You are viewing the chat in desktop mode. Click here to switch to mobile view.
X
Jay Jaffe FanGraphs Chat – 9/17/24
powered byJotCast
Prev Page View Full Chat Next Page
Cromulent
2:37
Would Francisco Lindor be more valuable to the Dodgers than Shohei Ohtani?
AvatarJay Jaffe
2:39
I have not read Kiri Oler's feature yet (https://blogs.fangraphs.com/francisco-lindor-would-be-more-valuable-to...) so I'm not sure I understand the full premise. Does that mean the Dodgers would have J.D. Martinez at DH and the Mets Miguel Rojas at SS? I guess I'll need to read to find out. I do enjoy Kiri's outside-the-box approach to baseball questions, though, so I'm looking forward to it.
John
2:39
Ohtani 50/50 or White Sox losing 121 games, which one is more likely to happen? White Sox have 5 more games against the Angels.
AvatarJay Jaffe
2:41
Failure is easier than success and one target is easier than two, so I'd guess that the White Sox (who need to go 7-4 to avoid that fate) have a better shot at reaching their destination than Ohtani (who needs three homers and two steals)
not Rickey
2:41
How concerning is Corbin Burnes going from a 125 K%+ and 81 AVG+ in his last two years with the Brewers to a 98 K%+ and 97 AVG+ this year with the Orioles on the verge of free anency?
AvatarJay Jaffe
2:42
It's a concern but — and I think I said similar in an earlier chat — he may be taking a more contact-oriented approach just because the Orioles need every inning they can get out of him given the other injuries in their rotation.
Guest
2:43
So where are Ben Clemens and Michael Baumann?  Does this have to do with the metered paywall?
AvatarJay Jaffe
2:44
I don't know where they are — they're always in the last place I look — but it has nothing to do with the paywall. Taking time off in September before the grind of October is a sound strategy for a baseball writer.
2:46
While I don't know what it did from a membership standpoint myself, I can say that we greatly appreciate the outpouring of support received from our readers when it came to the announcement of our metered paywall system. By comparison to most paywall systems, it's very generous and should be comparatively inobtrusive for light users. Plus as has been said before, this site functions so much better in ad-free mode.
Jason
2:46
Is there an updated version of how fWAR and rWAR is calculated? The one is the sabermetric library is from 2012 and I know fWAR uses stat cast for defensive metric. Not sure how much rWAR is updated though.
AvatarJay Jaffe
2:47
We're overdue for update in our library documentation but you can read about the change to Statcast for our range component here https://blogs.fangraphs.com/a-fangraphs-war-fielding-update/
Cromulent
2:47
Did Yankees fans hate Didi Gregorious this much? From a distance it seems like the answer is no. How is they're hating more on the guy who replaced the guy who replaced the legend?
AvatarJay Jaffe
2:48
It doesn't speak terribly well of those fans, but that said, Gregorius was always understood to be some kind of stopgap whereas Volpe was a highly-touted prospect who hasn't yet reached his ceiling.
AL Central Casting
2:49
Royce Lewis looked like a legit .900 OPS guy through his first 350-400 career PAs but pretty bad since then. Is this the league making adjustments? Is he tired? Just not that guy?
AvatarJay Jaffe
2:50
He was due for some regression given his insane early-career numbers, and given his recent slump (45 wRC+ over the past month) I wouldn't be surprised if he's not fully right at the moment.
Bighen
2:50
should Mendoza be getting more love for moy?  I feel like brewers manager has it locked up but Mendoza has been great for Mets.
AvatarJay Jaffe
2:51
I see a lot of complaints about his bullpen management — the unit is 17th in ERA, and 12th in FIP — but yeah I think he belongs in the discussion.
wheelhouse
2:52
as much as this doesn't remotely tell the whole story, the padres are pretty clearly going to have won the Soto to NYY trade in terms of raw WAR, right? Not even adjusting for $, and even as incredible as Soto has been, Cease and King are both down-ballot CY votes starters, Higgy is a perfectly fine starting catcher, and none of the guys they sent to Chicago in the Cease follow-up trade look like they're going to burn them.
AvatarJay Jaffe
2:54
Given that Cease wasn't part of the Soto trade — he came from the White Sox, who did get ex-Yankees prospect Drew Thorpe in that deal – I think you're running up the score here.
Justin P
2:54
I think the A's lineup is looking pretty good. Feels like they could be building something if they weren't moving to Sacramento. Am I correct in assuming it's going to have negative affect on their players' development?
AvatarJay Jaffe
2:55
I'd say that's a fair assumption
Guardcore Clevelander
2:55
If Luis Arraez gets to 3000 hits (unlikely itself, but still) is he worth consideration for the HoF, or is he just Michael Young in a different font?
AvatarJay Jaffe
2:59
if you're going to play around with long-shot hypotheticals let's at least see what the context for his getting to 3,000 hits is. He's already won a couple of batting titles. To get to 3,000 he's probably going to have to hit at a very high caliber that would make winning more titles likely. Chances are he'd help somebody to the playoffs along the way, perhaps multiple times, and perhaps even in one of his lesser years (like this year with the Padres) so let's see what he does there.

That said, a 27-year-old with 841 career hits isn't a candidate for 3,000. That's about 230 behind Silly Hypothetical candidate Nick Markakis had through his age-27 season, and he doesn't even get discounts in Utica, let alone a plaque in Cooperstown.
Evan
3:00
Would you say that if Billy Wagner doesn't get into the Hall, then there would be no chance for Jansen, Kimbrel, Chapman, etc to get in? Relievers don't seem to be well regarded as HOF candidates unless they're Mariano Rivera-like, so I'm curious as to what you think the chances of future relievers are.
AvatarJay Jaffe
3:01
No. Both KJ and CK have higher save totals (4th and 5th, respectively, while Wagner is 8th) and much larger postseason footprints, including a championship ring.

That said, I do think Wagner gets in.
Small Bears
3:03
Did the Cubs late run raise Counsell's first year grade from C minus to C plus ??
AvatarJay Jaffe
3:05
I don't think it's been that bad. Ownership's lack of spending has created a team with some significant holes, as sending Kyle Hendricks out for 22 starts suggests (to cite just one example).
Benjamin, J
3:06
A follow up on the Arenado, Machado and Ramriez discussion: how much more does Jose have to do to reach Arenado and Machado's level? I feel like from a WAR standpoint they're almost nearly identical
AvatarJay Jaffe
3:06
3:08
Ramírez is about one Ramírez season away from the other two. He's produced less defensive value than either of the others but is the best hitter and baserunner of the bunch. He'll be fine.
Eric
3:08
How much do organizations push back against players who play the game in a suboptimal way but make the news in a positive way for it? For example, imagine if someone was on pace for 100 steals but also getting caught 40 times, or Luis Arraez on his recent no strikeout streak where he was actually hitting worse than before.
AvatarJay Jaffe
3:10
Nobody is going to let a guy run like that and get caught 40 times. As for Arraez being worse than before? He slashed .397/.436/.473 for the games covering the streak, so you're off base.
Justin
3:11
How many extra WAR would Ohtani have if he played an average right field and put up the same batting and base running value
AvatarJay Jaffe
3:14
Currently we have a 10-run gap in our positional adjustments between DH (-17.5 runs) and RF (-7.5 runs) so figure 1.0 WAR over the course of a full season, maybe dialed back a bit due to the extra need for rest that comes with playing defense. You'd gain that in a year like this one, but at the cost of the value — WAR and aesthetic — that comes with him pitching in a "normal" season.

I believe we're due for a reappraisal of those positional adjustments so the gap may actually be less.
Walton Dilcox
3:15
Wow Arraez led the league with 194? How often does the league leader have fewer than 200?
AvatarJay Jaffe
3:16
It's pretty common lately, given that we've had just 6 players reach 200 (Arraez likely the 7th) in the last 6 full seasons https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders/major-league?pos=all&stats=bat&lg=al...
Prospect Improver
3:16
This century we had a hitter who ended his age 27 season with 242 hits, and he got to 3000 . . . so ~850 doesn't seem like a crazy total
AvatarJay Jaffe
3:16
Arraez ain't Ichiro.
Smiling Politely
3:17
Hey, so, Tommy Edman -- is he actually this good when healthy? The Dodger lineup suddenly looks really long after some tough stretches (ignoring the rotation, heh)
AvatarJay Jaffe
3:18
Edman has produced 4.2 WAR per 162 games in his career and is still just 29. He's a very useful player though I wouldn't expect him to slug .521 for long, and even .421 might be a reach.
Connecting…