Dan Szymborski: Greetings and hello!

Chris: Are you on the Kyle Lewis hype train yet?

Dan Szymborski: July.

Dan Szymborski: More seriously, he’s been a lot of fun so far, but the threshold for me greatly changing my view of a player in a positive direction is quite high when just the season before, they struggled against Double-A pitchers. At least relative to how prospects typically fare.

Peter Thomas: Dan. How should we evaluate catcher defense? And if a team has one of the few top catchers, and they should be considered MVP candidates for their defense, doesn’t that automatically downgrade the value of the pitchers on his staff?

Dan Szymborski: It’s tricky. We do try to assign framing credit to the pitcher and hitter. And there’s stuff like passed balls, errors, stolen bases, etc.

Craig Edwards: Let’s get things rolling.

Craig Edwards:

RMR: Any idea what park effects are like for the Buffalo stadium vs. Rogers?  Think I read the fences are closer which probably = more HR, but they’re also not playing on that horrendous turf which probably helps pitchers / defense right?

Tony Wolfe: Hi everybody! Love that we get to have Boog for the early game today.

asnbrv: Took a day off work, have beer and pizza and my favorite team is playing baseball, by 2020 standards its a 80grade day.

Guest: I think probably once a week about how Bud Selig has a hot dog and a Diet Coke for lunch every day

Dan Szymborski: Chats. A time for chats.

Dan Szymborski: THERE IS AN ACTUAL BASEBALL GAME

Dan Szymborski: I think. Today’s Thursday, right?

Guest: Or Mr. Belvedere

Guest: Dan! How about the baseball tonight theme on SoundCloud in honor of the return of the season?

Dan Szymborski: No, we can’t weird up the Real Chats too much.

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, and welcome to my almost-Opening Day chat. As I’ll be part of a group chat later this week (Dodgers-Giants, 10 ET on Thursday night), I’m going to work a bit short here.

Jay Jaffe: First a bit of housekeeping while the queue fills…  My latest piece on the Blue Jays’ quest to find a temporary new home, is here https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-blue-jays-are-in-search-of-a-temporary…

Jay Jaffe: A very cool thing that Dan wrote about the odds that somebody hits .400 in this short season is here https://blogs.fangraphs.com/toppling-ted-the-60-game-season-and-the-40…

Jay Jaffe: And a very cool thing that Sean and Dave did behind the scenes, showing the best 60-game stretches in a variety of categories since 1974, is here https://blogs.fangraphs.com/instagraphs/whats-the-best-that-could-happ…

Jay Jaffe: Via that last one, did you know George Brett had a 60-game stretch in 1980 when he hit .473/.522/.751 (the record for batting average in that span)? You do now. Some guy named Barry holds the records for the other two metrics.

Jay Jaffe: and now, onward…

Dan Szymborski: Hello friends! And enemies! (We don’t have any kind of wall that would distinguish between the two)

Guest: What is going on with Austin Meadows?  Any idea?

Dan Szymborski: Gentrification continues. The trendy bars have pushed away a lot of the old historic businesses.

Dan Szymborski: (Sorry, Austin Meadows always sounds like an obnoxious trendy city neighborhood)

Dan Szymborski: I haven’t heard much about what was going on with him.

Dan Szymborski: I wonder if he’d do what I’d do if I was an MLB player? I’d probably use this opportunity to get a vacation right up until opening day by being vaguel absent! Maybe cough a few times

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon folks and welcome to another edition of my Tuesday chat. Apologies in advance for what’s likely to be a shortened one this week, as I have to bolt to pick up my daughter at some point. 

I’ve been pretty buried in Positional Power Rankings lately. My first one, tackling the first basemen — much of which was written before the pandemic — went up Monday: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/2020-positional-power-rankings-first-base/ , and I’ll have right field up Friday.

Sonny: If the bouncy ball is here for the foreseeable future how does that impact the way we might view HR totals? Will 400-which is at the outer band of Josh Donaldson’s potential between now and 40y-be diminished like it was in pre-testing steroid era?

Jay Jaffe: Well, the steroid era already turned 500 homers into a milestone of questionable value; where attaining it once meant virtually automatic enshrinement, now a player has to have reached it almost without a hint of scandal. There have long been 400-homer players who didn’t come close to sniffing the Hall, even before PEDs were on the scene, such as Dave Kingman. As always, i advocate taking a more complete look at a player in terms of evaluating him for Hall fitness than just one number.

viceroy: How worried are you abot Ohtani’s inability to throw strikes at summer camp?

Jay Jaffe: Not particularly — it’s pretty common for TJ returnees to struggle with control and command initially. So long as he’s pain free, I think he’ll come around.

sympathy: poor Byron Buxton

Eric A Longenhagen: Good morning from Tempe, where I remain very isolated as our summer heat peaks. Hope everyone is doing okay (covid-adjusted).

Harry: If the virus remains a serious issue in FL/ARZ and fall league/instructs are cancelled how do you plan on adjusting The Board going into next season with so little new info?

Eric A Longenhagen: I’ll have to change how I source info. There will be stuff to glean from the offsite camps (though it’ll require filtering team’s info/thoughts on their own players, which is typically more favorable than comes from external sources) and guys who stayed at the spring facility all throughout this time may have changed in relevant ways even though they haven’t played in games. Kids in Latin America are also playing sandlot ball on their own accord and, it’ll be tough, but surely I can find people who’ve seen that and move some guys based on that intel.

Eric A Longenhagen: There’d almost certainly be less movement than a typical offseason, but that’s fine because it isn’t a typical offseason.

Zay: Is there any realistic way to add more revenue to MiLB?

Eric A Longenhagen: Via improved streaming. I think MiLB knows that and that’s why they cracked down on online video from affiliates last year, sent cease and desist letters to some publications.