Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks, and welcome to my first chat of June!

Jay Jaffe: We just posted my piece on Aaron Judge turning himself around after a season-opening slump: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/aaron-judge-is-slumping-no-more/

Jay Jaffe: Yesterday I wrote about Luis Severino’s resurgence https://blogs.fangraphs.com/luis-severino-is-in-a-better-place-than-la…

Jay Jaffe: My lunch just arrived as this chat began so please bear with me for a few minutes as I get some nourishment

Gerald H: Opening day 2025….what team do you think Juan Soto is on?

Jay Jaffe: I’d say it’s either the Yankees or the Mets, with the Giants probably the third team I’d name but their current regime’s precariousness probably working against them.

Dan Szymborski: It’s a chat!

Red: hey Dan! Can you put in a good word with the site team to add a date range function for minor league stats? Would be an awesome QOL improvement!

Dan Szymborski: I keep a bit of a list of things to bring up when we talk stuff at staff meetings, I could add it

Dan Szymborski: I’m pretty sure from the raw data we have, we at least have the ability

John M.: Have you ever tried to make any kind of projections about how Negro League players would fare if they were in an integrated MLB? Or how MLB players would fare if the leagues were integrated then?

Dan Szymborski: I’ve tinkered a little, but nothing substantive

Dan Szymborski: Greetings!

Dan Szymborski: I’m sad to report that the chili I was making last week when we chatted did not turn out well.

Dan Szymborski: I got careless with the salt and the whole thing was way too salty.

Dan Szymborski: So I had to eat it with VERY improper cheese and sour cream added in to mute the saltiness.

Joe: Can Gil be a front line guy? Or Schmidt? Both have looked great

Dan Szymborski: Both are certainly making their cases. Pitching development is weird, so when a guys’ working out a lot of the time it’s just him working out

Dan Szymborski: There’s a time for every purpose under heaven, even SzymChat

Guest: why is ZiPS still so in on Jack Suwinski’s bat?

Dan Szymborski: One thing is I’m not sure taht wRC+ is working correctly on the FG page at the moment

Dan Szymborski: But it’s still an extremely small sample

Dan Szymborski: and full fat ZiPS isn’t that much more negative

Guest: With the new BatCast data, do you think it will turn out to be better to have tightly clustered A and B swings (in terms of length or bat speed), or to have a smooth continuum?

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks!

Jay Jaffe: Welcome to another edition of my Tuesday chat. I’ve got a piece up today on Jung Ho Lee and the Giants’ unrelenting wave of injuries (https://blogs.fangraphs.com/jung-hoo-lee-goes-down-amid-a-brutal-strin…). Yesterday I wrote about Jo Adell finally breaking through (https://blogs.fangraphs.com/jo-adell-is-finally-putting-it-together/) — a piece I’d had in mind for a few weeks after a reader asked about him here in a chat!

Jay Jaffe: All of which is to say that in addition to having a good time interacting with our readers in these chats, they’re a good place to get an idea of what you folks are interested in, and I come out of each one with at least a couple of ideas — not all of which come to fruition, but they’re still useful. So thank you for that. And now, on with the show

Shotamania: Shota has the lowest ERA in his first 8 starts (0.96) since Fernando Valenzuela way back in 1981.  I’m just old enough to remember Fernando-mania.  Should we be talking about Shotamania?

Jay Jaffe: As somebody whose baseball fandom was in full flower during Fernandomania — I cut his box scores out of the Salt Lake Tribune and taped them into a three-ring binder — I’ve thought about this comparison, and even considered doing a Shotamania piece, but  Kyle Kishimoto, who’s not old enough to remember Fernando, beat me to the coverage https://blogs.fangraphs.com/shota-imanaga-is-pitching-like-an-ace/.

Jay Jaffe: Obviously, Imanaga is on an impressive run, with a 0.96 ERA and 2.30 FIP through eight starts. Is it a mania? I don’t think it’s had anywhere near the cultural impact of Fernandomania, which tapped into the Los Angeles Dodgers’ original sin of building their ballpark at Chavez Ravine, which forced the eviction of nearly 2,000 Mexican-American families living there.