Brock Beauchamp

I think I'm four episodes in right now. It's decent. Not a fan of what they did to the FBI agent in the first episode but overall, I'm into most of the characters. I say "decent" because there hasn't been a lot to really grab me and suck me in yet, just a series of mostly entertaining moments strung together. Out of four episodes, the one I liked least was the mission with the other team. The opposing team leader seemed like a cartoon villain in a show that, to that point, had delivered mostly reasonable and believable characters. I can tell there's a big twist coming and I'm pretty sure it has something to do with the director. Some kind of bombshell is going to be dropped on the team and rattle their belief system. The show has spent too much time telling us the team is a bunch of naive newbies.

Yeah, that's putting it lightly. I haven't seen his documentary but when it comes to Imperial Japan, I'll take Ienaga's word for it. He was one of Japan's most famous historians, grew up in Imperial Japan, and was even nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize late in life. While it's been quite some time since I read the book, I recall Ienaga had some pretty mixed feelings about whether Japan could surrender even if its citizens wanted to surrender. They had that little influence in the country at that point.

Never mind that people tend to forget we were the only Allied force fighting a two-front war for the second half of WWII. It's not that we wanted to let the Russians take eastern Europe, it's more that we had no choice in the matter. Hell itself couldn't stop Russia from taking revenge on the Germans and we were too tied up in the Pacific to even attempt some kind of eastern push through the Middle East or the eastern Mediterranean, the only reasonable eastern routes we had to Germany.

Also, the Japanese were literally starving near the end of the war. Whether that would have influenced their surrender is hard to say, as the Japanese military complex had little regard for their citizens. I recommend the book The Pacific War 1931-1945: A Critical Perspective on Japan's Role in WWII by Saburo Ienaga. It goes into quite a bit of depth how the Japanese had militarized an entire generation from the turn of the 20th century onward and how it made the concept of surrender in traditional conflict a difficult task. The quick version: The Japanese military, for all intents and purposes, consumed all levels of government shortly after the turn of the century leading up to and in the aftermath of the Japan-Russo War. In turn, some time in the 1910s, they actually militarized their school system, teaching a very slanted and imperialistic version of Japan's role in the world. By comparison, the Germans didn't get rolling with that kind of indoctrination until the mid 30s. By 1939, the Japanese had an entire generation of fighting-age men under indoctrination. The Germans had a bunch of kids in silly shorts who saluted a lot. As a result, Japan had already produced an entire generation of kids hell-bent on conquering the world, believing themselves invincible, and not giving a flying **** about the average citizen, as it was everyone's duty to die for the glory of Japan. The book explains a hell of a lot of why WWII happened and why the Japanese were so horrifically brutal to their enemies (even worse than the Germans, as the Japanese literally hated everyone). See The Rape of Nanking.

And let's not forget that, in the wake of the eastern European power grab that was taking place, the absolute last thing the Allies wanted was Russia marching across Siberia and grabbing parts of China and Japan. And that was clearly Russia's intent.

I'm coming to the conclusion Cameron is way higher than De Leon than everyone else, including the Dodgers.

I have no idea if I'm right, more that I have no idea what to expect.

That's likely way up their list of tasks to accomplish in the next 12-24 months but even that won't seriously constrain payroll through 2020. Even those big extensions usually pay in gradually increasing numbers through what would have been arbitration seasons. While a Buxton/Sano extension would like pay them $25m+ per season, those numbers wouldn't kick in until 2021-2022.

They're already well under past payrolls (somewhere around $15m under, IIRC). Then you get to remove a full quarter of that payroll when Mauer exits. The median MLB payroll is somewhere around $140m, I believe. The Twins could enter 2018 with just $75m on the books. What do they do at that point? I have no idea. And they won't have to worry about arbitration for quite some time. For every guy that gets a pay raise in arb, you drop another guy like Santana or Hughes through 2020.

I'm not so sure of that part. Again, we have no track record for Falvey or Levine as decision-makers. Levine was part of an aggressive front office, Falvey not so much. Going into 2018, the Twins will shed Santiago, Perkins, and a few other players... But more importantly, they'll be entering the last season of Mauer's giant contract. Which is why I'm giving the front office something resembling a free pass right now. We're seeing a tiny fraction of the picture and we don't have an established baseline to project their future plans.

Yeah, I tend to agree, which is why I'm mildly disappointed in the offseason. But we have no idea what Falvey and Levine plan to do on Opening Day. I think we're mired in the mindset of the Terry Ryan years and projecting his flaws onto the new front office. Maybe they didn't pick up a reliever because they plan to aggressively push guys like Chargois, Melotakis, and Burdi to Minnesota either out of Spring Training or sometime in May. Or maybe they already have Duffey slotted into the pen and haven't told anyone. That's half of a bullpen right there, not including the guys they have on the roster or wildcards like Perkins. Lots of options there and we haven't seen how this front office moves on pitching. Are they aggressive, Terry Ryan, or somewhere in the middle?

It's possible that's the case. It's also possible they don't really care about 2017 and plan to just throw **** at the wall and see what sticks while they reorganize the entire franchise. If anything, I lean toward the latter. They know they have something resembling a free pass in 2017 and plan to first straighten out scouting, analytics, coaching, etc. and then worry about the actual on-field product in Minnesota. The biggest question mark for me is where Falvey and Levine feel the organization is today. That changes the entire dynamic for 2017 and beyond. Are the Twins 90% of the organization they envision or 50%?

Yeah, same here. On a related topic, it also makes you wonder what they really think of Berrios. But Berrios throws harder than De Leon so it's not entirely an apples-to-apples comparison. In their respective cups of coffee, Berrios threw mid-93 and De Leon threw mid-91.

I've noticed we talk quite a bit about how the Twins might evaluate various Dodgers prospects but one thing we haven't talked about much is the guy we know they've evaluated a lot, both from the Cleveland perspective and the Minnesota perspective: Brian Dozier. We talk a lot about how the Twins need to make developmental changes up and down the organization but we're not really talking about how that might impact Brian Dozier, the best player on the team. It's entirely possible Falvey and Levine refuse to budge on Dozier because they're confident he's a perennial 35 homer guy now. They've seen Dozier play, evaluated both his 2013-2015 and 2016 mechanics, and have internal evaluation tools that dig much deeper than we can as outsiders. Combine that with a new hitting coach and it's possible they didn't move Dozier because the Dodgers were offering 3-4 WAR value for a player they believe is a 5+ WAR guy going forward. It's a risk either way but I don't think we've really considered where Falvey and Levine place Dozier and how confident they are about his 2016.

I'm still wondering if the reason this deal didn't get done is because Falvey and Levine had one of two issues with De Leon: 1. They have in-depth scouting on De Leon and they're not in love with his player profile, which forced them to ask for a lot more from the Dodgers. 2. They don't have an in-depth scouting report on De Leon, which forced them to ask for a lot more from the Dodgers.

I definitely have a type. In no particular order: - Kate Beckinsale - Natalie Portman - Emma Watson - Olivia Wilde - Evangeline Lilly Honorable Mention: Zooey Deschanel (love her music, can't stand her on New Girl)

Make it a fair fight and flip those numbers.

Sigh. Hayley.

Hmmm. Dunno, don't think about it much. Idris Elba, probably. Tom Hiddleston. Chris Hemsworth. Oh, ****. I'm just naming the cast of Thor. Seriously, that wasn't even on purpose.

As a friend once said, "Kate Beckinsale is so hot it makes me mad."

That. Sign. Is. Hilarious.

It's more in comparison to Dozier, who has been a paragon of health for four seasons running. Forsythe simply doesn't have the track record to match that. That doesn't mean he's an injury risk so much it as it means Dozier isn't an injury risk (at least to the point any player isn't an injury risk). At its core, it's the same knock I had against De Leon. While I can't call him an injury risk because he hasn't pitched more than 140 innings in a season, it's a small knock against him that he hasn't done it yet.

In my post, that's why I offset my statement by saying Forsythe had two good seasons under his belt. One good full season, one good 3/4 season. But he only played in 127 games in 2016. That's good when you adjust for his WAR value but bad when you consider he's been in the league since 2011 and 127 games is his second-highest game total.

It's not a terrible idea but you'd be hard-pressed to convince any of the Cubs/Cardinals, Giants/Dodgers, or Yankees/BoSox rivalries to dilute themselves in any fashion. And while most rivalries are regional, combining the NL and AL would result in some of those rivalries being diluted in one fashion or another, as some of the teams would be forced to split either division, league, or both.

It's hard to get a read on Forsythe, in my opinion. His last two years compare pretty well to Dozier but he has two good years compared to Dozier's four good years (with one great year mixed in). Forsythe has also played just one full, healthy season at an acceptable clip for an MLB starter. Dozier has somewhere around 3.75 of those years in comparison (excluding his six weeks of play pre-2013 breakout, when he was still the old, bad Dozier). On the flip side of that coin, Forsythe is less of a commitment. While Dozier has two guaranteed years, Forsythe has one guaranteed and one option year. While I doubt that matters much to the Dodgers, it is a risk-mitigating factor that counts for something.