FanGraphs Weekly Mailbag: January 24, 2026
At this time last week, the Mets were celebrating their signing of Bo Bichette. Up until that point, though, their offseason was largely being viewed as a letdown as they assembled an oddly shaped roster. Earlier this winter, they watched as Edwin Díaz spurned them for the Dodgers, let Pete Alonso walk and then signed Jorge Polanco to play first base, and missed out on Kyle Tucker. Sure, they upgraded at second base with the Marcus Semien trade, but doing so required them to part with Brandon Nimmo, who was coming off a year in which he hit a career-high 25 home runs and posted 3.0 WAR. They decided to replace that production with 23-year-old Top 100 prospect Carson Benge, who had a 53 wRC+ in 103 Triple-A plate appearances last season, as the big spoon of a platoon in left field. They also reinforced their bullpen with two of the more inconsistent members of the 2025 Yankees’ relief corps, Devin Williams and Luke Weaver. These weren’t bad moves, to be clear. Williams especially is a strong bounce-back candidate; Polanco is a quality player, though his entire experience at first base consists of one defensive plate appearance; and Semien fulfills the team’s desire to get better defensively. But they were a bit puzzling given that the Mets’ greatest areas of need were another impact bat, a center fielder, and a frontline starting pitcher.
As it turns out, adding Bichette was just the first in a trio of acquisitions to address those major roster holes. Late Tuesday night, the Mets traded for center fielder Luis Robert Jr., who is coming off two straight seasons of injuries and poor performance but is still a tantalizing talent and just 28 years old. “If you made an outfielder in a lab, he’d look a lot like this,” wrote Ben Clemens about Robert after the trade. Then, on Wednesday, they swung a swap with the Brewers for All-Star right-hander Freddy Peralta to anchor their rotation. They had to give up two of their top prospects to get him, but as Davy Andrews noted in his column on the trade, “the Mets are trying to win this season, and now that he’s not in Milwaukee, David Stearns has the luxury of leaving tomorrow’s problems for tomorrow.”
We won’t be answering any questions about the Mets or any of the other big recent transactions, such as Cody Bellinger’s re-signing with the Yankees or the Rangers’ trade for MacKenzie Gore, but we will be talking about the other big baseball topic of the week: the Hall of Fame. We’ll also discuss the best left-on-left hitters of all time, the aesthetic potential of the Colorado Rockies, and what to expect from Foster Griffin with the Nationals. But first, I’d like to remind you that this mailbag is exclusive to FanGraphs Members. If you aren’t yet a Member and would like to keep reading, you can sign up for a Membership here. It’s the best way to both experience the site and support our staff, and it comes with a bunch of other great benefits. Also, if you’d like to ask a question for an upcoming mailbag, send me an email at mailbag@fangraphs.com.
Matt is the associate editor of FanGraphs. Previously, he was the baseball editor at Sports Illustrated. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Men’s Health, Baseball Prospectus, and Lindy’s Sports Magazine. Follow him on Twitter @ByMattMartell and Blue Sky @mattmartell.bsky.social.
“By comparison, the spread from the highest median JAWS (third base, 57.3) and the lowest (left field, 47.8) is 9.5 points, a gap I consider unwieldy.” –Jaffe.
That’s fascinating. And disturbing. Certainly implies that 3rd basemen have been getting short shrift from hall voters. I was never much of a Graig Nettles or Buddy Bell fan, but I think I better reconsider.
Second and third base have a handful of omissions. The two that I think about most are Ken Boyer and Bobby Grich. I think because they’re both pretty well-rounded.
A pretty good crop is coming up though. At second base, Utley is very likely to make it in at this point, and Altuve also seems likely to get in. At third base both Jose Ramirez and Manny Machado seem like decent bets to get in.
I think you could make an argument for Nettles pretty easily, and maybe Bell too but Arenado seems like he’s as strong a candidate as Bell.
Lou Whitaker
There should be an influx in the somewhat near future at least, given that we’ve had something of a Golden Generation of 3B. Ramirez and Arenado are probably locks, with Longoria close behind, particularly as the older group of voters thankfully age out. Bregman can reach the 7 yr peak average with a 6 win season this year (although I’d personally bet against that).
Donaldson and Machado both look a little short, especially given that they’re aren’t exactly the most well-liked guys around
Machado looks a little short?
Compared to Longoria, haha?
Manny Machado, who leads active 3Bs in JAWS (over 60 and over 40), has cracked 2K hits, figures to pass 400 HR this year or next, and is coming off a 4 WAR season?
I think you can swap over Machado and Arenado. Machado is still putting up good, above average seasons – he has more hits and homers than Arenado, and didn’t spend most of his career in Coors. Ramirez needs to age ok – he’s still been a great player, and a couple of average seasons probably put him over the top (I think he’ll be much better than that, but age comes for us all) – though he is very light on the traditional counting stats at the moment, I think the advanced stats guys will (rightly) love him, and vote him in.
I think Ramirez is going to sail in. If his career was over today he would be very borderline. But he put up 6+ wins the last two seasons and he is now another 6 (maybe 7?) years under contract. You take a standard discount of 0.5 WAR and he will be in the range of guys like Beltre, George Brett, and Chipper Jones. If you take him from his Steamer projection this year he will still have better numbers than Rolen. And he will be a one team guy. I think he’s probably got a better shot of being a Hall of Famer than Bryce Harper and Bryce Harper is almost certainly a Hall of Famer.
I completely agree, but he is 33 and sometimes guys don’t age gradually, instead it comes all at once.
I hope he keeos playing well – the extension should be good for him and good for the Guardians.
I’m going to vehemently disagree that the Rockies care about the in game experience. It’s a bland as their roster.
If it weren’t named Coors, the park could certainly take better advantage of the local beer scene. But the best elements were designed in by nature and the architects (like the mountain and sunset views).
“First, by reverse platoon split, do you mean which lefty batter performed the best against lefty pitchers?”
Funny to have this article written by the one person on earth who would interpret this question this way. (Or was it just an excuse to answer 2 fun questions in 2 different mailbags?)
Yeah, I think most people would interpret that as “which lefty hitter had the largest positive difference when facing lefties as opposed to righties.”
While I agree with your interpretation of question intent, I’m glad to have gotten to read this fun analysis.
I am going to throw a flag at the author for glossing over Musial’s legit case as the best ever lefty-on-lefty masher. Most of his career production came post-integration, and look at that insane number of >4,000 PAs, double that of Ted Williams. This isn’t a short-career Vaughn or Keller OPS propped up a lack of decline years, this guy consistently smoked LHP for 20 years.
Perhaps the 1950s was too hitter-friendly?
I’m biased as a cardinals fan but I always love seeing Musial pop up on random leaderboards. He just hit, and hit, and hit. Singles, doubles, triples, home runs, didn’t matter.
And somehow he was left off of the Baseball All-Century team! When asked about it he gave a classic good guy answer, about it being because there were all these great players! What a player, what a guy.
I agree..esp since the way it was interpreted meant you were likely just going to end up with a list of the best left handed hitters in baseball history, right?
As soon as he said how he was going to do it, I figured we’d just end up with list containing Ruth, Gehrig, Bonds, Teddy Ballgame, Musial, Cobb, etc.
I’m pretty skeptical of long-term reverse platoon splits, at least at the major league level because of the selection process that you have to go through to get to the majors. Especially for left handed hitters, who often make their money because right-handers are 3/4ths of the pitchers you face. If you’re a right-handed hitter with reverse platoon splits you’re probably going to get playing time. If you’re a left-handed hitter who struggles against right handed hitting we probably won’t see much of you.
Since 2002, here is the list of left-handed hitters I could find whose wRC+ against left-handed pitchers is higher than their career wRC+. Minimum 240 PAs vs lefties. I excluded a couple because they were only a couple points apart.
Nick Johnson: (135 vs 126)
Daric Barton (128 vs 102)
Brad Wilkerson (112 vs 105)
Brennan Boesch (109 vs 89)
And once you get below that level you’re now dealing with guys who you wouldn’t want to use a roster spot for them for that purpose. Not unless they also played ace defense or something. That’s 4 out of 348 players.
I buy the idea that there are plenty of left-handed batters where there is no discernible platoon split, and there are probably even more right-handed batters with no platoon splits. But there’s just such a small role for left-handed guys who can’t hit right-handed pitching.
You are probably right, but that is still a more interesting list than the one in the article, which is basically just a list of the best left handed hitters in history.
I was scrolling down to say that I was almost certain that the answer to this question was Daric Barton.
Barton had such a strange career. An LHB first baseman with a .118 ISO and the biggest reverse split ever, full time for two seasons and in one of them he put up 5 WAR with walks and defense. Across the other six seasons he had a little more than a full season’s playing time. Maybe it just means that sometimes small sample size flukes last for a whole season.
Yeah I think someone who knows how to use Stathead is going to have to do it going back further to be sure but it is going to be really hard to beat Daric Barton.
Ichiro had reverse career splits in MLB.
2002 and later (from Fangraphs)
vs. LHP: 115 wRC+ in 2,861 PA’s
vs. RHP: 98 wRC+ in 7,135 PA’s
Full MLB career, from Baseball Reference:
vs. LHP: .329/.368/.418 in 3,068 PA’s
vs RHP: .304/.350/.396 in 7,666 PA’s
I have a vague recollection of a Fangraphs chat many years ago where Dave Cameron replied to a question about reverse platoon splits by stating that Ichiro was probably the only MLB player who Dave believed had proven out true talent reverse splits over a large sample. Don’t think that there wasn’t an extensive explanation, given the format.
Apologies to Jay Jaffe, but his rationales are full of overthinking that ends up with the so-called JAWS standard doing both too much and too little. If you go over to Baseball Reference and look at the chart 75th percentile for JAWS among inductees by position, or even a 50 JAWS cutoff (S-JAWS for starters, 40 for catchers and 75th percentile only for relievers) you can see a clear demarcation between players who have a good case for belonging (on 8the basis of performance, PED and other issues aside) and those who either don’t merit induction or do so because of special circumstances.
Yes, the “so-called” JAWS “standard” is utterly logically incoherent–it’s JAW-droppingly unbelievable that Jaffe uses it. As a mathematician, my head explodes every time I think about it. An actual quantitative standard for a merit-based group is a fixed value that determines which members (current or future) are or will be considered to be “legitimately” worthy of being in the group. Roughly half the current HOF members are below Jaffe’s “standard”, so by his logic, we must (logically) regard them as illegitimate–as not worthy of membership, since they are below his standard.
Are some of them illegitimate? Of course, SOME are–we all know LOTS of idiotic choices by previous voters. But not ALL are illegitimate–the illegitimate ones are those that are WAY below the average. The ONLY relevant question is how FAR below the average should someone be while still being worthy of being in the Hall? Somewhere between the bad choices’ low JAWS values, and the average current value, is where an analyst has to (thoughtfully, based on quantitative, objective evidence) propose an ACTUAL standard: a MINIMUM qualification level which, going forward, will tell us both which current members ARE legitimate (I.e., were not idiotic choices), AND which potential future members should ALSO be legitimately allowed in, if above the standard.
The above is what any sensible 5th grader understands. If a 5th grader is asked, “Sally, can you get into the 6th-through-8th grade Honors Math program next year?”, Sally will say “Yes, Dad, the standard for entry is a score of 88% on the Math Honors Entrance Exam, and a 3.60 overall GPA so far. I got 89%, and have a 3.65 GPA. so I will get in–yaay! I can’t wait for the Stats course!” If Dad replies, “Well, daughter, hold on now–I just read that the average 6th-through-8th Grade Honors Math member this year got 94% on the entrance exam, and had a 3.85 GPA through 5th grade/ So you’re not good enough to deserve to be in it. I’m so sorry they’re not going to take you, honey, but I love you anyway…”.
Sally will now (one hopes) say “And I’m sorry too, Dad, that you can’t grasp the elementary logical difference between the current average of a group and the values that sets the minimum standard, for both legitimate membership AND future admission. Dad, half the current members of the 6-8 Honors program are below average–if they only admitted those above average each year, most of them wouldn’t have gotten in, and the program would admit fewer and fewer people every year, and soon go out of existence. I honestly don’t know how you manage to hold down a job as a professional sabermetrician–though I’m glad you do, as I love you anyway as well, and I also need my allowance…”
Newsense, you propose a JAWS cutoff of around 50 as an actual minimum “standard”, at least as far as quantitative metrics go. Kudos, that is exactly how I see it, though it’s a pretty salient and obvious demarcation. I see JAWS as having several major flaws, the worst of which is wholly ignoring rates of WAR/PA and WAR/IP. I use a much more nuanced metric myself. But in a rough sense, it’s certainly much better to use JAWS than the random idiosyncratic statistical cherry-picking and personal bias that otherwise still plagues way too many HOF votes. A cutoff of 50 would produce an objectively fairly “worthy” roster of both current and prospective future Hall members, with relatively few exceptions in my view. A higher or lower cutoff would be fine as well, as people legitimately differ on how big the Hall should be. But at least using JAWS with SOME fixed MINIMUM cutoff would make such opinions consistent and evidence-based… Then the issue of the “average” member’s value can be relegated back to being the trivial and irrelevant curiosity that it actually is…
You’re not wrong in the abstract but in practice the JAWS standard works very well because the veterans committees keep inducting guys like Harold Baines and Dave Parker. There are so many undeserving players in the Hall and so many more will be inducted. It is entirely possible that the JAWS standard will be a reasonable measuring stick after MLB itself ceases to exist.
You’re of course right about the terrible choices like Baines and Parker and dozens of others, but I was taught that two wrongs don’t make a right. One can’t control the past, nor even the still prevalent current irrationality of many HOF voters (i.e., Omar Vizquel still got 73 votes this time, even while now known as a violent sex abuser! I have him as the 50th best shortstop…)
All one can do, going forward, is say “here’s how they SHOULD vote if they were rational and consistent.” Jaffe is a very astute analyst–why deny us his take on minimum qualifications according to his own WAR metric? Then he and others can feel free to give their own (often irrational or irrelevant) further modifications and considerations for individual players’ HOF cases to their hearts’ content…
I should mention that I’ve met Baines, and he’s a very nice guy–I’m happy–for his own enjoyment–that he got in, despite its making a mockery (for the umpteenth time) of the HOF selection process. And he would rank a fair amount higher than his position of 518th best player since 1900 on my list, IF his knees hadn’t been so decimated…
JAWS is far from perfect and so there’s no sense in using it to create a hard standard, or minimum. A starting point for discussion is a good use for it. Which I feel is how Jaffe uses it.
Yep – it’s a rough framework of “>45 let’s talk, >50 probably, >55 put him in.”
I think it’s something that he’s happy to ignore for guys that he likes and happy to use as a tool to make a case against guys he doesn’t like. Along with the argument that “I can’t vote for X to get in because I think that Y (who is not on the ballot) should get in before X.” He’s got a great grasp of stats and history, but he also wears his heart and his ass on his sleeve and won’t let the science get in the way of a decision his gut has already made.
Thanks for answering my question, Jay, that’s all fair enough.
Want to be clear too that my question was purely from an academic perspective – I think JAWS is a great tool and I was genuinely curious about whether and why alternate methodologies have been considered.
I also didn’t mean to insinuate that it’s somehow JAWS’s fault that Lofton wasn’t elected. Indeed, that was a crazy ballot. Was just looking for an example which could illustrate the point I was making.
If I was blessed to be a HoF voter, rather than worry about medians, means or percentiles, I would personally rank every player in the Hall by each position, weighing Jay’s very useful JAWS info as well as other criteria subjectively important to me. Then working my lists from the bottom up, I’d disregard any player who I felt was erroneously inducted. Once I reached the first player who satisfied my personal bare minimum standard, he becomes the benchmark at the position. That would allow a simple 1-to-1 career comparison for new candidates. Better than, say, Fred McGriff? You get my vote. Worse? You don’t, or, I make a conscious decision to lower my personal standard at the position going forward.
Certainly each year I’d review the edge cases around each “bare minimum” to account for my subjective rankings evolving over time, but after that audit I would still have 1 specific HoF-er to use as benchmark. All other inductees above and below don’t matter. All that matters is whether the new candidate tops the bare minimum.
Am I making any sense? Do any voters take this type of approach? Crafting 9 lists of <30 position players each isn't really that daunting — and should be fun for a HoF enthusiast — and, frankly, is an endeavor anyone privileged to have voting power should be more than willing to undertake.
Seems reasonable to me, although I suspect you would end up in much the same place as the median Hall of Famer at a position. JAWS has been influential enough that we probably don’t even recognize how much it has shaped our thinking.
Hi, g4,
Well, your comment gives me hope for rational HOF discussions! It’s the most comprehensively sensible and astute approach I’ve ever seen mentioned here. I’m sure very few actual voters do this, but of course you are absolutely right that they all should. But naturally I would say this, because it’s exactly what I myself have done–and I’m not even a voter, just someone who takes objectivity in evaluation seriously. It takes me about 3 minutes to do so for a player, using a mix of WAR and PA info from B-Ref and Fangraphs. I’ve done so for roughly the top 800 position players since 1900 in the AL/NL. My minimum standard admits 140 position players since 1900 to my HOF so far, including some active players. That’s about 1 player per year, and one extra player per decade. That’s my “temporal” ideal HOF size, which others are free to disagree with. My standard is designed to keep on admitting new position players at roughly that rate into the indefinite future. [And I do something very similar for pitchers, separately, that admits about half as many.]
For position players, I basically use a “rounded twin” of Bobby Abreu as the “minimum paradigm”: 60 Career WAR, Career Rate of 4 WAR per 640 PA, 30 Peak WAR in 3200 PA (I use a 5-year peak), for a Peak Rate of 6 WAR per 640 PA. This means the Non-Peak seasons have 30 WAR with a rate of 3 WAR per 640 PA. If a player exceeds the minimum values in all categories, into my HOF he goes. If he is below the minimums in all, he does not go in. If he exceeds them in some categories but is below them in others, I have a simple formula that assigns weights to the categories’ values, combines and balances them, and yields a single number that is then compared to the number of Bobby’s “Twin”, thus yielding a decision. I note that Bobby’s JAWS value is 50.9, which is why 50 is a very reasonable JAWS “minimum standard” that I feel Jaffe should just stipulate–as a “beginning for the discussion.” Referencing the “average” is meaningless. Vlad Guerrero Sr. is my “best player not in my HOF”, as he is just below my cutoff value, and his JAWS value is 50.3–again reinforcing the rough “JAWS of Fifty, Player is Nifty” minimum benchmark–IF one wants to use the fairly crude JAWS metric, rather than something more nuanced–of course I think more nuance is better, especially Rate info.
However, I don’t have different benchmark players for different positions–no need! This is the beauty of WAR–there is ALREADY a positional adjustment built into it. So I use the same cutoff value that (barely) admits Bobby Abreu (which is “60” for my formula) for every position. One test of the validity of the model is then whether it values roughly the same average number of players at each position per every N ranking positions, as you go down the ranked list. And mine does, roughly. There are a lot more right-fielders than left-fielders above any given level, but the average number of “corner outfielders” is roughly twice the average of the other single positions. Defensive value (RF’s have more) explains this deviation, but all other positions are roughly equal. Well, except that one has to give catchers a boost to get them up to the same “average number” per level as the other positions. Oddly, I give mine a boost of 25%, which I recently found out is exactly the same as Jaffe’s boost. At least we agree on that… 🙂
Again, thanks for your very cogent take on how to evaluate HOF candidates rationally. Cheers!
Not necessarily a question for you, but does league size matter? Is the assumption that expansion only functionally adds “left-tail” — closer to average and/or replacement level players? It would, assuming player acquisition correctly values players (on fewer teams, the top talent would “concentrate” — if we knew who the best players were at any given time) Or is the number of “Hall-worthy” players relative to the number of players playing?
As we’ve seen, there’s been extremely varying rates of HOFers in the league over time. There’s going to be some variance unless you set the exact number of players part of the criteria, but even that’s difficult/impossible due to the nature of overlapping careers (Verlander and Scherzer will likely play this year, and there’s a decent chance that some first-year guy or early-20s dude is a HOFer in 25 years) and differing career lengths.
I think the value that JAWS brings, despite not necessarily aligning with your (or my or anyone else’s) preferred HOF mechanisms is that 1) it does a really good job of focusing on things other than the vagaries of awards, All-Star appearances, team W/L record, etc.; 2) it does a really good of discussing the shape of a player’s career value; 3) it’s pretty simple to explain, even without getting into weeds of WAR too deeply.
The HOF is ultimately a subjective exercise and I think there can be value for exchanging rigor for simplicity in such cases. Having a framework like JAWS allows for discussion and has done an amazing job of bringing to light the greatness of certain players who might have gone unrecognized .
I do wish there were more logical consistency in voting — per David’s notes column, 3 voters voted for Rollins, but not Utley or Abreu, which requires very specific intellectual wrangling, IMO.
Good question. I figured my “minimum” paradigm was roughly Hall-worthy, but was prepared to modify it depending on how many folks it admitted. But when I saw it had admitted one per year plus one per decade (on long-term average, not necessarily in any fairly short time-span), that seemed about right to me, I felt that was “reasonable”. Then I looked at who’s likely to qualify over the next 10-15 years or so, given rational projections, and it seems to roughly match that rate, so i’m good with just sticking with it.
I also noted that most of the lower 5-10 % of my qualifiers were considered “borderline” HOF choices, whether actually in the Hall or out. Since most voters have been abysmally unqualified sabermetrically, that said to me most or all “should” have been in, if voted on by sabermetric experts, who recognized their real value. So my cutoff, which allows them in, seems quite reasonable.
Remember that WAR measures value above average (since replacement value is basically a pretty fixed fraction of “average value”, per PA or IP.) Expansion is thus irrelevant, as there will still be some average talent level, and one expects a certain roughly fixed percentile to be a certain distance above that. Even as expansion attracts more players, nutrition, training, and other natural factors make modern athletes (both pitchers and hitters, so it cancels out in WAR) objectively “better” than older ones. Their average talent level is now better, thus it seems to all even out, WAR-wise. But again, I have no quibble if people prefer bigger or smaller Halls, or temporal rates, than me. That is like preferring chocolate mint to peach ice cream… 🙂 I just want them to evaluate players accurately, consistently and objectively, then use whatever cutoff they like.
As for JAWS being simple, but moderately valuable, I agree. It’s a lot better than no system–which is precisely what the HOF voters had before JAWS, and many still do now. But the HOF is a big deal to both players themselves, and to fans. Why use a crude system when far more informative ones can be calculated easily by analysts, and then disseminated to the fans, sparing them any “difficulty”? I think the real answer to that is that fans and voters really like to plump for their “favorites”, and thus avoid using any system when it objectively disagrees with their biases. In that case, there is indeed no reason to value a more accurate and nuanced system, as it too will just be ignored or overridden whenever the evaluator doesn’t like the result.
JAWS with a cutoff of 50, and my own system, agree in more than 85% of the cases–almost all the “non-borderline” ones. But it’s the marginal ones that of course are the most crucial to “get right”, not the obvious superstars that any system admits. And it’s precisely there that nuanced systems will disagree, especially with a crude one like JAWS. The claim for borderline players that all sorts of ad hoc, non-systematic, cherry-picked and biased “information” about players should then be the deciding factors in deciding marginal cases. But that absolutely guarantees that individual choices will be made completely inconsistently–not with others’ choices, but with their OWN admittees vs. non-admittees! And THAT notion, I have to say, is utter bovine excrement… 🙂 But it is extremely prevalent…and so be it.
Down with the regime.
Tech support! My iPhone app won’t load this whole article, only the intro and comments.
It was nice to read about Charlie Keller. Obviously, an example of health cutting short a great career. I was fortunate to get to know through harness racing. As great a ball player as he was, he was an even better person. A super nice person. Gracious and humble.
Thanks Michael Rosen! Although it tempers my enthusiasm a bit, I appreciate the write up a lot. I think I’m going to dream on the 6 pitch mix working for one season anyways. Let’s hope I’m right. Now if my Nats can get some decent other pitchers on pillow contracts I might have a fun summer.
A platoon split is not an unclear term and is the difference between performance vs LHP and RHP.