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Jay Jaffe FanGraphs Chat – 2/3/26
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AvatarJay Jaffe
1:04
I think a fair bit of it depends on Rafael Devers' defense (he has just 29 games at first ) and Bryce Eldridge's acclimation to the majors. If the latter gets sent back to Triple-A, I think you'll see Arraez doing more DHing than originally anticipated, with Casey Schmitt at second base
Sirras
1:05
How different would the MLB landscape be today if the Giants and Dodgers remained in NY? What locales would have teams that don't exist today? What current teams (aside from the obvious Mets) would not have been formed?
AvatarJay Jaffe
1:07
There's a fun one to ponder. I think one of the big upshots would have been the White Sox leaving for the West Coast by the '70s (which they almost did before the Mariners were introduced) leaving Chicago a one-team town for awhile. If not them, somebody would have moved to LA and SF in the 1960s though.
1:09
here's my piece on the free agent position players still available. https://blogs.fangraphs.com/february-free-agent-watch-useful-role-play...
1:12
And while we're at it, my musical interlude of the week: While chatting, I just spun Ty Segall's most recent album, Possession — it's the best of his many albums that I've heard in awhile, guitar-driven psychedelia with a bit of a 1970s AOR bent. Also digging Fuzz's Fourth Dream: Singles, Demos and Rarities; that's Segall's other band where he plays drums instead of guitar. An early review described them as sounding "like a murder-obsessed Blue Cheer," heavy psych rock.
1:13
Segall's vast catalog is worth exploring if you're into that kind of stuff.
Claude
1:13
The 2007 Mets -- of the well-discussed horrific meltdown -- now have four HOFs, with Wright and Delgado both making surprising leaps this year.  No question -- just amazing the talent that team had and how much that collapse still weighs over the franchise.
AvatarJay Jaffe
1:13
Indeed, though I'm skeptical Delgado or Wright join them in Cooperstown anytime soon.
Austin D.
1:14
What player has/had the biggest disconnect between how good you thought they were as a kid and how good advanced stats tell you they were?
AvatarJay Jaffe
1:14
Steve Garvey certainly comes to mind given how much I watched the Dodgers and how he was perceived.
kwabbit
1:14
With Pedroia and Rollins doing quite well in voting this year, are we going to be looking at Hall of Famer Marcus Semien in 10-15 years if he can scrape together a few more 3 WAR seasons? 49.2 bWAR already, more than Rollins and just 2.6 less than Pedroia.
AvatarJay Jaffe
1:18
I wouldn't call what Rollins and Pedroia did in the voting "quite well" (25.4% and 20.7%, respectively); they made gains on a very weak ballot but I'm not yet ready so say those results suggest future election. As for Semien, I've been saying for a couple of years that he's a stealth candidate, but I think his low batting average (.253) and the weight of his value that rests on defense given a modest 108 wRC+ will make him a harder sell to the voters. If he can't reverse the offensive decline that began in 2024 and really took him to the depths last year, I don't see much chance of him getting elected.
RetireNutting
1:20
Why would the Pirates load up on right side of the IF and DH platoon bats and leave 3B empty of league average hitters? What's the plan for Cherington? `Almost having a league average offense makes it look like I'm trying with this rotation?`
AvatarJay Jaffe
1:22
They apparently still see something in Jared Triolo that the rest of us don't? I mean, they spent how long with Ke'Bryan Hayes bleeding outs all over the place so it's like they forgot you can get offense out of 3B. I suspect they could dip into the low-cost free agent pool for someone like Ramón Urías or his brother to offer a bit more fortification but that's still a below-average solution
joe
1:23
do you see Konnor Griffin making the opening day roster for the pirates
AvatarJay Jaffe
1:24
With just 21 games of Double-A under his belt, I highly doubt it.
WinTwins0410
1:25
Jay, I know you don't write about every major leaguer who goes to the great beyond, but can we have a comment from you about Dave Giusti, the palmballer who was a key part of the Pirates' 1971 World Series-winning team?  He died Jan. 11 at 86.  His was an interesting career -- starter converted to a reliever.
AvatarJay Jaffe
1:28
Don't know a ton about him but he was absolutely nails during the 1971 postseason after leading the NL with 30 saves during the regular: 10.2 scoreless innings split evenly between the NLCS and World Series; he did allow one inherited baserunner (out of 5) to score and so was charged with a blown save during the Pirates' Game 6 loss to the Orioles.
Jeremy
1:28
With the many mlb.com writers now voting for the HoF, what's your sense of how the balance of views in the electorate has changed? Just offhand, it seems like you could roughly summarize many newer voters' view as "if you had 10 good seasons (say, 3+ WAR), a few of which were great, you're a Hall of Famer."
AvatarJay Jaffe
1:29
I think the only generalization I'd say at this point is that they're far more fluent in advanced statistics than the generation of writers whom they've largely replaced. Which is what you'd expect.
Crabcakes
1:29
FGDC projects Valdez + Gallen + Bassitt + two of Martinez/Verlander/Littell as better than about half of MLB rotations, including "at least sort of trying to win" teams such as the Orioles, Cubs, Angels, Astros, Giants, DBacks, A's, Guardians, and Padres.  My question is, "it's February!  Sign some starting pitchers already!"
AvatarJay Jaffe
1:30
Hence my two-article plan, and yes I noted in conceiving it that a rotation made of the top five available would be roughly mid-table relative to the 30 teams.
TameImp
1:30
As a kid I always remember reading that Pie Traynor was the best 3b in history pre Mike Schmidt and when you look at him wirh modern stats it's tough to reconcile.
AvatarJay Jaffe
1:32
I wrote a fair bit about Traynor in The Cooperstown Casebook. High batting averages during a higher-offense era and superficially impressive defense that at the very least is not upheld by the data that goes into TotalZone.
Alec
1:32
I've been surprised by how low Torii Hunter's HoF voting percentage has come in at, growing up he always seemed like the premier outfielder who was a good blend of speed and power. I know Andruw Jones is a bit above Hunter in terms of compiling stats, career WAR, and some accolades, but is the gap between them so large that Hunter couldn't hit 10% of ballots in what was considered a lighter class?
AvatarJay Jaffe
1:34
I think it's a sign that voters are looking at the defensive metrics — and WAR — beyond just counting Gold Gloves and admiring highlight films. And as I've noted there's a couple hundred runs between Andruw and Torii based on that data.
Farhandrew Zaidman
1:34
the Rockies seem meaningfully better, but still likely to lose 100 games. What's a realistic timeline to return to 500 ball?
AvatarJay Jaffe
1:34
The sun is projected to burn out in about 5 billion years so the race is on.
Bog
1:35
Does the league send out an email whenever a team DFA's a player? Is there a Google Sheet all the POBOs are on listing players currently on waivers? How do teams keep track of all these minor moves throughout the league?
AvatarJay Jaffe
1:36
The league has an internal system that informs teams of all player moves. I'm not sure how much has changed since 2018 but Rian Watt wrote about it then https://blogs.fangraphs.com/inside-baseball-how-mlb-transactions-actua...
Farhandrew Zaidman
1:38
In a fictional world where we have time machines, say we throw an "all time WBC" tournament. Each country gets their all time greats. I feel confident USA wins - but who rounds out the top 3?
AvatarJay Jaffe
1:40
Probably the Dominican Republic and Cuba. B-Ref has a page that shows cumulative WAR by country https://www.baseball-reference.com/bio/country_bat.shtml. The DR is second, Venezuela 3rd, with Puerto Rico (which is a US territory but often broken out for such comparisons and has its own WBC team) 4th and Cuba 5th — but we know a whole lot of Cuban talent either never made it over here due to Castro or spent a lot of prime years still on the island.

Fun exercise to contemplate.
1:41
OK folks, that's it from me for this week. thanks so much for stopping by!
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