Brock Beauchamp

Hmm. Maybe not pulling Cano was a mistake.

Blackouts are far more difficult to fix because it pits teams and owners against one another, which creates a stalemate for real change. And besides, fixing the on-field game isn't the enemy just because it's easier to fix than off-field issues. Hating blackouts shouldn't change our willingness to fix other aspects of the game.

Okay, how?

Oh my lord, this is so wildly inaccurate and just pretending a game existed that never actually existed. First, you obviously haven't watched an old game in awhile if you think Mike Hargrove was some outlier in comparison to today's game. Second, if you think pitching was better 50 years ago, that's just ignorant. When I grew up any guy who threw a fastball that started with a velocity of "9" was a fireballer. Ignoring how velocity has changed the game only makes fixing the game's problems harder to do. If we can't agree that today's athletes are better, faster, and stronger, there's little point in having this conversation.

Oh, blackouts are *at least* as big of a problem as pace of play but they're two very separate issues. One is a business issue, the other a baseball issue.

Carlos Correa is a pretty decent athlete.

What I don't understand about this take, and I'm legitimately puzzled by it, is that a pitch clock makes the game more in line with its own history. The abuse of a lack of a pitch clock is what has changed the game and the enforcement of a pitch clock makes it look more like the game we all watched as children. I had been drifting toward supporting a pitch clock until Covid hit. Without new baseball, I went back and watched a lot of old baseball. And about two weeks into doing that, it hit me just how much slower and worse the game is now than it was back then. Guys didn't step out of the box 30 years ago. Pitchers didn't circle the mound 30 years ago. It's going to be difficult to change the Three True Outcomes version of the game but it's really easy to fix the stepping out, endless fiddling of batting gloves, and circling the mound. And the likely outcome of doing that also reduces the TTO game because if pitchers start losing 2mph on their fastball because they can't take 30 second breaks between pitches, offense and contact improve. And also, the pitch clock itself is about 60 years old now. It's older than me by 15 years. MLB simply hasn't enforced it.

That’s possible but unlikely, as the average age of baseball fans have been climbing for quite some time, IIRC. That likely means baseball is keeping the same fans but not acquiring new fans.

There are dozens of studies that show kids aren't into baseball and are migrating to other sports, anecdotal evidence of stadium attendance aside. Even Little League participation is dropping pretty much every year. The average age of a baseball fan is something like 15 years older than an NBA fan. Every way you look at it, the sport is soon to go into decline, if it isn't there already. Just google it, you'll find loads of information on the subject and every indicator points to baseball being in serious trouble soon.

You can do the math on this. Removing one commercial from each break shortens a game by at least nine minutes but probably not much more than that. I'll be generous and say the average game has four mid-inning pitcher replacements so we're now at 11 minutes. The article mentions the pitch clock reducing game length by 24 minutes. Commercials are not the problem.

Yep. If they hadn't abused the lack of a rule in the first place, we wouldn't be here right now.

The game is far from fine if you base its popularity upon any measure of fan interest for anyone under 50 years old.

The current rule is toothless. It has all these (stupid) stipulations and doesn't actually start until the pitcher is in position on the mound, then it begins a 20 second countdown. It wouldn't have an actual impact on the current game for anyone except the absolute slowest of pitchers. The new rule is much stricter and exact, as it should be.

It is physically impossible for me to care less about whether the players like the pitch clock. If they hadn't slowed the game to a crawl in the first place, we wouldn't be taking these draconian measures to speed up the pace of play. If you don't like the pitch clock, maybe you all shouldn't have spent three decades stepping out, ****ing around with your damned batting gloves, or pacing around the mound three times between every pitch. As a fan, I pay your salary and if you're not entertaining enough, I WILL DO OTHER THINGS. And right now, the game is not entertaining. It's circling the drain as an entertainment option and a pitch clock should have been implemented five years ago.

Interesting. Thanks, I'll get it fixed.

When you say Chrome, I assume you mean desktop?

They're not in last place this season.

Trading Correa would be disastrous. It's not even on the Twins' radar, I guarantee that much.

Again, thank you for sharing. We’re all about community here and you are now a more involved part of this community. If that’s the only thing this new feature brings, I consider it a success!

That's so great to hear and thank you for sharing. I've been reluctant to implement dark mode because it's a ton of work and I don't like dark mode. I don't want to use it and it creates 50% more work whenever I have to make a change. Hearing comments like this reinforces not only my commitment to keeping this feature but also that I should have done it quite some time ago. Again, thank you.

This has been one of the most-requested features for a long time and I'm happy to announce that Dark Mode is finally a thing you can use across the site! Dark Mode is a new way to use Twins Daily, especially at night or in darkened rooms. Instead of the background being black text over white background, it's the inverse: white text over black background. Some people find sites easier to use and read in this inverted scheme and now it's really easy to toggle back and forth as needed. At the top right of each page, you will see four icons in the red bar; the first icon is a half-filled circle. Click that to toggle back and forth from light to dark modes on the site. That's it! Now, the site has become quite sprawling and while I tried to check every aspect of how this renders on each page, I surely missed some things. Therefore, dear user, you are my quality assurance team. If you see anything that's hard to read, doesn't work right, or just plain looks weird, add a comment below and I'll get it fixed as soon as possible. For those of you who have been asking for this feature for so long, sorry it has taken this long. What seemed like a pretty simple feature actually turned into an overly-complex problem that I couldn't solve without quite a bit of effort. Once again, I'd like to give a big thanks and shout out to our caretakers of Twins Daily; without their continued support, small-but-important features like Dark Mode would be much more difficult to implement. The added freedom to hire additional staff allows me to spend more time focusing on these types of projects. Thanks again!

I’m not sure how the Twins plan to remain in first place given this pathetic offensive effort today. TRADE EVERYONE

Yeah, good point about Correa. Like I said, not the move I would have made but it's defensible. Avoiding making a guy who was idle for two full years to play a position he played for two weeks in the AFL three seasons ago isn't some insane decision. If Lewis is still in St Paul in mid-June while Urshela is still hitting at the Mendoza line, then I'll start to become upset.

Oh, Lewis is definitely more capable but it's also a pretty unfair ask to move him to a position he started at 12 times in October of 2019. That's it. That's his professional time at third base. And it's not as if Urshela is a hack. He's struggling offensively but he can absolutely pick it at the hot corner. As I said, probably not the move I would have made but it's very defensible. If Lewis can't play every day at a position he doesn’t need to learn on the fly, it's entirely reasonable to put him in a lower key atmosphere and let him do that. It's still mid-May.