Brock Beauchamp

Hah, I had a similar experience when I moved to San Diego as a teenager. I walked into high school and went "OMG, this entire school is Mexican!" The school was about one-third Hispanic. I felt like a minority, even though slightly over 50% of the school was white.

Fangraphs has his WAR at 0.2. Torii Hunter is not killing the Twins right now. His 2014 WAR was 2.7, a pretty good number for a middling position player (and his OPS was .765, not .800). The Torii Hunter signing was not terrible. I didn't like it because he's a defensive liability on a team that can't miss bats but as a one-year stop-gap, it's not awful. Not my preferred move but not one that will make or break the team.

Rosario didn't perform well last year. I never said otherwise. But Rosario didn't fail to the point that he considered giving up switch-hitting permanently and didn't even tell his coach about it. That should raise enormous red flags about the mental state of Aaron Hicks as recently as last season. The kid looked and acted completely lost, a guy who was beat before he even stepped into the box. He wouldn't even take the bat off his shoulder, for crying out loud. Even the coaches were confused by his actions. That's not the type of guy you call up until you're sure he has sorted his problems and the Twins' explanation is rational. I'd be disappointed if they hadn't learned from their previous, repeated mistakes with Hicks by now. There's a lot more to a baseball player than a box score. Hicks' numbers were not only bad, he behaved like someone who had lost all confidence in his ability. If you want that person to be a longterm fixture in your organization, you treat him with kid gloves until he gets his head right and then you probably give him a few more weeks to make sure his head is right. Throwing him into the deep end again after he failed multiple times is a good way to waste what could be a valuable asset going forward. Again, my biggest complaint is that the Twins didn't take this approach with Hicks in 2013 or 2014. I'm certainly not going to blast them for finally trying to do right by the kid.

Maybe because he coached for ~25 consecutive years and is getting paid a pile of money to sit on his keister. It also might have something to do with him saying "I'm taking a year off".

Stick a fork in Phil Hughes, he's done. This is why we don't overreact to a few weeks of play. I'm hardly the biggest advocate of the Hunter signing but the guy deserves more than a few weeks to get into the flow of the game. If a one-year contract to a vet is your biggest issue of the season, I think the front office did a pretty good job... Personally, I have far more issues with the thought process that led to the Opening Day bullpen than I am Hunter. It's a one-year deal by a team who has Aaron Hicks, Byron Buxton, Eddie Rosario, and Oswaldo Arcia in the organization. It wasn't nearly as dumb a move as some around here like to paint it.

I think there's something outside the box score that bothers the Twins. I would *love* to see an article of that kind that asks the right questions and doesn't accept trite answers. At this point, the front office needs to explain their thinking about Meyer if only to sate the fanbase a bit.

Aaron Hicks had multiple months in 2013 where he OPSed over .700. Was he playing well then? Let's not fall over ourselves just because a prospect has a good month, particularly when his name is Aaron Hicks. I just can't wrap my head around why some of you are advocating that the guy get a call-up after so many spectacular failures, time after time after time. What's the rush? What harm is there in letting the kid see success at a level for more than three weeks before promoting him? Hell, right now I'd consider calling up Buxton before I'd call up Hicks if the 40 man wasn't an issue. I'd do everything in my power to let Hicks flourish for a prolonged stretch of time so he has the best possible chance of sticking on the 25 man roster permanently when he does get the call. It doesn't need to be months or even half a season... Just 6-8 weeks of solid play could do wonders for the poor kid's head.

What makes you think Hicks has corrected himself enough to face MLB pitching again? ~60 ABs against RHP in Rochester? Given his spectacular, continued failure at every level since 2012, don't you think the prudent move is letting the kid prove himself a bit more before exposing him again? Think about that for a moment and how long that is in prospect years... Aaron Hicks has not had success at any level since August of 2012. That's 32 months ago.

The last time the Twins were three games over .500 was October 3, 2010. A win tonight breaks that streak.

Oh boy, I can't disagree with that last statement enough. As the article implies, I think this move was equally about Hicks building confidence and Rosario's daily work ethic and the thinking behind this move is sound reasoning. This front office has horribly mismanaged Hicks for two years. We should applaud them for doing the right thing by the kid and letting him get his feet under him before exposing him to MLB pitching again. The kid was so completely lost that he gave up switch-hitting and didn't tell his coach. Give him more than 2-3 weeks to build up some confidence before throwing him to the wolves again. The Twins should have been playing the long game with Hicks in 2013 after his first failure. Instead, they continued to jerk him around and he failed everywhere he went. The best thing for his long-term development is being in a place where he can get his head right and once he does that, maybe he has a shot at becoming a productive MLB player.

Fantastic. Any Twins fan that isn't reassured by that article has an irrational dislike of the front office. That was a well-reasoned, rational way to approach the situation and a good reminder that MiLB box scores don't tell us everything about a player. We need more articles like that when the Twins make a move that isn't completely logical on paper; real insight into their methodology and thinking. In this particular case, it's hard to argue that this wasn't the right move.

Great article, Shane. It voices many of the ideas that have been bouncing around in my head for years in a much more eloquent manner than I can formulate. This part is particularly note-worthy IMO: As I've mentioned to Carole before, I remember the first time I was in a room and I was the only white person. I was really uncomfortable and couldn't pin down why. Later, a flood of realizations came to me, the greatest of which was "society has trained me to be scared of these people for no good reason and in my wordview, the default person is white, everyone else is slightly alien to me". It was a really disturbing realization and it permanently altered how I think about race. As I mentioned earlier, we're all racists to an extent. It has been ingrained into white Americans on such a deep level that it's impossible to root it out completely.

Actually, yeah, I could easily see the Giants (Bruce Bochy, anybody?) or Rangers take a shot at Gardy. Probably not the Yankees and I'm skeptical of the Dodgers.

I'm coming up blank with examples but I know they're there, my old memory is just failing me right now. I think Gardy will have suitors. He's a good fit for some clubs. He drove me up with the wall with his in-game management but I think most of the league views him quite well, and for good reason... He stewarded a lot of good ballclubs and he's not that old yet.

He has shown sustained success much more recently than Hicks has. I just don't understand why people are trying to rush Hicks to MLB again. He has failed spectacularly to the point where he gave up switch-hitting for a few weeks. It's obvious that the game has gotten to this kid's head after 2+ years of repeated failure. Give him some time to build confidence and get his head right. Yeah, it might cost the Twins a game or two now but I'll take that if it gives him even a small edge to become a regular MLB player down the road. We should all applaud the Twins for playing the long game here instead of taking the easy road. They should have done this last year but that's water under the bridge at this point.

I don't believe that at all. I think Gardy can sit on his hands until the right opportunity emerges... An underperforming team of vets with a chance to compete. There are plenty of teams that would jump at the chance to hire Gardy's steady clubhouse influence in that type of situation.

This is my thinking as well. Let's not forget that the last time Hicks saw real success as a baseball player was in 2012. That's an eon ago. Letting the guy settle into sustained success for awhile is pretty sound reasoning (provided that's what the Twins are thinking). He has been floundering for 2 1/2 years now... That's a reallllllly long time in prospect years. A month or more of killing it at Rochester could go a long way for the guy's confidence.

In my opinion, the Twins didn't have a good option here but because Arcia is only going on the 15 day DL, giving Rosario a taste of MLB pitching isn't the worst thing in the world. If I was managing the Twins front office, I would do everything in my power to avoid "tainting" Hicks' recent success by letting something get into his head again. Let him succeed for an extended period of time before calling him up. The guy hasn't seen real success anywhere since 2012.

Please use "black", not "colored". I haven't heard a black person refer to themselves as colored in my lifetime. Really, I'm not trying to harass you or make you feel bad about it, just trying to point out that it's pretty insulting to some black people to refer to them as colored. And there's nothing wrong with admitting that you recognize race. It's impossible not to acknowledge someone's race unless you're blind. What's important is that you don't act or treat them differently because of it. My black friends see me as white and I see them as black. That's just how it is because none of us are blind and we all see the color of each others' skin.

Because it's not on me to fix all of the world's ills. When many of these incidents occurred, I literally would have had to "shout from the rooftops" for anyone to hear me. Social media did not exist in any meaningful capacity. But I recognized - and continue to recognize - that a problem exists and try to vote for politicians who also realize that a problem exists.

I don't fault him for realizing that tendency exists. What I do fault him for is being brazen about it and making zero effort to overcome what is an obviously biased view of race. We're all racists to an extent. I found that after not having been around black people for many months while living in Michigan, I became slightly on-edge when immersed into a predominantly black neighborhood again. Upon realizing this had happened to me, I became extremely embarrassed and started actively working on changing my perception of the world around me. I still have flaws based around race. As I uncover them, I work to stop my bad behavior and change how I think about things. It's a never-ending process. As old bad traits fade away, new ones replace them and the cycle continues. And that's why I'm no longer friends with that person. We all have flaws but I have no time for someone who is so disinterested in realizing those flaws and overcoming them. Doubly so for a person whose job has such an impact on the daily lives of people of color. I find it disgusting, really.

Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson! The black community so badly needs leaders who haven't fallen prey to the self-serving levels of grandstanding that those two commit on a near-daily basis. I roll my eyes any time either one of them appears on television, which is far too often for my liking. As for the "other side" of the bridge-building equation, based on the right's treatment of Obama, I think there's about a zero chance of anything productive coming from that side of things. In short, we're pretty much screwed.

Absolutely. I'm not saying cops are bad people for falling prey to the occasional stereotype and I'm sure lots of them work hard to avoid falling into bad habits. To an extent, it has been boiled into police brains permanently because lots of black people are poor and lots of poor people commit violent crime. The overlap there creates unfortunate tendencies to associate being black with crime. But it's a real thing and it really sucks for the vast majority of black people who obey the law yet get harassed by cops on a regular basis for nothing other than being black. My experiences with the motorcycle story are trying to shine light on that from the other side. All I ever had to do was reveal my whiteness and I was left alone. Imagine how infuriating that must be to people of color. I can't. To rattle off another story that some might find interesting, one of my best friends in high school became a cop after moving out of state. He later moved back after college so we reconnected and played poker a few times. He was a reasonable guy in high school; not bright but not dumb. He was a typical guy. Upon seeing him for the second or third time after reconnecting, we started talking about his job. At one point, he said: "When we're behind on our ticket quota, we just pull over white people. We don't have time to process arrests when we're under our quota so we just pull over white people, particularly women, because they never have arrest warrants. When we're just cruising normally, we pull over lots of black people so our arrest numbers look good." We weren't friends for much longer after that point but holy ****, he actually said that out loud to another human being and didn't hesitate to do it. Crikey.

As I said, it's not the first time I've had it happen. I can't even count how many times that has happened to me on a motorcycle. Not a single police officer has done anything but speed away the moment I take off my helmet, at least not as far as I can remember. Once, yeah, okay. Twice, well, that's a little odd. Ten times? 20 times? At what point do I take notice of this being a thing that happens? Couple that with the fact that I've spent most of the past 15 years living in non-white neighborhoods and ride motorcycles that are very popular with the black community and the trend becomes disturbing. Why are so many police officers following me and why do they suddenly lose interest? A few times back in the day, I just pulled into parking lots and took off my helmet so the damned cop would stop bugging me or I'd joke with my then-girlfriend "another cop escorted me to the driveway today". But hey, maybe cops just hate motorcycles that are in operation but become blind to them the moment they stop running, like some kind of invisibility cloak from Dungeons and Dragons.

To go completely anecdotal, not five days ago a police car followed me several blocks on my motorcycle. I pulled into the alley behind my house and they slowed (I didn't realize they were following me until they slowed and stopped to watch what I was doing in the alley). I stopped and the moment I pulled off my helmet (ie. the moment they realized I was white), they dismissed anything I was doing as suspect and sped away. I was no longer of interest to them. Think about that for a moment and let it soak in just how ****ed up that is. And it's not the first time I've had similar experiences with cops... I can't even count those kinds of situations at this point, especially from my days back in Long Beach (though North Minneapolis is nicer than where I lived for most of my time in Long Beach, it has similar problems). As a white man, I am nearly invisible to police officers. I had *one* bad experience with police in Long Beach. I stopped counting how many of my non-white friends had incidents because they were rather commonplace. I probably didn't even hear about most of them. That's the kind of pervasive, subconscious racism that plagues this country today.