Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks! Welcome to another edition of my Tuesday chats. I have a piece up today illustrating the weakest positions on NL contenders — sort of a preseason Replacement Level Killers list — with a companion AL piece to follow soon. https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-weakest-positions-on-national-league-c…

Jay Jaffe: On Sunday I covered the Cody Bellinger signing https://blogs.fangraphs.com/options-options-cody-bellinger-returns-to-…

Jay Jaffe: and last Friday i took a look at the Mets’ rotation in light of the Kodai Senga injury https://blogs.fangraphs.com/with-kodai-senga-injury-mets-rotation-alre…

Jay Jaffe: With the caveat that I may have to duck out for a few minutes soon when our painter arrives, let’s get on with it.

Jay Jaffe: (We had our living room, dining room, and kitchen painted yesterday! Facelift for the whole first floor!)

Idiotic Failson: Regarding the Yankees still being potentially interested in Snell – I want owners to spend money as much as the average fan and feel that owners too often hoard their team revenue. That said, let’s say that the Yankees spend $25mm/year on Snell. That brings their commitment this year to him to close to $60mm and their payroll to close to $400mm. Can they really afford to run $400mm payrolls (necessary or not) regularly? Am I wrong in thinking that signing Snell might actually be unreasonable?

Eric A Longenhagen: Good morning from Tempe! Thank you for checking out all of our Prospect Week work for the site, including this chat.

Eric A Longenhagen: Let’s get right into it.

Andrew: You’re a bit lower on Colt Emerson than a lot of the industry it seems. What does he need to show to get up into that ~50 range? And thoughts on Jeter Martinez?

Eric A Longenhagen: I like Emerson a lot, ideally he performs a little better versus belt-high fastballs going forward. Jeter is an 18-year-old Mexican DSL arm sitting 92-93 touching better than that, slider will flash. Long-term dev project, last I saw arm action was super long

Jesse: Do the Mets have a top farm system after eating all that money for prospects during the trade deadline last year?

Eric A Longenhagen: More like tier 2 behind Cubs, BoSox

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks, and thanks for stopping by today’s chat. It’s a snow day here in Brooklyn, with about 8″ of total snowfall in the city but a lot of it already melting. I’m fresh off having built our first backyard snowman with my daughter.

Jay Jaffe:

Jay Jaffe: About an hour ago, my piece on Jurickson Profar’s return to San Diego went live (https://blogs.fangraphs.com/jurickson-profar-rejoins-the-padres-not-so…). If you’re reading this, you have a pretty good chance of getting playing time in the Padres’ outfield this season because there’s not a lot of experienced competition.

Jay Jaffe: Anyway, it’s been a few weeks since I did one of these, so on with the show…

Not a huge fan: Hi Jay, I’m generally not a huge fan of your stuff, but just wanted to say thanks for taking the time to chat!

Jay Jaffe: Gosh, thanks for that. I’m generally not a huge fan of people who take the time to say that they’re not huge fans of me (or any of my colleagues), so, uh, have a nice day I guess.

Dan Szymborski: If you can’t do the chat time, don’t do the chat crime

Dan Szymborski: I don’t know what that means either, like most things out of my mouth

the person who asks the lunch question: what’s for lunch?

Dan Szymborski: Nothing, this isn’t an eating Thursday

Andy Dufresne: Are you bullish on Correa exceeding his projections now that the foot (and septum) are fixed?

Dan Szymborski: Mildly so? I tend to be skeptical over “OK, this fixes the injury thing for good” things

Dan Szymborski: It’s a chat!

The person who asks the lunch question: What’s for lunch?

Dan Szymborski: Egg salad sandwich

Daniel: What kind of year do you expect from Corbin Burnes? Will we ever see a year from him again like his 2021?

Dan Szymborski: That’s not the *average* result, but the chance is certainly there

Dan Szymborski: I do think he’s slightly down from his highest peak

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon and happy Hall of Fame election results day!

Jay Jaffe: I’ve got a lot on my plate today but since my chats have been so scarce lately i figured I’d spend a bit of time answering questions here as a way to burn off some nervous energy. Hall of Fame and hot stove q’s take precedence. Speaking of hot stoves, our new range arrived today, replacing the 20+ year piece of junk that this house came with. it had better heat more evenly!

Jay Jaffe: Here’s my look at our Hall of Fame crowdsource ballot results and a preview of election day https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-envelope-please-our-2024-hall-of-fame-…. I’ll obviously have more this evening

Jay Jaffe: And here’s a Twitter thread linking to the most likely honorees and a few other key pieces in this year’s series https://twitter.com/jay_jaffe/status/1749868791738097982

OK, on with the show

Refugee: FanGraphs voters are small hall? What the heck?

Jay Jaffe: I wouldn’t exactly say that. While the two candidates elected in this year’s crowdsource poll was fewer than in any of the previous five years, voters averaged just shy of 8 names per ballot; it’s just that those were spread more widely than we’ve seen

Dan Szymborski: And we are here!

James: You never win trading away Juan Soto. That said, Preller must be thrilled with his haul right now given how the SP FA market has been shaking out, no?

Dan Szymborski: Yeah, though I’m  not thinking much of Padres in 2024; that’s still a lot of performance to replace and they kinda needed pitching *now*

Laxtonto: Does it seem like this offseason is moving slow on the FA front? Or is it just perception of the long offseason?

Dan Szymborski: I dont’ think slower than usual. One thing is that there just aren’t many very good position players ou thtere

Dan Szymborski: Been really lite on stars