Dave Cameron: Welcome to the NL Wild Card live blog.

twb: great to be back in playoff chat season

Dave Cameron: Indeed. These are fun.

Dave Cameron: I will warn you that my two year old is still here, so I might be slightly slow for the next few minutes.

Dave Cameron: He doesn’t know the words “live blog” yet

Michelle: It’s been six years. This feels amazing. I think I might pee myself.

Dave Cameron: Happy Wild Card Wednesday, everyone.

Dave Cameron: The playoffs have begun, and I just published some thoughts on the Yankees power display last night (http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-yankees-are-overwhelmingly-powerful…), so obviously we’ll talk about the postseason plenty today.

Dave Cameron: But I’m sure there are plenty of questions about what’s going on in Atlanta, and other off-season issues, so we’ll grab some of those too.

Dave Cameron: Also, I’m running the live blog for the NL Wild Card game tonight, so you’ll get an overwhelming dose of me chatting today.

toki: What kind of penalties are you expecting the braves to be handed?  Do you expect them to lose prospects like the Red Sox did?

Dave Cameron: SInce we don’t have the information, it’s impossible to know, but it’s not that hard to note that no one in Boston got fired or resigned, and A.J. Preller was just suspended by MLB when he was with Texas and was accused of doing some shady stuff on the international scene. If Coppolella was forced to resign over the accusations, it seems like whatever he got caught doing was probably more blatant than what BOS or TEX did, so yeah, I’d expect some significant penalties for the Braves are still to come.

Jeff Sullivan: Hello friends

Jeff Sullivan: Welcome to 2017 AL Wild Card Live Blog

Travis Sawchik: [Jeff’s supporting actor enters]

Travis Sawchik: Howdy, folks

Jeff Sullivan: One year ago in this game, the Orioles lost to the Blue Jays by using Ubaldo Jimenez

Jeff Sullivan: Welcome, Travis, to your first FanGraphs playoff blog! It’s overwhelming!

Eric A Longenhagen: Hey everyone, we’ll start momentarily. Just tweeting a link…

Eric A Longenhagen: Okay, happy postseason to all. Let’s chat.

Gary: I’m a Braves fan nervous about everything right now. Should I be?

Eric A Longenhagen: Depends what ‘everything’ is. They can’t take away the entire farm system, which is quite good, and frankly, people in other front offices don’t think Atlanta has lost a whole hell of a lot here. But it is ugly and this won’t be fun for anyone involved.

Birdlaw Esq: Do you foresee you job as it relates to getting info on J2 guys presigning as about to get much more difficult?

Eric A Longenhagen: If teams are still agreeing to deals well before they’re technically allowed to (which they are) then no.

Travis Sawchik: Howdy, folks

Travis Sawchik: Let’s get started …

E_LBJ: Am I crazy to think that the DBacks have a good shot at winning the NL pennant?

Travis Sawchik: You’re not! One of the game’s better pitching staffs and JD Martinez and Paul Goldschmidt can carry teams

Ned Yost: 2017 Astros are all time leaders in RE24 since World War 2. Just thought that was cool.

Travis Sawchik: Oh? That is pretty cool. Some great teams in this post season. Indians just posted best pitching staff WAR of all time

Jeff Sullivan: Hello friends

Jeff Sullivan: Welcome to Friday baseball chat

Jeff Sullivan: Sorry for that extra long delay — had some problems recording the podcast

Bork: Hello, friend!

Jeff Sullivan: Hello friend

Tim Tebow’s Thunder Thighs: The Tigers announced that Andrew Romine will play all nine positions on Sunday. Can we please do this with Andrelton Simmons, too? Watching him pitch and run down fly balls in center would be a hoot.

Eno Sarris: dedicated to the Twins and Rockies. Team entropy may have lost out, but it’s kinda cool to have these two teams in the postseason

Eno Sarris: yello

John Edwards: Twins are in the postseason. What does this mean moving forward? Should we expect them to be in “Win Now” mode for the next few seasons?

Eno Sarris: I bet they run it like Cleveland with Derek Falvey in there. hope to have the young guys do it with a slow ramp up of free agent signings. Doubt they trade anything under control for a win now piece.

Minty: SP Castillo at $2 or Francisco Mejia at $4 as my last keeper?

Eno Sarris: Castillo. Mejia could be very good and still not be great for fantasy.

Dave Cameron: Happy final Wednesday of the regular season, everyone.

Dave Cameron: Next week, we’ll have one Wild Card game in the books and another to look forward to.

Dave Cameron: So, let’s chat postseason, awards, off-season stuff, or anything else baseball related.

The Average Sports Fan: If the Yankees end up in the Wildcard game should they just bullpen it?

Dave Cameron: Girardi said yesterday he won’t do it. That said, it would be interesting if he just ran Severino for 3-4 innings, thus potentially saving him for a Game 2 ALDS start. With Green able to bridge the gap to the late relievers, it’s worth doing.

Dave Cameron: But my guess is he’ll just go conservative and let Severino go until he gets in trouble.

Paul Swydan:

Paul Swydan:

Paul Swydan: Hi everybody!

Jeff Zimmerman: Hi

Justin Verlander: How are my Hall chances looking these days?

Jeff Zimmerman: I think you are in. I’ll be able to vote for you. I just hope the standards for pitchers starts dropping

Eric A Longenhagen: Good morning, all. I’ll start today by encouraging you to help our friends in Puerto Rico if you have the means to do so. Let’s chat.

Nick: Can you shed any light on what’s wrong with Maikel Franco? His peripherals are normal (except a low-BABIP). It’s it really just bad luck or is there a mechanical issue?

Eric A Longenhagen: Just based on the Phillies games I’ve seen he’s not a very good ‘Baseball Player’ which is to say he makes poor approach decisions at the plate that lead to bad contact when he’s making it. Was it yesterday or the day before he swung 2-0 with the team down two in the ninth inning? You need a baserunner in that situation and should be taking a strike. It wouldn’t surprise me if, upon deeper analysis, you were to find the quality of his contact suffered because his approach is just bad.

Dan: Luis Garcia of the Nats seemed to show decent bat skills. Could he maybe start the year in Hagerstown?  What is his development looking like?

Eric A Longenhagen: I have no idea. I like Garcia but that will be probably be largely determined by how he looks next spring.

Mr. Sunshine: Who are your favorite prospects (<131 AB) to stash or keep for early-mid season MLB returns in fantasy next year?