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Jay Jaffe FanGraphs Chat - 6/18/24

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Jay Jaffe

2:03

Good afternoon, folks, and welcome to another one of my Tuesday chats. This one is from the field office in Wellfleet, where I'm stationed for two weeks with my family — working this week, off next is the plan. Not long ago, my piece on Jack Flaherty's bounceback went up (https://blogs.fangraphs.com/a-change-of-scenery-has-worked-well-for-ja...), and yesterday I looked at the injuries to the Dodgers' Mookie Betts and Yoshinobu Yamamoto (https://blogs.fangraphs.com/dodgers-double-whammy-as-yamamoto-and-bett...)

2:04

Tomorrow I'll have something on the Yankees and Anthony Rizzo's broken arm. Injuries have cut into my list of players I was planning on checking into; some of those might have to wait until after I return. We'll see

2:04

Kelenic going to get an article soon about turning his season around? Just a hot streak or do you think some of this can stick?

Jay Jaffe

2:06

Kelenic is 24 years old, and while that's too young to write off, a quick look at his splits and trends tells me not to get very excited about two hot weeks. Yes, he's hitting the ball harder but not that hard, he's also chasing more than you'd like, and unlike last year, he's really struggling against lefties.

Section 34

2:06

Will Fangraphs ever do an Orioles top prospects list this year?

Jay Jaffe

2:08

Assuming they don't secede from Major League Baseball, I would think so, but I don't make the schedule. I imagine they're coming soon – obviously, it's a deep system with lots of interesting players who are becoming more relevant as the July 30 deadline approaches.

Matt VW

2:09

Most observers at the start of the season felt the Red Sox would be sellers at the deadline. Are they still on track to do so, or will they keep pursuing a wild card berth in an effort to placate an increasingly disaffected fan base?

Jay Jaffe

2:12

they're three games above .500 and 2.5 out of the third Wild Card spot, with the next-closest team 2.5 games in back of them. I think if they sold under those conditions, the resulting fury from Red Sox fans would make the Boston tea party look tame. Now, if they lose ground, it's a different story, and we've got six weeks to see what unfolds.

2:14

I do think the Sox have made some decent progress this year. The rotation has been a nice surprise, and some of the youngsters — Duran, Abreu, Wong in particular — have been impressive, as was Casas before his injury. They're moving in the right direction.

Francisco Lindor

2:17

70 career WAR...are you taking the over or the under?

Jay Jaffe

2:19

I'll take the under but not by much — I want to see a bit more consistency with the bat. He's dug himself some early holes on the offensive side and so his slash lines are unremarkable. but man, he's an impressive defender. I think he's a HOFer in the making.

KC Pain

2:19

Ben Rice got the call and seems pretty universally meh on scouting reports. 40s and like a 35-40 grade overall. Recent performance change any of that?

Jay Jaffe

2:20

Check in tomorrow. Eric hasn't been wowed by him, especially on the defensive side, and his future probably isn't at catcher (he's allowing about 2 SB per game and has a ridiculously low CS%). Perhaps the bat progresses more quickly if he sheds the tools of ignorance.

2:21

(I'm hoping to get more input from Eric for the Rizzo piece)

Tigers fan

2:21

Which current player do you think will have the greatest HOF career/legacy? Trout, Ohtani, Judge Soto etc.?

Jay Jaffe

2:24

I think all four of those guys are going to wind up in Cooperstown with impressive but very different legacies. Trout passed the JAWS average for center fielders before his 27th birthday (https://blogs.fangraphs.com/mike-trout-is-now-an-average-hall-of-famer...). Ohtani is a two-way player like we've never seen before. Judge's power is incredible, as is Soto's batting eye. If Ohtani can return to pitching well while still hitting well, I think he's the answer but I think that one way or another we'll be talking about all of these guys 50 years from now (maybe not me, as I'll be 104 years old).

Oil Can Boyd

2:25

As a follow up, he is one Andrew on of 13 players in MLB history to have 2,000 Hits, 400 Doubles, 45 Triples, 300 HR, 200 SB.

Just noticed that Cutch has the same number of career ho.srz as Edgar Martinez. As a Pirates fan, I always saw him as a Hall of Very Good player, but squinting, I do see a HOF resume.

Jay Jaffe

2:28

whoops, got those two out of order .Sorry, no, Andrew McCutchen does not have a strong case for the Hall nor is he a good comp for Edgar. Edgar owns a career 147 OPS+ and 68.4 WAR, and that's factoring in his time at DH. Cutch owns a 127 OPS+ and 49.3 WAR, and it doesn't look like he's gonna get to 55 let alone 68. It's a very nice career but he hasn't really been an above-average player consistently in his 30s, and the junk-drawer collection of stats you cited isn't going to sway anyone. Who cares about 45 triples?

2016? I Hardly Remember 'Em

2:28

Strictly speaking, is it possible that the Cubs roster transferred the "Billy Goat Curse" onto themselves in place of the franchise? Joking aside, hard pressed to think of a more prominent team where the collective core (Bryant, Rizzo, Baez) faded from its peak and/or failed to live up to its promise so prominently - are there any other cases in your mind that compare?

Jay Jaffe

2:31

I can't think of a similar case offhand, which isn't to say that there aren't comps. Oddly enough I think one of my colleagues is considering a look at those three Cubs' arcs. You'll know it when you see it.

C-Low

2:31

Any reason why you didn’t write about the Os losing Bradish, likely for the year? I’ve seen a lot of injury articles but not even a sentence about all the Orioles pitching injuries.

Jay Jaffe

2:33

I wrote about the Bradish and Means injuries in February and was focused elsewhere when both went down more recently, though I expected we would cover it. Apparently it slipped through the cracks. I'm sure we'll check in on the Orioles' rotation at some point in the not-too-distant future because obviously they'll be in the market for help.

DJ Tofu

2:34

Is it possible to say roughly how much WAR a player can gain in WAR from a specific PA, compared to making an out? e.g. if Player A currently has 2.0 WAR and in today's game he had 1 HR, 1BB and also made 2 outs, is there a quick way to get his WAR tomorrow? Thanks.

Jay Jaffe

2:36

Sort of... If you go to our leaderboards page and choose "Live Stats — Today" from the Splits dropdown you can see all of the hitters' performances, but the WARs only go to one decimal and that may not be fine enough since few players increase their WARs even by .1 in a given day. You can also choose "Live Stats — Full Season" and get the running total, then compare it to the previously published version.

Broken Bat

2:36

Padres and how to get a SP… I thin Padres must be burning the midnight oil in trying to determine how to grab a Tier 1 SP. The long term contracts bind sending a positional mlb player other than Kim. But what about Estrada and maybe a prospect say for Lugo or someone like that. Does Estrada now have perceived value?

Jay Jaffe

2:40

The Royals are contenders so they're not trading Lugo. Names I'd think could be available would include Crochet, Flaherty, Severino (if the Mets can't sustain this surge), Quantrill, maybe Luzardo. As for the concept of turning Estrada into something more valuable at the deadline, this article is probably applicable:

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/no-you-cant-trade-your-newfound-reliever-f...

2:41

You're asking about obtaining ready rotation help instead of a prospect, so it's not quite parallel, but most teams have relievers who could plausibly come out nowhere to go on a 25-inning hot streak, so nobody is giving up huge value for those of some other team.

Seeking Solutions

2:42

Dear Professor Jaffe, what's your best current idea to help jumpstart the absolutely miserable offensive environment in the game right now?

Jay Jaffe

2:45

Um, how about banning the shift? Oh, they tried that?? Welp.

I think the two answers that are most plausible are to monkey with the strike zone itself, a time-honored tradition (see 1968-69, for example) and to more transparently juice up the baseball. Unless you're prepared for an onslaught of home runs, I think you'd have to pair the latter with an increase in fence heights — maybe to a minimum height of X feet, or having a certain % of the fences in each ballpark meet that standard — which would keep more balls in play but make extra-base hits more common.

AL Central Casting

2:46

To your knowledge, has anyone analyzed the number of broken bats over the course of baseball history? Is this even do-able without watching every game? I assume they were less frequent the farther back you go (heavier bats with a different shape and pitchers didn't throw as hard), but what other factors would there be? Is it just me or were there more broken bats 10-20 years ago?

Jay Jaffe

2:47

I don't know about long-term but in 2008, the surge of popularity in maple bats and a higher frequency of fracture led to studies https://www.npr.org/2013/08/03/208638967/how-the-major-leagues-address...

2:48

The US Forest Service even got in on it!

Jason N

2:48

Is Tatis getting back on a HoF track?

Jay Jaffe

2:51

He's hitting better than last year but I don't think we can say it's enough to put him back on track after just a couple of months of improved production. Besides, the bigger issue will be whether BBWAA voters forgive his PED suspension, which is something we have yet to see the necessary 75% supermajority do for any player who has been suspended. Until that happens – and I wouldn't hold my breath, since the question now pivots around A-Rod — there isn't much to talk about.

Showbusiness77

2:52

Hi Jay ... thanks for the chat. Do you think Brent Rooker's early season success was a mirage? Do we think he finds his way out of this terrible slump to be some X% of where he was?

Jay Jaffe

2:53

Rooker had a nice breakout last year and is actually ahead of that in terms of his wRC+, SLG, and Statcast numbers. I wouldn't give up on him.

Cards fan

2:53

I see lots of ideas about increasing SP workloads and reducing the parade of relievers (finagle DH usage, make relievers face more than 3 batters, kill the AAA shuttle etc ). What would you do to increase the role of the SP?

Jay Jaffe

2:54

Trim the number of pitchers on the roster to 12, increase the mandatory number of batters faced for a reliever (or an opener, for that matter) to four or five, and impose harder limits on the amount of churn that happens on rosters with regards to relievers being shuttled to Triple-A and back

RynoatSecond

2:55

Jay, with the automated strike zone an inevitability at some point, do you think MLB will take the opportunity to lower the effective strike zone, thereby dis-incentivizing the high's 90 fastball that is unhittable up there? The game is quicker but I still don't think they've fixed the core issue of the game which is enough balls in play.

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