Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks, and welcome to today’s chat. While I wait fo the queue to fill, a bit of housekeeping…

Here’s my piece from today on Aaron Judge suddenly pulling the ball again https://blogs.fangraphs.com/aaron-judge-is-pulling-the-ball-again/

Jay Jaffe: Here’s yesterday’s piece on the opt-outs of Lorenzo Cain, Yoenis Céspedes et al https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/as-the-coronavirus-halts-teams-cain-ce…

Jay Jaffe: Here’s today’s FanGraphs must-read, Jon Tayler’s interview with epidemiologist Zachary Binney https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/epidemiologist-zachary-binney-on-whats…

Jay Jaffe: And here’s a lovely little tribute to the late Terry Cannon of the Baseball Reliquary and Shrine of the Eternals by John Schulian http://www.thestacksreader.com/terry-cannon-the-great-enthusiast

BB: Think we ever see Yo play again?

Jay Jaffe: Yes, I think so, particularly if the designated hitter is here to stay in the NL (and I think it is) but given his injury history, he’s unlikely to find a guaranteed multiyear deal.

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