JotCast | Jay Jaffe FanGraphs Chat 1/28/25

Jay Jaffe FanGraphs Chat 1/28/25

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Jay Jaffe

12:01

Good afternoon, folks! For the first time in awhile I'm on my second chat of the month, as the Hall of Fame election is now behind us

EonADS

12:02

Hey Jay, thanks for all the hard work you put in on the Hall of Fame information for Fangraphs each year. I know I certainly appreciate it.

Jay Jaffe

12:03

I'm very lucky to be in a position where FanGraphs give me as much space to cover the candidates and the Hall of Fame process. It's a lot of fun, and i know it's something people care deeply about. As I like to say, it's been my dumb luck to happen upon a resource that is practically a renewable source of energy

Alby

12:04

Harold Baines and Dave Parker were excellent hitters, but most consider them weak choices for the Hall of Fame. Does it feel like veterans' committees have given more weight to offensive statistics than to other factors, making such players look more like HoF's to them?

Jay Jaffe

12:05

Given that the Veterans/Era Committees are generally about 50% players, it's not surprising that they default to the more mainstream statistics which are not only usually offense-related but also centered more around old-school stats (AVG-HR-RBI, W-L) than new-school ones. That's a lot of what drives the choices — with less thought to defense

12:06

which isn't to say that WAR and JAWS don't get mentioned – I've been told my stuff gets circulated in the room but that's not to say it's driving voters' choices

Zach

12:07

I get that Hamels and Félix are close in peak via bWAR, and that's what informs S-JAWS, but by fWAR there's over 8 wins separating their top 5 seasons.Since that gap aligns with how they were viewed by, say, Cy Young Award voters,

Jay Jaffe

12:08

I've specifically chosen not to use fWAR in my pitcher deliberations because at the career level, differences in sequencing and BABIP are meaningful. At that point you're better off looking at actual run prevention as your starting point

12:09

and while Felix did win a Cy Young and Hamels did not, i think it's a stretch to assume it was fWAR driven. It was FIP driven, that much was more clear at the time

Pettitte Problems

12:10

Assuming that Andy Pettitte isn't elected by the BBWAA, how do you foresee his candidacy for a Veteran's Committee group? I would presume he's more well-liked by his contemporaries than a Bonds or Clemens, and think a committee with a Torre, Rivera, etc. would be more receptive to his candidacy...but I don't know for sure, because the HGH complicates things. (As ever)

Jay Jaffe

12:12

yeah there are two opposing forces that could affect his Era Committee candidacy, so to speak. A lot would depend upon who's on the committee, which is something the Hall has control of. we certainly saw them stack the deck against Bonds and Clemens with vocal anti-PED voices (Frank Thomas, Ryne Sandberg) and have seen committees with favorable makeups for Baines, McGriff, Parker in terms of former teammates and execs

12:14

I do think HGH would draw less ire than straight steroids but it's still gonna be a tough hurdle for Pettitte to surmount

Matt VW

12:14

Given the brevity of his career, I'm not surprised Zobrist didn't make the 5% threshold needed for a longer look. But is it surprising that he was shut out entirely? I get that for most voters he's not David Wright, but I wouldn't have thought he was Fernando Rodney either.

Jay Jaffe

12:15

Yes, I'm a bit surprised he was completely blanked when even somebody like CarGo and Adam Jones received at least a couple of votes. Zobrist left a much larger footprint on the game from a historical standpoint

FG BET

12:16

O/U 1.5 writers' ballot inductees in 2026?

Jay Jaffe

12:17

i'm taking the under, I think it's Beltrán in 2026 and Jones alongside Posey in '27, as noted in the five-year forecast, which I should have promoted up top https://blogs.fangraphs.com/slimming-down-the-next-five-years-of-bbwaa...

Link

12:18

From a HOF perspective, what is the difference between Dave Parker and Darryl Strawberry? They're rough contemporaries with similar off-field issues, but Straw has the higher bWar, more All-Star appearances, and is a local legend. Is it the MVP?

Jay Jaffe

12:20

Interesting question. I think one thing that separates them is that when Parker's name surfaced in the 1985 drug trials, he was publicly shamed and put on notice by MLB that he couldn't mess up again. Strawberry was suspended three times for substance abuse and it effectively ended his career

Link

12:20

More broadly on the topic of Straw and Parker, why do similar players get treated so differently by the Era Committees? Why are we always talking about Mattingly, but never Hernandez (longer career, higher bWar)? Does it all boil down to how they performed when they were on the ballot years ago?

Jay Jaffe

12:22

That's some of it. it's always puzzled me why Hernandez has failed to even crack an Era Committee ballot because he checks so many boxes. Even his cocaine issue is right in parallel with Parker's so it shouldn't be an impediment. Plus he's remained in the game for decades as a broadcaster, which certainly played a part in the election of Jim Kaat

12:23

But I think Hernandez's big issue is that his offensive profile doesn't look like that of a modern Hall 1B

Hayden

12:23

Do you think Pedroia could follow Wagner's path from 10% to election, with voters gradually becoming less concerned about the length of his career? I think Utley rising could also help him with more traditional voters--Utley has a clear lead in WAR but they compare well on most counting and rate stats, and Pedroia has a bit more hardware.

Jay Jaffe

12:25

I think there's potential for it to happen but there's a lot of inertia to overcome. Let's remember that the writers have yet to elect anyone from the post-1960 expansion era who finished with fewer than 2000 hits, and it wasn't until the 2022 election of Tony Oliva that an Era Comittee did so. Andurw Jones, Chase Utley, and Buster Posey all have the potential to knock down that barrier on the BBWAA ballot. If that happens, i think it opens up a lane for Pedroia, but I do want to see how much he increases his support next time around

Donkey

12:26

Given the Schilling/Bond/Clemens backlog, will we ever get underrepresented 1980s and 1990s starts into the Hall? Yes, maybe Kent comes off the list next year, but then he'll be replaced by Pettite. Given the changes in the electorate, if the Committee goes by BBWA performance, there'll always be an Abreu or Pedroia or Wright to consider without making room for a Whittaker or a Hernandez or a Cone.

Jay Jaffe

12:28

The current formatting is just so frustrating for that reason. Especially when we keep getting fed Parker and Garvey and John, etc. My frustration with the Historical Overview Committee that builds the ballots is well-known, but the Hall's decision to lump things together the way they have doesn't help

12:29

Who is th most deserving Hall of Famer that doesn't fit into one of the existing ways you can get in?

Jay Jaffe

12:31

Well, I think Curt Flood kind of fits that category. Yes, he was a 7x Gold Glover and 3x All-Star who helped the Cardinals to 2 championships and a pennant, but the brevity of his career means he's not going to get picked on the basis of his stats, and for whatever reason the HOC has never prioritized putting him up for a vote. We can't discount the possibility of executives stonewalling him the way they did Marvin Miller — he once pointed out to me how many executive voters either dated to the pre-free agency era or were sons of those who did — but at least getting him on the ballot builds some momentum.

Cameron L

12:32

Any further thoughts on Longoria/Donaldson's candidacies with the likes of Arenado/Machado/Ramirez coming up behind them? It seems like there will be a glut of third basemen and those 2 will be near the bottom of the pecking order.

Jay Jaffe

12:35

Yeah, while nobody from the latter trio has won an MVP award yet, Arenado and Machado are virtually even with Longoria in JAWS and Ramirez is close. All already have higher 7-year peaks than EL/JD and are still going. Let's not forget that both Longoria and Donaldson fell short of 2,000 hits (Longoria by just 70) so they have that additionally working against them, where Machado should get there this year and Arenado next (Ramirez still needs 500)

Kid

12:35

Why do you see Pedroia as more likely to gain traction than Wright? I would think they have almost identical cases (awards and post-seasons, notwithstanding).

Jay Jaffe

12:37

because awards and postseasons do matter for HOF voting purposes. Bill James' Hall of Fame Monitor does a decent job of capturing this; Pedroia scores 94, where 100 is a good possibility and 130 a virtual cinch; Wright scores just 74.

Alby

12:38

With Felix vs. Hamels, Felix was the best pitcher on his team, Hamels usually wasn't, which makes Felix feel like the better pitcher even if the stats say they're about even.

Jay Jaffe

12:41

I get that, but "feel" is a pretty small part of what drives my point of view on this. Also, Hamels didn't have half a decade of slow-motion sliding into oblivion while a fanbase's heart shattered into a million pieces

12:42

Hamels' only seasons with an ERA+ below 100 were 2009 (97, plus a lousy postseason) and his one-start 2020.

if he was available, he was generally very good to excellent.

Grand Admiral Braun

12:43

Have you even run a correlation on those players that have lead their league in fWAR (like Zobrist did) and didn't make the HoF? **For those eligible for the HoF. It's gotta be a smaller number!

Jay Jaffe

12:43

no, not directly. But it's hardly unheard of for one who led the league to miss out

Dancing Dan McGrew

12:43

Acuna would've been a free agent this year had he not signed an extension, what do you think he would get on the open market?

Jay Jaffe

12:45

That's a tough one given his frequent injuries — he's played in 120 or more games just twice — but I'd think over $250 million based on the ceiling

Dodgers' Future HOF Candidacies

12:45

Do you think Freddie Freeman's HOF candidacy will be hurt at all by the current handwringing over the Dodgers' spending and acquisition of talents like Sasaki? I'd imagine that the BBWAA is less prone to catastrophize or hold the team's roster management against Freeman, but I'm curious to get your take.

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