Dan Szymborski: And I have returned from a lengthy vacation and a Thursday in which I was way behind on an article I had to finish up!

26 Pitchers: Logan Webb or Joe Ryan rest of season/career?

Dan Szymborski: I’m still a Webb slinger, but I’m quite bullish on Joe Ryan. And hey, ZiPS never disliked him and that splitter’s been kickass

B Snit’s Bongos: Should a manager ever put on a sacrifice bunt?

Dan Szymborski: Yeah, there are specific situations it’s useful

Dan Szymborski: for example, you don’t need a high probability of a sacrifice bunt becoming a hit to make it worthwhile

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks, and welcome to my first chat of the month — apologies, as I had to punt last week’s due to other responsibilities.

Jay Jaffe: I’m fresh off a double-whammy on the Cardinals, first a look at their slow start and puzzling set of decisions regarding Willson Contreras: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-nl-worst-cardinals-are-panicking/

Jay Jaffe: …and, live as of moments ago, a closer look at Nolan Arenado’s season-opening slump. https://blogs.fangraphs.com/nolan-arenados-slump-adds-to-cardinals-woe…

Jay Jaffe: Next up will be some words on Vida Blue

Jay Jaffe:

Yeah Well Hiura Towel: What are the chances Manfred & the other owners will get sick of the Athletics stadium search clown show and force Fisher to sell?

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks!

Jay Jaffe: Sorry for the brief delay. I was immersed in details about Bryan Reynolds’ extension, which I’ll be covering for FanGraphs tomorrow. Today I have a piece on Logan O’Hoppe’s season-threatening labrum injury https://blogs.fangraphs.com/logan-ohoppes-promising-rookie-season-may-…

Jay Jaffe: And yesterday I tapped into some Max Power https://blogs.fangraphs.com/muncy-is-back-to-showing-maximum-power/

Jay Jaffe: Anyway, on with the show

International Baseball: The Montreal Expos have one of the most iconic logos of all time  and there seems to be a renewed interest in baseball. Can Montreal or Mexico City be taken seriously as expansion teams? How does the calculus of not being an American team factor in?

Jay Jaffe: I think not being an American team complicates things exponentially. I know there’s a lot of sentiment when it comes to returning baseball to Montreal but it’s not at all clear that anyone can get a ballpark built there, and without that, you’ve got bupkis.

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.