Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks, and welcome to another edition of my Thursday chat. While I wait for the queue to fill, a couple of housekeeping notes. First off, either next week or the week after, I will be migrating my chat to another day, not because I don’t love you Thursday regulars (well, most of you) but because my daughter’s preschool schedule requires a bit of juggling responsibilities within our household. People always ask, “Won’t somebody think of the children?” and here, I have.

Jay Jaffe: So please do not be shocked if my next chat is on, like, a Monday or a Tuesday (the day is still TBD). Embrace the change.

Jay Jaffe: Second, my piece on Aaron Judge’s recent hot streak, and the great team home run race between the Twins and Yankees, is up here. I think I set a personal best for bells and whistles — GIFs, vids, tables, spray charts — added to a piece, and so you will have plenty of things to entertain you but most notably, a Judge sentencing baseballs to die.  https://blogs.fangraphs.com/aaron-judge-is-mercilessly-punishing-baseb…

stever20: what do you think is wrong with Jansen?

Jay Jaffe: Velocity. Via Pitch Info, here’s his progression for his cutter:
2016 94.2
2017 93.5
2018 92.7
2019 92.1

Jay Jaffe: That’s two full clicks gone, and with it some movement — about 2 inches of horizontal movement and an inch of vertical movement. Not great, Bob!

Meg Rowley: Good morning and welcome to the chat.

Meg Rowley: What a nice day for a chat — allow me a moment to fetch a seltzer.

Aaron: After watching the A’s last week, if they had this year’s team with last year’s bullpen performance, they might we a top-3 team in MLB. What on earth happens to bullpens when they plummet like this? Why does bad relief pitching seem to snowball so much?

Meg Rowley: For any one reliever, it isn’t a ton of innings, they have more limited repertoires than starters do, which makes it harder to adjust if things go badly, and if more than a couple are ineffective for a while, you get other dudes pitching more than might be advisable. It’s just a recipe for volatility.

Lucas: Has David Appelman ever done a chat about the business of Fangraphs? I would enjoy that, and I’m sure others would as well.

Meg Rowley: David’s not much for chats, but (and my delay has been in trying to find the episode) he did a guest spot on Effectively Wild that might be of interest

Dan Szymborski: G’Afternoon!

Dbo: Since you published your article “The Cubs Are Slowly Pulling Away”, the Cubs have gone 5-7. Why do you hate the cubs and why did you feel it necessary to jinx them?

Dan Szymborski: If only I had such powers.

Derek Falvey: How highly should I rate Mitch Garver’s breakout year?

Dan Szymborski: Pretty highly. He’s getting a power boost even for power boosts

CamdenWarehouse: I’m so sorry for your loss, Dan. Galileo seemed like the best of cats.

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, and welcome to another edition of my Thursday chat. Lunch (dumplings) is on the way, my piece on Bo Bichette is in the pipeline [now live], and here’s a GIF of Kermit the Frog and Vincent Price, for no reason at all.  

Ben: Do you think MLB and Rawlings will change the ball this offseason?

Jay Jaffe: I think they’d be foolish not to. For as exciting as home runs are, they’ve got a PR problem on their hands now, and the so-called steroid era taught us that MLB gets very squeamish when the sanctity of home run records is threatened. I doubt they’ll be transparent about it, but I think we’ll see some kind of attempt to return to more normal levels.

Pujols: Do you think I care about round numbers? close to losing my career .300 average. Do I retire before that happens?

Jay Jaffe: No. Maybe if the contract was up at the end of this year, but bypassing two more years and a total of $59 million to keep it .300? Nobody cares about batting average that much.

Trevor Collicott: How do you write for fan graphs?

Kiley McDaniel: Hello from ATL! Scout is in the backyard investigating squirrel-like movements in the trees

Kiley McDaniel: Eric and I still have about a half dozen pro prospects to move before things will slow down update-wise around Sept 1 in preparation for offseason lists

Kiley McDaniel: for the latest moves: https://twitter.com/fg_prospects

Kiley McDaniel: and for the updated farm rankings: https://www.fangraphs.com/prospects/the-board/2019-in-season-prospect-…

Kiley McDaniel: and the top 1254 prospects in the minors: https://www.fangraphs.com/prospects/the-board/2019-in-season-prospect-…

cuvamc: What’s your take on Riley Greene in CF? Saw him myself a few weeks ago, looked more athletic/competent than I originally thought he would be. I know he’s most likely a RF, but how likely is it that he could play an average CF in the big leagues?

Meg Rowley: Hi all, and welcome to the chat — allow me a few minutes to schedule a piece and then we’ll get started

Meg Rowley: Ok, I am back.

Meg Rowley: Thanks for your patience

Lunar verLander: Do you think baseball players (on average) have more fun at their jobs than non-baseball players (again, on average)? I know it’s their job & they get evaluated based on their performance just like non-baseball players, but they ARE doing something they’ve wanted to do since they were a kid, so that has to contribute to it somewhat, yeah?

Meg Rowley: I think probably, yes. I think all jobs have things that are not fun (I love my job very, very much and I have weeks where a beer on Friday evening is quite welcome) but the highs of getting to do a thing you’ve worked toward forever have to be pretty great. Now, I’m sure there is variation year to year. I don’t imagine anyone playing for the Orioles is having as much fun as anyone on the Astros. But it’s a pretty great job, even though it is a deeply weird job, and a hard one.

Ryan: I know they can’t really discuss their jobs, but do you get the feeling that Carson and Jeff are enjoying what they do?

Eric A Longenhagen: Good morning, all. I’m back from showcase stuff. The prospect mover piece will be up soon and that will answer a lot of questions currently in the queue.

Crackjacketityjack: Zion Bannister is apparently in the AZL now. Isn’t that quick for a J-2 guy who just signed?

Eric A Longenhagen: He is but with fewer teams doing instructional league (though I think TEX still is) this is an opportunity to get into games now, and Bannister isn’t physically weak such that I think he’s clearly overmatched.

jjjj: If you are the Rangers, what do you do with Nick Solak long term? Have him replace Odor? Try him at 1B? Put him at LF or DH with Willie Calhoun?

Eric A Longenhagen: try to make him a 4 at 2B

Azfan : Who should I be more excited for, Liover pegeuro or Geraldo Perdomo?

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.