Baseball Prospectus - Chat with Craig Goldstein

Chat: Craig Goldstein

Welcome to Baseball Prospectus' Wednesday August 05, 2020 1:00 PM ET chat session with Craig Goldstein.

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

Craig Goldstein: Hey everyone, I'm going to swap out my coffee for a hibiscus la croix and then we'll get to your questions!

benrosenberg02 (at home (obvi)): Keeper league- Albies or Robert?

Craig Goldstein: Robert and I don't think it's close

James (Boston): From a fantasy perspective, for 2020, would you rather stash Spencer Howard or MacKenzie Gore?

Craig Goldstein: For 2020 alone? Howard. I'm not convinced Gore gets much run.

bozodidthedub (Providence): With Adell's ability to adjust across levels, what kind of progress would you expect/hope to see in 2020, given maybe 4-5 starts per week?

Craig Goldstein: I expect he'll strike out a fair bit (that slider he struck out on against Dunn was...well it was a bad swing) but I also think he'll be an impact player pretty quickly. He let two middle up breaking balls pass by in different at-bats and then grounded another middle-middle to first last night. Once he settles in, I think he'll start turning on those.

Tom Crockett (Maryland): During the "bubble" discussion, was there ever any consideration of moving teams to Japan or Korea, where MLB games could be played at early morning local time to be broadcast live at the usual time in the US? They could share stadiums with local teams, since they'd only be playing to a broadcast audience in a far-off time zone.

Craig Goldstein: I believe Kurkjian mentioned Japan as an option from an anonymous source but I think it was a load of crap then and now. Other countries (Canada excepting) aren't really accepting Americans and smartly don't want to take on the risk of importing a thousand plus people with this kind of exposure to COVID.

JP (CT): Jo Adell struggled to lift the ball in his first game in the majors. How worried about this are you?

Craig Goldstein: Jeffrey is making fun of me because of a comment in our gchat last night, but I was a little surprised to see him hit a grounder in his last at-bat. I'm not worried but I expect him to drive the ball more, generally. Also the play at first on his grounder to Seager was closer than it had any right to be.

Roger (Ontario): What kind of career do you think Cavan Biggio has? And why do you think pretty much everyone was late to the party on a guy who, at the very least, looks like a solid average regular?

Craig Goldstein: I'm not particularly fond of Biggio. He's fine but I think generally too passive at the plate without enough punch to make pitchers afraid of challenging his unwillingness to swing. I guess I'd disagree with the premise that everyone was late, just because he had a nice half-season. I'll be interested to see how the league adjusts now that there's more of a book on him.

Peter (the eye of Isaias): The off-season goal for Vlad Jr. was reportedly to hit the ball in the air more. So far in an extremely small sample, things look much the same. Do you expect him to make those adjustments in-season this year? Or is this something that might take more off-season work?

Craig Goldstein: Yeah, Vlad has always been able to make adjustments in-game much less in-season. I don't think he needs to overhaul things to make it work, generally speaking.

JP (CT): Jo Adell struggled to lift the ball in his first game in the majors. How worried about this are you?

dylanrox (Quarantine, DE): Thanks much for doing these Craig. Tyler Mahle seems to have reinvented himself with that slider. His 6 IP and K/BB and length were encouraging last night in Cincinnati. Makes me wonder if he will be more helpful than the erratic Matz. Considering him ahead of banged up or fringe wire options like Caleb Smith Lindholm Newcomb Reynaldo Lopez Taijuan Wacha Alex Wood Alex Reyes Ponce De Leon but would need to make a tough drop. (Matz or perhaps STL Closer Kim seems to be the likeliest, no?) We Start 5 SP and 3 RP and it’s a weekly league. Current staff SP Glasnow Darvish Nola Weaver Cease RP Lugo Pomeranz Wick Bench SP Matz Bench RP Burnes Kim IL Alcantara 14 team Weekly lineups Dynasty points (All Play format this season) K (2) IP (2) W (10) L (-5) BB (-1) ER (-1) SV (8) HD (4) BS (-6) Thanks much, Dylan

Craig Goldstein: Mahle is an interesting case. I haven't watched him this year but last year he had some initial success after ditching the slider and going to the curve. That tapered off and he's back to the slider this year, though we currently have him with a cutter too, with only a couple mph disparity. His whiff rate (still a small sample) is up on both pitches, so I do wonder if there's a bit of a blending/labeling question there. I guess I'd probably let it play out another start or two before making a call, though I realize that's a non-small % of the season these days. I don't know that he'll be dramatically better than Matz generally but if you're inclined to go with the hot new thing, I wouldn't blame you.

Chris (Washington): Think with rosters dropping to 28 on Thursday that we will see an uptick in trades and teams trying to sneak players without options through?

Craig Goldstein: Probably not? Most of the expansion meant adding guys who had options, etc, and I think teams will just send those guys down. I'm not expecting a ton of trades this year in general.

Chris (Washington): Will the Marlins really have to dfa 18 players in a few weeks?

Craig Goldstein: I don't think so. They're not adding 18 guys without options or all guys who weren't on the 40-man, to begin with. The ops manual doesn't really address much on the 40-man, and I think a lot of the fringe players they're bringing in will end up DFA'd. I'd guess somewhere about 8-10 get DFA'd.

Chris (Washington): Kyle lewis!!

Craig Goldstein: He's been good! It was interesting because he briefly saw the power disappear as he was fed a diet of breaking stuff on the outside, but he poked a homer recently and sent one off the wall last night. I'm still worried about the amount of strikeouts generally, but as I said before... if you can slug .550 it doesn't really matter.

Brendan Gawlowski (Seattle): Hi Craig, thanks for the chat. Has Luis Castillo's success changed your perspective on the viability of pitchers who succeed mostly with a FB/CH pitch mix, or do you think he's just a freak?

Craig Goldstein: No, I think he's the exception that proves the rule, generally speaking. I love a FB/CH pitcher so I'm rooting for him (and Paddack, etc.) but even Paddack is adding a cutter and sharpening his CB now. Things are different when you can throw 100 and have an 8 change up, which I suppose I should have made more room for. But no, I don't think that generally moves my position on the profile overall.

darielsantana (Santo domingo): Do you think we see Vaughn with E5 struggling and probably now a IL stint?

Craig Goldstein: I definitely _want_ to see Vaughn if he goes on the IL, especially because as exciting as the White Sox are right now, their actual major league depth leaves a lot to be desired. That said, you can make a justifiable case that Jimenez should be a DH and they can benefit from Engel in the outfield (sorry), defensively. If they give more time to Delmonico, we riot.

Craig Goldstein: Thanks for the questions everyone, I'll be back next week to further rave about Jo Adell and rant about, uh, Cavan Biggio and Nicky Delmonico I guess.