Brock Beauchamp

BTW, great blog entry, but I wanted to let you know you can now copy and paste tables directly into the Twins Daily text editor. Read this for a quick tutorial:

I also wanted Semien more than Simmons but if it's December of 2020 with pandemic worries looming over MLB, I completely understand the reluctance to pay for Semien when you can get Simmons for roughly half the price. But like pretty much everything in 2021, that decision is not working out for the hometown team...

As far as baseball curses go, it's basically impossible to top this one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_the_Colonel

If the new, bad version of Kenta continues, probably.

Fair enough. I agree the Twins should be playing much better than they are while KC is performing close to where I expected. Any comparison between them is at least mildly damning to the Twins season.

He had a pretty typical year in 2018 then the best year of his career in 2019 so yeah, I’d say he was a better pitcher in Minnesota. 2020 can be written off for a myriad of reasons for pretty much any player, even moreso Odorizzi. The dude just had a *really* unfortunate two months, much of which was completely out of his control (like a line drive to the ribs).

I agree wholly on all counts. The game is going to need a lot of changes, most of them pretty minor and some largely cosmetic (I’ve come to despise the shift and see no reason for it to exist) but a few will be significant (anything done to the mound). I wish I had more faith in MLB leadership, particularly Manfred, to make difficult decisions. I wasn’t a fan of Selig but I’d much rather have him in the big chair than Manfred right now. At least Selig wasn’t afraid to throw a wrench in the gears every so often.

This feels like a really selective way to interpret Odorizzi's time with the Twins. While his top level 2018 numbers were slightly worse (barely) than his 2017 numbers with Tampa, his 2018 FIP was *much* better with the Twins, which indicates there wasn't much difference between his performances and one could easily argue he was better with the Twins. Year Age Tm Lg W L W-L% ERA G GS GF CG SHO SV IP H R ER HR BB IBB SO HBP BK WP BF ERA+ FIP WHIP H9 HR9 BB9 SO9 SO/W Awards 2017 27 TBR AL 10 8 .556 4.14 28 28 0 0 0 0 143.1 117 80 66 30 61 1 127 2 0 1 604 102 5.43 1.242 7.3 1.9 3.8 8.0 2.08 2018 28 MIN AL 7 10 .412 4.49 32 32 0 0 0 0 164.1 151 89 82 20 70 3 162 8 0 1 711 95 4.19 1.345 8.3 1.1 3.8 8.9 2.31 2019 29 MIN AL 15 7 .682 3.51 30 30 0 0 0 0 159.0 139 65 62 16 53 0 178 4 0 4 658 128 3.36 1.208 7.9 0.9 3.0 10.1 3.36 AS And you're really underselling Odorizzi's 2019 season. He was mostly consistent throughout the season and overall, it was far and away the best pitching season he has had with any team. He was very good all season, except for one month where he flat-out melted down (but then immediately recovered). Outside of July, he had an above average ERA every month of the season. Here are his splits: Split W L W-L% ERA G GS GF CG SHO SV IP H R ER HR BB IBB SO HBP BK WP BF WHIP SO9 SO/W April/March 3 2 .600 3.34 6 6 0 0 0 0 29.2 22 12 11 2 11 0 30 1 0 0 120 1.112 9.1 2.73 May 4 0 1.000 0.94 5 5 0 0 0 0 28.2 16 3 3 2 9 0 31 0 0 0 109 0.872 9.7 3.44 June 3 1 .750 3.95 5 5 0 0 0 0 27.1 27 12 12 4 7 0 33 1 0 0 112 1.244 10.9 4.71 July 2 2 .500 7.43 5 5 0 0 0 0 23.0 27 20 19 6 10 0 19 1 0 0 105 1.609 7.4 1.90 August 2 1 .667 2.86 5 5 0 0 0 0 28.1 29 10 9 1 12 0 32 1 0 4 126 1.447 10.2 2.67 Sept/Oct 1 1 .500 3.27 4 4 0 0 0 0 22.0 18 8 8 1 4 0 33 0 0 0 86 1.000 13.5 8.25

The bolded is what makes me reluctant to endorse most free college and debt relief plans. I'm all in favor of a drastic overhaul of how we look at college and how we fund those who attend but without first solving the problem that has no end in sight (colleges exploiting the loan system and ever-increasing tuition), why on earth should I support more of my tax money going to them? And, unfortunately, the party with which I most consistently align seems willfully ignorant that the solution is not "throw more money at it".

This is the place. We still enforce rules in clubs but we're a bit more lax about minor offenses. Just don't go too far off the deep end here.

Good, I hope lots of veterans do the same. MLB is facing such a pitching imbalance this season (that has been building for quite some time) and they have an easy (partial) fix staring them in the face and have done... nothing. Which is par for the course with MLB but still, it's irritating.

I agree with your bullet points, though the "increase the size of the strike zone" is mildly concerning due to already sky-high K rates. But I don't disagree the zone should, at minimum, be altered. One thing I've heard bounced around baseball circles is that robot umps tend to crush unexpecting batters with their calling of the high strike, which is the enemy of the uppercut swing. If wonder if our answer may lie in the implementation of robot umpires, which is just a good idea overall, IMO. If pitchers can regularly target the top of the zone and get the call, batters will be forced to cut out their "ideal launch angle" swings and create a more generalized, adaptable swing that covers more of the strike zone.

That is just flabbergasting. Why on earth would a first baseman ever chase a runner? Step on the bag.

My opinions can basically be boiled down to "does this rule change speed up the game and/or increase action?" If yes, I'm probably in favor of it. If no, I'm probably against it. The easiest rule to change that will make the game better without impacting the on-field strategy/play at all is "the batter cannot step out of the box during a plate appearance". If that's too much, then eliminate the rule where the pitcher cannot pitch if the batter isn't in the box (basically, force the batter to be ready and in the box at all times). And then actually enforce the pitch clock, for god's sake. Those are rules that have zero impact on game theory/strategy (though players will surely try to claim otherwise) but will keep the game flow accelerated and fans more engaged. Because while three true outcomes can be boring, what really drags down a baseball game is watching the batter and pitcher take 25 second breathers between every. single. pitch.

I'm not really sure why you included BABIP in that comment, as it's not generally regarded as something that can be controlled by the pitching/defense, at least not to a large degree. But toggle that page over to offense and basically the exact opposite is true (except even moreso). Offensive WAR: Minnesota: 5th, 8.3 WAR Kansas City: 26th, 2.4 WAR That's actually a much larger gap than pitching WAR. And besides, does this tell us a significantly different story than the stats I listed above? Both stat groups tell us the Royals have a pitching advantage and the Twins have a significant hitting advantage so far this season. And my post was originally a rebuttal to "Kansas City has looked like a much better team than the Twins this season" and your stats don't suggest that's any more true than my original stats. An interesting thing I just noticed, though, and I definitely didn't see it coming. FanGraphs has the Twins as the seventh best defense in MLB. The Royals are below average, in the negative numbers overall, at 18th in MLB. That's just more evidence the Royals haven't been a better team this season, though, or at least not a noticeably better team anyway.

Blankenhorn was released in part because the team realized his glove didn't play as an infielder. They let him go because they didn't want another fringy outfielder taking up 40-man space so it doesn't make a lot of sense to bring him into the conversation. And we really need to stop bringing up pitchers in this conversation. While the front office might occasionally flip one or two 40-man spots between pitchers and position players, they generally stick to X number of pitchers and Y number of position players, especially if we're talking about people who they don't expect to contribute in Minnesota this season. They're not going to sink a pitcher spot on the 40-man on a fringe position player for an entire season because that could blow up pretty spectacularly mid-season.

He definitely deserves some of the blame because I've been right there, wondering exactly WTF it is he's doing with a few of his choices... a few. But it's an easy trap to fall into the bolded section of the quote because if everyone sucks, it becomes pretty easy to predict what's going to happen and your "other reliever" would have likely had an equally bad outcome, you just didn't have to witness it happening. And I can think of many times when Baldelli has gone with the obvious option (say, Rogers versus a L/R/L matchup or Duffey against a R/R/L matchup early in the season before anyone knew he had turned into a bad reliever) and then watching those two guys throw an effing hand grenade on the situation. I've seen relievers blow up good matchups far more often than I've seen Baldelli make a head-scratching move. The thing about a manager "going with his gut" is that the only way we can evaluate that "gut" is if it works... but what happens if literally everyone in the bullpen is awful and they fail every single time?

You just prompted me to look up something I've been meaning to look at; the ERA by inning. This is interesting: 6th: 5.51 ERA (this makes sense, the starters have caused plenty of messes this inning and the collective bullpen has been eager to light themselves on fire and jump into the fray) 7th: 3.91 ERA (appears to stabilize a bit) 8th: 4.40 ERA (man these guys suck) 9th: 4.41 ERA (yikes) Extras: 6.75 ERA (horrified face) Now this is the average between all the relievers. I mean, that's such a colossal trashfire from everybody involved. Can we even blame the manager for most of this? I haven't agreed with plenty of Baldelli's relief decisions this season but when the bullpen combines for a 4.40 ERA in the final two innings of every game, that team is going to lose so many games. So many. And that's not even bringing up those extra inning performances.

They don't have the person listed on the coaching section of the official website so god only knows who it is or how well they're performing the role.

They have someone performing the bench coach role, though. Can't recall who it is and definitely have no idea how well they're doing the job but a person is holding the role. I heard about it several weeks ago but wasn't paying close attention to who was doing it.

Ineffectual is definitely preferable, because it may be temporary. Incompetence tends to be... you know... kinda permanent. Everyone gets blindsided by unexpected things and no one can pivot effectively 100% of the time. That doesn't mean they get a pass for failing to see an oncoming trainwreck but it does mean they perhaps have a chance to recover from said trainwreck. An incompetent person looks at the broken tracks and says "no idea why this train derailed, let's send another, it can't possibly happen twice".

Wow. That's completely flippin' bonkers.

While it's hard to know what goes on behind closed doors and why formerly successful groups of people later fail, this sure is low-hanging fruit about why the Twins have fallen on their faces in early 2021. I don't know if it's actually correct, but it sure feels correct, at least partially.

No worries, my point wasn't about the specific sentiment as much about how we form narratives about MLB managers and how much evidence we really don't have about what they do on a daily basis.

Without a doubt. I've never said that Rocco doesn't deserve some blame for pretty much any way this team fails to perform, I'm just pointing out that the game has evolved and I don't think modern managers perform some of the roles we have historically attributed to the manager of an MLB team.