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Jay Jaffe FanGraphs Chat - 1/21/22
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AvatarJay Jaffe
2:39
guy feeling I think Ortiz has about a 75-80% chance of election
Pedro
2:41
Do you have any news on Muncy's injury or estimate on how much time he misses?
AvatarJay Jaffe
2:42
he did suffer a UCL tear, but didn't get surgery, which tells us it's not a severe tear, but i think the assumption is that he wouldn't be ready for spring training on a normal schedule. I don't know much more than that
Tom
2:42
What would Scherzer have to do to give himself a shot?  Will a couple more typical Max years in New York do it?
AvatarJay Jaffe
2:43
with three Cy Youngs, 3,000 strikeouts, and a championship, I think he's already there (he's above the S-JAWS standard, FWIW). Getting the 10 victories he needs to reach 200 is probably the last obstacle and that should be easily attained.
Nate
2:45
How many future HOF players are on an average team at a given time?
AvatarJay Jaffe
2:45
it varies from era to era. I studied this for The Cooperstown Casebook and recently updated the numbers for a SABR talk
2:46
The top row is BBWAA-elected players, the bottom row includes the small committees.
2:47
that's active Hall of Famers per team per season, where playing a single game means you're included in the count.
Isolated Thinker
2:47
Although it may be bacause of high innings pitched, Rob Dibble had a better 3 year stretch than either Rivera or Hoffman WAR-wise.  How many more seasons would he have had to put together at even half that level to be considered?  Thanks
AvatarJay Jaffe
2:48
well, he only had 7 seasons, 477 innings, and 89 saves. That's not a reliever on a Hall path to begin with — he'd need another couple hundred saves to even begin to turn heads.
Jeff
2:49
What’s the probability Altuve gets in to the Hall?
AvatarJay Jaffe
2:51
In June Dan Szymborski estimated that Altuve has a mean projection to land around 2,700 hits and a 31% chance at 3,000 so I'd say his odds are somewhere in that range, assuming voters bear him no ill will for being on the sign-stealing Astros — and I think that's a questionable assumption; even if he was said not to benefit directly, he didn't do anything to stop it, and he benefited as a member of the team.
Justin B.
2:51
Billy Wagner has to be pretty likely to get elected by the BBWAA at this point, right? I mean, we'll see if he crosses 50% this year; that would certainly be helpful. I have to think that most Hoffman supporters can ultimately be won over to his cause (despite fewer IP and S) due to Wagner's superior rate stats. Right?
AvatarJay Jaffe
2:53
the question is whether he has enough time to get to 75% via the writers; this is year 7 and it seems like he's looking at a single-digit gain, not a double-digit one. I think he'll be elected by one route or another but I'm not yet sure it's via the writers.
Nate
2:53
Is Meg ever going to do a chat again? I know she has a lot on her plate, and this is not an insult to you or any other writer (your chats are all great), but would you pass along that her chats are missed?
AvatarJay Jaffe
2:55
We're glad you enjoy the chats! Alas, they're generally the first thing to go when the plate gets crowded (speaking for myself especially) and like you said, her plate is crowded — I think doing the regular EW podcasts in addition to running the site is already rather superhuman. But I will pass that along.
x2R
2:55
Will we witness a .400 avg player in the next years? And what a player needs to get there?
AvatarJay Jaffe
2:55
have you seen what batting average is doing these days?
Slew
2:55
Likability seems to be immensely important to candidacy. This seems to have buoyed Ortiz greatly, and likewise for Vizquel before the revelations about his behavior, of course. Have you ever considered adding a Q-score like component to JAWS to attempt to answer the question "Will they be elected?" in addition to the current "should they"?
AvatarJay Jaffe
3:01
no. JAWS is what it is, a measure that's useful for its objective nature, to be supplemented by more subjective considerations that tend to differ from voter to voter. Some of that mythical Q score is actually captured in the Hall of Fame Monitor; All-Star appearances and awards do reflect a player's popularity to some extent. But anything I come up with to estimate "likability" is subject to my own biases; there are players on this ballot I like much more than some fans and voters, and players I like much less than those fans and voters.
Justin B.
3:01
Your comment on Edmonds (15th in JAWS at CF) brought to mind something I've wondered about C and 3B, where we have fewer players in the HOF than at other positions. You've written a lot about Boyer of the years but what do you think about Graig Nettles (12th in JAWS), Buddy Bell (15th), and Sal Bando (16th), or Gene Tenace (13th at C)? None of these guys are above the JAWS standard, although some are close to the WAR7 standard. But do you think they deserve to be HOFers by virtue of their ranking in JAWS, even if they are under the standard as a whole?
AvatarJay Jaffe
3:03
Yes, I think absolute ranking helps, especially at underrepresented positions; I'd be fine with Nettles, Bell, and Bando getting elected though I think it's much more important to see Allen, Rolen and Beltre get in. LIkewise for Tenace vis-à-vis Mauer, Posey, Munson and Freehan
Mike
3:04
Given Arod and Manny's uphill battle on the ballot, is it fair to assume Cano is not going to get in? Do you think that he would waive his NTC if it means that he can get in with 2 more good years?
AvatarJay Jaffe
3:05
with two suspensions, Cano is screwed even if he gets to 3,000 hits, and rightly so.
Jeb
3:05
Not a Q, just a comment. Could not care less about the HOF, but I think your articles are great and they've convinced me to read your book. Thank you!
AvatarJay Jaffe
3:05
Thank you for the support! I hope you enjoy the book
WinTwins0410
3:06
Jay, you wrote that you are grappling with the Golden Days committee’s vote to induct Jim Kaat, but in many respects, Kaat’s election can’t have been a surprise — he’d come close on other previous ballots, and he’s very popular across baseball as a longtime, still-working broadcaster, and he had a former teammate on the committee in Schmidt. Isn’t it fair to say that the bigger surprise really is Hodges getting in? The past few era committee cycles for Gil showed him with minimal support at best. What in your opinion explains the shift in committee support for Gil Hodges? For the past few elections, his support had tailed off (small sample size, I know). I had figured that as those who actually saw Hodges play had died off, it had seemed like he was consigned to down-ballot purgatory, sort of like Ken Boyer. What do you think tilted this particular committee to get Hodges in? Was it coverage about his 95-year-old widow still being alive, do you think?
AvatarJay Jaffe
3:08
Hodges was the ultimate hard-luck Hall case — the only guy to get to 50% and not get elected by one route or another, and he even got to 60%, and then was said to miss VC election by one vote —  so I can't be too surprised at that either. Particularly given that his managerial career and untimely death allows for a subjective cushion that really had no boundaries. Good, popular player plus championship winning manager who might have won more but was tragically struck down... I mean, that certainly has its appeal, and at time I was made to feel as though I was arguing against puppies and apple pie by saying that there were much stronger candidates out there.
Ben (not Clemens)
3:09
Does Chase Utley make it before his 10 years are up? Doesn't have the counting stats but his peak seems HOF-worthy
AvatarJay Jaffe
3:09
I hope so but we'll see. I imagine his candidacy will be a Rolen-like one but accompanied by endless shrieking from Mets fans.
Steve
3:10
Jay, your post count on Fangraphs stands at 979. I trust you have super spectacular plans for #1000?
AvatarJay Jaffe
3:11
wow, didn't realize it was so close. I keep all of my writing in a Mac program called Scrivener, where I have my own numbering system that doesn't include chats or multi-author pieces. There I'm at 859 and counting
Yakov
3:12
I know you've written up about Schilling and that given well....every public utterance he's made over the last several years it looks like he won't be voted in by the BBWAA. But given that there are already multiple players with really horrible characters in the HOF, how "fair" is it to keep Schilling out bases on the character clause?
AvatarJay Jaffe
3:19
As noted above nobody gave a shit about the character clause until 2007. Now that voters have decided to invoke it, it's fair to ask if a PED infraction is really the worst mark against character and integrity that we can imagine; I would argue that we've seen behavior from some current candidates that was much more damaging than PED usage. I think collectively, voters are grappling with that, and if the consensus is that DV allegations are enough to sink a candidacy, I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing.

As for Schilling, I would argue that using his sizable platform to spread misinformation about vaccines and election conspiracies — and calls for martial law — constitutes uncharted territory for a candidate; nobody imagined anybody would have to evaluate a candidate on that basis. I've made my peace with not endorsing the further enlargement of his platform while recognizing that eventually he's likely to be elected anyway.
olethros
3:19
I know you've long been a proponent of lifting the 10 vote max on HoF ballots, but given that historically an average of 8 of the top ten vote getter on each ballot were eventually inducted would you support a minimum number of votes, with ballots under that minimum being tossed and those submitting them possible losing voting privileges?
AvatarJay Jaffe
3:22
I don't think you can tell a voter that you trust his/her judgment to evaluate candidates according to very nebulous standards, and then turn around and make continued participation contingent upon endorsing a certain number of those candidates, or upon endorsing a specific candidate ("if you don't vote for Derek Jeter, who's obviously a Hall of Famer, we're kicking you out"). More to the point, the Hall and the BBWAA clearly aren't going to do anything to stop the occasional blank ballot or one-candidate ballot.
Nate
3:23
The Bernie Williams link brings back a 404 error...
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