Brock Beauchamp

Santana had a .400 BABIP that year and pretty much everybody knew he was due to regress because nobody gets that lucky two years in a row. There is nothing to indicate Mejia's rookie campaign was luck-fueled. He posted pretty solid numbers across the board and luck had nothing to do with his roughly league-average performance. And he's not a one-pitch guy. While his fastball was below average (-5.8 runs), his slider was neutral (+0.1 runs) and his curve was pretty good (+1.1 runs). His change certainly needs work, as he was -5.6 runs with it while throwing it only 18% of the time.

I honestly think Mauer would play for the Twins if they gave him $2m. But, given that he has some pride and a respectable agent, he'll probably demand something in the $8-10m range. And if he's performing, I'm totally okay with that. Some things are more important than money and seeing Joe help take another Twins team to the postseason is something I badly want to see happen.

The article mentions individual players. “There’s a reason spring training has more to tell us about teams than individual players. It’s about signal versus noise. For an individual player, any set of 50 plate appearances (in spring training or otherwise) is extremely volatile and doesn’t say much about them individually. But bring together all the plate appearances of the nine players who make up a batting order and the volatility begins to cancel itself out. All of a sudden we have some sense of how good the nine are in aggregate.” Besides, Garver has all of 21 PAs and only three strikeouts. You’re basing a bad spring on that?

I'm going from hazy memory but I recall some articles that crunched the numbers to show that ST stats don't have a strong correlation to regular season stats. Here's an article from 538. There's a modest team correlation but the individual player correlation is negligible. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/spring-training-matters/ "After factoring in the projected performance, a 100-point increase in spring training OPS raises a team’s expected regular-season OPS by 15 points. While that’s not a huge increase, it’s also a much stronger relationship than what we find for individual players, where a hitter whose OPS is 100 points better than expected in the spring improves their expected regular-season OPS by only six points."

His ERA+ was 98, which is pretty much spot-on for a starter, if not a tick or two above average. His FIP was only .15 higher than his ERA IIRC (going from memory). He certainly had his issues, especially length of starts, but he was also a rookie. There's enough to like with Mejia to expect #4/5 numbers in his sophomore season and I don't really see how you can call his 2017 "bad". It was a challenging, but acceptable, season for a rookie prospect who was never that highly regarded in the first place.

Yeah, my point is that I doubt they had clearance for Lynn in the original budget. They even talked about being done with moves before that point, which indicates they didn't have much space left to spend.

Yeah. I suspect the front office had to go to ownership hat in hand to sign Lynn but I doubt Sanchez was even in the discussion.

Exactly. After all, in 2016 I checked a box with the name "Clinton" next to it, even though it caused me considerable intestinal pain to do so. Because the alternative was so much worse. I did not and do not like Clinton for a variety of reasons too long to list here (but the last name is a real sticking point for me) and I did not support her in the primaries... but I'm not going to throw out the baby with the bath water just because I don't get my way 100% of the time.

I've maintained that Nancy Pelosi being in any position of power is a huge mistake and I've been saying that since I first noticed her rise to power in California politics in the 90s and early 2000s. I cannot stand her, she's everything I dislike about partisan politics.

Yeah... I saw a few people on Facebook that lean left who screamed "IT DOESN'T MATTER, BOTH CANDIDATES WERE TERRIBLE". Way to miss the point. A candidate that leans slightly to the left is A LOT better than a far right candidate. Take the modest win and get on with your day. If you get enough modest wins of that kind, you might actually be able to do something, as shocking as that sounds.

Yeah, this is why I generally dislike the goal of "centrism". I'm between the parties, for sure, but my political beliefs haven't actually changed that much in the past decade. I've warmed up to a few government-run ideas like healthcare but that's because the situation changed and I altered my opinions as a result of that change. I don't like the government's ability to manage most things but given how things have spiraled out of control regarding healthcare, is there really another solution anymore? If there is, I'd love to hear it... but as-is all too typical of the modern GOP, they don't really have ideas, just "make it the way it was in the good ol' days" rhetoric that ignores a changing world. The far left has stayed crazy and powerless. It's more of the same, only maybe a little more so than before. But they're still feckless when you get right down to it. They squawk a lot about identity politics, trans rights, and that sort of thing but I was on board with a ton of that stuff back in the 90s and early 2000s when neither party gave a damn. I didn't change my "leave my private life the **** alone" policies, one party just finally agreed with me about it. On the other hand, the far right continues to drift further to the extreme and they've actually gained power and have effectively mobilized over the past couple of decades. They've regressed on gun control. They've become more rabid over abortion laws. They've even tossed around the idea of repealing the 14th amendment, for crying out loud (SERIOUSLY?!?!!?). Now they're going whole-hog on immigration, yet another topic where my opinion literally has not moved an inch since I became a voting adult. And let's not even bring up free trade, one of the spots where I pretty adamantly agreed with the GOP for decades... My politics haven't really moved. They've shifted here and there but I'm basically the same political person I was at 20 years old, I'm just a bit smarter and more nuanced in my opinions to keep up with a world that isn't the same as it was in 1995. What has changed is the GOP going completely off the ****ing rails and moving away from me on almost every political topic. So why would I aim for the center in 2018? It's not, and never has been, who I am as a person. To quote Office Space: "No way, why should I change? He's the one who sucks!"

Except... Mejia wasn’t bad last year.

Well, fewer than half the voters opted for Trump in 2016 and many of those who did are now fat and happy, which means they're less likely to show up in the 2018 midterms. Sure, the old folks and religious voters will always show up so it'll be a battle but do you see the one-and-done Trump supporters showing even half the energy they had in 2016 when their favorite candidate isn't even on the ballot? On the other side of that coin, pretty much every person I know who didn't vote Trump is mad as hell right now, even several of the Libertarians.

Jimmer didn't conclude anything. He began the sentence with "I believe", which is generally a statement of opinion.

It's an okay idea in theory but in practice, it's much harder to line up starts between teams that way.

It’s pretty rare but not unheard of. Paul Molitor had the best four year stretch of his career from age 34 to 37.

The ten day rule still exists for demotions/call-ups, doesn’t it?

Ahh... I looked at the calendar wrong. I thought the team opened against the Pirates but see they open against the Orioles. My mistake. Also, I'll take this time to yet again complain about how much I hate the on/off nature of opening series. The Twins get three of them in a row this season. Ugh.

Dunno. I saw you mention Odorizzi earlier... is there any indication he's not 100%? I've only seem mentions that he's pretty much ready to go. He pitched around 150 innings last season so it's not as if he's rusty. As for Lynn, he's a horse that has over three weeks to get into shape. I don't really see a problem there. Then there's Berrios, who never seems to break down and Gibson, who doesn't seem to have any issues that I'm aware of.

Ah, I missed that Slegers was optioned as well. Thanks for the heads-up. Yeah, meh. I'm not a fan of pruning down the rotation before we close the second week of March. I don't see the point in it.

It was my understanding that teams are generally loathe to push back their best starters early in the season. They want to get a rhythm going and let them get into the flow of a season. I could be wrong about that re: the Twins but that's what I've gleaned from other teams in the past. Besides, we don't even know why Mejia was demoted. Maybe the front office hasn't liked what they've seen thus far and narrowed the race down to Hughes and a guy like Slegers. On its face, this is one move and we don't know how the dominoes fall from this point forward. We assume it's Hughes - and there's a good chance it is - but that's not necessarily the case.

I agree the games matter but do you want to see a guy like Mejia get 20-25 IP in six weeks? For his long term development, you want him pitching every 5-6 days. And that’s where situations like this get difficult. What matters more, 4-5 games in April and May or the development of a guy you want as a contributor for the next six seasons? I don’t think there’s a wrong answer here, it only depends on perspective and priorities.

If Morrison is a legit 30 homer guy, the Twins will pick up his option. Next offseason, it's likely that things return to normal and guys like Morrison are $10-12m players on a one year contract. You can move that guy for something in trade if need be.

From the looks of things, the first time the Twins will need a fifth starter is April 12th. If there's a postponement between April 7-12, they won't need a fifth starter until April 22nd or 23rd. There's a pretty good chance the fifth starter will pitch only three or four times before Santana returns in early to mid May. So, yeah, probably best to let Adalberto get his reps in Rochester and let Hughes flail away out there. edi: I looked at it again... The most the fifth starter needs to pitch - assuming there are zero postponements, a rarity in April - is five times through May 12th or so.

A dumpster fire just got rid of a slightly smaller dumpster fire. Tillerson was more balanced and reasonable than Trump but everything I've read and heard about his management of the State Department is terrible. The department was barely functioning under his "leadership".