Brock Beauchamp

A quick history of me: I founded a Twins message board in the mid-2000s, a lot like this one. In 2012, I met a bunch of Twins bloggers are we founded Twins Daily. That site has become the preeminent Twins site on the internet, reaching 2,000,000 visitors in 2022. We're going to cruise well past that mark in 2023. The foundation of what we built there is community engagement. We actively promote from within our own ranks and we believe discourse should be respectful and hot takes discouraged (unless they're really funny, naturally). Last year we bought BrewerFan.net and turned it into Brewer Fanatic (I'm from Wisconsin, don't hate me for it). In the past year, we've worked really hard to take what was a dwindling community experience and build it into a robust, modern community experience. So far we've seen about 100% growth year over year and we haven't quite hit our first birthday yet. Why the Cubs? Because one of our good friends is Matthew Trueblood, who is a Cubs fan and one of the best baseball writers I've ever met. While I personally will be managing the technical aspects of the site, this is going to be Trueblood's baby and if you haven't read his analysis, you're in for a real treat. I'm an old internet guy. I cut my teeth on forums through the late 90s and early 2000s. Seeing great legacy communities like this one fade into obscurity as we become more beholden to the likes of Facebook and Reddit chaps my ass, to put it bluntly. Each community needs its own flavor, personality, and perspective. My entire goal with this project is to preserve and grow the legacy that Tim and all of you built over the past 20 years. If you have ANY questions about literally anything, my door is always open and we're not some corporate behemoth. We're a bunch of baseball nerds who believe in community and no one knows this community better than all of you. I don't expect this site to fit into the same mold in which we built Twins Daily and later, Brewer Fanatic. We'll offer a lot of the same features but the core of this site is all of you who have contributed over the years and we value your input on pretty much everything. I'm looking forward to working with all of you in the coming days, months, and years!

It's hard to consider the loss of Alexander an actual loss. If he's pitching regularly, things have already gone sideways for the Brewers.

The variance on Bellinger is so large I can't even begin to predict how he will perform this season. Nothing would surprise me at this point.

Pretty much. They still have a nice core but very little depth behind it, which is why projection systems are so low on them.

Unlike ZiPS, PECOTA has Milwaukee and St Louis basically neck-and-neck at 87-ish wins. The Cubs come in a few games under .500 with 77-ish wins with the rest of the division being (expectedly) terrible with 70 or fewer wins. Thoughts? https://www.baseballprospectus.com/standings/

Looking to get into some new pods, hoping all of you can recommend some good ones.

Last year's draft is going to be among the worst in Cubs history. It's really inexplicable. Seems a bit premature to declare final judgment on a draft that's a little over six months old. While the top of the draft doesn't look great, it takes over half a decade to truly see how the middle and back of the draft class performs.

Oh, I know. I was just making a dumb joke at the expense of the Astros.

Amorality is the new baseball inefficiency.

That would easily cement their place as the Division Villains, for sure.

That's a pretty aggressive isoD. His career mark is around .065 and it was even lower than that in 2022.

I really can't get a read on that guy, which made it really hard to evaluate the value of any contract offer. He had a really nice 2020 but so did lots of guys. I basically don't count anyone's 2020, good or bad. His offense slumped quite a bit in 2021 with a 99 wRC+. Last season, he surged forward offensively with a 115 wRC+. His defense remains good so he'll be positive value no matter what happens with the bat but what kind of value do you see Swanson providing in the next 2-3 seasons?

"Embattled" is certainly a generous way to refer to that man.