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Jay Jaffe FanGraphs Chat - 2/4/22
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Brad
2:48
Why can't both sides just agree that they aren't getting extreme items like free agency a year early, just accept the trade off of Universal DH for expanded playoffs, and then meet in the middle with luxury tax and the non free agency bonus pool and easy enough to figure out international draft and regular draft lottery and let's play baseball....
AvatarJay Jaffe
2:50
because these concepts vary dramatically in terms of their economic impact and the players rightly recognize that the owners arenbelieve that the owners aren't negotiating in good faith.
2:51
It's never as simple as you think it is, and the goal shouldn't be "just avoid missing games," because there are real livelihoods and workplace rights at stake
Jeff C
2:51
Regarding the lack of recent starting pitchers in the hall, I think voters have complicated things too much.  Of the pitchers who debuted between 1900 and 1979, over 6% of those with 100+ starts are in the HOF.  Even assuming JV, Kershaw, Scherzer, Zach and CC, there would still be less than 3% from 1990-2009.  There's ample room for Pettitte, Buehrle and others without worrying about Cone, Brown and the prior era's glaring omissions.
AvatarJay Jaffe
2:52
some good points there though it's worth remembering that with Pettitte, PEDs and the Mitchell Report have complicated his candidacy. working on something in this area for publication next week.
Didace
2:52
"Would you ever consider leaving off a sure thing first ballot candidate to give your 10th vote to someone struggling to pass 5 percent?" I always thought (with the small amount of brain time I've given to it) that I would list all eligible players as yes/no and then vote for the ten yeses that have the least eligibility remaining. I know it's not the way the world works, but I don't much care about "first ballot" or "unanimous",
AvatarJay Jaffe
2:54
the Rule of 10 really does require anybody but the more small-Hall minded to do some kind of triage along these lines. it's worth remembering, though, that it's a bit more complicated because there's a lot of value in clearing a spot on the ballot and having those votes to redistribute next year. My vote for David Ortiz, which I did not anticipate bestowing until this election season, had a lot to do with the ripple effect of helping Rolen, Helton, Wagner, Jones, and Sheffield along.
2:56
and where a 90%-type candidate didn't need my vote, a 78%-type candidate did. Ortiz made it with 11 votes to spare
WinTwins0410
2:56
Jay, given how charged the PED issue is, how likely do you think it is that the Hall will make some kind of change that would prevent Bonds and Clemens (and Schilling, and Sosa) from being on this coming winter’s Today’s Game ballot? I know Joe Sheehan in his newsletter wrote that he’d be very surprised if Barry and Roger were on it. And really, I know that Mark McGwire leaving the BBWAA ballot and immediately falling onto a small-committee ballot is a "precedent" (of sorts), but do you think it’s a little strange that there would be no pause or hiatus in the voting for Bonds/Clemens/Schilling/Sosa, and that they’d be considered for the Hall *twice* within a span of less than 12 months? Curious your thoughts.
AvatarJay Jaffe
2:59
Well, there was supposed to be a one-year hiatus, but the postponement of the 2020 Era Committee votes due to the pandemic meant that the Today's Game eligibility lined up with the end of the Bonds-Clemens-Schilling tenures. The Hall put itself in this position, as anybody could have told you in August 2020, when the postponement was announced, that BB and RC weren't getting in via the writers (CS's continued sefl-immolation was less foreseeable). If they wanted the hiatus preserved, the Hall could have simply switched the order of the Today's Game and Modern Baseball deliberations around:
3:00
MB in 2023 and '25, TG in '24 and '26 would have been completely acceptable.
3:01
Now, it's going to look rather suspicious and targeted — as the shortening of eligibility windows from 15 years to 10 did — if the Hall does anything to change course
Bryan
3:01
Maybe the MLBPA and the league should just send their proposals to the HOF writers and let them even it out? Would this get us started on time?
AvatarJay Jaffe
3:01
Barry and Roger would like a word
Iso Joe
3:01
Recently, I've come across a couple of articles/tv segments describing Carlos Beltrán as a "borderline" candidate for the Hall. This seems off to me, considering that even by traditional standards (2700+ hits, 400+ HR's, 9 AS games as a switch hitting CF who played for 20 seaons), he has an evidently strong case. As someone who's planning to vote for him, why do you think this perception hangs around?
AvatarJay Jaffe
3:06
setting aside the 800-pound trashcan in the room, I think that belief is there because Beltrán did not reach the magic milestones that in a time before PEDs guaranteed induction. It's a mistaken belief that fails to account for the caliber of Beltrán's speed, defense and postseason performance, all of which elevate him.
Now, having said all that, Beltrán's role in the Astros' sign-stealing saga will definitely have some impact on his chances, but it's difficult to gauge just how much.
3:09
Is this an Alomar spit-in-the-ump's-face matter that would delay his election a year, or a Bonds-PED-level transgression that would keep him outside for the next decade? I don't know the answer to that at all, but it strikes me that  MLB being content to hang the blame on him and the managers and GMs while not attempting to hold any players accountable offends some sensibilities as well (even while acknowledging that the CBA would probably nullify Manfred's attempts to discipline players without there having been a rule on the books).
Mike
3:09
Obviously a stupid thing to do, especially twice, but would Tony LaRussa’s two DUIs have much of an effect on him getting your vote? Luckily he didn’t hurt anyone. I’m aware he’s already in
AvatarJay Jaffe
3:13
the baseball historian in me says no, because TLR's impact on the game was massive and the DUI stuff didn't have any connection to his career. The responsible citizen in me knows that DUI is a serious problem that I'm lucky has not affected me more directly, and I could see where a voter whose life has been touched by that would feel strongly enough to decide that it said something pretty significant in the negative about TLR's character.
Phil
3:13
I'm from eastern Mass and strongly biased in his favor, but even for me Pedroia seems like a Cantonian HOFer--that is, someone who'd be in easily if we used the NFL's standard for measuring peak vs. longevity. The only problem is that we don't.
AvatarJay Jaffe
3:17
NFL careers are so much shorter — and the sport so much more likely to produce career-ending injuries — that it makes sense. Gale Sayers played just 7 seasons and two of those were of two games due to injuries.
14343
3:17
I know hypotheticals are hard, but do you think if Yuli Gurriel came to MLB in his early 20s, he'd have a good shot at the hall?
AvatarJay Jaffe
3:19
The people who saw him and the statistics both suggest yes. Dan Szymborski did some translations that give you an idea of his numbers https://blogs.fangraphs.com/should-yuli-gurriel-and-jose-abreu-be-hall...
Mark
3:19
Why aren’t ballots required to be made public? Is it essentially bc y’all make the rule and would like to be able to save face and maintain privacy if necessary? Do you think they should all be required to be made public?
AvatarJay Jaffe
3:21
At the Winter Meetings in 2016, the BBWAA voted overwhelmingly (~90%) to make all Hall ballots public starting with the 2018 election (the '17 one was underway), but the Hall of Fame rejected our vote, giving voters cover to remain anonymous
Travis
3:21
Assuming games are cancelled, and a season starts late, how will the schedule adapt? Do they just start from the cancel date, or will they reschedule everything trying to fit more games in? Selfishly asking as someone who might be taken to some games in June for their bachelor party...
AvatarJay Jaffe
3:24
Probably just start from the date that they believe they can get things rolling and damn the competitive consequences. Maybe they use doubleheaders to make sure teams play the same number of intradivisional games? I really don't know.
Jack
3:24
Jaffe! Any hot takes on the ESPN top 100 players of all time?
AvatarJay Jaffe
3:28
I haven't looked, TBH, and don't have imminent plans to. They didn't even try to place Negro Leagues players, from what I understand, and they placed Jeter ahead of Pujols, which, what?

FWIW I do see a difference between not using Negro Leagues players within JAWS (though it's something I'm planning to study) and not ranking them in a top 100. JAWS is a ranking based on an objective formula whose blind spots — the postseason, subjective weighting of awards and historical importance, etc — could certainly change how one would rank the players in a more all-encompassing ranking. But if you're calling something a Top 100 of All-Time, unless it's the Top 100 WAR or JAWS rankings, you're implying that you've moved beyond the numbers, and if those are the answers, well, I'm going to have to question your process.
Anita Bath
3:28
I've heard fans say that if guys like Bonds aren't in the Hall, they don't even want to visit the place. The institution has to sort out this mess in order to remain alive, don't they?
Howard Beale
3:29
The HOF small committees have always been prone to cronyism and putting Ortiz in over Bonds makes it look like the BBWAA vote is a popularity contest. Can you give a good reason why people should still care about who is in and who isn't? To me the HOF is quickly becoming irrelevant.
AvatarJay Jaffe
3:29
tackling these both together.
3:35
The Hall of Fame has weathered ~30 years without Pete Rose just fine, and it will survive without Bonds and Clemens as well. For as much as one side thinks that this is the end of the institution's relevance, the other side believes that admitting those players is what would cause its downfall.

As to why people should care, the answer is that you certainly *don't* have to, and from a practical standpoint unless you live within driving distance you might not ever make it there in your lifetime, unless you really want to.  Nonetheless, people do choose to care because they want to see their favorite players honored and connected to the legends of the game — Ruth, Cobb, Mays, Aaron, etc. — and they want a place to go to see those players acknowledged, to see the game's artifacts, and to access its wealth of historical materials.
3:37
Long story short, while baseball's footprint may be receding as football and basketball and e-sports supplant it in the eyes of the kids, there's far too much historical weight there for it to go away, and the $11 billion-a-year industry isn't going to let the institution wither and die just because you've sworn you won't go there due to ~10% of BBWAA voters not giving ground on Bonds/Clemens when the other ~65% were in favor of their election.
WinTwins0410
3:38
AvatarJay Jaffe
3:39
Thank you for that! I am glad that my work has had an impact, and enough people higher on the food chain than myself have told me that enough times that I actually believe it.
3:43
I do think the electorate is better informed than it was 10 or 20 years ago, but  that the cacophony on social media regarding the most polarizing candidates threatens to overshadow that. This was a topic that surfaced in my recent conversations with both ESPN's Buster Olney (https://blogs.fangraphs.com/fangraphs-audio-buster-olney-and-jay-jaffe...) and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's Derrick Goold (https://www.stltoday.com/sports/baseball/professional/best-podcast-in-...)
Dan
3:44
Why doesn't a team with the most projected WAR also project as the best team? I know the Yankees aren't clearly the best team in baseball like their WAR implies but I can't remember the why's of the discrepancy.
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