Eric A Longenhagen: Good morning from dangerously hot Tempe, where I am coffee’ing at the kitchen island getting ready to work on Red Sox and Twins lists while prepping for the Combine.

Eric A Longenhagen: FOr those who missed it, please go read the Rangers list:

Eric A Longenhagen: Texas Rangers Top 45 Prospects | FanGraphs Baseball

Eric A Longenhagen: And the Mariners list: Seattle Mariners Top 29 Prospects | FanGraphs Baseball

Ken: Has Jack Perkins’ performance so far in Vegas moved the needle for you at all in terms of how you view his ability to remain a starting pitcher?

Eric A Longenhagen: Yes. Ran into him last week as I was working on Mariners and he carved. Physicality looks like he’ll be able to handle it even if he isn’t the most efficient strike thrower. Let’s keep in mind, though, that he’s looked like this (sitting 95-96 t98, plus slider, strikes) for like five weeks, six weeks? It’s not as strong a look as if he’d been doing it since April.

Dan Szymborski: Of all the writers how cover baseball, Dan is one of them!

RockiesFanGirl: Dan, you have a better sense of this than most, but this is a serious question: What can be done to fix the Colorado Rockies?

Dan Szymborski: I really think you either need new ownership or a change in approach from the current one to give the front office the resources they need to modernize the front office completely.

Dan Szymborski: There *are* people in the organization who are trying to modernize the organization, but they also need support and leeway.

Old MLB: With your 47th birthday coming up, who do you think among current major leaguers has the best chance to still be in the MLB at age 47? I guess Rich Hill has an outside shot but he largely looks cooked, and I don’t think Verlander or Carlos Santana are likely to last that long, so is it actually someone young with projectable long term skills like Soto? The plate discipline and power should still be in full swing a decade from now, but two decades is a crazy amount of time to project

Dan Szymborski: I think a reliever is most likely, maybe someone like Kirby Yates who doesn’t blow away batters anyway

Eric A Longenhagen: Howdy from Tempe, where it seems like it’s time to pay the price for living here yet again. First day of the Combine is currently forecast for 115 degrees. I might be brief today to go finish up the Rangers list. Padres list went up this week, go check that out.

Matt: Any ETAs for the 2025 draft BOARD update and mock draft(s)?

Eric A Longenhagen: Post Combine most likely

Takao: This is more a “organizational question” than a prospect question, but Baseball America has ranked the Reds minor league hitting development the worst in baseball 3 of the past 4 years (with a bottom 5 showing in year 4). In your opinion, does that ranking accurately reflect the overall system outside of the obvious names (Collier, Stewart, etc.)? Worth noting, Reds fan here and I’d tend to agree that our hitting dev has been atrocious since roughly 2021.

Eric A Longenhagen: I think they’ve accidentally ended up with a lot of chase-prone hitters, or hitters with a consistently exploitable weakness that would make it hard for them to have sustained success. Lots of guys with “inside out” styles of contact there, too. Would I say their hitting dev is bad though? I think that’s as much of a black box as anything in dev, tough to say from the outside.

Nervous Flyball Pitcher: I’ve seen reporting that FCL Orioles’ Joshua Liranzo’s max EV is up to 106.8 mph, but I don’t really have context for that. Is that number good/average/bad for an 18-year-old? Do you know if he has good EV90 or contact data so far?

Dan Szymborski: Greetings, FanGrapheteers!

Harshil Jani: Hi Dan. I would like to know what the accuracy of the Fangraphs pre-game win probabilities under the ‘live scoreboard’ section. Thanks.

Dan Szymborski: I don’t actually know; there’s a lot of data on our proejction probabilities, but I don’t have access to our historical numbers of game vs. game.

Dan Szymborski: I imagine they’re best when the teams are closely matched, since they’re game state based.

Dan Szymborski: At some point, we’ll have a ZiPS in-game version of this installed (you may have seen the beta in the playoffs), and that will know more about the relative strengths of the team

John: I know you’re the ZiPS guy, so if there is someone better to ask let me know, but how does Devers have such an elite batted ball profile despite pretty middling bat tracking metrics?  Average bat speed and poor squared up %, but elite in avg exit velo, barrels and hard hit %.

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks! Welcome to my Tuesday afternoon chat. Please bear with me a moment while I get my lunch order squared away…

Jay Jaffe: OK that’s done — fried chicken sandwich on the way…

Jay Jaffe: Yesterday I took a look at the Alexis Díaz trade (https://blogs.fangraphs.com/dodgers-hope-to-fix-alexis-diaz-and-bolste…), the latest in a long line of fix-it attempts by the Dodgers, who now have an astounding 15 pitchers on the injured list.

Jay Jaffe: Speaking of which, last night’s Mets-Dodgers game was a thriller that kept me up way too late. A Lindor leadoff homer! An Ohtani answer homer with a great call by Gary Cohen, and a game-tying sac fly in the 9th! And yet another Tanner Scott meltdown that decided the game.

Jay Jaffe: I’ve got a piece on the Astros’ recent surge and slew of injuries that should go up shortly. And now, on with the show

drplantwrench: i’ve had this debate with some baseball friends – which is the better stat: Quality Starts or Win-Loss?