JotCast | Jay Jaffe FanGraphs Chat

Jay Jaffe FanGraphs Chat - 5/19/20

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Jay Jaffe

2:04

Good afternoon, folks, and welcome to the first edition of my Tuesday FanGraphs chat, not to be confused with the Monday chats that weren't working, schedule-wise, or the Thursday chats that prevailed before my daughter started preschool. Anyway, I'm here, wiping the sweat from my face after quickly slurping down a spicy bowl of Shin Ramyun, and it's no coincidence that I just turned on the ESPN KBO replay of the NC Dinos and Doosan Bears. Let's talk some baseball!

David

2:04

What are the chances we get mlb baseball in 2020?

Jay Jaffe

2:06

I think it's more likely than not – maybe 2-to-1 in favor — but it's not going to be ideal, and it will be controversial with regards to the risk factors, the level of testing relative to the population at large, and the protocols with regards to a player testing positive. Buckle up.

C M Keller

2:08

I was looking at JAWS for relievers and was surprised to see that Rollie Fingers - a second-ballot Hall of Famer and universally acknowledged top closer of his era - was so low in the rankings. Was he overrated, or is current WAR rating of modern one-inning closers not well-suited for evaluating relievers of, say, 1990 and earlier?

Jay Jaffe

2:12

WAR doesn't work tremendously well for relievers in the first place, and Fingers wasn't elite at run prevention (120 ERA+, compared to 126 for Gossage, 132 for Smith, 136 for Sutter, 141 for Hoffman, 147 for Wilhelm, and 205 for Rivera). He had a distinctive mustache and played a prominent role on some playoff and championship teams (oh, what might have been had he been healthy enough for the 1982 World Series), so he did have the Fame going for him, but he just wasn't as dominant as some of his HOF peers.

Sonny

2:12

Really appreciate you making this time to chat. Working from home with a toddler these days is no joke. It reminds me of...wait, hold on...Get down from there! How did you get on top of the Fridge!?!...sorry I’m gonna have to call you back.

Jay Jaffe

2:13

Haha, thanks. Yes, it is a challenge to juggle work and child care, but I do enjoy these chats and hope that I can keep to doing them weekly.

Travis

2:13

If baseball returns, and becomes a focal point for the inevitable second wave (i.e. - wide outbreak on one team), that means the whole thing is kaput, right? I'm having a hard time imagining a scenario where MLB can justify continuing the season in any sense if they become the face of a new outbreak (in spite of any and all precautions).

Jay Jaffe

2:16

Nobody really knows how the league is going to handle an wider outbreak but I'd assume a 2-3 week shutdown of the whole MLB might be necessary, and yes, if that doesn't quell the spread then the season is probably kaput. I do think MLB needs to clarify its protocol here

Magic Kingdome

2:16

If there was a Muppets Hall of Fame, who are the top 5 ranked by JAWS?

Jay Jaffe

2:20

Hmmmm, Kermit, Miss Piggy, Rowlf (my personal favorite), Gonzo, and the Swedish Chef (my daughter's favorite). I'm snubbing Fozzie here, I realize, but having recently re-watched all of seasons 1 and 2 and part of season 3 of the Muppet Show, I find I like Fozzie's bits the least of the major characters.

Also: it's now been a week and we still can't find the DVD remote, which really hampers our ability to play the Muppet Show discs

I know at most like eight of you on here have been to my apartment in the Before Times, but if whoever took the DVD remote would kindly return it, no questions will be asked.

Jeff

2:20

Since injuries are the league's next frontier, what do you think about athletes turning to PRP and stem cells before considering surgery?

Jay Jaffe

2:24

This isn't exactly new. Bartolo Colon underwent his controversial stem cell treatment in 2010 (IIRC), and players like Carl Crawford and Chad Billingsley received PRP injections in 2012. I think it's perfectly reasonable for an athlete to attempt to rehab an injury without surgery, particularly if it's going to cost him or her a season.

glt4dc

2:24

This question is apropos of nothing but this is the time for such questions right? Anyhow, I've always wondered why there have been fewer 4-home run games hit (18) than perfect games thrown (23). Perfect games require a pitcher to throw 100 or so well-placed pitches along with flawless defense and a forgiving ump (and scorekeeper). In contrast, a batter "only" needs 4 pitches to whomp on in the course of 4-6 ABs and doesn't need anyone else's help. The latter seems easier, relatively speaking, than the former, but perfect games have occurred a little more frequently. Why do you think that's the case?

Jay Jaffe

2:27

Hmm, I'd say it might just be a small sample fluke, but it's also true that the conditions for both events have varied greatly over the course of baseball history; it was close to impossible before Babe Ruth, for example, to hit four homers in a game, and aside from two 1890s guys, who didn't even hit all the balls over a fence, the first one didn't happen until Gehrig in 1932, by which point there had been three post-1900 perfect games.

Bill G

2:27

Both Baseball Reference and MLB.com have declared OOTP as the most realistic baseball simulation software. I have not seen an independent review of the various simulation software games. I would like to see a review of DMB, OOTP, and others, or can you point me to one. Given we are all stuck at home this might be relevant today! Thanks!

Jay Jaffe

2:28

I don't have any pointers, but I've enjoyed playing with the review copy of OOTP that I received. I don't have any gaming experience outside of it, so nothing to compare it to, but I was hoping to write something up at some point.

Magic Kingdome

2:28

Best Hall of Fame speech?

Jay Jaffe

2:29

Having not heard anything close to all of them, I'll go with Ted Williams' 1966 speech calling for the election of Negro Leagues players, since it was definitely the most impactful on the institution's history.

Guest

2:30

Statler and Waldorf

Jay Jaffe

2:32

Considered them for my Muppets top five, and love them, but that raises the question of how to handle multiples. Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem, and the Chickens being the others.

David

2:32

When does Bobby grich get another look at vets committee? Is he the best player not in the hall of fame (other than ped guys and rose/Jackson)

Jay Jaffe

2:35

That's a good question. I've got an ESPN Insider/Plus piece ($)on each AL Team's next Hall of Famer, a companion to the NL set that ran last week (http://insider.espn.com/mlb/insider/story/_/id/29163993/every-nl-team-...), and I have Grich down for the Orioles (Mike Trout was my pick for the Angels). He's seventh in JAWS at second base and *should* be in, by my reckoning, but since going one-and-done on the 1992 ballot, he hasn't even gotten on an Era Committee ballot, in part because of the format change and the depth of the field of contemporaries. With Ted Simmons, Alan Trammell, and Jack Morris (meh) getting elected from the MB group, the traffic is at least thinning out a bit, so I'm hopeful he gets his day on the ballot; the additions of Dwight Evans, Lou Whitaker, and Thurman Munson for last year's ballot show that it's possible, to say nothing of Simmons becoming the first one-and-done BBWAA candidate to get elected.

Jeff

2:35

Historically, Does Theo Epstein have any shot to catch up to Friedman? Old school guys might like the rings but those guys are dying out

Jay Jaffe

2:37

Not sure what's being asked here given that Theo Epstein has presided over three World Series winners — including two of the most awaited, drought-wise — while being more or less on the cutting edge in terms of the direction of his front office.

Jeff

2:37

Speaking of, the Negro Leagues seems like a content gold mine. Do you have any articles planned on players? Have I missed past articles!?

Jay Jaffe

2:37

I haven't written much about them. Hope to at some point, particularly if any candidates get on the Early Baseball Era Committee ballot.

Travis

2:38

Hearing talk about Buck O'Neil being eligible/on the Veteran Committee ballots this winter. Should that come to pass, and given the voting mechanics of the committees (12/16 votes, only vote for four)...how likely is a split ballot where Minoso/O'Neil/Allen all come up just short? And in that scenario, is it permissible to fast-track R&D of socially-distant rioting in the proverbial streets? (The mechanics of the VC make me mad)

Jay Jaffe

2:39

And of course, Buck O'Neil is the obvious one. he'll be on a different ballot than Minoso, though, since his greater impact was before 1950, whereas Minoso and Dick Allen will be on the Golden Days ballot, for those whose greater impact was in the 1950-1969 window.

Bob Loblaw's Knoblauch

2:39

Thanks a lot for the Bob Watson piece. Much like Jimmy Wynn, I never learned much about sub-Hall players from before my time. What's the favorite profile of a player like that that you've written, or a favorite story that you unearthed in researching?

Jay Jaffe

2:42

Thanks. As one of the oldest writers on staff — putting the senior in Senior Writer — I've always enjoyed bringing some historical perspective to my FanGraphs work, just as I did at my previous stops. All of the obit/tributes I've written mean a lot to me (Frank Robinson, Don Newcombe, Rusty Staub, and Steve Dalkowski are some others that come to mind), but one of the more left field-type ones, of which I am most proud, was the piece i did on Ed Charles. https://blogs.fangraphs.com/r-i-p-ed-charles-who-followed-in-the-track...

Lorenzo

2:42

For a long, long time the best baseball simulation software was Micro League Baseball on the Commodore 64 from around the mid 1980's. Anyway, is it possible that some pitchers had their own personal catcher during this shutdown and somehow maintained their arm strength?

Jay Jaffe

2:45

I know that Max Scherzer did quarantine with a catcher (https://www.nbcsports.com/washington/nationals/meet-orioles-catcher-li...), and I imagine he's not the only one, but I don't recall reading about other examples. I did see Gerrit Cole playing a fairly vigorous game of catch with his wife, Amy Crawford — who happens to be Brandon Crawford's sister and played on an NCAA championship softball team at UCLA.

Gerrit & Amy Cole 🔥🔥🔥

( via IG/@ amyc23 )

2:47

As for Micro League, I never played it, but I did spend a lot of time on the family Apple II+ with Strategic Simulations Inc.'s Computer Baseball, which had 13 historical World Series pairings ranging from 1906 (Cubs vs. Hitless Wonder White Sox) to the 1978, '79, and '80 matchups. I wrote about it for Michael Clair's blogathon a few years back. https://oldtimefamilybaseball.com/post/73880788748/the-basement-tapes-...

WinTwins0410

2:47

Jay, I know you're not a supporter of Andy Pettitte getting into the Hall, but I'm curious about your sense of the voters' view of him in light of his HGH use admission. What kind of haircut are voters giving Andy based on PEDs vs. voters just not thinking he belongs in? (I realize this is just a subjective guess on your part). I think we'd all agree that based on this year's BBWAA vote, Clemens and Bonds are getting exactly a 38 percentage point haircut from voters for PED use. Is Pettitte (who got 11% this year) suffering something similar, or do you think it's more like a 20-point penalty? (If you could offer the same kind of guess on Sammy Sosa and Manny, too, that'd be great.)

Jay Jaffe

2:51

I think it's impossible to quantify something like that because it's not like an individual voter "gives the haircut" if you will, it's that some people are more strict or loose with regards to where the line is for PEDs. I think it should be fairly obvious that Clemens, Bonds and Manny would be elected if not for their usage, and the same is probably true for Sosa.

HGH stuff aside, Pettitte is a candidate who has a high win total and some big postseason numbers, but he never dominated in the way those guys did. He made just three All-Star teams, wasn't elite at missing bats or preventing runs, and didn't win a Cy Young. If not for Da Ringz, I don't think he'd be in the discussion for longer than a single election cycle.

Jeff

2:52

Is Carlos Beltran a top 10 CF in history or is that position loaded up?

Jay Jaffe

2:53

Well, he's ninth at the position in JAWS and has an outstanding postseason track record to boot, so I'd say calling him a top-10 center fielder is perfectly reasonable.

Joe

2:53

Do you believe the owners?

Jay Jaffe

2:54

Hell could freeze over twice and I don't think I'd believe the owners if they told me that their feet were cold.

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