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Jay Jaffe FanGraphs Chat - 10/17/23
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AvatarJay Jaffe
2:01
Good afternoon, folks, and welcome to the LCS edition of my weekly chat. Yesterday we had a couple of games that got blown open early but tightened up late, and we now have the Rangers heading back to Arlington up 2-0 and the Phillies up 1-0 on the Diamondbacks after Schwaber, Harper, and Castellanos hit about 1300 feet worth of early homers.
2:02
I previewed the NLCS , in case you missed it https://blogs.fangraphs.com/nlcs-preview-arizona-diamondbacks-vs-phila...
Next up for me is a piece on Kim Ng's departure from Miami and hopefully a Corbin Carroll thing for later this week.
anyway, on with the show
KC Pain
2:02
Any info on Ng?  Seems like ownership and her w a rift from what I read.....but was that happening all year?
AvatarJay Jaffe
2:06
I'll have more tomorrow but I think there were a couple of related things going on. Ng wanted to clean house a bit as far as staff to find people she was more in alignment with and bring some new voices into the organization — something that worked out well when she got to hire a new manager (Schumaker) — but owner Bruce Sherman apparently wasn't amenable to that. He's planning on bringing in a president of baseball operations, so she essentially would have been demoted to second-in-command, which doesn't play well when you've just guided a team to its first full season above .500 in 14 years and their first full-season playoff berth in 20.
Yeah Well Hiura Towel
2:06
The way the playoff format has evolved over the decades, we are now seeing more games featuring lesser teams, and fewer games featuring the best teams. This does not seem desirable to me; I would think the optimal format would be a showcase of the elite teams playing each other.
AvatarJay Jaffe
2:07
yes but there's more playoff games, see, and in the eyes of Rob Manfred and the MLB owners, that means more money regardless of who gets the piece of metal.
2:08
It's important to remember that MLB's vision of optimizing means more money, with a nod to competitive balance in the "everyone-has-a-chance" version
whereas your vision of optimizing (and mine) is probably something much different
Sad White Sox Fan
2:08
Why do the White Sox want to be the post-World Series Kansas City Royals?
AvatarJay Jaffe
2:09
Man, it's a sad thing when your number one aspiration in life is to maintain a vise-like grip on fourth place in the AL Central.
2:10
I think Jerry Reinsdorf might look at the Royals and say, "See, they're not spending a lot of money and who cares?"
Kevin
2:11
Do you think there would have been so much outcry about the number of days off for division winners had the series been more competitive? (I myself think the bigger issue was the series lacked drama rather than the underdogs won. Had the series been competitive, I suspect people would be applauding the underdogs for having won.)
AvatarJay Jaffe
2:15
I think it's mostly a reaction to the Dodgers and Orioles geting smoked. The Braves-Phillies series was reasonably competitive in that three of the four games were decided by a total of six runs, but the Braves only led fleetingly. The Twins-Astros series was pretty competitive, too.
Tim
2:15
Is the Orioles' 2024 closer currently in the organization or will he be added this off-season?
AvatarJay Jaffe
2:17
With Bautista out due to TJ, it wouldn't surprise me if they go out and get someone, though at the same time, I don't think they're inclined to spend big money on a name-brand closer, so deciding among Cano, Perez, and maybe Hall could be a way to save money and spend it on another area of need.
Sean Malloy
2:17
Of the big three active relievers (Kimbrel, Jansen, and Chapman), which one do you think will get the most support on the HOF ballot? How much do you think BBWAA voters value postseason performance for relief pitchers?
AvatarJay Jaffe
2:20
I think Kimbrel and Jansen are well ahead of Chapman in terms of likely support, and they have very similar numbers and career patterns, so it's tough to separate them. As for postseason stuff, the writers do value it for closers, but as Billy Wagner's climb towards 75% illustrates, a lack of it isn't necessarily a dealbreaker.
2:21
Wrote about the relievers building cases for Cooperstown in July https://blogs.fangraphs.com/cooperstown-notebook-the-2023-progress-rep...
KC Pain
2:21
Hoping the fever isnt a double entendre and you are under the weather.  Who do you think has had the easiest path so far in retrospect?  The toughest?
AvatarJay Jaffe
2:25
Thankfully I'm in good health other than a perpetual shortage of sleep. In terms of paths to this point, assuming you're talking about the four teams still standing, it's clearly the Astros, who faced an 87-win team in their only round compared to the others each knocking off a team with 100 or more wins. As for the toughest path to this point, it's probably the Rangers, who swept two teams that combined to win 200 games this year.
Too many Mooks
2:25
If Ohtani signs with the dodgers, do you think it becomes *less * likely that Kershaw retires this offseason, because of how fun that team could be?
AvatarJay Jaffe
2:25
I think Kershaw's decision will come before Ohtani's, in part because there does clearly seem to be some medical aspect to it. That shoulder wasn't right, and I wonder if he needs surgery.
Sammy So-so
2:25
So, was the endless refrain about shifting suppressing offense a lot of hot air or was there actually some effect? Can we tell after one season? Thanks, Jay.
AvatarJay Jaffe
2:29
Well, year over year the MLB-wide batting average rose five points (from .243 to .248) and BABIPs rose by seven points (from .290 to .297), with slugging percentages rising 19 points (.395 to .414), though that part may have been less attributable to the shift than to rising home run rates. I think it will take a few seasons to get a true grasp on the effects of the ban but it does seem to have stimulated some offense.
Brewers: 20 Pirates: 0
2:29
Really impressed with the Texas Rangers postseason so far. Can they possibly win a World Series title without losing a playoff game?
AvatarJay Jaffe
2:30
I doubt it. Nobody has done it in the age of the Wild Card, and i'm just not holding my breath expecting that they will.
2:31
That said, what the Rangers have done, including taking the first two games of the ALCS in Houston, is very impressive, and they're now one win shy of tying the 2014 Royals for the most consecutive wins to start the postseason. https://www.mlb.com/news/longest-win-streaks-to-start-mlb-postseason
Schmeeper
2:32
What are the odds Houston takes 2/3 or 3/3 in Texas? They've played really well in Arlington and I like the pitching matchups for Houston (I believe in JV if it comes down to needing a win in game 5).
AvatarJay Jaffe
2:35
Going by the ZiPS game-by-game odds, they have about a 1-in-8 chance of taking the next three games and — did I do this right? — about a 3-in-8 chance of taking two of three.
Insert Witty Name Here
2:35
Could Playoff Harper do anything that would surpass him as being greater than Mike Trout?  I know playoff success is team based, but the narrative…
AvatarJay Jaffe
2:37
Eh, maybe from a narrative standpoint, Harper could surpass Trout — or already has — but Trout has almost a 40-WAR edge on Harper (85.2 to 46.2 in bWAR) in addition to more individual hardware.
Noah
2:39
Is there data that would allow factoring impact plays into assessment of player value? For instance, I'm thinking last night of how Schwarber turning on that first pitch fastball and how it set an offensive tone/approach for the next few innings.
AvatarJay Jaffe
2:43
You can look at WPA or Championship WPA if you're trying to quantify the impact of a play but Schwarber's homer, as emphatic as it was, doesn't stand out tremendously. It increased the Phillies' chances of winning by 10%, tied with the play in which Moreno reached on Dominguez's throwing error to put first and third with no out in the 7th, with Harper's homer 9%, and Gurriel's game-ending GIDP 9% as well. In the ALCS game that preceded them there were at least five plays that swung the odds 10% or more in one direction or another
KC Pain
2:45
Thoughts on what ATL does now?  Go big on SP reinforcements?  Give it another go and just pray they avoid Philly next year?
AvatarJay Jaffe
2:47
yes, they need to reinforce their rotation, particularly with Wright out for the season due to capsule surgery. They have a $20 million option on Morton that's probably worth picking up even as he heads into his age-40 season (he was at 2.7 WAR this year) but I think they need at least one more mid-rotation arm.
Homer
2:47
Albies at 19.3 fWAR at 26.75 years old, which is a great start, but he seems to be topping out in the 4-4.5 WAR/year range.  Any chance he has another gear that will give him the sort of peak that might result in a spot in the HOF?  Would another 10 years of 4 to 4.5 war get him there, even without the star-level peak?
AvatarJay Jaffe
2:50
He's a good player, and 20.2 bWAR through his age-26 season ranks 23rd among second basemen, with some HOFers adjacent (see https://stathead.com/tiny/1OStr), but he has yet to put up a single 5.0 WAR season and he's going to have to find some of those to stand out as a candidate.
Smiling Politely
2:50
If the Brewers were smart, they'd interview Ng to replace Stearns and then beat the Marlins next year
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