Brock Beauchamp

I think there's a giant middle area between these two points where Buxton can reside comfortably. I don't want Byron to become Ichiro. He's bigger and stronger than that. I also don't want to see Byron swing out of his shoes constantly. He can shorten his swing and take a more consistent approach at the plate without becoming a slap hitter.

I think it's quite rational. Is Park measurably better than Vargas? Hell, is he measurably better than Palka? And both of those guys are on the 40-man roster. Now, if you want to call the Twins crazy for not having Vargas on the roster, you'll get no argument from me on that.

Well, it kinda seems everyone is right to me. Buxton is having huge problems right now. He's also played only a dozen games. If Buxton hadn't shown windmill tendencies in the past, I'd chalk this up to a horrific start and that's that. But this isn't new to Buxton. He's done this before. And we should be really concerned about it happening over and over again. On the flip side of that coin, he's begun to strike out less in recent games. He looks a bit more cohesive at the plate. If he keeps trending in that direction, he should begin to come around. And given how early it is in the season, if he has three consecutive good games, this problem fades from memory in a hurry.

Sure, Buxton and Mauer have question marks but people are concerned about Rosario. Why? It's fine to show emotion and want players to succeed. What I find maddening is watching people who have been baseball fans for a decade or longer gnashing their teeth over a dozen games. What an exhausting way to live. Yes, I'm concerned about Buxton. I'm concerned about Mauer. I'm watching Rosario closely... but man, it's 14 games. If Rosario has two good games, he jumps above his career OPS. If Buxton or Mauer have two good games, their numbers are suddenly respectable. Baseball is a long, grueling season. I'll ride the ups and downs but I won't let them control me. I also won't wave the Hector Santiago flag loud and proud for the same reason. I'm glad he's off to a good start but he's still Hector-freakin-Santiago.

Yeah, he has raised his BABIP 90 points in two games. Unsurprisingly, his OPS is now at a "terrible but not Buxtonly tragic" .504, up a full 110 points in two days. This is why we shouldn't flail about and gnash our teeth less than 10% of the way through the season. If Rosario goes 3-4 with a homer and a double tonight, his OPS jumps 200 points and we're close to being back at his career number again. Yawn.

Yeah, you don't cut 25-and-under centerfielders when your starter is a 23 year old centerfielder who can't hit. Oh, hell, that's still not right. Here's a better version: you don't cut 25-and-under centerfielders That's better.

So you want to cut a 25 year old center field-caliber defender with a career 95 OPS+ because he had a bad month to start the season. And you want to replace this player with... Ben Paulsen? Utter madness. (fun fact for you kids at home: Eddie Rosario has both a higher career WAR and OPS+ than Ben Paulsen)

Say "half fast", well, fast.

My overarching point is that it's hard to reserve 40-man space for three players who profile so similarly (and not in a good way). Give them their swings in logical order and discard each as they fail. Then add another similar guy to replace the failing player and try again.

Garver is interesting but he's hitting 350 OPS points over his career numbers in only 25 PAs. I'll just wait this one out and see what happens before I consider him ready to face MLB pitching.

Oh, sure, I didn't mean to conclude that Santiago is suddenly a #1 or even #2 pitcher, only that using FIP has never been an accurate measure of his value as a pitcher. He'll probably settle somewhere near his career numbers: a 4-ish ERA and close to a 5-ish FIP, give or take half a run. Or he could implode spectacularly. I don't have much faith in the guy. At any rate, right now he looks a lot more like the guy the Twins traded for than the guy who pitched for the team in the second half of 2016.

Some of Santiago's peripherals are concerning but he's another situation - an inverse Nolasco - where FIP is failing to account for something in the makeup of the player. Santiago's career FIP is one full run higher than his ERA in 733 innings across three different teams. At some point, we need to conclude that FIP just plain wrong about some players.

I just don't see a scenario where the Twins call up Park when they have Vargas and Palka already on the 40 man roster. Why shuffle the roster when you have similar guys with equally large questions already at your disposal? Give Vargas his shot and don't hesitate to cut him if the results aren't good. Then move on to other guys with question marks.

I'd keep him as a reliever and not think twice about it. If the rest of the rotation implodes and there are no acceptable options anywhere in the org, reconsider.

His plate appearances weren't awful last night, they were simply unsuccessful. He took a few too many pitches in the zone but that's probably what he needs to do right now. He made good contact in his first plate appearance, tried an ill-fated (but I'd argue decent) bunt attempt in his second, made mediocre contact in his third, and bad contact in his fourth. If Buxton has more nights like last night, he'll start to come around. I'm not looking for a 3-4 night right now (though that'd be nice), I'm just looking for him to start taking pitches and make contact more often. This problem won't go away in a single at-bat.

Byron Buxton did not swing and miss at a pitch last night. That's promising. Since April 12th, he has 20 PAs and 6 SO. Still too high but at least it appears he's making adjustments (and DickBert said last night that he worked with Rowson during his day off). So hopefully the Twins understand the problem and are working to correct it.

I'm not trying to be pedantic about it, I find the topic interesting and worth discussion. Say a pitcher throws a 95mph fastball. Say that fastball reaches the plate traveling 90mph. That's 132 feet per second. Given the "average" human frame rate capability of ~60fps, that means the ball is traveling 2.2 feet per "frame" in the typical human's mind. Now, obviously, elite athletes are not typical human beings. It's likely they see the ball better and/or their brain "refreshes" more quickly than a typical human. But, still, that's a lot of distance between light refreshes. We're talking about the brain getting a maximum of ~3 refreshes as the ball travels the final five feet to the plate. Couple that with the fact the ball, as it approaches the plate, is crossing a hitter's vision makes it even more difficult to track. It's hard to track something moving that quickly in front of you because, as it forces head and eye movement laterally, that's another issue in itself. I'm not sure it's even physically possible to track a ball to the bat, though that does little to undermine Reynolds' overall point. A good swing with proper form is never going to hurt a batter, especially one struggling as badly as Buxton. I wonder how much this has in common with the motorcycling lesson: look where you want to go. If you're looking down over your front wheel, your movements are herky-jerky, inaccurate, and reactive instead of proactive. If you keep your head up and looking toward where you want to travel, your body naturally reacts to where your head is pointed and follows. The body's reaction is instinctual to what the head position is telling it. The link between our eyes and body is a funny thing and is far more nuanced and deeply ingrained than we often realize. In that context, keeping your head down and looking toward(ish) the ball makes sense. It could give your body a loose framework of what you want it to do and letting the body do the work for you without the eyes (and higher conscious brain) having to override a default reaction.

Tonkin definitely goes and Breslow is probably next on the list but I'm not totally sold on that.

A perfect world sees the following: Adrianza replace Santana Vargas replace Tonkin That's the optimal roster right now, IMO. I'd consider replacing Gibson with Berrios and probably sliding Kyle to the bullpen, but I'm not sure who I'd bump off the roster for him.

Maybe that's the case but we're talking about a 25 year old with 875 MLB PAs and a .720 OPS versus a 27 year old with 1325 MLB PAs and a .655 OPS. Aaron Hicks' chances of becoming better than Eddie Rosario are pretty slim, even if Rosario has some warts. Rosario has age, experience, and on-field performance on his side.

Yeah, I think this is more of a universal thing than a Twins thing but it seems pretty common (less now than a decade ago though).

It has to be Vargas. Grossman is good, Mauer is bad, and the Twins need some help in both the outfield and at first base. Vargas checks all those boxes or allows others to check those boxes if he rotates into the lineup. I don't like the idea of losing Adrianza but both Escobar and Polanco look good this season. I'm surprisingly unconcerned about the left side of the infield right now.

While you may be right, at some point it becomes a simple matter of what human physiology can and cannot do. http://nerdist.com/your-brain-has-a-frame-rate-and-its-pretty-slow/ When tracking something traveling two feet from your body at 95mph, I'm not sure it's still possible to "follow the ball to the bat" with any kind of efficacy.

Yes, this, so much this. I hate the save statistic with a fiery passion. Which is why I'm okay with Kintzler being the "closer". If teams are going to play around a statistic, the "closer" should be: 1. A competent pitcher 2. A guy who doesn't give up homers on demand 3. The team's third best reliever

I don't even know if the original goal was money. The broadcasting rights for baseball were formed when other sports just weren't really on television at all. Baseball, by creating a broadcast system before anyone else and paving the way for televised sports, allowed other leagues to see what mistakes were made and correct them before teams had anything to jealously defend. Sometimes, it ends up hurting you when you're first to market with something because it's hard to undo unintended mistakes.