Baseball Prospectus - Chat with Craig Goldstein

Chat: Craig Goldstein

Welcome to Baseball Prospectus' Wednesday May 13, 2020 1:00 PM ET chat session with Craig Goldstein.

Craig Goldstein is the editor-in-chief of Baseball Prospectus.

Craig Goldstein: Folks...we're out of bread and so I'm just eating sandwich meats on triscuits. Things are getting dire.

Raymond (Washington DC): Who's your KBO team?

Craig Goldstein: I said on twitter that I'd pick whoever was playing but I'll be honest that I was really taken with the NC Dinos unis and I like Rucinski, so I guess I'm a Dino Guy now.

Peter (SUR): It looked like Ariana's brother, Jeremy, might have been the best softball player in the now infamous SUR/TomTom game. Who among the main cast would you sign for your theoretical team?

Craig Goldstein: Peter, thanks for checking in. I hope your hair is faring well in these trying times. Jeremy might have been but I'll be honest Jax looked pretty good out there too. He's a clubhouse cancer though. My heart says Sandoval because you know he's all in all the time but the skills were really lacking. I think I have to go with Brett, he's not the personality issue Jax is, he's definitely in shape and could do a little damage.

Mike (The Good Land): Hoping you and your family are staying safe and doing as well as you possibly can right now. What's been the most entertaining (and completely not possible) idea you've seen to try and get baseball back?

Craig Goldstein: Probably the weirdly floated "let's just take it all to Japan" plan? That thing made no sense from any perspective.

Byron (Portland): Just talking position players, why are most of the Koreans who come to the US beefy sluggers, but the majority of the foreign position players in the KBO are also beefy sluggers? They are literally the least portable players!

Craig Goldstein: Honestly this is an excellent question. Perhaps something to do with an already standardized beef export/import system? The logistics were already handled, easiest thing to start with!

CubbieBear (Chi-Town): Yoshitomo Tsutsugo came stateside with a reputation he could hit for power & average. Have you gained any feedback on how well he looks to adapt? What sort of production would you expect out of him? Thanks.

Craig Goldstein: No real update on Tsutsugo for me, unfortunately. I'd expect on-base and power more than average, personally.

Mike (Tempe): Should higher stakes dynasty leagues at least consider potential changes to their buy-in/pay-out structures for 2020? If you tanked multiple years to target 2020, you'd probably be pissed at the prospect of a lower pot. But if you were a contender and now are much more prone to a small sample size fluke result, you're probably not too keen on gambling big bucks on that scenario. Are we all just stuck with whatever hand we're dealt?

Craig Goldstein: I think we might have covered this last chat, but I don't see why it would change substantially. Risks are risks, but they affect everyone pretty arbitrarily here. No one planned for this.

Craig Fans (No. 1): If you could drop any non-all star in their prime from the last 20 years into the KBO who would it be and why?

Craig Goldstein: I consulted Patrick Dubuque on this because he's my go-to KBO guy. He suggested Jordan Hicks because a) the relievers there are...not good and b) no one throws hard, so 101 is just unfathomable. Add in the extremely contact-oriented swings that are generally employed and it'd be fun to see how that would all interact/if approaches change.

dan22ke9 (Mom’s Basement): How potentially bad financially did Lindor, Bryant etc. hurt themselves by not signing contract extensions ( virus outcome)? To me it’s going to br multi millions. Agree?

Craig Goldstein: I'm not sure I'm ready to agree, honestly. Both of those guys have another year after 2020, so there's more time for things to reset, and they'll be operating under a new CBA. It's hard to know what changes that will bring and how it will affect upper-echelon free agents.

bartleby (in an undisclosed basement): it is too depressing to follow any of this faux simulation baseball or korean b-ball------ give me a reason to be interested

Craig Goldstein: I'm not gonna sell you on it if you find it depressing, I think you have to have a genuine interest to really stick with it. I find it fun to look at the various simulations and see permutations of how a season can go. The KBO/CPBL is real baseball! The hard part for me is the timezone difference because I'm not *great* at queuing up games if I don't watch them live. I have never needed to know all the players to enjoy a game -- been to too many minor league games for that to be the draw, so just having real baseball that matters (to the players) is a joy when I'm able to do it.

Mike (Albany): What are the best pie analogues for Yasiel Puig and Walker Buehler?

Craig Goldstein: Man, this is a good one. For Puig I'm going to go with the Milk Bar Pie from Momofuko. It's all sugar. It's really good, but you can only have so much and I feel like that's Puig to a degree. Buehler...that's tougher for me. I want something that packs a ton of punch, and it's tempting to drift towards, like...heat, but you don't want a spicy pie. When I think of pies that just frontload flavor I tend to think lemon/lime type things. I'll go with the Shaker Lemon Pie. Tons of flavor but is smooth on the back end.

Craig Goldstein: Alright everyone, short chat but that was the queue and I've got a bunch to do today. Thanks for dropping in!