Eric Longenhagen Prospects Chat
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Jonathan
12:56
Have you ever looked retrospectively at how "sticky" changes in prospects' skill gains are? For example, when hitters' mechanical changes vanish under game pressure or during exposure to more advanced competition; or when pitchers have momentarily better pitch shapes but release traits aren't stable. My examples may be crap but hopefully the high-level question makes sense.
Eric A Longenhagen
12:59
It's a good notion and your examples are good. Changes I notice are just the ones I stumble into knowing, or discover when I need to study a player. Catching that a guy has started using a new slider grip one day can be tough to monitor, especially across the whole player population. So understanding what is/isn't sticky in the way you're describing becomes almost impossible...
1:00
If anything the changes we learn of are mostly the ones that *have* stuck, and that's part of why they become evident to us.
War2D2
1:00
Eric! With Bazzana as the…third? fourth? fifth? guy from that nutty draft hitting the majors, where do you think 2024 will rank in terms of all-time great drafts? Not that all of them will necessarily be Hall of Famers or even stars, but it sure seems like a group that will include a ton of everyday MLB regulars.
Eric A Longenhagen
1:01
Off to a damn good start. Tolle was 53rd pick that draft?
Sal's Mom
1:01
Is there another guy similar to Luis Mey with elite velo and crazy movement on his heater? 100+ with hair on it is so much fun to watch
Eric A Longenhagen
1:04
I'm excited to monitor Florida's complex arms this week
Swiftie
1:04
Hey Eric, can your tidbit of news you drop each week be a Dax Kilby injury update?
Eric A Longenhagen
1:05
WOrking on it.
Pedigree
1:05
Is there any evidence that major league pedigree actually means anything? For every Vlad Jr there's a Druw Jones, and even the highly-touted Jackson Holliday has so far been a disappointment (though there's still plenty of time)
Eric A Longenhagen
1:08
Insofar as your genes influence how strong and athletic you are, yeah. Your dad's tall, you're more likely to be tall. There's also the $ part of it. Having access to resources (your dad might have a batting cage in the yard, you grew up playing catch with his teammates, etc.) is also a variabe.
Like I don't think there's magic in it, it just slides the likelihood of the young player having the necessary components up.
Oaktown Blues
1:08
Any chance you have intel on Braden Nett's latest injury?
Eric A Longenhagen
1:09
I think he threw in AZ while I was in Florida, and if that's true he's not all that far away from an affiliate.
Alex
1:09
Since James Fegan doesn't do a chat, I was wondering if you could talk about his process when publishing prospect lists. Is he able to get out to the complexes and backfields to get looks in person? Does he tend to prefer certain prospect types more or less than you or Brendan?
Eric A Longenhagen
1:11
James is a full time white sox beat reporter at Sox Machine who contributes to our prospect stuff on the side. He is mostly at big league games.
Not actually a question but
1:12
Blue Jays farmhand Chay Yeager appears to be listed on The Board at 5'1"; alas, he is 9 inches taller than that. The height sort function also seems to only sort alphabetically, so trying to go by increasing height puts 5'10 players before 5'6 players; is this a known issue?
Eric A Longenhagen
1:14
No, but thanks for alerting me. Yeager is a typo. My inputs are in inches (73) and it converts it to 6'1" for the site itself but should sort the way you want it to.
Michael
1:14
Thoughts on Xavier Neyens in a small sample so far? K rate is high but exit velos are very encouraging.
Eric A Longenhagen
1:15
That's who we thought he'd be. Good prospect, but not suddenly changing how we feel about the hit tool risk piece of it.
Anthony
1:15
What's the hold up on Max Clark and Walker Jenkins. Do they still need more seasoning or is this service time manipulation?
Eric A Longenhagen
1:16
Clark dropped a can of corn fly ball the other night and Jenkins is slugging under .300.
Prospect-for-prospect trades
1:16
Is it really just the fear of being on the losing end that these don't happen more often? There are countless cases where the fits make sense, and this seems to not even be exclusive to prospects--teams seem very reluctant to swap one young player for another young player even in obvious double change of scenery candidates
Eric A Longenhagen
1:20
I think good big leaguer fomo is a real thing, but mostly I think it's okay not to just willy nilly trade young players around. People in your org are personally invested in them, they have friends and lives. The D'Backs make a biggie challenge trade once in a while and i'd like to see one or two every year, but I don't need Felnin Celesten for Josue De Paula trades.
Guest
1:21
Never remembered to ask about it until now, but was surprised to see Brady Kirtner not even get an honorable mention on the Yankees list and was wondering why.  Obviously it's fair to question if he'll even make the majors given questions with control/command, but he can spin the hell out of the baseball since he averaged a hair under 2800 RPM on his fastball/cutter and above 3100 on his breakers, and you were willing to add Jhoniel Serrano to the Marlins' list last year for similar reasons.  Apologies if the question comes off as dickish (not the intention whatsoever), but hopefully you see why it came off as a bit curious.
Eric A Longenhagen
1:22
Not dickish, that's the kind of thing that gets a guy snuck in toward the back of the list and you could totally consider Kirtner mentionable.
I'll tag him in this chat and it will act as his de facto inclusion in the Honorable Mentions of the Yankees list.
1:23
Dax Kilby is a hammy, idk what his timeline is.
Dontrelle Willis
1:23
Ethan Salas has been a huge dropper among top prospect lists due to injuries and poor offensive performance over the last couple years. Seems to be turning it around with a 0.883 OPS in Double-A this year. Should he be back on the top prospect radar soon?
Eric A Longenhagen
1:24
He was on our offseason 100
1:25
Oh wow, I'm ran the light a good bit today. I'm gonna split. Cubs list early next week, I'm thinking Orioles after that (need to coordinate with Brendan, we're double teaming that system)
thanks for coming!
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