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Brock Beauchamp

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Everything posted by Brock Beauchamp

  1. Brock Beauchamp
    I still don't believe in the White Sox. Overall, their team OPS is 27th in baseball. Just three teams - one from the AL - sit behind them. They've improved only marginally in May, posting the 23rd team OPS in baseball. Only three AL teams rank below them. The Whities play half their games in a bandbox. Their OPS needs to skyrocket before they even sniff contender status.
  2. Brock Beauchamp
    Yes.
  3. Brock Beauchamp
    It has flown under the radar but Mike Pelfrey's groundball rate now sits at an impressive 56% for the season. That's better than Kyle Gibson.
  4. Brock Beauchamp
    That's... Partially true. Nolasco has somewhat lucked his way into so many wins this month but he's been a better pitcher, despite being unlucky with a .374 BABIP. He has struck out 25 hitters in 28 innings while walking just six during that span. If he keeps it up, he's an above average pitcher (though I'm as skeptical as anyone about his ability to keep that up). I always assumed this to be the case. It wouldn't surprise me one bit if Meyer is in Minnesota by season's end, pitching out of the pen. That might be the best thing for his development.
  5. Brock Beauchamp
    I find it interesting that after all the teeth-gnashing about the "slow" rebuild, the Twins are lock-step with the Astros (though having watched many Astros games this year, I believe them to be the better team) but they got there one year faster than Houston. I rolled my eyes as much as anyone during the Kevin Correia-type signings but ultimately, it didn't matter or hinder the team's long game (on the other hand, moves like releasing Worley surely did). The Twins are rotating in younger players by the week and are in a very good position to keep racking up wins for the next half decade.
  6. Brock Beauchamp
    Yep. Mauer is very good with RISP, I don't understand why people rag on him so much. Here are the differences with RISP: Joe Mauer: BA: +.028 OBP: +.090 SLG: +.029 Miguel Cabrera (I just picked a random good player): BA: +.025 OBP: +.048 SLG: +.011 Yeah, so Joe Mauer. Despite "putting the bat on his shoulder and going after the walk", he still has a higher slugging increase than Miguel Cabrera with RISP.
  7. Brock Beauchamp
    It should be added that most of the difference in the splits between RISP and bases empty comes from increased OBP minus BA (in other words, walks). But not all of it. Small gains were often seen in BA and SLG in the years I spot-checked. My thinking is that bad pitchers put more men on base. Bad pitchers give up higher OPS to opposing hitters. Add in the increased walk rate (for obvious reasons) and you have the difference between bases empty and RISP splits. Clayton Kershaw doesn't allow as many runners into RISP as Ricky Nolasco does so most of Clayton's lights-out innings come with the bases empty. The inverse is true of Nolasco.
  8. Brock Beauchamp
    I'm not trying to diminish Joe's ability with RISP at all, just pointing out that it has to be weighed against league averages to determine the true difference.
  9. Brock Beauchamp
    That's dealing with batting average. I'm looking at OPS for obvious reasons. I spot-checked ten random years going back to the mid-70s and every year, the AL had a higher OPS with RISP than it did with the bases empty. Interestingly, the gap was small in the 3-4 years I checked from 1975-1990 and has expanded quite a bit since that time, growing up to a .040 OPS difference in a few recent seasons.
  10. Brock Beauchamp
    Well, both leagues have better numbers with RISP (by a healthy margin) so one would assume that most players also have better numbers with RISP. http://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/split.cgi?t=b&lg=AL&year=2015
  11. Brock Beauchamp
    The numbers bear this out. Percentage of strikes thrown to Joe Mauer in his career: Bases Empty: 62% Men on Base: 56% RISP: 54% Joe sees a lot fewer strikes when runners are on base.
  12. Brock Beauchamp
    I don't know what to think about Mauer right now. He seems like a player in flux, a guy who changes slightly on a weekly basis. It feels like he's trying to change his approach and take advantage of defenses shifting against him to middling effect. He's pulling the ball more but the ball is rarely hit with authority. For example, one of his triples felt like a rope to right center... That landed about 30 feet beyond the infield dirt. If not for the shift, that's possibly a single, maybe a double at best. It was hit well but not authoritatively. I hold out hope that Joe is still working on his swing, trying to make contact before he tries to advance and make authoritative contact... But I don't know if that hope is grounded in reality.
  13. Brock Beauchamp
    Completely misunderstood your post. Whoops.
  14. Brock Beauchamp
    Absolutely. I give Bruno quite a bit of credit for Dozier because the difference was night and day. One day, he was a subpar hitter. The next, he was an above average hitter. The difference was amazing. But you're right that ultimately, it comes down to the player acknowledging that changes need to be made and making those adjustments. Dozier not only listened to Bruno about his swing but he also applied a lot of hard work to defense and baserunning, ultimately becoming the most well-rounded player on the team because of it.
  15. Brock Beauchamp
    You can count me in the camp of "bullish on Dozier" and "bearish on Plouffe". I didn't see Plouffe coming at all.
  16. Brock Beauchamp
    Yeah, in that regard, they're extremely similar. It's an interesting development because even some of the front office's staunchest defenders had to question their player development system a few years ago when things got really bad. Now that some unlikely players have emerged as very good players, it appears that maybe things weren't as bad as they seemed, we just needed to give the organization more time to get everyone pointed in the same direction. Another good reminder that baseball moves at a glacial pace compared to other sports.
  17. Brock Beauchamp
    Absolutely. The career trajectories of those two players are interesting, doubly so that they doing it at the same time on the same team. Though Dozier is slightly different in that he had a definable "light switch" moment when Bruno changed his swing.
  18. Brock Beauchamp
    To present another option, it's possible the Twins saw the incredible work ethic from Trevor all the way through the system and felt he could become a quality SS in time. Hell, given what Trevor has done at third, I'm not sure he still couldn't become a quality SS if he applied himself to it. I can't remember the last time I saw a player get just a little bit better every year I watched him play the way Trevor has over the past four seasons. It's fascinating how Plouffe has so sneakily gone from "bad" to "meh" to "good" to "this guy is possible an All-Star" right under our noses.
  19. Brock Beauchamp
    I meant to respond to this earlier. I can't lay too much fault on the Twins for keeping Plouffe at short. He's relatively athletic and his bat didn't project to anything but shortstop until he went bonkers as a 25 year old in AAA. Maybe the Twins should have played him more at third in hopes he'd become a utility guy but I can't fault them for not making a wholesale change to third when the guy's yearly OPS hovered around .720-.730 in the minors. That simply isn't a bat that will carry at third in Major League Baseball. It appeared that if the Twins were to get value from Trevor, it would have to be at short because he couldn't hit worth a damn. It's easy to forget now but Plouffe was basically written off as a bust just a few years ago. It's a good reminder that not all baseball players develop at the same pace. Trevor seems to be a hard worker, a smart guy, and a good listener because he has completely turned his career around, one small step at a time. It's kinda amazing when you look at the progression of Plouffe as a baseball player.
  20. Brock Beauchamp
    To an extent, possibly... But this isn't a good example. We have reports of people who actually watch baseball games and they pretty much unanimously agree that Plouffe is a good defender nowadays. You'll get disagreement on just *how* good he is in 2015 but most people have agreed on the general sentiment that he's at least average with the leather. And then you have Tom Barnard, a guy whose job is to be as hyperbolic and aggravating as possible. The guy with the loudest idiotic opinion gets the most listeners because... Well, because that's our modern society, I guess. Sigh. That's a rant for another day.
  21. Brock Beauchamp
    The 50 people who say Plouffe has become a pretty good defender to every one Tom Barnard. I see your overall point about the eye test but this isn't a good example of it. One guy has gone off the rails and is showing obvious bias while the rest of the world has pretty much agreed on the exact opposite. Not all opinions carry equal weight, particularly when the results are this lop-sided. Not to get all political but it's kinda like climate change. On one hand, you have virtually every climate scientist and NASA saying one thing while a politician who received a law degree (or less) says the opposite. At that point, you basically ignore the politician because it's obvious he's either insane, bought out by special interests, or both. If anything, he has done you a favor by showing a complete inability to parse information reasonably with as little bias as possible. He has indirectly told you that he is not worth listening to anymore.
  22. Brock Beauchamp
    Agreed. The Twins rotation won't show legitimate upside until Berrios arrives and (hopefully) Meyer sorts out his command issues in Rochester.
  23. Brock Beauchamp
    You and the rest of the United States who prefer their metro areas to be populated and bear-free and their rivers not aflame.
  24. Brock Beauchamp
    It's going to take a lot more than five starts to convince another team to take on Ricky's contract. In all likelihood, he either pitches better or the Twins are forced to eat the contract as soon as July. At least one of Berrios and Meyer is going to need MLB rotation time this season, maybe both.
  25. Brock Beauchamp
    As I said in a later post, I'm less concerned about Hicks' numbers than I am his approach and mental state. Those are basically impossible to judge from an outside perspective so... *shrugs*
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