Brock Beauchamp

Sure, but we're talking about a new front office. My point is that the money is available and it's the front office's decision how to spend that money. The owner controls payroll but generally doesn't get involved with how that payroll is allocated.

They did it for Mauer seven years ago.

How so? The Twins weren't particularly good in the second half of the season, the rest of the league was just... bad. The Twins had a very good August but weren't exactly lighting the world on fire in September, playing .500 ball for the month. A couple of hot streaks by breakout players fueled that modest run in August but let's not pretend that the Twins were some excellent team and the front office completely missed on the talent that was just waiting to break out in the fifth month of the season. The front office hedged their bets and were wrong because one can't predict random players like Escobar going ape**** or that Buxton would finally figure it out. These things happen with young teams and you can't predict when or where they will happen. What matters is how you react, which makes this offseason vitally important.

In free agency, I don't play the middle ground. I go hard at Otani and Darvish or I go for reclamation starters and good relievers. I believe the right pickup in the rotation and a couple of good relievers drastically change the outlook of this team in 2018. I leave the offense alone. Your power RH bat is Sano or this team struggles. Like Buxton, the young players carry the day. If trades are available, I explore my options but I don't loot the farm for a two year guy. I don't think the Twins' window is 2018. Maybe 2019 is the first time they go deep in the postseason but I think 2019-2021 is the real window. Looting the farm today for a guy who only gets you to 2019 isn't my first choice.

What I most care about is whether the stream is ****ty AM radio again. It shouldn't be but the tech on this kind of stuff is usually out of the box and quite a bit behind where it should be.

I still can't believe the Twins will sign Darvish but that's because Falvey is from Cleveland and that's not how they operate over there. On the other hand, Levine is from Texas and that is how they operate over there.

Again, endorsements are not a big deal. No active MLB player cracked the top 50 athletes. Posey came in first at #51 at $3m. http://opendorse.com/blog/2016-highest-paid-athlete-endorsers/ I suspect Otani will earn the bulk of his money from Japan no matter where he goes.

Endorsements simply aren’t a big deal in baseball. It shouldn’t be a large factor in his decision.

My wife loved it, I thought it was decent. I struggle with most network TV stuff nowadays unless it's stellar like Parks & Rec.

The Twins last offseason wasn't very good if we're going solely by players acquired. They did more in the front office and coaching staff than the on-field product, which was also the right thing to do. But still, one flippin' reliever would have been nice. Overall, I was mostly satisfied with a quiet offseason as the new front office began restructuring. They shouldn't repeat that lack of action this offseason, though.

Trump could be found in the Oval Office eating the corpse of a baby and it wouldn't surprise me at this point.

1. Absolutely. That is without question in my mind. If you murder someone or rape someone, you don't get therapy and we call it a day. You face incarceration, though how we incarcerate is really the problem in my eyes. I firmly believe in min-max sentencing guidelines, as it creates some balance in a wildly unbalanced system where race, gender, and socio-economic status play as much or more of a role in the sentencing as the actual crime. 2. Different forms of incarceration are a good place to start, with a minimization of "incarceration" and a maximization of "rehabilitation" to varying degrees based on the offender and/or crime. We make only the most feeble attempt at rehabilitation and preparing a criminal to face the world as a productive citizen upon release and it's only gotten worse over the past couple of decades thanks to privatization of the prison system. Look around the world and choose models that seem to work best and then emulate those models. The Scandinavian systems seem to be a good place to start.

No one has even come close to saying this. Pseudo, nor myself, are arguing that we replace jail with a group therapy session where everyone sits around a fire and sings kumbaya until everybody gets better and decides crime doesn't pay. But more to my point, what needs to be redefined is "jail time". Scandinavian countries, I believe Norway in particular, have worked to change prison from "only punishment" to "punishment with a focus on rehabilitation". One of them even has prisons without locks on the cell doors. And, whaddya know, it works. "Jail time" is fine with me. What's not fine is the American definition of what a prison system is and does, which results in extremely high rates of recidivism at an extremely high cost to the taxpaying public. As for a life sentence for rape... if you don't see why that perpetuates a bad idea we've double- and triple-downed on already with little to no result, I don't really know what to say. The justice system *should* try to analyze the personal and societal impact of crime objectively, along with the potential for rehabilitation, and pass sentencing based on those criteria. Upping the sentence on a crime you severely dislike personally doesn't actually fix any problems, it just makes you feel good... in fact, it can actually damage any real progress to be made because you've "solved" the problem and moved on to other things, even though it's not actually solved at all. Sexual assault does not exist on an island within the individual perpetuator. It's as much a mental health and societal issue as it is personal. Yet you only wish to address the personal aspect of the crime and expect the desired outcome to be achieved (and you wish the justice system to remain as currently constituted, it seems, as you haven't mentioned anything but changing of sentencing). Yet we have mountains of studies that show increased sentences don't actually reduce crime, but we have a fair amount of evidence that retooling the justice system actually does.

It seems the reason Pseudo appears to be talking down to you is because you're firing bad, old ideas from the hip and covering your ass by labeling them as just "an opinion". You don't need peer-reviewed studies. There are European countries practicing what we're talking about here with far greater success rates than the US. Eh... "far greater success" is understating things. The results are so comically lop-sided that arguments such as yours should be dismissed out of hand. We're doing things wrong because we're already imprisoning anyone and everyone; doubling down on that idea goes against pretty much every rational and researched study I've read over the past 20 years, never mind the actual on-the-ground results we see elsewhere in the world. You literally said rape should result in a life sentence without the option of parole. Don't pretend you're taking some nuanced stance on the topic.

Agreed. I watched Hunter a lot and he was a fantastic centerfielder but didn't have the speed of Buxton, nothing close to it. And I don't trust defensive metrics from that time in baseball, especially the outliers (I still have difficulty believing many of the outliers in the modern game).

I hope the Twins are feeling out almost every young, cost-controlled arm on rebuilding teams but I don't like the idea of offering up a significant chunk of the farm system for a reliever. A starter? Sure, those are hard to find in free agency. Relievers, less so. If you overpay for a bum reliever, you're out maybe $25-30m over 3-4 seasons. Not a big deal in the grand scheme of things.

There have been rumors swirling about this for several years. I hoped they weren’t true. Sigh. At least he has enough decency not to back away and/or make excuses for it. He apologized and showed what appears to be actual contrition. When is forgiveness appropriate? Not making a suggestion, legitimately asking. https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2017/11/10/entertainment/louis-ck-apology/index.html

Hotdish. Passive-aggressive behavior. A Delta Skymiles card. Post-It notes.

You think about it a little if you’re picking at the top of the round (which not only is a higher pick but means your team was awful). An 85 win team should not care much if they want the player in question.

Yep, was going from foggy memory and didn't double check the stat lines before posting. I thought Darvish had pitched ~150 innings the years he was injured, not 100 in one of the years. That elevates his per-inning performance considerably and vaults him into the "close enough that I don't care to argue whether he's an ace pitcher" category.

We've wandered back into the "what defines an ace?" argument! HIGH FIVES EVERYBODY Seriously, though, I think we've clearly established that the board will never agree on what defines an ace pitcher.

Impressive. Six out of eight guys in the top half of the rankings.

1. Because Dozier didn't deserve this particular award. That's not a knock on Brian, as he had an excellent season. 2. A guy who at least deserved consideration, Mauer, didn't even make the finalist cut. I'm glad for Brian but I wish this award was based more on defensive merit and not reputation and/or offense.

I view it differently. I felt the story grew in intensity as the kids are maturing. Though the episode with Eleven in Chicago was pretty meh. I really enjoyed the rest, particularly the kids with Steve. Besides, isn’t this entire show about tropes and cliches?

Sigh. Okay. Whatever. The gold glove continues to be a farce of an award. But congrats to Brian. He had a hell of a season.