Brock Beauchamp
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Everything posted by Brock Beauchamp
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Twins sign Jake Cave to 2022 contract for $800k
Brock Beauchamp replied to Otto von Ballpark's topic in Minnesota Twins Talk
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Twins sign Jake Cave to 2022 contract for $800k
Brock Beauchamp replied to Otto von Ballpark's topic in Minnesota Twins Talk
Is that all OF or was Cave actually average in CF? I always assumed he was well below average in center. -
Twins sign Jake Cave to 2022 contract for $800k
Brock Beauchamp replied to Otto von Ballpark's topic in Minnesota Twins Talk
This isn’t the worst idea ever but I still ****ing hate it to the depths of my being. -
I narrowed the gap significantly! Frankly, I’m surprised it was that close. I went into the debate giving myself a zero percent chance of actually winning.
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Slightly below average is about where you'd expect a .660 OPS to land, though. And frankly, if we're micro-managing individual plate appearances - or hell, even 10-20 plate appearances - the conversation has gone off the rails. My original point about Puckett and Mauer struggling over 40 postseason plate appearances was to show the problems of small sample sizes and opportunity, not a comparison of talent level.
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And had Mauer received the double he rightly deserved, I’m sure his WPA would be quite a bit different, as it was extra innings when it happened and a run would have scored, IIRC.
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You’re pretty far down the wormhole at that point, Chief. When we’ve entered the part of the conversation where “he sucked but still led his teammates to victory”, I’m pretty sure I just won the conversation.
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Was it “leadership” when Puckett was absolutely awful for the same number of postseason PAs that Mauer received in his entire career?
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This I'm not sure about, either. Did Puckett intentionally change his approach to benefit the dome, knowing it would hurt his road numbers? I doubt it, at least not entirely, though he may have tweaked his approach to better suit the dome and his decline in road numbers followed suit. In that case, he should probably be punished for his road numbers but not to the tune of .148 OPS points. I suspect his true talent level is somewhere between those home and road numbers, though I don't know where. But one thing we *haven't* talked about is what would have happened if someone put Mauer, with his almost-negative-launch-angle, into that Metrodome environment. Mauer hit .365 in 2009. I think he may have challenged Carew's team record of .388 had he played in the Metrodome environment in which Puckett played. Mauer was the king of 100mph exit velos with -3 deg launch angle, which would have crushed in the 1980s Metrodome.
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Oh, he was above average on the road, for sure, but not miles above average compared to the median player (for much of Puckett's career, some truly embarrassing players filled the back of lineups). But breaking down singular season home/road stats just muddies the conversation. We all know YoY splits analysis just lead to madness. Puckett had literally thousands of PAs to examine and there's no need to start breaking down those thousands into smaller numbers when the big number tells a rather clear picture. And the Metrodome wasn't "just nice" to him, his BABIP was literally 60 points higher there. That's ****ing insane. Puckett had a BABIP over .370 in the dome.
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Fair enough, I actually don't disagree with a lot of the RBI/Run stuff. Puckett was more aggressive, which is great, but Mauer's "passiveness" also has its benefit of not making an out and turning the PA over to Morneau. Advantage to Kirby but it's not a huge gulf because counting stats are pretty meh when comparing a guy who plays 140 games versus a guy who plays 160. But in response to this, I'll ask you one question, Steve: Explain why your "easy choice" wasn't much better than average outside the Metrodome. If he was so great, why was he so damned normal outside that one, way-out-of-the-ordinary, batting environment? If he was so naturally talented as a player and hitter, why couldn't he hit within 100 points of his Metrodome OPS on the road? Not a single Puckett supporter will recognize and rebut this obviously important aspect of evaluating Puckett's true talent level as a baseball player. It's just bonkers when you look at it. Kirby Puckett scored 626 runs in the Metrodome and only 445 on the road. He drove in 601 runs in the Metrodome and only 484 on the road. All of this stuff is linked but no Puckett supporter will even acknowledge the greater point because I think it completely torpedoes Puckett's case against Mauer.
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While park factor is a great addition to stats over the past 20 years, park factor doesn't work as well on an individual level with some outlier players whose strengths may play extremely up or down for their home park. Puckett's BABIP was a whopping .060 higher in the Metrodome. That's insane! And it speaks to someone whose playing style greatly benefited from being drafted by the right team that played in the right stadium for that individual player. And that mammoth BABIP effect isn't going to be captured entirely from a park adjustment. For example, after scanning a bunch of really good players who spent a lot of time in the 'dome (Brunansky, Hrbek, Gaetti, Mack, Knoblach), Hrbek had the second greatest advantage in the dome, around +.100 OPS. Everybody else was in the "expected home field range", usually +.000 to +.050 OPS. So even the second place finisher in dome advantage, Hrbek, is still .050 below Puckett. Without modern batted ball numbers to show why Puckett benefited from the dome so much we'll probably never know why this was, but a .148 home/road gap is undeniably large and the dome had a huge impact on how the public perceived Puckett and his career.
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There were countless “doubles” that were outfield singles that literally bounced 25 ft in the air, allowing the runner to take a second base. Or infield singles that were just a ball hammered into the turf so hard the runner could reach first before it came back down to the infielder.
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Oh boy, I couldn't disagree with this more strongly. While I agree that up-the-middle positions are generally more athletic, there's a difference between "the most talented aren't allowed to play there" and "many of the most talented players don't have the necessary skillset to play the position". You're seriously undervaluing the catcher position and the people who play it, Otto. Like, enormously undervaluing those athletes. And even if you want to create such an unbalanced sliding scale, there's no debating that Mauer's 2009 showed that he was literally the best baseball player on the planet for a period of time, something Puckett never accomplished.
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Mauer’s career also lined up very closely with Buster Posey, the only other catcher of the past 40 years to win an MVP, so calling out Drew Butera is rather disingenuous. And Mauer doesn't compare that unfavorably to Griffey offensively. Both suffered serious injury concerns after turning 30 years old but up to that point, Griffey had a 148 OPS+ and Mauer had a 135 OPS+. That metric is not position adjusted. Kirby Puckett's OPS+ through age 30 was just 122. A direct comparison to a similarly aged teammate is Kent Hrbek, who had a 132 OPS+ through age 30.
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Then make the pool larger to compensate and the numbers are still striking. In the entire history of Major League Baseball, when compared to every. single. catcher. to ever play the game, here are some season numbers: Joe Mauer had the eighth greatest season from a catcher ever. Joe Mauer had five top 100 catcher seasons of all time. A few comparisons to other catchers over the past 70 years: Buster Posey had three top 100 catcher seasons of all time. Pudge had four top 100 catcher seasons of all time. Gary Carter had eight top 100 catcher seasons of all time. Johnny Bench had six top 100 catcher seasons of all time. Yogi Berra had three top 100 catcher seasons of all time. Jorge Posada had three top 100 catcher seasons of all time. Carlton Fisk had three top 100 catcher seasons of all time. No matter how you shake out Mauer's catching career, it was simply incredible. I mean, look at those names. And Mauer beat all of them except Carter* and Bench. *I'd like to take this moment to once again point out how wildly underrated Gary Carter is by the modern fan
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Here you all go, now no one has to look up Baddoo's splits. Months Split G GS PA AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI SB CS BB SO BA OBP SLG OPS TB GDP HBP SH SF IBB ROE BAbip tOPS+ sOPS+ April/March201966636144341310229.222.242.571.81436000100.323104125 May201458437112117401417.256.431.419.85018000110.385127142 June2217766611237003521013.348.434.455.88930100000.434136145 July23221019618244151842519.250.287.469.75645100001.26495101 August13115050210210400017.200.200.280.48014200000.3032531 Sept/Oct262411095162511310401427.263.355.389.74437100100.33397103 Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table Generated 11/19/2021.
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I see both sides of this. Baddoo has the huge performance advantage at a higher level but we also haven't seen Martin healthy yet. Right now, I think it's close to a wash because of the potential upside in Martin if his wrist injury was just a temporary setback.
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Except that wasn't done at all. The two were compared to the best players at the position, not replacement level or average. If someone has three top ten seasons at the position over a two decade span, what a league-average position player does during that time is irrelevant. That player is being compared to perennial All-Stars and potential Hall of Famers with no reference made to the average player. And Mauer shined in comparison to those players and bested them all, including a guy who is easily going to stroll into Cooperstown, Buster Posey.
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I see but I think your numbers are low, even for the Twins organization. If he's healthy, I'd be mildly surprised if their target for 2022 isn't around 110-120 IP.
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Sure, but this has no correlation to who is the better baseball player. Eddie Rosario was an absolute riot to watch on the diamond but that doesn't mean he's a better player than Joe Mauer.
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A hilariously perfect example of the flaws of RBI and Runs Scored.
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I'm not sure where to rank him right now. He was facing wrist issues in 2021 and his slugging was WAY down from his college days, when he slugged .600. It kinda mirrored what we saw from Kirilloff before he was shut down last season; he was still a pretty good hitter but he lost all his power. After an offseason of recuperation, I think we'll have a much better idea of what to expect from Martin by June of next season.
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To be fair, Ober pitched 78.2 innings in 2019, zero innings in 2020, and then jumped all the way to 108.1 innings in 2021. If he's healthy, it wouldn't surprise me at all to see him cross 150 innings in 2022. The Twins are cautious, no doubt, but they're also not so foolish as to waste prime seasons of a pitcher's arm just for the hell of it.
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The reason I think the owners lock out players is because: A. It gives them slight leverage B. The owners have a long track record of squeezing blood from a stone at the expense of the game itself C. The owners have a long track record of squeezing blood from a stone at the expense of the game itself D. The owners have a long track record of squeezing blood from a stone at the expense of the game itself
