Jay Jaffe FanGraphs Chat – 4/14/26

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon! Welcome to my first chat of April

Jay Jaffe: I was out of town last week, traveling in Austria with my family, retracing some ancestral roots and testing out my newly-acquired dual citizenship. It’s very weird to drop in on baseball when there’s a 6-hour time difference in that direction, to say the least

Jay Jaffe: Yesterday I wrote about Andy Pages, whose hot start I followed from afar https://blogs.fangraphs.com/with-a-hot-start-andy-pages-has-turned-the…

Jay Jaffe: For tomorrow I’ll be writing about Davey Lopes, my first favorite ballplayer, who passed away last week.

Bob: Do you think the Brewers will regain their magic this year?

Jay Jaffe: if I’ve learned one thing, it’s never take the Brewers lightly. They always seem to find a way to contend, and in that division, that’s often more than enough

Jos: Hey Jay. What do you make of Ben Casparius? I was so high on him but ever since he got shuffled back and forth between the pen/rotation it feels like he’s been broken (and now he’s hurt again)

Jay Jaffe: when I saw him getting lit up in multiple outings recently, i wondered if he might be pitching through something, especially with his velo and stuff down just a bit.

Jay Jaffe: I hope it’s nothing serious, he’s a useful middle reliever/spot starter but probably belongs in the bullpen long term

bob: The Braves have certainly exceeded the vibes-based preseason predictions, is this good early form perhaps more valuable as they will likely get some of their starting pitchers back eventually?

Jay Jaffe: i’d say so! Being able to keep their heads above water with a roster that’s far from full strength is something they were unable to do last season. They’ve bought themselves some time, particularly in a division where the Phillies are showing some significant concerns and the new-look Mets have stumbled out of the gate

CraigB: Who’s more likely to fall back to earth from here, Jordan Walker, Oneil Cruz, Andy Pages, Brice Turang, or Ben Rice?  And where will the “biggest loser” land for the year?

Jay Jaffe: Off the top of my head I’d say Rice and Pages since their success is being driven by BABIPs above .500

Jay Jaffe: not that the others are going to sustain their starts either, it’s just that the overperformances versus expectation are better supported (Walker up ~4 mph in EV and suddenly elevating more frequently, for example)

Ghost of Wade Boggs: Not a question, I just wanted to share some findings I dug up. Apologies for the wordiness:

I was scouring Fangraphs game logs to see if anyone who has won the Cy Young award has ever had as bad of a night like Crochet did last night. The logs appear to only go back to 1974, but in that time, I could not find an instance where someone gave up 10 ER (or 11 R total) in a start in a season where they won the Cy Young.

But that’s not what I came here to talk about – in doing this research, I found Mike Flanagan’s 1979 Cy Young winning season. What. A. Rollercoaster. He had *6* starts where failed to get through the 2nd inning. 36.95 ERA in those 6 starts. He had 2 more starts where he failed to get more than 3.1 innings (7.50 ERA). He *still* managed to finish the season with a 3.08 ERA on the backs of an additional 31 games (including 14 complete games, one of which went 12 innings), pitched to a 2.13 ERA. Man. 70’s/80’s baseball was wild.

Jay Jaffe: wow, never noticed that or had forgotten that about Flanagan’s season. Now I’m just imagining how many times that season Earl Weaver told him he looked like total horseshit out there

Jay Jaffe: Five shutouts certainly helped offset that, and getting very good run support on the way to 23 wins certainly helped him look good too

NobleHelium: Aaron Judge appears to have passed Mike Trout in BRef’s HOF Monitor metric (not sure exactly, it might be counting this season’s numbers which aren’t set yet, obviously). Is Judge now a lock for the HOF given that most everyone agrees that Trout is a lock?

Jay Jaffe: I think it’s those league leads in homers and batting average driving that. — 18-0 advantage for Judge in that department.

I do think Judge is getting close to becoming a lock, even given his late start. 3 MVP awards, 4 seasons with at least 50 homers, that will do it

Eliot: So will mcgonigle win rookie of the year? seems to me that i got a great deal for him early

Jay Jaffe: our staff overwhelmingly picked him to win, with 12 votes; nobody else got more than 5 (Kazuma Okamoto) and my own pick, Carter Jensen, got just 2

Jay Jaffe: Every time I see his name i think of the Simpsons’ Dirty Harry parody, McGarnicle https://simpsons.fandom.com/wiki/McGarnagle

Guest: The Pirates have achieved a 100 win pace so far. Fangraphs has projected them for 85 wins. Which number best reflects their true talent level holding injuries constant (at 0).

Jay Jaffe: i’m going to say it’s much closer to 85 wins because there’s a lot more going into to that estimate than just “they’ll keep winning at the same pace all season long”

troke: Jose Soriano! I know he’s not going to end the season with an ERA under 1, but can he keep something like this up?  Looks like he’s throwing the FB more, which is maybe helping to set up the sinker better.  I want to believe!

Jay Jaffe: I haven’t seen much of him yet but the pitch modeling systems say his stuff and command/location have both improved, and he’s doing a great job of suppressing hard contact. Michael Baumann wrote about him last week https://blogs.fangraphs.com/gimme-the-heat-boys-and-free-my-soul-no-on…

Trout Vs. Judge: I know it’s just a mid April game between 2 teams with bad bullpens, but Trout and Judge going back and forth with 2 HRs a piece was pretty fun. They’re both performing similarly right now. Who would you be more surprised if they maintained their current performance?

Jay Jaffe: Trout, because it’s been years since he put together something resembling a good, healthy season.

Judge: You didn’t even have to Jaffe Article Bump for him to power binge

Jay Jaffe: The mere process of thinking, “Maybe I need to investigate” did the trick

Insert Witty Name Here: Interesting that Davey Lopes was your first favorite.  I’ll always remember him for being the first base coach of the golden era late 2000 Phillies, the announcers mentioned constantly how great he was at teaching how to steal a bag, Utley’s success rate shows it.  RIP.

Jay Jaffe: Part of my reason for writing about him was thinking about why he became my first favorite when there were more obvious choices. I understand why teenage Jay was a Lopes fan even in the twilight of his career — he was a Bill James favorite as I was getting absorbed in that stuff — than I do why 8-year-old Jay was a Lopes fan when there were bigger superstars like Garvey on his own team

Jay Jaffe: Maybe it *was* the mustache

Guest: What’s gotten into Max P. Muncy?  His Statcast page looks like a Saw movie…

Jay Jaffe: He’s been Maximizing like his namesake. EV up ~8 mph, HH% double last year’s meager rate… I should find some time to check him out.

Guest: How’s the internet in Austria? Able to telecommute?

Jay Jaffe: It wasn’t bad for checking in but the time zone issue meant i could mainly only catch day games, and for at most about an hour here or there

Bug: I recently read a FG comment regarding Home Team “deading” balls for a SP.  Is this a common practice?  How? Does MLB test home team supplied balls prior to games?

Jay Jaffe: Home teams have been working such angles forever — groundskeepers watering the field down or letting the grass grow to help their pitchers, stuff like that. With balls stored in the humidor now, I’m not sure how much you can get away with now because that stuff is supposed to be monitored closely.

Guest: are there better odds neither Gerrit Cole nor Giancarlo stanton make the HOF than one of them do

Jay Jaffe: i think the odds are reasonable that one or the other makes it. Stanton might have pulled ahead lately by being so productive during Cole’s TJ outage

Guest: Do you think Wrobleski will be able to stick around at SP for LAD?

Jay Jaffe: I don’t see that as a likely outcome given the quality of his stuff and the makeup of the team’s roster. I think he’s more of a swingman type who will be in the rotation mix as a fill-in after Snell gets back and when the other starters take their inevitable midseason breaks. They’ll get Snell back at some point, and hopefully River Ryan and Gavin Stone, and there’s always Landon Knack for when they get stretched thin as well.

Jay Jaffe: I don’t see them pushing Wrobo past 100 innings, but if he keeps pitching like. he did last night, he’ll continue to get looks

Guest: Will David Cone ever make it to the HOF

Jay Jaffe: Alas, the way the Era Committee process is structured, the odds are greatly tilted against any sub-200 win pitcher who went one-and-done on the writers’ ballot suddenly breaking through.

Richard: Is Kevin Appier the best player to make only one All-Star team? In JAWS he’s right between 7x All-Star Dave Stieb and 5x All-Star Chuck Finley. He was the A.L. WAR leader in 1993, which should have earned him the Cy Young (and maybe even MVP). He was one of the 4-5 best pitchers in the game from 1990-97, with only Maddux, Clemens and Big Unit decidedly outperforming Appier’s averages across those 8 years. His 7 seasons with a 4.5+ WAR are more than 1st-ballot HOFers Glavine, Smoltz and Sabathia. Yet Appier was just a 1x All-Star and received only a single HOF vote.

Jay Jaffe: I think there’s a case to be made. Of the AL/NL pitchers whose careers began after 1933 (the year the ASG began), he has the highest S-JAWS (48.3, about 7 points ahead of Jamie Moyer and Javier Vazquez).

Jay Jaffe: He certainly deserved more recognition in his day

OW: Any reason for concern with Pasquantino? Bat speed down 3 ticks, K-rate up.

Jay Jaffe: Yeah, I’m concerned especially given the bat speed. 0.8% fast swing rate, what the hell? Is he  playing through injury? I want to know more

Definitely Not Carl Crawford: Justin Crawford has only 1 barrel and 1 ball pulled in the air (not the same batted ball event by the way) through 54 PAs/37 batted balls. The surface stats look good, but Crawford is riding a .405 BABIP. Do you foresee trouble for him down the line if the batted ball profile doesn’t change much? There is not much depth here for Philly so he will get every chance, but I worry things may get ugly.

Jay Jaffe: He’s likely to be a guy who hits a lot of grounders and uses his speed to compensate for his lack of pop (20/30 grades on his game power) but yes, I’d be concerned how it looks if/when he sheds 50 points of BABIP or something

Jay Jaffe: that said, check out what Dan Szymborski wrote about Crawford here while putting him on his Booms list https://blogs.fangraphs.com/szymborskis-2026-booms-and-busts-hitters/

JB: I’m not sure it’s possible, but can you explain why Francisco Lindor is so putrid every April since becoming a Met?

Jay Jaffe: My working theory — unbacked by any real research — is that it can be harder for a switch-hitter to get going because he has two swings to iron out instead of one. Cal Raleigh, José Ramírez, Jorge Polanco, and Ketel Marte are all off to slow starts as well.

Dan: Should I worry about Cal Raleigh? What about Luis Castillo? With Hancock pitching well, does Castillo go to the bullpen when Miller is healthy?

Jay Jaffe: Raleigh is averaging just 83.9 mph in exit velo and running a 32.4% strikeout rate. I’m sure pitchers are keying on him but yeah, that has me concerned.

Jay Jaffe: Regarding Hancock/Castillo/Miller, Castillo’s just been BABIPed to death, his peripherals are good (3.19 FIP) and he’s getting lots of grounders, and his velo and stuff are fine. I’m not worried about him. Nor do I ever encourage anyone to count starting pitcher chickens before they’re all healthy.

Pivot Point: What is the news on the return of Jackson Holliday? Is Angel Martinez a pivot for the ROS?

Jay Jaffe: He’s scuffling during his rehab assignment so until he shows signs of getting going I wouldn’t expect him to come up.

Jay Jaffe: Martinez hasn’t played any 2B this year but he’s really given the Guardians a nice boost with his bat. Not sure i’d call it a breakout yet but a promising step forward

Ozzie: What has been happening with Michael Busch? Are there some concering underlying statistics or just SSS bad luck?

Jay Jaffe: His swing speed is down a couple of notches, and his EV is way down, not pulling the ball very often. I’d guess his timing is off but I wonder if there are any physical issues there.

Bog: What would you do with Roki

Jay Jaffe: Probably send him to the minors at some point, but they likely need one of the aforementioned guys to show they’re ready to join the rotation

Jay Jaffe: oh and I forgot Knack is down with an oblique strain so that’s not going to be an option for awhile either

Beto: Austrian-American dual citizen here! I love living in Vienna but it does make baseball watching rather challenging. Best of luck on your trip and congrats on the citizenship!

Jay Jaffe: Thanks! The trip was great if a bit heavy — we tracked down my paternal grandparents’ residences before they were chased out of town by the Nazis in the spring of 1938. Spending a lot of time dwelling on Austrian history as one does as a tourist, through museums and sites of interest, means thoughts of that stuff are never too far away.

Jeremy: Lots of Fangraphs articles early in the season are about guys who’ve started surprisingly well, or surprisingly poorly (e.g., Walker, Soriano, Trout). Those articles usually show that the guy is doing something differently than he used to–swinging less, or elevating more, or locating better, or whatever. But surely any time anybody has a hot or cold streak, it’s likely that he’s doing *something* different, right? Finding that somebody’s doing something different during a hot or cold streak shouldn’t give us any confidence that that the streak is the new normal, should it?

Jay Jaffe: sometimes it’s just randomness that’s causing a hot or cold streak, and lots of streaks evade notice when they happen deeper into the season because they don’t fundamentally change anything about our understanding of a player. But when a guy starts out hot or cold, it’s natural to wonder what’s going on

Resolution: SHOCKED that the first time I’ve seen McGonigle mentioned alongside the Simpsons bit was in a non-Szym chat. What a time to be alive.

Jay Jaffe: I’m disappointed you didn’t think I might beat somebody else to a Simpsons reference.

Kellen: All off-season, every analyst said some version “the Tigers are winning the central, don’t worry about it.” As an anxious baseball fan, not worrying is not really my thing lol. The Tigers offense has been a relative disappointment before this Marlins series. In your estimation, is that a bit of an early season fluke or a larger concern to worry about?

Jay Jaffe: I’m not terribly worried but I get it if you’re a fan. They’re at a 102 wRC+ this year, down 1 point from last year; the power hasn’t shown up but league-wide, homers are way down (0.99 per team per game, down from 1.16 last year and 1.06 last March/April, and March/April league-wide SLG is down 10 points (from .391 to .381). Might be worth a big-picture look soon

Jay Jaffe: OK folks, I’ve got to go grab lunch and pay the tax man. Thanks so much for stopping by! We’ll do this again soon.