Brock Beauchamp

I can make a lot of arguments to get a lot of players regular at-bats through the end of the season None of those players are named Jake Cave.

If Thorpe is throwing over 90mph, he's the obvious choice. The team needs to make a decision on him this winter and if he's throwing hard, getting more eyes on him against MLB hitting will be useful for making an informed decision. If Thorpe is still at 88mph, don't bother. At that point, do something fun for fans and reach a little for Joe Ryan.

Everyone keeps saying this as if it's fact and I don't get it. Hitters already sell out to pull with the shift in place. If shifting hasn't produced the desired outcome of spray hitters becoming prevalent, why hasn't it happened already, especially for left-handed hitters? The shift has been used extensively against LHB for a decade now and pull hitting has only become more dominant during that time.

Lynn was bad for a month because he held out through half of Spring Training. After he worked himself into the flow of the season, he was pretty good for the Twins, which is why the Yankees wanted him at the deadline. What about John Gant? He was horrible for the Cardinals and has been a good reliever in a SSS with the Twins.

No, the dates I selected aren’t random because the cutoff point is when the Twins had the lowest winning percentage they’ve had all year, indicating they were playing very, very badly. Had that bottoming out happened a week earlier or later, I would have chosen that date instead. I selected the date based on team performance. Whereas a month is just a random collection of days that a Roman dude decided held significance around, what, 1900 years ago? Not really the same thing.

Any pitching staff that’s performing well and is fronted by the likes of Barnes, Jax, and Ober should not be trusted very much.

I don't disagree but I'd like to see the team move Donaldson in the offseason and Sano cannot be trusted. Rooker is more of a longshot for the 2022 roster but I'm not writing him off entirely yet.

Which he has actually been doing, I mostly question whether he can accumulate the PAs necessary to qualify. Here is Arraez's line since the beginning of July. Luis Arraez Batting Gamelogs for Career Games 177 to 205 Date Tm G GS Rslt PA AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB IBB SO HBP SH SF ROE GDP SB CS BA OBP SLG OPS BAbip aLI WPA acLI cWPA RE24 DFS(DK) DFS(FD) Jul 1 to Aug 15, 2021 MIN 29 25 15-14 109 98 16 37 8 0 1 9 10 0 10 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 .378 .431 .490 .921 .409 .95 0.865 .05 0.01% 11.29 209.00 262.70 per 162 games 163 140 609 548 90 207 45 0 6 51 56 0 56 0 0 6 0 6 6 0 4.9 0.1% 63.1 1168 146

Rooker's only hope to stick with the Twins is to hit enough to hold down DH, keeping Sano at first next season... but then that causes a roster pinch across all the corner positions. So... dunno?

It all depends on his legs. If he doesn't win one this year but can stay healthy in a future season, I think he collects at least one batting championship.

Yeah, I'm currently chasing my own tail on this one. I thought I had it resolved yesterday and it came right back, still trying to figure out how to prevent it.

Ah, good point. The team underperformed their expected record and then overperformed it. That has ramped up quite a bit during this hot stretch, as the team continues to win one-run games.

You're not wrong but calendar months really mean nothing, as they are an artificial start and end point that means little to the quality of play or the players on the field. Whether the team played over or under .500 in any specific month doesn't tell us more than the fact that, overall, they've played roughly .500 ball since they bottomed out to start the season. And when they hit that .333 winning percentage after seven weeks and had lost twice as many games as they had won, that's a pretty clear definition of bottoming out. And maybe they bottom out again starting today. That may be the narrative moving forward, but whether they went 14-16 or 11-19 in June doesn't really matter if not put into the context of overall trends that don't include random start and end dates.

I only popped in and out of the broadcast. Was today Kaat's last day? I feel both sad and satisfied to hear that. Kaat is a good analyst but he's getting up there in age and the game has changed a lot. I'm sad to see him go but understand why it's time. It's nowhere near a Blyleven situation where I'm ready to tell him about doors hitting and asses and ways out. I genuinely like Kaat and think he does a pretty good job but the game is shifting and he has become more stodgy about it every year.

But do you believe a change is coming from hitters? I don't. We've seen increasing shifts for a decade now, particularly against LHB, yet nothing has changed. Hitters remain - almost surely from the advice of front offices and coaches - dogmatically stuck to launch angle and exit velocity. I don't see this changing because high xBA balls are so much more valuable than low xBA balls. This isn't a course I see righting itself naturally, which is why I've been an increasingly big advocate for rules changes. If this course was going to right itself, why don't we even see LHB bunting against the shift? If we can't even get that much to happen, I believe expecting hitters to fundamentally change their approach enters fairytale territory. I'm not even saying you're wrong, I'm legitimately asking the question but I don't really see your scenario playing out. We don't even have to look far. What about Max Kepler? He's a really good example of what we're talking about here. Horribly low batting average, good-but-not-great power, athletic as all hell. He should be the poster child for bunting in some scenarios to beat the shift. It wouldn't take much for Max to beat out a bunt against the shift, yet it never happens. And if we don't see it from Max, why should we expect to see it from anyone else?

I'm not really sure what to think of Maeda for 2022 but it's pretty obvious something weird was going on with him before he ultimately went on the IL. Here are his stats before the IL: Date Tm G GS GF CG Rslt Dec DR IP H R ER BB SO HR HBP ERA BF BA OBP SLG OPS BAbip Pit Str StL StS GB FB LD PU Unk GSc IR IS SB CS PO AB 2B 3B IBB GDP SF ROE aLI WPA acLI cWPA RE24 DFS(DK) DFS(FD) Apr 1 to May 22, 2021 MIN 9 9 0 0 2-7 W-L:2-2 5.4 42.2 52 30 25 11 39 9 3 5.27 190 .299 .351 .517 .868 .341 718 65% 15% 13% 0.79 26% 7% 0 45 ---% 2 0 0 174 9 1 0 2 0 1 1.06 -0.801 .85 -0.42% -5.44 92.40 194.00 per 162 games 35 35 0 0 21 162 197 114 95 42 148 35 12 718 2713 27 0 8 0 0 658 35 4 0 8 0 4 -3.0 -1.5% -20.5 350 733 And after the IL: Date Tm G GS GF CG Rslt Dec DR IP H R ER BB SO HR HBP ERA BF BA OBP SLG OPS BAbip Pit Str StL StS GB FB LD PU Unk GSc IR IS SB CS PO AB 2B 3B IBB GDP SF ROE aLI WPA acLI cWPA RE24 DFS(DK) DFS(FD) Jun 14 to Aug 14, 2021 MIN 11 11 0 0 6-5 W-L:4-2 5.1 59.1 50 25 25 20 69 7 2 3.79 242 .228 .298 .379 .677 .299 969 65% 15% 15% 0.62 23% 11% 0 55 ---% 0 1 0 219 10 1 1 7 1 1 1.03 0.286 .09 -0.01% 5.70 194.30 358.00 per 162 games 35 35 0 0 16 184 155 78 78 62 214 22 7 749 2996 35 0 0 4 0 677 31 4 4 22 4 4 0.9 0.0% 17.7 601 1107

Frankly, I don't think banning the shift will result in much of a net positive statistically, though I believe it will result in a net positive from a spectator perspective. Groundballs being sucked up with routine efficiency because the right side of the infield is stacked with players is BORING. But if a player has to make a dive and a play, or the ball scoots to the outfield, that is entertaining. An out can still be recorded but the out is more entertaining than a guy standing ten feet in the grass would be. But while you may be right in that hitters dedicate themselves even more to the TTO barrel launch angle business, mistakes happen. That's literally the point of pitching, is to force hitters into mistakes. And seeing more infield and groundball action, whether it results in significantly more baserunners or not, is more entertaining than the current shift-heavy environment where so many balls are routine and low-effort.

That seems high but in today's game, it's really not. Sano will be a very productive hitter with a K rate around 30%. Here's hoping this latest trend continues through the end of the season.

The Twins season so far. April 1 through May 20: 14-28 record May 20 through August 15: 38-38 record This is shaping up to be a fascinating season for reasons I doubt any of us imagined. Through some bad luck, bad play, and a seemingly indifferent attitude, the early season Twins floundered badly through 6-7 weeks of play. Since that point, the team has certainly scuffled and looked bad but overall, they've posted a .500 record through basically half a season. It really goes to show how a team can tank an entire season by playing badly in the first few weeks.

I'm very intentionally not allowing this to happen. While I think one of Jax, Barnes, Ober may work out... I certainly do not believe all of them will continue to pitch as they have for the past couple of weeks.

Too little too late but watching winning baseball is always better than watching the other kind of baseball.

There’s no arguing about it. Three consecutive series against division leaders, three series wins.

Yeah, include me in this explanation because I don’t get it.

Yep. The game has changed. This team is actually quite good offensively but ran into some bad outcomes, which we've seen balance out recently. But the problem remains that MLB needs to take active measures to change that a .244 batting average is middle-upper in all of baseball. That's just a bad game to watch and this is a spectator sport.