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Jay Jaffe FanGraphs Chat - 12/17/21
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AvatarJay Jaffe
3:21
I'm sure it will be mentioned, mainly because EVERYTHING gets mentioned come HOF season, but I don't get the sense yet that it will have as much bearing as, say, Utley's short-ish career due to his late arrival as a regular.
3:22
Eric C
3:22
Surprised about Dahlen not getting in?
AvatarJay Jaffe
3:23
a little but not overly so, particularly once I saw the extent to which Negro Leagues and pre-Negro Leagues candidates dominated that ballot.
Justin B.
3:23
You've put a lot of work over the years into developing your methodology for evaluating relief pitchers, and it's been cool to see that formalized in R-JAWS. After HOF season wraps up, would you consider doing a column that looks in more detail on what R-JAWS says about era committee candidates who deserve renewed attention and maybe induction.
AvatarJay Jaffe
3:24
Probably going to have some time to look at this in January if the lockout isn't settled. Likewise for S-JAWS. Speaking of which...
david
3:24
does sjaws change your opinion on any of hudson buerhle and pettitte or are they still below the standard
AvatarJay Jaffe
3:26
They're still below the standard; in fact, their JAWS and S-JAWS are identical, at least to the first decimal. They're *closer* to the standard because limiting the impact of the workhorses lowers the standard by 4.6 points. https://www.baseball-reference.com/leaders/jaws_P.shtml
3:27
I'll cover those guys in one round-up post this week. I think my opinion on them has softened a bit, but not yet to the point that I'd include them on my ballot
Sam F
3:27
Do the early public ballots, and some writers making the distinction between Bonds/Clemens and Ortiz, give you more confidence that Ortiz gets in?
AvatarJay Jaffe
3:30
As I've said before, I have little doubt Ortiz will eventually be elected, but I'm not sure it will happen this year. Through 28 ballots all three are polling at 76.7%. This is a great place to be for a first-year candidate and a terrible place to be for BB/RC in year 10 because we know how much their support drops off in the public/private split (nearly 12 points between actual and pre-announcement percentages).
Key Flaw
3:30
Yeah I was being facetious about players voting for the Spink award, but after seeing some ballots and their weird justification, it makes me wonder if many of the writers are qualified (I do know it has gotten way way better over the years). I greatly appreciate the amount you write about the HoF candidates, and while I don't think every write would put quite as much effort into their vote, I wish they would.
AvatarJay Jaffe
3:31
We've already seen some doozies, haven't we? Some ballots resemble dart boards, with no kind of logic connecting the selections.
Richard
3:32
Hi Jay. Does Peter O’Malley have a HOF resume? During his tenure as Dodgers president/owner, they won 5 pennants, 2 World Series, had 9 Rookies of the Year (which included Fernando-mania) and the first Japanese-born and Korean-born players in MLB history. He also played a major role in baseball becoming an Olympic sport, was a tremendous promoter of the game globally, the longtime chairman of the Little League Foundation, ran one of the most respected organizations in sports and hired Tommy Lasorda.
AvatarJay Jaffe
3:34
There's an argument to be made on his behalf but he did inherit a lot of the infrastructure that led to those results. In terms of Dodger execs, I am surprised Buzzie Bavasi never got in for his work as GM during the 1950s and '60s.

Marvin Miller aside for obvious reasons, I find it hard to get worked up about executive omissions. I'd rather they were voted upon separately, as was briefly the case in the 2000s; with some exceptions, i'd fel taht taking a vote away from a player or manager to vote for an exec would feel wrong.
Thomas
3:35
Hey Jay! Big thank you for all of your work covering the HoF ballots and voting process. Out of the last 10-15 years of voting, who are the most surprising one-and-dones in your eyes?
AvatarJay Jaffe
3:38
In a vacuum, Kenny Lofton, Jim Edmonds, Johan Santana, and Carlos Delgado come to mind but once you look at how absurdly crowded those ballots were, it makes more sense. Earlier, the one-and-dones of  David Cone and Will Clark surprised me a whole lot.
Scott
3:38
Have you read the article on the Nomar Garciaparra All-Stars at Bill James online? What do you think in general of people playing around with JAWS to do different analysis?
AvatarJay Jaffe
3:39
I haven't seen that one. Got a link?
mmddyyyy
3:40
If a player passes away before the normal 5 year waiting period, can they be considered immediately? Can't remember what happened with Halladay.
AvatarJay Jaffe
3:41
The rule is that the player can be considered in the next election that is at least 6 months after he passes. For Halladay that actually ended up being the one for which he was scheduled.
The rule was put in place after the election of Roberto Clemente in 1973
WinTwins0410
3:41
Jay, can I get your reaction to two more aspects of the Carew/Golden Days committee?  1) That is weird about Carew not being part of the vote and I hadn't seen that.  Curious what your reaction is (moot point now) to how vociferously Carew was in the day or two *before* the vote, making known publicly that he was going to work hard to get Oliva in.  It was the kind of thing that I don't feel like we'd seen a lot of publicly before previous vets committees.  And then 2) the Chicago Tribune's Meghan Montemurro provided some inner workings of the committee in a story on Dick Allen.  I've always assumed that the committee members leave knowing what the final vote totals are but apparently it's a secret ballot.  Fergie Jenkins gave her some insight into how the panel works and told her (and maybe other reporters) about his surprise that Hodges did so well and his amazement that Allen was snubbed.  It didn't occur to me that committee members themselves can be surprised by results.
AvatarJay Jaffe
3:45
3:47
I didn't see Meghan's piece, will have to find it — she and I have talked about Dick Allen in the past when she was covering the Phillies.

But yes, the balloting is secret and the committee members aren't privy to the results. Even the Hall president supposedly doesn't know when he opens that envelope.
Lou Perltzman
3:47
Not going to answer the McCutchen question?
AvatarJay Jaffe
3:48
Whoops, sorry about that. I went to chase down a table, from the Andruw Jones piece:
3:51
With 37.4 WAR through age 29 (and 8.6 since), Cutch doesn't even crack the leaderboard, but he's in good company.
Curtis
3:51
Would a team made up of those who failed to get 5% beat a team of the "worst" Hall of Famers?
AvatarJay Jaffe
3:53
I'd sure as hell take my chances with a team that had Ted Simmons at catcher, Dick Allen, Lou Whitaker, Bobby Grich and Ron Santo in their infield (doing a little rejiggering there to move guys around to other positions they played, and noting that Allen and Santo got back on the ballot due to an amnesty in 1985).
Zac
3:54
Jay. David Haugh, a Chicago sportswriter and sports radio host with a ballot, voted for Ortiz and none of the other "steroid guys."  He published his ballot and has been very upfront with his reasoning, mainly that the evidence against Ortiz wasn't as robust as the others and Rob Manfred seemed to give his endorsement of Ortiz going to the Hall during an interview.  One of Haugh's interviews on the radio eventually led down the path of him lamenting that the Hall simply does not give the voters sufficient guidelines about the criteria for election, leaving the voters to their own devices to judge who is worthy of admission.  Do you think the vague criteria is an issue?  If so, is that frustrating to you given how much effort you put into trying to determine who is Hall worthy?
AvatarJay Jaffe
3:55
The Hall has always viewed the vagueness as a feature, not a bug. At times it frustrates me, but hey, that's where the daylight that allows me to do this part of the job comes in!
Andrew
3:55
With Miñoso going in this year, 8 of your 14 Cooperstown Casebook profiles will now be in the Hall!  (With Ortiz likely soon, and hopefully Whitaker on the next Modern Baseball ballot.) Have you thought much about a second edition?  Whom might you include in an updated volume?  Kenny Lofton? Thurman Munson?  Bill Dahlen?
AvatarJay Jaffe
3:56
Short answer: I have been thinking a lot about that, yes. Maybe I'll have some news on this in 2022.
Scott
AvatarJay Jaffe
3:56
thanks
Dalton Wilcox
3:56
Any thoughts on writing about guys like Delgado who maybe aren’t HoF worthy (psh) but were such badass and even feared players? Delgado was suuuuch a good player
AvatarJay Jaffe
3:56
Wrote about him when he was a candidate.
3:57
OK folks, the clock is running out on this chat today. Thanks for so many great questions! I only intended to go for about an hour but was having too good a time chewing on this stuff with you.
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