjusted this season, as .245 is roughly .010 higher than league average last I checked.

Me in the tenth inning:

A nice win but this team needs to stop playing sloppy baseball if they expect to win close games or post a long winning streak. Tonight will be a challenge with Bieber on the mound.

Yeah, I’m tired of losing but Giolito was filthy. If the Twins play like they did the last two days, this season won’t be a total loss.

Yep, that's what I meant, though I didn't really describe it well. Arraez has been marginally better than Sano, though both have been below average.