Brock Beauchamp

Tickets are on sale, everybody! http://twinsdaily.com/store/product/5-winter-meltdown-2015/

*holds a mirror toward dan*

Thanks, Mike. You bring up a good point. This thread is about the Meltdown event. If anyone wants to talk about how much they despise the front office, go do it somewhere else. There are at least a dozen threads more applicable than this one.

Ugh. Just ugh.

I agree on all points. But I'd like to see someone give the Bullpen Ace theory a legitimate shot over a couple of seasons to see if it works. Nobody had a one-inning "closer" before Dennis Eckersley... All it takes is one team to think outside conventional wisdom and test the theory. The other teams will mimic the idea if it's a success.

Somebody has to say it for all the BYTOers out there. GHEEEEET REEEEEADDDDHHHYYY

Please. Please. Please. And I'm not saying that only as a site owner... I'm saying that as someone who is tired of watching MN teams lose.

I'd hope the Twins have better options by that point, honestly. I don't think Dozier is the type of guy who will age well into his 30s - a personal opinion, nothing more - but hey, he might be a Michael Cuddyer type. Time will tell. I think Dozier is the type of guy you're excited to have on the team for 4-5 years. It would be my hope that any extension granted him would be used as trade bait as he crossed his age 30 season. If you can get him for ~$8m/year through his arb seasons plus one, that's not an awful risk, IMO.

I've said multiple times that I'm in no rush to extend Dozier. I'm mostly neutral on the subject. There's a risk to overpay a guy who might decline but there's a good chance you'll underpay a .750 OPS guy through his prime seasons. It's a risk but not necessarily a bad one.

Good players - and even bad players - do that over the course of a season. I'm not using one stat to argue Dozier's merits... Far from it. I believe you're too dependent on a few stats instead of looking at him as an overall player. Two things have remained constant with Dozier for the past ~800 PAs: he takes walks and hits for power, whether it is doubles or homers. He's good for 8-12 XBH most months. Those are the markings of a good, though not great, player. I'm not really sure what you expect out of the guy. If he took a walk every 20+ PAs and was Plouffian with his power (14 XBH one month, 3 the next), I might understand more of your concern. That simply isn't the case. Yeah, his BABIP fluctuates from month to month... That's pretty common with most players. Sure, his August BABIP skyrocketed... He also laced 12 doubles that month. Some of that was surely luck but some of it was probably due to him seeing the ball really well and lacing it (hard to hit double digit 2B in a month unless you're making solid contact). If his average jumped to .400 that month, you might have a point but he hit .280. The reason his BABIP was high is because he strikes out quite a bit and took an absurd 25 BB that month. In Dozier, we have a guy who has spent 1 1/2 seasons hitting around .250 with an OBP of .320-.330. He's good for 8-12 XBHs a month. He has shown consistency in the ways that matter: power, average, walks, strikeouts. Sometimes those XBH are homers, sometimes they're doubles. Dozier isn't a big guy; why should we find that surprising? If Dozier was more consistent, he'd be a great player, not a good one.

Oh, I'm not against an extension myself - though I'm not in a big rush to get it done either - but I can understand why some might have concern about a longterm extension to Dozier. Personally, I think he's done enough to prove that he's above average. Don't know if he's a great player but certainly above average.

Concern, sure... But it's a prett mild concern. The difference between a .730 and .780 OPS. If that's enough to make you cautious about an extension, I get that.

Again, you're using an extremely flawed system here. Dozier pre-AS break: 424 PAs Dozier post-AS break: 283 PAs Not to mention that home runs and stolen bases are not the only way a player brings value. Why are you so stuck on Dozier's SB/HR total when there are so many other metrics out there that give a better indication of his performance?

You're cherry-picking (not to mention that the second half of the MLB season is about 100 PAs shorter than the first half). Yeah, Dozier's power numbers slid - along with an accompanying slugging drop - but he actually posted a higher OBP (.352 vs. .340) in the second half and his overall OPS was still well above league average (.739 second half, .777 first half) due to the fact that he ripped 16 doubles in 283 PAs in the second half (compared to 17 2B in 424 PAs in the first half). It should also be noted that Dozier's best month came in August when he posted an .834 OPS while only hitting a single homerun. And this is why we use the entire stat set to evaluate a player and not two data points, people... Unless you're intentionally trying to skew the argument to fit a predetermined narrative. There are reasons to expect Dozier to not have another first half like he did in 2014... But we also wondered if he could repeat parts of his torrid 2013 campaign. He did. I think it's safe to say that at this point, Dozier is a .730-.770 second baseman who plays good defense and is a damned smart baserunner. That's worth a lot in today's game.

I'm guessing that Hughes is so in love with not getting booed mercilessly that he wants to live in the bowels of Target Field until he dies.

Not to mention that it's the second time they've done it in two years (Perkins).

I'd say the ideal is age 32-ish season but yeah, age 33 season ain't bad. The typical pitcher is probably in decline at that point but unless it's injury-related, the age 33 decline should be manageable in most cases.

Initial reports coming out that the three 2015 no-trade teams are: Yankees, Mets, Yankees

I think you just explained why the Twins signed this deal. Short of Hughes completely imploding, this is a great deal for the Twins.

Yep. If Santana reaches those milestones, he's almost surely worth the paycheck so the option is entirely irrelevant IMO.

Eh, Gibson is a pretty terrible comp to Meyer. Higher floor, lower ceiling. Gibson was a solid prospect; Meyer has the potential to be dominant. Or implode spectacularly.

Pretty much nailed my thoughts on the signing.

I ignore projections because they cast players toward the mean. If you're good, Steamer projects you to decline. If you're really bad, Steamer projects you to improve (unless you're ancient and in massive decline). That's not analysis, that's hedging a bet. Yes, more good players will decline than improve and some good players will get injured and have an off year. So, technically, Steamer is "right" because in the aggregate, it technically gets more things "right" than it does "wrong" but that's a long way from "accurate".

My point is that people deride WAR and defensive metrics and those things actually happened. It's an attempt to quantify things that actually occurred on planet earth and were witnessed by human beings. Projections for individual players? There are hundreds of variables that cannot be accounted for and applying such an algorithm to individuals is going to miss far more often than it hits. In the aggregate, Steamer is useful because a large data set is going to somewhat balance out the quirks of individual human beings. Some will overperform, some will underperform. Based in past performance, you can probably get something resembling an approximation of useful information if applied to a group of people. But individuals? Nah. It's pointless. If your algorithm relies on a human being and their foibles as a constant, you're gonna be sorely disappointed on a regular basis.

I said Steamer projections were crap last offseason and I still think they're full of crap. Just because they got a couple of things right doesn't mean we should ignore the legion of things they got wrong. They didn't even really get Mauer right... They overestimated his injury-riddled campaign. Same for Nolasco. They drastically underestimated Hughes. Attempting to predict individual performance to the decimal point is absurd. It's akin to looking at the sky and predicting next month's weather to a tenth of a degree based on the fact that it's Tuesday and you like popsicles.