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Jay Jaffe FanGraphs Chat –1/14/25
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AvatarJay Jaffe
12:00
Good afternoon and happy new year! Welcome to my first chat of 2025
12:02
Again it's been awhile, as I've been snowed in by my Hall of Fame series, including a larger-than-usual crop of interesting one-and-done guys. Yesterday I covered Ben Zobrist (https://blogs.fangraphs.com/jaws-and-the-2025-hall-of-fame-ballot-ben-...), tomorrow it's Curtis Granderson, with Fernando Rodney and Adam Jones still to squeeze in before Tuesday's election results.
12:04
I've been doing a few Hall-related media spots lately, including a Hall of Very Good podcast and some discussions of the ballot with writers. If this kind of stuff floats your boat, check in with me at @jayjaffe.bsky.social to follow along. By the way, my Twitter account is now locked; I basically stopped posting there just before running my annual Hall of Fame ballot piece (https://blogs.fangraphs.com/jay-jaffes-2025-hall-of-fame-ballot), and I don't plan to do more than occasionally lurk there going forward.
We're a week away from the Hall results being announced, so I expect several questions on that subject. With that, on with the show!
wheelhouse
12:05
i'm sure this is the least fun part of HOF voting to discuss, but does stuff like beltran starting low and gaining year-over-year bother you? in a sense i get it, but on some level a voter who switches to Yes on him thought that cheating was bad a year ago but this year actually it's in the past now. no one twenty years from now is going to care if he went in second ballot or sixth, so i dunno, either cheating is disqualifying or it isn't
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:08
Actually, year-over-year changes is actually one of the most interesting aspects of covering the Hall beat. Voting doesn't happen in a vacuum. Each candidate is competing with the other candidates for one of those 10 spots on a voter's ballot, and while not everybody goes to 10, enough people do that even some deserving candidates get left off. The voting body changes from year to year, with old voters replaced by new ones, and returning candidates that do well get more scrutiny from voters that bypassed them the last time. It's a very interesting set of dynamics in play, one we've started to get a better handle on thanks to Ryan Thibodaux and his ballot tracker group
12:10
With regards to the specifics of Beltrán, what I think voters are seeing is that it's the sense of proportion of punishiment that voters are reconsidering. Some people believe he's been particularly scapegoated or suffered far more punishment than, say A.J. Hinch and Alex Cora, who were suspended for a year but seamlessly returned to dugouts after that.
Matt
12:10
Hey Jay, thanks for your great work on the HOF series! Was curious about the Dodgers - specifically, how rare is it to have 4 HOF players (Ohtani, Betts, Freeman, Kershaw last season, likely for 2025) on the roster at one time?
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:14
it's not common but it's not, like, that rare. There are Yankees teams from the late '20s and early 1930s with nine! The 1961 Cubs had Richie Ashburn, Ernie Banks, Lou Brock, Ron Santo, and Billy Williams, and later Cubs teams from that decade had Banks, Santo, Williams, and Fergie Jenkins
I should put together a list, because i get asked variants of this question a fair bit and I never have a full accounting handy.
Bighen
12:15
Do you really think McCann and Martin are HOFers or were you just advocating for keeping them on ballot
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:19
I genuinely believe Martin is worthy based upon the framing data — which is huge because of the volume of pitches swing from balls to strikes over the course of a 14-year career — and  the way he was viewed within the industry. It wasn't a fluke that eight of his first 11 teams made the playoffs with him as the regular backstop, or that two GMs made signing him at top offseason priority and then ended 20+ year playoff droughts with back-to-back appearances. If I have to listen to people prattle on about this or that catcher's intangibles, i can point to some very tangible values that put Martin among the best of his era. I have McCann a bit below him in frJAWS, but I think this is a discussion worth continuing in the coming years, and it distresses me that both he and Martin may miss the 5% cut next week. If the voters aren't going to consider the value pitch framing, what objective data is there to justify the election of Yadier Molina?
sonny
12:19
The John Jaso mention in the Zobrist HOF retrospective sent me down the ras john rabbit hole. solid player and 80 grade 'remember some guys' candidate.
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:20
This whole ballot series pulls some Remember Some Guys gems every time, and Jaso is certainly one of them.
sonny
12:21
Mike Trout is 32 years old and has accumulated 86 bWAR. He's incredible, but maybe not the no doubt 100 WAR player we may have thought 5 years ago. What do you think his odds are to get--and stay above--100 WAR for his career?
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:23
Oh, I still I think he's got a better than 50% shot to reach 100 WAR. He's under contract through 2030 and while I don't expect him to play 150 games again, I also don't expect him to keep rolling out 29-game seasons.
SP "Surge"
12:23
Lot of starting pitchers doing better in tracking than may have been expected - Sabathia (though he's been a 'future HoF' for some time), Pettitte, King Felix, even Buehrle to an extent, are gaining ground or making a strong early showing. Do you think that this is evidence of a relative mindset shift by the voting body, giving the ongoing discussions on SP in the HoF? What are your thoughts here, given that you voted for Felix/have voted in the past for Pettitte & may do so again, pending future analysis?
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:27
I was just speaking about the starters' vote trend with The Athletic's C. Trent Rosecrans. I think what we're seeing is an arrival at a crossroads. CC has the peak, the longevity, and the big postseason footpritn of a Hall starter and looks like a slam dunk compared to his ballot cohorts and those upcoming. Félix has an impressive peak but no longevity or postseason, Pettitte has longevity and the postseason but only a modest peak. I'm not entirely sold on either Félix or Andy but I'm starting to think about them and their ilk, and i know a ton of other voters are as well. Where this will go, I don't know but we're going to keep talking about it over the next several years.

And that's really what I wish would would happen with Martin and McCann, in light of the upcoming candidacies of Buster Posey and Yadier Molina.
Brian Cashman
12:28
Does Marcus Stroman for Jeimer Candelario make sense?
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:31
i think you could construct a deal around those two, but it might require cash and other players to level out since Candelario has two guaranteed years and an option versus Stroman one year and a vesting option. The Yankees do need a 3B, the Reds may have less need for a starter but Stroman's groundball tendency would be worth more in that bandbox. I'm not sure Gavin Lux has the defense to play third base though.
Tom
12:31
do you think postseason statistics should be included in a player's career statistics (e.g., Pujols would "have" 722 home runs instead of 703)? i know the common argument against that is that not everyone gets to play in the postseason often or at all, so it's not fair to the Mike Trouts of the world that we might include an extra half-season's worth of playoff games for Mookie Betts when comparing the two — but that's true of athletic careers in general. not everyone gets to the big leagues in their early 20s or plays until they're 40. not everyone has the same injury luck.
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:32
I'm fine keeping regular and postseason stats separate. We can add them together if we want, it's not that hard.
Sam
12:34
How many more batting titles would Arraez need to win to have a realistic HOF chance? And would they need to be in a row?
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:39
Well, Bill Madlock won four batting titles but went one-and-done (4.5% in 1993) and has never made it onto another ballot. His defense was so bad (-107 via Total Zone) that he had no place to play after age 36, and finished with just 38.3 WAR. He'd be a poor choice for the Hall, and Arraez might not look like a very good one either. In winning his third batting title last year, he was worth just 1.0 bWAR, and so far he's totaled just 16.0 through age 27. The only way he can assure himself of getting to Cooperstown is by reaching 3,000 hits; maybe if he wins three more batting titles the conversation becomes more interesting, but even a 30 year old with 26 career WAR (where he'd be at if he replicated 2022–24 from a WAR standpoint) isn't somebody likely to get my vote.
deGoat
12:39
If deGrom can miraculously stay healthy and put up three more dominant 150IP and 5+ WAR seasons, is that enough for a ticket to Cooperstown?
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:40
let's see him do it and then we'll talk. There's no reason to get overly worked up about the hypothetical of a guy who insists upon crashing his Ferrari into a wall every time he picks it up from the dealer.
and let's see where the Félix candidacy goes
Mike
12:41
Why is San Francisco struggling to attract talent from the Pacific Rim? Location, community, and team's history with Asian players would suggest they would be a more favorable destination than they are. How does Posey Fix it
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:45
I don't think the problem is limited to the Pacific Rim. The Giants have had a hard time landing top-level talent for the long term for a few years now — yes, they came close with Correa and Judge — because the organization is seen as being in some kind of disarray. They've reached the playoffs once in the past eight seasons, with six sub-.500 seasons and four 4th- or 5th-place finishes. They're just not seen as a great landing spot until they pull out of that.
Steroid era
12:45
Shouldn't the HOF bar be lower for pitchers who pitched during the steroid era?  I'm thinking guys like Kevin Brown, David Cone, and Bret Saberhagen should easily be in.  Do you agree?
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:48
Those guys are at or near the top of my list of ones who at least should have gotten a longer look because they set up the conversation about starters that we're having now.

On that subject, I wrote about all three of those guys within a 6-part series I did in 2022, most of which was before the lockout negotiations heated up. The whole thing wasn't exactly planned out and so it didn't get one of those fancy navigation bars like my annual ballots do, and so I'd never even gathered the links together until today. They make for some interesting reading on the subject:
drplantwrench
12:48
im a KRod truther (there are dozens of us! dozens!)... do you think closers are properly valued in the advanced stats? and in the eyes of voters?
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:52
I think the voters mostly have it right in drawing a distinction between Wagner (elite rate stats) and K-Rod (very good rate stats). There's over half a run of ERA separating the two of them, and gaps in WAR, WPA, and WPA/LI, the metrics that go into R-JAWS. I've got Wagner as the best closer outside the Hall (6th in R-JAWS) and K-Rod 13th, below Nathan and Papelbon, both of whom went one-and done.
12:53
That Rodriguez has multiple ugly off-field incidents — one for assaulting his girlfriend's father (and injuring himself in the process) and one for a DV allegation further hurts his candidacy.
md
12:53
Speaking of hall of very good - which candidates this year would be your picks for hall of very good?
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:53
Pedroia, Wright, Tulowitzki, Zobrist... I don't see any of them really as HOFers but I have great respect for all of them and wish they'd done enough to merit stronger consideration.
Johnny5Alive
12:54
I know I have brought this up pretty much every year, but would you ever come around to voting for Wright.  His career was essentially over at 31, and if he even had 3 more healthy years at a typical decline, he would pass all your marks.  He gets penalized for a debilitating injury that ended his career.  He doesn't have the awards (altough he should have won MVP in 2007 he was the best player in the NL) or the championships (not his fault), but his career WAR is higher in fewer games than Kirby Puckett (different positions notwithstanding) and for comparison sake, he has the same WAR output per game played as everyone's darling this year Utley (who gets the benefit of 'starting late').  Wright gets penalized also for defense, yet his defense metrics swing wildly from season to season, which makes them questionable at best.  The math aint mathin Jaffe
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:59
In both of the last two years I've had one "reach" candidate on my ballot, a guy who's below my analytical threshold that I choose in order to stimulate my own thinking and that of others on the larger topic; last year it was Pettite, this year was Félix. I thought about Wright both times, but he's maybe 13th or 14th in my queue. He was on a Hall pace even with mediocre defense (-25 DRS career) but for the injuries, but if we started trying to credit every guy to whom that happened by electing them anyway we'd have to add another wing to the Hall. Dale Murphy, Nomar Garciaparra, Wright, Pedroia, Tulo — I've got better candidates on my wish list at each of their positions, guys with fuller careers I see as stronger HOF priorities.
Fans MLB Forever
1:00
What do you think about Alex Rodriguez and Manny Ramirez who have raised their percentages for the HOF?
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