Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon and welcome to my “Ides of August” chat! Today is the third anniversary of my daughter’s due date; she put off her arrival for another 11 days while we tore our hair out, in marked contrast to the way her two writer-parents approach deadlines.

Anyhoo, my piece staring into the heart of darkness that is the 2019 Tigers just went live https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-tigers-might-be-historically-bad/

And in honor of getting to use the phrase “heart of darkness” into my work, I’m spinning the Peter Laughner box set this afternoon. Laughner was the original guitar player for Pere Ubu when they did their first two singles (“30 Seconds over Tokyo” b/w “Heart of Darkness” came first) and left behind an incredible legacy for somebody who died young at age 24.

Jay Jaffe: Anyway… on with the show.

Ay Ay Ron: Hi, Jay.  Who do you greatly helped their HOF case the most based on their 2019 performance?  Who do you think hurt it the most?

Jay Jaffe: This is quite likely my next article, so look for it either tomorrow or early next week at FG.

nibbish: In your recent article, you mentioned that the Twins could have upgraded at first by trading for Tyler White or Miguel Andújar. Could you elaborate about that? Neither of them (particularly White) seem to be upgrades, or at least not enough to actually *trade* for.

nibbish: I mean “Jesús Aguilar” my mistake, sorry.

Kiley McDaniel: Hello from ATL! Scout is outside chasing chipmunks and I’m inside chatting with you people

Kiley McDaniel: Eric just finished up Area Codes and the PG All American game so our summer looks are done and the draft rankings will get tons of names added/moved in the next couple days

Kiley McDaniel: The tops of the lists are done, just adding some names to the bottoms to fill them out some

Kiley McDaniel: We’re working on a big project that we’ll announce soon and the main other things that’s going on now is doing sweeps through systems and moving the obvious prospects around based on new reports, so that will continue to happen this summer

Kiley McDaniel: Aristedes Aquino was added today, Thad Ward to the Red Sox, Breidy Encarnacion for Miami, a little shuffling to the CIN list, a couple ARI moves, some new video, etc.

Jerry: Does Will Smith’s early production in the big leagues help vault him at all on THE BOARD?

Meg Rowley: Morning all, and welcome to the chat.

Meg Rowley: I have returned from Boston, and most of my summer head cold.

Meg Rowley: Pro-tip: don’t get sick and then have to fly to a conference across the country. It is not fun.

Reminder!!: Meg doesn’t answer fantasy baseball questions!

Meg Rowley: Promise.

Lunar verLander: Everyone should strive to find someone who loves them as much as Gleyber Torres hates the Orioles.

Dan Szymborski: Instead of getting into a random Twitter fight right at 11:58 AM and starting the chat late, I’m going to go against character and do the responsible thing and just start my chat at 11:58 AM!

ECDC: Would you give Scherzer the Verlander extension (2 years/$66 million) right now?

Dan Szymborski: Absotively, posilutely.

Bread Gardner: Gotta admit, not really digging this matte black/matte white motif for Players’ Weekend. I’d have loved to see more throwback jerseys… like, it would be legendary to have ’50s-era uniforms for the Yankees-at-Dodgers games, you know?

Dan Szymborski: I wouldn’t mind everyone getting to choose their own. It’s not football and it’s not really hard to tell who is on what team from context.

Bread Gardner: I would like to call attention to Suzyn Waldman’s recent nomination to the Radio Hall of Fame; unfortunately, she was not elected. She’s a genuine trailblazer and I hope she someday gets a well-deserved place in Cooperstown.

Jay Jaffe: Hello, sports fans! Welcome to another edition of my Thursday chat. In 24 hours, I’ll be arriving in Boston for this week’s Saberseminar along with several of my colleagues, and if you’re in the area tomorrow night, we’d like you to join us for some snacks, adult beverages, and baseball chatter https://blogs.fangraphs.com/instagraphs/fangraphs-saberseminar-boston-…

Jay Jaffe: Now, on with the show…

Chris: What would it take for you to advocate the MVP for someone who didn’t lead the league in war?

Jay Jaffe: I don’t think one has to go strictly by a WAR leaderboard to choose an MVP. First off, we have multiple versions of WAR that have different inputs, both with regards to pitching models and defensive metrics, and each of them can help illuminate different aspects of what we’re trying to reward.

Jay Jaffe: Second, we can certainly bring some other stats and context there. WPA and clutch metrics can be part of the discussion. Absences due to injury (that player may have missed some games but been better on a prorated basis as far as WAR is concerned, or he may have come up big while a key teammate was injured), changes in role, particularly strong performances against a division rival or down the stretch… The bottom line is that we don’t need to be slaves to the decimals. The WAR leader is still gonna be the WAR leader whether or not he gets the hardware.

Jim: Tony’s article got me thinking… how many homeruns would Cruz need to hit to even have a shot at the HOF? Or will the PED suspension be too much to overcome regarldess?

Meg Rowley: Hello, and welcome to a Wednesday Meg chat.

Meg Rowley: This one isn’t likely to go overly long, as I have a pretty gnarly head cold and have to head to the ballpark later.

Meg Rowley: But for now, a chat! Let’s get started.

Rich K: Hi Meg.  Hope you feel better soon.  Are you chatting on Wednesdays now?  I thought you were on Tuesdays. . . .

Meg Rowley: I normally am — Dan had a conflict on Monday, which pushed him to Tuesday, which pushed me to today. I don’t know how, but eventually this ends with someone at FanGraphs being next in the constitutional line of succession. Should be back to normal next week.

Nahtan: If the season ended today, would you vote for Yelich or Belli as NL MVP (and why)?

Kiley McDaniel: Hello from ATL! Scout is eating her lunch and I’m still experimenting with grilled/smoked meats and various formulations of frose

Kiley McDaniel: I was at the East Coast Pro showcase this past week, so I’m updating the draft rankings this week, along with some pro adjustments while Eric is at Area Codes and the PG All-American game this week

Kiley McDaniel: There was some important content on the FG prospects social channels today

Kiley McDaniel: All of our rankings and stats and content and whatnot can be conveniently found here: https://www.fangraphs.com/prospects

Kiley McDaniel: to your questions:

Yay: Levi Kelly ranked top 10 for D Backs on other sites. Not on board for you guys. Isn’t he at least a 35+ at this point even if he’s just a reliever?

Dan Szymborski: IT IS CHAT TIME

Appa Yip Yip: Is Marcus Stroman the Mets best infielder now?

Dan Szymborski: It’s possible, lol!

Zipp: LFGM

Dan Szymborski: My favorite thing about the Mets is that they essentially had a terrific deadline (picking up Stroman and NOT trading Thor or Wheeler) because they failed their second part of that plan.

Philip: 2 questions: Is the zips stats only prospect ranking going to happen? And with the 3 year Zips projections is there a plan to have auto daily updates based on new statistical changing info?