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Brock Beauchamp

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Everything posted by Brock Beauchamp

  1. Brock Beauchamp
    I think it's a moot point. Whether the Twins traded Liriano or not, I don't see them resigning him last winter.
  2. Brock Beauchamp
    I think it's a bad idea to continually run yourself against your budget ceiling. It leaves no wiggle room for improvisation should something good or bad happen in 2014-2015. It also can crunch you when your young, good players start asking for raises and/or extensions. On the other hand, if the Twins have a ceiling of $110m+ right now, they should be no lower than $90m at the end of this offseason. That's still plenty of money to shore up this MLB team. Phil Hughes, Josh Johnson, and a few minor offensive bats can be had for $30m a year.
  3. Brock Beauchamp
    That has reduced the competitive nature of the market to a further degree. Specialists dominate the medical landscape nowadays and GPs are paid less and hard to find (one of my friends is a GP because he felt a social obligation to go that direction, despite it being a "bad career choice"). More specialists mean higher costs (but also, better more focused treatment). They're also found only in certain locations and hospitals, which further reduces the ability of the consumer to make a truly free market choice. The deck is stacked against the consumer in the healthcare industry. We need to throw out these notions of "competitive free market" because they don't apply in the reality of today's world. Then we can start finding real solutions that don't exist only in the theoretical.
  4. Brock Beauchamp
    Sure, they do a lot of little things right that add up to a quality MLB team. But I see people talk about drafting and development... Are the Rays really that good at drafting and developing players? We simply don't know because they hit it big in a couple of drafts and they had the luxury of picking in the top five for almost a decade straight. If, in two years, they're producing loads of good players from the 08 and beyond drafts, then we'll know that their system truly is superior.
  5. Brock Beauchamp
    I've been harping on this for a long time. I think the Rays are an extremely well-run franchise but before we crown them Kings of All Things Baseball, they need to draft lower in the pecking order and continue to succeed. The Twins turned into a good team in the early 2000s and continued to draft well for 3-4 years after that point. I haven't seen the Rays do that yet, though they've absolutely been killing it with trades.
  6. Brock Beauchamp
    I didn't mean to imply that. My point is more that without alternatives, there is nothing to stop hospitals from profit-grabbing whenever possible. Without a proper free market, which healthcare doesn't really offer because of the limitations of how it is administered, there is nothing "competitive" about the market at all.
  7. Brock Beauchamp
    The problem with this is that health care is usually not a true free market situation. If you get sick and have to go to the hospital, you generally don't price-shop hospitals and make an informed decision. Sure, you can do that with general check-ups but that's not where the real costs of health care are found... They're found in surgeries and emergency visits, which offer little or no cost-control opportunity for the consumer. An example of this is TIME finding an example of a hospital in Texas charging ~$7,000 for a procedure. The same procedure was ~$90,000 in a California hospital. There is no rhyme or reason to healthcare pricing because in so many cases, hospitals have a monopolistic control over their patients. If you get hit by a car, you don't get to request "hey, take me to that hospital instead of this hospital... their beds are nicer". The EMTs take you to the closest hospital. In many places, there is only one hospital within a reasonable distance. The free market does a good job of managing many costs and keeping things competitive... But when the consumer base has little or no choice in what products and services they use, the private sector takes the opportunity to charge whatever they want. All rhyme or reason goes out the window in favor of pure profit-grabbing.
  8. Brock Beauchamp
    I was surprised at how much this bothered me today. Reed, Iggy, and Bowie were the three guys who really got me into music in a serious way.
  9. Brock Beauchamp
    Well, the Twins Daily Offseason Handbook interview, for one.
  10. Brock Beauchamp
    Wittgren went in the ninth round. Why bring up LJ Mazzilli at all? The Twins drafted ten guys before Wittgren went to the Marlins. Whether you intended it or not, how people read your posts are going to dictate their reactions to your post. My comment was not meant as any disciplinary action nor was it saying that you violated any sort of comment policy; the point of my comment was "if you don't like how a half dozen people responded to your thread, you may want to consider that it might have something to do with how you phrased your statement in the first place". After all, the comment elicited virtually the same response from multiple people. At that point, it probably ain't them, it's probably your post.
  11. Brock Beauchamp
    Except that the Twins have more than one full-time stats guy. Ryan has said as much in recent interviews. Are they late to the game? Sure. But let's put the "ONE STAT GUY" thing to bed already. And at this point, are we still bashing Kevin Correia? The team got a marginal #4/5 starter for a #4/5 starter price. Most of the guys we were rah-rah about last winter were far worse than Kevin Correia, often at 2-3 times the cost. I don't think that absolves Ryan of his risk-averse FA signings but Kevin Correia was a good pick-up at the price, whether we want to admit it or not.
  12. Brock Beauchamp
    Well, you're going to get that response quite often when you bash a team for not picking a guy that 29 other teams also passed over several times. We've all had our pet picks that went to another team and saw success. It's part of the game. Had you phrased it "I wish the Twins had picked this guy, he's flat-out dominating" instead of taking an opportunity to slam the team in the process, it's probable that the response would have been vastly different.
  13. Brock Beauchamp
    It's possible... But it's also possible that Johnson and/or Haren could return to form and be a borderline ace pitcher. Besides, what's to like about Kazmir but not Johnson/Haren? And Hughes has plenty of warts. He's my "first choice" guy this offseason but he has warts. Plenty of 'em.
  14. Brock Beauchamp
    To be clear, I don't trust him for three years, either. I'm actually pretty okay with Florimon being a stop-gap for a year or two. But to call Drew a small upgrade over Florimon just isn't true. He would be a huge upgrade for at least a year or two and possibly a marginal upgrade for a third year. I don't think that's where the team should be focused right now... They need players who will be better for 3+ years to complement the wave of young players coming through the system (in other words, above average starting pitching).
  15. Brock Beauchamp
    Stephen Drew posted an OPS 160 points higher than Florimon, 53 points of which was OBP. He would be a massive upgrade at the position, not a marginal one.
  16. Brock Beauchamp
    The international market came later, for sure... But it's apparent the Twins have focused heavily on some international markets with guys like Arcia, Sano, Kepler, and Thorpe. They've done better in the international market in recent years than they did the draft. As for Ryan's early seasons, he didn't try to actually rebuild until the mid-to-late 90s. The mid-90s teams were full of creaky vets, not young players.
  17. Brock Beauchamp
    Fair enough. I don't know enough about the situation to say for certain but I could see either situation being the case (Smith being a problem versus Smith returning to his previous role and thriving).
  18. Brock Beauchamp
    But if Ryan can bow out and get out of Smith's way, why can't Smith do the same for Ryan?
  19. Brock Beauchamp
    I can't disagree with this post. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle... Stability is good but fresh eyes and influence are good, too.
  20. Brock Beauchamp
    My guess to that question is "you can't fire ownership".
  21. Brock Beauchamp
    I'd love to be wrong. Still don't see it happening.
  22. Brock Beauchamp
    I've never heard anyone in the organization publicly say anything negative about Smith. Hell, the guy still works for the organization. Obviously, they don't hate him that much.
  23. Brock Beauchamp
    No, I'm simply arguing that Ryan does many things right and that "sweeping changes" may not be necessary to achieve success. Ryan isn't perfect, far from it. His apparent refusal to pay market price for free agents is maddening. But if you're going to give me a guy who can corral and build a powerful farm system but is averse to free agent signings, I'll take him all day over the guy who does the opposite. I don't have to like everything Ryan does to believe he's a better GM than most in the game and if you fire everybody in the organization (which many here seem to advocate on a daily basis), there's a damned good chance you're going to fill those vacancies with people worse at their job, not better.
  24. Brock Beauchamp
    You can always buy the Twins Daily 2014 Offseason Handbook and get a comprehensive list... http://twinsdaily.com/2383-available-pre-order-2014-offseason-handbook.html
  25. Brock Beauchamp
    I have no issues with Smith being in the org. He proved himself to be a capable employee at his position, enough for ownership to promote him to General Manager. You don't punish the person for going beyond his Peter Principle position. You put him back into a role where he can succeed and ownership gets the blame for promoting him in the first place.
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