Eric A Longenhagen: What’s up everyone? Good morning from the FanGraphs Desert Vista Compound where I’ve got double-barrel action on the TVs already: Cuba/Panama and a mix of the very early college games…

Eric A Longenhagen: The Mets list ran today, so folks should check that out. Braves and Yankees are next.

Eric A Longenhagen: Let’s hang out for a while today and watch some sports.

Alex: Can you see the Braves farm system ranking mid range by next year? Large draft bonus pool for the 2026 draft and Alfredo Sena signing next January?

Eric A Longenhagen: Probably still toward the bottom, growing prospects into 55 FV guys or better is what really moves the needle on our rankings.

Scotty: Afternoon Eric. Anyone you’re impressed with that you’ve seen recently on the backfields?

Brendan Gawlowski: Hello everybody

Brendan Gawlowski: Tigers list went up last week, if you haven’t seen it yet. In theory we should be posting a Mets and a Braves list this week although. I’m most of the way through delving into Atlanta’s system and it hasn’t been pretty.

Brendan Gawlowski: Also, my wife likes to submit a question to these with a random username and she gets very excited if I pick it. Just thought that was amusing to share.

Brendan Gawlowski: Anyway, let’s go.

Big Fan: It’s spring and all, but this is my first look at John Gil and I didn’t realize he’s Pete Alonso but playing SS.  Did he grow/change over the winter, or is it just a handful of homers early in spring training?

Brendan Gawlowski: Yes he looks enormous now. I don’t know if it’s a good change but here’s an example of how “that guy used to be a shortstop?!” happens in real time

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks! Welcome to my first chat of March, a month that will feature actual regular season baseball and before that, the World Baseball Classic, which starts at 10 ET tomorrow night (which will be Thursday in Japan)!

Jay Jaffe: Apologies in advance because the first 15 minutes of this chat are probably going to be a bumpy ride as I’ve got a grocery delivery about to arrive and it includes frozen stuff so I can’t just let it sit.

Jay Jaffe: Yesterday I wrote about the Yankees outfield picture in the wake of the addition of Randal Grichuk https://blogs.fangraphs.com/yankees-add-randal-grichuk-to-fill-a-niche…

Jay Jaffe: Last week, inspired by a couple exchanges in chats from earlier this year, I looked into Jarren Duran’s 2025 season and the state of the Red Sox outfield picture (https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/fitting-jarren-duran-into-the-red-sox-…), and then hitter month-to-month consistency through the lens of wRC+, a Duran-related tangent (https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/jarren-duran-jorge-polanco-aaron-judge…)

Jay Jaffe: I’m planning a follow-up on the last of those using Statcast data.

Jay Jaffe: Ok, let’s get started with the questions, mindful of the fact that I may soon have to step away

Eric A Longenhagen: Good morning from Tempe, where we’re creeping into the 90s this weekend. Thanks for stopping by, let’s talk some ball.

Alex: Can you tell us who is next up for the team prospect lists?

Eric A Longenhagen: Mets and Braves are next, Yankees and Astros deeper in the mix. Extra deep and weirdly specific: Washington is on track for the second week of April because I’ll see Rochester, Wilmington and Harrisburg the first series and a half of the minor league season.

Go Mudcats: Hey Eric, hope you are doing well. In thinking about the Pirates and Griffin breaking camp with the big team, I’ve been trying to figure out what the downside is specifically. I understand that development can get messed up/stunted by rushing prospects, but how exactly would that present and why would 2 or 3 months in AAA keep that from happening?

Eric A Longenhagen: I think there’d be an end-of-season benefit to getting his feet wet immediately. Move his adjustment period and the pomp and circumstance of his call-up to the start of the season, get it over with, and give your team a chance of having a rooted, productive Griffin from May on instead of July on, or something…

Eric A Longenhagen: But in this case you’re the Pirates. You’ve gotta max out how long you have this guy.

Brendan Gawlowski: Hello everybody. I’m happy and relieved that we managed to get through prospect fortnight — I hope you all enjoyed the content. If you have any further questions on the list, picks to click, or anything else fire away.

Datt Mamon: Long-term, do you like M. Clark or DeLauter more?

Brendan Gawlowski: Clark. If you could guarantee me that DeLauter would be healthy… Probably still Clark but I’d have to think about it.

Guest: People talk a lot about players being able to spin the ball being necessary to create good breaking ball shapes. What physical traits lead to being able to do that?

Brendan Gawlowski: Whether it’s in the wrist or the fingers, some guys just have an innate ability to generate more spin, and that gives you more wiggle room to play around with shapes and grips. There isn’t a 1:1 correlation between spin ability and the quality of your breaking balls, though.

blackjack: Can Charlie Condon regain elite prospect status?

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks! Greetings from Brooklyn, where we got buried in snow yesterday, with over 18″ in my neck of the woods.

Jay Jaffe: The snow seems to have followed me from Salt Lake City, where I went last week to visit my parents and ski with my daughter. A massive two-day storm cut short our skiing — the kiddo isn’t ready for powder yet and canyon travel wasn’t so great. Anyway, it’s back to baseball here.

Jay Jaffe: yesterday I wrote about Bill Mazeroski, the Hall of Fame second baseman who passed away over the weekend. He was a genuine defensive whiz who’s best known for his 1960 World Series-winning walk-off homer, which propelled him into Cooperstown https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-defense-rests-a-tribute-to-bill-mazero…

The Actor for Al Pacino: Thanks for your piece on Bill Mazeroski earlier this week, I really enjoyed it.

It made me wonder, could you comment a bit on looking at historical defensive contributions, and how much weight you put into them? Defense is something that, even in the present day with all of our tracking data and video and analytics, can be hard to quantify. I am wondering what your overall perception of something like Total Zone fielding runs is – do you view it as just having wider error bars than our modern methods?

Jay Jaffe: Since JAWS is driven by WAR which up until the early part of this millennium, I do put some stock in Total Zone. It’s hardly perfect, and yes, there are wide error bars, but if you go around the diamond and check out who it rates the highest — guys like Mark Belanger, Ozzie Smith, Brooks Robinson, Andruw Jones, Willie Mays, Roberto Clemente — for stuff like that, it’s not out of line with expectations. Sure, you do get the occasional wide gap between perception and measure — Roberto Alomar and Jim Edmonds come to mind — but you can often work backwards to get a sense as to why certain players don’t fare well by the system

Jay Jaffe: And it’s worth remembering that positional scarcity and overall defensive value are important factors, too. A good-hitting right fielder isn’t as valuable as a good-hitting shortstop, etc.

Dan Szymborski: Sorry, technical diffculties

Jeff: In your 2026 prospects article, you mentioned that Zips is aware of postseason performance. I agree with this approach. Can you share how you decided to include this data?  It seems to me that many other projection systems do not include post season information.

Dan Szymborski: I just tested it and it was slightly helpful!

Dan Szymborski: I mean it wasn’t going to be a game-changer since it’s not enough games

Dan Szymborski: But isn’t it weird that we don’t “count” the most important games against the best quality opposition?

Dan Szymborski: So, naturally, I tested for it