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Jeff Sullivan FanGraphs Chat -- 8/24/18
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Jeff Sullivan
10:08
He's blown by last year's innings total, and he didn't pitch in 2016. He's lost average and top velocity lately from where he was in April and May
10:09
On the other hand, as you said, Gonzales' peripherals of late don't look that bad. And here's a weird thing:
Gonzales through June: .314 wOBA
Gonzales since July: .345 wOBA
Gonzales through June: .334 xwOBA
Gonzalez since July: .305 xwOBA
10:10
Gonzales hasn't actually been getting torched. I think a lot of this is just badly-timed luck
Vslyke
10:10
The Pirates have a good bullpen, a good OF, and a decent rotation. Do you expect them to pursue IF upgrades this offseason?
Jeff Sullivan
10:11
Mercer's an FA, Hechavarria's an FA, Rodriguez is an FA
Don't know what they're going to do with Kang
10:12
Bell, Harrison, Moran, Cervelli -- very easy to see them all staying where they are. But there's going to be an opening at short, for sure
10:13
Kevin Newman doesn't feel like an excellent solution to that
10:14
You wonder if the Pirates would have any interest in trying to buy low on Addison Russell
10:15
Marcus Semien could turn into an alternative
John
10:17
The Rays have been taking a lot of DH at bats away from C.J. Cron recently and giving them to Ji-Man Choi, which doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. Cron has his flaws, but overall he’s had a solid year and is one of the few guys on that team who can hit the ball out of the park somewhat regularly. Especially with Ramos gone, they now essentially have no power threat in their lineup when Cron isn’t playing. He also has two more years of team control left, but I guess they’ve already decided they don’t want to pay him what he’ll get in arbitration next year. Really though, what sense does it make to be giving these at bats to a guy like Choi instead of Cron? Choi’s not a long-term piece either as a pure DH who doesn’t hit enough to be a pure DH
Jeff Sullivan
10:17
Choi is 27, Cron is 28. Choi has five more years of club control, Cron has two
10:20
Neither one of them has an outstanding ability to put the bat on the ball, but Choi has demonstrated that he has a better approach than Cron does
Cron is just the one who has better top-end power
10:21
For now, it's easy enough to say that, well, Choi is the lefty and Cron is the righty, so you just run some kind of platoon. But Choi has been sidetracked for much of his career by injury. His Statcast information is encouraging, and he's always been a good and disciplined hitter in Triple-A
10:22
The Rays presumably know what they have in Cron. So right now they're trying to figure out what they have in Choi, so they can make a more informed decision in the winter. It's not like they're playing for anything
10:23
Back in April, I texted someone in the game that there are worse starting first basemen than Choi littered around the majors. The Rays are trying to find out if that's true, basically
GSon
10:24
Matt Harvey deal to the Brewers.. is it going to happen?.. what kind of return would you expect for the Reds?
Jeff Sullivan
10:24
I don't know why the Reds wouldn't just let Harvey go, but there was never any way they were going to receive very much
Matt
10:25
How many questions about Jeff McNeil would you like to answer in this chat? Would you prefer instead to discuss Phil Hartman's beloved performance as The Real Deal Bill McNeal in the hit 90s sitcom Newsradio?
Jeff Sullivan
10:25
Jeff McNeil has a 139 wRC+!
He has a contact rate of 86%!
10:26
Out of 408 batters with at least 100 plate appearances, McNeil has the highest in-zone swing rate in the majors, at 84%!
McNeil's exit velocity has topped out so far around a pedestrian 106 miles per hour, but this has been a fun debut
Jeff
10:27
I know the basic difference of ERA vs FIP for Pitcher WAR between bbref and Fangraphs, but my question is why at the top of the leaderboards is bWAR higher than fWAR I.e. Nola 8.7 vs 5.4, Scherzer etc.
Jeff Sullivan
10:28
fWAR basically regresses every pitcher to a standard ball-in-play baseline. bWAR is unregressed in that way, making it easier to run a high number
Tom
10:29
Is Joey Wendle good?
Jeff Sullivan
10:29
He's okay
10:30
He's somewhere in the vicinity of an average hitter, and he appears to be a plus defender
10:31
I guess that might make him good, depending on your threshold. If he played every day I'd peg him around 2 - 2.5 WAR
10:32
Puts him in a tier with, I don't know, DJ LeMahieu?
Bobby Cox
10:33
Feels weird to call it a slump with such an excellent OBP, but Soto is hitting .208/.380/.347 so far in August. Has he lost his entire lead in the ROY race?
Jeff Sullivan
10:33
Soto: 349 PA, 145 wRC+
Acuna: 327 PA, 147 wRC+
10:34
But Soto is slugging .512, while Acuna is slugging .571. Acuna has gotten to his number in a "sexier" way, plus he's drawn so much recent attention
10:35
I don't think momentum or trajectory should play a role in end-of-year RoY voting, but it sure looks to me now like Acuna is the favorite
Pity poor, unknown, underrated Brian Anderson
Oden
10:36
Hi Jeff, regarding service time and Eloy/Vlad, if Eloy has to go on 40 man this winter (I don't know that he does, doubt Vlad does), couldn't CWS just bring him up say for the last week of the season, then hold him down an extra week next April?  Seems that would give them a winter of positive PR, at still not really cost them anything.  Thoughts?
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