Brock Beauchamp

I'm generally against ownership stepping in and killing specific baseball deals. The baseball people were hired for a reason, let them do their jobs. Of course, it's perfectly within rights of ownership to (strongly) suggest a direction to go but I don't really like drilling down to an individual deal unless it's a franchise-altering deal, like trading Juan Soto or something.

Probably not a difficult choice for a guy who has made $144m in his career already...

Probably because he apologized and wasn’t a jerk (that I’m aware of anyway).

Sigh.

Welcome to Brewer Fanatic!

All in all, this is very much threading a needle. It’s impossible to please different kinds of users with different behaviors while trying to maximize growth for the health of the site. I try to do the best I can to compromise but ultimately, some goals directly conflict with one another.

This is something I'm constantly evaluating and re-evaluating but for the time being, editorial articles are going to stay in the forums. I'll try to articulate my reasoning for this as best I can. 1. An "orderly" forum is often an uninviting forum for new users and/or infrequent users. Having an 18 page thread titled "Corbin Burnes" might appeal to you (who seems to be a "forum completist" in that you read everything) but is daunting for new or less frequent users. But a one page topic titled "Are the Brewers going to extend Corbin Burnes" and another topic "Predict Corbin Burnes' Numbers in 2023" and another topic "My Arguments to Trade Corbin Burnes" is more descriptive and inviting to more users, even though the overlap between the three topics is considerable. 2. Right now we're in "grow the site" mode, which makes #1 really important. I have numbers for BrewerFan going back to 2005 or something like that. Over the past 4-5 years, traffic has been on a considerable downturn to the point where despite traffic bumping upward +100% over 2021, Brewer Fanatic's user count is just a bit over where it was in 2018 and 2019. That's how much traffic has declined over the past few years. If we're not bringing in new users on a regular basis, the site can easily go from "decent but kinda slow conversation" to "ghost town" in a matter of months. 3. We're trying to promote front page content because that's the best way to keep a site lively and active. So far it's working but we still have a lot of work to do in this regard and we're at maybe 20% of the traffic we need to be what I consider "thriving". That means BrewerFan, less than a year ago, was less than 10% of that traffic number. 4. This isn't forever. Right now it's the offseason and nothing is happening. The forums would be a draaaggggg if not for the articles refreshing page one content every day. The same threads would be sitting above the fold for days, if not weeks, at a time. As the season starts ramping up, we'll see a lot more user-generated topics populating the front page. 5. Ultimately, my goal is to have ALL articles go into their own forum. It's what we do on Twins Daily because there's so much content at that site we need to have articles go into their own forum. Twins Daily also has the kind of traffic that the forums - particularly the Twins forum - does a good job of "churning and burning" topics off the first page merely through user-generated content. Twins Daily usually has more than double the number of posts per month we receive here on Brewer Fanatic. As we build up the front page, increase the content count, and bring in more users to participate in the forums, I hope to do the same here.

This is a fun satirization of the Correa situation. https://twinsdaily.com/news-rumors/just-for-fun/carlos-correa-satire-mets-deal/

That Burnes start was spectacular. It was a real bummer that his final start mattered so little because he played the role of ACE so hard in that start.

And that's why owners need to be smart (something they haven't done well in the past) and, for the good of the sport, get 24 owners in line to agree to better revenue sharing. They don't need 30 teams, they need 24... and given how some of those drift between 20-26, I suspect it'll take 21-22 owners to agree. If they do that, I suspect the MLBPA will come around to a salary cap and floor. The game, as it as always been, is in the owners' hands. If they want to fix it, they have the power. Don't blame the guys on the field.

I'll say a little bit about myself here and it may be an overshare but it drives a lot of my thinking while operating a site and community: I'm raising two wonderful Black daughters. I hope that someday baseball captures their love and attention enough to take over this business and make it their own. I am a steward of both this community and especially them. I will not and cannot operate a community in a way that will embarrass them. That's my job as a father and a business owner. And that's (part of the reason) why we will not allow sexual aggressors to be trumpeted and their transgressions diminished. If anyone has a problem with that, I welcome them to participate with any number of communities that allow such conversation. But if you want the best conversation about baseball, that's what we have here at Brewer Fanatic.

My status as an administrator means only one thing: I work to maintain the health of the community and site at large. My personal issues with Bauer and his ability to throw a baseball have not entered this conversation even once; I have stayed miles away from that particular conversation quite intentionally. But back to the health of the community and site, defense of a sexual abuser or even mitigation of what they have done doesn't fly here. Ever. Feel free to say you think Trevor Bauer can throw a baseball really well and you want him on your team. Expect people to disagree, quite strongly. But defend the man's actions or mitigate the damage he has caused to others? Nope, not gonna fly here.

One thing I've been thinking about lately is that I think it's really dangerous to under/overrate the 2019-2021 draft classes. Those three classes were so screwed by the pandemic that I think there will be a ton of untapped gems mixed in with overrated flops. We're only now in 2022-2023 starting to sort out where some of these guys might end up in the long term of things.

Oh, I think Frelick is the better prospect (I mean, obviously) but given the way baseball and its economics work, I just think Mitchell will get first shot at CF. Trading him for something useful would be a big win, in my opinion because ultimately, I think the position is Frelick's anyway.

As much as it pains me to say, I would not be entirely against this if the market is there to haul back 5-6 really nice prospects in A+/AA/AAA, which should be a reasonable haul for three players of that calibre. This process isn't my first choice but it's a reasonable choice given the economics of baseball.

I think they could extend one or the other. I struggle seeing them extend both.

I have literally no idea what to expect from Mitchell in 2023. His BABIP was absurd in 2022 and his xwOBA was equally scary looking. It was also in 68 plate appearances so *shrugs* I think he probably has to be the Opening Day centerfielder though, right? I'm not sure Frelick can really do enough in spring to displace a guy who didn't get embarrassed in his first cup of coffee (I put little to no stock in spring stats so it would require a pretty massive shift in other things for one rookie to get bumped for another in spring if a hierarchy has already been established).

It's picking nits a bit but over his career, Mancini doesn't really have platoon splits. He was bad against LHP in 2022 and great against LHP in 2021. In 2020, he didn't really have platoon splits. Which doesn't necessarily have change your opinion of him; I think it makes the case he's somewhat unreliable if your priority is to acquire a lefty masher.

I’m a big fan of MKE Tailgate.

My understanding is that it was a straight-up ten year deal. No opt-outs, no trade clause may have been included.

I'm not really sure anybody actually knew about this problem. The Twins did a medical last year and given the privacy concerns of medical reports, hard to say what they know or don't... but we do know they turned around and offered Correa a ten year deal last month so they obviously weren't hand-wringing too badly over his medicals.

It wasn't about controlling emotions. After reading through the thread, there were people defending and/or trying to diminish the behavior of Bauer, which is absolutely deplorable. So yeah, the thread was locked and this one will be as well if it drifts down that road. An independent arbitrator saw enough evidence that Bauer's behavior warranted the longest suspension ever under the domestic abuse clause of MLB. It's not up for debate whether he did it and we're not going to litigate it on this forum.

The only real way to compete is to share television revenue. A salary cap won't matter if the Pirates still spend $80m a year or the Brewers spend $120m a year. The union will never, ever ever agree to a salary cap low enough to support the smallest market teams. That means MLB team will need to start sharing revenue in a much broader sense than they currently do.

Left-handed corner outfielders with significant flaws are the Twins' Pokemon.

Yeah, when I heard the Mets balk about his medicals, I thought he'd be signed within a day and Cohen would either just override the front office or they'd quickly come to a resolution with Boras. Now I'm more at a "flip a coin" opinion, heads he goes to the Mets, tails he goes to the field.