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Brendan Gawlowski Prospects Chat: 1/27/2026
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Wile E Peyote
2:53
You're a GM with a high draft pick. Given all information available to you at the time and with no hindsight, you can draft either an Elijah Green (tools everywhere but significant hit tool risk) or Nick Madrigal (no discernable other tools but incredible hit tool). Which flavor of prospect do you select and why?
Brendan Gawlowski
2:53
It really depends on the players. There are some hit tool guys I'll take over tool sheds and vice versa. You need to know the heuristics, but at the end of the day, scout the player, not the demographic.
flightsongs
2:54
I love some of the details on micro skills and adjustments that have been popping into the FG lists lately (eg: prospect X has learned to incorporate their top arm better in their swing) and can only assume you're responsible, so thank you!

Are there any patterns in these type of skill improvements that you see in a particular system or level?
Brendan Gawlowski
2:55
Not that he needs me to sing his praises, but Eric has been all over this stuff for a long time. How he did all this with so little help for such a long time is mind boggling. Just look at how he was right there with Brandon Sproat's delivery and stuff. Anyway, as for your actual question
2:57
Yeah, teams have patterns. Jays will get stronger and stat. Dodgers will change pitch shapes fast. Pirates pitchers often pick up velo.
Insert Witty Name Here
2:57
whats your chess rating?
Brendan Gawlowski
2:57
bounces in the 1400-1600 range on chess.com.
Crabcakes
2:57
I suspect the way to have the highest possible "prediction accuracy" would be to predict every prospect will bust.  That's obviously not useful.  So how do you assess how well you're doing?
Brendan Gawlowski
3:01
This. If you wrote 'org' every time you'd be the most accurate guy in the world and you wouldn't have done a lick of good. Assessing how well you're doing is tricky, because you can be right for the wrong reasons and vice versa. So, for me, it's less about that and more about: did you accurately report what you saw? did your projection make sense given the info you had at the time? And then year over year: Are you repeating the same mistakes? Are you noticing the game slowing down? Are you able to break players down in a more specific way? The results, the proof in the pudding matters, but so do the answers to those other questions and oftentimes they say more about your progress than results
Aldo Rayne
3:02
Lot of catching prospects like Austin Wells or Alejandro Kirk where there's strong skepticism of their defense and then come up and kick ass.  Are those guys improving or is something being missed in their evaluations?
Brendan Gawlowski
3:03
Framing kind of throws a bomb here. There are other ways guys can improve/regress but that's a skill that has a huge impact on catcher metrics and it's one that can both show up overnight or never arrive
Aldo Rayne
3:03
What position do you think Emerson is playing when he comes up?  Assuming there's not an injury to Crawford or something
Brendan Gawlowski
3:03
I could see him breaking camp at 3B. No info again, just speculation.
Crabcakes
3:04
At any given time The Board has a handful of 80 Raw Power guys and a large handful of 80 Speed guys.  Once in a long while there's an 80 Game Power guy.  I don't believe I've ever seen an 80 Hit or 80 Field rating.  Does this make sense?  If tools are baselined to average, then shouldn't any grade be equally common across tools?
Brendan Gawlowski
3:05
I should probably use the top of the scale a little bit more. The hit tool in particular is loaded though.
Garrett
3:06
Did people overestimate what a Gore return would look like? I doubt Paul Toboni turned down overwhelmingly better offers and settled for less. Especially since he was clearly high on Fien as a prep player and views him as a T100 guy. Trust your own scouting, right?
Brendan Gawlowski
3:07
Are people disappointed? I thought the return was pretty good; Eric did too.
Steve E
3:07
Your opinion: Is Justin Crawford a center fielder?
Brendan Gawlowski
3:07
Yes
Syndergaardengnomes
3:07
Been going to FL for spring training for a few years now, thinking of making a trip to AZ for spring training instead...  Anything different I should know?
Brendan Gawlowski
3:09
It's way better. In general, if you want to maximize ball and minimize driving, pick one side of the valley or the other. East side will be more expensive but have better food. West side has better deals on big-league game tickets. Try avoid Cubs/Dodgers/Giants.
Cousin Sal Stewart
3:09
Going off Colton's question about you and Eric covering games, how does it work, both for FG and for an MLB team? How much control do you have over how you are deployed within your scouting area? Does someone from above go "hey can you go see this kid that weekend?" Or at least coordinate how to make the most of your time and travel?
Brendan Gawlowski
3:10
Depends on the team. With PIT, I covered the Northwest League and could do it as I wanted early in the year. Closer to the deadline, assignments got more specific. I was always jealous of the TBR scout up here who set his schedule in March and barely needed to deviate
For FG, we'll both hit the local stuff hard and travel occasionally where there's a lot of juice to squeeze.
Larry
3:10
if you had to bet on one for the '26 season, who would you pick between Nolan McLean, Misiorowski and Chase Burns?
Brendan Gawlowski
3:10
McLean
Guest
3:11
When do you expect the Nats list to come out?
Brendan Gawlowski
3:11
We're actually only doing 29 this year and we're gonna skip WAS. Our apologies
3:12
(jk; it'll probably be toward the end of the line based on how we've put it together)
Guest
3:12
Do you have a rough schedule of the prospect lists for each team will come out you could direct us to?
Brendan Gawlowski
3:13
Lot of questions on this. No schedule. The rough pattern is to prioritize orgs we either know well (in my case) and or teams with a lot of Top 100 guys (because we'll need to have those blurbs done early). We're also trying to cover the teams who are likely to trade prospects early so we have that analysis done by the time the deal happens; our strategy was sound in this regard but the execution hasn't line up
PinstripedPride
3:13
Is the reason the Yankees so rarely have an actual top prospect low draft position because of success in the majors, bad drafting, prospects not developing, or the team just trading too many away.
Brendan Gawlowski
3:14
They always draft low and tend to take safer draft guys and pair that with upside in international. It's a reasonable lane.
Crabcakes
3:14
Turns out I was doing the Board tool filters wrong.  There are zero to three 80 grade fielders at a time.  But Fangraphs has never given an 80 grade hit tool.  Maybe that's a result of Hit having less possibility for positive outliers?
Brendan Gawlowski
3:16
Part of the problem is that we either need to redefine what an 80 hitter is, which doesn't seem practical, or accept that while an Arraez may come around once in a while, it's really hard to project which guys both have the skill to do that and also the approach to prioritize hit over power
Mario Kart
3:16
which non-50+ FV cleveland prospect are you most excited to see this year?
Brendan Gawlowski
3:16
Robert Arias.
Insert Witty Name Here
3:16
Follow up chess Q - favorite openings and why? Love the parallels to chess and baseball, always gotta think three or more steps ahead.
Brendan Gawlowski
3:17
I seem to drift into a lot of Scotch games
Guest
3:17
Do you think Harry Ford is ready to be an Opening Day starter for the Nats?
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