Meg Rowley: Good morning! As you might have guessed, I am not Kiley. We will return to our regularly scheduled programming next week, but for now, a Wednesday Meg chat!

yojiveself: imagine if you could start MLB all over again.  No history, no records.  How many games a season do you want?  To me, a 100 game season would be perfect.  Start mid-April, WS in late September.  Thoughts?

Meg Rowley: Dropping all the way down to 100 feels very drastic. Now you might say, hey, that’s because you’re used to baseball as it is, and this is meant to be a question about baseball as it should be.

Meg Rowley: To which I would say, well yeah, but 100 is too few.

Meg Rowley: I think something in the 150s allows you to skirt some of the really yucky weather on the front end, but keeps October the same.

Meg Rowley: There’s something about crisp air during playoff baseball I’d be loathe to do. Also, the sample size is nice.

Kiley McDaniel: Sorry for the delay! Errand running went a little sideways then got a call back from an int’l scout. But I am here now!

Tommy N.: Should I worry about Weathers not signing?

Kiley McDaniel: Good first question. Lots of rumors flying around about unsigned prep picks. Suffice it to say we’ve heard somewhat reliable buzz about all of them possibly not signing, but it’s likely almost all of them do…though the buzz is of varying seriousness. So can’t really help you with the specific ones more than an inkling as to what happens right before the deadline.

Kiley McDaniel: Hold on, just got some buzz to report on that exact topic

Kiley McDaniel:

Kiley McDaniel: Okay back to the chat

Dan Szymborski: A Time for Chats

Dan k: Will Harper rebound ?

Dan Szymborski: Yes

John S: should we expect to see your physique in the ESPN the BODY issue?

Dan Szymborski: They want to SELL magazines.

Dan Szymborski: They should put me on the cover and sell velcro-on clothes for $4.99

Kiley McDaniel: Hello! I am here to baseball chat with you. Home after seeing the top 2019 MLB Draft prep types at PG National, also saw a Dunedin/Port Charlotte game and the FSL All Star Game while I was over there. Going to see college Team USA next week with what is the most loaded roster they’ve had in a long time, may be a dozen day one guys on the team.

greg: Is there a direct link to THE BOARD on the homepage or under a menu that I’m missing?

Kiley McDaniel: Yes there is, mouse over the LEADERS header and its near the top of that menu

Lilith: Going into the season, India was pegged as a guy with average tools across the board. How has this season changed how you view his upside? Also, is it possible that he could stick at short? Thanks

Kiley McDaniel: He lost some weight and as sometimes happens, the tools got better when he did that. Power went from 50 to 55, speed went from 40-45 to 50, defense went from fringy to above at 3B and his offensive approach improved, then the stats jumped with the new power which he mostly tapped into

Kiley McDaniel: The upside is still no 60 tools, but there’s plenty of 3 win players in the bigs with no 60 tools that are just above average at everything and play everyday at a useful position, so he could turn into that. Seems likely to fall into the 2.0 to 3.0 WAR band for me, though.

Meg Rowley: Good morning and welcome to the chat!

BFreeman123: How does the Boston rotation shake out when Pomeranz back? Thanks

Meg Rowley: Without any special knowledge, I wouldn’t be surprised if the less effective of him or Steven Wright ended up throwing some relief innings.

Rockie Dangerfield: Lemme tell you a joke.
“The Rockies’ bullpen.”
Get it?

Meg Rowley: We can tell the truth about things, be funny, and resist the temptation to be mean for no reason. It just requires us to embrace a higher degree of difficulty in our humor.

Outta my way, Gyorkass: Why do I feel like the Brewers are headed for a complete dogshit 1-15 type stretch where they completely blow their playoff chances? That offense is either scoring in double digits or 0/1.

Dan Szymborski: And awaaaay we go!

John: Are the Yankees the worst team at breaking ball recognition?

Dan Szymborski: Don’t have the hit/miss numbers in front o fme (I’m outside), but last I checked, the Yankees were actually in the top part of the league in curves overall

Bo: What would it take from the Braves to get Machado? Worth it for a run this year, or should they wait?

Dan Szymborski: The O’s would probably insist on one of the young pitchers and probably Riley.

Dan Szymborski: It’s tricky, I think this is a situation where it pays the Braves to postpone as long as possible any kind of decision,.

Travis Sawchik: Howdy

Travis Sawchik: I hope all the fathers in the audience enjoyed their day

Travis Sawchik: Let’s get started, shall we?

Paul: If you were in Alex Anthopoulous’ position, how would you handle the deadline?

Travis Sawchik: I wouldn’t trade away too much of tomorrow, too much future surplus value … but I’d try and make some marginal improvements

Bernie: I saw your article on the attendance numbers, specifically AL, trending down. Any word on the NL attendance numbers?

Jeff Sullivan: Hello friends

Jeff Sullivan: Welcome to Friday baseball chat

James: The Astros seem to have their offensive mojo back. How scared should the league be?

Jeff Sullivan: I was just looking at something yesterday

Jeff Sullivan: I calculated every team’s total negative WAR

Jeff Sullivan: The Astros are at -0.1 — just Jake Marisnick

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.