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Jay Jaffe FanGraphs Chat – 8/19/25
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AvatarJay Jaffe
12:01
Good afternoon, folks! It's been a minute since our last chat, to say the least. Summer goings-on, especially a family vacation that ran Tuesday to Tuesday, did a number on my schedule here. Anyway, I'm back in Brooklyn and back on my b.s., so here we are.
12:02
Yesterday, I wrote about the season-threatening shoulder issues faced by Zack Wheeler and Josh Hader https://blogs.fangraphs.com/injuries-put-the-seasons-of-zack-wheeler-a... since that went up, Wheeler had his blood clot removed by thrombolysis, but that doesn't address the cause of the clot, and we're waiting to hear from the Phillies as to whether he'll pitch again in 2025.
12:03
On Thursday and Friday of last week, I wrote about the Dodgers' face-plant (https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-dodgers-have-face-planted/) and the Padres' surge (https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-revamped-padres-have-surged-into-first...), then of course the Dodgers swept the Padres to retake the NL West lead.
12:04
Tomorrow I should have the first installment of this year's Cooperstown progress report; my plan is to follow up with a second one next week.
Anyway, on with the show...
Pitchers for the Hall
12:04
Great article on Logan Webb today from Mike Baumann. I know it's early in his career, but do you think that today's version of the ultimate inning eating sinker baller is on the start of the path to the Hall?
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:09
Since I started with pitchers for the aforementioned Hall piece, I checked in on Webb but he hasn't yet cracked the Top 500 in S-JAWS. He has racked up 20.1 WAR so far and is just 28, so he's some time to build a case. Piling up high-quality innings is a great way to do that in general, particularly if you can notch ~170 strikeouts a year, though so far from Webb I see only a couple of foundational seasons (4.6 bWAR in 2022, 5.6 in '23).; he's at just 2.8 this year, though he did make his second All-Star team.
Opifijikl
12:09
Good article on the Phillies/Astros. Do you think Dombrowski has a chance of being elected into the HOF? He even seems to be keeping the Phillies farm above water too, maybe. What criteria would you judge him on?
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:12
Yes, I think Dombrowski's a future Hall of Famer, having built championship teams in Florida and Boston, and pennant winners in Detroit and Philadelphia. In fact, i expect he'll be the next executive to be elected once he retires.
Dansby Swansong
12:13
Esteban Rivera just published an article about Soto's declining D.  With his big contract, is his overall value likely to decline sooner than expected?
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:17
Some amount of bad defense was already baked into those projections; he had -9 DRS in 2020 (!) and -17 FRV in '22, and entered the year with -15 DRS and -28 FRV for his career between the two outfield corners. He's shown the ability to improve (0 DRS and -1 FRV last year after -6 and -4 the year before), so I wouldn't call this a dire situation just yet, and it's worth remembering that he's probably going to be a full-time DH sooner or later, which is also factored into those projections. It's his bat that's gonna take him to Cooperstown if anything is.
War2D2
12:18
Hi Jay! Hope you had a great vacation! You’ll probably get this question more than once today, but thought I’d ask anyway. Given the recent IL trip and potentially scary diagnosis for Wheeler, what would you put his Hall odds at if he winds up having to quit baseball due to health? He’s not at all close in any traditional metric, but if you aggregate the last five years he’s been the best starting pitcher in baseball (9 bWAR ahead of second place in that period). How do you weigh that, given the changing role of starters in the modern game? I’m not saying he should get in (only 40 WAR, no Cy Young, etc), but I’m curious what you think.
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:22
I'm not going to game out odds on him making the Hall, but I do address Wheeler's progress in tomorrow's installment. I'm less keen on the utility of a 5-year rolling WAR calculation for Hall purposes than I am a 7-year one; as Mike Petriello wrote about in early 2024 (https://www.mlb.com/news/how-the-hall-of-fame-should-judge-starting-pi...), 80% of the post-integration starters who can make such a claim are either in the Hall or will be. Wheeler is the leader for the seven-year stretches starting in 2018, 2019, and '20 (he's got about a 9-win jump on 2nd-ranked Max Fried); the only pitchers in that span with as many or more such leads are Clemens, Stieb, and Santana. So that's not nothing.
Grant
12:22
When I look up a split on Fangraphs and I check the wRC+, is the wRC+ that's displayed like sOPS+ from Baseball Reference in that it's comparing to the league average in that split or is it comparing to overall league average?
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:23
It's a comparison to overall league average.
21127
12:23
The Dombrowski as HOFer is interesting. What other modern execs will likely be considered: Cashman, Epstein, Friedman, etc.?
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:25
As GMs/POBOs for multiple champinship teams, all of those guys are probably going to wind up in the Hall as well. Beyond those guys, Billy Beane, despite never winning a pennant, is considered by many to have a pretty good shot on the basis of the influence of his Moneyball-era A's.
12:27
The other exec of recent vintage i'd mention is Beane's mentor, Sandy Alderson, though the end of his tenure in Queens was an absolute shitshow that could hurt his cause.
Brave Believer
12:27
I know you've done a lot of work on quantifying a player's performance as it relates to Hall likelihood. Have you or anyone else found a way to quantitatively take into account team performance for how the players likelihood changes?
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:32
The foundation of what I do with regards to the Hall is to focus on the context-neutral aspect of their performance via WAR, where team performance isn't the point. Of course, I think team success is a valid part of a player's Hall case, and can be reflected to some degree in individual postseason performance, but I don't have a prescription for how to quantify that and I expect that voters will differ in the subjective weight they accord team success.
RaisedUp
12:32
Is Junior Caminero having a under the radar great season? Even the image that comes up when you google him is a Yankees Pitcher.
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:36
I suppose you could call it under-the-radar season in that he plays for Tampa Bay and is a 22-year-old in his first full year in the majors, but Caminero did make the AL All-Star team and finish second in the Home Run Derby, and he's currently thid in the AL in total bases and home runs, so we're not talking about someone who's completely obscure. I expect his profile to grow in the near future
12 to 6
12:38
the alexis diaz rehab experiment is a worthy one, but given the dodgers seeming return to somewhat health in the bullpen, i would much rather he experiment at aaa instead of in the midst of a pennant race. paul gervase is a unique look for their pen - any reason he isn't up already?
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:42
When Gervase was traded from Tampa Bay to Los Angeles on July 31, Eric Longenhagen graded him as a 35+ FV and described him as a "gigantic righty with elite extension, plus fastball playability. Walk-prone track record." I don't know isn't up besides roster space, but he is on the 40-man roster and figures to get a look. I imagine the Dodgers front office likes him but wants to try a few tweaks at OKC before they throw him into the fire but I'd bet we'll see him in Dodger blue sooner or later.
sandy
12:43
Hi, any thoughts on Sandy Alcantara ROS?  One game very good, the next is awful.  Thank you
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:45
The raw stuff is still pretty good but that drop in swinging strike rate – from 12.3% in 2023 to 8.6% this year — worries me greatly. I think he's going to need another winter and maybe a change of scenery to be good again.
Maddoning
12:46
What's up with Mookie Betts exactly?  Is it that early-season illness?  It's a little early for an age-related decline, isn't it?
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:49
i think it's a combination of factors — the early-season illness, the physical demands of shortstop, age, nagging minor injuries, and the mental toll of his long slump.
12:50
He does seem to be through the worst of it and has looked better at the plate lately
Maddoning
12:50
Did Houston rush Cam Smith?  He's batting .159 since the ASB, with ballooning K-Rates
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:51
it does seem that way, which shouldn't be too surprising given that he had all of five games above High-A coming into the year. A Triple-A reset while there's still minor league ball to play would probably be a good thing for him.
md
12:51
How can you truly explain the Dodgers smacking the stuffing out of the Padres for a weekend then immediately looking extraordinarily pedestrian against the Rockies
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:51
That's baseball, Suzyn.
12:53
it's hardly inconceivable that after players get keyed up for the biggest series of the year so far, there would be an emotional letdown, and Coors Field takes a physical toll on players. The ball finding Teoscar — a bad outfielder these days — at a couple of inopportune times had an outsized effect on the results.
Sodo mojo
12:53
So earlier in the season the Raleigh over Judge conversation was laughable now with the gap in WAR tightening do you think Raleigh having one of the greatest seasons by a catcher gives him an edge in the mvp race
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:56
it's a real MVP race, and yes, Raleigh is having one of the great seasons for a catcher while Judge has cooled off and missed time due to injury; by fWAR the gap is just 7.4 for Judge to 7.0 for Raleigh. I don't have an MVP vote t but if I did, I'd be waiting until late September to make up my mind; we've got another month to see what transpires. I hope both players make this as hard to choose as possible.
Tom R
12:57
Is Stanton really going into the HOF with 500 HRs?
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:58
Well, I don't think he's going in without 500 homers. But I do think that if he does get to 500, the fact that a player reaches the milestone untainted by scandal is going to do a lot of the work for him.
Opifijikl
12:58
I've got a question about C. Rafaela. If you were trying to make a "context-neutral" list of pretty good players, would you include him? How do you take into account roster decisions beyond his control? He's great at CF and Still Learning 2B/SS but is being a team player and playing there despite bad results.
AvatarJay Jaffe
1:02
Sure. This is a guy who's got 3.0 fWAR/3.7 bWAR this year at age 24, with about a quarter of the season to go. He plays elite CF defense and has the ability to play the middle infield as well. He'd probably be more valuable if the Red Sox stick with him in center field, but the fact that they may make the playoffs with him spending time at multiple spots isn't going to hurt him.
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