Brock Beauchamp

Listening to offers and hoping for an overpay is quite different than trying to acquire a player at a diminished price. If the Giants were interested in Plouffe for Susac in May and considered it fair value, they're almost certainly interested in Plouffe for Susac in July because it's still fair value.

And I disagree because there's a good chance the Giants say "call me back in six weeks" and hang up the phone. It's mid-July and has there been a notable trade in MLB yet? There certainly wasn't one in May. Teams aren't in a rush to make changes even in June because there are so many roster variables in play.

His value to the Giants is higher. Ryan wouldn't change his valuation much, if at all. All that happens is the pendulum swings to the other side of the negotiating table. Also, this hypothetical ignores that this is a big reason why teams don't trade players in May. Sample sizes are small, teams are still figuring out their rosters, etc.

Sure, but on the inverse the "sell low" team isn't going to sell when they believe a player is underperforming his skill level. They'll ride out the storm and hope the player normalizes in time. For example, Lucroy. Would the Brewers have traded him for less in May when he had a 55 OPS+? Of course not, that'd be foolish. Was his "value" lower at that point? Yeah, maybe but it's irrelevant because the Brewers would have set his price at his expected level of performance, not his actual performance. That's what I mean by "long game". When you're looking years out, what is happening today doesn't carry much weight.

Ah, there you go. I still think that's on the low side but it's an interesting projection. Projecting on the fly is tough because it's hard to gauge regression or roster moves quickly. I'd like to see a metric more aggressively project those kinds of changes.

My point is that it becomes a counting stat that becomes less useful for projection as the season progresses. I'm not saying BaseRuns should be discarded, I'd simply like to see a projection version that is displayed alongside it. That would be more useful as the team banks lucky or unlucky wins along the way.

He entered 2015 as a #80-100 prospect on a few lists. The Giants weren't going to move his value down any more than the Twins would have moved Hicks' value down after his first two disastrous months of 2013. Think of baseball as a stock market where everybody is playing the long game and there is no short-term investment. People who invest in the long game don't buy or sell based on small, possibly random, flucuations in stock price. They stand firm and ride it out because they're looking anywhere from 2-5 years out (possibly even longer). What happens this month or next month is generally irrelevant.

BaseRuns has merit. Over the course of a season, a team's luck is probably going to balance out and BaseRuns is representative of what *should* have happened, not what actually happened. Not unlike FIP or xFIP, really. The problem with these metrics is that a lucky team doesn't automatically become unlucky just so their FIP/xFIP/BaseRuns balance at the end of the season. The Twins were incredibly lucky in late April and all of May. That shot them out to a (going from memory) +8 BaseRuns record, which is insanely high. Well, guess what? Those lucky wins are in the bank. At that point, the BaseRuns record becomes kinda irrelevant because it doesn't factor in games that already happened and project from there. Right now, the Twins are +9 in BaseRuns. For all intents and purposes (again, going from memory here), they have been BaseRuns neutral for a month and a half. That means they're no longer lucky but because they banked so many wins early in the season, they're still within a few games of their high water mark of the season (which was +11 games over .500, IIRC). It's almost a given the Twins will have a ridiculously high BaseRuns differential for the entire 2015 season but that doesn't matter. They don't need to "keep beating the odds" because they beat the odds so soundly in May. They just need to stay luck neutral for the rest of the season and they're a playoff contender, BaseRuns be damned. Also, the luck neutral Twins of today are a better team than the lucky Twins of May. Sano, Hicks, Rosario, and Mauer are starting to produce while Kyle Gibson has mysteriously turned into a strikeout monster while inducing groundballs left and right. There's still some room for upward movement on this roster. To summarize a post that's about ten times longer than I originally anticipated, it's July and the Twins' BaseRuns record is pretty much irrelevant. I'd like to see a second version of the metric that projected the rest of the season and removed all that "this should/shouldn't have happened" garbage because that's water under the bridge. It happened. It can't be changed. My guess is that if BaseRuns took the Twins' 49 wins as fact and projected the rest of the season based on the last month of play (ie. using the current roster and not the one fielded in May), they'd put the Twins somewhere around 83-85 wins for the season (basically .500 ball from here on out).

I know it's an extreme SSS and all but I have to admit I'm a little intrigued by Fryer right now. He's not a long-term solution in any way, shape, or form but he looked good enough in his first two games that I'd play him more often for the rest of July and see what happens. It's not the perfect solution (or even a good solution, probably) but given the lack of catching options out there, it might not be horrible.

Good point.

The Twins have played 12 games in July. In 33% of those games, either one or both of Santana and Escobar played in the outfield. If the Twins want to play Arcia, there's room on the roster to make that happen. He won't play every day but he can get a lot of PAs.

Yep, exactly. Maybe the Twins should have given away Kyle Gibson after 2013 when they still could have gotten something for him. And that Buxton kid, he looks rough. Players are not the stock market. They don't value or devalue at a moment's notice or sometimes for no reason at all.

Why would the Giants trade a guy for a lowered price when he's struggling?

Good lord. That's actually kind of amazing.

Thanks for the input. First off, your Twins Daily login information works on Vikings Journal, Wild Xtra, and Northern Pitch (but I think you already know that, just clarifying it). For each site you'll need to log in once but if you check "Remember Me", you won't have to enter the information on that site again until you clear browser data. The sites pass encrypted tokens back and forth so that your account is universal, though you have to log into each site individually. The reason why you're not logged into Twins Daily after you logged into Vikings Journal is due to browser security. For obvious reasons, a browser will not send the Twins Daily login information you entered to a domain named VikingsJournal.com. Otherwise, everyone would be spoofing each others' login credentials and stealing your information. It'd be really easy to steal everyone's data at that point.

On top of all that, what do the 2015 Twins gain by trading Hunter? I don't see an upside there. Scale back Torii's playing time? Sure. Rotate him to DH on occasion? Sure. Trade him? No, not so much. The team is worse without him than it is with him. As we head toward the stretch, that's what really matters.

To be clear, I'm not in a rush to mess with Aaron Hicks. I should have qualified that post with "If Hicks keeps hitting for a month or more..." Right now, I'd make no change. I was thinking down the stretch but didn't clarify that statement.

Yes and no. What I see differently with Hicks is he's finally making good contact and that was the final missing piece. Earlier this season, I became more positive about him after he stopped being so passive at the plate. That was encouraging. We knew Hicks had poise and good discipline. What he was missing was authoritative contact and the confidence to swing. In May he started swinging but still lacked contact. Now it appears he's finally getting the contact part of the puzzle. Hopefully he can adjust as pitchers develop new approaches against him so the contact element remains strong. That's the key piece we didn't see earlier in the season.

I like lefty/righty as much as possible and I like Dozier as the third hitter so I'd do this: Hicks Mauer Dozier Sano Plouffe Rosario Hunter Suzuki Whatever, I refuse to even put a name here Arcia would go a long way toward shoring up that righty/righty/righty 3/4/5 part of the lineup. In an ideal situation, he'd hit fifth in the lineup.

The bunting bothers the hell out of me. The outs on the basepaths, not so much. It's aggravating but it comes with the territory.

I disagree. Yes, the Twins are in contention but you still have to let young players learn the game. It's one of the reasons why teams loaded with young players often stumble badly during the season. Young players do dumb things, sometimes at critical moments. These kids are going to have to learn what works and what doesn't sooner or later and mistakes will be made. What's important is that they learn from the mistakes and don't make them repeatedly. I don't care that Rosario tried to steal second at such an ill-advised moment, what I care about is whether Molitor pulled him to the side after the game and explained why it was a mistake to run on that pitch.

Hick since the recall: PA: 35 BA: .286 OBP: .400 OPS: 1.043 BB: 6 SO: 3 His 2015 OPS is now at .701 (92 OPS+). He's a completely different player than he was just six weeks ago.

Win 48. Game #: 2015: 88 2014: 105 2013: 108 2012: 109 2011: 103 The 2015 Twins are now a full 15 games ahead of the next closest season and 21 games ahead of the worst season.

Bill Smith is not the GM. I think the chances of Arcia being traded for a reliever are non-existent unless it's a young fireballer with years of control and I still don't know if Ryan makes that trade.

Actually, I think that's the core of my point. Molitor isn't specifically calling bad steals but he's giving a lot of green lights, which the young players are using at questionable times. And I'm okay with that. It's hard to teach if you don't let people fail on occasion. If this continues in 2016 and 17, then I'll get irritated about it.