Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks! Welcome to another edition of my weekly chat.

Jay Jaffe: I just went live an hour ago with my deep dive into the news that a Salt Lake City-based group has thrown its hat in the ring to bring an expansion franchise to the city where I grew up — a possibility I was immediately dismissive of last week.  https://blogs.fangraphs.com/salt-lake-citys-bid-for-a-major-league-exp…

Jay Jaffe: (I’ve reconsidered)

Jay Jaffe: Yesterday I had a quick look at the impact of Corey Seager’s latest injury https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-loss-of-corey-seager-threatens-the-ran…

Anthony: What the heck is going on with Alek Manoah? He’s been brutal so far after being great last year.

Jay Jaffe: Good question. I haven’t seen much of him but I notice that his velocity is down a bit, and he’s getting hit very hard (7.43 xERA, woof). A quick look at his Stuff+ data shows that the scores for both his fastball and slider have particularly receded, (103 to 98 on the former, 111 to 101 for the latter,), with his overall Stuff+ and Pitching+ (including location) falling from 100 to 94. Velocity, shape, movement, I’m not sure what’s up but I’d guess he’s got some mechanical issues  to iron out.

https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=pit&lg=all&qual=0…

Dan Szymborski: It’s a chat!

Alex: Why is Neapolitan ice cream considered vintage now? Am I just old?

Dan Szymborski: It IS kinda old school now

Appa Yip Yip: Obviously it’s April and he only has 50 PAs, but Daulton Varsho has a 14% walk rate in this here young season. Did he level up?

Dan Szymborski: Probably not to *this* level since he’s still getting off to a lot of 0-1 counts, but his plate discipline stats have ticked up so far

YorDaddy: Is Dubon’s improvement at the plate real? They say he cut his fly ball rate after some advice from Yordan.

Jay Jaffe: Hey folks, welcome to my weekly chat. We had a bit of a glitch on our end in publishing this so I’m going to give it a few minutes for the queue to fill. In the meantime, here’s my piece on Adam Duvall’s wrist injury, which has interrupted one of the majors’ hottest starts https://blogs.fangraphs.com/red-sox-lose-red-hot-adam-duvall-to-a-brok…

Jay Jaffe: And here’s yesterday’s piece on the Rays’ hot start (now 10-0) https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-rays-are-steamrolling-opponents-at-a-r…

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

Jay Jaffe: A turkey reuben and potato salad from Mile End Deli. Yes, i’d love to have their corned beef reuben or the smoked meat sandwich, but I gotta keep the red meat under control and this is still a 95th percentile sandwich

Theo Epstein Truther: Seeing that the Cardinals might be the worst team in baseball this year makes my heart so happy. Is their offense as bad as their rotation?

Jay Jaffe: I don’t think anybody believes the Cardinals will be the worst team in baseball this year; even in the NL four teams have worse run differentials than their -9. That said, Marmol’s handling of the Tyler O’Neill baserunning thing was a red flag that made me wonder if he needed a sour hardass show of authoritah because he’s losing the clubhouse. That was totally horseshit. We’ll see if it fits a pattern.

Dan Szymborski: And here we are, for a slightly time shifted chat!

Guest: Joey Wiemer = Adolis Garcia 2.0?

Dan Szymborski: Not sure that really fits. Garcia was older but with a better track record

Dan Szymborski: Wiemer’s .800ish total OPS in AAA last year is actually quite underwhelming for the offensive environment he played in

Dan Szymborski: So I wouldn’t get excited about a handful of games

Dan Szymborski: Or are you just trying to get me to answer April!

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks, and welcome to my first solo chat of the 2023 regular season — last week’s chat was scrubbed due to my participation in the Opening Day chat.

Jay Jaffe: Anyway, I’ve got a piece up today on the rough start to Madison Bumgarner’s 2023 season. It’s grimmer than a @nihilist_arby’s tweet https://blogs.fangraphs.com/madison-bumgarners-2023-is-off-to-a-rough-…

Jay Jaffe: Yesterday I looked at Anthony Rendon’s return and the foolishness on his part that led to a four-game suspension https://blogs.fangraphs.com/anthony-rendons-return-to-action-may-be-in…

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

Jay Jaffe: Smoked brisket from a friend, and some leftover roasted cauliflower. Good stuff!

JT: Is Berrios Spanish for “sad futility”? Asking for a country.

Dan Szymborski: BASEBALL BASEBALL BASEBALL BASEBALL

Jay Jaffe: Hi everybody and a very pleasant good afternoon (or morning) to you wherever you may be. Happy 2023 baseball season and welcome to our Opening Day chat!

Ross: Describe a realistic scenario where the Mariners win the west?

Jay Jaffe: Honestly, I don’t think it would take all that much — a couple of key rotation injuries to Houston and a few guys having bigger-than-expected seasons for Seattle while the Angels and Rangers don’t quite get there.

Davy Andrews: Happy baseball to all.

Dan Szymborski: The Mariners win a number of games in 2023 that is a larger number than the number of games that the Houston Astros and Los Angeles Angels win!

Jay Jaffe: Good evening, folks, and welcome to our WBC Finals chat!

Guest: Why isn’t Japan starting one of Darvish/Ohtani? They seem clearly better than Imanaga.

Jay Jaffe: Ohtani started five days ago so guess they didn’t want to mess with his every sixth-day routine, but he could pitch an inning in relief. Darvish… not sure, as the complaint has been that he hasn’t been getting enough buildup here, but I’d expect he’s good for 2-3 innings tonight

Kyle Kishimoto: i theorized last night he could get an early hook for darvish to burn some USA bench bats (ex anderson starting over mcneil today)

Ann Xing: Who are the potential relievers for the US team?

Kyle Kishimoto: maybe they don’t want to use bard in high leverage, but the combo of williams/adam/bednar/pressly/ottavino will be great, with loup there too hopefully to deal with the 5 lefties stacked atop japan’s lineup.