Brock Beauchamp

Spent the night playing Everyone Is John, which is an absurd game that really encourages completely awful behavior and ideas. I was in tears I was laughing so hard. https://rpggeek.com/image/4327274/everyone-john

Astudillo walked, is that legal?

In a season of lows, getting swept by the Mariners might be the lowest point yet.

This half-joking poll actually became quite difficult to put together when I was determining whether to include those who didn't hang around long but really left their mark.

Hard to say with Buxton. If he comes back and mashes for a month, I don’t think teams are going to hesitate any more than they would in the off-season.

He’s too good for this list.

I don’t know what to think about that, really. I doubt the Twins are cheating less than other teams and only in the past two weeks have players appeared to lessened use of substances. That doesn’t explain why the Twins were so bad before two weeks ago. I often wonder if there’s something about the Twins pitching approach and the new ball that is a partial cause for this complete collapse.

While Shoemaker has objectively been a worse pitcher, I'm more disappointed in Happ. He should have been a pretty reliable 4/5 and being paid moderately well for it. Instead, we got:

Regarding Colome and that negative fWAR as a reliever:

I think that loses too much value in trade. If the Twins want to make an offer, do it now or trade them. Teams are likely willing to pay a lot more for that half a season while in contention and to fill an immediate need. In the offseason, teams can sign or trade for anyone on the market and the supply is more limited at the trade deadline.

I wonder how many innings they really expected to get out of Shoemaker given his history, which is why I wasn't in love with the signing. As that stat chart shows, the dude just hasn't pitched, not sure why anyone expected him to do so in 2021. But "not pitching" and "terrible pitcher" aren't the same thing.

I'm sorry but this doesn't make sense. What about these stats tell you an epic implosion was looming? Season Team Level Age W L SV G GS IP K/9 BB/9 HR/9 BABIP LOB% GB% HR/FB vFA ERA xERA FIP xFIP WAR 2013 LAA MLB 26 0 0 0 1 1 5.0 9.00 3.60 0.00 .167 100.0% 41.7% 0.0% 91.5 0.00 2.25 3.34 0.1 2014 LAA MLB 27 16 4 0 27 20 136.0 8.21 1.59 0.93 .286 77.5% 41.2% 9.4% 91.3 3.04 3.26 3.28 2.1 2015 LAA MLB 28 7 10 0 25 24 135.1 7.71 2.33 1.60 .285 74.1% 39.2% 14.0% 91.1 4.46 3.88 4.59 4.16 0.7 2016 LAA MLB 29 9 13 0 27 27 160.0 8.04 1.69 1.01 .315 74.2% 39.8% 10.3% 92.4 3.88 4.13 3.52 3.86 3.5 2017 LAA MLB 30 6 3 0 14 14 77.2 8.00 3.24 1.74 .276 76.2% 38.5% 14.6% 91.9 4.52 4.87 5.13 4.98 0.2 2018 LAA MLB 31 2 2 0 7 7 31.0 9.58 2.90 0.87 .313 64.2% 43.5% 10.3% 91.4 4.94 5.44 3.35 3.64 0.7 2019 TOR MLB 32 3 0 0 5 5 28.2 7.53 2.83 0.94 .183 87.2% 51.4% 11.1% 90.4 1.57 5.31 3.95 4.46 0.6 2020 TOR MLB 33 0 1 0 6 6 28.2 8.16 2.83 2.51 .194 75.8% 48.1% 29.6% 92.3 4.71 5.10 5.95 4.14 -0.1 2021 MIN MLB 34 2 8 0 13 11 54.2 6.09 3.79 1.98 .298 58.0% 44.4% 18.2% 91.8 7.57 5.76 6.03 5.29 -0.4

Yep. We should know so much more about this front office than we do right now. It’s really frustrating.

He pitched 28 innings last season. You’re basing a lot on very little. How much did you actually watch Shoemaker last season? I can comfortably say I watched him all of zero times, which means my eyeball test is worth exactly nothing.

I’m leaning pretty hard toward trading Berrios, Buxton, and Rogers and fielding offers for Maeda and Donaldson at this point. If the front office does things aggressively and makes smart choices, this team could be a contender again as early as 2023.

That's reasonable, I suppose, but at this point we can be thankful the team did not trade for a starter this offseason because YIKES, that would have been a colossal waste.

I'm not sure how you came to that conclusion. I think the Twins spent right up to their payroll limit, which is why they ended up with Shoemaker. According to Spotrac, the Twins are 16th in payroll this season. Maybe they should be more toward 12-ish (IMO, where they should aim for while in contention) but 16th isn't unreasonable by any means.

What's so crazy about predicting less than half a win for Shoemaker? Before this season, he had posted one negative fWAR season, which was 2020 in just 28 IP and that was *barely* negative at -0.1. Literally everything has gone sideways for Shoemaker to an extent that was rather unreasonable to predict. His walk rate is up, his strikeout rate is down (in 2021, not sure how that's possible) but his velo hasn't declined. He is just straight-up terrible now for reasons that aren't entirely obvious.

I considered including Maeda but just couldn’t do it, as the others have been SO BAD that Kenta looks decent bu comparison, even if our expectations were higher for him.

Yes

Lots of options here, give your vote careful consideration, please.

Never mind that television rights are the largest source of the sport’s inequity, too.

Neither do I but all those names you listed are likely to be just as bad as Shoemaker. Different isn't better. The thing is that you can't predict literally half your 26 man roster being on the injured list at once. Shoemaker has been absolutely awful, we can all agree on that. If the Twins don't move on from him in the next 7-10 days as formerly injured players return to the team, I'll be right there with you.

Actually, it's going to work so very well. This is what's going to kill cable. Is it overpriced? Yes, almost definitely. Will I pay it? Yes, without hesitation. AT&T Online is $92/mo so I can watch baseball for six months. I literally watch zero things other than sports, ever. $23/mo? Hell, I'll probably stick around for Wolves and Wild now, too.