Meg Rowley FanGraphs Chat – 2/3/2021

Meg Rowley: Hi everyone and welcome to the chat!

Guest: Thoughts on why teams wait so long to sign players in the off season?  It seems that there would be an advantage to get players in your system to become comfortable with coaches, analytics, and teammates earlier.  Also allows you to plan better for any early spring training injuries.

Meg Rowley: I think there are a couple of things going on, some of which are specific to our pandemic times and some of which are reflect broader economic trends in the sport. Generally, teams are better able to wait out free agents than free agents are to wait out teams – clubs hope that the delay will exert downward pressure on contract demands because the closer to opening day a player is without a contract, the more likely he is to sign any deal, just to secure a spot.

Meg Rowley: I think that phenom also tends to affect those teams that do want to get guys rostered earlier because the player might want to develop a better sense of his market before signing.

Meg Rowley: More specifically this year, I think the uncertainty about how long of a season we’re going to have in 2021 and whether the NL will have the DH introduced a dynamic that also contributed to the delay.

Meg Rowley: Plus, there’s a CBA negotiation coming up, which probably has at least some effect on new deals as teams are conscious that they might have a different labor and salary landscape in 2022.

Cardinals: How in the world did we not find a trade partner for Kolten Wong given the his announced contract?

Meg Rowley: On the one hand, this is a very good question! On the other hand, maybe the universe was storing up all its mystical forces to smooth the way for your Nolan Arenado deal? Makes you think.

Inaccessible Rail: Is there a place on Roster Resources that ranks all teams by payroll? I see that I can see each team individually, but I don’t see anywhere where I can see a ranking of the total sums. Am I just missing it?

Meg Rowley: Yes!

Meg Rowley: https://www.fangraphs.com/roster-resource/breakdowns/payroll

Meg Rowley: We plan to make some changes to how this is presented, and what we display here, but for now, hope it helps.

Rob: I really didn’t think the Wilpons could look worse after selling the team, but, boy. Also, how gross is Callaway pleading total innocence??

Meg Rowley: Pretty gross! We’ve all seen the screenshots!

Jeff: Are fans calling for a delay until seating is available being as greedy and selfish as many imagine the players to be?

Meg Rowley: I don’t think that’s how I’d characterize it – I’m not sure I grant the premise that many people think that of the players for wanting to play a full season, though I’m sure there are folks who do. I think the desire for safe, in-person baseball is understandable, and while my fate and the fate of the site is uncomfortably tied to there being something resembling a full season, wishing that baseball would take a pause until we’re sufficiently vaccinated doesn’t strike me as selfish.

Todd: I know the Mariners say they are still in the final year of a rebuild, but are you surprised they haven’t done more via FA or trade market? Seems like Wong would have been a good fit, and they’re close enough to contention to where standing pat seems odd, especially for DiPoto.

Meg Rowley: It seems to be a fairly clear ownership directive. Not one I agree with, and it doesn’t account for the relative dearth of trade activity, but I think they’re reticent to spend a year early given the uncertainty surrounding fans in the stands.

Jose: You seem to get on broadcasters like Smoltz for being too negative about today’s game, yet the EW podcast has turned into a pure hose of negativity from everything ranging about gameplay to off-field matters. It’s not fun to listen to anymore.

Meg Rowley: I don’t think the characterization of it as purely negative is accurate. And to be clear, my issue with Smoltz is his failure to meet the modern game where it is and see the aspects of it that are fun and engaging and compelling. I think there’s a difference between using a playoff broadcast, when you’re likely to have a significant audience and a larger look-in audience than a regular season game, saying everything about it is worse than when you played, and being a podcast that covers baseball three times a week and thus has to talk about the realities of say, trading away Francisco Lindor or the way ownership views payroll.

Meg Rowley: I would love to have more of our episodes focused on whimsy and silliness, and look forward to the baseball news of the day allowing for more of that.

K. Hiura: Does the Wong signing mean I’m moving to 1B??

Meg Rowley: I haven’t seen a team source say that, but it seems like the most logical move given their other pieces.

Myfanwy N.: Hi Meg! With Kolten Wong signing in Milwaukee, who would you have playing 2B in St. Louis this year? Carpenter? Edman? God forbid the Cards spend money on a free agent??

Meg Rowley: Edman I’d expect.

Meg Rowley: Also, why spend when you can get Colorado to give you Nolan Arenado for literally no bucks in 2021? I mean by all means still spend, but goodness.

Meg Rowley: I will never get over this trade, it will haunt me forever like a weary detective nearing retirement who wishes she could close out that last case.

Joe: What is Eric’s timeline to finish the team lists?

Meg Rowley: Opening Day, really truly. I know that doesn’t vibe well for some fantasy players, but never fear, we’ll have cool, great fantasy stuff courtesy of Paul Sporer for Prospect Week, which kicks off on the 15th.

Benny: Hello Meg.  Which of next year’s fab 5 shortstops (Lindor, Seagar, Correa, Baez, Story) signs an extension before free agency?

Meg Rowley: Lindor seems extremely likely, given what the Mets have indicated and their payroll resources. Báez and Story strike me as fairly unlikely, given what I imagine the Cubs’ offer would be after what they’ve publicly claimed about their finances, and the recent Nolan Arenado of it all in Colorado.

Joel: Meg – This Mariners season will (realistically) be a success if:

Meg Rowley: The prospects they call up perform well and they see meaningful developmental strides from the guys still in the minors.

Sad Rockies Fan: It’s pretty clear the prospect return for Arenado was pretty subpar, and Rockies management is horribly inept. If some of these prospects become similarly disgruntled with their new team, and decide to express this displeasure with the Rockies’ owner in a physical manner, would you say they are slapdick slap-Dick prospects?

Meg Rowley: Good god.

Guest: Does the Twins signing of Cruz indicate the universal DH is DOA for the 2021 season?

Meg Rowley: I think the recent back and forth between the PA and the league is a more reliable signal there, but it doesn’t make an NL DH more likely. That said, Cruz returning to Minnesota always struck me as the most likely outcome, and while he’s an ageless wonder and still very productive, he does still have an age, which was always going to put a ceiling on the dollars and years.

appa yip yip: Also, what are the Rockies doing? Just in general. What in the world is happening there.

Meg Rowley: When you find out, will you please let them and me know?

Guest: Can I get advice for my fantasy league? I am in a 30 team dynasty startup. It’s 5X5 categories, H2H, and it’s an OBP league. My question: we are towards the end of the 6th round. I don’t have a

Danny Almonte’s fastball: Out of these 2 things that we can’t really quantify, which do you think has a larger impact on performance in the game of baseball, weather or sleep patterns? What do you think has the biggest impact that we can’t quantify?

Meg Rowley: whoops, hit add too quickly

Meg Rowley: for the first thing, I’d ask again that you ask our fantasy writers, since they are very good at fantasy baseball and I am decidedly not

Meg Rowley: For the second thing, for any individual game, I’d say weather, but over the course of a season, I’d say sleep assuming it is a more persistent issue.

Meg Rowley: There have been a number of guys (I believe Josh James, Jed Lowrie) who have had sleep disorders addressed and seen real upticks in their performance. Turns out being able to sleep is really important!

sam: I still can’t get over how every single team passed on the chance to claim Brad Hand for less than the contract he signed

Meg Rowley: I think on the one hand (I swear I’m not doing this on purpose), there are some concerning trends in his FB velo numbers, though he did see it start to reverse itself as last season progressed. But yeah, it just doesn’t seem like enough of a problem, or significant enough of a contract for it to have been a problem.

Meg Rowley: (apologies, there is loud landscaping going on at my neighbor’s house and I had to close the windows)

Mike: Hi, thanks for doing this chat. I’d like to ask why you found Kevin Goldstein’s defense, as outlined in his first article, that even though he suggested an elaborate camera system when he was with the Astros that he was unaware that an elaborate camera system was being used by the Astros to cheat, to be credible, especially given that his defense fits well into the pattern of Astros front office folks all completely shirking responsibility? Really trying not to be rude, but this hiring has me considering cancelling my subscription.

Meg Rowley: I appreciate your question, and would simply share that we did a lot of background work before we made the decision to bring Kevin on, talking to him as well as folks on both the team and media side. David and I felt that our readers would find his experience and perspective interesting. I hope that helps, and that you’ll continue reading and supporting the site, and thank you for having done so before now.

Xuan: Who are your favorite players to watch?

Meg Rowley: Tatis is the easy answer, but hey, sometimes stuff can just be obvious. Ditto I guess on Trout. Betts is spectacular. Darvish’s repertoire is just incredible. I continue to love watching Greinke; Kyle Hendricks remains a fascination given the persistent gap between how he projects and how he performs.

Meg Rowley: That’s an odd collection and one that often shifts

Meg Rowley: We are wildly luckily. The talent level in the game is really great.

Rivervillian: Who are you picking first in the draft of “best shape of their life” before spring training starts?

Meg Rowley: Am I allowed to offer an earnest answer here? I’m going to give an earnest answer. Vlad Jr looked really good in LIDOM!

The Ghost of Wade Boggs: Has there been any more update on when the MiLB schedule will be released? Last I heard was that they were going to push it back a month or two

Meg Rowley: This is the latest I’ve seen on the question:

Meg Rowley: (also read and follow James, he’s great)

Rivervillian: When the Jays move back to Toronto, what are the odds on Buffalo getting a major league team with all the stadium upgrades they’ve got?

Meg Rowley: Sadly not very good, which given how Bills fans love a team is a shame, but I think other, larger markets further from the Blue Jays, Yankees and Mets collective shadow are more likely.

Rob K: I’m sorry, but I don’t know where else to ask this: are the mugs in your merch store dishwasher safe? I have limited open shelf space and no free time.

Meg Rowley: Per one David Appelman, CEO of FanGraphs: “To ensure a long lasting design, we recommend hand wash only” but that’s crap, the mug itself is definitely dishwasher safe and I have been washing mine in the dishwasher and it seems fine.

Meg Rowley: Now in the interest of full disclosure, David also shared that he also washes all sorts of non dishwasher safe stuff, like vacuum sealed mugs. So calibrate your risk tolerance accordingly.

Ken: The commish asks you to make one rule change starting tomorrow, what do you do?

Meg Rowley: I hope this isn’t a cheap answer, but universal DH. The more specific answer is, I don’t think hitters should be safe at first if they reach after a catcher fails to wrangle a dropped third strike. Don’t trust it.

Steve: Can you offer any advice to those that would like to apply to the FG part time contributor position?

Meg Rowley: Make sure that you include writing samples, but don’t worry if not all of them are baseball clips. We want to get a sense of your handle on analytics, but we also want a sense of you as a writer and realize non-baseball pieces might best express that.

Meg Rowley: Oh also, pay attention to the subject line when you email. We’ll still look at all of them, but we’re getting enough applications that saves meaningful time in distinguishing the Roto applications from the FanGraphs ones.

Jeff: Where would pro sports be today if we didn’t know payroll and salaries?

Meg Rowley: I was going to type out a whole answer, but then I remembered that Patrick Dubuque wrote a really interesting piece at Baseball Prospectus on this question! https://www.baseballprospectus.com/news/article/46244/cold-takes-what-…

See! You! Later!: Would it be possible to get some sort of toggle on the leaderboards to include postseason stats? It would be really helpful, at least for me.

Meg Rowley: I’ll ask Sean! Probably not right away but good question.

Danny Almonte’s fastball: Would you ban the shift if it were up to you, but no one knew it was up to you so you wouldn’t get irrational death threats?

Meg Rowley: No. I think there’s a lot of evidence the shift isn’t deployed optimally right now, so I expect this is a problem that will take care of itself as teams course correct. I’m also not a fan of strategy-based rules like that – I want teams to think up new stuff and see if it works.

Guest: Why do you have to think of trading Lindor or Mookie or whomever as a negative? It’s a negative for one fan base and a positive for another. As a neutral party, why do you have to come at it with a negative attitude?

Meg Rowley: I think part of what we do here is to highlight league-wide trends and what they mean about the health of the game. With that understanding of what we’re trying to do here, it’s hard to look at a team trading a player like Betts or Lindor as a positive. A lot goes into free agent decisions, and I’m not indifferent to the fact that front offices have a budget given to them by ownership, but I think we have to engage with what it means for baseball when these big moves happen.

Dodger Fan: The Cards just spent a ton of money!

Meg Rowley: Yes, I should say, they took on a fair amount of payroll here. They just took on so much less payroll than they should have had to given that it’s Nolan Arenado!

Milk Bag: Do you think you would attend a game this year if you didn’t have the option to do so as a member of the press? Asking for a friend. The friend is me. I really miss live baseball.

Meg Rowley: I don’t think so. Here’s how I think about it (other folks can think about it differently!): going to a baseball game is a thing I really want to do, and I know they are going to sell tickets in pods, and try to minimize risk, and you’re mostly outside, but you have to enter and exit the ballpark. You have to wait in line for the bathroom. Maybe you think going to a game is only 5% risky. But it’s also inessential. It isn’t going to the grocery store. What if you get unlucky and get sick? What if you get someone else sick? That isn’t worth it for me.

Guest: No judgement, but I’m fascinated that baseball media people don’t dominate fantasy leagues! Dave Cameron used to say the same, that he was just terrible at fantasy and couldn’t explain it. Do you just not like it, or do you think there’s something about being such an expert broadly about baseball that lends itself to making fantasy harder than it is for a more casual fan?

Meg Rowley: I play in a sim league that I like a lot because the in-game strategy is super fun. I used to play fantasy, and enjoyed it but didn’t love it, and only have time for so much stuff.

Meg Rowley: If folks love fantasy baseball, that’s great! It’s just not my bag.

LLW: If you were a free agent relief pitcher looking at a couple different one year deals, how much money do you give up to be in a great food city like LA or NY? Question motivated by Sean Doolittle signing with the Reds.

Meg Rowley: At LEAST $500k. Now would that be smart? I don’t think so. I’d be very busy! I’d probably be able to enjoy dining out (in non-pandemic times) less than I think.

Meg Rowley: But this isn’t so different from me at times entertaining the idea of moving back to NY because I might get to have beers with my friends three times a year.

Meg Rowley: Alright everyone, I have to go get ready to record Effectively Wild. I appreciate all the questions, and apologies for what I couldn’t get to today. I’ll be back next Wednesday. Thanks, and have great days.