Brock Beauchamp

A shoutout to @Peter Labuza, as this piece was mentioned by Provus on today's Twins broadcast!

I wish players were more open about this kind of thing, frankly. We all have preferences and that's fine. I don't begrudge anyone for loving NYC, it's a great place. But as a person who has been there many many times, I'm no longer interested in that kind of lifestyle. To each their own.

Who will win, the Colorado Rockies or Louie Varland? Or maybe more appropriately, who will lose less, the Colorado Rockies or Louie Varland? The moveable object versus the very stoppable force. A matchup for the ages, worthy of Mount Olympus itself.

A soft portion of the schedule is coming again, time to reel off a bunch of wins...

After growing up poor and needing to help his financially struggling parents, Rick Reed made the controversial decision to serve as a replacement player during the 1994-95 player’s strike. He was seemingly blackballed after the strike ended and spent the entire 1996 season with the Norfolk Tide (Triple A, New York Mets). Reed developed a good relationship with Tide manager Bobby Valentine, who was promoted to manage the Mets in 1997. Valentine helped ease Reed back into a clubhouse culture that was slow to accept a "scab", and then his career took off. His 2.89 ERA in 1997 was sixth in the National League. Reed was named an All-Star for the first time in 1998 at age 33, and he would make a second All-Star team in 2001. Between those seasons, he was a reliable control artist for a Mets team that reached the NLCS in 1999 and the World Series in 2000. The biggest moment of his Mets tenure was arguably game 161 of the 1999 season when Reed tossed a three-hit shutout to help New York keep pace with Cincinnati in the National League wild-card race. The two teams would finish tied, and the Mets were able to pull out a game 163 tiebreaker win on the road. Reed also started the Mets' only win of the 2000 World Series, allowing two runs over six innings against the Yankees. Reed posted a 59-36 record during his five seasons in Queens. Dwight Gooden is the only pitcher in Mets history with a higher winning percentage. He also has the third-lowest walks per nine innings in Mets history, trailing Bartolo Colón and Bret Saberhagen. The Twins acquired Reed in the middle of his 2001 All-Star season, sending veteran outfielder Matt Lawton to New York. Minnesota was in a playoff race for the first time in almost a decade, but things fell apart down the stretch. Their five-game AL Central lead at the All-Star break was gone by the end of July, and they finished six games out of first place. It didn’t help that Reed became a deadline dud, posting a 5.19 ERA with the Twins after the deadline. But the Twins playoff drought finally ended in 2002, and Reed was arguably their best pitcher that season. He led the team with 15 wins and 188 innings. His 3.78 ERA was second among those who pitched at least 100 innings, trailing 23-year-old Johan Santana (2.99 ERA in 108.1 IP). Reed led the American League by walking just 1.2 hitters per nine innings and was also eighth in WHIP. He tossed two complete games and completed seven innings in at least 12 of his 32 starts. Reed was especially strong after the All-Star break, posting a 2.88 ERA in 14 second-half starts. Reed got off to a pretty nice start in 2003. His numbers don’t look all that impressive, but an 11-run disaster against the Yankees in April ballooned them. If you remove that start, he would’ve had a 2.93 ERA through the end of May. This sample included a complete-game shutout against the Royals, who had gotten off to a fast start and were in first place when that game took place on May 14. Then, though, Reed was placed on the disabled list with a back injury, and he was never quite the same after returning in late June. He posted a 5.76 ERA from June through August. Ron Gardenhire moved the 38-year-old veteran to the bullpen in September, and he faced just three batters during the ALDS that fall. This ended Reed’s big-league career. He went to spring training on a minor-league deal with the Pirates in 2004, but chose to retire after his back issues from 2003 began to bother him again. Since retiring, Reed has been very involved at Marshall University. This includes a short stint as their pitching coach and a $1-million donation towards a new baseball field in 2019. Years after his career ended, Reed would say that getting traded to the Twins was the day “baseball kinda died” for him and his wife. Reed added, “I wish I could’ve ended my career in New York. When I was traded, I was torn up. I can say it now that I’m not playing. That’s how much we loved New York. Did I compete when I went to Minnesota? Absolutely. But there’s no place like New York.” Reed had been a free agent following the 2000 season and agreed to a three-year deal to stay with the Mets. He was three months into that contract when New York shipped him off to the Twins. NOTES: All statistics from Baseball Reference and Stathead. Most personal information on Rick Reed was taken from the Society for American Baseball Research. The quotes on baseball dying were from a New York Daily News article in 2010. View full player

This umpire is a joke. ABS please

Let's pretend that last series didn't happen. The Pirates are mostly competent nowadays, should be an interesting series.

I hate late start times on a getaway day.

In general, I agree with the idea of what you're posting here but not the reality because you're using Kepler as the baseline. Kepler is bad against lefties but not awful. He also provides quality defense and pretty solid PAs against pitchers on both sides of the rubber. Swap out Kepler for Wallner or Larnach, though. Swapping in Margot for 2-3 PAs sees a significant improvement in both hitting and defense. With that said, I probably would have cut Margot before Julien (though it's close enough that I won't criticize their move too much, either). But that has a lot to do with Margot not playing center field, which is the insurance I wanted to see when they rostered Margot.

In the Twins' case, a short-side platoon makes sense in the outfield. The problem is that Margot is bad against righties and just okay against lefties. If his splits were more extreme, it'd be easier to swallow his lack of performance against righties because you'd be replacing really bad LHP performance from Kepler/Larnach/Wallner/etc with really good performance.

And this is the crux of the matter. The Twins have a decent farm system and it's hard to find those 20-year-old superstars... but they kinda had one in Royce Lewis and he keeps blowing up his body. The Twins have absolutely zero control over that. The first time Lewis blew up, it was the offseason and he slipped on ice. I complained vocally about playing him in center without more experience so I do partially blame them for the second injury. But it was the first injury that prevented him from debuting at a much younger age, which is the point we're talking about here. Couple that with how the Twins draft in the first few rounds and it's no surprise that their only young superstar was the guy they took 1-1 in the draft. Maybe Walker Jenkins has a shot to be that guy but he missed the first two months of this season so that's unlikely as well.

Well, here we go again.

There is a minor controversy but no one I've seen is seriously pushing for Chourio to be demoted. The Brewers offense is rolling and giving Jackson some playing time still seems like a good idea.

Okay, listen. I run multiple baseball sites for multiple teams. The stuff you're comparing here is apples and oranges. First, the Twins tend to draft top-heavily on college athletes. That basically eliminates any draftee debuting before age 22-23. Second, Lewis literally blew up his leg just when the Twins were thinking he could become a key piece in the coming year. Third, Lewis still debuted as a 22-year-old after blowing up aforementioned leg. Every once in awhile, a team gets a Jackson Chourio and that player is literally MLB-worthy as a teenager. It doesn't happen often. When it does, huzzah! That's amazing! But for the bulk of MLB players, especially on a team that goes top-heavy in drafting collegiate players, it's not going to happen often. Are the Twins good right now? Yes. Do they have good players on the farm? Yes. So what exactly is the problem here?

Charles (Chili) Davis had a long and illustrious career in Major League Baseball; drafted by the San Francisco Giants in the 11th round of the 1977 MLB Draft, he debuted in 1981 and played with the Giants through the 1987 season. He moved to Anaheim and played with the California Angels for two years before landing at the part we care about, the 1991 Minnesota Twins. Davis, coming off a solid 1990 season with California (114 OPS+), signed a two-year, $4.5 million deal with Minnesota in January of 1991. The Twins, coming off a last-place finish in 1990 but maintaining some pieces from the core of the championship-winning 1987 squad along with some promising farmhands, signed Davis (along with Jack Morris) in an attempt to return to relevancy. Davis did all the Twins asked of him and more, posting a 141 OPS+ with 29 home runs in the 1991 season. He switch-hit in the middle of the resurgent Twins lineup, leading the team in several categories on his way to a 3.3 rWAR as the primary designated hitter. In the postseason, Davis was just as crucial to the Twins success as he had been during the regular season. In the ALCS, he went 5-for-17 with two doubles against the Toronto Blue Jays and then 4-for-18 with two home runs against the Atlanta Braves in the World Series. In game two of the World Series, his two-run home run pushed the Twins to a narrow 3-2 victory over the Braves. Davis stayed with the Twins in 1992 and continued his productive ways, posting a 130 OPS+ over 529 plate appearances. Many of the balls he saw fly over the fence in 1991 became outs or doubles in 1992, as his home run count dropped from 29 in 1991 to just 12 in 1992. He recovered value by raising his batting average by roughly 20 points and raising his on-base percentage to a near-elite .386 that season. 1993 saw Davis return to the California Angels where he struggled for one year. Move the calendar to 1994 and Davis resumed smashing the ball, posting a 148 OPS+ in 1994 and a 146 OPS+ in 1995. Davis continued his career with the Angels, made a brief stop in Kansas City with the Royals, and landed in New York as a roleplayer for the re-emerging Yankees teams of the late-90s. Chili Davis retired after the 1999 season. View full player

LOL at everything about that "double".

narrator: we did not see this

Oh hey, so MLB didn’t totally screw up the Roku thing. If you have MLB.tv, the game is not blacked out in-market.

Great win last night, let's do it again.

I recently changed the blog feature system so that the most recent blog is promoted around the site until it is replaced by another blog. All of the user blogs should be shared on our social channels as well so they're definitely getting eyeballs. I haven't checked in recently but most blogs have at least a couple of hundred readers per entry. Some spike up into the thousands.

I'm looking to beef up our caretaker content across all three sites and I'm looking to some of the independent statheads from FanGraphs, BP, etc. to fill this need. So while we likely couldn't get an FG staffer, some of their freelance peeps are definitely on my radar. Whose stuff are you reading consistently and think they might make a good addition to Twins Daily?

Ken Rosenthal in his recent roundup for The Athletic, mentioned that it's likely the Miami Marlins will be looking to deal pitchers at this trade deadline. They already moved Luis Arraez to the San Diego Padres early in the season and with new President of Baseball Operations Peter Bendix tasked with rebuilding a painfully depleted Marlins farm system, it's likely he will use the trade deadline to build out the farm system. Three names mentioned are starting pitchers Jesus Luzardo and Braxton Garrett while reliever Tanner Scott is also likely to be dealt. Scott is on an expiring contract this season but starters Luzardo (free agent after 2026 season) and Garrett (free agent after 2028 season) are long-term pieces that would require a hefty prospect price. While it's questionable whether the Twins will be in the starter market at the trade deadline, their volatile bullpen performance could make Scott an appealing trade pickup. View full rumor