Brock Beauchamp
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Everything posted by Brock Beauchamp
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I don’t know exactly what this news means, but it can’t be bad for Democrats. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/election-update-the-democrats-unprecedented-fundraising-edge-is-scary-for-republicans-and-for-our-model/
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Heh, called it. Before I even clicked on the link, I suspected it was about King.
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What about Houston? They didn't build a winner through deep pockets. What about Tampa? They certainly didn't build a winner through deep pockets, yet they consistently compete in the most brutal division of baseball. And it's not as if the use of analytics prevents use of scouting. They are complementary pieces and no team relies solely on analytics. That's where your argument is badly flawed. You're stuck on the notion that analytics-heavy teams only use analytics. That's not the case because of course it's not the case. Analytics is just one more tool used by front offices to build a baseball team. -
Over 30 career WAR and not that different than Kent Hrbek in overall value. And that’s one example that, again, literally took me two seconds to think of.
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Indeed. Theo Epstein knows nothing about baseball, nor do most of the World Series championship front offices of the past five years, most of which are heavy into analytics. Huh?
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Without even thinking about it for more than two seconds, Kevin Youkilis, the guy who was literally mentioned about 500 times in Moneyball. That was easy.
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Then why say it? And whether the player says the Twins were good at it or not, the Twins put Pressly on that path in the first place. If the player doesn't acknowledge what the team did to help him be a better player... *shrugs* And this is not me making excuses for a lot of the underperformance of the past season. I have some serious questions about how things are being handled and whether this front office is capable of building a winning team in the 21st century. But in this specific example, there is solid evidence the Twins did right by Pressly, even if the Astros were capable of doing more right.
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I don't have a timeline because we know so little about the mechanics of it all, really. What I do know is that improvements have been made. I expect to see continued improvement. Analytics departments are moving targets and the Twins have to chase teams that are also improving at the same time. As the long as the gap continues to narrow (and it almost certainly has in the past two years), I will consider that sufficient. If you close a gap for a long enough time, the gap ceases to exist. I like what the front office has done, mostly. Kalk was a great pickup, as was the football guy Adler. Zoll is... interesting, but so young that it's hard to judge because he has so little experience. Both of those guys were hired almost exactly one year ago and Kalk was hired just last December. Again, I'm not sure what everyone is expecting here. Houston is literally the cream of the crop in this regard and I'd be stunned if the Twins could catch them in only two years (most of one of those years being an evaluation period so more like one+ year). I think some of you are doing a disservice to what Houston has spent over half a decade putting together; if it was that easy to replicate, half of baseball should be their equal and suddenly, we're not talking about how savvy Houston is right now. If it was easy, everybody would be doing it.
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It absolutely helps the Democrats. It helps everyone keep things just the way they are and to push corporate and special interest agendas over the good of the people.
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But the point is that they *did* see results. Pressly turned into a very good pitcher based on what the front office saw in the advanced numbers. Did the Astros improve upon that? Sure. But the Twins saw some of the same data and started the process.
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How? From where? And do you think that staff is running at 100% efficiency and capacity? Falvey and Levine inherited almost nothing. They stuck with some of it for awhile to evaluate and then discarded some of those options (Goin, for example). That takes time. Then they had to go find other people qualified to do that job the way they want. That takes time. Then that person needs to get up to speed, implement their own systems, and hire people to carry out those tasks. Again, that takes time. The Twins analytics staff is in much better shape than it was two years ago, as evidenced by what they did with Pressly this season. But it's going to take time to fully flesh out that kind of system and catch elite teams like the Astros, if that's even possible at all.
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Well, to give concrete examples, the Twins snagged Kalk away from the Rays just ten months ago. And they approached Presley correctly, telling him to change his selection. That likely had Kalk’s fingerprints all over it. But still, ten months. I’m not sure what people are expecting. The Astros probably look back at their 2012 analytics staff and chuckle about it, too.
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I agree that it's not a problem that will take a decade to fix but I think you're underselling how hard it is to find quality talent in a field that's rapidly expanding. It's not as if the Twins are hiring in a vacuum, they need to bid against 20-something other teams for new talent and find a way to poach experienced talent from other organizations. If you've paid any attention to the deep learning and AI market in Silicon Valley, you'll know just how ferocious that kind of situation can get. There's a limited talent pool and everybody has to draw from it.
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Yep, and the Astros have had 7-8 years to figure all this out. The Twins front office has had all of two years to rebuild this thing with an entirely new analytical perspective. If we're in year four or five and the Twins are still getting stomped by a bunch of teams in the analytics department, that's a big problem.
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Yeah, complaining about the return is odd. The Twins got a return on Pressly valued somewhere between where his numbers sat in Minnesota versus where they sat in Houston. They didn't just let the guy walk away and then get good, a la Hicks. They got value back for him if not on par with, then close, to how he pitched in Houston. He was a reliever with 1.33 seasons of control remaining. He wasn't going to fetch a king's ransom.
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Perry Castellanos, many other strength coaches let go
Brock Beauchamp replied to Seth Stohs's topic in Minnesota Twins Talk
Dunno, I think they've done okay by Gordon. They've certainly challenged him but until he hit AAA, he adapted to the challenges well enough. The second half swoons are becoming concerning at this point, though. I accepted them as a 20 and 21 year old but it's getting harder to accept and understand them as he ages. Which brings us around to it possibly being a strength training problem so these firings make some sense to me. -
The cover theme is Opening Day (or early season) expectations and the successes/failures of those players. I thought about whether guys like Astudillo, Gonsalves, and Stewart should make the cover or not and decided to take the route of "how did our April expectations align with actual on-field performance?" And even then, a couple of guys didn't make the cut, most notably Lynn and Morrison.
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Honestly, more than anything else, that was what turned me off Kavanaugh. And it happened in real time. As I listened to his testimony (I listened to almost all of that day's proceedings), I was just shaking my head as he spent nearly ten minutes becoming increasingly hostile to the point where he blamed the Clintons. Seriously. The ****ing Clintons. Can we just get past that **** already? His testimony felt like it was written by Breitbart and I don't want Breitbart within 1000 miles of the court system. That's not how high level justices behave. Not at all. I can't prove or disprove Ford's testimony, though I'm inclined to believe her, as it felt entirely genuine and honest. Absent real proof, I can't protest too much about the proceedings going forward, though the half-assed investigation was yet another insult added to the turd sandwich that was this entire process. But I saw how Kavanaugh reacted and that was enough to convince me he doesn't belong on the court. It's a pretty low bar to set, really. Impartiality and decency are what we should want out of all our justices, left or right. I didn't have a problem with Gorsuch, even though I disagree with his political views (though I had huge problems with how he got there and the political thievery that went along with it). I'm not against conservative justices. I'm against Brett Kavanaugh.
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I absolutely agree that we should have a boatload more laws protecting peoples' rights to vote. Hell, I don't even really blame federal Congress, much less the Supreme Court, for a lot of what is happening. This country is a republic and most of that damage is being done by local legislatures, which (rather unfortunately) is their right because of the screwy way our elections are held and coordinated. And we really need to stop electing such ****ty local legislatures. It's embarrassing, yet the worst offenders wear their malice like badges of pride.
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Superficially, I agree... but the court has centuries of precedence to look at when deciding to rule on a gerrymandering case. Outside of a few specific instances (race being the biggest that I know of), the court has generally stayed out of gerrymandering issues. Because of that precedence, some justices feel the court has no right to intervene unless very specific bullet points are met (again, race is a big one). The reason they feel they have the right to intervene re: race is because there are laws on the books specifically targeting that issue (yay, laws make the Supreme Court's job much easier!). Gerrymandering has always happened in this country. The difference is now we're really good at it thanks to computers. And if a situation changes due to technology or an improved knowledge of how to game the system, that doesn't really change the legality of the situation or the court's right/ability to intervene... once again, that's why laws exist and yet another shining example of how our legislators continue to fail us at every turn.
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Now we're down to ideology, though. Not everyone reads the Constitution the same way and some believe the power of the document is far more limited than others. And that's a reasonable opinion to have, really. Every way this is examined, the blame loops around to the legislature, a group of people who need to start doing their ****ing jobs once in awhile.
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On a larger point, I've really started to dislike some of the left's arguments that every time the court disagrees with their political view that there's a nefarious plot behind it. Many conservative decisions are made simply to limit the court's powers, which is a good thing when viewed through that lens. That doesn't mean I don't get irritated when they make a decision like Citizen's United but I understand why they do it. In short, let's stop blaming the courts so often for voluntarily limiting the scope of their own power and start placing more blame on those dip****s in Washington who refuse to pass laws to make the country a better place.
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I think the chance of Roberts voting to overturn Roe v Wade approaches zero. I remember him talking about previous court decisions and how infrequently they should be overturned. It would require direct opposition to a previous ruling to overturn Roe v Wade, which is a tall order that requires a fair amount of mental gymnastics to get through to do it. As for gerrymandering, as much as I WANT to see the court address it, I'm not sure it's the court's job to address it. It's a perfectly sensible stance to believe that it's not the court's job to determine how elections are held. That's a legislative duty and, unfortunately, our legislative entities are mostly broken right now. But that doesn't mean the courts get to jump in and do the legislature's jobs for them. We need to unbreak our legislative system and stop relying on the courts so damned often to clean up the messes those nitwits in Congress leave behind.
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Actually, I think it could play out quite differently. Roberts is ALL ABOUT the legitimacy and legacy of the court and this is HIS court. I can honestly see how he views the Kavanaugh appointment (and Gorsuch, for that matter) is an affront to HIS court and stabilizes it in defense of his legacy. Roberts is not some radical conservative. He cares deeply about the court and its stature in the American system. Maybe he stays the course and keeps doing what he's doing but he didn't stop the ACA from being overturned out of pure legal sensibility. I think he saw something larger, a legacy impact of it. The guy cares about the court and where it's going. I suspect he'll steer it in a far more sensible course than many of us fear.
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Miguel Sano Detained In Dominican Republic
Brock Beauchamp replied to Seth Stohs's topic in Twins Daily Front Page News
Dude, back off. I'm not judging Sano here but defamation includes intentional negligence in the statement. Sano was detained for running over somebody. Maybe he was in the right, maybe he was in the wrong, but... Stop the armchair lawyering. You're not a lawyer. I'm not a lawyer but I'm married to one and it has only made me realize how much I *don't* know about the law. So just ease the hell up. Also, for those ready to crucify Sano... Ease the hell up until you know WTF is going on. Stop playing to your biases. We'll find out more soon enough.
