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Klawchat 10/7/21
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Keith Law
1:01
Klawchat. Because you have to make this life livable.
addoeh
1:01
I see Dayton Moore's son is projected to be a draftee in 2022.  From the outside, there could be a conflict of interest if he knows where other teams view his son and where they may draft and offer him.  This probably isn't the first time this has happened, but do you see a potential issue?
Keith Law
1:02
Happens every year. IMO, the best move would be for the Royals' owner to say you can't draft your own kid, and move on. The information imbalance you mention is, I think, unavoidable.
Noah
1:02
I've written to you about this before, but it still gets under my skin when I see Sandy Alderson make a move (like letting Rojas go).  While I know the next GM or President will pick their own guy, I just would rather the Mets hire that next FO guy than have to read about Sandy Alderson doing anything other than retiring after his involvement in turning a blind eye to sexual harassment in previous hires.  Why won't the Mets announce Alderson's firing or retirement?  It's a stain on an already stained organization.  Thanks for doing these, Keith!
Keith Law
1:04
I have no idea. Whatever you think of Alderson's legacy, his tenure with the Mets has been disastrous, and he shouldn't involved in this hiring process. You didn't mention the conflict of interest he faces with his son in the FO as well. Will he hire someone who has no real plans to use his son or retain him beyond the contract they just gave him in July (which was itself suspect, as that's a decision the new GM should be allowed to make, not HIS OWN FATHER).
Matt
1:05
Can you please explain to all the Yankee fans out there that it does no good to fire Aaron Boone unless there is a plan to replace him. It's why the Yankees ended up with Aaron Boone in the 1st place.
Brian
1:05
Hey Klaw, thanks for hosting this chat. Highlight of my week. Inevitable Yanks question from an impatient fan - how do they move forward? Fire the coaching staff? The GM? Nobody? How do they get over the hump?
Keith Law
1:06
These both seem like the same sort of question. I don't think Boone is the problem here. The team just had a great season with a rotation that was often cobbled together, and they lost the WC game primarily because their ace has been dealing with a hamstring injury the last few weeks and wasn't able to give them a quality start. That doesn't call for wholesale changes. Go sign Correa and a starter.
Dark Knight
1:06
Who do you think is better offensively:  Wander Franco or Bo Bichette?  Big debate from a circle of loyal followers.  Thanks Keith!!
Keith Law
1:06
This is a debate?
Barry
1:06
It seems like there are lots of Kickstartes for board games, even when the games are published by for profit game manufactures. Is there a reason why?
Keith Law
1:08
Aha! I know the answer to this. One is marketing - Kickstarters build a big buzz for upcoming titles. And the bigger reason is that it guarantees a sales figure for the first printing - you aren't printing 10,000 copies and hoping you sell them but with no idea if you'll sell out or only move 2500. It's not the original purpose of crowdsourcing, but I think it ensures the financial health of publishers because they aren't putting big piles of cash at risk and sometimes ending up with a warehouse full of unsold games.
Mo
1:08
Do the Cardinals need to look into the SS market this off-season given DeJong's been pretty rough for 2+ years now?
Keith Law
1:09
I like Sosa. I think I've always kept him reasonably high on my Cards rankings and he finally justified that this year. Would like to see him get a full shot at the job.
Daniel
1:09
Keith, outside of Stearns/Beane... would you mind giving us a few names that you think would be good hires as president of baseball operations by the Mets? Who are you high on to run a franchise? Thanks in advance.
Keith Law
1:11
So I heard last week secondhand that those guys and Theo had already turned the Mets down ... then the report of a Theo conversation that happened this week came out, so maybe what I heard was wrong, but also, I can't imagine either guy taking that job. It would be great if the Mets didn't just recycle the same names all over again.
1:12
I know several people within MLB who are rooting for Bobby Heck to get the GM job there, and he'd make a lot of sense as a respected exec who comes from one of the best-run orgs (Tampa Bay) and can bring that knowledge as well as his experience managing a staff (he was scouting director for Houston when they took George Springer).
ATR
1:12
Do you anticipate Torkelson and Greene to be in Detroit's opening day lineup? Thanks!
Keith Law
1:12
No, just because of service time stuff. So few teams do that.
Jason
1:12
is it unfair that a team can withstand the loss of Bauer and Kershaw and still be a WS favorite? Seems unfair to me. Any other team this wouldve been a death blow. Thats what like 70 million bucks in pitching?
Keith Law
1:12
Define "unfair."
I mean, should they sign Harrison Bergeron instead?
Chris
1:12
Is there any optimism for Rockies fans with Bill Schmidt?
Keith Law
1:13
Derek and I discussed this on the pod we just recorded for tomorrow (The Athletic Baseball Show), and the answer is ... maybe. It really depends on what he does next, and especially who he hires.
A Salty Scientist
1:14
So has Logan Webb really leveled up on command and the change to become a legit #2? Nothing in the expected stats screams fluke to me, but curious if you've seen anything notable.
Keith Law
1:16
I think this is his peak, in the sense that he executed his pitching plan about as well as he possibly could this year. I don't want to say it's luck, because that seems to discredit him, but more that everything went right for him. If he's a 60% groundball guy who can really limit hard contact like he did this year, he can be an above-average starter for a while. But I would bet the under on 2022 because of the above - everything seems to have hit at the 90th percentile.
Anthony
1:16
I know minors stats shouldn’t always be used for prospect evaluation but I’ve read stuff on  Julio Rodriguez’s hit tool being closer to a 50 than a 60 based on his long swing. Given his career minors BA is well over .300 why isn’t his hit tool given more praise?
Keith Law
1:16
Because batting average is really not a great measure of hit tool, especially not when you're facing a lot of bad pitching in the minors (and some good, too, he's not only able to hit the bad ones).
Seth
1:16
MLB is missing a golden opportunity with the Giants Dodgers series starting so late on the east coast.  This is the series all baseball fans have wanted to see this year for so many reasons.  If this was Yankees Red Sox it would be in prime time on the east coast without question.  Seems like there has to be a way to get these games on earlier so they dont end at 1:30am EST.
Keith Law
1:17
If you start the games earlier then the west coast fans - which, I would assume, includes most of the Giants' and Dodgers' current fan bases - miss the beginnings of the games, and that's worse.
Philly Phantasmic
1:17
How much playing time will the Royals give Melendez and at what positions?
Keith Law
1:18
He's a catcher. They have to use him as a catcher, and yes, I'm aware of the catcher they already have, but that guy isn't going to hit 48 homers again, and catchers, especially ones who've caught as much as he has, are not great bets to age well into their 30s.
1:19
OTOH if the Royals just want to keep Salvy as the everyday guy, I imagine they could get a king's ransom for MJM.
Jason
1:19
Did everyone who worked in the Trump White House just keep saying to themselves "Think of the book deal, think of the book deal..."
Keith Law
1:19
Well, they were clearly just thinking about themselves, so this fits.
AES
1:19
Aside from a long history of normalizing racism, why hasn't there been a bigger outcry about Mcdonough's comment about Zaidi?
Keith Law
1:20
It was showing up on Twitter's "trending" sidebar for me all night, but there should be some kind of reaction from his employers. It was inappropriate.
Mcf1417
1:20
Michael Harris had a rough end to the year. What’s your thought on him going forward?
Keith Law
1:22
Harris in the Atlanta system? He didn't have a rough end to the year at all. You can see my notes on him from when they came through Wilmington.
Chris Mitchell
1:22
Should the playoff format be changed to reseed the teams after the WC games without regard to division winners? If this were done in the NL, it would be Giants-Braves and Dodgers-Brewers in the NLDS with a possible matchup of baseball's best teams in the NLCS. A playoff format that results in the teams with the two best records in the sport meeting in round 1 needs changing.
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