Eric A Longenhagen: Hey, everyone. Good morning from Tempe.

Eric A Longenhagen: Here’s our recently updated top overall prospects list: https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-updated-top-131-prospect-rankings/

Eric A Longenhagen: Not much else to link to as everything had been building up to the draft and that update, so now we have more irons in the fire than we do stuff to plug.

Eric A Longenhagen: I’m gonna chat longer than usual this week because I bailed on last week’s chat, so without further adieu..

Joe: Thoughts on the Brewers draft haul?

Eric A Longenhagen: I liked it. I’m not the biggest Joe Gray fan because I saw him swing and miss against good pitching a lot throughout his amateur career, but he’s been a known guy for a long time and you could argue we nitpitcked him to death. At worst he has a traditional power/projection right field profile, which is a fine thing to draft in the second round, and Gray has a better chance to stay in CF than most prospects like that because his feel out there is good and might enable him to stay there even if he slows down.

Jay Jaffe: Hello and welcome to the almost-on-vacation edition of my Thursday chat. I’m writing this from Wellfleet, Massachusetts, where I’ll be spending the next week before heading to Denver for our FanGraphs staff trip and reader meetup. Let’s see if the wifi can hold out for another 90 minutes

Ray Liotta as Shoeless Joe: If the Orioles and Mets combined into a single team, would that team be good enough to get to the playoffs in the NL East? AL East?

Jay Jaffe: Without thinking too hard about it, I’ll go ahead and say no. Other than Machado, Britton and maybe Chase Sisco, what from the Orioles would even be usesful to the Mets right now?

Steve: Sounds like expansion is inevitable. If MLB does go to 32, would you prefer 4 8-team divisions or 8 4-team divisions? Do you want an expanded playoff format?

Jay Jaffe: I think I prefer 4 x 8 teams to 8 x 4 but either way, there would probably be 8 teams in each league making the playoffs, which I don’t love. But it gets so messy if you don’t do it as a function of 4.

CamdenWarehouse: How much input do teams have on how their games are broadcast? I find it interesting that the Orioles appear to have one of the least advanced approaches and also have broadcasts that favor stats like pitcher Wins, Quality Starts and BA w/ RISP while mostly ignoring sabermetrics.

Kiley McDaniel: Hello from a McDonald’s in Tampa where I’m setting up shop for a bit before I hit a few games today, then hit PG National starting tomorrow, which is the first stop on HS showcase season for the 2019 Draft

Anonymous : When evaluating college players, what specific stats, if any, do you look at when trying to figure out if the player will be a productive player at a higher level?

Kiley McDaniel: BB/K ratio and ISO for hitters are both big. BB/K for pitchers too also tells a lot of what you need to know. If you’re bad at controlling the strike zone at the amateur level, it’s an uphill climb

Kiley McDaniel: Also, this chat will run a little shorter than usual, but I usually go over the alotted hour so I feel like we’re all okay with this every now and then

Teddy: Hey Kiley, can you expand on the Brett Cumberland just to the top 100? Is it about the defense taking a step forward? The offense doesn’t look very impressive this year on paper.

Kiley McDaniel: It’s a 120 wRC+ in basically a full year in Hi-A at age 21/22 with plus raw power, a late-count, lofted power approach and the frame/defense have improved this year. He was also in the top of the 45 tier, so he was around 150-200 already and like 20 guys graduated, so he would’ve been right around 130-150 if he hadn’t improved at all.

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

Meg Rowley: There are a lot of Mariners questions in the queue, but I will do my best to pepper in others!

Luke Basewalker: Who’s the next big prospect to get the call now that Adames is up?

Meg Rowley: Apart from A Pitcher Needed for injury, I’d think probably Senzel if he’s healthy

Brendon: How has Edwin Diaz been this season?

Meg Rowley: Brendon, he’s been very good!

Dan Szymborski: And awaaaay we go!

Dan Szymborski: Sorry, I had been on the phone and then I had to go to the bathroom.

Dan Szymborski: And I don’t want to chat from the bathroom, lest someone figure it out somehow and then giving everyone an unpleasant vision.

Preller: What is the prospect i should be targeting when trading Tyson ross

Dan Szymborski: A good one?  I think it depends on the team really.  The fact that he’s a free agent is going to keep the price down, I think I’d gear more towards a number of interesting lottery tickets than trying to get one specific guy.

Dan Szymborski: Let’s not forget, it was obvious to trade him in 2015 and htey didn’t.

Travis Sawchik: Happy Monday

Travis Sawchik: Let’s mourn together Ohtani’s right UCL

Travis Sawchik: Baseball cannot have nice things. We are reminded of this often. On that somber note, let’s get started…

GY: Do you think the indians could acquire Hand & Yates without including Mejia/McKenzie/Chang or Bieber?

Travis Sawchik: Indians-Padres seem like an obvious match

Travis Sawchik: Indians would have to give up a premium prospect

Jeff Sullivan: Hello friends

Jeff Sullivan: Sorry sorry! Podcasting!

Jeff Sullivan: Welcome to Friday baseball chat

hscer: I know they’re completely independent, but the Caps make me feel better about the Nats chances this year. Is that sports?

Jeff Sullivan: That’s sports

Jeff Sullivan: It also shows the power of the narratives we make up about them to make them more interesting

Jay Jaffe: Hey gang, it’s that time again! First off, thanks to reader GELB, whose question last week prompted me to write about José Ramiréz and the greatest 3B seasons ever, not to mention the folly of the 10-WAR pace https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/jose-ramirez-and-the-greatest-third-ba…. I always come out of here with an idea or two for the next week, which is great.

Second, I’ve got vacation on my mind, as this is my last chat before embarking up on a trip up to Cape Cod, and it can’t come soon enough. I’ll be chatting from there next week, but the following week, I’ll be en route to Denver for the FanGraphs staff throwdown and reader meet-up (https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/fangraphs-meetup-denver-june-22/), so if you’re in the area, do come by for some beers. And with that, we’re off and running…

Nick Senzel: When do I come up?

Jay Jaffe: I get asked this every. single. week. My guess is sometime after the Super Two date, whenever that is, and given his vertigo issues I don’t see the need for the rush. It’s not going to change the arc of the Reds’ season, though.

Matt: In the Koufax vs Kershaw debate, I got to thinking about innings. Does JAWS to anything to account for the fact that, for example Koufax’s environment allowed him more opportunities to accumulate WAR that Kershaw’s environment? Kershaws peak 7 will never match Koufax’s (even without injury) because Koufax had more IP in which to accumulate WAR. Or is that a part of Koufax’s intrinsic value over Kershaw’s?

Jay Jaffe: WAR is something of a counting stat, and Kershaw (61.9/49.6/55.8, 50th among SP) has actually already passed Koufax (49.0/46.1/47.5, 88th) on both the career and peak levels, because he’s had more good, healthy seasons.

If I ever do The Cooperstown Casebook, Volume 2 — and I’ve got a rough outline — I’ll probably lead with a chapter called What We Talk About When We Talk About Sandy Koufax. People tend to forget that his peak was very short, even by Hall standards. Even in his run of five straight ERA titles from 1962-66, he made fewer than 30 starts in two of those seasons due to injuries, and once you let some of the air out of his stats with park adjustment he doesn’t fare remarkably well via WAR/JAWS. And of course none of that incorporates his postseason work, which is one of the main reasons for his popularity, and rightly so.

Jay Jaffe: Kershaw hasn’t got the postseason part of the resumé down, and that’s always going to be something  that a certain segment of the public holds against him, but his body of elite regular-season work is already larger and better than Koufax’s.

Tommy N.: Are you surprised Liberatore signed for slot did he really just want to start his career or was there something in his medicals to make him slide? Granted 3+ mil is still a lot of money.

Kiley McDaniel: Wasn’t medicals. I’ve been told the story and am pretty sure it’s correct, won’t be sharing for a little while at least for reasons you guys can probably assume. Great deal for TB.

Tommy N.: Padres draft kind of was underwhelming after Edwards and Weathers they drafted a good amount of college seniors is this because Xavier Edwards is going to cost much more than we expected?

Kiley McDaniel: We like Grant Little and Dylan Coleman, Juwaun Harris has a lot of upside. College seniors means money savers to pay other players, so it’s a sign money is being moved around.

K-Man: Any opinion change on a player because of the team that drafted him?

Meg Rowley: Hello! Welcome to my let-Meg-sleep-at-least-a-little delayed chat!

never fail beta male: Brewers just dropped 2 out of 3 to the lowly White Sox, this is the beginning of the end and the fun is over, right? Please tell me I’m not right…

Meg Rowley: You’re probably not right! The Brewers are a good team, but even good teams lose to lousy teams sometimes.

Meg Rowley: I like that Brewers team a lot. It must be so strange to be a baseball player and have your bad days make everyone so profoundly nervous.

Meg Rowley: We all have bad days.

Brewers Fan: New Glarus or Capital Brewery ?