Brock Beauchamp

I refuse to bugfix IE8 at this point. My god, MS has done all they can to hamstring the internet. Such awful business practices over the past 10-14 years.

There are many that haven't given up on him and I'm sure the front office is among that group. I thought Hicks was mis-handled but he's still only 24. There's plenty of time for him to get back on track.

Teams in that situation penalize themselves enough. If you purge the MLB team, it's usually a 4-5 year process to get it back to contention. Teams that do it take a massive hit in the pocketbook and fans stay away for a long time. That doesn't mean teams shouldn't occasionally purge and start over, I just think there's enough of a downside that an NBA lottery system (ugh) isn't a good fix.

I can agree with that. Willingham and Correia are at that "take what you can get" stage. It doesn't mean you trade them today if no good offers exist but you trade them if the package is even somewhat reasonable. They're actually a hindrance to the roster down the stretch.

A player like Dozier would demand a top 20 prospect in return. No question. He's 27 years old with four years of control and looks to be a 3 WAR player if healthy. That's a combined 12 WAR, probably more like 15 WAR if he keeps it up. That's a really valuable player, more valuable than Span due to length of control.

The body copy font may be slightly larger but it's roughly to the same size. What I tried to eliminate was some of the smaller fonts around the site. I either eliminated that text entirely or upped the font size. My goal is cleaner, larger fonts all around. If I don't feel information is useful to a large number of users, I eliminate it entirely. The new design is much cleaner than the current site, which I put together in just over a week. It was a mad-dash just to get it together and I've never been happy with the design, even though it was a massive improvement over what came before it.

Given his flirtation with giving up switch-hitting (and baffling return to it a few weeks later), I wanted to dig a bit further into his splits and see how he was holding up. According to Minor League Central, he is indeed taking all his swings as a RHB in New Britain. Good news, for sure. http://minorleaguecentral.com/player?pid=543305&type=batter&split=2014 His line drive rate is low and he's hitting a ton of balls on the ground but that OPS is promising.

And that's a fair complaint. I'm a HUGE advocate of HUGE fonts. You'll notice that Twins Daily will never be accused of using too small a font because I think it's a horse**** decision to make people squint to read your damned site. And spoiler alert: a new Twins Daily is coming. If you think the fonts are big now, just wait awhile. They're only getting bigger. I have two design theories on fonts and how to choose the right one: 1. First and foremost, fonts should be clean and easy to read, everything comes second. 2. There is no second point.

Well, yes. That was gross mismanagement on every level. They deleted data, removed functionality, put in place a terrible moderator system that was half-baked, and basically gave every sane person a reason to leave forever. There were few actual "improvements" in that redesign and a whole slew of mistakes. Different situation here. SI.com, while I don't like the fact that it's fully responsive (see my comments above) or that its webfont doesn't render well on cheap Windows machines, does a lot of things right: - It works better on more devices - It uses modern functionality like lazy loading to speed up load times - It's very finger-friendly There's a lot right in that design, even if I think it's still too busy for its own good.

The most well-organized and smartest team of developers could design and develop a site that changed the internet forever and a huge portion of the userbase would call it an abomination. Then those users would adjust and by the time the next version rolls around, they'd love the current version (that they hated just nine months ago) and call the new version an abomination. People prefer what they know over what's actually progressive and good. See every iteration of Facebook as proof of this concept in action. Show someone 2011 Facebook today and they'd scoff at its lack of functionality, bad layout, and poor UIX. Yet at the time of its replacement, they swore up and down that it was the best thing ever and that it didn't need to be changed.

Three true outcome players are valuable. See Dunn, Adam. My only question is whether Walker is a two true outcome player, which isn't nearly as valuable (and often turns the player into a bench bat).

My guess is that no matter what happens, Berrios will start 2015 in New Britain. He's not going to get many innings at AA this season before he's shut down and the Twins won't feel a need to rush the kid. By all accounts he has tremendous stuff and an even better head on his shoulders but starting him in AA next season gives him a better opportunity to succeed. They can easily promote him to Rochester at any time during the season.

I love it, though I still think they're cramming too much information on a single page. It's miles better than ESPN, who was recently awarded my personal "MY GOD PEOPLE ACTUALLY USE THIS SITE?!?!?" award for the tenth consecutive year. I'd *love* to do a fully responsive bootstrap version of Twins Daily but it's beyond the scope of a single person to manage. Harrumph. I'm not crazy about a fully responsive site, as I believe mobile devices (phones, primarily) should call a leaner, sleeker version of the code to minimize load times and data usage. But a hybrid responsive site that calls to tablets and desktops while delivering a slimmer mobile version for phones, that's something I'd *love* to implement.

Ah, yes. "API". In truth, one of the most useful tools of development... But when used by a layman, code for "take someone else's data and do what we want without permission". Um, no. You can't just "steal" a database... Which is the very purpose of an actual "API".

Put it in the cloud, Mike. That fixes everything.

Fantastic. I've been waiting to see someone do this and your data backs up my initial thoughts... It's really hard to figure out which 16 year old players will become quality MLB players, which makes the Twins strategy of "throw smaller amounts of money at a lot of guys" seem pretty logical.

Yeah... I think "pretty good" is an understatement. Any draft that nets Buxton and Berrios is outstanding, with or without Walker. I'm still pretty skeptical about Walker given his OBP issues, age (22 in A+), and strikeout tendencies. That doesn't bode well as pitchers get smarter and better further up the MiLB ladder. Either way, he's an interesting guy to keep an eye on, that's for sure.

Security camera footage from Target Field as of 6:44am this morning:

That thread is a perfect example of why we aren't always against thread "derailments". Conversations are organic; let them flow and they'll often lead in unexpected and enlightening directions. What we're against is hammering at the same drum in every thread or inserting a pet topic into a completely unrelated conversation. For example, if you don't like Joe Mauer and said so in 14 other threads, feel free to shut up about Joe in a thread about Kevin Correia. If you have a grudge against the medical staff, don't bring it up in a thread about Phil Hughes, who hasn't been injured during his time with the Twins. If you don't like Terry Ryan, not every thread needs to spell out how (fill in blank roster move) is an indictment of his ability as a General Manager. There are plenty of threads that specifically cater to those subjects, just hold on to your britches for a minute and wait for another to pop up. Natural thread derailments are fine. We often encourage it, as it extends the life of the conversation and takes it in new directions. What's not fine is smothering the board with the same opinion across 12 threads and three forums. What's not fine is dominating the board with an opinion that everybody already knows you have because you've stated it multiple times. And if that opinion is negative (as people who trumpet the same points so often are), we're going to have an even lower pain threshold until we take action. Some people confuse persistent negativity with honesty; in reality, rampant negativity is toxic and it ruins the party for everybody. I often keep my mouth shut in threads because I feel as if I'd only be contributing to the negativity in a thread that already has plenty of it. It's not that hard. Wheaton's Law pretty much sums up my thoughts on the subject: It's really that easy.

I think I can safely say that Jack, despite his friendly and open nature with the posters on this board, is not going to publicly comment on whether his boss should be fired.

When the moon is just right and the parents are sleeping, I slip out the basement window and run naked to the nearest SABR convention.

Pain and soreness doesn't take a player to 80%. It shouldn't affect a player noticeably once he has loosened up. Pain and soreness are normal. "My bat speed is significantly slower because my wrist hurts" is an injury.

You'll really miss the "sniff the fresh stacks of mimeographs" Friday afternoons.

It's pretty hilarious how my experience aligns exactly with their requirements. Hmm. Hmmmm.