Brock Beauchamp

Most people don't hate him because they haven't listened to him speak for more than a few seconds. That's why I said "when/if he hits the national stage and the mud really starts flying, he's going to be crucified because everyone will realize he's eminently unlikeable". The people who know Cruz tend to dislike him (including his own party). There's no reason to expect that ratio to change when more people get to know him. Cruz is an uncharismatic man with a pretty radical platform that doesn't play well with huge swathes of the voting public. He won't win over America's big middle. But hell, as a person who dislikes the current GOP platform and wants them to crash and burn and be forced to rebuild anew, I hope Cruz gets the nomination. It'd be an easy win for liberals and a slap in the face to moderate conservatives.

The only way I see the Democrats losing the White House is a Sanders/Rubio general with Rubio finding a way to draw huge numbers of Hispanics to his side. Even then, I think it's probably close. Sanders probably beats Cruz. Sanders definitely beats Trump. Clinton beats everybody. Maybe Rubio has an outside shot if the stars align. The problem with Republicans is that they've corralled 4-5 truly terrible candidates and one mediocre candidate who might be young enough and vibrant enough to draw some traditional Democratic voting blocs across the aisle. Then again, Rubio's policies might keep independents, young people, and people of color away from him so he loses just like the rest. But he probably brings the GOP Florida, which is huge. I know you like Cruz but when/if he hits the national stage and the mud really starts flying, he's going to be crucified because everyone will realize he's eminently unlikeable. Not just a little unlikeable, which can be overcome... But really unlikeable. The guy has the charisma of a basilisk. On top of all that, the GOP has crafted a platform that makes it nigh impossible for them to win most of the large electoral states. Their platform works for state-level and local level elections but it adversely affects them when it comes to a nationwide general. Automatically writing off 130+ electoral votes is a difficult hurdle to overcome. They can't win the west coast, they can't win the NE with the possible exception of PA, they can't win MI, IL, MN, etc. Meanwhile, Democrats have one populated state they cannot win: Texas. The rest of the Dems' unwinnable states are mostly in the 3-9 electoral vote range. The Republicans have to make nearly a clean sweep of the plains states, south, and southwest to even make it close.

I think part of the problem is that we haven't had a truly conservative voice in this country for a long, long time. The right has been distracted with inane social policy and let fiscal conservatism fall to the wayside (and no, I don't think "obstructionism" is a real form of fiscal conservatism). Fiscal conservatism is about making the government smaller, more agile, and smarter... It's not "let's just stop the government from operating because we don't like it".

I consider it semantics, really. The GOP's "approach" is, by and large, non-governance or at least minimal change. In the long run, that's a better idea because the government has operated for almost 250 years. It's not *entirely* broken. Doing nothing will likely lead the government to continue operating while one bad idea could really cripple everything. But outside of doing nothing, the stuff the GOP *has* done seems to have had an adverse effect on our country: toppling unions, lowering taxes on the wealthy, allowing corporations to have an increasingly large role in policy creation, etc.

That'd be my goal as well but I'm not all-in on Kepler quite yet... He needs to show me more than one very good season. I *love* his peripherals, which show a lot of sustained potential, but I still need to see more from him in Rochester. I think he may end up being more of a 2017 guy than this season.

Uh, yeah. To me, sustaining the middle class starts with education, integrated housing ownership, and healthcare. Education is obvious and it's a leading cause of the employment gap in this country, both in cost and opportunity. Integrated housing ownership allows people to move into a decent neighborhood with good education opportunities and doesn't prop up the rental market, which is largely owned by wealthier Americans. Healthcare is a leading cause of bankruptcy. Those aren't exactly, uh... Strengths of the modern GOP platform. To be fair, they're not really strengths of the Democratic platform either but at least the Democrats try to enact change here and there.

God, yes, this. One of my biggest problems with anything in the United States. As someone who works independently, healthcare is a big problem because I don't have an employer paying a huge portion of my care (or even simply getting a "bulk discount" that I can tap into as an employee).

Responsible? No, not entirely... Reagan stopped being president almost 30 years ago. But he set bad precedents some still trumpet to this day ("trickle down" has turned into "teh job creators!"). There is some truth to the statement "we do better when everyone does better". It's not a cure to all our problems but it'd be a small step in the right direction. If only a few have spending power, only a few are able to buy the goods and services that keep the rest of us employed.

Well said. I cannot fathom why the modern GOP worships Reagan. If they want to hold up a president as someone who got things done and radically altered the USA, hold up Roosevelt. If they want to hold up someone who was ex-military, smart, and a good ol' fashioned "Decent American Man", hold up Eisenhower. Both are vastly superior options to Ronald ****ing Reagan. It should also be pointed out that Reagan ushered in the influence of the Religious Right, which created fragmented and nonsensical policy goals within the GOP. They used to be the party of (mostly) small government; now they're a hodge-podge of hawkish policy, tax breaks for the wrong people, big spending, and invasive policy into our private lives. Basically, everything I don't want from a government. I can get on board with a true small government approach (within reason) but I can't support people who only want small government when it benefits them or agrees with their life outlook. Small government is small government. You get one or the other, you don't get to pick and choose when you like small government and ignore it when you want to control how other people live their lives. Liberty is about freedom for all, not freedom for Those Like You as you cobble together a pseudo-caste system of Those Like You who get liberty and Those Not Like You who don't. And I certainly can't support people whose goal is to be nothing more than an irritant in an attempt to break the system entirely. One has to govern to be in government. Being a petulant twat and oppositional on every topic isn't what adult people do when trying to change something for the better. It's what children do when they don't want to take a nap.

Okay, this is getting very close to petty bickering and the discussion is circular. Return to talking about Mauer (and not repeating past comments/blathering), or the thread gets locked.

Given how many righties are on this roster, it shouldn't be hard to get Arcia into the lineup on a regular basis. When it's rolling, his bat against RHP is easily worth the defensive loss.

Yeah, I'd like to see Plouffe back at six, maybe seven, if possible. I'm not even counting Park at this time because he's a mystery. Could be an .850 hitter, could be a .700 hitter.

Aw, Pseudo, you beat me to it. Listen, there are good lessons to be learned from our founding fathers. It's also important to remember many were ignorant *******s and were wrong much of the time. Many of the lauded O.G. Tea Partiers fought to "build" a government so fragmented and ineffectual it nearly collapsed within a decade. So I guess Ted Cruz has that in common with some of them.

Yeah, I'd probably bat him third but I don't care too much if they bat him fourth, either. If Buxton turns into an .800 OPS guy, then I'd probably move him to third and have Sano hit behind him but right now, the Twins are lacking a traditional third hitter.

It'd be nice if Arcia turned it around and became a good lefty bat behind Sano. My hope is that Buxton can slot into either first or third, somebody else goes second, Sano cleanup, then surround Sano with an assortment of Dozier/Arcia/Plouffe. That's a pretty solid lineup surrounding Sano in the short term. Nothing spectacular but enough to make pitchers wary of pitching around Miguel.

His discipline was ungodly for a rookie of his age.

I'd say people were more optimistic about Escobar than confident. There wasn't a reason to be much more "confident" in Escobar than there was in Santana (and I've been one Escobar's bigger supporters over the past few years while equally down on Santana during the same time period). Escobar was in the same boat as Santana going into last season. A middling prospect coming off a surprising season. Let's not forget Escobar's pre-2014 OPS+ of 62 or his MiLB OPS of .675. The two were peas in a pod, when you get right down to it. One happened to thrive while the other wilted. It happens. But ultimately, it doesn't change the fact no GM was going to offer anything of substance for either player last offseason. They were both "wait and see, hope something breaks right" players.

I didn't let Molitor off the hook for that one and I know several others on this board felt the same way. I was going nuts when Santana was getting starts in June and July.

I thought Santana deserved a shot, albeit with a very short leash. We all knew he was going to regress, it was only a matter of "how badly". Which is why he had no real value to anyone but the Twins. We're talking about a guy who raised his MiLB OPS to .717 after a solid 2015 partial season in AAA.

I find this conversation odd. I feel like I'm defending Danny Santana when I've been one of his biggest detractors since day one. It's weird that people can see such flaws in a player they consider taking him off the roster yet assume opposing GMs just see a shiny batting average and say: http://cdn1.theodysseyonline.com/files/2015/08/13/635750221080483966-880717574_e34c7ff9_tumblr_lemm04OIdO1qb7ikeo1_500.gif

So you're advocating the Twins should have traded their question mark at shortstop when they only had other question marks available at shortstop to back him up. Hey, it's great that Escobar worked out but nobody counted on him to do much of anything 12 months ago. And this is assuming anyone was willing to give up anything for Santana in the first place. Let me pose you this question because I have the feeling it will end this conversation in a hurry. It's January of 2015. You need a shortstop or centerfielder for your team. Danny Santana is available. What do you pay to acquire him? ... That's what I thought. Would you have paid more than pennies on the dollar for Santana based on his 2014? I sure as hell wouldn't have given up much of anything for the guy, which makes a trade rather pointless because the Twins needed a shortstop. Why take another team's flyer at another position when you have a flyer of your own already on the roster at a position of need?

Heheh, I'm in it for the long haul with NFLX. Going into the stock, I fully expected a bumpy ride because they're aggressively expanding and a lot of money is going out the door while not enough is coming back in. I'm already way into the black on the stock and a bit of regression in the short- or even mid-term doesn't bother me. I learned some time ago that I'm not clever enough nor do I pay enough attention to market ebbs and flows to "game" a stock. I pick companies that I believe in and, by and large, I stick with them for a long time.

I only buy into those stocks when I plan to hold onto them for a looooooong time because I believe in the business model's long term viability. Like 20 years long. I mean a long time.

Or it could have absolutely nothing to do with Joe's strength or training. I subscribe to both KISS and Occam's Razor as often as possible. Joe was a very good player. He OPSed around .850 every season of his career except an injury-plagued and truly bizarre 2011 season. He returned to baseball and was once again a very good player in 2012 and 2013. Joe gets a knock to the head. Joe spends a lot of time bouncing between "close to ready" and "dunno, check back later". Joe returns to playing baseball. Joe is no longer a good hitter. It seems pretty straight forward to me.

Yep. Without that contract, people are disappointed in Joe but move on to more interesting topics.