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Jay Jaffe FanGraphs Chat - 4/12/18
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Rstar1725
12:37
Ronald Acuna, W. Calhoun and others were talked about a lot leading up to the season. Not much talk about Gleyber Torres. Though he's only had 60ish games above AA, what is a realistic time frame, if any, for a call up.
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:39
Torres' 2017-ending Tommy John surgery on his non-throwing elbow and his adaptation to second base have slowed his progress a bit. My guess is that barring further injuries to the big club, he's looking at a June callup, not necessarily attuned to the Super Two deadline because the Yankees don't really care. But with Drury, Walker, Torreyes, Wade and Andujar all on hand, the team has plenty of players for second and third base until he's clearly ready.
Scruffy-Looking Nerf Hurler
12:42
I keep hearing people say that Kimbrel is throwing up some red flags. Do you see or know of any because I can’t really see them. Thanks!
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:45
12:46
Should there be more polls in Jay Jaffe's chats?
Why? (36.6% | 52 votes)
 
Meh (63.4% | 90 votes)
 
Total Votes: 142
Tat
12:46
You should do a poll about something, no one ever does polls anymore in chats
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:46
First time doing that, sorry for the technical glitch.
Bort
12:46
If Wheeler keeps pitching the way he does, can the Mets really send him down when Vargas comes back?
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:48
Fans of every team tend to count chickens before they hatch. If the Mets' recent history in keeping pitchers healthy has taught you anything, it should be about the folly of worrying about who goes to the bullpen or Triple A at that magical moment when the team has six starters. this stuff has a gruesome way of sorting itself out.
Scott
12:48
It's 11 games in and Joey Votto only has two walks. Should we be concerned?
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:49
Another guy who's worth a closer look, but for the moment (shrug emoji). Goldschmidt, Votto and the now-injured Anthony Rizzo — the three best first basemen in the NL over the past few years in terms of both wRC+ and WAR (with Freddie Freeman a close fourth) are all off to dreadful starts.
Sean
12:50
Paul Goldschmidt had four 400+ ft hits against the Giants - a double, a triple, and two long home runs. I think he's back. Pretty much exactly after you wrote your post.
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:51
It's like the Jonah Keri injury curse, but for positive regression. For the sake of my 19-month-old daughter's college tuition, it would be great if I could monetize this.
Guest
12:51
Do you think Matt Davidson's revamped plate discipline is at all sustainable enough to make him a decent player? He's done a great job laying off pitches out of the zone and cutting down his swing and misses so far
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:55
I'd love to give you all definitive notes about this player or that one's plate discipline to date relative to past years, but a) it's early and b) I haven't had time to investigate all of these guys and c) really, it's early.

Davidson was once a heralded prospect. I covered the 2013 All-Star Futures Game at Citi Field, where he won MVP honors. He's always had a capacity for strikeouts (164 and 191 at Triple A in 2014-15) but never the kind of thing that would produce a 165 K/19 BB ratio, as happened last year in the majors. There's really nowhere to go from there but up or to an indy league. So far, he's tending towards the former. Will he sustain that? I'll go with a hard maybe.
Andrew
12:56
By the end of the month are the Angels in the discussion for the best team in baseball? I think they would have to stomp on the Astros, Yankees, and Red Sox but it’s not out of the realm of possibility.
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:57
Let's hold our horses until we see how they do against the aforemetioned teams, given that we're not even halfway through April.
Jkim
12:57
Hot starts? - Dodgers started the season last year at 10-12 and still went to the WS. (yeah yeah yeah sample size of 1) but I odn't think it matters
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:58
Having studied this on an annual basis, I can tell you that 10-12 doesn't move the needle much. It's the outliers, like 2-7 or 3-9, where few teams come back from. Twitter search my account (@jay_jaffe) and Cardinals 3-9 for the ridicule I took in April and the way that one turned out
Gilbert Grape
12:59
Realistic Prediction for a Harper free agent contract?
AvatarJay Jaffe
1:00
10 years, $350 million, with multiple opt outs that make it highly unlikely he completes the term.
brad
1:00
Jay, Looking at the last few, but maybe more, years, at the SP in the minors who are the cant miss aces, and then looking at MLB at the actual aces, I seem to find something odd.  The cant miss minors SP seem to get hurt at a very high rate, Ie Urias, Bundy, Reyes, Puk, and a lot of the real life aces, were not top prospects, ie Kluber, Keuchel DeGrom, So it seems like we have more information than ever, but  still don't know a lot.
AvatarJay Jaffe
1:05
in some ways, TISNSTAAP (There Is Still No Such Thing As A Pitching Prospect), but we have more information than ever in terms of being able to quantify pitches' velocity and movement and look for comparables that may be less obvious than what meets the eye.

The big problem is that some pitchers are just too good for their own still-developing bodies' good, and the tendency of teams to exploit that, particularly at the amateur level, where the stakes are geared towards the short term, is what causes a great deal of damage. And on the flip side, pitchers tend to develop in nonlinear fashion— the effects of a mechanical change or the addition/improvement of a new pitch can have an outsized impact on performance.

In total, stuff and physical projection are worth noting, as is the capacity of pitchers to learn at the big league level, but our dark-ages ability to keep them healthy continues to cloud the matter.
John S
1:05
Should pitchers who throw behind batters to send a message be treated differently than those who actually hit the batter?
AvatarJay Jaffe
1:06
Under Commissioner Jaffe, no. I'd suspend 'em all.
Turgid
1:06
Have you been to that axe throwing bar in gowanus?
AvatarJay Jaffe
1:07
No. I'm not sure my Hamburger Shoulder (2003 SLAP surgery) can withstand such excitement, nor do I have the proper goatee to gain admission to such an establishment.
Slapshot
1:07
Is Bartolo Colon your favorite active player to write about?
AvatarJay Jaffe
1:07
If he's not the single most favorite, he's clearly in the top five.
Yadier Molina
1:08
Am I a hall-of-famer?
AvatarJay Jaffe
Turgid
1:08
That 98 fight was a good one. What was the one where Strawberry did a flying ninja kick into the dugout?
AvatarJay Jaffe
1:08
That was the one
Mountie Votto
1:08
Thoughts on Bryan Price? Votto gave him the vote of confidence, but some of his decisions have been baffling so far this season
AvatarJay Jaffe
1:09
I have been predicting the firing of Bryan Price on an annual basis since he took over the job, which makes me at least 0-for-4. It's time to throw up my hands and admit that I have no idea the standards by which the Reds judge him.
Tat
1:10
Didi has cut his Swing % by 10% this year, is this the kind of change that sticks or no?
AvatarJay Jaffe
1:12
according to my homework assignment from years past, the 50 PA mark is where Swing % tends to stabilize, and he's at 51 PA, so let's just say that it's possible that this is something real. Having said that, the decision on which pitches to swing at us a conscious one to a much greater degree than many other stats we track, and if Gregorius' performance takes a turn for the worse, he may be tempted to revert to his old ways.
Ozzie's Hair
1:12
Can fangraphs start keeping a statistic of how many times a batter/baserunner loses his helmet while running the bases?  It would be just another great excuse to revel in how much fun it is to watch Albies play.
AvatarJay Jaffe
1:13
He's got work to do to unseat the Helmet Shedding King, Eduardo Nunez
Cal
1:14
Who's your favorite prospect that's likely to see the bigs by June?
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