Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon and welcome to another edition of my Tuesday chat. It looks like we’re in a dark place today as far as the 2020 season is concerned, but I’m hearing a bit more optimism this morning (and afternoon) than I did last night, mainly because Manfred and the owners have put themselves in an untenable position and something has to give.

STT Fan: what do you think is the % chance we see MLB this year?

Jay Jaffe: I still think it’s above 50%. There’s just too much money for it not to happen, but man, getting a season off the ground has been and will continue to be ugly

Robert: Is Manfred somehow worse than selig?

Jay Jaffe: Been thinking about this a lot, and in some ways, it’s like trying to choose your least favorite child from among two failsons.

That’s the easy answer. The reality is that one has to remember that the commissioner isn’t an independent operator or neutral party. He serves as the representative of the owners, and so implicit in his actions is that he has the backing of three-quarters of them needed to stay in power.

For all of the dark places that Bud Selig took baseball, he was very skilled at marshaling a consensus among his fellow owners, satisfying their very disparate needs among big- and small-market owners, labor hawks and doves, et cetera, which is why he was able to stay in power so long and effect so much change.

Manfred doesn’t seem to have that knack, at least to the same degree, but it may also be true that he’s working with a worse set of owners — ones that realize they can take their teams into the tank without worrying about whether they’ll make a profit, and so on.

Guest: Jay, first off great job on Long Gone Summer. Second, who do we suspect are the 6 owners that don’t want to have a season are? OAK, CHC, LAA, PIT for sure, right? Who are the other two?

David K: Will Fred Wilpon own the Mets a year from now?

Dan Szymborski: Yes

Dan Szymborski: Oh yeah, chat go start now.

Guest: the year is 2025. Who are the elite players

Dan Szymborski: LIkely the young elite players of today plus a few names that we don’t know yet

Dan Szymborski: Or, more accurately, we don’t know if they’ll be good or not

Eric A Longenhagen: Good evening, chat. It’s draft night number one. Hope everyone is ready to engage with a Major League Baseball thing, I’m quite excited.

Eric A Longenhagen: Here’s a list of the chainsaws I’m juggling tonight:
-chat
-sourcing picks and rumors from draft rooms and tweeting them
-updating the draft portion of the board with team/pick# in the “Trend” column
-Maybe sliding players onto their drafted team’s prospect list on the pro side of The Board

Eric A Longenhagen: You should assume, if I’m not engaging here for a little stretch, that I’m doing one of those other things

Eric A Longenhagen: Let’s do some questions before the Tigers go on the clock

Daniel: Dream scenario for Mariners at 6?

Eric A Longenhagen: Baltimore cutting a deal at 2 and someone they like more than Hancock falling to them.

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks, and welcome to another edition of my weekly chat! Apologies for not being able to fill this slot last week — the protests in Brooklyn left us without our usual dose of child care from my saintly mother-in-law, because travel from New Jersey was untenable.

Jay Jaffe: A bit of housekeeping: I’ve got a two-part deep dive into MLB amateur draft history, illustrating the best picks from later rounds by WAR. Many thanks to Ben Clemens for the database help that made such a series possible; I had some fun putting it together.  https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/beyond-round-5-the-best-later-round-dr… https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/beyond-round-5-the-best-later-round-dr…

Jay Jaffe: Regarding the draft: I’m really no expert, so I won’t have answers to most questions regarding who will go tomorrow — those questions are best left to Eric Longenhagen.

Anj: A lot of what I’ve seen has the Orioles taking Martin #2.  If say, the Tigers surprise and go Martin at #1, do you think the chances of the O’s going underslot increase or decrease?  So basically, would they be more or less likely to go underslot if it was Torkelson on the board at 2 rather than Martin?

Jay Jaffe: The entirety of what I know about this year’s draft is that Torkelson was my cousin’s neighbor in Petaluma, California and so therefore should be taken first, because my cousin was super-generous with passing me his 1966-75 baseball card collection when I was younger.

David: do You think the bad faith negotiations by ownership are going to impact the next round of cba negotiations in 2022?

Eric A Longenhagen: Morning. Abbreviated chat today, but I’ll try to move fast to get to a ton of questions.

Vern: After the draft and the Cubs and A’s lists, what do you see yourself doing for the next year without a minor league season? Any fun projects in the works that you normally wouldn’t have had the time for?

Eric A Longenhagen: Yeah, my hope is to make some structural changes to the board, do some research with all this TM data I’ve collected and publish those pieces, etc. Mostly tho I need a break after the draft.

Mike: Do you plan to update your draft board again prior to Wednesday?

Eric A Longenhagen: I’ll brush it up this weekend and Monday morning it’ll be final.

Evan: Hancock or Meyer?