Paul Swydan: Hi everybody!

Chris, Jeff AND myself will be live with you tonight at 9 pm ET to cram some baseball down your cramholes. In the meantime, I’ll get up some polls, and you post some questions and comments. It’s just crazy enough to work.

See you soon!

Paul Swydan: Six shutout innings from Gerrit Cole > seven walks from Jon Lester.

Let’s light this turkey.

Chris Cwik: Hi, everyone. Been a while.

Paul Swydan: Chris is married now you guys. Tell Chris congratulations!

Jeff Zimmerman: I am working on a poll, will jump in soon.

Paul Swydan: Btw, 56% of you are pissing me off. Man of Steel looks AMAZING.

Jeff Sullivan: Look, at this point if you haven’t figured out that being late is part of my schtick, that’s your problem.

Jeff Sullivan: Not that it was intended this way, but look where we are!

Jeff Sullivan: I am the worst FanGraphs employee!

Comment From Time
Why do you disrespect me?

Jeff Sullivan: I have a different concept of you

Comment From Goose
Please rank RoS! Hosmer, Belt, Konerko

Dan Szymborski: Right Red Ankiel? Kirk “The Flailing Dutchman” Nieuwenhuis? Lucas Duda and Aeneas? Jordany the Spin Doctor? The man of stupid personal nicknames is here.

Comment From Guest
Why is nobody talking about Tulo?

Dan Szymborski: Tulo hasn’t gotten much attention, which is amazing. I know I spent half of the ESPN franchise draft chat last week bitching about Tulo not being drafted.

Comment From Max
Has the official Kyle Blanks’ breakout officially arrived?

Dan Szymborski: Kyle Blanks seems to alternate his breakouts with being injured and craptastic for a year and a half.

Comment From CJ
Any Mets worth of adding in deep leagues based on the shakeup yesterday?

Marc Hulet: Hi all,

I’m filling the Friday prospect chat hole this week with Mike Newman unavailable. Obviously the Major League draft is on the brain today with the first two rounds going last night and the remainder of the draft picking up again today at 1 pm eastern. I haven’t been following the draft coverage as much this year as in the past but we can talk about the draft in generalities, if you’d like. For more information about last night’s events, please check out Al’s 4.5 hour FanGraphs chat…

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/al-skorupa-fangraphs-draft-chat-6613/

If you have any prospect questions, please feel free to ask… For background on me, here is my offseason work that included the site’s Top 100 list and individual Top 15 prospect lists..

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/fangraphs-top-100-prospects-2/

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/fangraphs-top-15-prospects-lists-a-recap/

If you want to expand from talking about prospects, we can also chat about this year’s MLB rookie class… I recently wrote about my monthly recap of the Top 5 rookies in the Majors, over at Prospect Insider…

http://prospectinsider.com/view/rookie-watch:-miller-leads-charge/

I’m opening up the chat now. We’ll start at noon but you can post your questions beginning now.

Comment From Milhouse
Have you seen Carson Kelly live? Thoughts? I know he’s young.

Marc Hulet: We’ll officially get started…. I have not seen Kelly live but I’ve seen video and have also spoken to talent evaluators who are high on the young hitter. He’s struggling a bit but is still just 18 in the Midwest League… the org is very high on him.

Comment From Milhouse
Has your opinion of Daniel Robertson changed from the offseason? Is he a guy I should be trying to acquire even if it’s a slight overpay?

Marc Hulet: I’m surprised he’s been as steady at SS as he has been… a lot of people expected him to become a permanent 3B right away. I’m very happy with the early returns.

Comment From Hunter Pences Thorax
Astros GM Jeff Luhnow recently said George Springer is staying in the minors. Is this a money thing, or a Springer thing, or both?

Al Skorupa: Welcome to the chat! Please leave your questions and we’ll be starting around 6:30. In the meantime I’ve got some videos for you related to the latest rumors from my buddies Steve Fiorindo and Tyler Bullock.

E Tyler Bullock:

Steve Fiorindo:

Al Skorupa: I wanted to discuss some draft basics before we begin. First off, let’s remember that the baseball amateur draft is a different creature than the other pro sports drafts. We hear a lot about “best player available,” but this draft has never really been about that – it’s about the best mix of value and talent. Cost is a major part of the equation. This isn’t teams being cheap – this is about how to best use limited resources on some… less than stable investments. As a logical extension of that, prior to the new slotting could a team have gone crazy and spent four times what every other team spent and got great results? Yes… but at a very poor ROI. Projecting teenagers and young men physically and in terms of how their skills would develop is HARD. Just like the people around you in your life when you were young there are an infinite number of variable that will determine their success or failure in life. This is very, very far from an exact science and that’s why I have a tremendous amount of respect for amateur scouts and the near impossible job they’re given.

Al Skorupa: I also think a common misconception is that there is a real consensus out there on players. There really isn’t much of a consensus. Scouts differ all the time on players. It’s pretty wide open. Watching some of these guys on the Cape last year who will be taken early tonight and I’d come across cross checkers who would tell me a guy nearly everyone projects for the first round “can’t hit” and they wouldn’t take him. Teams look for different things. Individual scouts look for different things and the process is nowhere as exact as many people imagine.

Al Skorupa: That brings me to… myself. Who am I and why is it worth you reading my chat? Well, I write about prospects for Fangraphs and you can find my work other places – primarily bullpenbanter.com, a site I started with fellow FG prospects writer JD Sussman and a few other talented writers. I do a lot of amateur coverage over there and I’m glad to bring some of it over to FG since I enjoy watching amateurs (as opposed to minor leaguers – who I also enjoy watching!).

Eno Sarris: Will be here in 14!

Eno Sarris: Lyrics of the day are actually the frigging chorus. But yeah, it’s a bit obscure.

Sunny, sunny, sunny whether
Joely wasn’t altogether true
Still our cousin knew
I, I, I, I, no, I, I, I, me me me me
More I want to
Bren coughed boo hoo hoo

Eno Sarris: Also, if I leave or disappear abruptly, I’m sorry. David Walker from Firestone Walker is supposed to call me about the BeerGraphs meetup tomorrow, and, well, yeah.

Comment From Simon
Camped out for your chat trying to get in early bfore lineups lock. I feel like I’m waiting in line over night at K-Mart for tickets to see the Rolling Stones – yeah, I’m that old! Anyway…

Pick 2 of the following streamers with the best ERA/WHIP
Hughes a SEA (Harang),
M. Gonzalez @ HOU (Norris),
Pettitte , a SEA (Saunders),
Jackson v PIT (Burnett)
Phelps a SEA (F. Hernandez)

Eno Sarris: You are first. So you get an answer! It’s like getting tickets in the front row! or something. I like Pettite and Phelps. Hughes scares me a bit. Like he’s looking for something.

Comment From Swoon
Gorgeous Peter Bourjos, expectations for him ROS? Can you also please tell him to actually try and steal once and awhile, since he is so fast. He also has pretty eyes.

Dave Cameron: The queue is now open. We’ll definitely talk about the BioGenesis report, but I’ll be honest, I don’t have that much to say about it at this point. So hopefully you’ll ask about other things too.

Comment From Keith
So what do the Royals do from here? Trade Butler, Gordon and Shields and start over…again?

Dave Cameron: My guess is they’ll do very little in season and Dayton Moore will be fired during the off-season, leading to a new regime and maybe a new plan.

Comment From JEB
I think the big news here is that Chris Perez was picked up last night for recreational drugs!

Dave Cameron: Chris Perez just seems to do so many things wrong.

Comment From Greg
Should the White Sox be looking to trade Sale at the trade deadline to rebuild their system?

Paul Swydan: Hi everybody! Just another day around here at FanGraphs. I was busy pulling off the steal of the ESPN Franchise Player Draft:

http://insider.espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/9341222/jurickson-profar-steal-franchise-player-draft-mlb

http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/page/franchise130603/espn-franchise-player-draft

And Jeff was busy introducing a new and very helpful injury finder:

http://www.fangraphs.com/fantasy/mash-report-6413-introducing-hidden-hitter-injury-finder

And Chris? Well, Chris is still on vacation, so he’s useless. But Jeff and I are putting in enough work to cover for him. And we’re STILL ready to do more work for you, the people. Join us at 9 pm ET and we’ll cram some baseball down your cramholes!

Paul Swydan: By the way, we’re taking suggestions for Jeff’s injury tool. Early front runners are the reader-suggested acryonyms HURT Score (Hitter’s Under-performance from Recent Trauma), or PAIN (Player’s Abiding Injury Number).

Paul Swydan: Hi guys, let’s do this! Sorry if you couldn’t submit questions for awhile, I closed my computer like a dum-dum. But the phone lines are open now!

Comment From Doo bob
Subtracted Performance Runs After Injury Notice (SPRAIN)

Paul Swydan: That’s a good one. Jeff will be along in a sec, btw.

Comment From Roster Rooster
How about F-HIM (Forecaster of Hidden Injury Metric)

Jeff Sullivan: New excuse for this today!

Jeff Sullivan: I lost my contact lenses!

Jeff Sullivan: I found them though. And now we can begin our customary baseball live chat about baseball.

Comment From Steve
It’s past 12:03! Jeff must be dead!

Jeff Sullivan: I couldn’t see 🙁

Comment From Jimr
Is the 3rd base issue settled with the Braves?

Dan Szymborski: LION-O, IT’S TIME FOR DAN SHIMBORSHKEY’S WEEKLY CHAT SNARF SNARF!

Comment From Chris
I missed your scent. I missed your musk… When this all gets sorted out, I think you and me should get an apartment together!

Dan Szymborski: I haven’t showered yet today, so you probably don’t actually miss my musky scents.

Comment From Jonathan Broxtons Belt
Am I the most underrated player in the league?

Dan Szymborski: Heh.

Dan Szymborski: Perhaps whatever’s keeping C.C. Sabathia’s pants up