Meg Rowley FanGraphs Chat – 5/5/2021

Meg Rowley: Hi all, and thanks for stopping by. Let’s get rolling on the chat.

Magic Kingdome: Who starts Game 1 of the 2021 ALCS for the Mariners?

Meg Rowley: All right now settle down.

Meg Rowley: I encourage everyone to take joy where they can find it and revel in good starts and also, not set yourself up for disappointment.

Padres Offense: Pls give the magic hitting juice. I need.

Meg Rowley: If it makes you feel any better, they are slightly underperforming their baseruns but yeah, it’s been an unwelcome swoon. I don’t expect it to be a sustained swoon, but yeah, would be good for Machado and Cronenworth to get going.

Meg Rowley: Hosmer and Wil Myers outhitting those guys, just like we all expected.

Carl: I remember when fangraphs was good.

Meg Rowley: I also remember today!

Han Soto: What’s your favorite pizza topping?

Meg Rowley: Pineapple and jalapeños.

Meg Rowley: You might not like those things. You might like other things. I am glad you like those other things while I like my thing.

Dayton Moore Talking Head: It’s July 31.  The Royals are 4 games over .500, 3 GB in the division, and 1.5 GB for a wild card.  Do you buy, sell, or hold?

Meg Rowley: I think they buy for sure – they’ve shown they believe themselves to be ready to contend and if that’s the math come July, I think they buy or at least see who they can promote (they don’t really play service time games but do have some 40-man crunch looming).

Steven: J-Rod assignment feel a little light to you?

Meg Rowley: It didn’t jump out to me, no. I should preface this by saying that it’s really hard to know how to interpret assignments this year given the lost 2020 season – some of the normal progressions we might see for top players are going to feel heavy because of the lost time. I think High-A for a 20-yea-old to start the season strikes me as age appropriate. I don’t imagine he ends the year there.

Dayton Moore Talking Head: You are invited to do a full inning guest spot on a TV broadcast.  Which broadcast crew do you want?  It can be any current local or national team.

Meg Rowley: Can I pick the Nerdcast? I’d like to pick the Nerdcast. They seem to have fun and think about the game the same way I do.

Kikuchi: Have you ever named a small furry creature after me?

Meg Rowley: No. I feel weird about naming pets after specific, real people.

Guest: Will Cody Bellinger or Christian Yelich end up playing more this year?

Meg Rowley: What a depressing question! My instinct, not knowing anything special here is to say Bellinger, despite Yelich having played in more games already, because it seems like once he’s truly mending he should hopefully be good to go, whereas back stuff can linger.

Meg Rowley: Aging: what a ripoff!

Nat: Re hit by pitches and lack of balls in play: here’s my new idea. Deaden the ball, shrink the zone,and move the batters box away from the plate. More balls in play, fewer homers, inventivizes oppo approach.

Meg Rowley: So you want to both make the zone smaller and put hitters further away from it while trying to cut back on the thing that is holding up league-wide offense?

Guest: How much does the MLB batting average typically improve after April?

Meg Rowley: I don’t have specific numbers in front of me, though I do know that mostly because of weather, offensive numbers experience an early season swoon and then tend to heat up as the weather does. Of course, we’ll have to see given the new ball.

Meg Rowley: I’d say it would be nice to have a consistent ball year-to-year that we really get to know but then again, making new friends in your 30s is hard.

Chaz: Do you think an Olympic level sprinter, with no baseball background, could help as pinch runner on a playoff roster?

Meg Rowley: I am very delighted to have an opportunity to share this Sam Miller gem as an answer to your question: https://www.baseballprospectus.com/news/article/22979/pebble-hunting-b…

Bobby: How concerned should I be about deGrom’s setback?  He’s the only sure thing on that rotation.  Still don’t trust Stroman or Walker and Carrasco and Syndergaard are both on the IL.  Peterson is basically a rookie and Lucchessi is just bad.

Meg Rowley: I mean, it isn’t great news, though it could be quite a bit worse so I would say somewhat? Your best pitcher had to miss a start because his body wouldn’t let him. Not good! But the part of his body that was an issue wasn’t his elbow or should. Not as bad as it could be!

Vader: OK Miss Mariner, best guess as to when we see Gilbert and then Kelenic?

Vader: Are your Mariners going to go closer by committee or does Graveman have more value coming in earlier and Montero gets most the saves?

Meg Rowley: Not sure what merits the accusatory tone here (They truly aren’t my Mariners! I didn’t do it!) but for Gilbert and Kelenic, I expect both get some real Triple-A run but might be up later this summer (post June, pre-September) if all goes well and the club isn’t wildly out of it. As for the bullpen, they’ve seemed appropriately keen to deploy Graveman in high leverage moments and I expect they’ll continue to have that dictate his usage more than the inning it happens to be.

Michael: Has any team had its playoff odds tanked by injuries as much as the White Sox? First Jiménez and now Robert… it’s hard to be optimistic right now.

Meg Rowley: It’s pretty dramatic – Robert alone was worth -18.5% for their divisional odds per ZiPS

Meg Rowley: Dan’s piece on this is worth reading if you want to know more although maybe you don’t! https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-white-sox-just-lost-their-most-importa…

brad penny for your thoughts: having a bud light seltzer?

Meg Rowley: I am not. I am working.

Jonny: With fewer and fewer pitchers reaching 162 IP per season, how long is it before the threshold for qualifying for an ERA title changes? Who sets that threshold?

Meg Rowley: It’s an interesting question – I imagine it will still be awhile before there’s a ton of movement there, but league-wide trends might force the issue. MLB determines it.

Sharps: How is every team underperforming xwOBA?

Meg Rowley: It’s a combo of the weather and the new ball. At some point, it’ll need to be recalibrated for the new offensive environment.

Matt: how should I be feeling as a phillies fan right now?

Meg Rowley: It sure would be nice if they’d give you all an easy win. Just, a normal-ass win. It seems very stressful to be a Phillies fan right now. It does not seem… fun, though perhaps the Phillies fans I follow constitute an unrepresentative sample.

Meg Rowley: But beyond that, hey you’re in first place and your division is surprisingly soft! So feel good about that part.

Mugghead: Will Lindor’s contract go down as among the worst in MLB history?

Meg Rowley: Seems very unlikely!

Meg Rowley: His struggles are odd – walking and not striking out at career-best rates. He’s just really not barreling stuff up at all. And he’s hitting so much on the ground!

Meg Rowley: It isn’t good, but doesn’t seem unfixable, though if you want to write some sort of disaster narrative and read it as a continued swoon from last season, you could, but why do that just yet.

Birchlover Birdich: What name would you give to an expansion team in Portland? (In case it ever happens)

Meg Rowley: Call them the roses and then have one of the logos be a baseball but with a thorny stem as the seams.

Mason Storm: Is there a scenario where the MLB draft has as much of a draw as NFL or NBA drafts do? Or is the nature of the players going to MilB, plus a deep pool going to keep it from being a popular event?

Meg Rowley: It’s tricky to do for the reasons you outlined and also because the amateur pool is less well known and certainly less well seen on average than it is with college.

Meg Rowley: In a year like this one, with so many first rounders from Alabama and other programs involved with the national championship, I had pretty good context on the class even though my college football viewing is at an all-time low. But even if the average baseball fan knows about Rocker and Leiter, when you get into non-SEC programs, it dips and then there are the high school guys.

Meg Rowley: All of that said, I think the broadcasts that MLB and ESPN have done lately are great for those who care about it. But it’s just going to have a different vibe. With rare exception you aren’t going to see these dudes for a while, whereas I’ll see a whole lot of D’Wayne Eskridge (So fast, yay! Already 24, oh Seattle, you have such a type) just a few months from now.

Mettyfap: Your thoughts in Amir Garretts suspension?

Meg Rowley: That even with prior incidents and the health and safety protocols, it seemed long.

Han Soto: I don’t like pineapple all that much in general, but I can absolutely see the spicy working with it on a pizza. I’ll give it a try sometime.

Meg Rowley: The spicy and sweet balance nicely imo. I’m not a big fan of Canadian bacon (though I get that the salty probably functions the same way for some folks that spicy does for me).

Magic Kingdome: Let’s try this is a different way — who is the Mariners’ best starting pitcher (OK to assume Gonzalez is healthy)?

Meg Rowley: Good grief, is it maybe Chris Flexen? I… I need to sit with this for a minute.

asnbrv: Is it a glitch on my browser when I toggle the postseason stats on player pages, it gives me like 10rows per postseason year?

Meg Rowley: There’s a glitch, should have a fix in later this evenings is my understanding.

Lunar verLander: Would their intrasquad game be called The War of the Roses?

Meg Rowley: YES IT WOULD. IT WOULD BE CALLED THAT.

giodude: The new group of writers have been excellent 🙂

Meg Rowley: I think so, too. Really enjoying getting to know them and see what is interesting to them. And also, just deeply grateful that folks have continued to support the site with memberships, making new features and new voices possible.

Meg Rowley: There’s a lot still to be set right in (gestures at the world) but sometimes I think about how much dread and existential threat we felt at work last year, and can’t believe where we are now.

Guest: Why do fangraphs writers have such strong opinions about non-baseball related matters and why are they always wrong in those opinions?

Meg Rowley: You don’t have to order that pizza if you don’t want to.

Gil: Re: Mets and Davis

Has there ever really been a case of a coach being fired and things noticeably improving as a direct result? Seems like it would be pretty tough to pin improvement on that choice alone.

Meg Rowley: I think that’s right – there have certainly been instances of team-wide offense improving after a coach’s firing but I think it’s really hard to pin that on the firing. Which isn’t to say that hitting coaches don’t matter. It’s just hard to isolate the improvement to their absence (or a new presence).

John: While MLB tries out drastically new ideas, here’s one for increasing action. Any strikeout automatically erases every baserunner. For example, with 2 on and no out, we’re currently taught to panic over hitting the ball (OMG risk of double play), but a strikeout would function as a triple play or reset button. Instant incentive to put the ball in play! And make the game, you know, watchable again.

Meg Rowley: Incentive, sure but in execution I think you just designed a 30 minute baseball game?

HankLloydWright: I hate pineapple on pizza and yet hearing the words “pineapple and jalapenos” together somehow makes me want to try that pizza

Meg Rowley: The trick is to order a half-n-half with something you know you like. Much lower pizza stakes.

Isolated Thinker: % chance that Ohtani and Trout are AL co-MVP?

Meg Rowley: This Byron Buxton erasure will. not. stand. WILL NOT.

Owen: Will Myles Straw ever hit enough to be a decent starter in CF?

Meg Rowley: I really don’t think so. Dude can fly, but I’m very skeptical dude can will make enough contact or hit for enough power to be an everyday dude.

Meg Rowley: Alright pals, I need to get rolling so I can prep for Effectively Wild. Thanks for the questions, and apologies for what I didn’t get to. Enjoy the rest of your day!