Meg Rowley: Good afternoon from Boston, and welcome!

Meg Rowley: This should be the last week for a while where the schedule is wonky, so thanks everyone for being patient.

stever20: Is Bryce Harper officially back?

Meg Rowley: Was Bryce Harper ever really gone? I know this season has not gone the way that he or the Nationals wanted it to. I know that the increase in strike outs has worried some. I also don’t want to chalk it all up to BABIP.

Meg Rowley: But barring some injury we don’t really know about, I think this is a fluky, weird year, that we’ll look back on and think, “Huh, that was strange.”

Moelicious: Does Meg purchase overpriced stadium food or sneak in her own treats?

Eric A Longenhagen: Hi from Tempe, everyone. Let’s quickly do some housekeeping…

Eric A Longenhagen: We did a pref list on the prospects traded ahead of the deadline: https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/ranking-the-prospects-traded-at-the-de…

Eric A Longenhagen: I see that we omitted Jorge Alcala and that Brett Phillips fits under the Drury/Paulino/Meadows roster limbo area I like to cover, so I’ll add those guys in today.

Eric A Longenhagen: Also, we updated The Board: https://www.fangraphs.com/scoutboard.aspx

Eric A Longenhagen: We did updates to all team lists and moved players who were traded around.

Eric A Longenhagen: Carson also had me on the pod: https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/fangraphs-audio-eric-longenhagens-pros…

Jeff Sullivan: oooooooookay, done podcasting now

Jeff Sullivan: Hello friends

Jeff Sullivan: Welcome to Wednesday baseball chat

Jeff Sullivan: Next week, we’ll be back to normal, and I’ll reoccupy my standard Friday slot

Jeff Sullivan: This has been a hectic couple weeks

THE Average Sports Fan: Where you surprised the A’s didn’t make a move for a controllable Starting Pitcher?

Travis Sawchik: Happy Trade Deadline Day

Travis Sawchik: 59 minutes to go …

Travis Sawchik: Chris Archer appears to be the biggest chip that hasn’t moved that might (probably will?)

Travis Sawchik: Harper is apparently staying, Rizzo says

yerp: Who says no: Archer for Harper + international signing money?

Travis Sawchik: Tampa ends that call quickly

Dan Szymborski: OK, let’s get this party started.

Dan Szymborski: Not only have I left emotes on, but I’ve put “Peanut Gallery” on.

Dan Szymborski: Which may be the biggest disaster ever, never to be repeated, but let’s try!

Dan Szymborski: Seems to work.  Trade Deadline is supposed to be a non-stop erotic cabaret, so we can take some risks.

Bret: Will the Blue Jays be able to trade Roberto Osuna? If so, how much of a discount will they need to give?

Dan Szymborski: Aroldis Chapman was traded.  I expected they don’t, though.

Meg Rowley: Morning all, and welcome to the chat!

Meg Rowley: I am obviously not Jeff. We’ll be swapping chat times this week and next so that he can engage in various adventures.

CrashedDavis: more a Jaffe question, but you’re chatting: with statcast and the associated stats (plus future innovations) allowing us to much better judge over/underperformance, how are we going to evaluate that over full careers in HOF debates 15+ years from now?

Meg Rowley: Just as we have a much better understanding of who is actually good now than we did 50 years ago, I would imagine it will continue to enhance how voters think about who is worthy of induction.

Meg Rowley: I think there is a limit to how much stats like xwOBA can change that process, because ultimately the Hall is concerned with the careers guys really had, but it’ll have an effect.

Meg Rowley: I imagine it will also force us to change how many guys voters can vote for at any one time as we better understand just how amazing a lot of these guys are.

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