JotCast | Jay Jaffe FanGraphs Chat 6/23/26

Jay Jaffe FanGraphs Chat 6/23/26

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Jay Jaffe

12:03

Good afternoon, folks! Welcome to the latest edition of my weekly chat. The queue for question is rather sparse so I'm going to give it a few minutes to fill up before I dive in. Remember, that while you don't need to be a FanGraphs member to post a question to the chat, you do need to be logged into your user account to do so.

12:04

On the subject of membership, please read David Appelman's "The State of FanGraphs," which is currently featured on the home page. https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-state-of-fangraphs-2026/

12:05

I have a piece on Freddy Peralta that should go live during this chat.

12:06

Prior to that, I wrote about Jackson Chourio's step forward, which may be flying under some radars given that he missed the first 5 weeks of the season https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/jackson-chourios-big-step-forward

leoneforthird

12:10

Lets assume that Skubal comes back and is Skubal and the Mariners are still in a playoff spot at the deadline. Does a Logan Gilbert for Skubal trade make sense for both sides. The Mariners have young pitchers that they can slide in next year when Skubal leaves and the Tigers get a pitcher who can help them compete next year.

Jay Jaffe

12:15

That's an interesting one to ponder, but I don't think it makes great sense for the Mariners. Gilbert is a very good pitcher with one more year of club control, and the Mariners do seem to have rotation depth, but the margin between him and Skubal just isn't big enough — to me at least — to give that up. I can certainly understand the impulse to go for it, though.

Peter Maclaren

12:16

what do you think we can realistically expect from Shane Bieber?

Jay Jaffe

12:18

I don't expect the 2020 version of Bieber to come back anytime soon, and I imagine he'll be on a short leash to begin with, but I'd expect him to settle in as a useful #3 behind Cease and Gausman in that rotation.

BillyBeaneisnotmylover

12:18

Thinking about this being the end for Verlander and Scherzer, made me wonder about next HoF chances for pitchers. How are Sale and Cole's chances?

Jay Jaffe

12:19

The short version is that Sale looks like the next Hall of Fame starter outside the Greinke/Kershaw/Scherzer/Verlander group. He doesn't have the bulky counting stats of CC Sabathia but as of today, the two are tied at 50.8 S-JAWS, 56th all-time. https://www.baseball-reference.com/leaders/jaws_P.shtml

12:21

Cole once seemed to be the heir apparent to that quartet but elbow issues culminating in Tommy John surgery have limited him to 23 starts since he won the 2023 Cy Young and he's now 35 years old, with a 39.1 S-JAWS. If he can make it to 200 wins and 3,000 strikeouts he's a likely Hall of Famer but he's going to have to be productive through the back half of his 30s.

cboone21

12:22

Foster Griffin has been a bright spot in the Nats rotation. He doesn't have ace peripherals, but I'm still surprised that his fWAR (0.9) seems really low for a guy with a sub-1.100 WHIP. bWAR is 2.2, so what explains the difference?

Jay Jaffe

12:26

Two things going on here. He's a guy with a 3.15 ERA (76 ERA-) but a 4.41 FIP (105 FIP-). His low ERA is benefiting from a .243 BABIP that owes something to strong defensive support (note that his xERA is just 4.05 and he's got an 11% barrel rate — he's not doing a great job of suppressing hard contact). bWAR is going to credit him with most of that, though it does have adjustments for defense. Meanwhile, he's also got a 1.58 HR/9 rate, which is what's pumping up that FIP, and FIP is what drives his fWAR, which in this case is middling.

war2d2

12:26

Jay! PCA is going HAM. I realize we’ve seen this before, and he came down to earth hard in the second half last year. The difference seems to be that he’s gotten way more selective in his swing decisions. Do you think this is somewhat sustainable? I only say “somewhat” because I don’t think his true-talent triple-slash is .437/.481/.930 like it has been for the month of June so far. But the swing decisions seem at least a little bit sticky.

Jay Jaffe

12:27

Yeah I don't expect a 1400 OPS going forward but the big leap forward in his swing decisions is something that should provide a better floor for him during his slumps while helping him sustain better production.

Eric

12:29

Thanks as always for the chat Jay! A friend of mine recently suggested that staying somewhat in the public eye via Sunday Night Baseball (and a string of MLB Network appearances) might help Joey Votto secure a first ballot ticket to Cooperstown down the road if he keeps it up. I disagreed, thinking that a) that certainly isn't Votto's motivation and b) it won't have any appreciable effect. Do you think PR of any kind (beyond making sure you don't go full Schilling) can actually, or has actually, pushed many guys into the Hall?

Jay Jaffe

12:31

I think that for your average non-slam dunk Hall of Fame candidate it generally helps to stay in the public eye around the game in one capacity or another — coaching, broadcasting — and remain accessible so long as you're not going off the rails like Schilling or joining the Former Players Fainting Couch group chat that finds fault with every little thing players are doing these days.

12:32

That said, I don't think Votto has much to worry about because he was already very accessible, particularly during the latter days of his career, and the writers who are going to be voting on his candidacy already love themselves some Votto AND understand the numbers that show how great he was.

Bobzilla

12:33

Besides Soto, do you feel like the best young hitters (Acuna, Tatis, Guerrero, etc.) who have debuted in the last 7-8 years are less consistent than their peers in the past were? While injuries could be a factor, could it be driven by everyone pushing for max performance creating a higher level of competition?

Jay Jaffe

12:37

I don't have the means of quantifying this but it does seem many of the players who would fit that demographic — particularly if you're drawing a line so that doesn't include, say, Aaron Judge or Mookie Betts — have had their ups and downs, with injuries part of the story. I think it's also true that the game is harder than ever in a lot of ways, with better nutrition and training a big part of it, and in the age of analytics, the amount of data that can be used to exploit players' weaknesses.

12:38

At the same time it's also worth pointing out that the same data, and what we've learned about swings and pitch grips and so on, has made player improvements much more possible than before.

Mr. Redlegs

12:40

What do you do if you're the Reds? An earned 5th place in the central, extreme lack of heart/hustle, mediocre to poor farm and a poor record for out of nowhere player dev (Bleday is the outlier). Hope for a healthy Hunter Greene resurgence and ride it out? Or sell off parts?

Jay Jaffe

12:42

I think we've seen the pitching be good enough recently enough not to give up entirely, and anyway it's not like this is a team that has Skubal in his walk year; their top pending free agents — Singer and Stephenson — have been replacement level and the guys with some kind of options (Suárez, Pagán, Johnson) have been replacement level-ish as well.

So you're not going to add a ton of talent to the roster by selling.

maximus74

12:44

did the city of New York just break Devin Williams?

Jay Jaffe

12:50

It does seem that way, but it mostly comes down to the guy's ERA being much higher than his FIP and xERA; this year, he's given up a .370 BABIP despite decent contact stats.

That said, Williams' signature Airbender changeup isn't so special; he's throwing it harder and the differential between that and his fastball has shrunk, and its shape has changed. Lance Brozdowski noted some mechanical stuff in late April that's worth checking out: https://lancebroz.substack.com/p/mets-devin-williams-breakdown-pirates...

mragbayani

12:50

Further to Eric's question above re: Votto, do you think Keith Hernandez's quarter-century in the Mets broadcast booth would have an impact with a future Committee (or Committee nomination panel)? It seemed to work for Kaat, and at the risk of homerism, Keith is a much better announcer and was a much better player.

Jay Jaffe

12:54

Beyond the fact that he doesn't have counting stats that scan as fitting in with the typical HOF first base candidate, and that much of his value comes from defense, I have to wonder if there's some personal conflict behind the scenes that's thwarting his attempts to get on a ballot. He should be getting some of the repeated Era Committee reps that are instead going to Steve Garvey, an inferior player with a lot more baggage — particularly post-career baggage — attached to him.

tjcook87

12:55

Re: the last 7-8 years, consistency, et al. How much of that can we ascribe to the Covid lockdowns and how that affected development time, reps, etc. Are we past a lockdown effect, so to speak? Or will ripples of that continue to show up?

Jay Jaffe

12:57

At most i think that has to be a very small part of it. It's not like it caused the performances of Tatis or Vladito or Acuña to fluctuate

Anselm

12:57

Hi Jay -- curious to know your take on the owners' latest proposal regarding the international draft, the age limit, the cutting out of high school players being drafted -- it seems like a total non-starter on its face. Do you detect any real strategy on the owners part, beyond just putting terrible offers up front and hoping to find a middle ground closer to what they generally want? Thanks

Jay Jaffe

1:01

it is a laughably contemptible proposal that has less than a zero chance of being accepted by the players. The young players this would cut out are the ones who become the face-of-baseball types — Junior Griffey, Harper, Soto, Trout — so this is cutting off nose, eyelids, ears, and lips to in order to save 30 of America's biggest assholes some money, to borrow Craig Calcaterra's phrase.

That said, MLB has to know this, and it's a way of making the mere adoption of an international draft seem reasonable. That's the obvious end-game here.

hoo5151

1:02

This year, Steven Kwan's bat speed seems to be showing the opposite trend of Jung Hoo Lee's recent approach.

After returning from injury, Lee largely avoided swings above 75 mph and was able to rack up a tremendous number of hits. However, over the past few games, he appears to be taking more aggressive swings.

In yesterday's game, he recorded a career-high bat speed of 83.3 mph.

Do you think Lee's approach of varying his bat speed depending on the situation is a sustainable and effective strategy? Or would he be better off sticking to the more controlled, contact-oriented approach that brought him so much success after his return?

Jay Jaffe

1:03

It's a good question to which i don't know the answer but I think it's worth remembering that there's more variance and situational awareness for most players when it comes to swing speed than a single number conveys. Even Lee has a fast swing rate of ~3% over the past couple seasons.

1:05

Given how lost the Giants season is, I don't think it would hurt for him to experiment with swinging harder more often. I mean, what's the worst that can happen? The bullpen is gonna become MORE bigoted? Vitello gonna lose that clubhouse even more?

Athletics Fan Surrounded by Guardians

1:05

I recently read "Maybe I'll Pitch Forever" and "Veeck as in Wreck", which were both entertaining if flawed. Do you have any favorites in "baseball autobiography" genre?

Jay Jaffe

1:07

Ball Four is the heavyweight champion even if it is in diary form. Nice Guys Finish Last, by Leo Durocher with Ed Linn (who also served as the as-told-to for Veeck) is fantastic.

More recently, Cobra, by Dave Parker with David Jordan, was outstanding.

Alby

1:12

Speaking of SF's bullpen bigots, do teams ever take into account things like a player's fit with the city they'll be playing in? It always seemed to me that Dombrowski erred in bringing a thin-skinned guy like Castellanos to abrasive Philadelphia, for example, just as anti-gay players seem a poor fit in San Francisco.

Connecting…

filter2

4:05

HOF chances for third baseman Leody Taveras?

Auswan_Kletin

4:14

How if at all do you anticipate the trade deadline changing this season with the looming CBA negotiations and potential/likely lockout?

mackhartin

4:17

How do you feel about Hinch's bullpen/bench usage strategy? This also made me wish I knew of more ways to monitor manager tendencies - maybe there's a page I miss?

Daniel Eck

4:21

Sale ranks even higher by era-adjusted JAWS!

jonerici

4:35

Hey, Jay! There's been attention brought to the baseballs being that of the 2019 variety lately. Do you think there's any intention to that and if there's a correlation between boosted ratings from bigger offense this Summer and the looming lockout next year? I can't help but put the tinfoil hat on and think the MLB's trying to make some extra bread because they know we're losing a big chunk of next year. I'll hang up and listen.

tjcook87

4:37

(Exclusively talking about baseball on field performance, of course)

cosmichero

5:13

do you think the next generation of young hitters (wood, Kurtz, Witt, etc) will be more consistent than the last?

Philip Christy

5:20

The owners really are happy to make the game worse in order to make a buck. It's disgusting.

NicklePickers

5:27

Do you have a favorite among these young arms: Yesavage, Early, and Gore? They seem to have mismatching stats...

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