Brock Beauchamp
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Everything posted by Brock Beauchamp
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I mostly agree and see where you're coming from but disagree on "bad luck". I consider it an inevitability in today's game. Someone will get injured. Gonzalez will take their place. Where Gonzalez separates himself from someone like, say, Adrianza, is that he can play anywhere. In your scenario, I'd probably agree that it requires a fair amount of "bad luck" to get Adrianza 400 PAs, as it means your middle infield was torn to shreds over the season. But in the case of Gonzalez, it could come in small bursts all over the diamond: 40 PAs in left, 60 PAs at short, 80 PAs at third, etc. Because of Gonzalez' versatility, I don't believe it requires bad luck for him to get a lot of playing time all over the field, all the while replacing someone at neutral or negative WAR value. Starters will get dinged up over the season and having a guy already on the roster to fill in for them can lead to a lot of PAs, all the while keeping your roster more stable in the process and not risking some pretty awful performances from replacement players, even if their scope of damage is limited to only a few plate appearances. -
I generally agree but those bad performances don't go away because you replace them, they're only mitigated somewhat. And a roughly league-average replacement instead of dipping your toes into polluted water - no matter how briefly - has a positive impact on the season. But we're also getting into cloudy territory with WAR itself here. For example, Logan Morrison was atrocious last season. Over ~350 PAs, he was "worth" -0.3 WAR. Over 21 PAs last season, Tayler Motter was "worth" -0.3 WAR. Maybe my point isn't as much about projection systems not properly evaluating replacement players, it's about WAR being so shaky on partial seasons. Either way, I have little confidence in either accurately judging the value of someone like Gonzalez as a 10th starting man.
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Damn it, you just beat me to the punch. Democrats shouldn't be the least bit scared of the word taxes; if anything, they should embrace it. TAX TAX TAX. And they should be couching this argument 100% of the time in the fact that Donald Trump, under the mantle of the so-called fiscal wizardry of the Republican Party, is driving this country into a deficit hole. Turn the argument back on the GOP. Make the public painfully aware that they are NOT fiscal conservatives. And then come back with a heavily-progressive tax plan that keeps the middle class neutral, helps the poor, and absolutely tears apart the upper classes (well, relatively speaking... more like "return them back to where they were 40 years ago"). Become the party of fiscal "responsibility" (term used loosely because no party is actually responsible, only that some are worse than others). The door hasn't only been unlocked to do it, the bloody thing is wide open for anyone to walk through who cares to.
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I have to wonder if this is a place where prediction models fail. They account for playing time but I question how accurately they predict subpar replacement players. For example, Gonzalez is likely a step down from Polanco. But if Polanco gets injured, how much of a step up is Gonzalez from Replacement Player X? We all know the basic replacement player performance level but we also realize that replacement players aren't available all the time, or that a team may misjudge a "replacement player" and get something much worse in their place. If Gonzalez starts 100 games because he's just pencilled in as a starter, we can pretty accurately judge his value to the team in wins. If Gonzalez starts 100 games at three different positions because of injuries to starting players or general ineffectiveness, I have less faith a projection model is accurately judging his value to a team.
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Yep, if you're in their area, use them. I'm not, unfortunately. But it's hard to complain about CenturyLink filling that gap for $75/mo, even if their "gigabit" is anything but. It's still miles better than Comcast dollar-for-dollar.
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Park: Twins Emphasizing Catcher Defense, Framing
Brock Beauchamp replied to Seth Stohs's topic in Minnesota Twins Talk
I found it far less painful to watch Garver as the season progressed. Early on, he was absolutely brutal. Then he smoothed out a bit in the second half. -
Got it. I totally misunderstood your post.
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I think you're overlooking the fact that someone will go down in the first month of the season... and the second month of the season... and so on. Adding a player like Gonzalez gives you flexibility when things are good and a quite good backup should things go bad. I have a lot of faith that a manager like Baldelli will be able to use that kind of player in a way that add wins to the team over the course of a season.
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Sure, but even incremental steps need landmark achievements along the way. Big advances can be made in short time but don't try to Save The World in 100 days. That's not reasonable, nor will it likely be smart policy or stay in place for long after your party loses power. Obama basically lucked out with the ACA. Had public sentiment held its line for even 12 months longer, the law would have been revoked. It was only those last few months where people started to be convinced that it should remain law... after seven years of being in place.
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I kinda get what you're saying but the Gonzalez move only makes me grumble more about the lack of an impact bullpen arm this offseason. Add that and I think the Twins are pretty easily an 85 win team based on last season's performances, with an upside of 90+ wins without even squinting (95 if you squint a bit). Young teams that underperform in a season often either fizzle out entirely or go bananas. My opinion is that you bank on the "go bananas" side of that equation and you buy a few players to hedge that bet. You don't need to go sign Keuchel and indebt yourself to a player for 4+ seasons but you should definitely sign guys like Gonzalez (and a reliever) to give the young players a framework in which to succeed.
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I think the wall is a good example why incremental approaches work if you have the dedication to stick with it (also why the ACA maybe shouldn't be abandoned outright). Immigration has been a problem for a long time. Lots of presidents have taken approaches to curb various problems through increased enforcement, smarter tech to aide enforcement, fencing where appropriate, etc. And, by god, IT WORKED. Illegal border crossings are waaaayyyyy down, like 25% of what they were 20 years ago. And then some orange dope comes along promising to build a wall AFTER WE FIXED THE PROBLEM. The most expensive works project of the entire situation is offered only after we've cured most of one problem and identified a new, unexpected problem caused in its wake. The actual problem today has shifted to points of entry, where drugs continue to pour through our borders. Spend a bunch of money on the front end of this problem and it's likely you simply wasted a bunch of money chasing the wrong dragon.
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I was trying to figure out a way to butcher his name so kudos to you.
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Randball Stu has been absolutely killing it.
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Very well said, Ben.
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Fantastic move. Gonzalez brings badly needed flexibility to this roster. Call up Astudillo after the first injury and you can rotate people all over the field, creating matchup havoc with the back of the roster.
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Which is why I haven't hitched my wagon to anyone yet and have chastised a few Facebook friends who are already pounding the drum relentlessly for one candidate or another (while equally bashing the others). I'm tepidly on Warren's side but I want to hear what Klobuchar and others have to say, too. I keep repeating "I'm going to let the candidates come to me, I'm not going to come to them." It's good policy this early in the game. Let the candidates fight it out and see who emerges with the best ideas.
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I agree that authenticity is key and that's how Democrats can win. But my idea isn't some appeal to centrism; it's a different angle from which to approach the problem, one that won't scare off a bunch of people with "Big Washington Coming to Take Your X". My goal has the same outcome as yours, it's simply on a more granular, achievable arc that will take longer but receive less resistance in the short-term. And I think it will work better when all is said and done. The parties have underserved the middle of this country for too long. Democrats mostly want everything to come from Washington. Republicans want everything to come from nowhere. Approaching this disparity by advocating Washington assistance through state programs could bring a hell of a lot of people on board while largely achieving the same goals. It's a lot easier to sell "Iowa helping Iowa" than "Washington providing for Iowa and Oklahoma and California (dirty commies) and Montana". One creates an inclusive feeling of helping the people around you while the other harbors animosity that someone out there, far away, is surely freeloading on your hard-earned dollars.
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And that's why Democrats lose so bloody often. You're arguing that it's your way or the highway; moderates need not apply. That attitude loses you a ****load of elections in a two party system.
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It’s not to prevent a Republican backlash, it’s to prevent a moderate backlash that drives them to the open arms of insanity again. The Democrats just won back the suburbs. Do what it takes to keep them and the party gets to stay in power for quite some time. Republicans cannot win with rural America alone.
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For the record, Minnesota is a mid-sized state. Its population is within a few hundred thousand people of Finland, Norway, Ireland, and Denmark. Those countries somehow manage to negotiate reasonable terms. Why can't individual states do the same?
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Of course SOME states would negotiate together. Or they could go their own way and do it themselves. Or they could do nothing at all. Couple this option with some de-regulation for the moderates to take back home (say, selling healthcare across state lines) and you could likely craft a bill that won't face enormous blowback that gave us the political climate of 2010 through today. Look what happened to the ACA. Republicans steamrolled our government because the federal government rammed something down the states' throats. It led us directly to Trump. The same thing happened after the New Deal, we were just lucky enough to have a Republican president with a backbone at the time (Eisenhower) who told his own party to pound sand on the issue. And yes, some people will go without healthcare for awhile. But the change has an actual chance of sticking without huge blowback from the middle of the country, which nearly doomed (and partially gutted) the already weak ACA. My solution is also likely to be a hell of a lot more efficient than any federal program. I trust Minnesota to do right by Minnesota a lot more than I trust Washington to do right by Minnesota. I'm not against big government but I demand smart government. We rarely get that from Washington under the best of circumstances and it's nearly impossible in this environment.
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I don’t buy that at all. If you get a handful of states bargaining together, you equal or surpass the population of several mid-sized European countries in a hurry. If you get a handful that includes CA and NY, you can equal the largest European nations. California by itself is larger than a lot of European nations. It’s also larger than Canada. Never mind that my solution is something that could actually pass. You only need tepid buy-in from a few states for a program they don’t need to use, which gives moderates that ever-important plausible deniability in swing states. Let single payer infest states like a virus instead of ramming it down their throats, which would likely give us a redux of 2010. And after this country elected Trump, I’m terrified to think who those people would elect next.
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I wish a candidate would stop trying to go for broke with a federal solution and instead incentivize (temporarily) state-issued single payer solutions. Let the New Yorks, Californias, Oregons, and Minnesotas set up their own systems, then watch other states' citizenry slowly get up in arms that they don't have similar coverage. Let the states compete against one another to implement the best system, then let the others copy and improve upon it. It's not as if that's the way our republic was designed to function or anything. Sigh. I'm getting pretty tired of "one-stop solutions" from a federal level. They rarely work well, almost never get implemented at a sufficient level because of blowback from the eternally-stupid south, and they rarely meet the needs of a diverse nation. So give the states that want to be progressive a nudge in that direction and see what happens. I suspect mostly good things will follow.
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Has anyone noticed a concentrated attack on Klobuchar amongst their out of state friends lately? In my feed, the hate is rampant. I like Klobuchar quite a bit as a senator. I had no real desire to see her run for president. Even today, I still prefer other candidates over her... but this disinformation campaign is really starting to piss me off. I've seen her called everything from conservative to spineless to establishment and frankly, I don't really get it. I just wonder why so much of the liberal hate is aimed at her right now. I see people rolling their eyes at Bernie - as they probably should - but outside of Harris, I haven't seen anything close to the outright vitriol that I've seen thrown at Klobuchar. And for what reason? It just seems a bit too focused for me to believe it's coincidence. So few even knew about her before a week ago, except that pretty stellar handling of pure jackassery Kavanaugh threw at her last year.
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My Comcast service had deteriorated to the point two cans and a string would have been better.
