segagenesisgenius

Interesting! Can you show me this research, if you have it handy? I have not seen anything that shows that longer and louder protests can lead to changing minds, and would love to read about it! What I HAVE seen is that strong protests can lead to an energized base of the protesters, such that those people are more likely to vote in the upcoming election. Or, to put it differently, protests that take extreme action and/or include inflammatory rhetoric are not shown to change anyone's mind, but they DO tend to make those people that already agreed with the protests more likely to make a difference in the next election(s) by voting in relatively greater amounts. Basically, let's say that 50% of people agreed with the views of the protests a week ago, 20% were undecided, and 30% were opposed (totally random numbers). As a result of the protests using extreme tactics such as blocking I-35 and involving hate rhetoric toward cops, those 20% are overwhelmingly estranged from the movement. However, the next election in November may STILL be successful from the protests, as those 50% will overwhelmingly vote (whereas otherwise maybe only half of those people would have voted), such that the election is swung. Was this the kind of study that you were referring to? Frankly, this all makes sense to me. This is how the Tea Party hijacked the GOP for a good decade; by energizing their faction via extremely strong and vocal protests. That said, I wasn't looking to address the efficacy of protesting when it comes to energizing preexisting supporters of an idea, as that wasn't the purported desire of Nick. My understanding is that Nick was doing what he was doing for the primary and/or sole purpose of convincing people that currently believed and/or acted differently than he did. And I thought it was important for him to know that, if convincing people to think/act differently was his aim, that he could not be going about it in a worse way. TLDR: My understanding is that dramatic protests are great for energizing people that already believe a thing such that those people are more likely to sway elections, and dramatic protests are poor at changing minds (such that Nick's stated actions were poorly tailored to fulfill Nick's stated desires), but I would love to read anything that refutes and/or challenges that understanding.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but you aren't spreading the message. Seriously, scientifically, you are not. At least not the way that you want. You are only "spreading" your message by making people more resistant to it. The kind of things that you are doing (blocking traffic, attacking people who do things differently than you want, using inflammatory language - and check the comments, clearly your language was inflammatory, whether or not you meant it to be) have been proven to have a negative effect on both changing minds and also enacting societal change. You will not change minds based on how you are acting, and in fact you are making it less likely that people will do the things that you want. If someone doesn't like speaking out, then they will be even less likely to consider speaking out as a result of your tactics. If someone is neutral for speaking out, they will be less likely to speak out as a result of your tactics. The only thing that you might do is make someone that was already leaning toward speaking out somewhat more likely to speak out even more. Also you will feel better about yourself (as you hurt what you are professing to try to help). Here is a source on that: https://www.psypost.org/2020/05/new-psychology-research-finds-extreme-protest-actions-reduce-popular-support-for-social-movements-56906?fbclid=IwAR0dXw0ft4J_iu-o33nxd0jzC5Dq6i6ARBhSQFHkDAFEqDa8yJVVUd8UKFw For a particularly relevant example, the article spells out how democrats push people away from, e.g., voting for democrats because of the way that they attack Trump. Did you know that lots of democrats are actually helping Trump by the way in which they attack Trump, by making independents not want to associate with the democrats? That's a heckuva backfire. You aren't changing the mind of anyone who thinks differently than you do. To do that, you need to humbly think about the views of other people, not attack them, and respect their viewpoints, even while you point out why you strongly strongly disagree. Look to MLK and how he talked to various white pastors who told him to be more "patient" as he waited for social change. A (in retrospect) despicable thing that they were asking, to be clear. Yet in his replies he was always overly courteous, going to great lengths to emphasize how he did truly understand what they were doing what they were doing and asking what they were asking. If a black man born in Georgia in 1929 can respect the viewpoints of opponents, so can you. What you are doing is purely being done for your sake, so that you feel good about yourself. And that is fine! It's good to take care of yourself, and make yourself happy in life. If you want to do that by pretending that you are helping a cause by insulting people that disagree with you such that you actually hurt this cause, well, there are worse ways to spend your time. That said, if you ACTUALLY want to convince people, then you need to do so respectfully, and you need to truly try to empathize with people that think differently rather than you do. If you want to ACTUALLY make a difference, then start humanizing businessmen, bankers, suburbanites, the highly religious, rural white uneducated voters, or other people that are frequently on the opposite sides of the debate from you. Try to understand these groups of people. Try to understand and truly *feel* their hurts and fears and dreams, rather than dismiss them and ridicule them. Once you understand these people that you disagree with, approach them on their level, rather than attacking them from yours. I know that it feels better to just attack the viewpoints of people who believe different things, and to take fantastically bold actions to show just how strongly you feel (such as blocking traffic on I-35). But you are actively making the things that you want to happen LESS likely to happen by what doing things in this way.

I am beyond uncomfortable with the concept of shaming and calling out specific individual people for what they do not want to do based nearly exclusively on the color of their skin. Here is the problem; you are not calling out people generally, you are calling out one person specifically. You mention Kepler a dozen times in this article, and leave no doubt about how you feel about him; rather, the reader knows that you want to publicly shame him for being a bad person in this regard. As you state it, there is no moral ambiguity here. On top of that, you are not calling him out for what he did do. In fact, you largely excused him for what he did do (the tweet with the blue lives matter facemask). Rather, you shamed him repeatedly in this article for what he did NOT do. You only said this because of Kepler's race. You did not shame Sano for not saying anything (and he has not). They are both young budding players from a different country. They both have a large audience both home and abroad, and are both wealthy and successful. The only difference is that one is white. You want Kepler to speak because he is white. You (seemingly) could care less whether or not Sano does because he is not. You are publicly calling out a person for what they did(n't do) for the apparent sole reason of his race. You did not do this because Kepler regularly is in this domain of politics, race relations, or the like, such that his sudden silence might function as disapproval or approval of what others were saying. This could not be further from what Kepler's domain is. This is not equivalent to if the MLB didn't speak on this (as MLB deals with race relations). This is not equivalent to a politician not dealing with this (as politicians deal with race relations). This is not even the same as if Baldelli wasn't speaking on this (as Rocco is, in large part, paid to be a spokesperson for the team, and was hired for his ability to reach across a cultural divide). Kepler was and is employed because of his ability to hit and catch baseballs. This has nothing to do with what Kepler personally or professionally does. You are only shaming him for what he is not doing because of the color of his skin. People have all sorts of reasons for not doing things. I know people that don't like talking about sexual assault because they have been sexually assaulted. I know people that don't want to talk about anything divisive because they want to be a bastion of emotional stability, and don't want people to have literally no place to look in this day and age that does not stress them out and make them depressed and unhealthy. I also know that many athletes that don't want to say anything political as they don't feel informed about the geopolitical landscape of a foreign country and don't want to misstep in an accidental way and offend people who like them or the team. Personally, I do not think that any of these things are a big enough moral failing that they warrant implying that someone is being a bad human for withholding their comments accordingly. Apparently we disagree on this. In a philosophical sense, I agree that all humans should pay attention to the human plights around them, and I also agree that all of us should do this for each of those around us, not only for those that look like us and think like us but also for those that do not look like us and do not think like us. But I can think of few slopes more slippery than implying that an individual person is being a bad person based on the color of their skin and what they do not feel comfortable doing. Call for people generally to speak out based on what their human morals feel, rather than turning the other way if their internal moral compass is telling them something. That's fine and good. However, the minute that we try to force a group of people do what the herd morality wants them to do because of a characteristic of how that person was born (and imply that any person is a lesser and/or worse human if they do not actively do the thing that the herd demands) is the minute that I feel fantastically uncomfortable with the direction in which we are heading.

The problem is that this probably helps our main competitors more than us. Some, such as myself, were of the opinion that Bux was actually being artificially held back so that he wasn't given an unnecessary amount of ST action in which he could have hurt himself. After all, the most important thing for Bux to be helpful to us isnt his bat but his glove, and his glove shouldnt need much ramp up time. Otherwise, while this may help Hill get back earlier, it also pushes back how soon Pinada can join us. Given how iffy Hill is as an option, I personally consider this at best as a neutral exchange. More painfully, this gives the Yankees and Indians and Astros a chance to enter the league fully healthy, rather than starting out injured and letting us build a cushion. The Yanks were expected to be without Hicks, Paxton, Stanton, and Judge. If the start is delayed a few weeks, they can get back each of Paxton, Stanton, and Judge. If a month+, they might get close to Hicks. Similarly, this delay might enable both Clevinger and Carrasco to be ready for the start of the season when they previously were not supposed to be. This will also allow Verlander to start the season for the astros, which he previously was not supposed to. I dont want to be unnecessarily negative, but this delay is frankly far better for our main competitors than it is for us.

Very fair, and great additions to my comments. Maeda improves the floor of what we could do in the postseason substantially, both as a reliever and as a starter. I also agree that, while I would guess that the front office is currently hoping that Odorizzi would be a playoff starter rather than Maeda, no one will be writing off the game if Maeda is starting. Postseason moments are clearly not too big for him, and he clearly has the talent to impact games.

Disagree. I think they traded now because they want to win now, as in this year or next year. I think that this trade does not reflect that the Twins think that Graterol is a reliever long term (though they of course had concerns about that). I think that this trade reflects that the Twins think that Graterol is not stretched out enough to be a starter for a full year in 2020, and, as a result of being a reliever this year, probably won't be a starter in 2021 either, such that he does not factor substantially into their current two-year window. You know why I think that? Because the Twins also wanted 10MM, and were willing to give up a high round 3rd pick to get it. The 3rd round pick indicates that they are not worried about 4 or 5 years from now, and they want the money to do something this year. As I read that, they want money to be able to trade for an ace that a team wants to dump. They don't need the 10MM for this years payroll, as they are only 17th in MLB. They clearly hope to get someone else that is currently paid a lot of money. They want to win a World Series this year or next year, during which Graterol is unlikely to be a front-line starter that he has the potential to turn into. I think that the Twins are hoping that Maeda fits in as their #4 starter for the bulk of the year. He is clearly behind Berrios. He is also behind what Odorizzi was last year (which the Twins are clearly hoping will repeat). We are looking to add a new impact pitcher by all accounts. Rich Hill would also be ahead of him. I think it is also debatable whether or not he has a higher ceiling than Pineda. Frankly, by the time we get to the playoffs, I think that the front office is hoping that Maeda is our #6 starter (mystery new pitcher, Berrios, Hill, Odo, Pineda, Maeda), and is actually one of our primary relievers instead. That said, that is not a slam on Maeda, it is a compliment on the depth of our starting pitching. Maeda profiles as a very very solid and reliable #3 guy. We just already two have guys that profile as #2/#3 guys in Odo and Pineda (at least by performance last year and raw ability, respectively).

I think you are both right. Maeda clearly makes the Twins better in the regular season. He also brings the Twins odds of winning the #1 AL seed (which is HUGE in advancing past the ALDS) from, say, 20% to 33% (given that we were addressing the one biggest weakness of our team, and largely doing so by massively raising the floor of that weakness). If you are increasing the odds of getting the #1 seed substantially, it is a win-now move. THAT SAID, it is difficult to say that this improves the ceiling of what we could do in the postseason. If things are going well Maeda will not start in the postseason. We all want a new #1 or #2. That gives us mystery guy, Berrios, and Rich Hill as our probable starting playoff pitchers, with Odo (at least) slotting in front of Maeda unless Odo falls apart. Maeda has pitched well in the postseason as a bullpen guy, yes. He is death on righties, specifically, and generally above average on lefties. But Maeda does not have a higher ceiling as a reliever than Graterol, whose raw stuff should translate to death on both righties and lefties. I mean, last we saw Graterol he pitched a clean inning with 2 strikeouts in the playoffs against the Yankees, and his last pitch was 101 mph. Graterol profiles as a Ryan Pressley-type overpowering put-out-any-fire reliever way more than Maeda does. As such, while Maeda improves both our floor and probably our ceiling for the regular season, it is difficult to say that he improves our ceiling for the post season, which (for better or worse) after last year is primarily what our fans care about. In the post season all you care about are you top 3 starters and your top 7 relievers. If Maeda is one of our top 3 starters we are probably in trouble. And while Maeda can undoubtedly be one of our top 7 relievers, that was also undoubtedly where Graterol was headed too.

It looks from your comments that you are 100% certain that the Twins are 100% certain that Graterol will not be a starter. If that is indeed your position, then I am here to tell you that your position is incorrect. No good analytic department (which the Twins now have, or at least are in process of building) deal with such absolutes. I would bet you just about anything that the twins thought that there was, say, a 40% chance that he would be a starter and a 60% chance that he would be a reliever, such that there was a better-than even chance that they would win this trade. This would seem to be the case as both Boston and the Dodgers (two smart organizations) appear to evaluate Graterol as having a strong case to be a starter (otherwise they wouldn't make this trade). And make no mistake, Boston definitely wanted Graterol and evaluated him as a starter, otherwise they would have said that they didn't want Graterol at all (rather than saying that they wanted Graterol AND someone else). It almost sounds like you are making it absolute in order to justify the trade as a clear win. This trade is too close to be a clear win. It is a high risk, high reward trade with the chance to push the Yanks for the #1 seed this year (pending one more move for a front-line starter at the trade deadline). I absolutely guarantee you that the Twins did not evaluate Graterol as a player who had essentially no chance as a starter. Instead they viewed him as a high volatility guy, and they wanted a more clear floor to give them a more clear path to the playoffs while their window is wide open. Not a bad idea. Might even be a very astute idea. But not nearly as clear-cut as you are describing.

I think you're both a little bit correct and a little bit incorrect. Clearly no one else has had a save in a long time (to me it looks like the last non-Rogers save was Parker back on June 22). For better or worse, Baldelli had refused to give anyone a chance to try to protect a 3 run lead at the end of a ball game in a long, long time. That said, you also asked who was the last pitcher to start the 9th in a save situation other than Rogers, and you may be surprised that even Rogers himself has only done that himself only four times(!!!) over the last seven weeks(!!!). Baldelli very rarely brings in a new pitcher in a traditional closer setting like you mentioned (start of the 9th with less than 3 runs). Instead, what Baldelli has done is bring in Rogers into a few non-save situations in the 9th (which a traditional closer doesn't do) and he also saved a few games from the 7th and 8th inning on (which a traditional closer doesn't do). Perhaps semantic points, but then yours was a semantic (if also rhetorical) question

That's fair! I don't mind us agreeing that he seemed off in this game. Though that is a very predictable result of realizing that you have to move and pack your bags and start a new job in a high leverage situation in less than 24 hours. Such that, once again, it was a weird choice for Baldelli to put him in. However, my original point was purely debating whether or not Dyson had sufficient time to absorb all relevant scouting and analytic info that he might have needed/wanted because he faced 5 batters on the Marlins 5 weeks ago (accidentally said 6 earlier). My position was and remains that it is odd to argue that Dyson would have been prepared as a result of facing these five batters five weeks ago, as baseball analytics involves way more than that. Also, in modern baseball often the goal isn't to throw in the zone, but to get the batter to chase you out of the zone. This is definitely some of Dyson's game. He is not a "pitch to contact" guy. In his most recent successful outing with the Giants, 60% of his throws were OUTSIDE of the strike zone. In the game prior, he uncharacteristically threw only 45% outside of the strike zone. Before that, in a successful save against the cubs, he only threw 4 of 15(!!!) pitches in the zone, for a crazy rate of throwing 73% outside of the strike zone. In this game, he threw... 57% of his pitches outside of the strike zone. In other words, this was a fairly regular rate for him. So why was it unsuccessful? Probably in part because of his crazy previous 24 hours. However, it may in part have been caused by him not getting a chance to digest the scouting report, such that he did not know which pitches the batters would chase. See how that all ties back together?

Scouting isn't just a matter of knowing what the player looks like, such that if you faced them 6 weeks ago you are good to go. It is a matter of knowing what a player is struggling with, and what they are crushing. It is a matter of knowing that, "hey, for the last 3 weeks this guy has been crushing high fastballs, so if you are going to miss, miss low." It is a matter of watching them that series so you can find out what pitches they are trying to sit on. In other words, it is juuuuuust a bit more advanced than trying to remember the name of your wiggly pitch. It is commendable that Dyson wanted to go out there. It is unlikely that he could have absorbed all of the intel that the twins had that could have been advantageous to him.

"Toss in the turnaround of Marwin Gonzalez, who's batting .302 since the start of June" I'm guessing that's supposed to be May?

I'll buy some of this, but not all of it. I mean, Kaufmann just underwent a $250 million dollar renovation in 2009 that was impressive enough that MLB gave them the 2012 All-Star game, so the K is not a dump and it basically never was a dump like the Dome was essentially immediately upon it being built. Rather, Kaufmann has basically always been a top 10 park. Which is why it is meaningful to me how quickly their attendance dropped off after their recent peak. This is particularly true when comparing them to, say, the Kansas City Chiefs, who have always had great attendance and great home-field advantage, even during poor stretches (for example, that 1-million person smaller metro area set the record for loudest crowd ever in a game 4 years ago in any stadium, even though their stadium is an open-air stadium, and even though they were in the middle of a 40-72 stretch over the preceeding 7 seasons... it's just not much of a baseball city, it is a football city). That said, I agree that I don't like calling out non-yankee fans, and feel a bit sheepish that I did so in retrospect. I mainly did so because I was so shocked that the twins were being called bandwagon fans, as they have regularly been some of the more persistent in town and across the nation (I always notice a disproportionate amount of twins hats when I travel nationally, given that we are only the 14th biggest metro area in the US).

I also didn't like him calling the twins "frontrunners," but for me it was for a different reason. Basically, I didn't think that twins fans WERE frontrunners. To me, frontrunners are fans that don't go to the games and stop wearing gear and whatnot a year or maybe two after a good run. I think of the Royals, who are ranked 13/15 in the AL for attendance, and that is two years after basically .500 baseball, and 4 years after a world series win. Comparatively, it took six years of poor baseball in MN before we slipped out of the top 10 in the AL. Similarly, I still saw MN Twins gear out around town all the time over the last decade. Twins fans were discouraged, but they didn't disappear. Basically, my thought is that I don't like twins fans being called frontrunners because, well, I don't think that they were. Conversely, I don't necessarily disagree with your analysis, if you don't mind me saying so. First of all, the twins didn't drop down their payroll 1 year into having their stadium. First year they were 9th across MLB, second they were again 9th, and third year they were 13th. It wasn't until their 4th year at the new stadium that they dropped down to 23rd. I am also confounded by your saying that "[f]rom ‘92-‘18 this was one of the three worst clubs." The Twins have never been last in their division for more than 2 years in a row, and never had sub-.400 winning seasons more than 1 year in a row. Also, did you just completely tune out the seasons in the aughts? Without really even thinking about it, I can tell you that the Royals, Tigers, Rays, Orioles had worse and longer losing streaks that the Twins had across that stretch, and that's just in the AL. Getting 3 first place seasons in a division in a 9 year stretch is one of the three worst clubs in the majors? None of those same teams (Royals, Tigers, Rays, Orioles) ever had a prolonged good stretch that good, either. And it costs $200 to take a family of four to watch a game in the cheap seats? I mean, if you are going to go back to '92, cheap seats were $5 or less back at the dome. Heck, last year I could find tickets to get inside for $15, if you didn't care where you sat. As a kid I would have one dome dog and one pop for $15. That's $120 for everyone for tickets and food. If you want to add in two beers for both you and the missus, that would be $150. How many beers were you buying for your kids? I think I get what you are trying to say (Twins have had some really bad stretches, so it is entirely justifiable that lots of twins fans haven't been paying to go and watch them in person over the last few seasons, all of which I agree with entirely), but you basically tried to fight his poor hyperbole with your own poor hyperbole. No reason to stretch the truth.

Ah, I was gonna comment on how he to got to 64, but I see someone else beat me to it. Nevermind! Gotta finish reading these comments before I add in