Brock Beauchamp

Lewis. There you go. Well, I don't get it, but whatever.

Another reasonable way to look at the situation. Selling on Gordon this deadline might be selling high on the guy, though it might be hard to convince opposing GMs that is not the case. I'm open to several different approaches but the approach it will be hardest to sell me on is "trade Ervin Santana, the one legitimate proven, above average pitcher in the organization".

But there's huge middle ground between none of those guys being good and all three of them being good. What if both Gonsalves and Romero are good but one gets injured? What if one is good and the other bad? The hit rate on groups of prospects is rarely binary. Right now, I'm concerned with the 2017 Twins, a first place team. I do not dismantle pieces that virtually ensure they drop out of first place in a hurry. If/when they are no longer in first place, reevaluate. We still have roughly seven weeks until the deadline.

There is some hope for 2018. Gonsalves and Romero profile as decent prospects. But my eye is really on Thorpe. He's right back to his old self and killing it in Ft Myers. Given his age and former dominance, he could fast track through the system. IMO, Thorpe is the only guy in the upper minors with a legit shot at being well above average. It's probably a stretch to envision seeing him before July of 2018 but we'll just have to see.

Dozier isn't fully expendable but he's the closest thing to expendable the Twins currently have on the roster. Polanco and Escobar won't be great but they probably won't kill you, either. And Gordon is playing like he really wants a September cup of coffee. If Gordon moves to Rochester and continues dominating, he's going to force the issue some time in 2018, even possibly Opening Day.

They can probably pick up an acceptable free agent starter. Or they could trade Dozier. I later mentioned that I'm open to trading Dozier if it helps the 2017 squad. He's the closest thing to expendable the Twins have on the roster right now.

What young guys? The Twins have zero legit starting pitching prospects in AAA and two decent, though unspectacular, guys in AA. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if neither of them throws a pitch in MLB this season because they're not ready. No one has been or will be blocked for the foreseeable future. The team is starting Nik Turley today, for crying out loud.

.300 is an arbitrary number and doesn't mean much. In today's game, all batting averages are suppressed. As of today, there are only 27 qualified players in all of baseball with an average of .300 or higher. The Twins have two players in the top 50 in batting average, Sano and Mauer. But batting average doesn't tell us much on its own. The Twins are sixth in the American League in team OPS, which tells us a lot more about their offensive capabilities. They're a slightly above average offense with the ability to get into the top five in the AL when all is said and done.

The thing about luck is that there is no inevitable "counter-luck" to balance the season. The Twins have been moderately lucky, yes, but their BaseRuns record is 28-29 so it's not an extreme shift in either direction (and BaseRuns is a better metric than pythag, as it tries to measure a lot more than just pure run output). The Twins could play .500 ball the rest of the season (which is close to their BaseRuns output thus far) and challenge for the division and wild card deep into the season. One six week long hot streak from Brian Dozier and they can be quite a bit better than that, either winning the division or a wild card appearance. The Twins are a flawed team, yes. That's why I wouldn't break open the farm for an expensive rental. But, on the other hand, I'm not going to give up on a team with a legit shot at the postseason just because they're imperfect. Lots of teams are imperfect and go deep into the postseason. And none of this brings up the long-term PR hit you'd see from trading Santana and/or Dozier (though I'm more open to trading Dozier if it helps the 2017 squad). Baseball attendance lags by nearly a season. The Twins would be leaving literally millions of dollars on the table for 2018 by punting on the season and closing the year with a 78 win season versus an 85 win season and postseason contention.

The Twins are still in first place. So, no, you do not trade from a position of weakness unless the return is so astounding good that you can't refuse the offer. And that is so unlikely to happen that it's not worth mentioning.

The deviation from the cast episode is "New York, I Love You" and is one of the finest single episodes of television I've seen this decade. Another great episode from season two is the dating episode, can't recall its name.

While working yesterday, I started half-watching Master of None. The first season is very good. The second season is amazing. At least half the episodes are great, the rest are good. And each great episode has this crazy, experimental flavor that defies placing the show in a single genre. The creators play around with story mechanics and take episode-long detours away from the main cast at points. It's fascinating stuff and way smarter than I expected.

I'm still going to need to see more from Garver. He only has a combined 160 PAs in Rochester over two seasons. His OPS was .688 in A+ and .753 in AA. I hope his bat is legit but I'm still worried that what we're seeing is a mirage.

I doubt that's his strategy. At least I hope that's not his strategy. I suspect the more likely situation is that it's still May and no one is available. Going into the season, the Twins had a ton of arms that weren't very good but that was probably enough to get through to June or July. Unfortunately, Trevor May's injury crippled that approach before a single game was played.

Because there's not a strong correlation between player performance and RBI but there is a strong correlation between team RBI and win-loss record. And RBI is largely a team stat, not an individual stat. The exception is the solo home run.

It's an overstatement. RBI are extremely valuable. RBI are also an extremely poor evaluation tool. Guys who hit lots of home runs collect lots of RBI. It's that simple. Mauer walks an incredible amount in RBI situations, which further deteriorates his number. The best outcome of an RBI situation is to get that RBI. The second best outcome is to get on base. In that regard, yeah, I guess Mauer isn't the greatest outcome player, he's simply the second-greatest outcome player.

It's disappointing how prevalent the Mauer hate is in less stat-centric circles. A few days ago, I was reading the comments section of I Love Minnesota Sports' Facebook page. They posed the question "Who was the better Twin, Hunter or Mauer?" Some people said Mauer, which is probably the easy and right answer. A few said Hunter but pointed out his clubhouse leadership skills. I'm fine with that. But a bunch - and I mean a bunch - went after Mauer hard. They downplayed everything Joe was good at and talked about how Hunter was better at everything. Most threw in potshots at Joe over the contract and even his personality (weak, lazy, whatever). And that is just an idiotic opinion to have on Mauer. We all gripe about his faults at times but he's one of the best players to ever wear a Twins uniform. That can't really be disputed but some people out there act like he was Nick Punto in his prime, not a record-breaking catcher who was at the top of the sport for several years (it's hard to say Hunter was ever at the "top of the sport", he was a very very good player, not elite). So, yeah, it's not really an overcorrection.

Why did you expect him to be better? His OPS is almost exactly between his last two seasons. I was worried Castro would be a little worse with the stick than he has been this season. He has modest power but played half his games in Houston, which gave the illusion of a bit more power than he actually has (going into the season, he had nearly twice as many homers at home than he did on the road). I'm quite satisfied with Castro's play.

That's fair. I hope they had a good reason for the Tepesch start because from the outside, it was puzzling.

Sure, lots of coaches had hands-on experience with Berrios but the last time they saw the guy was when he closed out that horrible 2016 season. And they didn't get a good look at him in spring so their last chance to really examine the guy was when he was terrible and obviously doing things wrong. Again, I find it hard to fault them that they took the cautious approach in that situation.

Another thing we've lamented in past years is how the front office so often put guys in situations where failure was likely. Alex Meyer springs to mind and the ridiculous call-up he got two years ago (I think it was two years ago, anyway). Aaron Hicks is another example. Maybe even Buxton in the third spot this season is an example (but it was fixed so quickly that it's hard to complain too much about it). Whereas this front office gave Berrios every chance to succeed instead of fail. They let him go to the WBC because he wanted to do so. They put him in Rochester and let him dominate, something he probably needed after his disastrous rookie season. Then, just 40 days into the season, they called him back to Minnesota and he's killing it up here. Berrios looks like a different pitcher today. Maybe he would have been that pitcher that on Opening Day but given how little he pitched in March and how bad he was in 2016, I'm skeptical that would be the case. Letting a promising young prospect get his feet back under him before exposing him to MLB opposition after a disastrous rookie campaign isn't something we should be criticizing. Now, if it was July 1st and Berrios had just made his first start after tearing Rochester to pieces for three months, that's something to complain about. But Jose made his first start on May 13th.

Possible? Sure. I don't think anyone should dispute that it was possible. A good idea? I don't think it would have been a good idea. The new front office who didn't have any hands-on experience with Berrios. He was absolutely terrible last season. He barely pitched in Spring Training so the new front office left March still barely seeing the guy. It made all the sense in the world to give that guy a few weeks of observation in Rochester before deciding whether he was MLB material. We don't even know if Berrios was working on anything specific in MiLB so that's another reason why they may have wanted to see him in Rochester for a month.

There was a ton of risk in putting Berrios in the rotation on Opening Day. What happens if he posts four consecutive He goes back to Rochester. The process starts over. We don't see Jose until July. That's quite a risk, in my opinion.

Dude, Santiago is an established veteran with 750 career IP. Berrios barely burned through his rookie eligibility in 2016 and was absolutely horrible while doing it. There's nothing to compare between those two guys.

Not many. The Twins gave three starts to Mejia, which objectively was not a terrible call. They gave a single start to Tepesch, which probably was. Berrios wasn't ready for Opening Day after spending a bunch of time on the bench in the WBC. He was absolutely terrible last season and the front office obviously needed a better look at him in person before promoting him to Minnesota. They didn't get that in Spring Training so their next option was Rochester (never mind that Mejia had a strong ST and earned his spot, as much as a player can/should earn a spot out of Spring Training). The Twins gave just one start to their fifth starter between April 23rd and the day Berrios was called up. One of the stranger talking points running around this board is the implication the Twins sat on their hands for weeks while Berrios was dominating. The guy was called up and started the team's 33rd game, which is just a hair over 20% of the season. And the Twins used a fifth starter just once after their 17th game of the season (just a hair over 10% of the season). So, in essence, I guess we could lament that single Tepesch start but that seems somewhat silly to me. Gibson was going to have an opportunity to get his feet under him and he last pitched May 4th, the team's 26th game of the season. He was yanked from the rotation after six starts, which is pretty close to the minimum a team will give a struggling starter. So, if we really want to pick nits, I guess you could toss one Gibson start in there, suggesting the Twins should have pulled him after five games. So... two games? It still seems silly when framed that way.