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?

Dan Szymborski: And welcome to the chat!

Who’s Fabio?: Dan, is it more accurate to say MLB owners are going to lose 4B or MLB owners are going to earn 4B less?

Dan Szymborski: That’s like asking if it’s more accurate to say that I’m the King of Siam or I’m sexier than George Clooney.

Dan Szymborski: Or whoever people are into these days.

BeefLoaf108: Which team does a potential 50 game regular season help the most?

Dan Szymborski: On a general level, the mediocre teams that needed help to make serious playoff runs.

Eric A Longenhagen: Good morning from scorching hot tempe, where it’ll be 107 today. Boiling everywhere, it seems.

Eric A Longenhagen: I assume most of the chat is aware of this week’s mock, but if you’re not might wanna familiarize yourself with it quickly since I expect it’ll be a focal point of our discussion today.

Eric A Longenhagen: Let’s begin

Jefferson: Whats the story on Nick Gonzales defensive skills? So many reports completely skip over that. Is it not a concern? Is he definitely going to stay in the middle of the infield?

Eric A Longenhagen: I think he stays on the middle infield but that there’s a chance he’s not a good one. He’ll make some spectacular plays, boot some easy ones and we didn’t get a full spring to stamp the position. It’s another reason the Kesotn Hiura comps fit from a profile perspective. You’re drafting him for the bat, it’s a bonus if he sticks.

RS: Pretty much every mock has the Giants either taking or linking Tyler Soderstrom, is that the buzz you’re hearing?

Dan Szymborski: And so starts the show!

Daryl: Who do you have the Reds taking with their first pick?

Dan Szymborski: Eric’s the mock draft guy!

Dan Szymborski: It’s hard to say depending on who goes there, but I expect the team to take a pitcher

Dan Szymborski: Or at least prioritize a pitcher

Dan Szymborski: Maybe if someone like Bailey drops to them?