Paul Swydan: Hi everybody!

Jeff and I will be here at 9 pm ET to cram as much baseball as we can cram into your cramholes. Until then, fill up the queue! See you soon!

Paul Swydan: Hey guys, let’s do this thing.

Comment From Cobbieguy
Conventional wisdom says Brock Holt won’t be a first ballot hall of famer; however, what can his value be going forward? Ben Zobrist lite with less power?

Paul Swydan: Ben Zobrist lite with less power is a utility player, which is what Holt really is.

Jeff Zimmerman: I am just not buying to his season. Zobrist without the power and a little worse defender.

Comment From Ceej
Is Byron Buxton injury prone similar to someone like Ellsbury and Harper where it just keeps happening but he isn’t necessarily brittle and more fluky?

Jeff Sullivan: All right, so let’s see

Jeff Sullivan: Late: check

Jeff Sullivan: Don’t bother asking fantasy questions because I don’t know how to answer them: check

Jeff Sullivan: The Mariners are the way to my heart but I try to limit the amount of those questions I take: check

Jeff Sullivan: Onward!

Comment From JR
Does Baez moving to 2B imply he’ll get called up soon?

Dan Szymborski: ZIP ZOP ZOOPITY BOP

Dan Szymborski: First off, our usual business.

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Comment From Bret
Reports over the weekend that the Jays can’t take on any money in trades. On a scale of 1-10, how angry should Jays fans be?

Dan Szymborski: Assuming the reports are true, very.

Nicholas Minnix: Hello, everybody! I’ll be with you at the top of the hour, as always. I have been going to about an hour and a half for these, but today I won’t go much beyond the requisite hour, visiting family, hope you understand. Looking forward to hearing what you have to say and ask!

Nicholas Minnix: And, my sincere apologies: I changed the start time of my event initially … but not the time zone! So now we’re all set.

Comment From Zach
Among the teams who are in the hunt for a RP which would not have Soria as a closer?

Eno Sarris: Hey!

Eno Sarris: I’ll be back soon!

Eno Sarris: In the meantime enjoy an oldie.

djclay33:

Eno Sarris: Sorry! I’m here!

Comment From Sandy
Eno time!

Neil Weinberg: Hey everyone, this is my first chat since joining FanGraphs, so let me get you caught up.

My job here is primarily to serve as something of a Site Educator. This means that I’m responsible for providing resources to readers about our data, advanced metrics, and how to make use of the features available at the site.

It’s possible you’ve seen me around the various baseball parts of the internet. My Twitter handle is @NeilWeinberg44 and if you want to get in touch about these kinds of questions at times other than 3pm on Wednesdays, that’s where to find me. It’s my job, so take advantage of it.

With that said, I will prioritize “how does this work?” and “what does this mean?” type questions during the chats, but feel free to ask regular questions about anything as well. Although if you’re here for fantasy advice or prospect talk, I’m probably less helpful than some of our writers. And if you’re here to discuss beer, I am literally the least useful person on our staff.

Think that’s it, queue is open and we’ll start at 3pm!

Neil Weinberg: Alright, let’s chat! I’ll probably hang out for an hour and fifteen minutes today, but will go longer most days if there are lots of questions.

Comment From DD
I can never find a direct link on the site for the Live Scoreboard Page. I always have to do a google search. Embarressing I know. Please point me in the right direction. Thanks!

Neil Weinberg: This is a link to Sunday’s. http://www.fangraphs.com/sc…

What you want to do is go to FanGraphs and look for the “Score” tab at the top. Hover over that and then click the current year (so 2014) and it will take you to the current day. Unfortunately, I can’t show you this in action because today is a very dark day on the calendar.

Comment From @BobbleHeadGuru
Why are there two different WARs. Why is fWAR better?

Neil Weinberg: There are two different WARs (actually 3!) because there are different ways to measure certain aspects of performance. Typically, most of the hitting measurements will be the same, but the different sites have different ideas about how to properly measure defense and baserunning…and pitching for that matter. I prefer fWAR, but I recommend looking at all of them. I’ll put together an updated Glossary entry about this in the future to break out the exact details.

Dave Cameron: This week’s chat will probably be delayed by 10 or 15 minutes, as I’m reformatting the Trade Value post for today to return to the previous blurb style, as it appears preferable to a majority of the readers.

Dave Cameron: Apologies for the delay, but at least it comes with some benefit to you, unless you were one of the few who liked the experiment…

Dave Cameron: Alright, today’s trade value post is up. Only took an extra 1,000 words to do it blurb style. Hope you guys enjoy it, because man, blurbs are a lot more work.

Dave Cameron: I guess maybe I should provide a link: http://www.fangraphs.com/bl…

Dave Cameron: And let’s chat.

Comment From Jason
What would be fair for the Players Association to ask for in return for banning smokeless tobacco in the next CBA?

Paul Swydan: Hi everybody! Tonight, since there’s this fancy game up in Minneapolis, the FanGraphs After Dark chat has been supersized into the All-Star Game Live Blog.

We’ll start earlier than usual, 8 pm ET, to coincide with the start of the game. I’m going to be flying solo on this one, because Jeff is off on a family vacation this week. So, I’m not sure I’ll last the whole game, especially if there are stupid rain delays like there were last night. But I’ll give it the ole’ college try!

I’ve got some polls set up, and the queue is open. I’ll take the normal questions we take each week too, if you want to ask those. But we’ll try to focus on the action, Jackson.

See you soon!

Paul Swydan: Hi guys. Just settling in. We’ll get started in a few minutes.

Comment From Pale Hose
I was expecting a chat, but I get a live blog instead. This is probably the highlight of my week…

Paul Swydan: Me too!

Well, I am going to a De La Soul concert on Thursday, but this is right up there!

Comment From mike
How good is Cutch? His numbers are unreal am I reading them right.

Paul Swydan: You are in fact reading them right.

Jeff Sullivan: Hello there, friends

Jeff Sullivan: Hello there, friends of friends

Jeff Sullivan: Let’s chat baseball. I chat at a slower rate than Dave does for a variety of reasons. Don’t ask me fantasy baseball questions because I don’t know how to answer them. You know, the usual stuff

Comment From Peter B
Thoughts on Aiken and the Astros?

Jeff Sullivan: From the outsider perspective, it’s easy to say, oh, they’re just trying to make the numbers work, and they found something of a medical facilitation. But while I don’t know the severity of what Aiken might be dealing with, it sure seems like he isn’t really hurt, so I understand why people are upset

Jeff Sullivan: I think it was Olney who was talking about what Aiken might get paid as a free agent. Which is interesting, but also unhelpful since all high draft picks would get bank as free agents

Dan Szymborski: We built this city, we build this city, we build this city for economy of scale and more efficiently administered public service.

Dan Szymborski: You thought I was going to say rock and roll. But that’s a poor reason to form a city, there’s no particular governmental unit that’s more suited to rock and roll.

Dan Szymborski: But let’s start out with our usual business.

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Comment From Tim
Thanks for chatting, Dan! How would you configure the O’s rotation out of the break?