Brock Beauchamp

I hate to be the one to break it to you but the Twins lost 1-0. Complaining about pitching usage may be barking up the wrong tree in this specific instance.

Oh, I think closing out the season heathy would make a huge impact. There’s a big difference between a player having half a season with four wins and a quarter season with two and a half wins. Buxton’s hitting ability has been on the rise but he stepped it to an entirely new level early this season. Coming back and doing it some more would instill confidence that’s his hitting ability going forward.

People complain about the zombie runner but they aren’t half the abomination that seven inning games are.

Which is fine if he’s starting 40-50 times a season.

No one is estimating a Buxton contract because it’s impossible right now. The difference between Buxton being healthy or not during August and September could be worth an extra $25m+ if he was a free agent at the end of the season.

I’m rather done with Rortvedt for awhile.

Good news, everybody! THE BASEBALL SEASON IS NOT OVER YET. That's... good news, right?

Yeah, well I heard:

In the 20+ years I’ve been online with Twins fans, I’ve heard so many stupid statements made but the Granite/Buxton thing may top them all.

@Dodecahedron @chpettit19 Please stop sniping at each other and argue the points you wish to make.

This is what I’m thinking. A deal that pays Byron a lot but gets him back to free agency relatively young.

You can use wRC+ instead, which weights the value of each event and determines its numerical value using baseball history and runs scored. But the thing is, OPS+ is usually really close to wRC+ because, as it turns out, the strongest correlation to run scoring is 1)OBP and 2)Slugging so OPS actually does a really good job of measuring hitting ability.

I agree six is really unlikely but I think a lot depends on Byron. I could easily see him taking one year if no one offers more than four.

I don’t know if anyone “wants” to trade Arraez but with Miranda screaming to get a call up while the team pitching is terrible, it could improve the team.

For the first and probably only time in my life, I’m going to say this: I find the Pohlads rather blameless for this situation. They spent quite fairly coming out of a pandemic season. Everyone else? Oh yeah, I got blame all day.

The difference between Carew and Arraez is a mile wide, though. Arraez posted his best OPS+ of 125 in 2019. Carew, as a 24 year old, posted an OPS+ just over 150.

I know he’s mentioned things in The Athletic but can’t recall specifically where. He’s said quite a few things on the podcast as well. IIRC there were doubts about Gordon even being protected on the 40-man last winter.

Sure, I seriously doubt the door is closed on anything at this point but not closing the door and the guy being Plan A are considerably different. I think we’d all love if Gordon bounced back from Covid stronger and faster than ever, turning into a good MLB shortstop in the process but I don’t think anyone is holding their breath waiting for that to happen.

That's often the case with international signings who struggle, though. They start at such a young age and are often so undeveloped, yet teams get little extra time to get them to the majors that they end up burning a ton of options in the minors. And while Kepler didn't technically start 2016 in the majors his first game in Minnesota was April 10th, which was the sixth game of the MLB season.

I mean, that's not really true, though. Kepler was promising but undeveloped until he hit AA, where he broke out and spent basically the entire season. In both A and A+ ball, he OPSed in the low .700s, pretty bad offensive numbers for a corner OF/1B guy, which he mostly was at the time. After that, he only had a handful of PAs in AAA, was called to Minnesota for a cup of coffee, returned to AAA for another ~120 PAs, then returned to Minnesota to stay. He was 23 years old the last day he spent in the minor leagues, which is pretty young for a guy who only started playing baseball as a teenager. Other than keeping him in AA for so long, which I guess wasn't terribly surprising given his yo-yo performance up to that point and how raw he was in the lower minors, he moved through the minors at a relatively brisk pace. Here are his numbers before AA. He didn't exactly light the world on fire. Year Age AgeDif Tm Lg Lev Aff G PA AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI SB CS BB SO BA OBP SLG OPS TB GDP HBP SH SF IBB 2010 17 -2.6 Twins GULF Rk MIN 37 153 140 15 40 6 1 0 11 6 1 13 27 .286 .346 .343 .689 48 1 0 0 0 0 2011 18 -2.5 Elizabethton APPY Rk MIN 50 221 191 29 50 11 3 1 24 1 1 23 54 .262 .347 .366 .714 70 6 3 2 2 0 2012 19 -1.2 Elizabethton APPY Rk MIN 59 269 232 40 69 16 5 10 49 7 0 27 33 .297 .387 .539 .925 125 5 8 0 2 0 2013 20 -1.4 Cedar Rapids MIDW A MIN 61 263 236 35 56 11 3 9 40 2 0 24 43 .237 .312 .424 .736 100 2 2 0 1 1 2014 21 -1.7 Fort Myers FLOR A+ MIN 102 407 364 53 96 20 6 5 59 6 2 34 62 .264 .333 .393 .726 143 4 5 2 2 0

I think people are underestimating how easy it will be to move Happ for modest salary relief. Plenty of teams need help at the back of a rotation, even if it's not good help. Someone out there will likely take a shot at Happ for $1-2m.

RBI will never be an important stat again because there are other, better, indicators of the "skill" required to drive in runners, primarily slugging, wRC+, or other metrics. Also, OBP is and will always be a priority for teams. It's part of the reason why starters are going fewer innings; it's because hitters continue to run up pitch counts in pursuit of both OBP and slugging (hitters are better than ever at waiting for "their" pitch to drive).

While I'm very skeptical of Lewis remaining at short, I don't believe he should be judged for slipping on ice, which can cause all sorts of strains and injuries the human body wouldn't face on solid ground.

I also agree that story was *very much* about Loki and his/her motivations. The entire Loki/Sylvie dynamic focused on that and it came to a boil in the void world when all the Lokis were in play at once. One of my favorite moments of the entire series is the bit about how "the moment any of us try to change, we end up here". All of the Lokis were a reflection of the Hiddleston Loki and looking back, I still can't believe Richard Grant was in ONE EPISODE. His portrayal of basically an older Hiddleston Loki was simply outstanding and everything about that episode looped back to Loki, his flaws, and why it's so hard for him to change.