JotCast | Jay Jaffe FanGraphs Chat

Jay Jaffe FanGraphs Chat - 6/3/22

Prev Page View Full Chat Next Page

James

2:44

With Yordan getting paid, would think the Astros look to extand Tucker next. What type of contract would you expect relative to Alvarez?

Jay Jaffe

2:46

He'll get more than Alvarez, as well he should, but at last report the two sides were far enough apart that they broke off negotiations. I don't have direct access to Dan'z ZiPS projections so he'd be the one to ballpark a projected contract

Guest

2:46

In honor of Yordan's new deal with the Astros... how is his nascent HOF case looking? Longevity is probably the biggest question mark, right?

Jay Jaffe

2:48

He hasn't even had a 4-bWAR season. Nascent is generous in describing his case. Dude can hit, and if there's growth, look out, but he has no safety net of defensive value to keep him around if he doesn't.

Pat Kelly's Potential

2:48

Maybe this is a silly question but is the number of future Hall of Famers playing during any given year relatively static? And if so, approximately what is the number?

Jay Jaffe

2:50

No, it has varied widely from era to era. Here's a graph I keep:

2:51

That's Hall of Famers per team per year, broken out into BBWAA- and committee-elected

the big peak in the middle there is the period where the Frisch-Terry-Hoyt Veterans Committee ran amok

Key Flaw

2:52

I had been on the fence thinking about Andruw Jones and the Hall of Fame when I realized (probably from something you wrote) about how similar his and Ken Griffey Junior's careers are. Both came up really young at 19, both had really great years in their 20s, and both fell of to almost replacement level at age 30. The only differences are that Griffey hit more home runs and played for 5 or so years longer to get his counting stats up (and he was more famous). Yet Griffey got almost 100% of the vote and Jones is still waiting. Is it really mostly marketing and brand that got Griffey so much support?

Jay Jaffe

2:56

The two players' career patterns bear some similarities but Griffey was a much better hitter, and so he stuck around much longer. It's much easier to quantify (and celebrate) offense than defense, and Griffey was also much more outgoing and well-regarded within the game, so he kept getting chances where Jones ran out of them, particularly after his DV arrest.

Guest

2:57

Would 3,000 hits and/or another MVP solidify Altuve's HOF case? Or is it going to be in jeopardy regardless due to the scandal?

Jay Jaffe

2:57

3,000 hits is a virtual guarantee for the Hall

2:59

And I suspect that whether or not he gets to 3,000 or a 2nd MVP award (which definitely would hel), Altuve's reported ambivalence regarding the trash can banging scheme will probably carry the day there

3:00

i don't think I know any voters who have given credence to the buzzer story — that's one for the tinfoil hat bunch

Devos

3:00

Would you be more or less interested in MLB if they went back to 1993 format - two huge divisions. two teams in each league make playoff. It seems like Dodgers-Giants was the first playoff series in a long time that broke through nationally because both teams were loaded.

Jay Jaffe

3:01

I think I like 2 divisions per league more than 3, but in either of those breakdowns the Dodgers and Giants are paired together due to geography so I don't see where going back to the older format makes such a matchup more likely

A Boy Named Yu

3:01

What was more surprising - Salvy Perez's 50 HRs last year or Brady Anderson randomly going off for 50 back in the 90's?

Jay Jaffe

3:04

Anderson's season was so out of nowhere. He'd never hit more than 21 homers and had just 41 in the three seasons prior to his hitting 50. Perez (who actually only hit 48 last year) had reached 27 twice, and had totaled 65 in his three previous seasons, one of which was the pandemic-shortened one (and of course i'm not counting his full year missed due to injury).

Josh

3:04

Is xwOBA broken? Or in need of a recalibration ?

Jay Jaffe

3:07

xwOBA doesn't get recalibrated until the end of the season. Tom Tango did a good thread on this recently.

@YankeesSlut You have to be careful here. Each of those seasons had their models recalibrated at end of season. So, you are comparing the first two weeks of 2021 to the recalibrated model of 2021.

Once the 2022 model is recalibrated at end of 2022, you won't see that 25 point difference.

A Boy Named Yu

3:07

What is the shortest dominant career a guy could ever have that you would support for the HOF? Like 5 years of 8 WAR for example? Career ends out of his control, i.e. injury or illness

Jay Jaffe

3:08

I'd probably need more specifics than that. Obviously a player has to have played in parts of 10 seasons to be qualified for the Hall in the first place. Five eight-win seasons within that context but almost nothing else would be interesting but I'm not sure it would be enough, unless it's somebody doing something as singular as Shohei Ohtani.

Dave

3:09

Patrick Wisdom hits home runs better than most baseball players. This is not a question.

Jay Jaffe

3:09

he's on my list as a player to look into sometime down the road

WinTwins0410

3:09

Jay, a couple quick questions: 1) Should Jim Kaat just stop broadcasting? (Seriously.) And 2) I assume you don't see his latest comment as being disqualifying for his election/induction, so more broadly, I'd wonder: Is there anything done by a HoFer that would lead you to conclude that that guy should be fired from/pressured to resign from the Hall? I ask this totally seriously (recognizing that an offhand "Nestor the Molester" comment by a 83-year-old man, while ridiculous, also is a long way from murder!), as it came up in the past regarding O.J. Simpson. I know several hockey hall of famers have been pressured into resigning over the years (Gil Stein, Alan Eagleson).

Jay Jaffe

3:12

I don't think Kaat has any business being on the air anymore but no, I don't see that as pertinent to his HOF case, weak tea though it was. I'm not sure exactly where the line should be but I think if a living HOFer were convicted of murder, rape, treason, sedition, or something else that's quite serious that the institution could just say, "Yer out!"

Rudy

3:13

Is Joey Gallo done for good? Seems like a DFA candidate

Jay Jaffe

3:15

Gallo's quality of contact is generally fine, but he's not making enough of it. He's another guy who fits the pattern of swinging and chasing far more often than normal, and so I think some of it comes back to his approach, which needs some re-thinking. he does enough things well that I don't see the Yankees just DFAing him, but trading him even while his value is low is another matter.

Grant

3:16

Is it not reasonable to assume HOF/team/year would decrease with expansion? i.e. is it fair to assume that if x% of players from, say, the 1960s make the HOF, the 1990s should also have x%?

Jay Jaffe

3:21

The problem with that line of thought is that the player pool has expanded so dramatically, first via integration and then via Latin America, and it's raised the caliber of competition. Trying to keep a similar player-per-team level of Hall of Famers consistent across eras is almost certainly a futile task, and I'm not about to say that we should be admitting players at a level equivalent to that peak on the graph, but at the same time it's clear that more recent eras are underrepresented.

(sorry, this is a tough one to answer in a chat format)

ironcurtain

3:21

I think we're seeing the actual Robby Ray this year; and not his 2021 Cy Young season.

Jay Jaffe

3:22

Agreed, the 2021 season is the anomaly, while this looks a lot like his 2018-19

Young Man

3:23

Jay, how do I break the news to anybody alive in the 70s that Joey Votto will most likely be a hall of famer? I've started with an easier topic, like talking about the 2020 election with my grandparents, but could still use some help. Thanks!

Jay Jaffe

3:23

Haha good luck

3:24

I touched on Votto's case in this piece, particularly the last few grafs https://blogs.fangraphs.com/joey-vottos-gotten-his-groove-back/, but I think that does only part of the job.

A Boy Named Yu

3:24

Is there a big debate in the future over how good he really was if Trout somehow doesn't hit some of the big career milestones, i.e. 3000 H, 500 HR?

Jay Jaffe

3:27

Eh I don't think it will be that big a surprise if he doesn't become a 3000/500 guy; I'm not worried about the homers unless he has a severe injury. He's playing in a very strange era for offense, with hits especially hard to come by even if you're not walking 100 times a year. We'll all be aware of the pandemic-shortened season and the injury-shortened ones, but the three MVP awards and four (!) runners-up already tells anybody who's listening that this guy was perennially the best if not always acknowledged as such by the hardware.

Mookie

3:28

What’s up with Trout why can’t he get a hit right now? This makes me sad.

Connecting…

Your current subscriptions

None

E-mail Address	Chat Owner	Status	Remove

Enter your email address to be notified when Jay Jaffe hosts a chat