Eric A Longenhagen: Howdy ho from a brisk and refreshing Tempe, Arizona, where I’ll be able to see baseball in person a week from today.

Eric A Longenhagen: Thanks for joining me for the first chat of the calendar year. If you’re new, we talk about prospects in this space for about an hour on Fridays.

Scotty: Happy Friday, Eric. How often in your analysis do you use comps to shape your thoughts about players? I was thinking about who is a starter comp for Jaxon Wiggins and I was coming up with a blank.

Eric A Longenhagen: If I go looking for a comp it’s usually via the shape of a player’s data. Like, “Alfonsin Rosario’s contact rate is X% and his measured power is Y, what big leaguers have a similar contact rate and measured power, etc. and what did they perform like in the bigs…

Eric A Longenhagen: It’s more about understanding viable MLB baselines than going looking for a comp player to player

Eric A Longenhagen: And then sometimes you’re just watching a guy and think, “This guy looks like Jon Garland” or whatever

Dan Szymborski: Greeting friends, enemies, and the possibly neutral who accidentally found their way here with a misclick somehow

JC: What are your personal expectations for Alonso in Baltimore?

Dan Szymborski: I think he’ll be quite awesome for the first few years. I expect the end won’t be great, but it ought to be a better situation than Chris Davis, and I imagine the front office is realistic about what the abck end could like like

Lowetide: Hi Dan, I giggled about the ‘refrigerate’ pills tweet yesterday. I’ve done many similar things. Among Misiorowski, Mclean, Yesavage, Bubba and the rest of the young arms emerging now, is there one or two who shine beyond the rest for Zips?

Dan Szymborski: I mean, the drug seems to be working, but I should probably read things!

Bubba: I don’t mean to be insensitive, as this is a genuine question, but what makes ZIPS projections worthy of an article per team in a way that Steamer or The Bat is not?

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks, and welcome to my first chat of 2026! I’ll get this going momentarily (having a chat with a reporter about Hall of Fame stuff)

Jay Jaffe: OK, I’m back! Happy New Year to you all.

Jay Jaffe: Hope you had good holiday breaks. If you missed it, I published my Hall of Fame ballot explainer https://blogs.fangraphs.com/jay-jaffes-2026-hall-of-fame-ballot

Jay Jaffe: and yesterday began the One-and-Done portion of the ballot with a profile of Hunter Pence https://blogs.fangraphs.com/jaws-and-the-2026-hall-of-fame-ballot-hunt…

Jay Jaffe: I did include a couple of one-and-dones in the pre-holiday coverage, namely Alex Gordon and Edwin Encarnación, but I gave their careers longer treatments. Likewise for the next profile, Shin-Soo Choo.

Jay Jaffe: anyway, on with the questions!

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks, and welcome to my final chat of 2025! Very shortly my profile of Edwin Encarnación will go live on the site, my last of this calendar year but not of this cycle; I’ve got a bunch of one-and-done guys to cover in January. My Hall of Fame ballot explainer will go live a week from today, and will be in the mail the same day.

Jay Jaffe: In case you’re scoring at home, that’s four new profiles thus far (Cole Hamels, Ryan Braun, Alex Gordon, and Encarnación), eight holdover profiles, and three multi-candidate roundups. You can see the schedule here — with a link to our Crowdsource Ballot, if you haven’t already partaken (https://blogs.fangraphs.com/a-2026-hall-of-fame-ballot-of-your-own-and…) — or follow the links atop each post to get to the ones you missed.

Jay Jaffe: and now, on with the show.

John T.: In your Fernando Valenzuela Era Committee piece you mentioned electing more pioneers to the HOF. In that spirit, would you support electing more people with outsize influences on the game, even in unconventional ways—I’ve long thought that Dr. Frank Jobe should be in the HOF for the role he’s played in baseball history. What do you think?

Jay Jaffe: I think once we establish this as a viable route into the Hall, Jobe would definitely be one worth considering. I do find it remarkable that only two pitchers with TJs have been elected (John Smoltz and Billy Wagner), but that speaks more to the general dearth of pitchers elected over the past few decades than anything else.

Guest: If you had to pick a fifth starter for the Padres (and I’m praying for a trade or free agent signing to fill the fourth starter spot) would it JP Sears or Randy Vasquez and why?  Red is absent on both of their Statcast pages…

Eric A Longenhagen: Howdy howdy, I’m on the road seeing family for the holidays while still hammering away at writing and Board maintenance, but still wanted to squeeze in one last chat before the site is dark starting in the middle of next week through New Year’s Day. So let’s boogie.

fried rice: why is ZIPS so bullish on colt emerson’s 3B defense?

Eric A Longenhagen: Good question, I think it’s probably just mapping to 3B the metrics Dan’s using from SS/2B based on historical data when a player makes a similar move. But it’s Danny’s model, I don’t know for certain.

AD: Jordy Vargas came back after a really long injury layoff. Looks like he struck a ton of dudes out, but the walks were crazy. Is this normal injury rust, or had something noticeably changed?

Eric A Longenhagen: I thought his delivery looked *better* in a sense, namely that the traits I’m looking for in a delivery (in this case I thought Vargas was getting down he mound better than before, I haven’t looked at the extension data to check tho) were more present than before, his arm slot was kind of all over the place late in 2023 and was more consistently 3/4s in 2025…

Eric A Longenhagen: This plus rust coming off the TJ means I’m not super concerned (the breaking ball still performed like a 70 last year) but obviously the Rockies track record with arms hasn’t been great.

Dan Szymborski: And we are here.

Dan Szymborski: Because we can’t be there.

Dan Szymborski: Can only be here.

Rick: The Phillies, Braves, and Mets have all made significant additions since their ZiPS projections were released. How do you view their division at this point in time?

Dan Szymborski: I don’t think hugely different; the Phillies I think are clearly better.

Dan Szymborski: But I haven’t released Mets yet!