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Jay Jaffe FanGraphs Chat – 3/3/26
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AvatarJay Jaffe
12:01
Good afternoon, folks! Welcome to my first chat of March, a month that will feature actual regular season baseball and before that, the World Baseball Classic, which starts at 10 ET tomorrow night (which will be Thursday in Japan)!
12:02
Apologies in advance because the first 15 minutes of this chat are probably going to be a bumpy ride as I've got a grocery delivery about to arrive and it includes frozen stuff so I can't just let it sit.
Yesterday I wrote about the Yankees outfield picture in the wake of the addition of Randal Grichuk https://blogs.fangraphs.com/yankees-add-randal-grichuk-to-fill-a-niche...
12:04
Last week, inspired by a couple exchanges in chats from earlier this year, I looked into Jarren Duran's 2025 season and the state of the Red Sox outfield picture (https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/fitting-jarren-duran-into-the-red-sox-...), and then hitter month-to-month consistency through the lens of wRC+, a Duran-related tangent (https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/jarren-duran-jorge-polanco-aaron-judge...)
12:05
I'm planning a follow-up on the last of those using Statcast data.
12:07
Ok, let's get started with the questions, mindful of the fact that I may soon have to step away
bringbackpologrounds
12:08
Does Skubal's WBC pitching plan raise an eyebrow? He claims it's not FA-related, but if he's so worried about preserving his ramp-up for the season, why is he even on the team?
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:11
As I understand it, Skubal's plan is to make just one start for Team USA, with a 55-pitch limit. I think that sounds like a compromise between the thrill and honor of participating and representing his country, and the realities of the pressure on him as the ace of a contending team. I get that it's not ideal but I also don't think it's a big deal
No player, particularly a pitcher, should have to shoulder a big burden in this context, and if the days he'd be available don't line up with the WBC schedule, I can't say I blame him
Steven
12:11
A time traveler from the future tells you that Ronald Acuña plays 150-plus games each season the rest of his career. What would you peg his odds of making the Hall of Fame? And what's his career WAR total?
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:13
...and there's the grocery delivery. Apologies for the delay...
12:18
...and we're back
12:21
If Acuña's playing 150 games a year at a reasonable level of quality i think he's probably Cooperstown bound. The guy has been worth 5.7 bWAR per 162 games, and even if he were worth, say, 3.0 WAR from here on out, that puts him over 60 WAR assuming he at least gets to his late 30s
While I was running around, this came down: https://x.com/jeffpassan/status/2028880474949492839?s=46&t=g_PT0BXbhsS...
12:23
Profar suspended for the 2nd time, which not only leaves a hole in the Braves lineup, it costs the WBC Netherlands team a key player.
12:24
I'll be covering that tomorrow for the site. On the subject of the WBC, check out Kiri Oler's pool-by-pool series of roster evaluations. Here's Pool D, including the Netherlands team https://blogs.fangraphs.com/diving-deep-into-world-baseball-classic-po...
12:25
Also on the subject of the WBC, Davy Andrews has a thing on teammates facing off — we won't get Ohtani vs. Trout but here's what could happen https://blogs.fangraphs.com/teammate-connections-during-world-baseball...
12:26
And Michael Bauman has some ideas about young players who could break out during the WBC (no, not in terms of teen acne) https://blogs.fangraphs.com/woo-joo-jeong-is-skating-the-river/
12:27
Think Harry Ford for Great Britain in 2023 — a prospect who puts himself on the map because he's competing against higher-level talent.
12:29
Oh, and speaking of Davy, his bandmate in the Subway Ghosts, MLB.com's Michael Clair — who is on-site in Japan — has a book about the cinderella Czech Republic team from 2023 that I just started. It's called We Sacrifice Everything for Baseball https://bsky.app/profile/michaelclair.bsky.social/post/3mf2viganmk23. Definitely worth a look if you love the underdog stories of the WBC
Ok, back to our regularly scheduled programming
Jordan
12:29
Do you think Matt Olson has a shot to get inducted?  By the time his contract is up he should have over 400 homers and will only be 35.  500 a real possibility?
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:32
Olson popped up on my radar when I did last year's Cooperstown Progress Report series https://blogs.fangraphs.com/cooperstown-notebook-the-2025-progress-rep...

Updating what I wrote there, he turns 32 later this month so he's no spring chicken, but thanks to his combination of power, plate discipline and elite defense, he’s at 39.7 career WAR/35.7 peak/37.7 JAWS, with three seasons between 3.3 and 4.0 that he could still improve upon to approach a 40-WAR peak before too long. That's a guy with at least an outside shot at the Hall
Matt VW
12:32
Scale of 1 to 10 how keen are you on the World Baseball Classic?
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:33
I love the WBC! I will watch the hell out of it. I haven't done enough to absorb all the details of the pools and rosters yet but Kiri's series has gotten me jump-started in that direction
So put me down for like a 9 there.
puddle
12:33
Any WBC teams you're especially interested in watching, aside from the obvious top 3?
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:37
Assuming you mean Team USA, defending champions Japan, and the Dominican Republic, the other ones I'm most interested in from a rooting standpoint are the Netherlands (honkbal!), Korea, Israel, and the Czechs. Plus I always love seeing the talent collected for the Venezuela and Puerto Rico teams though the latter has been hit by injuries and insurance issues.
Alby
12:37
Something you said answering a letter last week has me wondering – are most members of the Hall of Fame small-hall or large-hall by inclination?
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:39
You are apparently referring to our subscriber mailbag, where I tackled the prospect of an at-large BBWAA election of players who fell off the writers ballot https://blogs.fangraphs.com/fangraphs-weekly-mailbag-february-28-2026/. In there, I covered the troubles both the writers and the expanded Veterans Committee of the first decade of this millennium had in handling large pools of candidates
12:40
As I noted there, the basic problem with the expanded VC — which included all living Hall of Famers and all Frick and Spink Award winners — was that the Hall of Famers didn’t think any of those guys was good enough for their country club. While individuals might support their former teammates to a greater degree, that's a small-Hall bunch if I ever saw one.
Guest
12:40
also, do you think ABS challenges can be a good component of WAR?
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:41
I think that as with framing runs, we will be able to come up with some additional component that adds or subtracts a few runs but that in most cases it won't be a huge deal
DJ
12:41
In light of the Jurickson Profar PED news, are teams typically made aware of the positive test well before the public reports?
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:42
As I understand it, no, with the caveat that a player who suspects he failed could send a heads-up. The way it's supposed to work is that the program's confidentiality is strict enough that the team finds out only when the player does.
Cody Christie
12:43
Do you see a scenario where Johan Santana is elected to the Hall of Fame?
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:46
I think that something like the pathway towards election of Félix Hernández by the BBWAA could heighten interest in Santana as an Era Committee candidate when he becomes eligible for the 2029 Contemporary ballot. But the Era Committee process is anything but reliable, especially for a one-and-done guy, so I wouldn't hold my breath; in fact, as I wrote this past weekend, I think he'd have a MUCH better shot if he were to be considered by the current BBWAA voters, who based upon the discourse and the surges we saw in voting percentages are going through a pretty deep consideration of starting pitching standards right
Jubs
12:46
There's a few notable names still on the free agent market, and the top 4 by projected fWAR are all starting pitchers. What are the chances Littell, Giolito, Corbin and Gray get picked up before the end of Spring Training?
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:48
I'd say pretty good unless any of them is having reservations about pitching in 2026. Pitching injuries happen all the time, creating gaps in rosters, and the sight of spring baseball can spur some FOMO as well.
Thank you
12:49
Where is the best resource to get pitch data such as pitches used and velocity for 2026 spring?
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