You are viewing the chat in desktop mode. Click here to switch to mobile view.
X
Jay Jaffe FanGraphs Chat - 12/15/20
powered byJotCast
Prev Page View Full Chat Next Page
Matt J
2:46
What's the deal with the seemingly increase in non-tenders and fewer contracts to vets over the past few seasons? Seems like low to middle end players are underpaid while top end free agents are getting most of the teams' budgets. How would you fix this?
AvatarJay Jaffe
2:48
Eric Longenhagen wrote about the increasing number of non-tenders last month https://blogs.fangraphs.com/on-the-coming-deluge-of-non-tenders/. As we've seen in recent winters, teams are doing more to put the squeeze on free agents who aren't top-tier, and they know that flooding the market with several roughly equivalent alternatives helps to keep costs down.
2:49
I don't have a great answer for how to fix that beyond making sure that players get paid more earlier in their careers so that pre-arb and arb-year guys can so easily crowd out the vets.
Guest
2:50
How does the "cap" work in a prorated season.  Is it also prorated?  Or, could teams that might be going close, go past it, since the season will likely be ~10-15% shorter, thus saving them about that much in actual salary?
AvatarJay Jaffe
2:55
I thought I remembered MLB waiving the CBT for this season but now I can't find where I read that; I know that they waived the revenue sharing between large and small-market teams. Rather than bring this chat to a halt as i dig further, gonna move on and hopefully somebody reminds me.
David
2:56
Andruw Jones....in what year would you "guess" he will be elected to the Hall? Being the best defensive center fielder of all time and all.
AvatarJay Jaffe
2:57
2028, maybe? That would be his 10th year of eligibility on the writers' ballot. By then I expect both Carlos Beltran and Kenny Lofton to be in, which will make his omission stand out more
Purple Drink
2:57
Should teams that don't need shortstops (e.g. the Mets) be looking at Marcus Semien as a 3B solution?
AvatarJay Jaffe
2:58
I don't think he's got enough bat for 3B and I suspect many if not most teams feel that way
Springer
2:58
What more does Scherzer need to do to get in to the Hall of Fame?
AvatarJay Jaffe
2:59
With 3 Cy Youngs he might get in even if he never threw another inning but I think that by the time he reaches 200 wins and 3000 strikeouts (he's at 175 and 2784, respectively) he'll be considered a lock.
45 blows billygoats
3:00
If Buster Posey retired today...HOF'er?
AvatarJay Jaffe
3:00
I'd vote for him myself but I suspect most voters feel he has to have at least a couple more solid and healthy seasons
John
3:00
scratch that.  Looking at era committees it looks like Allen, oliva, piniella, Parker and Evans are next -  agree?
AvatarJay Jaffe
3:05
The ones I'm most keen on and realistic about are Allen and Miñoso for Golden Days, and Whitaker and Evans for Modern Baseball. Past voting totals suggest Oliva for the former, Parker for the latter, and Piniella for Today's Game but i'm extremely lukewarm on all of those. I'd take Jim Leyland, who has yet to be on a ballot and who took teams to 3 World Series in a heartbeat over Piniella, who only took 1.
John
3:05
how do you feel about Marty Marion’s chances?
AvatarJay Jaffe
3:05
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Mike Ortman
3:05
Fastidiously following HOF articles and info is what I’ve been doing to keep myself sane in my spare time during this decade long year we’ve been through.  But I LOL’d multiple times reading Ray Ratto’s article on Defector about his HOF vote.  What were your thoughts?  His jabs at you and others were obvs tongue in cheek.
AvatarJay Jaffe
3:06
Totally. Ray's one of a kind and I enjoyed that so much it probably makes him angry.
Ortman
3:06
How about some outlier picks for the HOF that you would get behind?  One 19th century guy?  One Negro Leaguer?  One contributor?
AvatarJay Jaffe
3:08
Bill Dahlen for the 19th century guys (though he crossed into 20th), Buck O'Neil for the Negro Leagues, and Doc Adams for his pioneering work.
Guest
3:09
Players need to face the media after games, voters should face the media after their votes. Prove me wrong
AvatarJay Jaffe
3:10
The BBWAA overwhelmingly voted to make ballots public a few years ago. The Hall rejected our decision.
GSon
3:10
The confidence in the business of baseball  has been serverely tested and has barely survived.. With the news that the MLB owners are attempting a gambit/end run by including the vaccine (and, hopefully it's effectiveness) as a prerequisite to opening the 2021 season, this will give the owners a fighting chance to achieve some form of fiscal "win".. Do all teams survive? Will a team, like the indians have to "sell off" the Lindor's and Ramirez's to stay afloat? Will the MLB ownership band together to assist this difficult time?
AvatarJay Jaffe
3:11
There's no way in hell the viability of any franchise is threatened by the pandemic — all of them would sell for massive amounts of money if they hit the market.
WinTwins 0410
3:11
Jay, in your 9/1/2020 chat, I asked you if -- by postponing the small-committee voting one year -- the Hall was run by idiots, was just plain cruel, or both.  You answered at the time that you didn't think it was run by idiots, and I accepted that answer then and now, as the Hall clearly was ahead of the curve on the pandemic.  But can a case be made that -- looking at delayed inductions and heartbreak for Ron Santo, Marvin Miller and now, likely, Dick Allen -- something with these era committees is cruel and has to change?  Posthumous inductions of the recently deceased seem really, really stupid to me.  And if a case can be made that something with the committees has to change, do you think Allen's death *will* spark a change in the coming months with the era committees?
AvatarJay Jaffe
3:16
I think the fault lies less with the institution and more with the mindset of individual voters. The Hall was quite reasonable in creating the Era Committeee process and in downshifting so that older eras were considered with less frequency. The fact that these guys have all come up for votes several times, and that their candidacies have become more favored by additional research in that span — that's on the voters, some of whom may have held petty grudges against the likes of Santo, Allen Miñoso et al or failed to reflect upon the obstacles that they faced. The one thing I'd say the Hall could do to simplify this would be to allow voters to name 5 guys instead of four from among the slates of 10 candidates.Tom Tango has done the math on this and it's nearly impossible with just 4 votes per voter.
3:17
I should note that when I put that on the individual voters, the living HOFers who participated in the old VC process, which never elected a single candidate and which endlessly f*****d up with Miller bear a significant amount of the blame.
Chris
3:18
Mariners just made a trade
AvatarJay Jaffe
3:18
Mets fan
3:18
If Degrom wins the Cy young this year is he a hall of famer? Would be 3 in 4 years with a 60 game season breaking up the 3 peat
AvatarJay Jaffe
3:19
if he wins another it will put him in a unique situation regarding his candidacy. Short and sometimes less-than-stellar careers explain away why the 2-time winners aren't in, but the only 3-time winner on the outside is Clemens.
Collin
3:19
Does the McCann deal mean the market is not nearly as cold as we expected?
AvatarJay Jaffe
3:20
No, it means Steve Cohen is telling the truth when he said the Mets would be aggressive this winter.
David
3:20
Beltran and Lofton before Andruw?  He is definetly above them.
AvatarJay Jaffe
3:21
he's 11th in JAWS, Beltran 9th, Lofton 10th. Gold Gloves and favorable defensive metrics aren't everything.
C@$hman
3:21
would you rather have Lemahieu at 2b and gleyber at SS or Trevor story at SS and gleyber at 2b?
AvatarJay Jaffe
3:22
Story-Torres. I don't think Gleyber is good enough defensively to hold down SS
Ariel White
3:23
Thanks for your answer. I do recommend talking to your colleague, Sheryl Ring, before voting for someone like Bonds or Jones to get her insight on voting for an abuser. I think that it is important to understand that it isn't up to the voter whether or not they are sending a message with their vote.
Connecting…