Brock Beauchamp

Chocolate milk stout, for sure.

Just checking in but the Miguel Sano we're railing on is the one with the .925 OPS for the season, right? Sure, he's looked bad at times. He also has all of 41 PAs on the season and the weather has been utter crap in almost every game he has played.

Never mind that Santana has started 80 games for the Twins and compiled a 123 ERA+ in the process. Sure, he might (likely will) regress from 2017. That doesn't mean he's going to implode because he has a long way to drop before it becomes an implosion. Hell, getting eight weeks off to start the season could actually end up being good for the guy. People are writing him off and I'm not sure why.

Well, this is fun.

Oh, same here. It looks like he’s pressing for sure. But it could be six of one, half dozen of the other. He’s struggling in the cold but also pressing to live up to expectations. It’s so early and there are likely multiple factors in play. I don’t think he’ll be as good as last season but it’s way too early to predict where he will land.

It's also possible he plans to move into the Senate. Wisconsin has a seat up for grabs this election. Personally, I hope he just goes away.

I find it curious that so many Minnesotans are shrugging off the fact that cold weather bothers some people more than others. Maybe it's because we're used to it but surely we all have those friends who absolutely diiiiieeeee whenever it drops below 20 degrees. This past winter, I was at the cabin splitting wood in -16 degree weather (not wind chill, straight up -16) and was pretty okay for about an hour or so... some of my friends would have been unable to function at that temperature. Some people can shrug off the cold (obviously, Verlander is one of those guys), some guys can't (it appears Odorizzi and Kuechel have more problems with it). And if there's a crazy-stupid variable out there that could easily be impacting several players' performances on the field, I don't know why it should be dismissed out of hand.

Actually, I think this stat can have real legs if implemented correctly. We now have exit velocity, launch angle, hang time, and a myriad of stats that can give us a pretty good indication whether a player's contact should reach a glove or grass. That's a lot more telling (obviously, SSSS abounds right now) than eyeballing "well, he had a .287 BABIP last season..." and trying to determine if he's over or underperforming based solely on what he did in previous seasons.

Oh, I totally agree on the bunting. Just pointing out that whether or not he's mashing the ball on April 10th doesn't tell us much about his future performance.

My quick and dirty rule is that if it’s still early enough for a player to have just one monster game (3-4, 2B, HR, BB) and normalize his stats overnight, it’s too damned early to worry about his early season performance.

Ryan is pretty bad but I find him way more tolerable than people like Cruz and McConnell. I disagree with him but he occasionally flashed signs of having principles. Unfortunately, that Paul Ryan all but disappeared after the 2016 election. Then again, expecting ANYONE to rein in the idiot brigade that is the current House may be an impossible expectation.

Yes, everyone plays in the same weather but not all guys play the same in cold weather. Just ask Dallas Keuchel. We're seeing crazy (mostly of the bad variety) performances on a near-nightly basis. Yeah, it's disappointing that Rosario isn't playing better... but lots of guys are all over the place. Some are getting away with it (Odorizzi), some are not. Wake me when the weather warms and these players shake off the rust. Then we'll be able to accurately evaluate where they're going as a player. Eleven months ago, there were posters on this forum who literally wanted to see Rosario waived from the team. How did those hot takes turn out after all the dust had settled?

I also thought he had the chance to improve based on his more advanced metrics but after getting burned by past Mauer false starts, I refused to truly believe it could happen.

The Twins have played most of their games in temps below 40 degrees, we’re nine games into the season, and the team is 5-4. Pump the brakes. There’s a lot of season left to play and right now, it’s impossible to separate who struggles in the cold, who is just off to a slow start, and who we should be worried about.

Mauer is rocking a ridiculously high BABIP (.429) but his K rate is just 10%. It's really early and the weather has been terrible but is the old Joe slowly coming back? I refused to let myself believe he'd improve upon last season but maybe it's possible...

They’ve had it listed that way for ages and it’s wrong.

Oh, I'm not saying anyone else needs to share my viewpoint. I'm only saying it's early in a season with some legendarily awful weather. I'm going to give pretty much everyone a pass for these first couple of weeks.

Rosario sure had a couple of plays that looked ugly but in cold weather with wind (at least there was a fair amount at my house a few miles away), I'm not going to get too down on him. And in a 0-0 game where the runner scores with a hit, I'm not going to beat him up for going after that ball and then realizing he couldn't catch it and trying to defensively block it from going for extra bases (he failed, of course). All in all, Rosario didn't really change the game defensively. If the Twins don't score, they can't win. He had a pretty bad game but so did several of his teammates.

An easier schedule later in the year with fewer make-up games that wear down a team through the dog days of the season. I'm only talking about a couple of weeks of day games here, which comes out to 3-4 weekday home games for each team once you factor in off days and scheduled day games like the Opener. It's just not that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things. By April 15th most seasons, the weather has cleared up enough where it's not much of an issue. The night games might be brisk but they likely won't be "no ****ing way am I going outside" cold. Plus, two weeks gives you +20 minutes day light in the evening.

Dunno, Minnesotans are usually over-the-top excited to get outside in April, especially during the day. I know loads of people who take days off to do stuff in spring and catching a baseball game is only a half day off work. All in all, I think day games cost MLB teams money but I don't think it costs them much, especially early in the season when it's still pretty cold at night and gets dark relatively early. Does anyone here hang outside during your typical early- to mid-April evening/night (excluding the **** fest of weather we're getting right now)? I usually scurry inside in the evening but love to be out and about during the day when it's warmer and the sun is in the sky. Minneapolis has an average April high of 57 (quite nice, all considering) and an average low of 37 (no thanks). Now, it's not going to hit the low during game time but mid-40s is still pretty uncomfortable to be outside at night exposed to the wind, whereas 50+ during the day is pleasant enough.

Heh, fair enough.

It... never left? Apple has produced Macs from 1984 through today.

I have fewer issues with April home games than I do April home night games. Scheduling is hard and MLB has to walk a tightrope to keep it relatively fair to all teams (the Twins coasting with a 60/40 home/road split in August and September isn't exactly fair to warm weather teams). I grudgingly accept that MLB wants a gap between the home opener and the next game for the sake of profits. But what I don't get is stuff like tonight's game... it should be a 1-3pm start time. Not only does it almost guarantee warmer weather but it allows flexibility for precipitation and pushing the game back a few hours if need be. The Twins are here to make money but the small pittance they make by scheduling night games this early in the season seems like going one step too far to maximize profits for little reward.

Economics plays a significant role in our current problems, without a doubt... but you read that article from a few weeks ago that showed how black people were less upwardly mobile but far more downwardly mobile than white people. At that point, there's obviously a racial component in all of this and it also plays a significant role, one that should not be diminished nor ignored. Personally, I'd argue that saying that economic component is most important is letting the tail wag the dog; many of the economic issues stem from racial problems going back generations, such as home buying restrictions and corralling people of color into manufactured ghettos (which lead to lower property taxes, which lead to worse schools, which lead to less business investment and innovation, which lead to the next generation being mired in the same muck as the generation before them and creating an inescapable cycle). There are many people in this nation who want to have this discussion and I certainly don't mean to include you in that group but it's almost impossible to deny that there's a significant segment of this nation with absolutely no interest in having this discussion in a meaningful manner. Look at how social media and conservative talking heads blew the **** up over Black Lives Matter (talk about the most benign phrase ever, yet it was somehow twisted into something horrible) and the sheer audacity of football players quietly taking a knee in protest of inequality. If you protest in groups, people scream and complain that you're in their way. If you protest quietly by taking a knee, those same people scream and complain that you're dishonoring (insert badly thought out talking point here). And at that point, how can you claim those people are coming to the table with the intent of having an honest discussion?

The Mac was 1984.