Brock Beauchamp

I get almost everyone being in on Syndergaard but aren’t the Padres also in on Stroman and others? That makes less sense.

Both teams went for it in the offseason and refuse to back down from that idea for some unknown reason. Pack it in, boys. Trade off what expiring assets you have this year and try again next year. Paying prospect capital to essentially waste half a season of a player just seems... well, stupid, frankly.

I suspect we see one of three things happen to fix the LHP situation, in order of likelihood: 1. The team lets it run with Thorpe or Smeltzer and hopes for the best 2. Trade for a starter, bumping Perez to the bullpen 3. Trade for another LHP With Rogers as your best bullpen piece, picking up one more good reliever allows Rogers to play in more of a lefty specialist role (put him in against a tough lefty late in a game but then leave him in for 2-3 more outs because he's that good), which mitigates the need for a dedicated LH specialist (though it'd still be nice to have one).

I feel the opposite. Despite Cleveland closing the gap, I want some focus put on the postseason along with also winning regular season games. And Romo lines up really well against the Yankees and Astros, particularly the Yankees.

This is exactly how I feel about it as well. I'm not looking for another Rogers - though that'd be nice, it may be unrealistic - but I want someone significantly better than Duffey, May, and even a step better than Romo (who is now the second-best arm in the pen).

Like others are saying, this seems like a pretty logical move to shuffle around some pieces while picking up a middle relief arm. But they need something better so I'll reserve judgment until we get past the deadline.

I thought I heard he had resumed baseball activities but could be confusing that with someone else, as I heard it during the Yankees series and I was pretty drunk for that entire set of games.

True. Expecting him to be dominant out of the gate is probably unfair, it’s just that the bullpen doesn’t have a lot of margin for error right now.

I don't find it surprising at all. He had over a year off baseball and scuffled a bit. After a couple of months of scuffling, he's good again. He's not a guy I want around forever but for a one year deal, he's a great addition.

He's not going to be in Minnesota this season.

Also, I'm a Thorpe bobo but he didn't look good tonight. He got a bunch of bad hitters out and lucked out against the good hitters he faced. He was missing the mitt all over the place and threw wayyyyy too many pitches out of the zone. Disappointing, for sure.

The Twins have "struggled" since the beginning of June. Their high water mark of being over .500 was 25 games. That came on July 13th. They're now 23 games over .500. Wow, this team is falling to pieces.

I believe he started rehab just a day or two ago.

Agreed across the board.

I saw it an hour ago but I'm the type of petty bastard that just wanted to sit back and see how long it'd take for someone to figure it out. I'm mildly disappointed, to be honest. I hoped it would go for at least the rest of the game.

I think either the front office really dislikes Stroman or something was lost in the translation of that tweet (ie. the Jays are rightly hesitant, not the Twins).

Nope, 1.5 years of control.

Yeah... me too, and I wouldn't think too hard about it. The Twins must either really like Larnach or really dislike Stroman or both. Or maybe they feel like they'd be selling low on Graterol. That's possible, too.

How is Lewis not living up to anything? He struggled early this year as he made mechanical adjustments but has an OPS well over .900 in July. Also, Lewis and Arraez have little overlap. Lewis is a SS that will fall back to CF if he can’t hack the position. Arraez is a second baseman who has acquitted himself well at third over the past month.

I saw that earlier and got a good laugh out it.

I agree with the exception of Syndergaard. I think they're legitimately interested there, but that's far from a guarantee a deal gets done. I suspect they're in on Syndergaard with the idea they'll shift Perez to the pen and then pick up another relief arm. If Syndergaard isn't going to happen, then they ignore starters and move to pick up two relief arms instead.

I didn't really expect it this year, much less past years.

Both, I suspect. Given how the team apparently views Adrianza, it's possible they viewed him as Gonzalez-Lite and assumed Gonzalez would be snatched up at a much higher rate than they got him. When Marwin lingered in free agency through February, they probably pivoted and grabbed him. Which makes me wonder how analytics-first teams are viewing “roving” players. For example, maybe Gonzalez is a 2 WAR player. That's fine but hardly jaw-dropping. A basic analytical analysis would pencil in two wins and move on. But is that actually the case? I don't think it is because: 1. Gonzalez provides rest for starters. I'm sure some advanced teams have affixed a number to what you get from a player starting 155 games versus starting 145 games. Maybe it's such a small number that most ignore it... say, 0.1 WAR performance over those 145 games. But if you duplicate that nine times, you're quickly at 1.0 WAR or thereabouts. Suddenly, Gonzalez is a full win more valuable than he was before. On top of that, Gonzalez will allow many starters to sit during games they face a platoon disadvantage, further extending that improvement in overall play. Or maybe that starting player has a 2% higher chance of avoiding injury at 145 games. That in itself has an enormous impact if it prevents a 5 WAR player from going down for a month of the season. 2. Gonzalez provides insurance against starter injuries and replacement (or worse) players. We always affix the "replacement player" value but we also know that replacement players aren't manufactured on an assembly line, ready to take over as needed. Plugging in Gonzalez at third while Sano was injured could easily have brought the Twins another 0.5 WAR, as their options behind Sano weren't great (I'm excluding Adrianza from this hypothetical because it's just that, a hypothetical). Multiply that over multiple positions over the course of a season and you start to get that much more value from Gonzalez. 3. The futility fielder. Again, we assume that historically, this player is replacement level. That may not be the case. Just plugging in any random player, as we saw for a decade straight with those 2000s Twins teams, can lead to some ugly black holes on the roster. All of these numbers are just guesses but I don't think it's a coincidence that a team like the Astros valued Gonzalez and now teams like the Twins also value him (or that the Cubs held a similar concept by aggressively pursuing Zobrist). I think there's a lot more to the story than "Gonzalez is worth two wins and that's that". And I suspect this is a trend we'll see gain in importance going forward.

Their "clutch" hitting didn't really show up last night, as they went 14 innings against the freakin' Kansas City Royals. Also, Cleveland's OPS is 28th in MLB with RISP. The Twins are 9th. http://www.espn.com/mlb/stats/team/_/stat/batting/split/39/sort/OPS/order/true

I mostly agree, though I tend to skew on the side of "it was a bad call because Schoop was obviously trying to get out of the way and Engel ran four feet laterally to "hit" him... but they *barely* touched". In that situation, I think it should have been a non-call because it didn't actually impact the play and Engel went right at Schoop. But you're right that Schoop should have tagged him out at second. There was no reason to lollygag and wait for the runner to come to him when 4-5 steps at him and the play is over.