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Jay Jaffe FanGraphs Chat - 5/14/21
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AvatarJay Jaffe
3:04
I think we could go with the Statcast Era (2015 on) because at some point soon we'll have some kind of Statcast inputs for WAR.
Mr. Burrito
3:04
Year of Pitcher 2.0 might require a response, a la the mound change of 1969.... Thoughts on what that change should be in 2022?
AvatarJay Jaffe
3:06
I mean, they're looking at the mound distance change in the Atlantic League in the second half of this season, and no-shift rules in Double-A. I don't think it would happen so quickly that either rule would be in place in MLB for 2022, but 2023? We might be heading that direction if these rules catch on.
Cool Papa Bell
3:06
What are the Padres doing with Lamet? Why didn't they stretch him out in rehab games first?
AvatarJay Jaffe
3:07
I have really not understood their approaches with Clevinger and Lamet. People scratch their heads over the way the Mets have dealt with deGrom lately but this... is weirder and it seems less protective and productive
B
3:07
How about making the baseball larger?  Would that make the game more hitter-friendly?
AvatarJay Jaffe
3:09
I suspect the first thing we'll see change-wise before the rules I mentioned is another stab at the properties of the ball. MLB has already shown its willingness to do it whether it's above the radar or under.

I don't think we'll see a change to the ball's size unless you're talking about caliper measures. But its properties are at up for discussion and tweaking
Rick
3:10
Minus Verdugo, how bad is Boston's OF?
AvatarJay Jaffe
3:10
Why can't the Red Sox develop outfielders as good as Mookie Betts, Jackie Bradley, or even Andrew Benintendi?
3:11
Franchy is a fun name to say, though. Maybe not as fun as Mookie.
Guest
3:11
I know the Twins are a disaster now but man it is absolutely nuts how Nelson Cruz is 40 years old and somehow still a monstrous hitter. Random Cruz thoughts??
AvatarJay Jaffe
3:12
Dude can f'ing hit. Absurd barrel rates.
Go Yankees!!!!!
3:13
I’m infatuated with xERA. Would it make any kind of sense to have an xERA-based pitcher WAR?
AvatarJay Jaffe
3:14
Well, you'd want to strip out the "earned" because you're going to address the impact of defense more completely, but I can imagine somebody whipping it up
Gaslamp Gary
3:16
When will we acknowledge that Jake Cronenworth is a top 10 second baseman?
AvatarJay Jaffe
3:16
Who's saying "we" haven't? I mean, he was among the Top 10 Right Now on MLB Network this year, not that I was part of that process. Or anything the network has done recently. (cough, cough).
glt4dc
3:17
The White Sox have the best record in baseball (at the 20% point of the season) despite some serious injuries AND Tony LaRussa as manager.  Which is a way of asking - how much do managers matter?  Or, even if you think LaRussa was not a good hire (I certainly didn't understand it at the time), how much does a "bad" manager choice impact a team.  I've seen variants of this question asked here before and no one seems to have a real way of capturing the value-added (value-subtracted?) of a manager.
AvatarJay Jaffe
3:18
It's a challenge people have been reckoning with for longer than the 150 years that LaRussa has been alive.
One thing that's helpful in managing is to have an utterly crap set of teams in the same division.
3:20
Which in this case is an indictment of the Tigers and Twins, since the Royals are at least trending upward and the Indians have proven at least somewhat resilient despite their curious choice to go with an outfield that couldn't hit water if it fell out of a boat
Curtis
3:21
What's your favorite on-the-field moment of the 2021 season thus far?
AvatarJay Jaffe
3:22
Ohtani's first start, when he hit the homer and threw 101
Joseph
3:22
Prediction for ROS Yermin Mercedes slash line?
AvatarJay Jaffe
3:23
Maybe a bit above our Depth Charts projection for .269/.326/.446
Gaslamp Gary
3:23
Please tell me Blake Snell will be fine
AvatarJay Jaffe
3:23
He'll be fine if he stops walking 15% of the batters he's facing
Guest
3:24
From your perspective, what should the Mets have done differently with deGrom? One can say that they should have put him on the IL immediately after the first missed start feels like revisionist history, but that discounts the fact that the MRI (which he got immediately) didn't show anything and he said he was feeling ready to go. This isn
AvatarJay Jaffe
3:26
I didn't say I had any objection to the Mets' handling of deGrom. My impulse would have been to cool him off on the 10-day the first time something cropped up, but they did skip his turn, which means we're haggling over a couple of extra days. This is not a beef.
Jed
3:26
When should the Cubs throw in the towel and start trading their short term assets?
AvatarJay Jaffe
3:27
July. Nobody's going to start breaking up a roster in mid-May.
Matt VW
3:27
Every time Franchy comes to bat, I imagine someone in the stands saying "show-dair? Show-dair? It's CHOW-DAH! SAY IT!"
AvatarJay Jaffe
3:27
I legitimately LOLed.
Jonny
3:27
Which moving the mound farther back or lowering it further have basically the same effects as each other or different effects?
AvatarJay Jaffe
3:29
I think they've concluded that moving it back further will have greater impact, as it addresses pitch velocity, which has measurably increased on a near-annual basis for over a decade https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=pit&lg=all&qual=0...
Lance
3:30
Once Gleyber returns, do you have any optimism for him reaching 2018-19 levels of production?
AvatarJay Jaffe
3:30
Not in this offensive environment.
Joey Bagadonuts
3:31
Best rookie OF rest-of-season: Jarren Duran, Jesus Sanchez, Brandon Marsh? Both in terms of playing time and quality?
AvatarJay Jaffe
3:32
I'm not holding my breath on any of them having a significant MLB impact this year, but I'm also not the guy to ask. Was nice to see that Marsh — the highest rated of the bunch, by far — returned from his shoulder injury and homered, so I guess I'd say him.
Nick T
3:33
Hey Jay, how would you go about answering the question "is my team hitting bad, or are they just running into great pitching all the time?"
AvatarJay Jaffe
3:34
Does Baseball Prospectus still do the opponent quality metrics or did that get folded into DRC+? Those were useful. I suspect peeking at DRC+ would be useful, if so.
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