Jay Jaffe FanGraphs Chat – 8/6/21

Jay Jaffe: Hey folks, pardon my tardiness. I have been working on a big Hall of Fame-related piece that I had hoped to run today but that still has some loose ends to tie up and got a little carried away.

Jay Jaffe: That piece absorbed a lot of my attention this week, hence the lighter load of published pieces. I was very happy with the response that the Joey Votto piece (https://blogs.fangraphs.com/joey-vottos-gotten-his-groove-back/)

Jay Jaffe: Anyway on with the show…

Lorenzo: Will someone be doing a piece on J.R. Richard?  I didn’t realize that his career was tragically cut short at his peak, along with some major controversy over how the Astros handled his injury.

Jay Jaffe: The news of Richard’s death hit me hard, because I remember how impressive and imposing he was (especially when Nolan Ryan joined that staff), and then how sad it was that he was struck down in  his prime. A tribute to him is right in my wheelhouse, but as I am heading to San Diego for a week of vacation with my parents and my brother and his family on Sunday, I’m not sure i can put together something in a timely fashion. We’ll see.

Jay Jaffe: Reminds me that I wrote my Frank Robinson tribute while in Salt Lake City for a long weekend of skiing. tough timing.

Buster Posey: After this bounce-back year, is there anything else I still need to do to get into the Hall?

Jay Jaffe: Buster, I think your candidacy would benefit greatly if you would keep raking to the point that you pass the 2,000 hit mark.

Jay Jaffe: I wrote about Posey’s HOF case in May https://blogs.fangraphs.com/a-healthier-version-of-buster-posey-is-swi…

Karl Diggler: Phillies, Mets, or Braves for the division?

Jay Jaffe: I still think the Mets hold on because neither the Phillies nor the Braves seem to be particuarly good, but wow, has that race tightened up. At the end of Saturday, the lead was 4 over Atlanta and 4 1/2 over Philadelphia and now… it ain’t.

Jay Jaffe: I liked the Baez deal for the Mets but I think they’re going to regret having not gotten a higher-profile starter given the way things unfolded on deGrom.

Jay Jaffe: not like the Phillies did much to help themselves at the deadline.

Appa Yip Yip: What’s up with the Red Sox? Are they cooked, or will they recover?

Jay Jaffe: To these eyes they always seemed likely to come back to the pack given the holes in their lineup (1B especially) and a largely unimpressive rotation. Their starting pitching has been especially bad lately, with a 5.50 ERA and 4.45 FIP since the All-Star break. I know they think Chris Sale can help, and I think so too, but I also think they should have been more aggressive in upgrading the rotation last week.

Josh: How much do the injuries to Degrom this year hurt his HOF chances?

Jay Jaffe: It’s a blow, in that he’s missed enough time that he won’t qualify for the ERA title, and is probably kaput in the Cy Young race. What really matters is whether he bounces back to health, though. If he doesn’t, then he’s really hosed.

Matt: How would an MVP this season affect Harper’s HoF chances?

Jay Jaffe: Well, it wouldn’t hurt them, but there are 2-time MVPs who have never made it (Juan Gonzalez and Dale Murphy). Harper got an early enough start that he should rack up some big counting stats if he stays healthy, but his defense is cutting into his WAR; he’s at 3.0 bWAR right now, with -7 DRS, not to mention -6 OAA; he’s at 3.7 fWAR because his UZR is only -0.5.

Jay Jaffe: From his B-Ref page:

Right Field (59th):
  37.4 career WAR | 33.0 7yr-peak WAR | 35.2 JAWS | 4.9 WAR/162
 Average HOF RF (out of 27):
  72.1 career WAR | 42.5 7yr-peak WAR | 57.3 JAWS | 5.1 WAR/162

Jay Jaffe: He can pull a lot closer on peak if he stays healthy and reels off some 5-WAR seasons

Josh: Who do you think gets the 2 Wild Card spots in the AL?

Jay Jaffe: A’s and either Red Sox or Yankees. The latter really benefited themselves with the additions of Rizzo and Gallo but can’t seem to buy a break in the COVID department. More like breakthroughs.

E in NH: Do you think Tarik Skubal’s drop in performance over the last month is due to wearing down or the league starting to figure him out?

Jay Jaffe: I haven’t had a chance to see him lately so I’m less familiar with the arc of his season, but looking at the numbers, that guy is getting hit HARD. 91.1 mph average exit velo, .502 xSLG, 5.78 xERA  — he’s fortunate to have just a 4.32 ERA at this juncture

Jay Jaffe: his fastball velocities don’t show much variance month to month so I’m not sure if it’s a workload/fatigue thing.

Evan: Is the potential Johnathan Davis/Brett Gardner platoon the worst of all time?

Jay Jaffe: I don’t know about worst all-time but I don’t see what Davis brings them that Greg Allen didn’t. Allen had given them a nice burst of competence at a tough time and seems capable of living up to his 45 FV prospect tag

Jay Jaffe: Gardner looked to be past his sell date last year and man, has he been overexposed this year.

War2d2: Weird question, but do you think Carlos Zambrano could have been Shohei Ohtani ten years earlier? I was looking at his stats, and he was worth 1.2 BBRef oWAR in 2008. I often wonder if he’d played every day if he could have kept his rage issues under control. He was out of the league by age 31, and still managed 40+ WAR.

Jay Jaffe: I doubt it. Zambrano was a good pitcher who missed bats and in his prime was especially good at preventing runs, but he never had anything close to the elite velocity of Ohtani, and he was a good hitter FOR A PITCHER, not a good hitter. 24-to-1 K/BB ratio. Remember that oWAR includes the positional adjustment, which in his case accounted for 10 of his 12 runs above replacement.

J: Is there anything the Astros could’ve realistically done to improve their rotation? Scherzer reportedly vetoed any trades with them, they likely couldn’t have topped the price on either him or Berrios anyway, and I don’t think any of the other starters traded is a significant upgrade over anyone in their healthy starting 5

Jay Jaffe: I mean, there’s always SOMETHING that could have been done, but in this case might have involved trading major league talent. Like, suppose they were willing to move Jose Urquidy, who’s good (but hurt) and has a lot of control years left, to Cleveland in the Straw trade and gotten back, I dunno, Zach Plesac, who’s good but underperforming. I’m speaking in hypotheticals here,. As it was, I’m surprised that they did as much as they did to the roster by trading Straw and Toro.

Re: Nats: Do the Nats get involved in this offseason’s shortstop class? It’d be early for the “rebuild”/”retool”, but there doesn’t seem to be another opportunity to fill that gap before Soto hits free agency…

Jay Jaffe: i’d be surprised, if after trading Turner they turn around and sign, say, Trevor Story or even Marcus Semien to a big deal. Since it doesn’t look like they have anybody close at SS, I’d think that a couple years down the road, they might have to figure out who the next Story/Turner/whoever is that they can pry from another team before that guy reaches free agency.

drew: can you think of a good reason padres aren’t pursuing sretch run SP depth like the dodgers are right now (duffy, hamels, tropeano)?

Jay Jaffe: I wrote about both the Padres and Dodgers’ rotations this week and was surprised to see what Preller said about how if the guys they have don’t pitch up to their potential then another addition wouldn’t have made a difference. It smacked of some sour grapes and rationalization after the fact. Which isn’t to say that there’s no truth to what he’s saying — Snell and Paddack have underperformed, and Darvish had a bad July. I guess the best I can say for Preller is that maybe he found the cost of an upgrade prohibitive when it came to the Padres’ longer-term outlook and didn’t want to further raid the system.

Sox Matter: Do you think Minnie Minoso ever makes it to the HOF?

Jay Jaffe: I would very much like to believe this, and I think that now that his Negro Leagues numbers are considered major league that it should help his case. He’s still on a ballot that’s ultracrowded with popular candidates but I have to think his time may be coming.

Nate: Where does Andrew McCutchen’s career need to go from here to have a chance at the HoF?

Jay Jaffe: Honestly, i don’t see how he gets there

Jay Jaffe: Center Field (31st):
45.9career WAR |38.47yr-peak WAR |42.1JAWS |4.3WAR/162
  Average HOF CF (out of 19):
    71.9 career WAR | 44.8 7yr-peak WAR | 58.3 JAWS | 5.4 WAR/162

Jay Jaffe: He’s a DH-caliber fielder who has netted 5.5 WAR since 2018. He’s 34 and has 263 home runs. He could get to 300 and to 2,000 hits, but he’s done putting up five-win seasons. I love having him around and hope he plays into his 40s but i don’t see where he’s going to summon his elite performances from.

Marshall: Following his MVP season, Harper has been pretty consistently good (in terms of season totals) but not spectacular. Even if he ends up making the HOF, will his career still be viewed as a disappointment?

Jay Jaffe: do you know many guys who are in the Hall of Fame and are viewed as disappointments? I mean, maybe there’s Mickey Mantle and his self-inflicted issues, but come on.

John: Was the Baseball HOF both a hall of fame and a museum from the start, or did one precede the other?

Jay Jaffe: From the start. It literally began with Stephen Clark of the Clark Foundation paying $5 to purchase a baseball that was said to have come from Abner Doubleday via a a 71-year-old mining engineer named Abner Graves who claimed to have been present when the general drew up a field and revised the rules of town ball. He took his idea to Ford Frick, then NL president, in hopes of getting further donations and found that baseball wanted to do something to commemorate the centennial of Doubleday’s alleged invention in 1839.

Jay Jaffe: I give a brief history of this in The Cooperstown Casebook.

WinTwins0410: Jay, can you talk a little about 19th-century pitching stud Tony Mullane?  Why hasn’t a small committee for the HoF ever put him in?  I realize he’s ancient and played his last game in 1894, but still — 66.6 bWAR and some phenomenal seasons, particularly early in his career.  Your thoughts?

Jay Jaffe:

Jay Jaffe: From the Casebook.

Jay Jaffe: Statistically interesting, and also way too racist.

Jay Jaffe: I’m of the opinion that the Hall doesn’t need any more pitchers from the infinite workload era anyway.

Kretin: Do you think the fWAR calculation will switch from UZR to OAA or other defensive metric some time in the near future?

Jay Jaffe: Stay tuned.

Justin: Do you think the Padres stay in the wild card race? Or is their boat leaking too much water?

Jay Jaffe: A lot depends on whether Tatis comes back and can play effectively, but I think they’ll stay in. They still have a 3 1/2-game lead on the Padres for the 2nd spot, and right now they forecast to be the better team the rest of the way. Swap Tatis for Kim at shortstop and it’s a lot harder to hold off Cincinnati.

Charlie: What odds would you put on Grienke being voted into the Hall by the writers?

Jay Jaffe: High. He’s very close to the JAWS standard, past 200 wins, closing in on 3000 strikeouts, and genuinely one of the most fascinating players of the era. Writers tend to love him.

Jean-Michel: What do you think is the biggest weakness for every AL wild card contender?

Jay Jaffe: I think that’s an article, not a chat question

Jay Jaffe: and will file it away for potential future use.

Fart Schilling: Favorite non-deGrom pitch to watch when tuning in for a game on tv (for example Chapman’s splitter, or Touki’s curve)?

Jay Jaffe: Ohtani’s splitter, Glasnow’s curve, Devin Williams’ changeup, and Cole’s four-seamer come to mind. Anything Max Scherzer, Walker Buehler, and Yu Darvish are throwing on their good days.

Leif: Who gets bumped from the Seattle outfield when Lewis returns?

Jay Jaffe: Seems pretty obvious that it’s Kelenic-Lewis-Haniger unless I’m missing something. Dylan Moore/Shed Long/Jake Bauers is Replacement Level Killer stuff in left right now.

bk: RE: AL wild card – the Blue Jays will make things interesting, as well!

Jay Jaffe: I’m not counting them out because their starting pitching has improved considerably since the break, and I do like the Berrios addition

Terry Malick: Cody Bellinger in 2021. This is who he is or this is a blip.

Jay Jaffe: We went over this a couple weeks ago. He’s a mess, and this season might be a write-off but he’s not a .165 hitter.

Mr. Padre: How underrated is Manny Machado?  Having another great all around year but it seems like you don’t hear much about him.

Jay Jaffe: I think he’s benefited from having Tatis become the face of the Padres, the focus of the attention. Maybe not the elite fielder he once was but still above-average, and maturing as a hitter.

Kosta: I know everyone says the Mariners can’t keep this up given all their close victories, but I think this season will help them down the line since they have figured out how to win close games. Do you think that winning close games is more flukey or more of a skill a team can use to its advantage?

Jay Jaffe: From a statistical standpoint, the stuff tends to be flukey, not a skill; one year’s clutch performance does not predict the next. From a psychological standpoint, I think there’s value in a player knowing that he’s capable of good outcomes in high pressure situations. He may not always come through in those opportunities — nobody does it all the time — but I suspect that it reduces the likelihood of panicking by trying to do too much.

Jay Jaffe: Justin Choi had a look at the Mariners’ historic-level clutchiness this week https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-mariners-are-trying-to-be-the-clutchie…

Richard: Hi Jay. In the past you’ve mentioned Andrelton Simmons quietly building a HOF resume, but I assume his chances of induction are all but dead at this point?

Jay Jaffe: He’s petering out due to injuries and the decline of his offense. There’s still time for him to rebound but he’s got to stay on the field, and excel at fielding while not sucking at hitting.

Brian: When was the last time a team exceeded expectations more than these year’s Giants? The 2008 Rays went from worst to first, but they had a ton of highly regarded young players that all broke out largely as expected.

Jay Jaffe: 2014 Royals? They were young players breaking out, too but nobody projected them to win. Offhand I can’t think of parallels following a a template of old guys all rebounding at once to turn a mediocre team into a powerhouse.

Jimmy Wynn’s Toy Cannon: Correa likely finishes his age 26 season with ~33 bwar, which is almost halfway to the average career SS in the HOF. What are the odds he hits that mark? And do you think he has to blow past those numbers to have a chance at the HOF, given the sign stealing?

Jay Jaffe: When Dan projected him in the spring it looked as if he’d fall well short (https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/c/correca01.shtml) but he’s a player whose value seems to depend a lot on the defensive input, and he looks a lot more special via DRS than UZR, or the blend of the two that’s used in ZiPS. His 4.5 bWAR is already his fourth-best season and probably winds up as his third-best. I do think he’s gotta blow past the marks convincingly to have a real shot at the Hall because the stigma of sign-stealing is going to hang with him for awhile.

Eric Hosmer: If I turn into Nelson Cruz (but lefty) from this day forward, do I have a shot at the Hall?

Jay Jaffe: no.

Nate: T/F – Robinson Cano will never get another hit in the majors.

Jay Jaffe: false. I think he’ll be somebody’s DH next  year.

WinTwins0410: Jay, thanks for the Tony Mullane detail.  Just a personal note: my wife handed me a New York Times article recently about fun, multigenerational family vacations.  I took a look at it, and it was written by your mother-in-law!  https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/17/travel/multigenerational-family-vac…

Jay Jaffe: Ha, yes!

Jay Jaffe: and i know that I didn’t have to share that but i also know that Paula Span is a writer whom a lot of my readers’ parents like!

Jay Jaffe: (i’m quite fond of her as well!)

Luke: What type of contract does Seager get as a FA this year keeping in mind his consistent injury woes? And is he a fit with the Yankees if they trade Urshela and move DJ to 3B?

Jay Jaffe: I think so much depends on how he holds up over the next couple of months. obviously talented, trouble staying on the field, but a good number of his injuries have been fluky. The Yankees infield scenario you offer would have to include a move back to 2B for Torres, which would make sense. Still, i’m not sure that trading the guy who’s been quality for the past 3 seasons to fit in an expensive free agent is the best way to go.

Sean: King Felix has no HOF chance, does he? 🙁

Jay Jaffe: not as I see it. That he’s gone to camp twice, offered flickers of hope but failed to even get as far as the regular season would be the death knell of any candidacy

Marshall: Re my earlier Harper question, maybe I’m way off but I feel like most fans view Harper as a disappointment thus far. I just thought it would be highly unusual for a HOFer to be viewed as a disappointment, and you seem to agree; so do you not think fans currently view Harper as a disappointment, or do you think over time those perceptions will fade once he’s elected?

Jay Jaffe: I think Harper suffers by the inevitable early-career comparisons to Trout, who’s the best ballplayer many of us have ever seen. The further he gets from that, the more he’ll be appreciated in his own right, particularly if it eventually comes in the context of a winning team.

Owen: Altuve is, sadly, back to being good again. Would you vote for him for HOF and do you think he’ll ultimately get in?

Jay Jaffe: I’m not tremendously convinced he’ll have the staying power to make a strong run at it. We’ve seen what Bad Altuve looks like and it’s pretty bad, and unlike, say, Seager, we’ve seen some soft-tissue lower-body injuries that don’t bode well in the long run.

Jay Jaffe: As for his candidacy, I’m going to try to keep an open mind about it for as long as I can. I will say that despite what’s been said about him not wanting to partake in the trash can scheme, I feel a lot less joy watching him than I did a few years ago. Maybe that’s just a blanket thing about the Astros in general.

Jay Jaffe: Whew, I blew through my stop time. Still some very good question sin the queue, but i have stuff to do including a podcast spot that will run next week, when I’ll be on a much-needed vacation in sunny San Diego with my parents and brother and his family. Thanks so much for stopping by!