Brock Beauchamp

Yeah, that's the logical course of action to take... It's not as if we don't know who Mauer is at this point. As an aging vet, it certainly won't hurt him to sit one game a week as you try out some of the younger players.

Agreed. If there's a block of five guys in the lineup that get on base 35% of the time, that lineup will score runs and wear down pitchers.

I don't understand the point of these posts. Mauer will not be benched in 2016. Everybody knows this to be the case. Besides, Mauer isn't exactly killing the team. His OBP is .370, second on the team behind Grossman (who still sits at a ridiculous .420 through 181 PAs).

I'm not dismissing Stewart's troubles... They were concerning. My point is more "don't rush to judgment" than "ignore the data". There weren't isolated cases of posters completely dismissing Stewart after his early struggles, there were literally dozens of posters doing it. I remember at least 4-5 posters suggesting the Twins trade Stewart "so they can get something for him while he has value".

I'd also be disappointed if he spent three more seasons in the minors but I didn't expect him to jump to AA and have immediate success so the timeline has escalated a bit. I suspect Stewart will be a "slow and steady" prospect, much like Gordon. Roughly one a level a year and no skipping AAA. But if Stewart keeps it up, he could open 2017 in Rochester and he's beating on the door at that point.

Kohl Stewart is a perfect example of why you don't write off a talented prospect because he didn't develop at the rate of a Correa, Buxton, Schwarber, Strasburg, etc. Stewart is still only 21 years old. Sure, there are still question marks and reasons to be concerned (the fact that his K rate spiked and then settled again is mildly concerning) but kids develop at different paces. As I said when people started getting down on him in 2014, the kid could spend five more years in the minors and still debut as a 24 year old.

That's an interesting way to look at it. It didn't occur to me to keep Nolasco, knowing he'll suck and trade Santana because he might not. I lean toward just releasing Nolasco, though. Or moving him to the mop-up role. Either way, he leaves the rotation and doesn't return.

Unless the return is really good - and I don't think it will be - I don't see much of a point in trading Santana. If you hold on to him and he continues being mediocre - given his career, not a big risk - he only becomes more valuable as his contract winds down. If the offer is great, you pull the trigger... But you can say that about damned near any player on the roster. But if the offer is underwhelming, I don't really see the point. Shedding Nolasco and Milone are good ideas for either money or roster space reasons. If you manage to get rid of those two and keep Santana, there's plenty of room in the Twins rotation for any young pitchers that need MLB service time. And, again, if someone like Hughes comes back next season, then trade Ervin at the next deadline. Provided he isn't injured, his value will be the same, if not higher.

I'm saving up my Suzuki contract extension outrage for when it actually happens. Seriously, though... Guys, enough with the cheap barbs for something THAT HAS NOT HAPPENED. It's not funny. It doesn't add anything to the conversation. And, maybe most importantly in my eyes, it's bloody repetitive and boring. There are so many things to be angry about this season, there's no need to manufacture outrage over hypothetical situations that probably won't happen. It's not something we're going to start issuing warnings over (probably) but it's the kind of thing that derails conversations and puts you on the moderators' radar as a poster to keep an eye on. If you don't have anything real to contribute to a discussion, just... Don't post. It's really not that hard. Please.

After mulling over the Clinton situation for a day, here are my thoughts: Intent matters in a criminal case but that doesn't excuse negligence, incompetence, or whatever you want to call it. Clinton screwed up badly and should be called out for her mistakes. On the other hand, I'm not too worked up about it, which is the saddest thing of all. Clinton is a cog in the political machine and at this point, I expect shady dealings disguised as incompetence. But when put into context, Clinton's email situation is rather unremarkable. Lil Bush, either through incompetence or flat-out lies, manufactured a war we shouldn't have been in (almost surely at the prompting of his VP) which directly led to the creation of ISIS (shocking, I know) and got thousands of Americans killed, including one of my three best friends in the world. Oh, and he literally spent trillions of dollars we didn't have in the process. Clinton got a hummer in the Oval. On its face, not a big deal to me... but the dude straight up perjured himself in front of Congress. That's... Not cool, man. And it's a pretty big deal. Reagan... Oh, Reagan. Where do I start? Oh, that's right, Iran-Contra. Congress expressly forbade (via law) the American government from helping the Contras and obviously, it's illegal to deal weapons to an enemy state 100% of the time. Well, Reagan did both. It was, at best, borderline treason. Running through this trip down memory lane, it reminded me of three things: 1. I have no faith in the honesty of most American politicians and at this point, I expect the worst of nearly all of them. 2. Obama has received enough flak for five administrations yet his administration is the cleanest in recent memory (out of eight year presidents) and it's not close. Conservatives have been so bloody unfair to the guy (who, in my opinion, will go down in history as a thoroughly adequate president). 3. I'm having a hard time getting too worked up about email servers.

I don't care about salary relief for Jepsen, as he's gone after this season anyway... We can only wish the same applied to Nolasco. Nolasco counts because his absence helps the 2017 roster in two ways: rotation space and money. The same *kinda* applies to Plouffe but unlike Nolasco, the Twins are under no obligation to Trevor for 2017. I'm okay if the Twins trade Santana, I'm okay if they keep him. He hasn't been great, he hasn't been terrible. There's always space in a rotation for ONE guy like that (the problem is the Twins often have 3-4 guys like that).

I don't count them, as it's likely neither will return anything other than cash.

A FIP of 7.56. Wow. That's... Really hard to accomplish.

No, that's my personal over/under happiness level, not what I expect Ryan to actually do.

Well said on all counts. If Ryan formed the team I wanted him to form, they *might* be 5-7 games better than they are today. Maybe. But that's still terrible. No one accounted for everybody on the team to step backward because that's not the king of thing anyone can account for realistically. It's also not my job to know all of these things... But if I could see glaring holes that weren't filled, inexplicable signings that didn't make sense given the roster construction, and the potential damage caused by violently playing MiLB ping pong with your best prospects, then damn it all Terry Ryan should have seen those things (times 10) and done something about it.

My over/under is three players traded. I'm happy at that point. Four or more and I'm . Two or less and I'm .

Yeah, exactly. While this is a truly awful thing if it actually happened, we need to let the police/court system find out whether it actually happened. Athletes aren't the only terrible people in the world. Just as athletes often abuse their wealth/power, other people will abuse the system in an attempt to take that wealth/power.

Imagine if everything else hadn't gone wrong.

I'm just playing (obviously) but you're right that Mauer isn't a three hitter anymore. But I'd still probably hit him second because his career low OBP (.338 in 2015) is still pretty good. It'd be nice if he was faster and didn't clog the bases but that OBP can still do some good near the top of the lineup. But not third. You want extra base power in the third spot.

1. 1B - Mauer 2. 2B - Mauer 3. SS - Mauer 4. 3B - Mauer 5. LF - Mauer 6. CF - Mauer 7. RF - Mauer 8. DH - Mauer 9. C - Murphy

And Trevor May had a 8.79 ERA and OPS against of .945 after his first four starts. You also continue to isolate the Berrios part of the conversation when I've said "If this only happened to Berrios, I'd probably get over it... But it's happened to half a dozen guys this season alone."

You could easily justify giving him another start after the Tigers because it was his fourth start. My point isn't that Jose Berrios helped the team after four starts, it's that you couldn't accurately judge whether he could help the team after four starts. And on a terrible team already out of the postseason picture in mid-May, a guy like Jose Berrios deserves more than four starts to prove himself. It's not like Jose Berrios would be permanently ruined if you ran him out there for 7-8 starts and hell, he might actually adjust and become a contributor to the MLB squad. But, again, Berrios is just one guy. If the Twins had done that only to Berrios this season, I'd probably say "meh" and get on with my day. But they have jerked around most of their young players at one point in the season: Chargois, Meyer, Berrios, Kepler, Polanco, Arcia, Buxton... One guy you can explain away but when that number crosses half a dozen, it's a major problem.

Berrios' spot was filled by Pat Dean. Pat Dean. On the day Dean started, the Twins were 10-31 going into the game. Again. Pat Dean.

Sure he was nervous. Most guys are in their first MLB appearance. It would have been nice to see how he looked in a second MLB appearance.

Oh, sure. One could argue the problems started in the offseason - and I don't really disagree - but I understand how the Twins were hoping a young arm would rise through the minors and take the job. That was a risky plan but not an awful plan. The Twins were expected to be a bad team going into 2015. Well, as it turned out, they weren't a bad team and when unexpected things happen, the plan needs to change. When the Twins turned into a contender and the young arms weren't coming through the system, moves should have been made no later than the middle of June to address glaring problems we all could see. Instead, we got Jepsen on July 31st and Cotts at the end of August. Hell, had they just called up Oliveros (instead of putting him in the ****ing Rochester rotation), maybe things turn out a bit differently. Argh. I get mad just thinking about it.