Archive for Chat

Brendan Gawlowski: Hello everybody. I’m happy and relieved that we managed to get through prospect fortnight — I hope you all enjoyed the content. If you have any further questions on the list, picks to click, or anything else fire away.

Datt Mamon: Long-term, do you like M. Clark or DeLauter more?

Brendan Gawlowski: Clark. If you could guarantee me that DeLauter would be healthy… Probably still Clark but I’d have to think about it.

Guest: People talk a lot about players being able to spin the ball being necessary to create good breaking ball shapes. What physical traits lead to being able to do that?

Brendan Gawlowski: Whether it’s in the wrist or the fingers, some guys just have an innate ability to generate more spin, and that gives you more wiggle room to play around with shapes and grips. There isn’t a 1:1 correlation between spin ability and the quality of your breaking balls, though.

blackjack: Can Charlie Condon regain elite prospect status?

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks! Greetings from Brooklyn, where we got buried in snow yesterday, with over 18″ in my neck of the woods.

Jay Jaffe: The snow seems to have followed me from Salt Lake City, where I went last week to visit my parents and ski with my daughter. A massive two-day storm cut short our skiing — the kiddo isn’t ready for powder yet and canyon travel wasn’t so great. Anyway, it’s back to baseball here.

Jay Jaffe: yesterday I wrote about Bill Mazeroski, the Hall of Fame second baseman who passed away over the weekend. He was a genuine defensive whiz who’s best known for his 1960 World Series-winning walk-off homer, which propelled him into Cooperstown https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-defense-rests-a-tribute-to-bill-mazero…

The Actor for Al Pacino: Thanks for your piece on Bill Mazeroski earlier this week, I really enjoyed it.

It made me wonder, could you comment a bit on looking at historical defensive contributions, and how much weight you put into them? Defense is something that, even in the present day with all of our tracking data and video and analytics, can be hard to quantify. I am wondering what your overall perception of something like Total Zone fielding runs is – do you view it as just having wider error bars than our modern methods?

Jay Jaffe: Since JAWS is driven by WAR which up until the early part of this millennium, I do put some stock in Total Zone. It’s hardly perfect, and yes, there are wide error bars, but if you go around the diamond and check out who it rates the highest — guys like Mark Belanger, Ozzie Smith, Brooks Robinson, Andruw Jones, Willie Mays, Roberto Clemente — for stuff like that, it’s not out of line with expectations. Sure, you do get the occasional wide gap between perception and measure — Roberto Alomar and Jim Edmonds come to mind — but you can often work backwards to get a sense as to why certain players don’t fare well by the system

Jay Jaffe: And it’s worth remembering that positional scarcity and overall defensive value are important factors, too. A good-hitting right fielder isn’t as valuable as a good-hitting shortstop, etc.

Dan Szymborski: Sorry, technical diffculties

Jeff: In your 2026 prospects article, you mentioned that Zips is aware of postseason performance. I agree with this approach. Can you share how you decided to include this data?  It seems to me that many other projection systems do not include post season information.

Dan Szymborski: I just tested it and it was slightly helpful!

Dan Szymborski: I mean it wasn’t going to be a game-changer since it’s not enough games

Dan Szymborski: But isn’t it weird that we don’t “count” the most important games against the best quality opposition?

Dan Szymborski: So, naturally, I tested for it

Eric A Longenhagen: Hello everyone, hope you had a nice weekend and enjoyed some combo of college baseball, the Olympics, and NBA All Star stuff (or non-sports delights) as I certainly did.

Eric A Longenhagen: The top 100 was published today! Brendan and I are here to talk about it with you, as well as whatever else might be on your mind.

Eric A Longenhagen: It can be procedural stuff, questions specific to players, your dynasty roster, whatever. We know a lot of you may be stopping by for the first time today because the Top 100 list brought you here. Thanks for coming, please look around and make yourself at home.

Guest: how close is Jojo Parker to being on the list?

Brendan Gawlowski: Parker was very close, Eric and I went back and forth on it while I was doing the Toronto list. At the end of the day, we didn’t have anything new on him to bump him from the post-draft updates. Good reminder that the gap between player 90 and player 135 is tiny.

Eric A Longenhagen: Parker’s good, probably a little less projectable than most of the same-age infielders who made the list.

Dan Szymborski: Greetings all!

The Oriole Bird: How do you feel about the Chris Bassitt signing for the O’s?

Dan Szymborski: I’m OK with it!

Dan Szymborski: I mean, I would have preferred Valdez

Dan Szymborski: but given no Valdez, I’d rather have additional starter depth than not

mustachio: Verlander to the Tigers: more than just a nostalgia tour?

Brendan Gawlowski: Hello everybody. We’re going to go relatively short today so smoke em if you got em.

Goule: Feel like Im not seeing enough River Ryan ROY talk. Is that because he’s older? I see an easy path to 20 plus starts.

Brendan Gawlowski: I agree with you, I think he’s really good.

Steve: Where does Chowolsky fit among top SS prospects right now?  Is he in the Griffin, McGonigle, Made, De Vries et. al. group or the next tier down?  How quickly does he get to the majors?

Brendan Gawlowski: I’m optimistic on the guy but let’s let him see some pro pitching before we really get nuts.

Alec: (apologies for being completely unrelated to prospects but) JUSTIN VERLANDER IS HOME! I have no idea if they’re doing a six man rotation when either Olson is healthy or Melton shoves in presumably Toledo to start the year but the prodigal son has returned!