Jay Jaffe FanGraphs Chat – 3/21/19

Jay Jaffe: Hi folks, welcome to today’s chat! I’m in a brief not-rain delay as I finish up a quickie Instagraph on Ichiro. Will join the party soon.

Jay Jaffe: OK, I’m back. Had a quick brainstorm for something to say about Ichiro that I found interesting. Thanks for waiting that out, happy 2019 MLB season to those celebrating, and on with the show!

Russell: Do you think MLB/HoF will make Ichiro wait a full five years or make a special exception for him?

Jay Jaffe: I briefly address this in the forthcoming post but at this point, I don’t see the Hall making an exception. He’ll be eligible for the 2025 ballot instead of 2024, but I think the tradeoff — the chance to retire on his own terms, in his native country — was well worth the delay.

Ray Liotta as Shoeless Joe: Jesus Luzardo is out for a month. What a bummer!

Jay Jaffe: Fuuuuuuuuuuuudge.

I’ve only seen bits and pieces of his work but I’ve been a Luzardo fan since I first heard his name, on the basis of its similarity to The Jesus Lizard, a kick-ass 1990s band that is either number 1 or 1A when it comes to live acts (the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and the Waco Brothers are the other two vying for that title). They blew the doors off every venue I saw them at from about 1990 to 2017, when they came out of retirement for a final tour. Oh, and their best album is called GOAT.

Get well soon, Jesus Luzardo.

Travis: Given the recent FG update for Pitch Framing/WAR, and seeing how that has affected career WAR totals in a way that stands out (Molina, McCann, Martin, etc.), how has this affected your thinking on Catchers and the Hall, and/or do you foresee yourself adjusting JAWS accordingly or leaving well enough alone? I know you use BR WAR for your system, but the discrepancy seems large enough that it merits consideration.

Jay Jaffe: I’ll be writing about this in an upcoming post, particularly because there was also a B-Ref update concerning catcher defense from 1890-1953 that tweaked the standards a bit

https://twitter.com/jay_jaffe/status/1108731998011568130

psweeting: Is Ichiro a unanimous HoFer?

Jay Jaffe: Now that the barrier has fallen, I think it’s entirely possible he will be. If I were a betting man, I’d put $20 on it today.

DDD: Love to hear your take on the Trout contract. Also, what do you think that means for Betts?

Jay Jaffe: Count me as somebody who’s happy for Trout for guaranteeing this massive payday but also believing that, as Craig Edwards put it, he left money on the table. https://blogs.fangraphs.com/mike-trout-leaves-money-on-the-table-again…

Given the way the free agencies of Bryce Harper and Manny Machado played out this winter, I’m glad we’ll be spared the months of speculation and nitpicking that come with the free agency of a superstar, all the bullshit about what Mike Trout isn’t. It’s become a pretty joyless aspect of the hot stove season. Who cares whether Trout would be recognized in a mall? And as Pedro Martinez would say, who is Colin Cowherd?

Rothbert: In this era of cold stove free agency it’s easy to over look how underpaid Lorenzo Cain is. What happened here? Do teams not like stud center fielders? Did the Brewers (and now Padres) uncover a new roster building strategy where you pay good players to join your team?

Jay Jaffe: I think Cain’s 5/$80M deal had much more to do with the changing free agent market for over-30 players (he was heading into his age-31 season) than specifically about center fielders. And while I labeled it a team-friendly deal last March (https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-most-team-friendly-free-agent-deals-of…), I tried to show that it was a pretty fair one based upon our dollars-to-wins reckoning. “In all, it’s more of a fair deal than outlandish one.”

Archimedes: First Tim Salmon, now Mike Trout. Who will be the next fish-named player to spend his entire career with the Angels?

Jay Jaffe: Does Salmon or Kevin Bass (1986 All-Star with the Astros) have any kids? Given that Trout was the son of a former minor leaguer, and that current prospect lists are topped by the progeny of Vlad Guerrero and Fernando Tatis, I have to think that bloodlines will matter for this otherwise-fishy exercise.

LP: Ichiro is my all time favorite player. Who is yours?

Jay Jaffe: It would be tough to pick just one. Hank Aaron, whom I was too young to see play, was the first star I learned about. Davey Lopes and Reggie Smith were my early favorites with the Dodgers (c. 1978), Fernando Valenzuela surpassed them for obvious reasons in 1981. Gaylord Perry, Tim Raines, Edgar Martinez, Larry Walker, David Cone, Clayton Kershaw, Yasiel Puig, Mike Trout, Bryce Harper and many others would be in the conversation as well.

Sanford: Now that framing data has been added to catcher WAR, Molina becomes a near-lock for the HOF now, right? (Especially given that he’s closing in on 2000 hits.) Also, how much have guys like McCann and Martin improved their chances?

Jay Jaffe: I’ll get into this in the forthcoming piece but I’m less sure that the framing stuff guarantees Molina’s HOF election than I am that this clouds the issue because of how people view McCann and Martin. There’s a lot to unpack.

Scott: If Ichiro came to the majors at 30 and had the same stats in the subsequent years, would he still be a Hall of Famer?

Jay Jaffe: Dude arrived late and got to 3,000 hits with a pretty thick resumé along the way. You do that, starting at any age, and you’re going to get into the Hall (so long as nobody turns up a PED scandal).

stever20: Who do you have going to the final 4 for basketball?

Jay Jaffe: As I’ve been buried in our Positional Power Rankings, I haven’t even seen a bracket, let alone filled one out. I have come to abhor the NCAA  — whose entire governing body should be launched into the f’ing sun — and have watched just one college game this year (Utah beating USC in LA in February, watched a few minutes with my father when I was in Salt Lake City).

Still, I’ve done this enough times to tell you that Duke, Kansas, North Carolina and Michigan are going to the Final Four. I don’t even care whether some of those teams made the tournament or would meet in an earlier round; they’ll all find a way to wherever its being played.

g4baseball: What is the outlook for Wilmer Flores? Will his bat overcome his defensive inadequacies?

Jay Jaffe: I have a soft spot for Flores, but I don’t see anything changing for him. He is what he is, a fringe major leaguer whose combination of offense and defense makes him a poor fit for a starting spot.

RR: Do you know how far back (i.e how many years) catcher framing will go?

Jay Jaffe: Right now it goes back to 2008. I think we’d like to do a 1988-2007 version, covering the pitch-count era, in a With You, Without You manner as Baseball Prospectus has done. Given the information available, that’s as far back as we can reasonably go.

Dave: you get +10 points for knowing jesus lizard

Jay Jaffe: I got paid to write about music before I got paid to write about baseball, then stumbled into 15 years of work as a graphic designer.

Slurve: In your learned opinion, which HOFers SHOULD have been unanimous and what’s the single best argument AGAINST their unanimity?

Jay Jaffe: Too many to list. All of the original 5 (Cobb, Ruth, Wagner, Johnson, Mathewson), Hornsby, Lajoie, Cy Young, Foxx…. many others from the pre-WWII era. Jackie Robinson, Frank Robinson, Hank Aaron, Musial, Mantle, Mays, Ripken, Bench… like I said, too many to list.

Rudy L: Harper or no, I still think the Nats are better than the Phils, now and for the next few years. Your thoughts?

Jay Jaffe: My Ichiro post is ready:

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/ichiro-bows-out-again/

Chicken Little: Is Trout ever going to get in another playoff game? NY and Boston seem like locks for the next few seasons as do the Astros in the West. That leaves on WC spot for them!

Jay Jaffe: Unless you’ve got airtight information on a coming meteor’s collision with Earth, it seems pretty silly to rule out the possibility of any team not making the playoffs at all between now and 2030.  OK, maybe not the Marlins.

Matt W: After trout, is Chaz Roe the most dominant fish-named player in MLB currently?

Jay Jaffe: He’s got the edge over Anthony Bass, at least in terms of innings.

Not current, but I discovered the existence of this guy https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/e/eellsha01.shtml

Jay Jaffe: Harry Eells!

Roger: Pujols and Ichiro won the 2001 ROY awards.  Has there ever been a pair of ROYs to be first ballot HOFers?  (Not to get ahead of ourselves, of course)

Jay Jaffe: Rod Carew and Tom Seaver were the AL and NL ROYs in 1967. They later went on to collect major milestones (3,000th hit and 300th win, respectively) on the same day, August 4, 1985.

Jay Jaffe: They were elected in their first year of eligibility, one year apart (1991 for Carew, 1992 for Seaver).

TomBruno23: Which team could use Dallas Keuchel the most for 2019?

Jay Jaffe: I made the case for the Brewers or Phillies here https://blogs.fangraphs.com/dallas-keuchel-needs-a-home/ but one could do so for just about any team in the 82-92 win range.

Anonymous: Say something nice about Ketel Marte

Jay Jaffe: He had a very solid season in 2018 (104 wRC+, 2.5 WAR) and is pretty fun to watch given his athleticism. It will be interesting to see how his move to center field goes.

stever20: what do you think the players association thinks of all these extensions, in particular the Trout one?  I’m thinking they’re none too happy with them.

Jay Jaffe: I think the MLBPA has to be happy guys are getting paid. If they’re unhappy, it’s because of the complacency that’s crept into the union over the past two decades. And if that’s the case, I think the union needs to push very hard for a change to the way players are compensated before reaching free agency, both in the minors and majors.

Walt: I clicked on your article about team-friendly contracts from last year. It lists Todd Frazier! I think he did actually more or less earn his money last year, but it’s amazing how many fellow Mets fans think he’s a thief who should be sent to the glue factory.

Jay Jaffe: 1.5 WAR at our standard assumption of $8 million per win is $12 million of value ($11.9 million on his page, suggesting there’s a bit of rounding going on), so yeah, he earned his money. It wasn’t pretty, but he can still play a very solid third base.

I’m not sure how eager I am to critique that piece and its companion but I suppose it’s something I should revisit in the name of accountability.

tom: is the positional power rankings one of the hardest posts to write for fangraphs? it seems the team puts a ton of time into it.

Jay Jaffe: It’s a ton of time to research even the most familiar players, hough when you write about baseball daily, it helps because you’ve presumably got a storehouse of nuggets to draw from. It reminds me a fair bit of writing the Baseball Prospectus player comments, which I did from 2006-12 (I think those are the right dates). There’s a rhythm in putting one together and a cadence to making each entry flow that I find very soothing. Reminds me of the best part of writing my book — a point when you can just lose yourself in the research, learn new stuff, and enjoy the craft for a moment without worrying about a ticking clock.

Iron Man: How much more money could Trout have gotten on the open market?

Jay Jaffe: I don’t think $500 million over a similar time frame is out of the question.

Scott: Aside from the standard answers (Trout, Betts, Harper, etc.), what players are you most excited about this year?

Jay Jaffe: I’m a little nervous given how his spring has gone and the workload he had last year, but I want to see whether Walker Buehler can contend for a Cy Young award. Eager to see whether Gary Sanchez can rebound after a rough season, and whether Luke Voit’s late-season run was for real. Puig playing in a home run-conducive ballpark, with a chip on his shoulder. Manny and Bryce in new uniforms, plus taking the wraps off Vlad Jr., Tatis Jr. and Eloy.

Lee: What are Keuchel and Kimbrel’s plays now?  It’s now so close to the season that they both won’t be ready for opening day.  I have to think both are going to have to settle for reduced 1 year deals with a  hope in doing better next off season.  Tough position to be in but I have to think they both had decent multi-year offers on the table at some point.

Jay Jaffe: I think their respective agents overplayed their hands going into the winter to such an extent that I don’t think either ever got a “decent” multi-year offer or a formal one of any sort rather than vague discussions of parameters.

For either, I think a team has to do something like 1 yr + player option or a version of the Arrieta deal, which is 3 + opt out/escalated override. Wouldn’t surprise me if the Brewers came away with one or the other right now.

Pat: I think when you add in Ichiro’s cultural impact, ambassador to the game in baseball’s 2nd biggest market (Japan), overall acknowledgement as a great guy (similar to Mariano…anyone, ever said anything bad about Ichiro?),  to his obvious playing/statistical accomplishments, he SHOULD be unanimous HOF, right?

Jay Jaffe: Yes.

Hello: Did you read FG chats before you joined the site?  if so, who was your favorite chatter?

Jay Jaffe: Occasionally but without regularity I would check in on the chats of Eno Sarris, Dave Cameron and Jeff Sullivan, in part because they would often turn up in Google searches pointed towards “How is [Player X] doing this?”

babyswiss: Im selling myself on Amed Rosario this year. Think his OBP skills improve or is he destined to sit at the bottom of that lineup and fade?

Jay Jaffe: I wrote the shortstops PPR, which will be up tomorrow. I’m not wowed by what he’s done but he’s entering his age-23 season, and with even a bit of growth he’ll be a league-average guy. I’m not really sold that he’ll be much more than that in 2019 but I’m glad we don’t have to hear anymore bullshit about Jose Reyes mentoring him.

Trent: Which team got the best value in its recent extension: Astros (Bregman), Rays (Lowe), White Sox (Jimenez), or Angels (Trout)?

Jay Jaffe: whew, tough question. Without actually doing any math, I’ll go with Bregman because a) he’s already played at a star level in the majors and B) the bar to clear is lower than it is for Trout. It’s lower still for those other two guys, but the conversion rate of top prospects to stars is an uneven one.

john: With injuries to Jeffress and now Knebel does Milw now have a bigger reason to land Kimbrel?

Jay Jaffe: Hadn’t seen the Knebel news but

If it’s as serious as the early indications suggest then yes, I’d say the Brewers have even more reason to add Kimbrel.

Phil Diggety: Votto vs. John Olerud?

Jay Jaffe: Votto’s a future Hall of Famer who’s approaching the JAWS standard, Olerud is a close-but-no-cigar guy

Vader: How concerned are you with Severino? Do you think he can get back in May and be much better than his 2nd half of 2018?

Jay Jaffe: I’m concerned any time a pitcher has a shoulder issue but right now I’ll go with what I’m hearing which is May for Severino. And yes, if he’s healthy I certainly think he’ll be better than he was in the second half last year.

Broken Bat: Thanks for the time. Do you think that Jon Gray ST results are meaningfull? He has like a 22-1 k/ bb spread. Does he finally get the results of the talent most view as a #1 or #2 SP?

Jay Jaffe: K/BB numbers are just about the only thing I look at for spring training stats for pitchers. What they tell me is that this guy is healthy and fooling hitters. That’s about as far as I’m willing to take it. If so, I think he’s probably a 2-3 starter but not an ace.

Hello: Thoughts on player statues at ballparks?  Lots of hoopla in Mets-dom about a potential Tom Seaver statute.

Jay Jaffe: More of ’em, please. The Seaver one is overdue – it would have been better to honor him at a point when he was able to attend the dedication ceremony.

KD: Will Bauer really only do 1-year deals when he hits FA or is this just grandstanding?  I mean, there is a point where taking a longer term deal just makes sense from a financial standpoint, given enough money.

Jay Jaffe: Based upon what he’s said publicly, he’s going to have a lot of explaining to do if he backtracks from that pledge. And yes, given the chance of a career-altering injury at any given point, I think just about any pitcher is better off taking a multi-year deal.

Thor: How do you envision the league combatting the raising number of foul balls?

Jay Jaffe: I still think the best way for MLB to deal with several of its concerns about the pace and style of play is to tweak the strike zone, particularly at the bottom. It’s a time-honored method of restoring the pitcher/hitter balance that doesn’t have much in the way of obvious physical implications, the way of lowering the mound or moving the rubber back would.

brad nj: Jay, it is my birthday, can I get a shout out?  How do you see Austin Hays this year and going forward?

Jay Jaffe: Happy birthday, Brad! I don’t know anything about Hays that Kiley or Eric couldn’t tell you, so read what they have to say  https://blogs.fangraphs.com/top-32-prospects-baltimore-orioles/

stever20: 1977- Andre Dawson/Eddie Murray

Jay Jaffe: Dawson was not a first-ballot Hall of Famer. He was elected in his 9th year of eligibility.

DDD: Reggie Smith is a favorite of yours? Cool! Does he belong in the HOF? (I say yes, but I’m a bit of a big hall guy)

Jay Jaffe: He’s 16th in JAWS at RF, ahead of Ichiro, Dave Winfield and Vlad Guerrero but short of all three standards (including 5.1 JAWS). I’d be happy if he were already in but I’m not terribly motivated to mount a campaign for him. Likewise for Dwight Evans, who’s 0.5 ahead of him in JAWS

Ryne: How was the Fangraphs meetup?  I registered to go but unfortunately had a last-minute emergency and couldn’t (I live in AZ). Apologies if that messed up the head count or anything

Jay Jaffe: Sorry you couldn’t make it, hope it was nothing life-altering for you or anyone else. A good time was had by those in attendance, myself included.

stever20: re. ROY/HOF- at least 3 other times at quick glance- 56 (Robinson/Aparicio), 67(Seaver/Carew), 77(Murray/Dawson).  And 2012 seems very possible if not likely- Trout/Harper.

Jay Jaffe: Aparicio wasn’t a first-ballot guy either which was the original question.

AJ Pollock: *clears throat* Chaz Roe? Anthony Bass? Gentlemen, please.

Jay Jaffe: Fair.

Trevor: Who pitches the most innings this year: Kershaw, Severino, or Keuchel?

Jay Jaffe: Right now I’d say Kershaw because he’ll probably pitch in April.

Jay Jaffe: Folks, I’m sorry that I couldn’t stick around longer but my window for chatting has ended today. Thanks for stopping by, and happy baseball to all!