Jeff Sullivan FanGraphs Chat — 9/8/17

September 8, 2017

9:04	Jeff Sullivan: Hello friends

9:04	Jeff Sullivan: Welcome to Friday baseball chat

9:04	Bork: Hello, friend! Apologies for my absences. Bork Jr. can be very distracting.

9:05	Jeff Sullivan: Hello friend

9:05	Ray Liotta as Shoeless Joe: Anticipatory: We don’t want to hear about the NFL!

9:05	Jeff Sullivan: The NFL is stupid

9:05	Ray Liotta as Shoeless Joe: Reactionary: C’mon Jeff, this is a baseball podcast! Get that football talk out of here!

9:05	Jeff Sullivan: I think now we’ve had our fun

9:05	JTT: Does anybody want to win the 2nd AL wildcard? The mariners definitely don’t want to

9:06	Jeff Sullivan: The top five teams in the running have all won six of their last ten games. That would be a full-season 97-win pace!

9:07	Jeff Sullivan: So I might counter-suggest: does anybody, outside of the Mariners, not want to win the 2nd AL wild card?

9:07	Daniel: Since you wrote about them, the Marlins are now 1-10 and have a hurricane bearing down on the city. I hope you’re proud of yourself.

9:07	Jeff Sullivan: Timing is everything

9:07	Jeff Sullivan: There’s a very narrow window to try to slide in a positive post about the Marlins. Nailed it!

9:08	Ray Liotta as Shoeless Joe: What is better for Fangraphs, relative to advertisement support: Listening to a podcast produced by Fangraphs or reading a post on the Fangraphs site? [Not that I don’t enthusiastically do both].

9:08	Jeff Sullivan: I don’t actually know. I’ll guess podcast

9:09	E: Predict when the Indians streak comes to an end, if you are right, I will cheers to you

9:09	Jeff Sullivan: Tomorrow

9:09	TJ: Stanton chasing 60 is nice, but can we appreciate Albert getting close to the 100 RBI, < .400 SLG club?

9:09	Jeff Sullivan: He’s only seven RBI away!

9:09	Jeff Sullivan: Currently slugging .394

9:10	Jeff Sullivan: Let me run a quick little query…

9:10	Jeff Sullivan: Okay, 1990 Joe Carter wins out. His 115 RBI that year are the most ever by a player who slugged under .400

9:11	Jeff Sullivan: There are just 11 seasons on record in which a player has reached triple digits

9:11	Jeff Sullivan: Joe Carter has two of them!

9:11	Jeff Sullivan: 2013 Brandon Phillips ended up at 103 and .396. I’ll be.

9:13	Josh R: With the Dodgers, are we starting to delve into the supernatural? This was a team that won 78 out of 100, the best 100 game stretch in over 100 years! How is this even possible?

9:15	Jeff Sullivan: The Diamondbacks have won 13 games in a row. 13 games in a row! And 15 out of 16. Immediately prior to that stretch, they went 17-29, and 4-11.

9:16	Jeff Sullivan: I don’t want to dismiss the Dodgers’ slump entirely. Obviously this isn’t something they want to have happen. But to put it very simply: what are the Dodgers playing for right now? They’re not really playing for…anything, outside of staying healthy

9:16	Jeff Sullivan: They’re still an extremely good baseball team. They haven’t gone down the shitter

9:18	PF: How does Tampa fix its attendance problem? Does it, or will it relocate it the future?

9:18	Jeff Sullivan: It seems inevitable that the team will build a new stadium somewhere closer to the fan base’s population center

9:18	Jeff Sullivan: http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/can-the-rays-ever-achieve-league-averag…

9:19	Jeff Sullivan: Right now, the ballpark sucks, and it’s a chore for everyone to get to. That’s a terrible combination

9:20	toki: what do see from Alex Wood ROS?

9:20	Jeff Sullivan: His stuff has been trending in the wrong direction all summer long. Difficult guy to trust. Might end up in the playoff bullpen

9:21	TJ: Is Tanaka going to get a bigger FA deal than Darvish? Considering age, should he?

9:22	Jeff Sullivan: My guess is that Darvish ends up with the higher annual salary, because teams just have a bias in favor of power stuff

9:22	Jeff Sullivan: And age, for pitchers, matters less than it does for hitters, as far as the market is concerned

9:23	Jeff Sullivan: Also something to be said for the fact that Darvish “already had” his surgery, while Tanaka hasn’t. Not clear what that actually means, but it’ll be in the heads of some general managers

9:25

Grover: Puig seems to have bounced back and put together a very good season, but it increasingly looks more like this is what he is. Would it make sense for the Dodgers to try and sell high on him this offseason considering their depth or do you think he can reach another gear and is worth hanging on to?

9:26

Jeff Sullivan: I imagine the Dodgers are pretty happy that Puig has bounced back as he has. Makes him easier to market, because I think the Dodgers have preferred to go on without him for a while. They’ve made the best of things in the meantime, but I doubt the Dodgers would hesitate to trade the last two years of Puig’s team control for value

9:27	Jeff Sullivan: Puig’s a good defender, and he seems to have learned some measure of patience. Still, he’s a far cry from being a statistical star, which is what the Dodgers would want

9:28	2-D: Is it acceptable, philosophically, to bring in a position player to pitch after rosters have expanded?

9:28	Jeff Sullivan: Yes, because someone needs to handle the 34th inning

9:28	greg: Is defensive efficiency a decent enough statistic for comparing overall team defenses to each other over the course of a season?

9:29	Jeff Sullivan: It’s a lot better than nothing. Same information as BABIP. There are additional considerations, additional variables, but it ought to be able to separate the best from the worst

9:29	Enlightening Round: Whenever bad contracts get brought up, I never see Homer Bailey mentioned, how bad has this one been?

9:30	Jeff Sullivan: 6 years, $105 million, 2014 – 2019

9:30	Jeff Sullivan: Bailey, so far, has contributed 2.2 WAR, over 45 starts

9:31

Jeff Sullivan: It’s a bad contract, obviously. It would take a miracle now for Bailey to not end up a bust. But at the same time, perhaps it’s evidence of people being charitable; hard to hold it against Bailey that he just got hurt. It happens and it sucks and it’s nice to see him back on the mound again, throwing close to where he used to throw pre-pain

9:32	Jeff Sullivan: On the one hand, Bailey has been a zero for a while, so it would be silly for the Reds to count on him for anything in 2018. On the other hand, Doug Fister is good again, so, who really knows, with pitchers?

9:32	Brett W: Laat month, you described Mitch Haniger’s timing as “borked.” You are under no obligation to apologize to Haniger, but did you even consider Bork?

9:32	Jeff Sullivan: I’ve lost sleep over this

9:34	jeffer sullivaner: have you seen walker buehler’s third pitch? does he even need one?

9:36	Jeff Sullivan: As a starter, probably, yeah. In Buehler’s debut, he showed rising four-seamers and a big hammer curve. Great combination for a reliever. Obviously, he has the powerful arm. Only threw one slider. Incredibly difficult to cut it as a starting pitcher with two pitches

9:36	Jeff Sullivan: Even Rich Hill has different curveball varieties, to give hitters a different look

9:37	Jeff Sullivan: Drew Pomeranz might be a blueprint here, I guess. It’s not impossible. But Buehler would feel a lot safer with at least a show-me third option

9:37	CamdenWarehouse: Can I get route efficiency somewhere for a given play in an in-progress game? After a game?

9:37	Jeff Sullivan: I might be wrong but I think route efficiency has been phased out

9:37	Aj Hinch: Who should is my SP#4 in the playoffs, McHugh, Morton, or Peacock?

9:38	Jeff Sullivan: The Astros don’t need a standard No. 4, and they probably won’t have a standard No. 4. I expect them to dedicate at least one playoff rotation spot to a piggyback of sorts

9:38	Jeff Sullivan: Like, Morton for one turn, then Peacock for one turn, then the rest of the bullpen

9:40	Bork: Think the Jays will be looking for a more stable SS/2B like uh…Profar?

9:41

Jeff Sullivan: I imagine they will get on the phone and give it a shot. More than a few teams out there will be looking to give Profar his next opportunity. Really hard to want to give up on Travis, and Tulowitzki might not yet be bad enough to flat-out cut, but the Jays will want to have better depth behind them next April

9:42	TJ: Do you think Jeter will really try and lure Cashman to Miami? I can’t believe he’d forget about that last contract negotiation. Jeet seems petty.

9:43

Jeff Sullivan: Jeter can try what he wants, and I’m sure he’ll try to lure any number of guys. I don’t think Cashman leaves, not just as the Yankees are blossoming. The guy who goes to Miami will immediately have to set about making the team worse in the short-term. Unless Cashman *really* wants to begin a completely new chapter, I imagine he sticks around

9:46	5 Run Homer: Thanks for chatting, Jeff! What the heck is wrong with Osuna lately? He’s been bad since early august at least

9:47

Jeff Sullivan: Looking over things, it appears that Osuna experienced something of an August velocity dip. It’s bounced back his last few outings, so Osuna might be getting things straightened out now. I’d guess there was something mechanical. I wouldn’t be too worried, not given the entirety of Osuna’s 2017 campaign

9:47	Brett W: Playoff rotations. Overall track record, projections, or hot hands?

9:48	Jeff Sullivan: In theory, everything informs the projections, so you want to go with the best projections available. But where you have a narrow difference, then you can go with your gut, so to speak, by playing the hot hand or the matchups

9:49	Dave: It’s the last game of the regular season. If the Nats win, they’re first in the NL and likely play Arizona in the NLDS. If they lose, LA is first, and the Nats get the Cubs. If you’re Dusty Baker, do you tank the game?

9:50	Jeff Sullivan: No

9:50	Jeff Sullivan: The Cubs are very good, you’d like to have home field if possible, and it’s far from guaranteed the Diamondbacks would beat the Rockies, or the Cardinals, or the Brewers, or whoever they’d face

9:50	lastings: have unwritten rules arguments gotten stupider or are we just noticing them more?

9:50	Jeff Sullivan: Noticing them more, because we have more people trying to notice them

9:52	FireDrayton: Ken Giles has been lights out the last few weeks. Does it look like anything has changed for him, or is it just a good run of batted-ball and HR suppression luck? Anything else?

9:53

Jeff Sullivan: He goes on these runs. Did the same kind of thing around the middle of last season. He’s so good at his baseline that, when he gets hot, his performance is exceptional. His current velocity is playing up some, so I’m sure that’s contributing, but Giles isn’t a meaningfully different reliever

9:54	Sterling Mallory Chris Archer: Are you optimistic or pessimistic this benching of Mikael Franco will cause him to learn some f’n plate discipline? If he watches Daniel Murphy and his no wasted movement, he could be a monster. His body has too much movement when he swings.

9:55	Jeff Sullivan: Optimistic Franco could show a short-term improvement, pessimistic it would stick. I just don’t think Franco is very good, and the Phillies feel the same way

9:56

Futuresgames: Are we getting a little carried away with Guerrero Jr.? He’s basically gone from a “hmm, could be interesting” prospect to being KLaws minor league player of the year, a part of BA’s first team minor league all-stars, and in discussion as a possible top 5 overall prospect for next year… all in a year, and at age 18! Give me a reasonable assessment.. is he really worth all this hype?

9:57	Jeff Sullivan: There are two dueling points to be made. One is that Guerrero is still just in High-A, which is quite a distance removed from the majors. He has several hurdles left to clear, and any prospect in A-ball should be regarded as risky

9:58	Jeff Sullivan: That being said, if you have to love a prospect in A-ball, you couldn’t really do better than Guerrero. He’s 18 years old, he has power, and he has more walks than strikeouts. It’s like he’s on the Devers path, but even better

9:59	Jeff Sullivan: Because I’m prospect-conservative, I like guys in the higher levels. Like, Acuna has already been good at both Double-A and Triple-A. But Guerrero is a lightning-fast riser

9:59	Patrick: What the hell does a professional at-bat mean? I was watching the Rockies game yesterday, their announcers said it about every single person