Brock Beauchamp

You're looking for an easy answer and somehow landed on the manager. The reason the Guardians are good again is because they're hitting again, just as they did in 2022, when they also won 90+ games. Teams have down years all the time.

This thread is such a perfect encapsulation of why it's impossible to have a reasonable discussion about Rocco Baldelli.

I consider them a pair because, as you said, it’s almost impossible to separate the actions and decisions of each.

There's a lot to unpack here and based on some of the writers' slack conversations, it's an interesting topic. This is not a Rocco Baldelli thread, please leave him out of it. Let's focus on the front office. 1. Pinch-hitting. While Baldelli pulls the levers on the field, he's getting his data and guidance from the front office. In the past, I've mostly been okay with their tendency to aggressively approach matchups mid-game and try to win the game in the sixth instead of the eighth. There's a lot to be said for putting a guy like Wallner in the moment the lefty starter is gone or aggressively subbing a good fifth-inning matchup by inserting Kyle Farmer, who at the very least will bring good defensive play to the infield for a few innings after the plate appearance. But now that Kyle Farmer is in his mid-30s and guys like Manny Margot are the pinch-hitters du jour, this strategy played out to literally comical effect in the second half of the season as records of incompetence were set. The roster didn't have the horses to deploy this strategy, yet they deployed it anyway. 2. Does Falvey want to come back? From 2021-2023, Falvey was given license to pursue big-dollar players like Donaldson and Correa. He did a pretty good job of it, too. But the thing about using that strategy is that if your boss suddenly tells you to cut costs by 20%, your carefully laid plans for the future have little chance of working. Where you expected to have $40m to spend on players to round out your star cast, you suddenly have less than $10m. Which then forces shenanigans of trading players for salary relief, trading for players who might not have been even your third choice but possibly your eighth or ninth choice in Margot. Do we believe Falvey would have actively pursued Margot if he costs more than "literally nothing" in dollars? How much faith does this instill in Falvey that Minnesota is a place he wants to continue working? It looked like he had a pretty good thing going, the team had momentum with fans, and all of that vaporized almost exactly 11 months ago. 3. The farm system is the strongest it has been since the Mauer/Morneau days. If nothing else, this might keep the front office intact and at least somewhat able to mitigate the budget constraints suddenly placed upon them. I'm just curious what people are thinking about this front office, the strategies they've used in recent years, and how it all came tumbling down over the past two months.

So now we're blaming Terry Francona? That's a choice.

I don’t think Rocco was wrong in that instance. It happened quickly and to one of the Twins only decent relievers at the time. It went as badly as it could have. And if you think others are at fault, go ahead and create a thread about it. Except AGAIN, this thread is about Baldelli and nothing else. Except we’re not talking about those guys, only Rocco. Not even the hitting coaches. JUST ROCCO. ALWAYS. I spent quite a bit of time this morning organizing a series of articles breaking down how every aspect of this organization failed this season. Yes, including Rocco. I don’t have a “crew” because most of the people I speak to don’t defend Rocco, they just attempt to contextualize his actual influence in comparison to ownership, the front office, and the players themselves.

Good lord man, you’re completely off the rails with Rocco. Simply because I’m not obsessed with him, you act as if I’m his biggest supporter. And lol at “shouting down” anyone when you and your crew derail half the threads on this forum at the slightest opportunity to rip into your pet topic, Rocco Baldelli. Literally every single aspect of this organization failed this season (except the minor league system, maybe). Yet here we are AGAIN, talking about the one guy who probably has the least control over any of it. Was Rocco bad this year? Yeah, I think so. So was EVERYBODY ELSE, except those other people actually took the field, built rosters, and decided the budget of the team. Yet here we are again, obsessing over Rocco ****ing Baldelli. It’s unhealthy, man.

Some of y'all need to start charging Rocco rent, given how he's living in your head.

I don't care if they fire Baldelli at this point but he's not the problem. Until the Pohlads fire themselves, the guiltiest parties will go unpunished.

They can lose one against Miami but it means they need to win two against the Orioles. Which may or may not be difficult, depending how the Orioles manage their final series.

Ugh, FFS. I'll reach out again.

Every fanbase is convinced their team is incompetent with the bases loaded. The Twins have the 23rd OPS in baseball with the bases loaded. Pretty bad but not at the bottom.

DON'T YOU DARE GIVE HIM CREDIT FOR ANYTHING

I get the obstruction call, not arguing it. But I've never seen it called at second on a pickoff play.

Yeah, when the game was on the line and a pretty awful call was made at the plate.

Weird because he was extended for three years like two months ago.

Well, you see something new every day...

He has been injured for awhile now, they probably should have shut him down the moment the Sox fell out of the race.

I think that's a little unfair to Cora. You're completely ignoring that ownership kneecapped the franchise by forcing a Betts trade and making uncompetitive offers to the likes of Bogaerts. Is Cora a great manager? I have no idea but he has been working with diminishing roster returns since that championship.