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Brock Beauchamp

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Everything posted by Brock Beauchamp

  1. Brock Beauchamp
    The Twins won't get much for him - I'd say a C prospect is the ceiling - but yeah, they might be able to get something for Santiago.
  2. Brock Beauchamp
    I don't know if it's quite that bad. If Vielma is a starter or sees significant playing time, that's likely a big problem. But as a glove-first backup, he could have value. If he can play second or third well, that value rises quite a bit. He's the type of guy who could stick around baseball for 4+ years as the 24th or 25th man on the roster. After all, Adam Everett accumulated just over 3000 MLB PAs with a 66 OPS+ and managed to generate nearly 10 career fWAR.
  3. Brock Beauchamp
    So Law has De Leon ranked only marginally higher than Kohl Stewart and Gonsalves? Am I reading this correctly? Ouch.
  4. Brock Beauchamp
    Sure, but they need to recreate those algorithms. It's not as if an algorithm is 50 characters of easily-remembered code that can be replicated in 15 minutes. And it's not as if they need just one algorithm, they probably need dozens. And they walked into an analytics department that consisted of no more than four people, if I recall correctly, and those four people were probably already stretched thin with existing work. So, they need to assess their needs, find more people, and reassess the work currently in progress. And the guy who makes those decisions has been on the job for less than three months while he's also trying to restructure scouting, coaching, analyze trades, etc.
  5. Brock Beauchamp
    A patent is something else entirely. Was the algorithm generated on company time by an employee? If yes, then taking a disc with that algorithm on it is definitely illegal. Recreating that algorithm is something else. But recreating things takes time and it's not as if either Falvey or Levine have spent the past two months in front of a computer, coding complex algorithms to analyze data. They have employees to do that and they may need to go find those employees, which again takes time.
  6. Brock Beauchamp
    Hard to say and it wouldn't surprise me one bit if they weren't allowed to take anything with them when they left. While under the employ of a company, all intellectual property generated is the property of said company. When I left Polaris, I took the knowledge I learned with me. But had I taken a single line of code I generated while I was there, they could have sued my ass for it.
  7. Brock Beauchamp
    I'd go as far as to say seasons 2-4 of the American version were just as good as the British version. The American version, when it was rolling through those early seasons, was absolutely hilarious. I find most people who whine about the American version are just being pretentious prats who don't want to like anything that's popular. And that same crew went on to create Parks & Rec, one of the best sitcoms of all time. But the American Office started to slide downhill hard and fast somewhere around season five. Its problem wasn't quality, it was the American television tradition of beating a horse until there's nothing left. The Brits have the smarts and decency to get the hell out while the getting is good.
  8. Brock Beauchamp
    Nope, not sure it matters. Not sure it doesn't, either. The real question comes from asking how much teams rely on publicly-available data versus how much they rely on self-generated data. It's not as if Falvey or Levine could take that self-generated data from their previous clubs. That'd be theft. Even mirroring the processes used by their previous clubs could put them in hot water. And they certainly haven't had the time to fully flesh out the Twins analytics system to generate the same amount of specialized data they had in Texas or Cleveland. But if they feel comfortable relying on publicly-related data, it's not an issue.
  9. Brock Beauchamp
    I'm sure it has the same physical toll on your body but flying west literally buys you time while east takes it away. Think of it this way. What would you rather do: 1. Hop on plane at midnight and land at your destination around 1am, arriving at your hotel by 2am. 2. Hope on a plan at midnight and land at your destination at 7am, arriving at your hotel by 8am. One gets you something approaching a full night of sleep in a bed. The other forces you to sleep on a plane. When I fly to Europe, I'm completely screwed up when I land on the continent. I have no idea what time it is, I'm exhausted, and I've lost something approaching half a day. It's usually the wee hours of the morning and I've barely slept. I lost the entire night. When I fly home, I'm exhausted and I land in Minneapolis just 2-3 hours after I left Europe. That gives me a full 6-8 hours to get home, sleep, and then get back at the day. I'm still out of sorts but at least I've slept off my exhaustion.
  10. Brock Beauchamp
    There aren't many teams who would give up much for Polanco. Contending teams want someone with less risk, a proven commodity. Rebuilding teams, more willing to take risk on unproven players, are loathe to trade prospects.
  11. Brock Beauchamp
    I don't know if 2017 is make or break for Stewart. I don't know how long it will take to change the organizational philosophy of the minor league coaching staff. That may make Stewart's "do or die" season come in 2018, which could decide his fate as a reliever or starter. 2017 will be important, though. We need to see some kind of progress with that K rate.
  12. Brock Beauchamp
    What happens if Meija isn't ready? What happens if one or two starters go down in March or April? What happens if Berrios can't find the strike zone again? In a rotation full of question marks, keeping another mediocre arm when the money would be burned by ownership anyway isn't a bad decision. The true test of this front office was not the retention of guys like Santiago and Grossman. Those were fine decisions. The true test of this front office is whether they'll throw those guys off the roster when it's apparent they don't belong in major league baseball. That was the issue with the previous front office. Teams sign/acquire/retain those types of players all the time, even well-run teams. But the well-run teams give those players the hook in May or early June, not August or never.
  13. Brock Beauchamp
    I agree Santana needs to be cut but there's really no point in doing it right now. He can play with the team through March, giving the front office more time to evaluate, then they can make a decision. As for Grossman, he's an absolute butcher in the field but he mashed LHP last season. Do you know what other Twins outfielder mashed LHP last season? Absolutely no one. It was so bad that both Rosario and Kepler had an OPS under .600 against lefties. Only Buxton held his own with a .735 OPS against southpaws and there is zero positional overlap between Buxton and Grossman.
  14. Brock Beauchamp
    Falvey and Levine currently have an analytics department they did not create nor one they've had time to overhaul. And that's the point many of us are making. They inherited an organization woefully behind the times and have been on the job for all of two months. We have no idea what state analytics is in today, the ultimate goals for the analytics department, or a timeline when Falvey and Levine feel they'll reach that goal.
  15. Brock Beauchamp
    It's possible we saw peak performance from Grossman last season... But what's the real harm in spending 4-6 weeks finding out if that was the case? Keeping Grossman and Santiago are the kinds of moves bad teams in evaluation mode should make. If they suck, kick 'em to the curb in May or June. If they don't suck, flip them in July for whatever you can get. In my opinion, keeping Grossman was a no-brainer for a team coming off a 59 win season. Keeping Danny Santana is far more questionable, as he has neither a position nor any recent performance worth mentioning.
  16. Brock Beauchamp
    Again, we need to stop blaming today's front office for yesterday's front office decisions. Falvey and Levine, flush with cash, decided to pay Santiago $8m in a free agent market so completely barren that it resembled a Cormac McCarthy novel. Is that really such a bad call? Even if Santiago bombs out horribly, you're out all of $8m. Big deal. If he's even mediocre, your team is slightly more competent than it would be otherwise and if your team is bad in July, you flip Hector for a middling prospect. They were put in a bad situation by the previous front office. They made a decision based on that situation, one that won't make or break the team in any way. But the decision has modest upside. Had they released Santiago, another team would have leapt at giving him a one year $6-10m contract. The free agent starting pitching market was that bad. Teams would have fallen over themselves to get Santiago because nothing else was available.
  17. Brock Beauchamp
    I agree but it's literally January 24th. PItchers and catchers don't report for nearly a full month. If the Twins break north without at least one young flamethrower in the pen, I'll be mildly disappointed.
  18. Brock Beauchamp
    Robbie Grossman is 27 years old with a career OPS+ of 102 and a 2016 OPS+ of 126. Yeah, he's a butcher in the field but he's not the type of guy you discard without a second thought. On the other hand, a bad start to 2017 and the Twins shouldn't hesitate to cut/demote him, either. I remain unconvinced Danny Santana will be on the team in 2017. The Dozier situation resolved itself all of 12 hours ago and that creates a domino effect all the way down the roster. Instead of playing Escobar at short or finding a stop-gap shortstop, Polanco will assume the role of starting shortstop. That means Escobar is utility infield. Where's that leave Santana? On a bus somewhere that isn't Ft Myers is my hope. Again, if this is an evaluation year, it makes sense to start the season with a bunch of bad/mediocre, cheap, expendable relief pitchers. As Keith Law has pointed, the Twins may have the best corps of relievers in the minors. You want a group of guys you won't hesitate to push out of the way at a moment's notice should one or more of them step forward March-May. We've heard rumors Berrios may start the season in the minors but I'm not one to put much stock in rumors. I'll save my outrage for the actual decision, if/when it comes.
  19. Brock Beauchamp
    I get that but the new front office can't think that way. They have to do what's best for the franchise and the flaws of the old front office can't influence their decisions.
  20. Brock Beauchamp
    Yes and no. Lots of extremely good teams have "luck" on their side. But the Cubs were -4 BaseRuns in 2016 and they were the best team in baseball.
  21. Brock Beauchamp
    It's hard not to be let down by this offseason but I have a few counterpoints: 1. This free agent class was horrible everywhere the Twins needed help, except catcher. And they got a catcher. The area they truly needed help, starting pitching, was as barren a landscape as I've seen in the past two decades. 2. Falvey and Levine have a lot to do. That doesn't excuse them from not being at least a little bit more active but if they had to make opportunity cost decisions between revamping analytics/scouting and trading/signing players, I'd prefer they focus hard on the former at the expense of the latter this offseason. 3. Brian Dozier is the biggest let down and while I'm disappointed, I can't cast final judgment on the decision until we know the actual offer from the Dodgers. I'm disappointed but not ready to crucify the front office without that information. 4. We're going to finally get to see the kids play in 2017 and it's way overdue. If we see anything less than four months of Berrios, May, Buxton, Kepler, Sano, Rosario, and Polanco, I consider that a failure. 5. What is 2017? I'm not quite sure how I feel about the decision but it appears Falvey and Levine feel it's an evaluation year. Throw the kids out there, see what you have in them. Pick up a catcher to help your beleaguered pitching staff and call it a day. At least we'll get to see all the players we've been champing at the bit to see for years with all the good and bad that comes with throwing a very young roster on the field.
  22. Brock Beauchamp
    The sad thing is that this is probably true. The reality is that Obama was a dignified, classy, mediocre president. Only in comparison to his recent peers does he look like some kind of gift from god. He did a lot of good things but he did a lot of questionable things as well, along with a whole bunch of nothing. He wasn't the great liberal hope he promised to be, he was waaaaay more hawkish than I expected, and he failed to rally the nation around any of his causes. Sure, some of that can be (and should be) pinned on the opposition but good leaders work through those issues and aren't made completely ineffectual by them. I adore Obama the man (and Obama the family). As a president, he's somewhere between "meh" and "okay".
  23. Brock Beauchamp
    I have copies of the early 2000s Dune and Children of Dune television movies. Has anyone seen them? I haven't watched them yet.
  24. Brock Beauchamp
    Yeah, a bunch of King stories would make the list. But IMO, The Running Man is the most egregious example of warping King's work into something it is not. The Running Man is an entirely different story that carries the title of the King work for reasons completely unknown to me (well, the reason is money, but that's the worst reason to do just about anything in the creative world).
  25. Brock Beauchamp
    It makes sense, as flying east is brutal on my body. Given how MLB players often fly overnight and then play the next evening, it has to have some effect on them. I'd be curious to see it broken down even more granularly... Is it harder for players to fly in August than May?
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