FanGraphs Weekly Mailbag: July 12, 2025
If you’ve ever sent in a mailbag question, you may have noticed that we sometimes wait a bit to answer it. We can’t get to all of your great questions each week, but many of them remain relevant and interesting enough that we can respond to them later on. Other questions require some reporting on our part, and it may take us longer than a week to check with various sources to gather the information necessary to address them.
I thought this was all worth mentioning, because three of the four questions featured in today’s mailbag were submitted more than an a week ago and a few deal with stats that have changed since the questions were submitted. We have updated the stats you’ll see in each question because those are the ones we are citing in our answers.
One last thing before we get to your questions: I’d like to remind all of you that while anyone can submit a question, this mailbag is exclusive to FanGraphs Members. If you aren’t yet a Member and would like to keep reading, you can sign up for a Membership here. It’s the best way to both experience the site and support our staff, and it comes with a bunch of other great benefits. Also, if you’d like to ask a question for an upcoming mailbag, send me an email at mailbag@fangraphs.com.
Matt is the associate editor of FanGraphs. Previously, he was the baseball editor at Sports Illustrated. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Men’s Health, Baseball Prospectus, and Lindy’s Sports Magazine. Follow him on Twitter @ByMattMartell and Blue Sky @mattmartell.bsky.social.
So the draft is tomorrow and we don’t have a rankings update or even the first go-around of the mock draft. What happened to draft week?
Draft week appears to have become “Draft Weekend.”
I am sure this will be a huge topic of conversation in those comment sections once they eventually come out, so I am weighing how much to say in this one. I love Eric’s work and know that stuff happens. And I don’t want him to leave, but the editorial team needs to sit down with him and rethink how he’s doing this.
I generally try to give Eric some grace with this stuff, particularly the pace of the team lists. But teasing the articles on the front page and then not releasing them during the week is a really bad look.
Eric and Dan’s work are the main reasons I subscribe. Both of them put out fantastic content. I hope Eric knows people like his content and this feedback isn’t an attack on him. Feedback is necessary though to improve one’s self and the product. I have to be receptive of constructive feedback I personally get and receive in the product I work on. I see it as a good thing though as a way to improve and be the best and hope Eric sees it the same way.
I don’t need all the draft board at once and would be happy with rolling increments of about 10 player updates. Fangraphs would get the most bang for their buck to keep customer satisfied getting say the top 10 players out. Next get to the full 1st round talents and you cover 98% of the content that will be ready. Anything past that is bonus for people like to go really deep.
I’ll also add on for the editorial team. There is no point in a mock draft 1.0 in theory today and then 2.0 tomorrow. Many people wouldn’t even consume 1.0 until tomorrow and would just bypass for 2.0 when it is there and they are reading about the draft in the few hours before the draft. Save Eric the time putting the 1.0 together and let him focus on the board or just relaxing even as I know he has to be grinding non stop this time of year.
I know I said I didn’t want to write too much about this here but since we have no idea when the other stuff is coming out, I suppose I’ll say it both here and elsewhere.
Based on what I know about him and what he does, I have come to the conclusion that Eric, like many people who write for a living, don’t want to submit something until they think it is “done.” That he has to make sure that everything is comprehensive, and that no stone is left unturned. I have heard comments about his legendary attention to detail, how he has to keep checking in with sources to make sure he gets everything, especially in the DSL and on the complex backfields, that he has to see every prospect on video (or in person). Some of them might not be 100% true but it’s clear what his approach is to this.
This sort of perfectionist streak can really cripple you in terms of finishing projects. He has to find a way to reframe it and redesign his workflow to get things out at the times people care about them. We don’t need information from winter ball or spring training or the complex backfields in the big, team reports. Those are the sorts of things that work better as gradual updates during the early part of the season (maybe training camp), and would mean that he could do bimonthly updates of the draft board.
If he has to go a year without updating every prospect so that he can get them out in Spring Training 2026, that’s more than reasonable. The Marlins list was released this week, things really shouldn’t change that much between now and January.
If ya’ll want to bitch about the draft coverage perhaps take it to the comment section of one of the articles that’s, you know, on the draft, rather than highjacking Martel’s column. Just an idea.
Well, when the problem is that most of those articles don’t exist, I don’t know exactly what to tell you.
You know as well as I do that two such articles exist.
That were both posted at least a day before the article I commented on? You’re welcome to complain about it all you like, but you aren’t the one setting commenting guidelines here bud.
Considering the draft is less than 7 hours away & the MLB Draft Update hasn’t gone up yet..which was supposed to be BEFORE MLB Mock Draft 1.0..which was supposed be BEFORE Mock Draft 2.0:The Day Of, I think bubbles & raregokus have a valid point.
At this point, unless Eric has had some health/family issue, it’s unacceptable & if I was member for the draft coverage, I would probably be canceling.
I love the work & detail Eric provides, but, this stuff is pretty time sensitive.
& if he HAS had a personal issue:
First of all, God Speed & hope it works out.
Second, someone should have posted about that, I.E., something unforeseen came up & Eric’s articles won’t be done because of it.
$60 a year is a pretty small amount of money to get so up in arms over. Even if I’m paying primarily for Eric, it’s not enough money for me to cancel. Just the board itself is worth that much.
FanGraphs’’ editorial staff can decide what is ultimately unacceptable and you can quit over whatever you like, but the agita about the draft articles? Come on.
Touch some grass. For real. The draft will happen with or without the articles. Your day isn’t ruined.
Ironically, I wasn’t even upset, I’m not a draft guy, but, if I WAS I would be. All I did was jump on yesterday & read the comments here & see they had 7 articles pegged for draft week & only 2 were up at 11:30 AM..
Anyway, I did enjoy my day (thanks for caring!) & did touch the grass, as I played 18 holes of golf after working outside for a couple hours & didn’t watch a second of the draft.
BTW, look at the comments in the MLB Draft Rankings Update post. Maybe you can correct all of those people & also tell them how they should act & what should be important to them.
At this point I’m unsure if we get a draft board update today either unfortunately. Even if unfinished, I don’t know why the list wouldn’t be published. Submit what is done and then update further after the draft.
It can be hard to imagine that there are better fielders (or hitters, or pitchers) if you mostly watch one team. Jacob Young is real good but the top 4 guys in OAA this year basically didn’t play much CF last year either because they couldn’t hit and were in the minors or were played out of position, so this changed super fast. As
For the dip in his defensive production, we will know by some point next year if 2024 or 2025 was the anomaly.
Yeah I think many team’s fans think their CF is the best defender in baseball just since the majority of what they see. The announcers don’t help either as team announcers all say their CF is the best.
For 2024, of the 22 players that played at least 750 innings in CF (about half the season), 20 – TWENTY!! – had positive OAA. Just like in Lake Wobegon, all centerfielders seem to be above average. This is why I think defensive outfield stats should be calculated separately for each outfield position.
On the topic of WAR across eras when making player comparisons, I try to consider what the broad opinion was at the time about what was important. I barely peek at batting average and RBIs when looking at today’s players, but even thirty years ago those numbers were really important. So if you were a player in 1935, or 1965, or 1985, you likely tooled your approach to batting average over on base percentage, and driving in the run (putting the ball in play) was more important than preventing an out (drawing a walk). I don’t think its unreasonable to assume players from those eras, if those environments valued walks more, many of their their slash lines would adjust accordingly.
Relief pitching in the 80s is interesting, given how the save became so important, and the media made stars of the specialists, then the single-inning flamethrower emerged. And now there is a more measured understanding of how the value is marginal compared to what was once believed.
Such considerations probably shouldn’t move the needle in any major way – I guess I think of it more as a way to remain humble, as opposed to harsh, when critiquing a player of years past for not being quite as good as their contemporaries thought. Or when critiquing postseason awards such as relievers winning the Cy Young, Dawson or Cabrera winning their MVPs, Gold Gloves going to players who had sizzle but not as much range, etc.