Eric A Longenhagen: Hi hi hi. There are many trades happening and I need to write them up, so we’re gonna keep things tight to an hour today. Off we go…

Lilith: Tony Santillan seems to be have a very under the radar great year. What else does he need to do to get on some top 100 lists?

Eric A Longenhagen: That’s Reds  2015 2nd rounder who had huge stuff (upper 90s, plus breaker) but was very wild as prep and early as pro. I agree the strike-throwing has been encouraging. Can’t speak for other outlets but he’s close to a 50 FV for us already.

LioneeR: Touki has taken off a bit this year.  I saw reports saying that he wasn’t allowed to use certain pitches in order to work on his changeup.  Does that happen a lot with prospects, or is it just certain teams?

Eric A Longenhagen: Certain teams are more strict with pitch usage as part of development than others but this type of thing is common to some extent.

Chris : The Padres should not start trading prospects for Archer or Syndergaard right?

Jay Jaffe: Hey hey, party people! As if there weren’t already a shortage of hours for me in this week — between the impending trade deadline, my Replacement-Level Killers series, Hall of Fame Induction Weekend (with travel to Cooperstown), a couple of TV appearances, the one-year anniversary of The Cooperstown Casebook’s publication, social obligations, podcasts, parental obligations and, wait, what was that other thing? Ah, SLEEP — I appear to have opened this chat queue early. The questions are piling up, so let’s get to it!

stever20: loving the replacement-level killers series….  for the Rockies with the way Desmond has bounced back- they have to just keep him at 1b and ignore the first 6-7 weeks of the season now right?  Far bigger areas to worry about?

Jay Jaffe: Glad you’ve enjoyed the series! Including the pending publication of the corner outfielders piece (today) and centerfielders (tomorrow, fingers willing), the Rockies have RLKs at every position besides 3B (Arenado) and SS (Story). Jeff Bridich is the boy who doesn’t have enough fingers to plug every hole in the dike… if he were also simultaneously shooting holes in said dike by playing Gerardo Parra et al. Realistically, the Rockies are going to play Desmond somewhere anyway, but they desperately need another couple of bats if they’re going to stay in this thing.

Lilith: I’m curious about your definition of an “inner circle hall of famer”. If you had to create statistical cut-off points for who is a hall of famer, and who is in the inner circle, where would you, personally, put that line? 90+ WAR? 60+ WAR7? Some other stat altogether?

Jay Jaffe: In the Cooperstown Casebook, I divided Hall of Famers at each position into three tiers, the Elite, the Rank and File and the Basement. The Elite are ones who exceed the career, peak and JAWS standards at their position. Circa the Hall of Fame’s 75th anniversary of its opening in 2014, there were 75 such members. Now, that doesn’t include some particularly noteworthy players, most notably Jackie Robinson, who obviously belongs on that top tier but had his career shortened by the color line. But to the extent that I care to distinguish the top shelf from the rest, that’s more or less my working definition.

Bo: Strasburg back on the shelf… Does this qualify for “something extreme” that Mike Rizzo referred to regarding becoming sellers?

Kiley McDaniel: Sorry for the delay, just wrapping up a call. We’ll be rolling out the updated prospect lists in the coming days, leading up to the deadline.

Kiley McDaniel: ICYMI I did the Trade Value series last week and a think piece on trade value and which teams have the best trade ammunition https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/which-teams-could-even-trade-for-lindo…

Jeb: What is Travis Swaggerty’s upside?

Kiley McDaniel: 50 hit, 60 power, 50 D in CF. Could be a 3-4 win guy

Guest: Think about Jalen Beeks Rays just acquired

Kiley McDaniel: Just tweeted out some thoughts on that deal, TB’s competitive situation and Beeks specifically in  a thread here

Jeff Sullivan: Hello friends

Jeff Sullivan: Welcome to Tuesday baseball chat

Jeff Sullivan: This is a temporary arrangement — I’ll be out of town this Friday and next, so I’ve swapped days so as to not miss a chat

Jeff Sullivan: Swapped places with Meg this week, and it looks like the odds are I’ll do the same next week. Then back to normal!

botchatheny: when you look into poncedeleon what do you see?

Jeff Sullivan: Swing-and-miss fastball he’s become increasingly comfortable using up in the zone. Secondary pitches are behind and control isn’t perfect, but when you have a good heater as a primary pitch, you can be successful for several innings at a time

Dan Szymborski: We have started!

Dan Szymborski: A few minutes late.  I totally space on the fact that I need to start it early to let a queue get going and I panicked.

Dan Szymborski: And I can’t figure out how to get it appear on the front page now! lol

Dan Szymborski: I got it to appear last week, so there’s something that I did last week that I didn’t do this week.

Dan Szymborski: So I’m going to be in wordpress panicking for a few minutes more.

Dan Szymborski: I assume none of you saw this on the front page somehow?

Travis Sawchik: Greetings

Travis Sawchik: We’re 100 games into the season….hard to believe

Travis Sawchik: Let’s get to it

Dave: Do you think this hot streak is going to keep Pittsburgh from selling? They’re not out of the wild card yet.

ballsandgutters: if Pirates somehow take 2/3 from Indians I’ll get excited.  Expecting 0/3.   Regardless,  I’m wondering if Hamels would OK a trade to Pittsburgh.  He’s from San Diego AND really intelligent… just like Williams, Brault and Musgrove.

Travis Sawchik: The Pirates’ FG playoff odds have jumped tp 13%. It’s still a long shot

Jeff Sullivan: Hello friends

Jeff Sullivan: Welcome to Friday baseball chat

Jack: Who would you take for the rest of their career, Greg Bird or Jake Bauers?

Jeff Sullivan: Bauers. Even though I think they’re both perfectly fine right now, Bird is 25 and Bauers is 22

Jeff Sullivan: That’s an impossible age gap to overlook

Ross: So all within the last few weeks, the Kings got Ilya Kovalchuk, the Lakers got LeBron James, and the Dodgers got Manny Machado. Has any city ever had a better month than L.A. just did in terms of exciting acquisitions by their sports teams?

Jay Jaffe: Howdy folks, and welcome to today’s chat. It’s been said in connection with Ted Williams’ final game that “Gods do not answer letters” — that’s John Updike, in his famous New Yorker piece — but somebody on high has brought us color footage of his final home run and highlights from his final game. Don’t miss this: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/19/sports/ted-williams-film-last-game….

Ray Liotta as Shoeless Joe: Brad Hand and Adam Cimber for Francisco Mejia. Discuss.

Jay Jaffe: I joked on Twitter that the entirety of my analysis beyond recalling that Mejia had a 50-game hitting streak two years ago was Jeff Spicoli saying, “Hola, Mr. Hand”

Jay Jaffe: That’s from Fast Times at Ridgemont High, a staple of my teenage and early adult viewing, and a movie that you damn millennials (stands up from lawn chair and shakes cane) probably know nothing about. Well, rent it on your electric sousamaphones!

Jay Jaffe: Seriously, Mejia is a very nice get, and as a non-prospect guy I’ve never heard of Cimber. You’re probably better off asking Eric or Kiley about that and about how much catching Mejia will do going forward, though I’d bet the Padres will give him every chance to stick there.

Jkim: Shouldn’t the Dodgers look to trade someone like Toles & obviously Forsythe for bullpen help?

THey’d need to add a prospect to sweeten the deal obviously.

Idk how the trade will work out but I think Oh could be a good addition to their bullpen

Kiley McDaniel: Eric wrote about how African American players stood out at the Futures Game and also in the 2019 draft class and what that could mean: https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-futures-game-was-black/

Kiley McDaniel: And I’m currently going through the annual trade value rankings, with 21 thru 30 likely getting posted during this chat: https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/2018-trade-value-31-to-40/

Tony Womack: Sanchez’s WAR projections seemed low. Would his ranking differ if he was projected 3-4 WAR?

Kiley McDaniel: Struck me as a little low as well. The WAR figures for catchers impact the rankings the least, since they don’t include framing and the non-WAR abilities that catchers bring to the table (handling a staff, mental game, etc.) are the most notable of any other position.

Sats: Is Victor Victor Mesa a potential top 25 prospect, and what kind of grades would you put on his tools

Meg Rowley: Good morning all, and welcome to the chat!

Meg Rowley: As I mentioned last week, there is likely to be a bit of shifting around with the Tuesday schedule in the weeks to come so that we aren’t doubling up on chats.

Meg Rowley: But until then, here I am!

Waltharius: Why would LAD need Machado? They have enough hitting in Taylor at SS, and Turner at 3B

Meg Rowley: It allows them to move on from Forsythe. Heyman had a tweet on how they’d shift around the infield and I imagine it’s pretty close to what you’d see.

Rox Rox Purple Sox: Rockies have a ton of infield prospects in the pipeline (Bregman, Hampson, Welker). Do you think those guys factor into a decision to resign LeMahieu this year, or are they too far away?