Dan Szymborski: It’s a chat!

Tacoby Bellsbury: What has been the ZiPSiest transaction of the offseason, and what would be the ZiPSiest potential one from here?

Dan Szymborski: I’m not sure. Or even what the question means!

Dan Szymborski: Maybe Jung-hoo Lee? When ZiPS evaluates the opt-out it gets relaly close to actual

Mike: What new legend player would you most like to see in MLB The Show 24?

Dan Szymborski: TETTLETON

Dan Szymborski: IT’S A CHAT!

Champdo: So how many bats do you think Colt Keith gets for the Tigers next season?

Dan Szymborski: I’m with Jason here, I think 300-400 PA is reasonable. Unless he flops, I think the Tigers will figure out how to play them, even if the position right now is uncertain

Houzer: Could Willy Adames be an option for the Tigers at 3B in a trade? Maybe like a Sawyer Gipson-Long for Adames deal?

Dan Szymborski: Adames would be fun. I don’t think Gipson-Long by himself gets it done th ough.

Dan Szymborski: And it may be dependent on where the Brewers are.

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks, and welcome to a live at the Winter Meetings edition of my chat. I’m here in Nashville at the Opryland MegaBioDome monstrosity with something like a dozen of my FanGraphs colleagues. There hasn’t been a ton going on transaction-wise, but it’s good to be here nonetheless.

Jay Jaffe: Yesterday I published my coverage of Jim Leyland’s election to the Hall of Fame via the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee ballot for Managers/Executives/Umpires https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-hall-of-fame-calls-for-jim-leyland/

Jay Jaffe: On Friday I had my first writeup of a new candidate on this year’s BBWAA ballot, Joe Mauer https://blogs.fangraphs.com/jaws-and-the-2024-hall-of-fame-ballot-joe-… and today I’ve got a look at Year 2 of Carlos Beltrán’s candidacy https://blogs.fangraphs.com/jaws-and-the-2024-hall-of-fame-ballot-carl…

Scott: Rumors are rumors, but I don’t see how Ohtani wins a WS ring if he returns to the Angels. That organization just doesn’t seem to have the leadership that’s needed to make it happen. Is that assessment off-base?

Jay Jaffe: No, i don’t think this is off-base at all. Honestly, I find an Ohtani return to Anaheim rather implausible because their infrastructure — the roster and the DOA farm system (https://www.fangraphs.com/prospects/farm-system-rankings) — just isn’t there in a way that suggests anything but more of the same. Whether it’s the Blue Jays, Dodgers, or another team, I think he can do better elsewhere, and I have to think he believes that as well.

Travis: What’re the chances Kelenic suddenly puts it all together?

Dan Szymborski: ITS CLOBBERING TIME

striker: Being an Orioles fan and play analyst, who would you be willing to give up in a Cease deal? Would a Cease + Jimenez deal interest you?

Dan Szymborski: Jimenez no

Dan Szymborski: Cease, I’d do something with Westburg as the center (I like Westburg). But I wouldn’t go Westburg AND Mayo

Joe: What key indicators do you look at for determining if a prospect should be called up?

Dan Szymborski: Well, who he’s replacing really.

Ben Clemens: Hey everybody, welcome to the chat

Ben Clemens: Let’s just get going

John Mozeliak: So I should jump the market for Sonny Gray right? Get one starter out of the way, what do I need to offer? 4 years for $90?

Ben Clemens: I actually don’t love this plan, there’s less benefit to ‘jumping’ a market when you’re trying to get more than one person

Ben Clemens: and also, the cardinals should be seeking value if they’re trying to accomplish their stated goals, which are a)keeping payroll constant and b)adding good starting pitching

Ben Clemens: overshooting the market to get your guy works a lot better when you only need one guy

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks! Welcome to the first offseason edition of my Tuesday chat!

Jay Jaffe: This is also very possibly the last one of these I conduct for a few weeks in my current abode, as The Big Move from the apartment where I’ve spent the past 16 years — the everyday professional part of my writing career, as it is — to our new home further south in Brooklyn is scheduled for a week from Saturday.

Jay Jaffe: It’s all very exciting and stressful and there’s a lot to do, as you can imagine. Since I’ll be without a computer setup for a few days, I’ll have to work ahead, hence the unlikelihood of a chat next week.

Anyway, yesterday I wrote about Clayton Kershaw’s surgery and Lance Lynn’s option: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/with-kershaws-surgery-and-lynns-declined-o…

Jay Jaffe: And today I published my first candidate profile from the 2024 Contemporary Baseball Era Committee Managers/Executives/Umpires ballot, Davey Johnson https://blogs.fangraphs.com/2024-contemporary-baseball-era-committee-c…

Jay Jaffe: And now, on with the show

Votto: What should I do this offseason? (Assuming that whatever I choose is what makes me happy) Is it to retire? Take a bench role with the Reds (again, assuming they’d have me)? Or sign with another team – and which team?

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.