Brock Beauchamp
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Everything posted by Brock Beauchamp
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My father is awful with money and therefore, I was awful with money... until I landed flat on my ass at age 30. Since then, I’ve been a pretty good saver. The savings themselves wax and wane based on what I’m paying off so my savings account may not look great at times but it means I threw a chunk of money at something recently.
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I saw the getaway day lineup more as a result of the stupid early season schedule than any fixed plan going forward. I’ll be really disappointed if we see that on a regular basis with a roster that includes the flexibility of both Astudillo and Gonzalez.- 70 replies
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- adalberto mejia
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Article: Three Catcher Conundrum
Brock Beauchamp replied to Cody Christie's topic in Twins Daily Front Page News
I don’t think it will - or should - be that clear cut. Castro is long in the tooth and could certainly use some breaks. Garver is pretty bad behind the dish so you don’t want him out there all the time. It all boils down to how the front office views Astudillo’s defense, I think. -
You’re criticizing Baldelli for running his team like a modern baseball organization (mixed in with players’ lack of execution, which is hardly the fault of the manager). Outside of a few specific instances where you’re playing for one run late, sacrifices are a losing strategy. Especially in the first inning, which you just complained about. Yikes.
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- nelson cruz
- jose berrios
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Article: Three Catcher Conundrum
Brock Beauchamp replied to Cody Christie's topic in Twins Daily Front Page News
Lots of teams who value pitch framing and catcher defense. Seriously, the Astudillo hot takes in this thread are making my head spin. He’s a fun player and a player I want to see more of going forward but handing everyday duties to him at pretty much any position is madly irresponsible. This team has proven players at most positions and many of them are defensively proficient. Stop drooling over OPS+ numbers over 100 PAs. I expect better from the posters on this site. -
I’m going to need to see a lot more of Astudillo before I believe he’s average behind the plate. And Castro is somewhere around league average for catchers with the stick. It’s a stretch to say he “can’t hit”.
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There’s a lot more to catching than holding a bat and Castro is pretty good at most of it, very good at some of it.
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- michael pineda
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I want to see Astudillo get more playing time but there’s no sense of urgency to the situation. Over time, attrition will get him playing time. In the first weeks of the season, figure out what you have in the starting corps and let them play. These situations resolve themselves quickly enough most of the time. Fit him in where you can, play him a couple of times a week, and keep him fresh when an opening arises. If an opening doesn’t arise, that means the team is pretty good and I’m not going to worry about it much.
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Where and how often? And who loses playing time in return? I want to see Astudillo on the 25 man roster but we’re three games into the season and he’s an unknown quantity. He should get playing time but not at the expense of more established players. If he’s worthy of a starting spot, he’ll play his way into it. Don’t force the issue.
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I love Astudillo as much as the next guy but some of you need to reel it in a bit. The dude has ~100 career PAs. The front office isn’t insane for refusing to write his name into lineups using a pen.
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If people are willing to overpay, you take it. And people were willing to overpay for Pressly. Don't get me wrong, he's a very good pitcher. But they really overpayed for 1.3 years of service.
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Someone please let me know why I should care if Gonzalez has a bad spring.
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Out of curiosity, why?
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Huh. Saw that all coming about 45 minutes into the first episode. Hiding the ball in an obvious manner is bad... It gets someone thinking about how clueless the characters are and then you start spotting every. single. thing. that. will. happen. It's the opposite of suspension of disbelief. Instead of being enraptured, you pick apart every single thing that's on screen and then know what happens next.
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Watched the first 2.5 episodes of The Umbrella Academy and wow am I disappointed right now. Hour long episodes, watched 2.5 of them. That’s a long-ish movie running time. Almost nothing has happened. Which is too bad because I like the premise, like the cast, and wanted to like the show. But after the fifth time the writers chose to hide the ball (again) instead of revealing *anything*, I simply lost interest.
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No, you probably shouldn't. It's not a show that will grow on you. It's a show that you either love in the first five minutes or just don't care to watch. No answer is wrong, except one answer is wrong.
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I’m only a few episodes into it so I don’t know what kind of legs it will have but Letterkenny is comedic genius. You can find it on Hulu. Warning: it’s likely the kind of show you will love or hate. I don’t think there will be a lot of middle ground on this one.
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Well, yes and no. It's the first week of March. Hitters aren't exactly up to speed on game velocity. Good that he performed, great that he showed increased velocity, what the hitters did with it is basically inconsequential.
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I actually agree with most of this, which is why I haven't really refuted Gonzalez' +1 projection... as a median. At its root, my questionable confidence in this kind of projection is two-fold: 1. That replacement players are actually available. We have a pretty long track record of watching some truly abysmal players get time on the field, though it should be noted a lot of that happened under the previous front office (which makes it as much of a management mistake as player). 2. That WAR itself - which is used for the projections - is even worth a damn when you get in SSS of I'm not even saying the projection is wrong. It very well could be spot-on but when we start dealing with tiny numbers and lots of them, my faith in advanced metrics begin to waver (and, essentially, Gonzalez' replacements would be lots of tiny numbers).
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I mostly agree and see where you're coming from but disagree on "bad luck". I consider it an inevitability in today's game. Someone will get injured. Gonzalez will take their place. Where Gonzalez separates himself from someone like, say, Adrianza, is that he can play anywhere. In your scenario, I'd probably agree that it requires a fair amount of "bad luck" to get Adrianza 400 PAs, as it means your middle infield was torn to shreds over the season. But in the case of Gonzalez, it could come in small bursts all over the diamond: 40 PAs in left, 60 PAs at short, 80 PAs at third, etc. Because of Gonzalez' versatility, I don't believe it requires bad luck for him to get a lot of playing time all over the field, all the while replacing someone at neutral or negative WAR value. Starters will get dinged up over the season and having a guy already on the roster to fill in for them can lead to a lot of PAs, all the while keeping your roster more stable in the process and not risking some pretty awful performances from replacement players, even if their scope of damage is limited to only a few plate appearances.
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I generally agree but those bad performances don't go away because you replace them, they're only mitigated somewhat. And a roughly league-average replacement instead of dipping your toes into polluted water - no matter how briefly - has a positive impact on the season. But we're also getting into cloudy territory with WAR itself here. For example, Logan Morrison was atrocious last season. Over ~350 PAs, he was "worth" -0.3 WAR. Over 21 PAs last season, Tayler Motter was "worth" -0.3 WAR. Maybe my point isn't as much about projection systems not properly evaluating replacement players, it's about WAR being so shaky on partial seasons. Either way, I have little confidence in either accurately judging the value of someone like Gonzalez as a 10th starting man.
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I have to wonder if this is a place where prediction models fail. They account for playing time but I question how accurately they predict subpar replacement players. For example, Gonzalez is likely a step down from Polanco. But if Polanco gets injured, how much of a step up is Gonzalez from Replacement Player X? We all know the basic replacement player performance level but we also realize that replacement players aren't available all the time, or that a team may misjudge a "replacement player" and get something much worse in their place. If Gonzalez starts 100 games because he's just pencilled in as a starter, we can pretty accurately judge his value to the team in wins. If Gonzalez starts 100 games at three different positions because of injuries to starting players or general ineffectiveness, I have less faith a projection model is accurately judging his value to a team.
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Got it. I totally misunderstood your post.
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I think you're overlooking the fact that someone will go down in the first month of the season... and the second month of the season... and so on. Adding a player like Gonzalez gives you flexibility when things are good and a quite good backup should things go bad. I have a lot of faith that a manager like Baldelli will be able to use that kind of player in a way that add wins to the team over the course of a season.
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I kinda get what you're saying but the Gonzalez move only makes me grumble more about the lack of an impact bullpen arm this offseason. Add that and I think the Twins are pretty easily an 85 win team based on last season's performances, with an upside of 90+ wins without even squinting (95 if you squint a bit). Young teams that underperform in a season often either fizzle out entirely or go bananas. My opinion is that you bank on the "go bananas" side of that equation and you buy a few players to hedge that bet. You don't need to go sign Keuchel and indebt yourself to a player for 4+ seasons but you should definitely sign guys like Gonzalez (and a reliever) to give the young players a framework in which to succeed.
