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Eric Longenhagen Prospects Chat
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Eric A Longenhagen
12:17
Good morning from Tempe where the new neighbors have people gutting the house for the next week plus, and jackhammering has been involved.
12:19
I think we're gonna go long today, so buckle in, throw on some music or a pod, and play pepper in the queue with me for the next little while.
Brown
12:19
Any news/speculation on what the Giants are doing with the IFA money they just traded for?
Eric A Longenhagen
12:19
Actually, no. Lemme see if I can source the amount of space traded during chat today.
Potato
12:20
Eric, is it funny that Semien first moved to 2B in deference to Bo at SS in Toronto, and now Bo is moving to 3B instead of 2B in deference to Semien in NY? Or am I reaching?
Eric A Longenhagen
12:22
It is kind of fun and cool that these two have now played together at multiple spots but I don' know that I'd say Bo is what moved Semian off of shortstop, Semien kinda moved himself out of there. Great hitter, wasn't a great shortstop.
Wasn't a good shortstop
Bo has been fine there, body looks like it's aged out, which is pretty normal.
Sleepless in Seattle
12:22
Why is Brennen Davis not listed in Fangraphs top prospects?  This has to be an oversight no?
Eric A Longenhagen
12:24
(Johnny Carson voice) Chatters who've been in a coma since 2019
No, even through the haze of the internet I can tell your tongue is planted firmly in your cheek.
12:25
Injuries, man. Hope Brennen gets to wear a big league uni at some point.
NFP
12:25
Is Jordan Sanchez still a 40+ for you?
Eric A Longenhagen
12:28
That one's tough. Scary contact rate, love the swing/bat speed and upside of lefty power like this. Definitely too risky to *really* stuff, like in the 45 tier or better, 40+ I think properly reflects his ceiling, but also maybe doesn't sufficiently account for his risk now that he's had a 63% contact season in the DSL.
Mike Trout
12:28
Did the Mets give up too much? Would you rather have Gore or Peralta, considering the costs?
Eric A Longenhagen
12:31
I don't think it's too much. I do think they kinda shot themselves in the foot with both Jett's and Sproat's value, though...
Sproat got worse after making changes in '25. Is it the org that wanted him to make those changes? The Mets are pretty good at developing pitchers overall, but in this case the tweaks coincided with the player regressing.
12:32
Jett they should've let play CF and 2B earlier. He's hit his way to triple a but still isn't good at any position, which scares the crap out of me.
12:33
I like both prospects, to be clear.
MLB Rooney Rule
12:34
Surprised by the shift in grade from last year on Juan Brito. Dude barely played in 2025, so what really changed?
Eric A Longenhagen
12:35
I think I over-ranked him last year.
12:37
And also hamstring surgery is scary. He was *barely* scraping by at 2B and has been playing basically all 1B in LIDOM (where he didn't hit well fwiw).
MLB Rooney Rule
12:37
Did that unnamed Venezuelan player you were worried about ever get out of the country and sign?
Eric A Longenhagen
12:38
Yes, the team felt like he'd be okay when I asked them if he was still there or not in the days immediately following the airstrikes.
George
12:38
Eric, I appreciated your piece on the Gore trade. I’m a Nats fan, and there’s been some local media who are saying that the Nats might be considered a top 5 minor league system. Am I wrong for seeing them more in the 10-15 range?
Eric A Longenhagen
12:40
I had the right in the very middle at the end of '25. I think their transactions this offseason move them closer to 10th. Our methodology favors top-heavy systems, and in the Gore trade it was more guys I have 45s, 40+s on, they only move the needle so much.
12:41
I think it's more true that they set themselves up to have a top 5 system in like 2 years, when some of the Fien/Fitz-Gerald/Yeremy group has matured.
bushupking
12:41
How worrisome are shoulder injuries for hitting prospects in general? Are injuries to the lead shoulder more alarming than an injury to the back shoulder? (Am thinking about Bryce Rainer in particular.)
Eric A Longenhagen
12:43
It depends on the exact nature of it. Think about Tatis and Corbin Caroll's shoulder injuries, from basically being too explosive for their own good. They've survived those. When it's a traumatic injury from a collision or fall, those freak injuries are a person-to-person, incident-to-incident type of thing.
And then you have the injuries involving nerves and veins and stuff....whole other world.
NFP
12:44
How do teams balance the defensive development of guys on similar timelines who play the same position? This is mostly a Wehiwa Aloy / Colin Yeaman question for 2026. They could just stick Aloy in Frederick and Yeaman in Delmarva, of course.
Eric A Longenhagen
12:45
In those guys' case I think they'll both play multiple positions. But yeah you can use the DH to ensure they both get at-bats or stagger which affiliates they start at.
Jonathan
12:46
One of the things AI can't yet do well is predict something that it hasn't been exposed to in its training data.  I figure scouts have massive internal libraries of prospects.  Can you think of anyone (or even any pitch, or any trait) that's very rare or even singular, that a CV-based agent trained on video from the last 5+ years might have trouble assessing as well as a human would?
Eric A Longenhagen
12:51
I guess I'd be curious about what kind of video it's been fed, just like game footage, high speed stuff? Mocap stuff? There are things scouts see visually that definitely can/have become measurable through tech (bat speed, bat path angles, jumps on defense, even real time biomechanical data) and I'd wanna know how much of that stuff AI is looking at, data and video...
12:54
I care about stuff like body composition and posture; I care about how bodies look in motion and think you can learn a lot by how cleanly these guys field and excahnge the baseball. If what you're talking about can assess stuff like that it's cutting deeper into what scouts have still been able to offer during the TrackMan era.
12:55
Then there's the interpersonal stuff, Getting to know the player as a person is still important, although sometimes I think we overestimate our ability to really know how someone is going to adjust to pro baseball just by having coffee with them and their family.
romorr
12:56
Orioles and Rangers paid similar prices for Gore/Baz. Considering the prospects + pitchers, which do you prefer?
Eric A Longenhagen
12:57
Gimme the Gore package. Rosario's ceiling is that of a player you basically can't acquire. Tampa didn't get that in the Baz deal.
David Wiers
12:57
Of course it isn't why you're there, but what was the best/your favorite MiLB mid-inning entertainment?
Eric A Longenhagen
12:57
This is like 15% of why I'm here.
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