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Meg Rowley FanGraphs Chat - 5/29/18
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Meg Rowley
12:00
Good morning! I hope everyone had a good long weekend, and isn't too sad about going back to work.
And hey if you are, well you're reading a baseball chat, so hopefully that helps.
Dane
12:01
Vlad Jr. When will he be up and what do you expect from him this year?
Meg Rowley
12:03
It'll be interesting to see how, if at all, Donaldson's injury shifts things for them. I know he described it as minor, but the Blue Jays' hold on contention is verrrry tenuous.
I still think the service time stuff holds him down because I am cynical and bit mistrusting by nature, but there is an opening.
12:04
And I expect him to just hit the crap out of the ball. All the way to Jupiter a lot of the time. There will likely be defensive silliness, but you won't mind because he will just hit the crap out of the ball, in my considered opinion.
Dane
12:04
Is Joey Lucchesi as good as his numbers say he is or will his deception factor ware off?
Meg Rowley
12:05
Think we have to see him back healthy, and for longer than this to say. His FIP is a full run worse than his ERA and the walks make me nervous, but I think we need to see more to know.
12:06
Is that a cheap answer? I mean, perhaps, but it is also true. True and cheap.
Doug
12:06
Do you expect the Angels to be active in the Machado/Donaldson/Moustakas talks this summer? With Kinsler struggling, could move Cozart to 2B
Meg Rowley
12:07
I expect that they will try. I think they might be a bit more competitive in that space than you'd expect given their system (at least for Machado and Donaldson). They should try to make a move, though reinforcements on the pitching side might be more pressing.
They're a weird team.
frankthetank
12:08
Is the combination of absolute joy from this success and yet unrelenting expectation of it all to crash down at any moment the quintessential Mariners fan experience?
Meg Rowley
12:08
I will only speak for my own quintessential fan experience, and say that having this much joy (even as I expect it to get worse) is pretty foreign to me.
12:09
This team is absolutely winning more than I think they should. This team is absolutely very fun. I thought they would be a boring bummer, and they aren't that.
12:10
Apart from anything else, Edwin Diaz picked the absolute perfect time to be really, really, really good at his job, and now he'll get to rest occasionally.
Dave
12:10
Well, what's your opinion on the Rizzo situation?
Meg Rowley
12:11
I think it was a bad slide, and that there should be consequences for that bad slide because you can end guys' careers doing junk like that. He's not allowed to deviate from the base path to initiate contact with the catcher.
Diaz gave him a clear path to home. He was several steps into fair territory!
Miami Blues
12:12
Read that Nats made offer for Realmuto a while back. Do you know what that offer was?
Meg Rowley
12:13
I do not know specifically, but I would think that it was reasonably rich (though apparently not rich enough). Realmuto is having a very good year at a position that is very shallow once you weed out the guys who aren't going anywhere.
12:14
I still expect that he'll move.
It's also not yet June, and Jerry Dipoto aside, it's early for this sort of thing.
James
12:14
Justin Verlander
Meg Rowley
12:15
What a pitcher, huh?
If Charlotte from Charlotte's Web were going to write "Some Pitcher" in her web, I bet it would be for Justin Verlander.
12:16
And while he has shown a tendency on twitter to be a bit, shall we say, fussy, the hat tip to Yankee Stadium was pretty amazing. I realize your individual milage on that may vary.
12:17
But truly, I think about where we thought his career was going in 2014/2015, and where it is now, and I still don't know if we talk enough about this run.
Zonk
12:17
Brewers now have a 4.5 game lead, and the 2nd best record in baseball.  Are you a believer?  Because the Fangraphs projected standings has them going 51-56 the rest of the way.
Meg Rowley
12:18
I like them a whole lot.
12:21
They are outperforming their pythag and BaseRuns by a few games, while the Cubs are underperforming, which is where some of this disconnect comes from, but I think (I think) I had them as a wild card team in our pre-season projections and I see no reason to think they won't play in October.
I'm more open to the idea of them winning the division now than I was a few weeks ago.
Weathering that stretch of bad health was huge.
Bobbo
12:21
Is Willie Calhoun ever going to get called up?
Meg Rowley
12:21
Yes!
When?
Ehhhhhh.
Soonish?
kyle
12:21
what is wrong with bryce harper?
Meg Rowley
12:22
I wonder if he's pressing a bit. Part of this is what he is being thrown obviously, but the K% is way up.
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