Brock Beauchamp

As a father of two small children - and hooking them on baseball is key to the sport's continued existence - a 6:40 start time is vastly preferred. But it doesn't have to be one or the other, split 6:40 and 7:10 start times. Maybe drop in some 6:10 start times, too. Also, this problem is lessened by shortening game length. If an average game is 2:50, a 7:10 start isn't optimal for little kids but still somewhat manageable. If games creep toward 3;30, a 7:10 start time is completely unreasonable.

By the way, comments are now enabled on all of the prospect pages so if you have something to say about these prospects, please do so!

I have no problem with the baseball in itself but if MLB was going to deaden the ball, they kinda needed to add the pitch clock at the same time so mitigate pitchers having an even larger advantage with velocity AND a dead ball. Or done something else to slow down the max effort and velocity of pitching, I just happen to goeice the pitch clock is the first move to make in that regard.

I notice there are many "mega-threads" that go on for years and I just wanted to let you know that we have been and will continue to split many of these off into smaller, more digestible threads. So if something happens that you want to talk about, please just go ahead and start a new thread. We encourage this for a few reasons: 1. Forums with an entrenched community full of mega-threads tend to become impenetrable to new users and we want to encourage new users to sign up and join in. 2. Mega-thread titles often meander into wildly different topics, which makes the titles misleading over time. What started as a topic about Woodruff may have meandered into a discussion about Hader and the title should reflect its topic. 3. Shorter, newer threads tend to receive more participation. People tend to tunnel vision over old titles but within that thread, the conversation may be very relevant to the user, they just don't know it. 4. New, popular topics are easier to feature on the site and include in our emailers. We're not laying out any rules here, just making suggestions to increase participation and make the forums a little more welcoming to newbies. That's all, thanks everyone!

Because almost all of his gains last season came via increased slugging. His launch angle was at a career high but his hard hit % was mediocre and his average exit velocity was actually pretty bad. That's a potential combination for a lot of warning track flyballs that were home runs last season.

While I'll be able to catch part of tonight's game, I'm actually really excited to see Houser vs. Greene tomorrow. I've wanted to see Greene pitch since he was drafted.

FanGraphs has the Brewers at an 83% chance to the win the division and it's only May 4th. Nice.

Why waste Hader on a three run lead against the Reds? I think we can all agree managing for stats is a bad call.

I also find them fascinating. I'm fascinated with their front office but hate their ownership (before it became en vogue, I did the math and figured out the math that the Rays' payroll is less than what they receive in national TV revenue). But ultimately, they're going to decline if other teams catch up and they start giving up too many Joe Ryans in trade for very little.

As an aside, I'm really curious how long the Rays can keep it up when they're giving up players that play well on other teams (Adames on the Brewers, Ryan on the Twins). They're getting great performance out of Rasmussen, which works well for the Adames trade, but they can't play the 1:1 trade ratio game and succeed. They have to win trades, not tie or lose. It was easy to keep up what they were doing when they were dishing off people like Chris Archer and Blake Snell for huge hauls but then those players failed with their new teams. Eventually, they're going to start losing trades more often as other teams catch up, as they did on the Nelson Cruz/Joe Ryan trade with the Twins and, at least in part, as they did with the Adames trade.

I'm all in for Yelich doing this until the shift is banned next season but that bunt was an illustration of why bunting isn't used often; it's hard to do well.

LOL. I literally sat down and opened my laptop as Adames launched that to dead center.

It's so strange to me that Votto still isn't to 60 fWAR. It feels like he should be. But then again, he was kinda bad for a 3-4 year stretch there.

I haven't heard anything. I kinda suspect the difference is nearly unnoticeable, especially when the weather is terrible and there's a six month gap between using last year's ball and this year's ball. Are the humidors installed in Cactus and Grapefruit league parks? I never thought about that until now.

Yeah, they can't stay this bad forever but isn't India out right now? That means it's unlikely the Reds will suddenly become competent tonight.

Well, partially yes, but that's not the entire story, at least for me. I've been a part of many forums over the years and watched almost all of them slowly die to the (what I believe are contemptible) forces of Facebook and Reddit. Instead of all these great little communities that once existed for every niche, each with their own particular flavor, we have a handful of overlords controlling a too-large portion of the internet. So, yeah, I want to someday make money from this site but it's not as if Twins Daily is raking in the cash for me, either... the work I do is as much out of love of communities and the sport as it is financial gain. If it was purely financial gain, I'm a developer with 20+ years of experience living in a tech-heavy city. I have lots of opportunities that pay much better than what I'm doing here... but I actually care about my baseball projects, which makes these projects a fair trade-off for me personally.

I think the answer is staring MLB in the face but, in typical MLB fashion, they won't do it. 1. Ban all sticky substances and pre-tack the ball. 2. Decide what kind of ball you want - aim for neutral - make the necessary changes, then do not change it again. 3. Control flyball characteristics using the humidors. This should be a very trackable and reliable way to alter the ball in very small ways season-to-season, all without having pitchers complain that it feels different to the touch, the seams are too raised, or whatever. No one is going to throw a fit if balls are 4% more humid from one year to the next.

I know we're all relying on Urias to come back and be something close to his 2021 self - the Brewers offense kind of needs it - but is this a reasonable expectation? 2021 was his breakout season and almost all of that value was derived from extra base hits, particularly home runs. Standard Batting Year Age Tm Lg G PA AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI SB CS BB SO BA OBP SLG OPS OPS+ TB GDP HBP SH SF IBB Pos Awards 2018 21 SDP NL 12 53 48 5 10 1 0 2 5 1 0 3 10 .208 .264 .354 .618 71 17 0 1 0 1 0 4 2019 22 SDP NL 71 249 215 27 48 8 1 4 24 0 1 25 56 .223 .329 .326 .655 77 70 8 9 0 0 0 64/H5 2020 23 MIL NL 41 120 109 11 26 4 1 0 11 2 2 10 32 .239 .308 .294 .602 63 32 4 1 0 0 0 54/6H 2021 24 MIL NL 150 570 490 77 122 25 1 23 75 5 1 63 116 .249 .345 .445 .789 111 218 9 10 1 3 3 564H 4 Yrs 274 992 862 120 206 38 3 29 115 8 4 101 214 .239 .332 .391 .723 94 337 21 21 1 4 3 162 Game Avg. 162 587 510 71 122 22 2 17 68 5 2 60 127 .239 .332 .391 .723 94 199 12 12 1 2 2 SDP (2 yrs) 83 302 263 32 58 9 1 6 29 1 1 28 66 .221 .318 .331 .649 76 87 8 10 0 1 0 MIL (2 yrs) 191 690 599 88 148 29 2 23 86 7 3 73 148 .247 .338 .417 .756 102 250 13 11 1 3 3 Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table Generated 5/3/2022. Except home runs are way down, currently at 0.90 per game after being over 1.0 every season since 2015 and over 1.2 per game the past three seasons. Obviously, people tend to overrate home run fluctuations in early season cold weather but I think it's pretty conclusive MLB did something to the ball, the humidors had a much larger effect than expected, or both. What is a reasonable expectation for Urias? I'm very skeptical 20+ homers is fair, even if you adjust for time missed.

More specifically, his xwOBA is .306 (~.320 is average). Peterson is definitely unlucky though he also hasn't been good, merely somewhere in the neighborhood of average if you believe expected metrics.

Yeah, I really don't know what to expect when the Centrals need to play other teams more often. I mean, the win total has to drop, I don't see how it wouldn't, but I have no idea by how much.

Hopefully he can get up to MLB game speed quickly.

I agree but was phrasing it more politely. ?

I completely agree. The Twins also have a very upper-minors-heavy system. Almost all of their top prospects are in AA or higher. I think the ALC is going to get really competitive for awhile and it will be interesting to see which team falls short, as they all have a lot of young talent on the cusp of the majors or already in the majors.

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