You are viewing the chat in desktop mode. Click here to switch to mobile view.
X
Jeff Sullivan FanGraphs Chat -- 3/17/17
powered byJotCast
Prev Page View Full Chat Next Page
Jeff Sullivan
10:41
A very dangerous sort of nesting doll
McFly
10:42
Was Villar's breakout last year just due to an unsustainable high BABIP versus RHP or is this a repeatable skill?
Jeff Sullivan
10:43
His right-handed swing improved and he already had some speed and pop. He's not *that* good of a player but I do buy him as a decent regular
AO
10:43
What do the Dodgers do with their 19 outfielders?
Jeff Sullivan
10:43
Keep some number of them at any one time in the minors or on the DL
Guest
10:43
How much synergy do you think there is to be gained from building a stylistically complimentary baseball team? (Thinking Mariners outfield with flyball staff or other similar concepts) Can a team built in a specific style significantly outperform the summation of individual projections by leveraging complementary skills? Debating a friend - he thinks team composition is critical and I fall more on the side of the synergy is fringe and value is value. Curious as to your thoughts. Thanks, Jeff.
Jeff Sullivan
10:44
There is value to be gained if you put a bunch of complementary pieces together, but the downside is in limiting the pool of players you can try to acquire. Like, if you're trying to pair FB pitchers with good defensive outfielders, then you'll looking only at speedsters and fly-ball pitchers. So you're ignoring other kinds of talent, which is a modest detriment, at least in theory
Luke
10:45
I know this has been discussed before, but I'm curious which spring training stats are predictive for regular season success and which aren't.
Jeff Sullivan
10:45
Mostly, just don't bother, assuming velocity readings don't count as spring-training stats. But pay attention if you see a big change in strikeout rate
JT
10:45
Trumbo atleast knows how to play the outfield. Hanley genuinely looked like he had never played outfield at any level of baseball in his life
Jeff Sullivan
10:45
And yet Trumbo has been almost that bad. Amazing!
Caligula
10:46
You can tell the season is about to start based on the heavy amount of fantasy questions in chats this week. Thanks for the fantasy free zone.
Jeff Sullivan
10:46
I'd like to repeat for people: I don't avoid fantasy questions out of being a jerk. I just genuinely don't know how to answer them, because I don't play fantasy baseball, and there are so many details that I don't want to give bad advice
Marcus
10:47
Why has fangraphs gone to such great lengths to ignore the Fernandez report. People such as yourself were building shrines to honor this man, but now that it's found out he drove the boat and killed 2 others and left a child behind it's radio silence
Jeff Sullivan
10:47
This is a baseball-analysis website, not a baseball-commentary website. If you are looking for baseball commentary, there is no shortage of outlets
Whether that's how we *ought* to operate, I don't know, but it's the model
10:48
Even when the accident was first reported, we basically focused on the loss to the baseball community, since that's all we know
Terry's Sarape
10:48
How will the HOF re-sort their criteria for Starting pitchers in a generation of pitch counts and innings limits? Will they use WAR? Will it be measured in "Kershaws" i.e. 85% of Kershaw's career gets you in? 300 wins seems nearly unattainable...
Jeff Sullivan
10:49
It's a legitimate question and I don't know the answer yet. It's going to require a shift among the voting pool, which is gradually taking place. But as you know, the current bar for pitchers is already way too high
The Tone
10:49
So I'm not NOT concerned about Matt Harvey right now, but it's also March 17th and this is his first pitching action against actual hitters in like 8 months. There's plenty of time for the velocity to creep up, and for those pointing to the middling spring training results/stats, why are we supposed to take those any more seriously than guys who are in the "best shape of their lives" hitting like .400 over 35 at bats in the spring? You can't think one set of statistics is useless and simultaneously think the other set is indicative of what regular season performance will be like.
Jeff Sullivan
10:50
There's an important reminder in here: we do want to make big deals of what's happening right now, because it's all we have. But this is still pre-baseball. Velocities are generally down in March and April, rising through the summer. No opinions should have drastically shifted from where they were in January
BrotherMan
10:50
RE: Hanley Remember when he used to play SS?
Jeff Sullivan
10:50
Michael Morse was a shortstop
10:51
When Jim Thome was 18, he was also a shortstop!
StewZilla
10:51
Is Andrew Triggs going to put up decent numbers?
Jeff Sullivan
10:52
I don't know that he is, but I do believe that he's capable. Ultimately though he's so new to starting I can't predict how well his body will hold up
wizard
10:52
See anything in C.J. Cron this year? I'm noting multi-year improvement in ratios, batting eye, and hard contact that suggest he could break out this year if given PT...
Jeff Sullivan
10:52
It's weird to me that he's been kind of marginalized. I get that he's not a great player, but he's gotten better, and you'd think the Angels would want to make more use of that. But I guess right now he serves as useful depth
BrotherMan
10:53
It's unfortunate the best part of hockey kicks off the same time as the MLB season
Jeff Sullivan
10:53
Of course, it's also the worst part of the MLB season
libre
10:54
If you had to make a one-hour presentation to a possible future employer about why they should hire you, what would it include?
Jeff Sullivan
10:54
My name
Henry Rowengartner
10:54
How do you see the logjam at outfield for the Mets playing out say a month or two into the season?
Jeff Sullivan
10:54
Odds are decent there'll be some sort of injury, even if it's to Duda, forcing an OF to first
mtsw
10:55
How do you expect Steve Pearce to be used in Toronto? He seems to me like he's sort of out-of-the-loop in their depth chart right now, especially considering he had like a 150 wRC+ with Tampa before getting hurt last season.
Jeff Sullivan
10:55
Insurance in lots of places, and most importantly 1B and LF
Scott
10:55
What kind of season would you like to see from Keon to justify your love?
Jeff Sullivan
10:55
100 wRC+ with good baserunning and defense
Ideally, of course, he hits even better than that. I know that he's capable
Terry's Sarape
10:55
Is command more important than control for a SP? RP?
Connecting…