Jay Jaffe: Good morning — or afternoon, depending upon your time zone — and welcome to the Winter Meetings edition of my lately-not-so-weekly chat. Post-Thanksgiving travel hell prevented last week’s installment, which strengthened my resolve to get this one in despite being 3000 or so miles away from home. I’m in the media room at the Hyatt and thus prone to distractions like greetings from folks around me but we’ll try to get this done.

Anyway, the big news here so far is last night’s Modern Baseball Era Committee result, which added the ridiculously overdue Marvin Miller and Ted Simmons to the Hall of Fame; you can see my writeup here: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/marvin-miller-and-ted-simmons-are-now-hall….

Jay Jaffe: And now, on with the show…

Vander: So… Whitaker… What the? Why?

Jay Jaffe: I know there was a lot of hype and hope for Whitaker this time around, and I’m sorry to see that he missed out. However, if you look at this year’s Modern Baseball ballot, every candidate besides Lou Whitaker and Dwight Evans had been considered multiple times by small (or not-so-small) committees, and the fact that both of those guys avoided the “less than X votes” cluster means that they’ll almost certainly get other shots. Miller and Simmons had each been considered at least three times before and both had missed by exactly one vote in the past. I’m not surprised the voters decided it was “their turn.”

Chris: Any chance we learn which voters didn’t vote for Miller or Simmons?

Jay Jaffe: Not unless they announce so themselves, which they are most definitely NOT supposed to do.

Kiley McDaniel: Hello from ATL! Scout and I are sitting on the bed while the kitchen floor gets sanded and refinished, which she is somehow sleeping through.

Kiley McDaniel: We’re in list season, so hit the new PROSPECTS dropdown at the top of the page to see the latest. Red Sox should be out tomorrow, Twins early next week while we’re all in San Diego for the Winter Meetings. We’ll be doing the WSH/HOU/STL/MIA spring training pod next.

Kiley McDaniel: Eric has written up:

The Profar trade: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/instagraphs/padres-add-profar/

40-man decision day: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/on-40-man-decision-day-and-the-prospects-w…

MIL/SDP trade that happened right before last week’s chat: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/analyzing-the-brewers-and-padres-swap-of-y…

Kiley McDaniel: I wrote up the Nestor Cortes/SEA swap right before last week’s chat as well: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/mariners-add-cortes-for-international-bonu…

Kiley McDaniel: and I think you guys will find some interesting sleepers and an overarching development in the BOS list tomorrow

Kiley McDaniel: to your questions:

Meg Rowley: Hi all, and welcome to the chat!

Meg Rowley: We’ll get going in a second here, but a few things to highlight from the site today:

Meg Rowley: First, Jay’s Jeter profile is live, and a good read, so read it! https://blogs.fangraphs.com/jaws-and-the-2020-hall-of-fame-ballot-dere…

Meg Rowley: Craig took a look at the Moustakas deal: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/reds-go-big-with-mike-moustakas/

Meg Rowley: and also at some themes that emerged from the non-tender deadline: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/five-lessons-from-the-wild-non-tender-dead…

Meg Rowley: Also, this reported piece from Justin Klugh on the Wichita Wind Surge and the controversy surrounding their name is well worth your time: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/a-change-in-the-wind-wichita-faces-blowbac…

Kiley McDaniel: Hello from a rainy ATL! Scout is napping in the other room and I’m scrambling to finish stuff before the holiday grocery shopping and prep. May share some finished products and more kitchen looks on my instagram @kileymcdaniel

Kiley McDaniel: Also, there’s a bunch of moves happening in the last hour. Gibson to TEX, Pomeranz at SDP, Urias-Grisham MIL-SDP deal, so I’m sure we’ll spend time on that.

Kiley McDaniel: Lastly, we were in NYC last week and had a live event that sold out and went really well! Eric and I joined Meg and Ben on stage for a prospects panel with a Q&A and it’s the last segment on this episode of EW: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/effectively-wild-episode-1460-live-from-ne…

Kiley McDaniel: While at that event, Eric and I revealed something we’ve been hinting at for the last few weeks: we wrote a book!

Kiley McDaniel: you can preorder it here: https://www.triumphbooks.com/future-value-products-9781629377674.php?p…
and use code FV20 to get 20% through the end of the year

Kiley McDaniel: there’s summaries there and on Amazon, but the idea is this is a follow-up on the happenings of Moneyball, about the tension between stats and scouting and where things are now in baseball. Also covers how to scout, how to get a job in baseball, how to train/get a scholarship as a player and many other things!

Jay Jaffe: Hey folks, welcome to my first solo chat in over two months! Between our postseason group chats, the Hall of Fame ballot releases timed to coincide with this time slot, and some lesser issues, I’ve been out of the loop with this process but for today, I’m back at it, just in time to avoid giving you any useful Thanksgiving tips.

Bring Back Jeff: In all seriousness, I do understand what you mean about batting average. This is fundamentally a game about entertaining us. We get to choose what we care about. And batting average is fun, even though it may not correlate all that strongly with the “value” of the player.

Jay Jaffe: Last week, a good chunk of our staff descended upon New York City and we did a FanGraphs live thing on Thursday. During my panel, which also included The Athletic’s Lindsey Adler and Marc Carig, I went into a tangent on batting average, saying, “Let’s give a shit about batting average again” or words to that effect (I haven’t played this back https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/effectively-wild-episode-1460-live-fro…), a sentiment that I’ve been mulling for months but haven’t had the chance to write up in full treatise form

Jay Jaffe: The statement, which i only briefly fleshed out, has to do with countering the aesthetic shortcomings of the current iteration of baseball before us, and I think Bring Back Jeff’s non-question kind of summarizes some of that. Anyway, I’ll have more to say about the topic at some point this winter, perhaps even in the next couple weeks, but I make no promises as to when because it’s Hall season and I’m up to my neck in both Modern Baseball and BBWAA processes.

Jay Jaffe: Anyway… on with the show, which will also be interrupted by a brief radio spot that you can hear via SiriusXM at about 12:35

Dave: After reading your piece it seems that Rolen didn’t end up having a good relationship with the Cards or Phils. If he’s elected does he go in without a logo?

Dan Szymborski: And away we go!

Peter Thomas: How’s that ZiPS 101 article coming?  I know it feels to you like self promotion, but there are sooooo many projection skeptics out there who could be converted if they better understood the process.

Dan Szymborski: Not even thinking about it until my two big year-end/winter projects (the elegies and the ZiPS are done).

Dan Szymborski: I had process writing.

Jeff: What’s $/WAR at these days and how can I help make it better for the owners?

Dan Szymborski: Depends who you ask. Based on ZiPS projections, I still get the best predictor of salaries players get in the mid 7s.

Kiley McDaniel: Hello from ATL! Scout is patrolling the backyard and Eric and I are readying ourselves for the NYC live event and the first batch of team prospect lists

Kiley McDaniel: Don’t know if he’s mentioned this yet, but we’ll be doing lists by spring training pod, since lots of pro coverage groups teams that way and it makes it easier to talk to each source once in the offseason instead of circling back a bunch of times

Kiley McDaniel: https://plus.fangraphs.com/product/fangraphs-live-new-york-city-2019/

Kiley McDaniel: and I just noticed it appears to be sold out already

Kiley McDaniel: so I’m just being a tease now

Kiley McDaniel: here’s the last thing i contributed to: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/2020-top-50-free-agents/