Eric A Longenhagen: Howdy, y’all, it’s cloudy and rainy here in Tempe as the weekend slate has been disrupted by the remnants of Hurricane Priscilla. We need to precip, though, so it’s all good. Looks like starters for tomorrow’s game got moved up a day? At least it appears Rhett Lowder has. Let’s discuss…

Hazmat Corntail: Where do you see Jonathan Long fitting in long term with the Cubs, or does he need a trade? He seems pretty blocked right now

Eric A Longenhagen: Multi-positional part time corner guy

Ben: Hey Eric, hope you’re doing well. Who are you most excited about seeing in the AFL and why is it Alfredo Duno?

Eric A Longenhagen: It’s honestly just the guys I haven’t seen, or at least haven’t seen in a while, which is almost always players from orgs based in Florida.

Eric A Longenhagen: Also, and perhaps this was already reported but clearly I’m off the socials so I don’t know, Josue De Paula has a hammy thing and is probably a couple weeks out.

Eric A Longenhagen: Good morning from Tempe, where we’ll hit 100 degrees again today, hopefully for the final time this calendar year.

Eric A Longenhagen: I did an end of year update to the Top 100 Prospects list. The piece with all the writing is still with editing and will be published at some point today, but for now you can view the fresh list over on The Board.

Eric A Longenhagen: The Board | FanGraphs Baseball

Eric A Longenhagen: Today is Fall League Media Day and also one of the last days remaining on the instructional league calendar, so this will likely be more of a 45 minute chat today so I have the option of hitting both.

Rube: What happens in an expansion draft and what excites you about it?

Eric A Longenhagen: It probable the rules would be different from the last time MLB had one (like ’96 ish I wanna say?) but essentially teams got to protect 15 players on their roster from selection. The expansion team(s) gets to take a player from each other club in “round one”, and then those clubs get to protect a few more of their players before round two (I think it was three more guys)…

David Laurila: Happy postseason, all.

David Laurila: I’ve seen each of the Guardians and Tigers in-person six times this month, so I have a decent feel for this series.

David Laurila: And despite their records over the past month, I favor the visiting team in this series — unless the Tigers don’t win with Skubal on the mound.

Pocket Pancakes: Favorite pitching matchup today?

David Laurila: Crochet-Fried, but Skubal-Williams is close. Gavin Williams is really good.

Dan Szymborski: G’afternoon!

Eric A Longenhagen: Howdy from the gear-covered kitchen island in Tempe. We did it, guys. It was 105 yesterday and the high today is 87. It’s over, we earned it, party at the FG Desert Vista Compound on Sunday.

Jeb: Out of all the Pirates young pitchers, which one would you trade for a bat? What could they fetch back in return?

Eric A Longenhagen: I wonder if Chandler is the best candidate to trade, it might take him longer to polish up and make big impact than the current FO group has to make the team good.

Eric A Longenhagen: What would the return be? In a space like this, I feel like I’d just be bs’ing you if I offered names.

APBA Baseball 4ever: Hagen Smith and Noah Schultz – how many starts do you see each of them getting in the majors next year? If the answer is zero for Smith, that’s okay. Could you see Schultz getting 15+? Could you see Smith coming up in September?

Eric A Longenhagen: Schultz I’d put on pace for a September call up and Smith I don’t think will see the bigs until late the following year.

Dan Szymborski: “Give me an introduction message for a Dan Szymborski FanGraphs chat that sounds like it’s from a deranged person with limited connection with reality and an obsession with history who also really really like FanGraphs”

Dan Szymborski: “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your WAR calculations! I rise today in this digital amphitheater not as Caesar, not as Napoleon, but as a humble pilgrim trudging across the blood-soaked battlefields of history in pursuit of a single shining truth: FanGraphs is the Rosetta Stone of civilization. When Rome collapsed, did the barbarians have wOBA? No. When Napoleon marched on Moscow, did he consult ZiPS projections? He did not — and look what happened! Yet here we stand in the Year of Our Lord 2025, blessed to witness the holy gospel of OBP+, xFIP, and Dan Szymborski’s inscrutable oracles. I have not slept in three nights, my parakeet now knows what BABIP is, and I carved the FanGraphs logo into the oak desk of my landlord while screaming about FIP- minus. Brothers, sisters, eternal strugglers against the darkness of ignorance, we gather not to talk of weather or bread, but of spin rates and aging curves, of regression to the mean and the cruel march of time itself! History collapses into the present momen

Guest: I’ve always assumed that hitters with large platoon splits would age more poorly than those with more balanced splits, but recently realized that my evidence was entirely anecdotal. Is there significant statistical evidence that supports this? Thanks.

Dan Szymborski: I have not found this. It’s possible simply that they’re more exploitable, that the general declines makes them more obviously platoonable than a similarly talented player with small splits

Dan Szymborski: Like the 350/500 guy an ages to be a 330/450 guy and still hits 310/430 and 340/460

Dan Szymborski: But maybe the PLATOONY 350/500 guys is suddenly now a 280/350 and 390/550 guy where he once awas a 300/400 and 420/600 guy

Eric A Longenhagen: Good morning, everyone. I just got back from visiting family in PA and am looking forward to starting the mental lawnmower again. Let’s get to as many of your questions as possible in the next hour-ish.

Taker55: Can Spencer Jones fake it in CF enough for the Yankees to run him out there next year? The price tags for Grisham and Bellinger go up by the week.

Eric A Longenhagen: I think you add him to the 40-man but need redundancy at the position in case he can’t make enough contact to be good. They should try to re-sign one of those guys or seek an alternative option. I don’t think it’s advisable to just hand the job over to a guy striking out as much as Jones does with no other option.

Rob: With Lara getting promoted today, what looks good with him despite the awful AAA numbers?

Eric A Longenhagen: This is Jhancarlos Lara, btw. He throws really, really hard. I wouldn’t add him if you’re in your fantasy championship series or anything, he’s too wild to trust in that way.

Pudge: How much has your view on Connelly Early shifted in the last couple weeks?

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks!

Jay Jaffe: For the fifth straight Tuesday, we’re doing this — which I think might be a season high. A lack of travel will do that.

Jay Jaffe: Anyway, on Friday I wrote about Mookie Betts’ turnaround (https://blogs.fangraphs.com/mookie-betts-may-salvage-his-season-yet/), and yesterday he was named the NL Player of the Week and had a big night against the Phillies in a losing cause, with a solo homer and a pair of sac flies.

Jay Jaffe: Yesterday I wrote about the Mets’ slide; remarkably, they’ve gone 32-49 since Senga was injured on June 12. Their problems basically stem from running out of arms. https://blogs.fangraphs.com/amid-the-collapse-of-their-pitching-the-me…

Jay Jaffe: I’m working on a piece about the remaining playoff races. it’s not Team Entropy but it’s what we have, and it’s helpful to understand the tiebreakers and remaining scenarios

Jay Jaffe: Pouring one out for Robert Redford, whom I particularly loved in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and The Sting (both with Paul Newman). If you’re young enough that those movies aren’t familiar to you, by all means waste no time in seeing them. As for The Natural and the baseball connection, eh, i don’t hate the movie like i do Field of Dreams, but it’s got problems.