Jeff Sullivan FanGraphs Chat — 7/8/16

July 8, 2016

9:05	Jeff Sullivan: Hello friends

9:05	Bork: Hello, friend!

9:05	Jeff Sullivan: Hello friend

9:06	Jeff Sullivan: Welcome to a baseball chat that feels kind of weird to conduct

9:06	Jeff Sullivan: But we will conduct it nevertheless!

9:06	Jeff Sullivan: For it is required of me!

9:06	Brett: Ok, Rich Hill was great last night. Do the A’s get a top 75 prospect for him?

9:07	Jeff Sullivan: Top 50, I should think. Now, there’s a lot of variation within said top 50, so, you know. But Hill comes with tremendous upside and with every passing start he’s reducing the perception of his risk. He’s pretty clearly for real; the only question is how long he can last

9:08	Minty: Now Bregman is back to playing SS. When do you think the SS/3B situation gets solved?

9:09	Jeff Sullivan: Well the easy answer is, in the majors, where Correa is entrenched

9:09	Jeff Sullivan: But I wouldn’t be surprised if this were just about Fresno already having Matt Duffy at third. The Astros want Bregman staying versatile anyway, so it’s not a bad thing

9:10	Jeff Sullivan: Easier for Bregman to occupy the spot of Nolan Fontana and Danny Worth, instead of Matt Duffy and Colin Moran

9:11	Kevin: I was going to pester you to write about Aledmys Diaz but you beat me to it. Good on you.

9:12	Jeff Sullivan: I know I just wrote about him at length but this has been an almost miraculous season. Aledmys Diaz, 143 wRC+? What on earth happened last July? This is one of those things we have trouble understanding due to limited media fluency in Spanish

9:14	Jeff Sullivan: Granted, Diaz has pretty good command of English so maybe that’s the wrong point to make. But in any case, bizarre and incredible and sudden turnaround

9:15	Nathan: Is Matt Holliday just slumping or is this his big decline?

9:16

Jeff Sullivan: I know this is probably hard to believe but over the past month or month and a half, Holliday is damn near the big-league leader in average exit velocity. He continues to hit the crap out of the ball. He just hasn’t hit the ball to the right place. I think he’s okay and still obnoxiously consistent

9:16	Bork: Who should the Jays target? Starting pitching or relievers?

9:17	Jeff Sullivan: Some of this depends on how well they think Sanchez will hold up, but they should definitely be in the market for a reliever or two. I don’t think they need to bother with an ace — if they want a starter, they could settle for a filler type

9:17	Mike T.: Jeff, if we put all seriousness aside for now, how many Josh Donaldson Upper Deck rookie cards, plus Ryan Goins, would it take for the Jays to get Sonny Gray?

9:17	Jeff Sullivan: More than there are in circulation

9:17	Jeff Sullivan: So they’d have to start printing their own counterfeits

9:17	Jeff Sullivan: Thereby depressing the market…

9:18

PSM2f: Cubs have been struggling in all three phases the past few weeks. With hitting and defense, the talent says they should rebound. I think the real concern come October is the Bullpen and SP beyond Lester and Arietta. Do they move to bolster their Pitching staff? Is ATL a possible match? What do you think CHI would be willing to trade for a package of Teheran, Vizcaino ect..?

9:18	Jeff Sullivan: Funny thing about Vizcaino is he’s presenting tanking his own trade value. More walks than strikeouts over the past month+. Doubt the Cubs would be real interested

9:19

Jeff Sullivan: By and large, the Cubs are okay — they’re still the most complete team in either league. And the best team, too. But they’ll still be vigilant. I’d expect them to add a pretty good reliever, at least. And they’ll monitor the starting-pitcher market, even though I remain unconvinced they need the help

9:19	Jeff Sullivan: Lots of teams will check the starter market. As we all know, few quality starters will actually be out there

9:20	Owen: Rich Hill, Josh Reddick, and Sean Doolittle to the Red Sox would need a package headlined by ______________? At that cost, would the Sox do it?

9:21	Jeff Sullivan: Well Doolittle is on the DL with shoulder discomfort, so that kind of works a kink into the plans

9:23	Jeff Sullivan: Let’s say it would begin with Kopech, but it wouldn’t come close to stopping there

9:23	Jeff Sullivan: Maybe — maybe — Devers

9:23	Deeds: Thoughts on Tulowitzki’s recent surge? Any faith he keeps this going?

9:24

Jeff Sullivan: Plenty of faith, based on the track record. Lately he’s cut his strikeouts in half from where they were earlier. I’d like to be given a good explanation for what happened last year, because we can’t just ignore it, but Tulowitzki has been so good over his career he deserves the benefit of the doubt

9:24	Jeff Sullivan: He remains a really good offensive shortstop. His defense is still there. The Jays are starting to see the best of him, finally

9:25	Blurp: Is it just me, or does the cost for getting two years of Andrew Miller at the going market rate seem too high?

9:26	Jeff Sullivan: It’s unfair how good Miller is. Over the past three years, he’s allowed a .470 OPS. No signs of slowing down. He is just a reliever, but after what the Royals have done, the market will put a premium price tag on this kind of shutdown closer

9:27	James: Let’s say Rizzo offers Joe Ross and Trea Turner for Wil Myers. Does Preller take them back? Should he?

9:27	Jeff Sullivan: Yeah, you take that

9:28	Nick: Hi Jeff. Did you see that Cistuilli again included ol’ Max Schrock on his Fringe Five article today? He’s coming hard after your inflation-adjusted hundo-stack.

9:28	Jeff Sullivan: He can pry it from my cold dead hands

9:29	Scott: Which NL Central team, not named the Cubs, next wins a World Series?

9:29	Jeff Sullivan: Cardinals, I guess, after they turn a couple 40th-round draft picks into MVPs

9:29	Guest: should the yankees just keep chapman and make a QO?

9:30	Jeff Sullivan: Probably not in this market. Especially if they elect to hang on to Miller. Chapman would be the best around

9:30	Greg: What does a Teheran to Boston trade look like?

9:30	Jeff Sullivan: Devers+, but only if the Braves decide they do want to trade Teheran, which they confusingly might not

9:30	PL: Rich Hill hype train at full bore

9:30	Jeff Sullivan: Legitimate and honest sentence written in 2016

9:31	greg: No question, just wanted to let you know I really enjoy your signoff at the end of these each week. Signifies to me that the weekend is upon us.

9:31	Jeff Sullivan: I can’t tell you how much I love having the Friday chat. I love you, Friday chat!

9:31	Hmm: Let’s get the Bregman questions out of the way. Home run #5 last night…in only 8 games. How long before he’s up?

9:32

Jeff Sullivan: Not too long, but what complicates things is that Luis Valbuena is hitting the shit out of the ball. I mean, at the end of the day, he’s still Luis Valbuena, but you’re not sitting Correa and you’re not sitting Altuve. Perhaps it’ll come down to A.J. Reed not seizing his current opportunity

9:33	mtsw: Two previously non-selling teams appear to have knocked themselves out of contention in the last couple weeks in the Rockies and Diamondbacks. Do they have any pieces that it would make sense for them to move right now?

9:34	Jeff Sullivan: Greinke would be the fascinating one, the landscape-altering one, but that would probably be too bold and too complicated to pull off in July

9:35	Jeff Sullivan: The Rockies could and should pitch Carlos Gonzalez as this year’s Yoenis Cespedes. The Diamondbacks should sell off a chunk of the bullpen. It’s unfortunate for the Rockies that Jake McGee isn’t as sellable as he should’ve been

9:38	Josh: What is your take on Boras blasting Stearns for sending down Davies? The move was purely strategic, but the lost salary isn’t nothing.

9:40

Jeff Sullivan: Boras, of course, represents Davies, so that explains that. It’s not like the Brewers are saving money — the money they would’ve paid Davies, they’ll now just pay Andy Wilkins. And Boras doesn’t represent Andy Wilkins! But I do kind of get where he’s coming from — Davies *has* been good, and let’s face it, the Brewers aren’t really playing for anything. Wilkins isn’t a prospect. They’re 10 games under .500. How important is that extra bench bat, really?

9:41

Jeff Sullivan: If the Brewers knew this was going to happen, perhaps they would’ve reconsidered. But also, I’d say this is more of a minor annoyance than a long-term complication. Boras has turned it into a headline but the story will blow over if it hasn’t already. Davies will be back, and he’s going to make some millions of dollars. He won’t lose too much sleep over a lost $20,000 or whatever it is

9:42	Jeff Sullivan: Remember when the Angels renewed Mike Trout’s contract for just barely over the league minimum? That didn’t stop Trout from agreeing to a sweet long-term deal with the organization shortly thereafter

9:43	Ronnie: Is consistently taking advantage of mistake pitches the number one factor which drives most batters’ ultimate success or failure?

9:44

Jeff Sullivan: I don’t know if it’s number one, but yeah, it’s way up there. When the pitcher executes how he wants to execute, then most of the time, even the best hitters are shit out of luck. A quality breaking ball or something just below the zone is going to get cut on and missed, or weakly hit. So a lot really does come down to being prepared to take advantage of location lapses

9:44	Jeff Sullivan: Pitchers miss, most of the time. If they didn’t, there wouldn’t be any runs. Sometimes you hear a guy described as a mistake hitter. Almost all of them are mistake hitters

9:45	Guest: After you die, would you rather be completely forgotten or hatefully remembered?

9:45	Jeff Sullivan: I can’t imagine caring, on account of I’m dead and it’s not my problem

9:45	Jeff Sullivan: But the latter presumably comes with a life of being hatefully considered, so, I’d like to not have that. Who wants to be hated?

9:45	Jeff Sullivan: For that matter, who hates?

9:46	Jeff Sullivan: How does somebody hate?

9:46	Jeff Sullivan: It’s such a foreign concept to me.

9:47

BJOGC: Jeff, how absurd is it that the NFL has teams that are perpetually awful? They have so many checks and balances. They have a salary cap, a draft system that rewards bad teams with players that can literally turn a franchise around overnight, basically no international signings of any consequence, it’s insanely easy to keep your own players and not lose them to FA, plus they don’t really have to scout high school because the college system is so competitive that all the really bad players are weeded out already. How can teams like the Lions or Jaguars continue to be bad?

9:48

Jeff Sullivan: I know next to nothing about football but my assumption is that there continue to be a few organizations run by absolute idiots. It’s not a sport that calls out for progressiveness or open-mindedness. It’s like a whole sport of the absolute worst of regressive baseball coaching. Not every team would be like that, but some would be, and then if you fail to, say, identify and develop a quarterback, welp, good luck winning six games

9:49	Jeff Sullivan: Stubbornness leads to failure. But in football, stubbornness might be considered a virtue. Oh no!

9:49	Seattilite: Will the M’s make the playoffs before 2020? Or are they going to set a new franchise record for playoff drought? Of course the first drought started with an expansion team and this one started with a 116 win team.

9:50	Jeff Sullivan: Think of it this way: if the Mariners fall short in 2016, that’ll be 15 consecutive seasons without making the playoffs

9:50	Jeff Sullivan: The Pirates went 20

9:50	Jeff Sullivan: The Royals went 28

9:51	Jeff Sullivan: The Blue Jays went 21

9:51	Jeff Sullivan: It can be so much worse.

9:53	Hmm: Josh Bell got the call, what cam we realistically expect from him? Hit tool looks solid but will the power be there?

9:54	Jeff Sullivan: Looks to me like he’s hit for better power than ever this season. A lot of that could be wrapped up in improvements in his right-handed swing. Even last year, he was pretty dominant from the left side

9:55	Jeff Sullivan: Even if he’s underpowered, hey, it’s John Jaso! But with more upside than John Jaso.

9:57	Paul: Enjoyed yours and Dave’s articles on the Blue Jays this week Jeff, Thank you. What would a Donaldson extension look like and should the Jays lock him down now especially considering the possible departures of Bautista and Encarnacion.