Jay Jaffe FanGraphs Chat – 9/15/26

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks! After a couple weeks of scheduling conflicts, this chat is back, baby.

Jay Jaffe: I’ve got a piece in the editorial pipeline regarding the two leagues’ Cy Young races. The consensus points to Misiorowski and Schilttler, and the impressions may be locked in, but their statistical edges aren’t as clear-cut as you might think.

Jay Jaffe: Last week, I wrote about the Teoscar Hernández revival (https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-well-timed-teoscar-hernandez-revival/), the playoff picture (https://blogs.fangraphs.com/this-still-aint-team-entropy-but-both-leag…) and some AL East center fielder injuries (https://blogs.fangraphs.com/a-bad-weekend-for-al-east-center-fielders-…)

Jay Jaffe: The Red Sox have continued to deal with center field issues, with Eli White — who had done a decent job replacing Ceddanne Rafaela — landing on the IL with a right foot ligament injury

Jay Jaffe: (sorry, dealing with editorial queries)

puddle: Obviously tiny sample size and a .499 xwOBA won’t hold, but Josue De Paula’s 35% BB-rate, 0% K-rate, and 94.8 avg exit velo is kind of bonkers for a 21 year old who jumped straight from AA. Watching him spit on 3-2 splitters and sliders to take the walk makes me really understand what scouts meant by “advanced approach.” What the heck are the Dodgers going to do with him the playoffs?

Jay Jaffe: That’s a good question. When I wrote about Teoscar, I included a bit about De Paula and Ohtani’s injury. I think JDP is auditioning for the big-bat-off-the-bench role that’s probably been vacated by Dalton Rushing with his latest elbow issue — a rip when Miguel Rojas comes up in a higher-leverage situation, perhaps. Teo is so hot that I can’t see sitting him in favor of the kid, and they’re both lousy defenders, but presumably Ohtani will be back to fill the DH role

Jay Jaffe: That home run, wow

Guru: Cam Schlittler mvp?

Jay Jaffe: Eh, by our numbers his 5.9 WAR trails Bobby Witt Jr. (6.5) and Yordano Alvarez (6.0), whose Triple Crown chances appear to have taken a hit. bWAR has Schilttler ahead 7.1 to 6.3 to 5.8. I think it takes a lot of inertia to overcome the rationale/prejudice that favors position players in MVP races even when a pitcher has the WAR edge. I don’t have a strong feeling about any of them

ThisIsBob: PCA HOF?

Jay Jaffe: LOL, it’s a bit early for that but 9.3 bWAR is certainly going to provide a boost to his JAWS down the road. But as Alex Bregman — who has never approached his 8.9 WAR from his age-25 season — one year doesn’t elevate a Hall case by itself.

Jeremy Fox: Is the race for the last 3 AL playoff spots the most boring close playoff race of all time? It has all the hallmarks of an exciting race–a bunch of teams all bunched together, some of whom will be playing each other over the final couple of weeks. But they’re all barely .500 teams and so it’s just so hard to care. It’s like watching an Olympic swimming heat with three elite swimmers and the five senior citizens who swim laps at your local Y every morning.

Jay Jaffe: It’s interesting but not tremendously compelling except for what it says about the 6-team format being a bridge too far. The hater in me would love it if a sub-.500 team made it because that might ruffle enough feathers to have a larger discussion about this current system.

war2d2: Hey Jay! I had brought up to Ben yesterday that the Cubs had both the most position-player fWAR and the least pitcher fWAR. Which made me think about What’s the worst pitching staff that went the farthest in the playoffs that you can remember? BBRef makes searching for this easier, and I was able to find a couple pretty good numbers, namely the 1993 Phil’s’ pitchers only amassed 12.7 bWAR and the 2024 Rangers’ pitchers had 10.1 bWAR. Both, of course, blow away the Cubs’ current total of 5.8 pitching bWAR as a team.

Jay Jaffe: Wow. Offhand I can’t think of better/worse examples but those are some interesting precedents. The Phillies did have Curt Schilling, who had a 4.07 ERA that year but was very strong in the postseason at least. The 2023 Rangers (which I believe is who you meant based on their championship and WAR total) had the impressive October contributions of Jordan Montgomery.

kingkash7788: It would be hilarious if Vlad wins another gold glove, but I think he’s the current frontrunner

Jay Jaffe: yeah Vladito has the edge in both DRS (11, first in the AL) and FRV (6, tied for first with Christian Walker). Just a good-field, no-hit kid these days.

drplantwrench: what are the rules about Stan Kroenke influencing decisions this winter for the Angels before the sale is official? i’d imagine he’d want to hit the ground running, but can he do anything by say, december?

Jay Jaffe: as I understand it, incoming owners whose approval is pending — but who have everything else buttoned up — are allowed to have input in hiring decisions

Phillip Denny: Guardians/Blue Jays/Rangers are fighting for the final playoff spot – who you got?

Jay Jaffe: Guardians, I think. Edge in starting pitching thanks to Messick and Williams.

tomsteele: which Cardinals catcher is the most exciting?

Jay Jaffe: Ted Simmons.

maximus74: 2006 cardinals had 6.2 bWAR

Jay Jaffe: The less said about the 2006 Cardinals, the better. Some of us break out in hives.

daml91: Do you buy this version of the Dodgers’ being more vulnerable heading into the postseason than the last two iterations? I think I might have the Brewers as the favorite out of the NL at this point.

Jay Jaffe: My refrain last year was “not with that bullpen” but the Sasaki move helped mitigate that. I’m not sure they can pull the same rabbit out of a hat twice, and I’d be a lot more worried about Ohtani and Freeman. So yes, I think it’s fair to view them as more vulnerable.

Baseball Learner: Do you think Gerrit Cole can return to elite status? I think he needs another pitch to throw at lefties, and neither the cutter nor the changeup have ever quite gotten the job done. Maybe he just needs to live in the zone a little less and accept some walks to get some chase?

Jay Jaffe: Cole looked great for awhile but has been vulnerable to the longball lately. I wonder if post-TJ fatigue is the big driver there but statistically, he’s got a huge problem this year in that his curveball has been lousy, with a .618 SLG against, compared to sub-.300 in 2023-24, and its whiff rate is down to 19.8%. If he fixes that, he’ll probably be fine, but I don’t expect him to snatch the mantle of Yankees ace away from Schlittler.

Jay Jaffe: I do think it’s probably time for Cole to hunt for another weapon as well, and it wouldn’t surprise me if he and the Yankees find one. They’re very good at that sort of thing

drplantwrench: follow up – what about input on free agents or international signings? can kroenke make a splash in those?

Jay Jaffe: Again, he’s allowed to have input even without approval. Whether the new regime can convince international free agents that the franchise that squandered Trout and Ohtani is the one where they’ll find glory is… another matter.

Matt Mancuso: Is there a good, recommended sequel to “Lords of The Realm”?

Jay Jaffe: Howard Bryant’s Juicing the Game wasn’t as funny but it was a pretty good follow-up in surveying the landscape and seizing on leadership’s blindness to the PED problem. That book is now 21 years old itself, meaning about double the distance as there was between LOTR and Juicing

Jay Jaffe: The Cy Young piece is up: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/checking-in-on-the-cy-young-races/

JustinPBG: Are we about to have a FIP/luck argument about Cease? I think Cam has had the most important ability, availability

Jay Jaffe: As noted within, Cease has edges of less than .1 in FIP and xERA over Schlittler. As for the availability quip, they’re nearly dead even in innings per start, with the gap between the two coming down to one 15-day IL stint for Cease. That might well be enough to swing the race but I don’t think it tells us that one pitcher is definitively more durable than the other; practically any starter could find reason to go on the 15-day IL in any given season at one point or another; some gut it out, some don’t.

Phillip Denny: Is this the worst FA class in recent memory? Corollary, does the relative weakness of the FA class relate to the impending labor dispute?

Jay Jaffe: Beyond Skubal it’s rather weak, but I haven’t measured it definitively and I’m not sure anyone has. Some of that might be because of previous decisions that pre-empted the possible 2027 lockout but those are more likely to happen with shorter-term deals where opt-outs are possible, and those are still more likely driven by the immediate ability to grab that bag.

crob16: How real do you view the Rays as a threat to win it all this year? Projections going in to the season had them quite low and they have seemed to continue to over perform as it goes on. Is any of this real or is it just smoke and mirrors?

Jay Jaffe: it certainly feels like we’re overdue for a deep Rays run; they haven’t won a series since 2020. They’ve significantly overachieved in terms of preseason projections and relative to Pythag/BaseRuns, and neither their pitching nor their lineup appear tremendously impressive on paper, so to me it feels like there’s some smoke and mirrors involved. But we’ll see

war2d2: I did mean the 2023 Rangers. My copy editor has been sacked.

Jay Jaffe: Speaking of copy-editing confessions, Matt Martell gently pointed out to me I had four variants on the Yankees ace in today’s filing, which, yikes:

Schlittler
Schlitler
Schittler
Schiltter

Jay Jaffe: I missed a step in my usual process, whereas I caught the diacritic in Sánchez before dragging the thing into WordPress.

pdunes: As good as PCA has been this year, Mike Trout had about 5 of those seasons.

Jay Jaffe: To further the point, Trout had 47.5 bWAR through his age-24 season, the highest of any position player (Ty Cobb 46.5 is second). PCA is at 17.4, and while he has almost two weeks left, my math says he probably won’t catch up.

kingkash7788: has there ever been an example of a player leading the league in both offensive runs and defensive runs on fg?

Jay Jaffe: Offhand I don’t know. Willie Mays 1962 almost gets there, assuming we’re keeping AL and NL separate. 58.7 runs offense (1st), 20.0 defense, 0.1 behind Leo Cardenas for first.

mragbayani: If Pete gets to 500 HRs (he’s at 299 at 31, and would need 28 a year for 7 more years), is he a HOFer?

Jay Jaffe: obviously, you mean Alonso and not Crow-Armstrong. Assuming Giancarlo Stanton doesn’t get up off the mat to add another 44 homers to his total, I think Kyle Schwarber (384 homers) is going to be the one to press the issue on whether 500 homers and a PED-free reputation is enough, damn the WAR/JAWS.

Jay Jaffe: Alonso has just 27.2 bWAR through his age-31 season  and has never reached 4.5, though he’s a threat this year (4.1). His defensive metrics have improved over last year but he’ll be DH-bound at some point. He’ll need very very good staying power

maximus74: did Kyle Tucker see JDP coming and say “oh shit i better start hitting”

Jay Jaffe: Maybe it was the road trip? Tucker has a 127 wRC+ away from Dodger Stadium (.266/.362/.464) but just 63 at home (.187/.287/.285) and nobody has figured out why. But his defense will probably ward off a JDP challenge unless there’s a pitcher against whom he has particularly bad matchup numbers or something.

Fun-Hating Dork: Don’t blame you on Schlittler; as someone who has questionable eyesight, those L’s and T’s all blend together. It’s “Sch<blur>er”.

Jay Jaffe: yeah, it’s an on-screen visual thing. “eligibility”  — a word I type about 5-10x as often as most baseball writers i’d guess due to my HOF coverage — is another one where I’m a mess, all those dotted i’s and lowercase l’s and such.

riceball: which of the three headed dragons of the AL West would you rather be in 2028, ignoring whatever is currently going on right now. they all kinda seem cooked both now and going forward?

Jay Jaffe: Houston’s farm system is second-to-last in our rankings on The Board, where Seattle is 14th and Texas19th. Houston also has the highest payroll commitment for 2028 ($79 million to Seattle’s $76 million and Texas’ $54 million) but those are all middle-tier. I’m not sure whom I’d favor at this point except that the Rangers strike me as a sleeping giant, financially.

Phillip Denny: When Shohei and Pages return, there will be a legit post season roster crunch. One of JDP, Call, Keekay, Rojas, Tucker will need to be left off (assuming 14 position players and 12 pitchers). If they run 13/13 then two will need to be left off.

Jay Jaffe: you’re right, the numbers are probably working against De Paula there. Call might be the guy on the bubble, with his defense rendered redundant by Kiké

Jay Jaffe: Ok folks, time for me to trundle off. Heading to Citi Field for some baseball from the cheap seats tonight. We should be back at this next week. Thanks for stoping by!