Brock Beauchamp

I like to poke in and remind everyone of this little thing called "observational bias" every now and again.

Reality is far more complicated than that. 11 HR total. 4 HR in tie games. 6 HR in games within 1 run. 7 HR in games within 2 runs.

Massively improve? No. But should we expect improvement from a 23 year old player as he approaches his prime seasons? Absolutely.

Expect that they don't. Joe Mauer 2014 bases empty: .697 OPS. Joe Mauer 2014 RISP: .796 OPS. Yes, a lot of that is OBP driven (his OBP is a whopping .400 with RISP) but his slugging is also marginally higher with RISP (.015). What can we learn from this? That RISP is pretty much a useless statistic on which to base a player's worth, as it fluctuates wildly from season to season due to SSS. Joe Mauer spent the bulk of his career hitting marginally better with RISP, just as most players do (because RISP appearances tend to come against worse pitchers who are hit more easily). He didn't suddenly "forget" how to hit with RISP after a decade in the league. It's a meaningless statistic. Joe Mauer has been a pretty bad hitter this season. That's his problem, not RISP.

Hard to say. I have so many things on my list right now that it's hard to say when I'll get to the new databases and polish them up.

Spacing issues are easy: read this blog primer, particularly the section about pasting rich content. As for tables, that is on my list of things to add in the future. I was surprised they weren't in there by default and adding them is a bit tricky, as they require loads of BBCode settings that I need to research.

I bashed Moore a bunch for trading for Shields. Honestly, I still think it was a mistake because they could have done the same thing this offseason for Price. But part of me has to root for the Royals, if only for the fans who have suffered for so long. I still want Oakland to win a ring for Beane but an ALCS of Oakland/KC sure wouldn't make me angry... but MLB would probably have a fit.

Sure you have, you just didn't notice because they were all MLB players at that point.

Absolutely. Team wins and losses trump all... But starting pitcher win-loss records don't closely correspond to talent. Tony Fiore once went 10-3. Two years later, Johan went 16-7 and lost the Cy Young to an inferior pitcher who went 21-8. What do all those wins and losses mean? They mean the team won and lost games while that pitcher was on record. It doesn't mean that pitcher was better than the competition. If looked at in the aggregate, is there correlation? Absolutely. But individually, pitcher win-loss is far too volatile and dependent on other factors to mean much unless the pitcher is an extreme outlier (eg. a 3-20 pitcher is almost surely bad, a 20-3 pitcher is almost surely awesome).

Given the huge decrease in offense, the QS - a stat I didn't like in the first place - seems more meaningless.

Obviously. I mean, who can argue that? Grrrrrr...

Mauer sure has looked like the Joe Mauer of old since his return. Let's hope that's a sign of things to come and not a result of facing Astros pitching in Houston.

Great entry. As always, hope springs eternal. At least the Wild are good, right? BTW, you should pop on over to Vikings Journal and start a blog over there. We're giving away pizzas to the first few bloggers on the site (provided you live in MN).

It's good to hold grudges.

It's really not... at all. There have been studies done that show any number of stats more closely relate to pitcher success than W-L. K/9 is a better indicator, for one.

Interesting numbers. Thanks for the breakdown. I think we can take away from this that rebuilds take time. Few teams can flip their fortunes from awful to good in a single season.

I started work on something just like that last night. Haven't gotten it working yet but I expect to have something put together within a week or so.

Another nice pickup by Ryan. Damn, the dude can wheel and deal. I had given up hope on getting anything for Willingham.

Mobile usage continues to rise. While not ALL functionality needs to be available on mobile, it's a good idea to make mobile as flexible as possible. I bet there are some users out there who ONLY use the site on mobile.

You can do whatever you like with the coupon, Dave. You can send it to Governor Dayton for all we care.

Oh, I added a Your Profile link at the very bottom of the mobile theme. But now that I look, there is no edit button. I'll add it to the list.

Ashbury, I bumped your post count. You can now change your title.

Well, somewhat comically he has an OPS of ~.850 in his first 20 PAs with the team so I'd wager he's going to get a few more starts. As long as Arcia doesn't sit at his expense - as he did today - I can't say I really care. I don't think Schafer is going to amount to anything but eh, whatever. Sitting Arcia against a righty. I just. I just... COME ON, GARDY.

This is the second Twins Daily primer article – the first being the basics of the new Twins Daily – and today, we’ll focus on the user blog experience. How it has changed, how it hasn’t changed, and how to get the most out of your blogging experience on Twins Daily. Even some of the veteran bloggers might want to take a look at these tips, as a few things have changed with the new system.First, you’ll want to create your blog if you haven’t done so already. Just hop over to the blog section of the site and click the “Create a Blog” button. For those of you with blogs, you’ll see an “Add Entry” button in its place. Download attachment: create-blog.jpg One additional feature of the new software is that you can now have multiple blogs on Twins Daily. Why would you want to do this? I have no idea; just letting you know the option exists. Anyway, back to you new bloggers. Veteran bloggers, you can skip to the next paragraph. Once you’ve clicked “Create a Blog”, you will be prompted to name your blog and add a description and other related information. It’s all self-explanatory, just follow through the instructions and save your new blog. To create a new blog post, click “Add Entry” from the blog main page. Okay, so now everybody has a blog and has clicked “Add Entry.” Now we’re into the meat and potatoes of the new blog system: entering a blog. I’m going to skip over a few of the more self-explanatory steps (poll creation, publish/draft, preview, etc) and focus on some of the things that might confuse a new user. As you can see below, I have conveniently numbered the points for you. Download attachment: blog-entry.jpg 1. Tags: you can tag “like content” in the new Twins Daily. The system will automatically generate links to like content in other blogs that are similarly tagged. A useful feature that helps users find related content and drive more traffic to your personal blog. For consistency and accuracy, it's best to list each tag as "firstname lastname" with no punctuation (and without the quotes). To add multiple tags, hit the comma key and that phrase will be added as a tag. 2. Entry image: this is the image that will appear at the top left of your blog and in the blog main page next to your post title. You can leave this blank but the more high-quality images you use, the more likely a person is to click into your post and read it. 3. Entry album: this is part of our new Twins Daily gallery. You can create an album of images and include the entire album in a blog post. This drop-down menu is how you add an album. 4. My Media: again, a gallery option but instead of posting albums, this can be used for single images. Do you have an image you want to re-use multiple times in blog or forum posts? Add it to your gallery and re-use the image multiple times with the My Media button. Video (not shown): mea culpa, I forgot to add this option to the image. To the left of My Media, you can see a green/blue square icon. If you want to add video from YouTube, MLB.com, or Vimeo, click this icon and selected Media from the drop-down list. Paste your YouTube or MLB.com URL into the Media URL field and click okay. The video will automatically insert into your post. 5. Paste Rich Content from your Blog: this is a brand-new feature. For security and technical reasons, allowing users to directly past images, links, and HTML markup into a post window is a bad idea. But you don’t want to re-link all your content and re-add images when pasting from your own blog. That’s lame. Click this text and paste your blog content into the generated window. Click okay. The system strips out all bad mark-up language (fonts, colors, etc.) and keeps your links, text effects (bold, italics, etc), and images. Super-handy. 6. Attach Files: obviously, being allowed just one image for your blog entry isn’t enough for long and/or complex entries. Need to add more images? Place your cursor where you want the image to appear, upload a new image using Attach Files, and then click Add to Article. The image will generate where you placed the cursor in the editing window. After you’re done editing your post, click either Save Draft or Publish and your entry will be saved. Publish the entry to allow other users to read the blog entry. Those are the blog basics. If you have questions or tips/tricks I missed in this article, be sure to post in the comments section! Click here to view the article