JotCast | Jay Jaffe FanGraphs Chat

Jay Jaffe FanGraphs Chat - 4/11/23

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Jay Jaffe

2:02

Hey folks, welcome to my weekly chat. We had a bit of a glitch on our end in publishing this so I'm going to give it a few minutes for the queue to fill. In the meantime, here's my piece on Adam Duvall's wrist injury, which has interrupted one of the majors' hottest starts https://blogs.fangraphs.com/red-sox-lose-red-hot-adam-duvall-to-a-brok...

2:04

And here's yesterday's piece on the Rays' hot start (now 10-0) https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-rays-are-steamrolling-opponents-at-a-r...

The guy who asks the lunch question

2:07

What's for lunch?

Jay Jaffe

2:08

A turkey reuben and potato salad from Mile End Deli. Yes, i'd love to have their corned beef reuben or the smoked meat sandwich, but I gotta keep the red meat under control and this is still a 95th percentile sandwich

Theo Epstein Truther

2:09

Seeing that the Cardinals might be the worst team in baseball this year makes my heart so happy. Is their offense as bad as their rotation?

Jay Jaffe

2:11

I don't think anybody believes the Cardinals will be the worst team in baseball this year; even in the NL four teams have worse run differentials than their -9. That said, Marmol's handling of the Tyler O'Neill baserunning thing was a red flag that made me wonder if he needed a sour hardass show of authoritah because he's losing the clubhouse. That was totally horseshit. We'll see if it fits a pattern.

Mike M

2:12

How many PAs do you see James Outman getting by the end of the season for LAD? And is he a sneaky all-star candidate?

Jay Jaffe

2:13

if he stays healthy, at this point I don't see how he doesn't get at least 500 PA. the early success is impressive and the Dodgers don't have enough of a margin to sit productive players even if they don't fit neatly into platoons.

Skip

2:14

I have a friend going through some serious medical issues; can you recommend a light-hearted or emotionally positive baseball book I can bring him?

Jay Jaffe

2:17

I'm sorry to hear that. Especially if your friend has some knowledge of baseball history, I'd suggest The Great American Baseball Card Flipping, Trading and Bubblegum Book, whose authors (Fred C. Harris and Brendan C. Boyd) just won SABR's Jefferson Burdick Award for their contributions to baseball card collecting. https://sabrbaseballcards.blog/2023/04/10/2023-sabr-jefferson-burdick-...

Th book is about far more than collecting, though — its combination of reverence and irreverence is a forerunner to 21st century baseball blogs and alternative media. I had the pleasure of chatting with Fred Harris about it in 2021 https://blogs.fangraphs.com/fangraphs-audio-fred-harris-chats-baseball...

2:18

A more recent one and close to home, The Only Rule is It Has to Work by Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller, about their running a low-level indy team, was fun

Bobby Cox

2:18

Is Orlando Arcia actually average to above average now? After all those poor to middling years?

Jay Jaffe

2:20

It looks that way, and from the outside I'm surprised, but he's been hitting the ball much harder and showing better plate discipline. Remarkably, he's still just 28. Jake Mailhot had a look at him when he beat out Grissom for the job https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/making-sense-of-the-braves-shortstop-s...

Urban Shocker's Jockstrap

2:20

Predict ATL's top 5 starters by inning pitched at the end of the year given recent injuries, debuts, and past injury histories! Go! (also please and thank you)

Jay Jaffe

2:21

Maddux, Glavine, Fried, Niekro.... wait wait wait

2:22

I'd go Morton, Strider, Fried, Dodd, and Soroka but wow does that picture keep shifting.

Inaccessible Rail

2:22

The Mets have several players who will definitely be out at least 60 days, but they only have two players on the 60 Day IL. I notice that all teams do this every year. Is there some benefit I'm not understanding to keeping players off the 60 Day IL?

Jay Jaffe

2:24

Something I learned only this year is that you can't move a guy onto the 60-day IL unless you need to add somebody to the 40-man roster. Of course, there may be other reasons not to move a guy on there, such as the hope that he'll be back inside of 60, but this is the Mets we're talking about so maybe that doesn't apply

Mike M

2:25

This is the year for the Angels, right? RIGHT!?

Jay Jaffe

2:26

I hope they make the playoffs this year, particularly after seeing how much fun both Ohtani and Trout had during the WBC.

I did not, however, go so far as to pick them in the staff predictions https://blogs.fangraphs.com/fangraphs-2023-staff-predictions/

Ross

2:28

I heard spin rate is down....

Jay Jaffe

2:29

That's what Rob Arthur's latest dispatch says https://www.baseballprospectus.com/news/article/81832/moonshot-mlbs-cr...

TomBruno23

2:29

So, the Cardinals' starting pitching...

Jay Jaffe

2:33

It's not great — we had them 20th in our Preseason Positional Power Rankings — but it's not as bad as it's looked so far; note that Miles Mikolas' ERA begins with a 9 and his FIP with a 1 (and not a 10). Three of their five guys (counting Jake Woodward, Wainwright's fill-in) have at least a strikeout per inning.

Rick

2:34

On a scale from 1 to panic, how worrying is the most recent Rodon setback (back soreness)?

Jay Jaffe

2:34

2-3. if it's really just tightness in his back and not something worse it probably affects him by at most another week, and that can be clawed back by bringing him up from rehab for a 75-80 pitch start instead of a 90ish one

Summerland

2:35

My reco for a fun baseball book. It's a fantasy novel that revolves around baseball

Jay Jaffe

2:35

For the person above looking for a baseball book for their friend. Haven't read this one myself

Strosfan

2:35

Is there anyone you'd trade Yordan Alvarez for one-for-one considering current contractual/free agent status? Maybe Julio R? Enormous surplus value, considering the deal he signed last year.

Jay Jaffe

2:36

Wander Franco comes to mind. Probably Adley Rutschman too

Inaccessible Rail

2:38

I'm a little confused about Noah Song's status. I see he's still listed as a Phillie, but doesn't he have to be returned to the BoSox?

Jay Jaffe

2:40

No, a Rule 5 pick can go on the IL without being offered back to his original team. That's where Song is right now, throwing bullpens as he works his way back from a back problem ("tightness"). He can do a rehab assignment but once that expires he has to be on the 26-man roster; he can't be optioned.

Yeah Well Hiura Towel

2:40

As Dan Szymborski has pointed out, now that the games are way shorter, can we get rid of the zombie runner? (I know it's not gonna happen)

Jay Jaffe

2:40

Sigh. No, it's not going to happen.

Insert Witty Name Here

2:41

Kelenic has a high K rate but is hitting the ball hard. Still optimistic?

Jay Jaffe

2:42

Reasonably. .300/.344/.500 so far. Just one barrel (5%) but a 60% hard-hit rate and .524 xSLG. I *think* he's on his way

Inaccessible Rail

2:43

Kodai Senga for ROY?

Jay Jaffe

2:46

I picked Corbin Carroll and tend to lean towards the true rookies rather than the foreign league imports. I don't think Senga's a bad pick though

Inaccessible Rail

2:48

I was surprised that the Padres let Seth Lugo throw 109 pitches in his last outing. But then I remembered that he'll get extra rest because of the six-man rotation. Is there any evidence that longer outings with more rest between is better for arms than shorter outings with less rest?

Jay Jaffe

2:50

I don't know that anybody's got evidence on the controlled experiment level but that's true for about a thousand different things that happen in baseball, because players aren't lab rats and there is only so much one can control for. The six-man rotation is an attempt to give pitchers more rest between starts but I don't think we've seen teams try to push harder to get more out of those starts in terms of pitch counts, innings, or batters faced per start

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