Brock Beauchamp

Happ is in the rotation if he’s healthy and likely the same for Shoemaker. It’s a bad idea to discard veteran starters before Opening Day. You’re going to need starters 6-8 soon enough and it only reduces depth to drop even an ineffective veteran before a real pitch is thrown. Especially in this weird hangover season where so many of your 6-9 depth guys barely got in any work last season. It’s hard to predict what will happen if you need to lean on a Lewis Thorpe for 120 innings after the cluster**** of 2020.

I dislike Amazon but this is why I badly wanted to see the RSNs snapped up by them. They have the foresight to not get cute and just offer sports in a manner that caters to 21st century consumers of content. Not only is the standalone app a gimme at this point, why can’t I pay anyone to watch the San Diego RSN? Why can’t I pay to watch three different RSNs? So much money is being left on the table to cater to an old, broken model that people under 40 just don’t want anymore. And given how sports are generational, a lot of long term damage will be done if they keep it up with this nonsense. As it stands, I’ve stopped watching all sports except baseball because I can’t be bothered with this crap anymore.

Heh. Spring Training team performance has almost zero correlation with regular season team performance. It's close enough to zero to be completely useless. But on the individual player level, the correlation is slightly better but still weak enough that spring stats don't tell us much. My understanding is that the only way ST correlation becomes even remotely useful is when you weigh previous season performance with current spring performance and then spit out a number but nobody here is doing that so it's outside this conversation a bit.

It’s always preferable to see players perform well but it has been shown time and time again that the correlation between spring training and the regular season is very weak. I want to see healthy players and pay no attention to the stats (though it’s always depressing to experience a miserable game like this one).

Apparently on the post-game Zoom Dobnak mentioned that the coaching staff approached him a week ago with data how to improve his slider, giving it more break. It's Spring Training and "best shape my life", "learned a new pitch", yada yada yada... but it's something worth noting and keeping an eye on in the next two weeks.

Both English and Spanish lessons for those who need each. More communication is better all around for everyone.

Almost certainly. I'm not even convinced it will happen at all this season. Which is really unfortunate because I'm super excited to take the family to at least one, hopefully more, Saints games this season.

Ah, okay. But I'm not sure Johan broke down from a "variety" of injuries. The way I remember it, there was one major injury and he never recovered from it.

Right now, roughly 20% of Minnesotans have had at least one vaccine shot (which, while not 100% effective, one shot is a big immunization in itself). It's the ninth of March. And the scale is only ramping up, there's a good chance we're at 30%+ of the entire population getting at least one shot by Opening Day. Instead of arguing about numbers, maybe take a moment to realize how much we've all done (well, some of us) to get to this point and how close we are to the end zone.

Huh? Johan started 30+ games five seasons in a row, all of the five seasons he was a full time starter in Minnesota. He even led the league in starts twice during that time.

Good. I'm not sure what numbers we should be opening up in or how quickly, but it's time to start moving that direction. At some point, we need to tear the band-aid off and live our lives again. I don't know if that should start to happen in April or June but it's going to happen soon.

As spy pointed out, JBJ is a capable, if underwhelming, offensive CF. But I think the Simmons comparison is pretty spot on, actually. For some reason, both players are considered "bad" offensively when, in fact, they're just a smidge below average for the position. Their defense is what makes them good/very good but their offense doesn't get in the way of them being good, either. (obviously, Simmons is amazeballs defensively while JBJ is only good so their overall outcomes aren't perfectly in line)

The details are unknown but based on the history of incentive-based contracts, the Astros will be getting a very good version of Odorizzi if they end up paying him $15m per year. And, obviously, that's a best case scenario for everyone involved. As a baseline, I'd eagerly bet on Odo with roughly $10m per year on the line.

Blech. That’s not a great deal for Jake. I’d sign him at that price in a heartbeat.

Dunno if it will tell much, if anything. Odorizzi came from the Rays and the Twins got a career year out of him. There isn’t much more one can ask of an org.

Yep. My only concern about JBJ is his ability to hit outside Fenway. I haven’t looked into his spray charts but his career road numbers are pretty bad. But if he’s able to maintain his numbers over the past several seasons, $12m per is a good deal for a guy that is roughly a league average starter in center.

Does anyone see dollar figures on his deal yet? I can’t find anything. I hope Jake got paid. He deserves it.

I’m okay with roster expansion but it needs to come alongside call-up/down restrictions and have a pitcher cap of 13. Playing ping pong with pitchers in AAA just sucks for those players who accumulate service time 1-3 days at a time.

I agree with a lot of your points here but disagree that a single solution is the silver bullet. I believe a combination of things need to happen to trim down game times because the game itself has changed. For example, it's going to be hard, if not impossible to walk back the fact that batters take more pitches per plate appearance in today's game. Over the past 20 years, the gain has been .25 pitches per PA. In just one game, that adds up to an additional 20-25 pitches thrown. That's several minutes of game time by itself. Here's what I'd like to see happen: 1. Pitch clock. There's no reason to roam circles around the mound or adjust your damned batting gloves every pitch. It's not strategy, it's ****ing boring. I can't count how many times I've turned off a game simply because the pitcher was being a slug on the mound, throwing two pitches a minute and making me yearn for a channel where I could watch paint dry. 2. Three batter minimum. Pitchers should be encouraged to finish an inning and forced to finish if encouragement doesn't work. 3. Restrict the shift. No infielder can cross second base. No outfielder can leave their OF zone (L, C, R, divided into thirds). That still allows for plenty of movement and adjustment, it only kills stacking one side of the field and killing BABIP in the process. Will this reduce game length? I don't know and while it'd be nice to shorten games, what's more important is to make the game less boring than it is right now. And putting the ball in play for a hit, throwing pitches more often, and reducing the number of times a game grinds to a halt for a pitching change makes it a better spectator experience. We can't do anything about the pitches per PA so work around it. If MLB does a good enough job of encouraging balls in play, we might even see a reduction in pitches per PA, speeding up the game even more.

1. https://www.tiktok.com/@banishedchris/video/6931760170062335238 2. https://www.tiktok.com/@banishedchris/video/6931760170062335238?sender_device=pc&sender_web_id=6936911038533305862&is_from_webapp=v2&is_copy_url=0

I don't know how much roster size influences game length but games continue to get longer almost every year. Game length isn't stagnant and hasn't been for some time. The average game length in 2010 was 15 minutes shorter than 2019. https://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/MLB/misc.shtml

I put zero stock in literally anything that has happened beyond the physical health of the player (or lack thereof). The last two weeks of ST barely matter. The first two weeks don’t matter *at all*. It’s practice and blowing the rust off.

I don't fault teams for doing it, as it's within the rules and gives an advantage over a long, grueling 162 game season. But also, just change the damned rules. If loopholes are found and exploited, close them. MLB has been terrifically awful at adapting to the changes in the game that have made the sport a worse spectating experience over the past 10-15 years.

I'm fine with 26, actually prefer it to 28... with the stipulation that there is a 13 pitcher cap (not in place this season) and the call up/down rules are less lenient to playing AAAA ping pong with players (hopefully coming in the upcoming CBA). So, since neither one of those things exist this season... I guess I don't care? I'm just not happy with MLB's unresponsiveness to modern "advancement" of the game that has largely been a detriment to the spectating experience. Pitching specialists and watching five pitchers a game per team is just one of many things that make the sport less fun to watch.

Someone with extensive experience writes up this lengthy explanation of the process, including why it’s so difficult to predict timelines due to government bureaucracy and a pandemic, and this is your response?