Jay Jaffe FanGraphs Chat – 6/2/26

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks! Welcome to my first chat of June — it’s lovely here in Brooklyn and I wish I could take this outside. I … probably could except I’m not sure how strong the wifi is in the back yard. Hmmm.

Jay Jaffe: Anyway, yesterday I wrote about the myriad issues that have led to the Tigers bottoming out. At 23-38, they’re still tied for the majors’ worst record, but last night they did win 10-9, scoring more than 6 runs for the first time since May 3 and at least 10 runs for the first time since April 16. The Jaffe Reverse Jinx strikes again!

Jay Jaffe: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-tigers-have-collapsed-but-not-because-…

Daniel Bergman: I know this is a lofty comparison but the Yankees rotation right now has me thinking of ’98, with every starter having ace level upside.

Jay Jaffe: whoa whoa whoa, that’s a bit too lofty, I think. We’ve seen Cole and Schlittler pitch like aces, and Rodón’s been reasonably close at his peak but right now is dealing with significant command issues that make it very difficult to imagine him getting back to his 2021–22 form. Warren has taken a big step forward, and I like Weathers but don’t see him as having the stuff to be more than a mid-rotation guy.

Russell: Could it be beneficial for a pitcher to randomly pull out a knuckleball every like 200 pitches

Jay Jaffe: I think it could be very beneficial to throw one more often than that, provided a pitcher can maintain the feel for the pitch without it being his bread and butter

jbaldino6: In such an odd year especially for the AL, but even more so because of the 2027 uncertainty, where do you see the value lying for players with 2 years left on their deals (ex: Willson Contreras) at this years deadline?

Jay Jaffe: One really has to be the absolute doomiest gloom-and-doomer to believe that 2027 is in such jeopardy that there may not be a season. I get that the two sides are far apart in their first proposals and that the owners are publicly floating a salary cap, but they have to know that it’s not happening. I don’t think we’ll get to the point that there’s a work stoppage that costs real games, so I don’t see concerns about such a thing having a significant impact on player valuation.

odin525: Seeing the stats on slugging versus Miz brought back memories of one of my favorite pitchers in my younger days, JR Richard. I still remember reading the news and am still saddened by a great career cut short. Do you think he deserves a spot in the Hall of Fame? I would love to see his short career honored among the greats.

Jay Jaffe: I’m old enough to remember J.R. Richard, how awesome he was at his peak and how tragic it was cut short. While I do think it’s possible he could have had a few more great years that could have made the Hall a possibility for him, I don’t see him as so unique that he should be enshrined with just 107 wins and 22.2 WAR.

dirtypuer: Do you think prospect pedigree is underrated a few years into a guy’s career? Feels like there have been quite a few breakouts that no one saw coming once there was enough major league data on a guy to project further mediocrity.

Jay Jaffe: I think that when well-regarded prospects struggle early in their careers, people tend to write them off too early — you see me railing about the term “failed prospect” on here when we’re talking about 23- or 25-year olds. It can take longer for some guys to put it together, and I don’t think we should be surprised when one does even if he’s in his mid-20s or something, because at one point there was a consensus that this guy could be something special.

Jeremy Fox: Have all possible good pitches already been invented?

Jay Jaffe: Almost certainly not. Thanks to the combination of technology and analytics, we’re seeing players and coaches design pitches by making tweaks of existing ones, and the permutations are endless. They’re still going to bear some resemblance to the major types — a sweeper is a kind of slider, and thus a breaking ball — but we may see something new now and then.

pems416064: why is there a list of only 69 SP for the 30 teams?

Jay Jaffe: Do you mean on the leaderboards such as this one: https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders/major-league?pos=all&stats=pit&lg=al… ? (72 actually). Those are the pitchers who have enough inning (one per team game) to qualify for the ERA title and other rate stats leaderboards. you can adjust the innings threshold under the “Min Playing Time (IP)” drop-down on the right above the table.

Anonymous Member: Jacob DeGrom hitting the 100-win threshold is huge for his Hall chances, right? No one below that benchmark has been elected as a starter.

Jay Jaffe: The lowest win total for a Hall of Fame starting pitcher from the AL,NL and bygone 19th-century leagues is 150, by Dizzy Dean, with Addie Joss at 160, John Montgomery Ward (who basically converted to shortstop) at 164, and then Sandy Koufax at 165, so while 100 is a nice milestone that would help deGrom’s cause, I think he’s gonna have to rack up a fair bit more than that. Johan Santana’s got a fair bit of support from the statheads and he’s at 139.

Two rats in a wool sock: The fact that Tucker’s playing like this on a $240 million contract (nearly half a billion if you include luxury tax) and literally no one cares, makes me think that a salary cap is inevitable

Jay Jaffe: “here’s a random fact based on a small sample, let’s extrapolate this into an industry-redefining event that would require the collapse of the players’ union”

Jay Jaffe: Tucker has started slowly, but he improved from April to May, and the Dodgers are in first place and have bigger issues to deal with. So no, I don’t see how this means that this is going to lead to a salary cap.

war2d2: Jay! The Cubs are really going through it with their rotation. If Ben Brown hadn’t found a sinker over the offseason they’d be in even worse shape. They obviously need a starter (or two…or three…), but trading at this point of the season rarely happens. If you were Jed, knowing that you have a team with a core made up of a lot of guys in walk years and a bottom-half farm system, would you mortgage the future to over-pay for some pitching help? They have a handful of 50fv guys that could be parts of a trade for upper-tier MLB talent, but dropping a couple top-100 guys for a Joe Ryan really puts a lot of eggs in a basket held together by questionable elbow tendons (that analogy kind of fell apart at the end there)

Jay Jaffe: If the Cubs are still contending two months for now and hoping to deal for a top-end starter they need to be aiming for Tarik Skubal.

Note: this is not an invitation for you to ask me about trade proposals for Tarik Skubal.

Jay Jaffe: (and by you I mean all of youse)

EVCinNYC: As an aside, are you going to try George Washington’s beer recipe from Brooklyn brewery Talea? https://www.nypl.org/blog/2026/06/01/george-washington-beer-recipe-tal…

Jay Jaffe: I like Talea’s stuff, so yeah, I’d definitely give that a shot, especially now that I’ve aged into the Dad Sometimes Prefers Lagers Over IPAs demographic

Jay Jaffe: sounds like lunch is here, stand by for a couple minutes of chaos…

Jay Jaffe: Chicken shawarma platter, for those of you scoring at home…

warpath: Both the MLBPA’s and MLB’s proposals this past week both included some form of the following: changes to revenue sharing, and a higher baseline expectation for team payroll. Seeing as there seemed to be some agreement there (even if the mechanisms proposed were quite different), would you think that we could expect a final CBA to include these? I’d be for both as a fan

Jay Jaffe: The CBA is basically about how to divide the pie, which is to say it’s about revenue sharing, and yes, the mechanisms for how that will happen will be central to the negotiations. As Ben Clemens wrote, the MLBPA’s proposal centers around a change in the way local TV revenue is shared, so I think we’re not going very far out on a limb to suggest that we’ll see some kind of change there https://blogs.fangraphs.com/mlb-and-the-mlbpa-have-made-their-opening-…

Anonymous Member: Is there a takeout lunch you would trade Tarik Skubal for?

Jay Jaffe: Not an existing one but I’d think hard about a deal if the Italian sandwich from the sadly-defunct Bierkraft in Park Slope was on offer: “House-roasted ham, petit jesu, capicola, prosciutto di parma and pecorino sardo cheese with arugula, tomato, onion, roasted pepper, extra virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar.”

Jay Jaffe: That or a Van Horn Fried Chicken Sandwich, with some sides.

odin525: It’s interesting to hear numbers being thrown around by league execs, in some offshoot logic, to justify a salary cap. But, we all know the truth is a narrower part of that. Seems the vast majority, including the league itself looking at their proposal, believes the biggest issue isn’t the handful of teams spending money (and the misleading Dodgers’ “stats” don’t help), it’s the many more teams unwilling to spend money. A $69 million payroll in Miami? Ridiculous. A dollar out should include a dollar in.

Jay Jaffe: agreed.

Thomas Nguyen: Robbie Ray to the Cubs, what say you?

Jay Jaffe: Unless he’s pitching much better than his current 4.45 ERA and 5.38 FIP, he’s a consolation prize or a back-rotation change-of-scenery guy

jdefrancesco5: Who do you think will be the next player to reach 90 WAR?

Jay Jaffe: Mike Trout, if we’re going by fWAR (89.5), though he’s at 90.2 bWAR. I think Mookie Betts has a good shot if we’re going by bWAR (75.0) but he’s only at 62.8 fWAR because DRS loves him  more than other defensive metrics

Philip Christy: Bobby Witt is leading in Fangraphs’ Defense stat, on the Fangraphs leaderboards. He’s also first in WAR. How often is baseball’s top defender also its top player overall? Also, about time he wins an MVP huh?

Jay Jaffe: Not often, but Cal Rikpen Jr. comes to mind thanks to a thing I wrote for this past weekend’s subscriber mailbag https://blogs.fangraphs.com/fangraphs-weekly-mailbag-may-30-2026/

Jay Jaffe: He tops our leaderboards in defense in both 1984 (when he was almost completely ignored in the MVP voting, which was the topic for the mailbag) and 1991.

Jeremy Fox: Odds that Christopher Sanchez can break the scoreless inning streak record?

Jay Jaffe: this is where we need Dan Szymborski to weigh in with some binomial wizardry instead of me.

Jay Jaffe: Sanchez needs 14 2/3 scoreless innings to surpass Orel Hershiser’s record, which looks to me like it borders on needing a third outing instead of just two because the odds of him giving up that run have to be higher late in the game when he’s going through the order a third time and his pitch count is higher.

Jay Jaffe: throwing a dart, i’ll say he’s got a 4% chance, ignoring what I just wrote and figuring he’s about 1-in-5 for a scoreless start start of between 7-8 innings, and then 1-in-5 for repeating that.

jtrichey: Just want to say I love when Lord and (Love)Lady end up in the same boxscore for the Nationals. They have even been back to back a few times out of the pen.

Jay Jaffe: Box scores reward that kind of attention and oh, does everybody know to sign up for that free box-scores-via-email service? It’s a damn delight: https://boxscore.email/mlb

bosoxforlife: How does Matt Shaw for Brayan Bello sound ?

Jay Jaffe: like an entry on the list of Things That Are Very Much Not Happening

Jay Jaffe: I don’t know what’s up with Bello these days but no contender is looking at him and thinking he’s the solution to their pitching injuries AND giving up 5 years of control of a 24-year-old former top-25 prospect

Phil: The Athletic recently referred to Andrelton Simmons as having once been on a path that, “if he had kept up a similar pace, could have put him in the conversation for an Ozzie Smith-like Hall of Fame berth.” Utter nonsense, yes? The Wiz has 2500 hits!

Jay Jaffe: I read that piece, by Sam Blum, who tracked down Simmons in the Mexican League, where he’s playing for the first time since 2022. https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7322869/2026/06/01/andrelton-simmons-…

Jay Jaffe: I think “Ozzie Smith-like” is a stretch but at one point it didn’t seem incredibly far-fetched based on watching him accumulate bWAR via high DRS totals, and climb the JAWS rankings. Though his age-28 season he had 33.5 bWAR and was +174 in fielding runs at shortstop, but due to injuries and a steeper offensive decline than anyone expected only added another 3.2 WAR before taking his ball and going home.

war2d2: I think I gargled my question, I was wondering if you thought the Cubs should try to over-pay for pitching _right now_ vs. waiting until the deadline. I’m assuming they (and everyone else with a shot) will be trying for Skubal if he’s available then, but I was figuring the Twins would be willing to deal Ryan (or the Marlins with Sandy) right now, at this moment, if they were over-paid enough.

Jay Jaffe: do not gargle with questions! They can scrape the delicate esophageal tissue and cause serious problems.

Jay Jaffe: (I think you meant garble)

Jay Jaffe: I think for the most part, teams are generally unlikely to trade the type of players who will be coveted deadline pieces this far ahead of the deadline because they have much more leverage in late July and early August. You may get one team giving you a great offer but the temptation is always going to be to get multiple teams in a bidding war and find one acting more irrationally than the others. And looking at the way the Cubs have played this season, I don’t think you can approach this with that kind of irrationality on June 2.

Jay Jaffe: Speaking of which, June 2 is Lou Gehrig Day, the 101st anniversary of his first game of the 2,130 consecutive games he played, and the 85th anniversary of his passing. I’ll be breaking out my End ALS t-shirt in honor of Gehrig and MLB.com’s Sarah Langs. You can buy one, with proceeds going to Project ALS https://rotowear.com/products/baseball-is-the-best-shirt?srsltid=AfmBO….

glenb0828: Any hope for Dylan Crews?

Jay Jaffe: See above! Yes, he’s 24 and was considered a top-5 prospect not long ago. I wouldn’t give up on him at all.

odin525: Considering the volatility of pitching arms these days, wouldn’t you want to wait as long as possible to make a trade so the inevitable injury doesn’t occur on your watch?

Jay Jaffe: Re: Ryan, yes that’s another aspect of this too. You want to make sure he’s durable enough to be worth trading for, even if it means you’re going to get fewer innings from him

JustinPBG: What type of player tends to fall off a HOF path faster (aside from surgery etc)? A great defender who can hit pretty well for their career (Semien, say) or a great hitter who can field okay (idk, Stanton, since he used to field well)? Just trying to find current examples even though Stanton may well hold on

Jay Jaffe: I think hitting tends to age better, because it’s less speed-and-mobility dependent than fielding a difficult position

NicklePickers: What do you think of this new kid Jump? Is he more van Halen or Kris Kross? (Though who’s to say which is better…)

Jay Jaffe: I don’t know that I’d wish either Van Halen (“Jump” being the beginning of the end of their greatness) or Kris Kross (one-hit wonders) on Jump, whom I haven’t seen yet. Michael Baumann wrote about him the other day, though https://blogs.fangraphs.com/if-you-want-more-more-more-then-jump/

bkgeneral: What return do you think the Tigers will get if/when they decide to trade Skubal?

Jay Jaffe: What did I say above? They’re going to get three magic beans and then grow a beanstalk that Scott Harris has to climb.

odin525: There’s some rumbling about how the Brewers should break the bank and go after Skubal to win it all (thanks, Rosenthal). Besides generally not being a team that mortgages the future for today, it seems the team Milwaukee is building in the minors will be better than the one on the field now. I know flags fly forever but I really hope they stay the course. Where do you fall?

Jay Jaffe: I’d love to see this. I think the Brewers might be well-positioned to deal for Skubal without entirely mortgaging their future, and I tend to favor that kind of an aggressive approach.

hamiltonthebabeporter: how much would Skubal’s next contract would need to be increased by if the team wanted to add a clause in it that would limit Boras from making any more stupid puns?

Jay Jaffe: Boras might ask for an extra zero on the end.

Jay Jaffe: Ok folks, thanks so much for stopping by, that’s it from me this week! Tip your waiters, waitresses, and bartenders, please!