Brock Beauchamp

I didn't twist your words. You're not the only person commenting in this thread, in case you hadn't noticed.

Yeah, all of this. Rubio isn't completely toxic as a politician, either... I'd put him under the "morally repugnant" label.

I'm just going to isolate these two sentences from the rest of the post so everyone can bask in the glorious irony.

Because symptoms aren't always indentifiable? You're also twisting the numbers a bit. You're using Morneau's "50% reduction" differently than Mauer's "8% reduction". Using the same scale for both players - their Hard HIt % being 100% - Mauer's Hard Hit drop from 2013 to 2014 was over 25%. On top of that, Morneau's 2010 Hard Hit % was an extreme outlier. 45.3% of his contact in 2010 was hard hit (an absurdly high number, FTR). Previous to that, his highest number was 39.6%. Normalize those two numbers and whaddyaknow... Morneau and Mauer have similar drops in Hard Hit rate before and after their concussions (Morneau is a few points higher but both players show similar, extreme declines). IIRC, Morneau also claimed to be "symptom free" multiple times in 2012 and 2013. That didn't seem to matter, as he never returned to his 2006-2010 form. Was some of that due to aging? Sure, I bet it was... But players don't normally fall off a cliff during their age 30-31 seasons without good reason. Was Morneau also lazy? Why were we so sympathetic to Morneau, never questioning his work ethic or drive to succeed, but refuse to give Mauer the same benefit of the doubt? Why did Twins fans give Morneau a "pass"? Why did Twins fans give Koskie a "pass"? What about Span? The difference isn't Joe Mauer, it's Twins fans' attitudes.

Morneau spent diminished years symptom-free as well. As we're finding out by the day with NFL players, concussions are not well understood and their long-term effects can manifest in a variety of ways.

Implying a former world class athlete is lazy isn't unflattering, it's a hatchet job. Mauer was essentially the same player - plus or minus a few strikeouts - until he received his latest concussion. He hasn't been anything close to the same player since that time. Maybe teams more aggressively shift against him and compound the problem but at the core of the issue, Mauer hasn't been the same guy since he took that baseball to the head. It's not hard to figure out the root cause of the issue at that point. The day before the concussion, he was an .850 OPS player. In the following two years, he's a .750 OPS player. And this argument wasn't presented with any kind of intellectual honesty. It formed a conclusion and then wrote a narrative to fit that conclusion. The user's avatar is "U lift, bro?", for crying out loud. Never mind the title itself, which reads "Lack of Training and Overflow of Excuses Catching Up to Him". That's not an attempt to open an honest dialogue about a potential issue, that's presenting a conclusion based on very limited information. Mauer's problem is that he no longer hits the ball hard. Did he suddenly get old and it exactly coincided with a serious concussion? I can't see that argument presented with any kind of seriousness. Was he lazy before the concussion or did that just magically happen after the incident? Joe Mauer's hard hit ball rate is down ~8% since the concussion. His soft hit rate is up ~7%. That's why Joe Mauer is no longer the player he was before the concussion. He's swinging more often and not hitting the ball as hard as he once did. That seems to me like remnants of concussion symptoms. He doesn't have the hand-eye coordination he once did and it has turned him into a mediocre hitter.

Oh, Hrbek was a good player until he hung up the cleats but we're not talking about performance in this thread. It's a hatchet job on Mauer's work ethic, not his performance.

The dude doesn't even run around the bases. He trots. Unacceptable.

Also, I'm the guy with blue hair. Come and say hi!

There are probably 80 people here. It's a packed house.

Houston is in freefall. The second WC is ripe for the Angels and Twins to snatch away from the Astros. Now we just need to find out which team wants it more.

On top of that, I find it incredible posters (posting on a baseball message board, mind you) will call a guy lazy when that guy is (was) better at his profession than anything any of us will do in our lifetimes. It requires a rather impenetrable Reality Distortion Field to suggest such a thing and do it with a straight face. Maybe Mauer doesn't have a great offseason regimen. I don't know and I have no information to suggest either side of the argument is correct... But it's incredible to suggest he's lazy when he was one of the best players in baseball for a decade. What, do some of you think Mauer somehow became one of the best catchers in MLB history through dumb luck and talent? *shakes head in disbelief*

Maybe the fourth best CF on the team. Maybe.

While I don't feel the Meyer trade was a bad decision, I can't argue with this statement.

Deleted the rest of the quote just so I could say "yep". I have no idea why his velocity is down but I'm almost certain some (all) of his issues are tied to his decreased velo. Hughes isn't a fireballer. He got by with solid velocity and good movement. Take that good 94mph velocity and drop it to a mediocre 92mph and he's a very hittable pitcher.

Okay, both of you tone it down and stop taking jabs at each other. Consider this an informal warning.

Are we REALLY comparing Mauer to Hrbek or did that 6pm old fashioned hit me harder than normal? I mean, come on people. Hrbek weighed more than a Buick by the time he was 34.

Eh, maybe. Top ten is stretching it a bit.

Ahtlete is first round pick. Athlete turns down football scholarship at premiere school. Athlete dominates defense-oriented position at a level never seen in the history of baseball. Athlete gets hit in the head. Athlete gets old and declines faster than most expected. Athlete is obviously lazy. What a bum, that athlete.

It's a difficult situation. We're approaching the end of the season. Hughes can't make MiLB starts. Down the stretch and into the playoffs, the Twins will probably need Hughes. I'm most disappointed by the velocity. If Phil doesn't get back to 92-93 in his next start, then he probably doesn't have any business in an MLB rotation. But I can't really fault the Twins for trying, though. It's a risk but one I'd be willing to take.

I knew most of this but putting it in a list is amusing... Only three of those teams still have the same name. Kinda weird. If you put a gun to my head, I would have listed the Highlanders as an original AL team. I didn't realize they came into existence two years after the formation of the AL.

I like Wild Card teams but I'm not sold on the one-game playoff. I'd prefer three games but I understand why MLB is resistant to that idea. First, it extends an already too long season and second, it forces other postseason teams to sit too long and possibly get rusty.

i don't think the question is whether Escobar is an .850 OPS player, I think the question is whether he's a .750 OPS player. It's possible Escobar is a player in the mold of Trevor Plouffe and, to an extent, Brian Dozier (though Dozier is better than Plouffe). They're decent-to-good players but not elite at the plate. Those players don't hit .280 and OPS at .800 month in, month out. They post .800+ months and .650 months. When combined, they end up in the .750-.800 range over the course of a season. Escobar has been red-hot. I think it's short-sighted and naive to expect this to continue. He'll almost certainly regress, become mediocre/bad for awhile, and then get red-hot again (provided this streak isn't an aberration).

We shouldn't be concerned. This is a typical arc for a young player that thrives after a call-up. Pitchers and coaches acquire film on the player. They find his weak spots and exploit them, often by throwing an inordinate amount of breaking balls. Now it's up to Sano and Bruno to adjust to the new approach.

That's pretty great.