Brock Beauchamp

That was the intent of my statement. If the 2017 Twins win 82 games, the front office will have a pretty solid idea what attendance will look like in 2018, particularly the first half of the season. That's the time to open the checkbook and push for higher 2018-2019 attendance (particularly 2019 attendance due to the seasonal lag), not the other way around.

I meant to use expectations and future attendance, not a reverse correlation. Front offices should have a pretty good idea what to expect in attendance with each coming season. The in-season variation seems to be pretty small based on wins and losses, particularly early in the season.

Sure, it lags but the front office knows that better than we do. If a team is on the cusp of contention, the logical move is to push them further toward the front of the pack via free agency and spending. It's the smart move both competitively and financially. Do you want to stall out at 2.3m attendees or push toward 2.7m? Never mind the added windfall from actually making the postseason and playing games. And given the Twins current payroll, they have plenty of space to add money and still remain profitable, all the while creating a better financial environment going forward (because if we count the lag year, we should also count the inevitable boon year where a bad team sees high attendance).

It's possible he's still in that range and his BABIP is unsustainably high but there's more going on with Gordon than just getting hits. His walks are back up to an acceptable level (9.3%) but his K rate has held close to steady (19.8%, up a couple of points over last season). But the real difference is the power. Now, he's coming out of the FSL so we should expect a power surge but Gordon's ISO has jumped from .095 to .185 at the same time he made a significant jump in talent level, as he's now playing in AA at just 21 years old. Last season, Gordon had 493 PAs with 23 2B, 6 3B, 3 HR. This season, Gordon has 162 PAs with 8 2B, 5 3B, 3 HR. He's on pace to add 50% to his XBH total and more of those XBH are going for 3+ bases. That's the kind of trend you expect and want to see with a lean 21 year old player. All he did was smack doubles last season. This season, more of those doubles are turning into triples or leaving the park. Time will tell whether this holds but there are reasons to be optimistic.

The ideal situation is to move Dozier after the season (provided the Twins stay in it this season, ruling out a deadline deal) and keeping the middle infield open for 2018. Let Polanco and Gordon fight over who gets short and second. I don't really care who wins, only that the best defender get the premium position.

Good news for sure. I missed that, thanks.

I think payroll will be linked to attendance. If the Twins start winning and fans start showing up in greater numbers, I suspect the Pohlads will open the checkbook because it's the smart business decision. Last season, attendance dropped under 2m for the first time since Target Field opened. If a winning baseball team gets you back to 2.3m, it makes all the sense in the world to drop some money in free agency, build a legit winner, and try to get that attendance back up over 2.5m the following season. And then 2.7m. Etc etc.

I don't think that was the case. The Angels don't really give a damn about money but their farm system is laughably bad. I suspect they had to (unwillingly) take on Nolasco as part of the deal. Even getting Nolasco for free is a downgrade when you give up Santiago in return. It's possible the Twins could have moved another prospect instead of Meyer but if I was the Angels, I would have absolutely demanded a prospect in the deal or there was no reason for them to make the move at all.

I'd like to see them aim a bit higher than that. The Twins payroll is really low and Mauer comes off the books after 2018. Sano, Rosario, Kepler, et al won't get significant money until 2020 or so. That should give the Twins an opportunity dive into $100m waters to pick up a capable free agent pitcher. Given the arms in the system, the Twins *should* be able to backfill the 4/5 rotation spots internally. I'd like to see them aim for a 2/3 in free agency.

Sure, but half the lineup is already 25-and-under and there are some options to fill one or two more of those spots (first base, for example). And the one spot that might open via trade - second base - has a guy tearing up Chattanooga at shortstop. The lineup doesn't need any help because the help has already arrived. But the pitching staff, well, there's Berrios and a few good bullpen arms coming. That's great to have but looking at the roster, it's not likely to be enough.

It's easy to look at each draft pick and say "yeah, I get why they did that and lots of teams passed on Player X" but ultimately, the fact the Twins haven't landed on a successful starter draft pick since Berrios is incredibly disappointing. And frankly, I'm not even sure it was a bad pick as much as I question the development process of pitchers in this organization. If Stewart was brought up in the Pirates organization would he be having the same problems? Dunno. The guy certainly has the stuff to succeed and I have no idea why he can't put it together. And if Stewart looked like a promising #3 starter on his way to Minnesota (or already here), that's suddenly not a bad pick at all. Not the ceiling you'd like to see from that high in the draft but any time you get a capable starter, you're doing okay for yourself with a pick. It's really hard to identify when/where the Twins went wrong but it's apparent they've gone astray somewhere in the process.

I suspect that Molitor, like the other coaches, is being given more quality information from the front office. We've always known Paul is a smart baseball guy but he's not a modern front office guy. He has neither the time nor ability to crunch numbers and follow cutting edge trends in the game. Someone needs to provide him that information and I suspect the new front office is doing a much better job of getting him what he needs. Though it's likely he's becoming a better manager as well, I simply think most of the philosophy change is information-driven. In a recent article from MLB, Allen talked about the new information being given him and how it helps him do his job. It's reasonable to think Molitor is getting similar information to better help him do his job.

Notice I specifically said rotation arms. I don't really understand the bullpen promotion strategy but the Twins have promising bullpen arms, I'm just not sure what they're doing with them right now. But bullpens can be fixed a lot more easily than a rotation and the Twins rotation is a combination of old, mediocre, and ineffective. That's a big problem going forward. Mejia and Berrios need to step up in a big way because there's no help for 2017 behind those two arms. Maybe Romero and Gonsalves enter the equation in 2018 but I'm not particularly bullish on them, either. Having a rotation that averages 6.1 innings instead a rotation that averages 5.1 innings over the course of a season does wonders for making the bullpen look better. You're essentially eliminating full seasons from your two worst relievers (obviously, those two will still get work so it's more of a split between your worst 3-4 relievers but still, it's easier to build a pen when you don't need to roll out your sixth worst guy in the seventh inning twice a week).

Pretty much this. What I find most depressing is that the position players are thriving - Gordon, Wade, et al - while the rotation arms are largely stalling out. Given the 25-man roster, it'd be preferable the opposite was true (if I had to choose one or the other).

Well, this is what I hope to see from Buxton. He's going to have his cold streaks as pitchers adjust to his adjustments. He's been striking out too much again over the past week so seeing him go 1-3 with a homer, sacrifice, and strikeout is something of a good sign. What's going to kill Buxton is his 0-for-15 with eight strikeout stretches. If he can turn those cold streaks into 2-for-15 with one XBH and six strikeouts, that will go a long way toward making him a competent hitter.

I don't know why Burdi isn't in Rochester but I totally get why he's not in Minnesota. He's still under 15 IP after not really pitching last year. If the front office's plan is to move him directly from Chattanooga to Minnesota relatively soon, I won't have any complaints. If they keep him in Chattanooga for another two weeks then promote him to Rochester for another 4-6 weeks, I won't be a fan of that idea.

Which is why I'd strongly consider promoting Burdi directly from AA.

The fifth starter doesn't matter as much as the first. Teams regularly skip the fifth position so the guy in that slot doesn't pitch as often... and the fifth rotation spot is often a revolving door. If your best pitcher gets injured, your replacement automatically slides into the fifth spot. The fifth spot in a rotation is usually pretty fluid.

95% of the time, I think Berardino is the best beat writer covering the Twins. The other 5% of the time, unfortunately, is stuff like this.

It's pretty hard to say they've chosen the comic fans when the movies regularly gross the domestic product of a small nation. I actually attend comic cons, lots of them. The overwhelming majority of people at "comic cons" don't give a damn about comics but they love the characters in film and animation. Because Rocket and Groot are fun. The more ridiculous they are, the more fun they become.

Hahah, fair enough. I've watched most of the FF movies and while I understand why people like them, they're not really my thing. They're pretty well done for what they are, just not my thing.

I phrased that badly. A few of those guys could become real starters. The only guy I see with real promise is Romero, as defined by "a real chance of becoming above average for a sustained amount of time".

I haven't weighed in on this - quite intentionally - but here's my take on it. The tweets were badly worded, as are many tweets when 140 characters are the limitation on a conversation. It's one of the reasons I generally dislike Twitter. Good for snapshots and link-sharing, bad for nuanced conversation and topics... Hell, not even bad. Twitter is absolutely terrible at nuance. Ignoring what I know from internal conversations, I will not try to glean Parker's intent from those tweets. It could have been an observation, it could have been a bit more nefarious than that. BUT, Parker later said he wasn't trying to suggest that Berrios was doing something wrong. So I'll take him at his word on that. That should end the conversation, IMO. Where this all went wrong is Berardino's article. Notice the quote of "pine tar" by Santana. Where the hell did that come from? Parker never said anything of the sort. He never mentioned anything other than a "dark spot". I believe this was an ill-advised tweet from Parker. He should have been more clear from the beginning if observation was his goal. But I feel the real problem here is Berardino. Did he contact Parker and attempt to clarify the tweet? No. He ran into the Twins clubhouse and started escalating the situation. A dark spot becomes cheating. Cheating becomes pine tar. Now, Parker is doing everything but accusing Berrios of going all Joe Niekro out on the mound, throwing a file as an umpire approaches him. So who here was trying to "raise their profile"? It sure doesn't seem like Parker to me. He made a mistake, IMO, the scale of which is certainly debatable. But he's not the one who transformed this into a full-blown cluster****.

Personally, I was impressed with how hard Gunn has pushed the "families are built, not born" theme throughout the first two Guardians movies. The first film gently pushed the idea but the second film pushed hard in that direction with every character, though in quite different ways. I think it was quite a feat to work every character into that theme, even though it made the film bog down a bit in the middle. It's rare to see a trilogy push one theme in that manner, particularly a theme outside typical blockbuster fare. This is, of course, assuming that theme will continue in the third film. There was a surprising amount of subtext in the film considering its comic book, popcorn movie overtures.

Based on the numbers, he looks like an extremely rounded hitter. I always thought that would be the case with Gordon, but I thought he'd be a .750-.775 rounded hitter, not an .850 rounded hitter.