Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks, and welcome to the Halloween edition of my FanGraphs chat. I’m sure we’ll discuss some horror stories from free agency, playoff bullpens, and more.

Jay Jaffe: Nothing from me today as I plug away at my entries for our Top 50 Free Agents list, which runs next week, but I did do a piece on Ketel Marte’s record-setting postseason hitting streak, which he extended to 19 games last night https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-postseason-marte-party-is-one-long-hit…

Jay Jaffe: on with the show…

mac: What’s your opinion of Bellinger? I feel like 29 teams could sign him and he’d sustain this unsustainable performance, but for the one in the bronx he’d be unplayable by june

Jay Jaffe: Funny you should mention that, as he’s one of the players I’m writing about for the FA50. The change of scenery really worked for him, in that the Cubs found some mechanical changes he was able to implement without driving himself and everyone crazy with constant tinkering — mainly regarding his hand position and back hip — and he had a nice bounceback season. His Statcast numbers are pretty meager, but some of that is because he traded power for contact, cut his strikeout rate dramatically, and had some of the best 2-strike numbers of any hitter.

Jay Jaffe: I’m not sure he hits for a 134 wRC+ again in 2024, but his power and athleticism give him a pretty decent floor for the next few years.

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks, and welcome to the LCS edition of my weekly chat. Yesterday we had a couple of games that got blown open early but tightened up late, and we now have the Rangers heading back to Arlington up 2-0 and the Phillies up 1-0 on the Diamondbacks after Schwaber, Harper, and Castellanos hit about 1300 feet worth of early homers.

Jay Jaffe: I previewed the NLCS , in case you missed it https://blogs.fangraphs.com/nlcs-preview-arizona-diamondbacks-vs-phila…

Jay Jaffe: Next up for me is a piece on Kim Ng’s departure from Miami and hopefully a Corbin Carroll thing for later this week.

Jay Jaffe: anyway, on with the show

KC Pain: Any info on Ng?  Seems like ownership and her w a rift from what I read…..but was that happening all year?

Jay Jaffe: I’ll have more tomorrow but I think there were a couple of related things going on. Ng wanted to clean house a bit as far as staff to find people she was more in alignment with and bring some new voices into the organization — something that worked out well when she got to hire a new manager (Schumaker) — but owner Bruce Sherman apparently wasn’t amenable to that. He’s planning on bringing in a president of baseball operations, so she essentially would have been demoted to second-in-command, which doesn’t play well when you’ve just guided a team to its first full season above .500 in 14 years and their first full-season playoff berth in 20.

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks, and welcome to my first solo October chat of this postseason. I hope you’re enjoying the playoffs so far or at the very least are faring better than the Dodgers.

I did a quick piece on last night’s Phillies-Braves game and its wild finish (https://blogs.fangraphs.com/late-homers-wild-final-play-help-braves-kn…), and before that a piece on Sandy Alcantara’s Tommy John surgery (https://blogs.fangraphs.com/sandy-alcantaras-volume-and-velocity-lead-…). Anyway, on with the show…

Zips user: How did you feel about the playoff format?  Is 4-5 days off a disadvantage to bye teams?  Is a three game series really worth it?  Why not a one game play-in ?

Jay Jaffe: I’m on record as disliking this current format, both because of how diluted the field becomes when you start including the league’s sixth-best team, because the advantages of winning the division aren’t great enough (the third seed has to play), and because best-of-three is so random that it tells us almost nothing about who’s the better team.

I much preferred the 5-teams-per-league format because i thought the one-and-done Wild Card game was the appropriate penalty for qualifying without  winning the division, but it’s worth noting that for all of the handwringing that goes on every year, the off-time between the end of the regular season and the start of the Division Series there was the same as it is for the recipients of the bye under the current format.

Zips user: Jay,  what is your view of catching framing?  Should it be in WAR or not?  The umps don’t miss much any more and robots are coming within two years.  Does it make sense to have a 10-20 year period where framing is in WAR but not before or after ?

Jay Jaffe: I do believe framing should be part of WAR and wish we had it going much further back. I don’t think its value will go away entirely because it seems quite clear we’re not getting a full ABS (automatic ball and strike) system but more likely a challenge system, and even that has a ways to go before it’s ready for the majors. But even if that weren’t the case, we should be using the data we have for the period where it was relevant.

Fungible Pitching: Regarding modern SPs throwing fewer innings than in past eras, thus being less likely to accumulate HoF-caliber WAR/etc, does the bar really need to be lowered in order to induct a comparable amount of SPs as in the past? After all, SPs now are trained and paid to be interchangeable. They’re becoming role players, by design. No individual “Fame” there.

Dan Szymborski: Sorry, was busy talking about the Springfield Bear Patrol

Andrew: Which minor leaguer improved their projections the most this year?

Dan Szymborski: Dangit, why do you guys always ask questions there’s no way I can answer on the fly! lol

Dan Szymborski: Hold on, let me call up the September update and the preseason and see if I can crunch this super quick

Dan Szymborski: OK, the minor leaguers whose 2024 projections have gone up the most (hitter)

Dan Szymborski: Colt Keith, Justyn-Henry Malloy, Tyler Black, Masyn Winn, Luisangel Acuna,

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks, and welcome to my final chat of the 2023 regular season. I’ve got a piece today on the Astros’ September struggles (https://blogs.fangraphs.com/for-one-night-at-least-justin-verlander-st…) and yesterday dared to question the rush to anoint Ronald Acuña Jr. MVP by writing about the role of versatility in Mookie Betts’ candidacy (https://blogs.fangraphs.com/mookie-betts-versatility-has-enriched-his-…). Anyway, let’s get to it…

Jason N: Snell about to get CY award #2, but I’ve never seen him in a HoF discussion.  His awards will be pretty far apart (about 5 years).  Is this unprecedented to have a player with some far apart peak years but very little in between?

Jay Jaffe: I think it’s mostly pretty early to entertain a serious Hall of Fame discussion about any starter beyond the big four (Kershaw, Verlander, Scherzer, Greinke) and Cole, and that goes for Snell, who hasn’t even reached 1,000 innings (he’s at 992.2. The shape of his career thus far is unusual in that his two Cy-Caliber seasons account for about 63% of his 21.1 career bWAR; his third-best season by that measure was last year, worth just 2.1 WAR. I’m not sure I can find a good parallel offhand, in that even two-time CY winner Denny McClain had a 4.6-WAR season in 1965, three years before the first of his back-to-back awards. But among HOFers, Jim Kaat going 11 seasons between 5.0-WAR years (1962 and ’74) stands out, though he had some with 4+ WAR in that span

Fletcher: After the Kershaw/Verlander/Scherzer/Greinke group is inducted, how long will it be until the writer’s elect another SP? Do you think someone like Cole will get serious traction or will the reduced workloads be too much of a barrier?

Jay Jaffe: I think Cole will have serious traction if he stays healthy. Good chance to reach both 200 wins and 3,000 strikeouts (he’s at 144 and 2,147 now). It’s who comes after that that’s the question.

KC Pain: Will the Orioles have enough room for all their potential banging at the door in the minors or will they have to make a move or two?

Dan Szymborski: It’s a chat!

Guest: Has this season increased or decreased Justin Verlander’s odds of reaching 300 wins?  This season feels like a median outcome to me, but curious if Zips sees something different.

Dan Szymborski: I don’t have ZiPS open, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s dropped a little bit

Dan Szymborski: Verlander matched his projections, but remember, he wasn’t at 50% to win 300 games

Dan Szymborski: He kinda needs to beat his win projections by a bit

Guest: Enjoyed the milestone article looking 3,000 hits.  Any other milestones that you’re planning to look at soon?

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks! Welcome to another edition of my weekly chat — the first one in two weeks. It’s been a lively time around Casa Jaffe-Span lately due to pending real estate transactions; I missed last week’s caht and was late setting this one up. Since i’m also late in securing lunch, I’m going to let the queue fill up for a few more minutes and then light this candle.

Chadwick: Is this the stadium proposal that gets done in St. Pete?

Jay Jaffe: This isn’t just a proposal, they actually appear to have a deal, so yes. Other than the fact that they literally could not get any other deals done until now, what I don’t get is how this one solves one of the big problems that Tropicana Field has faced, which is simply getting to the ballpark given its location.

Jay Jaffe: Because this park will be right near the current one

Jay Jaffe: and it’s a dome, not even a retractable.

Jay Jaffe: it will be interesting to see how this ignites the discussion of expansion to 32 teams. When I wrote about Salt Lake City’s surprising bid, it was clear that solving the Oakland and Tampa Bay stadium issues was necessary and both have now been, uh, dealt with.