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Jay Jaffe FanGraphs Chat - 3/30/20
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AvatarJay Jaffe
12:03
Good afternoon, folks, and welcome to today's chat, where I plan to talk about baseball in at least some shape and form. I hope you're doing all right; the Jaffe-Span household is trying to keep it together in downtown Brooklyn, where we've got a reasonable stockpile of supplies and are taking plenty of precautions when we do need to walk our dog (Sandy) and get our daughter some outdoor exercise.
12:05
Some housekeeping: Please read this message from David Appelman. Like just about everyone else in the world of sports, we're facing some lean times, and we hope that you'll think of us.  https://blogs.fangraphs.com/a-fangraphs-update-were-asking-for-your-he...
12:06
The Ringer's Bryan Curtis has a piece about our situation and those of several other sports media outlets https://www.theringer.com/2020/3/30/21199460/coronavirus-sports-media-...
I'm currently working on an obituary of Jimmy Wynn, the Toy Cannon — a highly-underrated ballplayer who was a stathead favorite. That will run tomorrow.
And now, on with the show...
Dave
12:06
How is Sandy doing?
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:09
Sandy  — our mutt, whom you can follow on instagram at @sandybrooklyn — is doing all right but has a lot of pent-up energy. She gets her daily walks and some exercise when we throw the ball down our 40-foot hallway, and my daughter is learning to make her sit and do a few other commands. She is very confused by yoga and other indoor exercise, which of course has become part of our routine
Matt Klentak
12:09
is it more likely we see a shortened season or no baseball till 2021
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:11
I still think it's more likely that we see a shortened season than none at all. It may be an oddly shaped one in terms of the possibility of starting with empty stadiums, neutral site postseason stuff with an expanded field, maybe even seven-inning doubleheaders (but I doubt that), but last week's agreement between the league and the union, and the comments by Tony Clark, made it clear that MLB wants to do *something* rather than nothing, even if things get weird. I'm going to retain hope, and I think you all should as well. After all, it's still only March 30, not July.
Nolan
12:11
If MLB decides to start the season with the All-Star game, as some have suggested they should, how would or should the All-Stars be selected?  Go with last year's teams again?  Pure fan voting, even in the absence of statistics on which to base those votes?  Something else?  Seems like it could be significant if players have bonuses in their contracts related to All-Star selections.
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:13
As with the actual ASG, I think a combination of selection methods is appropriate, with fans, managers, and players all getting to weigh in. And because the game is such a marquee event, I do think there will be one. I recall the second "half" of the strike-torn1981 season resuming with the ASG; if it gets late enough, making the ASG the season opener is fine by me.
Hank Mardukus
12:13
Jay - assembling a quarantine content playlist. You get to add two movies to it, what are you picking?
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:17
Good question. Hmmm. I find the Royal Tenenbaums to be endlessly watchable (most of the Wes Andersons fit that bill), as well as the first two Godfathers, Goodfellas... damn, this is hard.

One thing I've been going back to, a stress reliever in terms of viewing, is Apollo-related documentaries. I've been a big space nerd ever since seeing The Right Stuff in movie theaters, and it's a favorite non-fiction topic beyond baseball. One movie that I dearly love and would constitute my official pick is For All Mankind, a 1989 doc consisting of restored footage of Apollo missions, with a great and memorable Brian Eno soundtrack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_All_Mankind. It's on the Criterion Channel, if you're into that sort of thing, and there's an option to overlay the names of the astronauts and other figures (such as flight director Gene Krantz) onscreen. Also available via DVD
As for the other pick, let's go with Tenenbaums to keep the chat moving
Royal pain
12:17
Jay, please ask David to set-up a Donate button.  Already have $50 sub.  Thanks.
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:18
I will relay that message!
Thank you for your support, all of you who are members, whether old or new.
Travis
12:18
I have to imagine that this will make for a good article in the coming weeks, but: with this delayed season/potential no season, who is most hurt in their pursuit of Cooperstown by missing out on a prime season? I'd have to think players like Josh Donaldson, Jacob deGrom, and Joey Votto might need all the additional compiling stats they can get, and missing out on prime years (or comebacks, in Votto's case) could hurt.

Follow up - likely the writers take that into account when voting? (a la the "Harold Baines Veterans Committee/3,000 hits vote)
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:18
Will tackle that very subject, perhaps as soon as this week.
Dave
12:19
Do you think the lack of business will put a bunch of MiLB teams out of business? And do you think that baseball would still contract 40 of those teams if they lose 20 to the economy this year?
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:22
That's a good question and I don't know the answer but I do think some fraction will go under; whether it resembles the cut list MLB created this past winter is unclear.  

Given the plans to contract the amateur draft in both 2020 and '21, it does seem clear from the agreement hammered out last week (see https://blogs.fangraphs.com/mlb-and-the-union-hammer-out-a-deal-and-hu...) that the league and the union are paving the way for fewer players to enter the amateur ranks in the coming years. That's not great news for anybody.
Matt Klentak
12:22
top 3 defensive catchers you've watched with your own eyes?
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:26
I've been impressed, even transfixed, by Russell Martin, whom I've probably watched more than any catcher over the past  decade and a half. The numbers mostly support this as far as his being an outstanding framer; I've always thought highly of his blocking ability as well, as he's shown great mobility, but the numbers there aren't overwhelming.

Beyond that, it's probably the two obvious choices, Ivan Rodriguez and Yadier Molina.
Curtis
12:27
Skyped a synced-up Ken Burns Baseball Inning 1 last night with 3 other baseball-starved buddies. We all cued it up and started at (roughly) the same time.  Was lost in baseball nostalgia for 2 hours...it was awesome...HIGHLY RECOMMEND (the format...feel free to substitute the movie though it was unanimously our choice)
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:28
oh, that sounds really cool, and an idea worth sharing. My wife, who for years ran a Bad Movie Night with a half-dozen college friends who had also settled in Brooklyn, attempted to do that a couple weeks ago with the Cats movie, but with only one person streaming and sharing it, the technical difficulties proved insurmountable.
12:29
I will say that I highly encourage everybody out there in isolation-land to figure out a way to Zoom/Skype/Google Hangout with friends, chat over a beer or a cup of coffee or some kind of shared experience. It's been a great chance to reconnect with friends from all over the country and it's given my morale a boost. A++ would do again, repeatedly
Sam
12:30
Despite a relatively short career, and playing only in small markets, I've always been fascinated by how good Brian Giles' career was. Seems like he was mostly swept under the rug. What was the perception of him during and shortly after his career/peak? Perhaps any rumblings of HOF support?
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:34
I wrote about Giles for the 2015 ballot series https://www.si.com/mlb/2014/12/24/jaws-2015-hall-of-fame-ballot-brian-... He had a very solid career of 50+ WAR, but got a late start, not playing 100 games in a season until his age-26 campaign, and because he was such a disciplined hitter, he fell 103 hits short of 2,000 — the line below which nobody from the post-1960 expansion era has been elected. Giles, who did have some ugly domestic violence stuff during and after his career, was completely shut out in the voting, and I don't see him being anywhere near the top of the list to get reconsidered.
Jason N
12:34
If a bumper crop of talent joins MLB over a few year period does that mean the number of HoFers could be higher for that generation, or are we focused more on the top x% of players and therefore some great players fall short?
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:37
it takes decades upon decades to gain a true understanding of the HOF frequency of a given period, given the combination of waiting periods, ballot eligibility windows, and the committee process. The reality is that the limits in ballot size — 10 spots for BBWAA, 4 for committee — create bottlenecks. We have seen a record number of players elected in recent years, but that's done more to flesh out an underrepresented era than to saturate it. I've written about historical levels of representation in my five-year outlooks and virtual ballots, and even with the latest flood, we're nowhere near the max.
Grand Admiral Braun
12:38
Fun fact on Burns' Baseball: The Ruth-centered episode - "A National Heirloom" was originally going to be called, "That sonofabitch."
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:38
I'd never heard that one
WAR
12:38
I’ve noticed the best players in past eras accumulated significantly more WAR than most of today’s stars. Is it simply an issue of rest for position players (I know that is part of it for pitchers) or is there more to it? Also, I’ve been a member, but encouraged my fantasy baseball league cohorts to join the site. We all use it!
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:41
The higher WARs from eras past represent a larger spread of talent between the best and worst players — the replacement level was lower in the time of Honus Wagner or Babe Ruth or whoever than it is today. Ideally one can use a timeline adjustment to help normalize that; Baseball Prospectus' WARP3 was one such attempt, but it's not built into any of the current versions of WAR(P) so far as I know.
Grand Admiral Braun
12:41
When not figuring in difficulty of era, Hornsby is the greatest right-handed hitter of all time. I have doing a deep dive on all the greatest right handed hitters -- if Trout can continue for a tad longer...man. 175wRC+ during his current 8-year peak.
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:42
at the very least we're seeing one of the five or 10 best players ever in Trout. I think you can probably boil it down to Ruth, Mays, Bonds, and Trout for the all-time Rushmore.
I Used to be Mel Clarke
12:42
How does service time work under the new agreement for the Super Two Deadline and player's like Nick Madrigal?
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:44
Assuming there is a season, any service time will be prorated. So if a Madrigal or somebody plays 60 games in a 120-game season, he'll receive credit for half of a standard service-time year (172 days), so 86. The top 22% of players with two-plus years of service time the ones who become Super-Twos, will still be qualified in that manner.
if there's no service time, "anyone currently on a 40-man roster, 60-day injured list or an outright assignment to the minor leagues with a major league contract would receive 2020 service time equaling what the player accrued in 2019."
12:45
that's from the AP report last week. https://apnews.com/6b2b49b2aadbc859c407c774ef172b2f
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