Archive for Chat

Dan Szymborski: And thus it begins.

Matt: So about the zips prospect rankings? When it happening?

Dan Szymborski: Yup!

Guest: What do you make of the Yankees missing out on Jhon Diaz and then immediately trading for international spending money? Also does the Yankees reneging on their deal with a J2 prospect impact their ability to make future deals?

Dan Szymborski: There’s perhaps something in the story I have missed as I only know the basics. IIRC, the Yankees ran into cap issues from previous international signing.

Dan Szymborski: I doubt it will affect anything long-term.

Kiley McDaniel: Hello from ATL, Scout is resting alongside me as she’s about to begin nap #3 of the day.

Kiley McDaniel: We just posted some changes to THE BOARD on twitter that are reflected on the site

Kiley McDaniel: here is the board link: https://www.fangraphs.com/prospects/the-board/2019-in-season-prospect-…

Kiley McDaniel: here be the tweet:

Kiley McDaniel: I’ll probably be sneaking out to the Gwinnett/Columbus playoff game tomorrow, waiting to hear back but expecting Logan Allen v Kyle Wright with Pache, Waters, Riley, Alex Jackson vs. Zimmer, Daniel Johnson, Bobby Bradley. That would be good

Kiley McDaniel: the prospects landing page has prospect leaderboards, graduation tracker and all of our content: https://www.fangraphs.com/prospects/

Eric A Longenhagen: Hey everyone, hope you’re having a good day so far. And if you’re not, hang in there. Let’s get to some questions

Brandon J: Mitch White, Josiah Gray, Leo Crawford, Gerardo Carillo. Who are you taking long term, and which one is least likely to pan out?

Eric A Longenhagen: Gray is in our overall 100. White is near-term potential starter who has had injury/consistency issues. Carrillo has more variance but def a relief risk. Crawford sits 86-90.

John: Hey Eric, you guys had a brief glowing paragraph on Jeferson Espinal. Am I right to be really excited about him?

Eric A Longenhagen: Swing efficacy is behind but he’s so young. 70 runner with some physicality and hand-eye coordination. Yeah, he’s fairly exciting.

Cubs Boi: Which MI should Cubs fans be more excited about — Luis Verdugo or Pedro Miguel Martinez?

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks, and welcome to another edition of my Thursday chat. While I wait for the queue to fill, a couple of housekeeping notes. First off, either next week or the week after, I will be migrating my chat to another day, not because I don’t love you Thursday regulars (well, most of you) but because my daughter’s preschool schedule requires a bit of juggling responsibilities within our household. People always ask, “Won’t somebody think of the children?” and here, I have.

Jay Jaffe: So please do not be shocked if my next chat is on, like, a Monday or a Tuesday (the day is still TBD). Embrace the change.

Jay Jaffe: Second, my piece on Aaron Judge’s recent hot streak, and the great team home run race between the Twins and Yankees, is up here. I think I set a personal best for bells and whistles — GIFs, vids, tables, spray charts — added to a piece, and so you will have plenty of things to entertain you but most notably, a Judge sentencing baseballs to die.  https://blogs.fangraphs.com/aaron-judge-is-mercilessly-punishing-baseb…

stever20: what do you think is wrong with Jansen?

Jay Jaffe: Velocity. Via Pitch Info, here’s his progression for his cutter:
2016 94.2
2017 93.5
2018 92.7
2019 92.1

Jay Jaffe: That’s two full clicks gone, and with it some movement — about 2 inches of horizontal movement and an inch of vertical movement. Not great, Bob!

Meg Rowley: Good morning and welcome to the chat.

Meg Rowley: What a nice day for a chat — allow me a moment to fetch a seltzer.

Aaron: After watching the A’s last week, if they had this year’s team with last year’s bullpen performance, they might we a top-3 team in MLB. What on earth happens to bullpens when they plummet like this? Why does bad relief pitching seem to snowball so much?

Meg Rowley: For any one reliever, it isn’t a ton of innings, they have more limited repertoires than starters do, which makes it harder to adjust if things go badly, and if more than a couple are ineffective for a while, you get other dudes pitching more than might be advisable. It’s just a recipe for volatility.

Lucas: Has David Appelman ever done a chat about the business of Fangraphs? I would enjoy that, and I’m sure others would as well.

Meg Rowley: David’s not much for chats, but (and my delay has been in trying to find the episode) he did a guest spot on Effectively Wild that might be of interest

Dan Szymborski: G’Afternoon!

Dbo: Since you published your article “The Cubs Are Slowly Pulling Away”, the Cubs have gone 5-7. Why do you hate the cubs and why did you feel it necessary to jinx them?

Dan Szymborski: If only I had such powers.

Derek Falvey: How highly should I rate Mitch Garver’s breakout year?

Dan Szymborski: Pretty highly. He’s getting a power boost even for power boosts

CamdenWarehouse: I’m so sorry for your loss, Dan. Galileo seemed like the best of cats.

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, and welcome to another edition of my Thursday chat. Lunch (dumplings) is on the way, my piece on Bo Bichette is in the pipeline [now live], and here’s a GIF of Kermit the Frog and Vincent Price, for no reason at all.  

Ben: Do you think MLB and Rawlings will change the ball this offseason?

Jay Jaffe: I think they’d be foolish not to. For as exciting as home runs are, they’ve got a PR problem on their hands now, and the so-called steroid era taught us that MLB gets very squeamish when the sanctity of home run records is threatened. I doubt they’ll be transparent about it, but I think we’ll see some kind of attempt to return to more normal levels.

Pujols: Do you think I care about round numbers? close to losing my career .300 average. Do I retire before that happens?

Jay Jaffe: No. Maybe if the contract was up at the end of this year, but bypassing two more years and a total of $59 million to keep it .300? Nobody cares about batting average that much.

Trevor Collicott: How do you write for fan graphs?