Jay Jaffe FanGraphs Chat – 6/16/26

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon! It’s a gorgeous 71-degree day here in my corner of Brooklyn and here I am, stuck inside yappin’ at you folks — I kid, but maybe I’d better take a walk to get my lunch after this ends.

Jay Jaffe: The vibe here is still lovely in the wake of the Knicks’ NBA championship win on Friday night. As somebody who’s been hating on James Dolan and the Knicks for over 31 years since moving here, I did not climb aboard the bandwagon, but my wife and daughter greatly enjoyed it — the latter has never been swept up in sports fandom like that before, so that was cool to see.

Jay Jaffe: And of course we have the World Cup going on, the drama of which has already managed to outrun the awful underlying politics.

Jay Jaffe: And the baseball has been fantastic! Jacob Misiorowski’s one-hit, 15-strikeout game from Friday night was remarkable, and Yoshinobu Yamamoto chased a perfect game on Saturday evening.

Jay Jaffe: Yesterday I wrote about José Ramírez’s broken hamate https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-ultra-durable-jose-ramirez-has-been-fe…

Jay Jaffe: and late last week, I wrote about Dustin May (https://blogs.fangraphs.com/dustin-may-is-finally-having-his-day/) who made me look good by throwing a one-hit shutout last night against the Padres

Jay Jaffe: Soundtrack for today’s chat inspired by this remarkable story regarding Cape Verde, which battled to a scoreless draw against Spain in the World Cup https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/may/24/space-echo-mystery-behin…

Jay Jaffe: And now, on with the show…

Phillip Denny: Hi Jay! Is Yamamoto the most “complete” SP in the league? 70+ grade command, wide mix that can do up and down, arm and glove side. Really the only knocks are he’s a righty not a lefty, and the velo isn’t *elite*.

Jay Jaffe: It’s tough to figure out where to slot Yamamoto in the sense that he doesn’t have overwhelming velocity or light up the stuff rankings in our pitch-modeling systems. But damn, can that guy do a lot, as you say, and on a given night he can be untouchable

Jay Jaffe: He came within 1 batter of Yusmeiro Petit’s record of 46 straight retired during that perfect game/no-hit bid, and is now (IIRC) one of 22 pitchers to have multiple no-hitters broken up in the ninth.

Jay Jaffe: And last October he proved that as a competitor he’s about as steely as they come, with that no-days-rest relief performance in the extra innings of Game 7

Jeremy Fox: Guess we can stop speculating on whether Aaron Nola will make the Hall.

Jay Jaffe: It’s a bummer that things aren’t going well for him. 5.95 ERA and 4.45 FIP in 31 starts dating to the beginning of last season, and failing to last 5 innings in 6 of his last 10 starts.

Jay Jaffe: The stuff still rates as pretty good, so I don’t think he’s totally cooked, but he’s going to have to fix some things.

grandbranyan: In 2022 the Brewers had a .531 W% and a +0.23 run differential on a per game basis. Since then they have increased each of their W% and per game run differential season over season for a cumulative .586 W% and +0.90 R/G over their last 555 games (with an MLB best .643 W% and +1.59 R/G over their last 189 games). Depth Charts projects them for a .530 W% and +0.28 R/G rest of season like it’s still 2022 though. What’s the disconnect?

Jay Jaffe: Models aren’t designed to change to accommodate one outlier. Dan Szymborski looked into the Brewers’ success compared to ZiPS projections a few weeks ago (https://blogs.fangraphs.com/why-does-zips-hate-the-milwaukee-brewers/) and found that yes, the team has beaten preseason win projections by a larger margin from 2020–25 than any other team, and accounted for that by observing that the team has “been extraordinarily successful at giving more playing time to players exceeding their projections.”

Jay Jaffe: A lot of that is fairly difficult to adjust for because team personnel changes in season (nobody foresees the exact players being acquired in a trade, for example), but chalk a lot of it up to the Brewers doing an extraordinary job of evaluating their own talent. and having some great depth to accomodate injuries.

Phillip Denny: How, if at all, are you using the new miss distance data? On my end, it feels more informative for hitter analysis than pitchers. I don’t care if a pitcher’s curveball misses the bat by 2 inches or 2 feet, but I do care if a batter is consistently hitting FB off his handle, changeups off the end, etc.

Jay Jaffe: I have only futzed with it a little, more on the hitting side by noting which guys are getting under a lot of balls. Still a TON to explore.

Harry Arrieta: Has any player led the league in WAR at the break and not get voted into the ASG?

Jay Jaffe: For some reason I thought that happened to Tommy Edman a few years ago but I can’t get to the specifics without breaking out of this chat for too long – but it’s not hard to imagine it happening for somebody with very strong defensive numbers but modest offensive ones.

Philip Christy: Zach Wheeler has just been amazing since his return. If he keeps pitching like this through 2027 – at which point he has claimed he will retire – can you make a case for electing him to the Hall?

Jay Jaffe: The case to be made for him, if that comes to pass, would rely more on the rolling WAR stuff that Mike Petriello has popularized rather than JAWS.

Jay Jaffe: Wheeler is only 145th in S-JAWS (39.8), and while he should pass guys like Adam Wainwright (132nd at 40.8), he’s not going to catch Jacob deGrom (95th at 44.7) if he sticks to that plan

mlommler: I was noodling around some statcast leaderboards this morning and saw that PCA’s average swing speed is slightly higher than Shohei’s now?! He doesn’t have the super-elite maxEV, mind you. But I did a little more peeking and PCA has also been swinging way less this year, which I would call passive if it didn’t seem like he now has the power to make that tactic work. Seems like a big freaking deal, even in an extremely up-and-down season for the Cubs. You buying that he can sustain the 130-ish wrc+ he’s running with this process?

Jay Jaffe: honestly, I need to take a closer look before I weigh in about its sustainability but yeah, I’ve noted he’s been hot lately, in part because he’s started to rein in his free-swinging approach.

Jay Jaffe: There are many paths to success in the majors, and what works for one guy may not work for the next, but finding what works for HIM is the key.

warpath: Hey Jay, thanks for the chat. Ben Clemens has mentioned a couple of times that the FG team is actively looking at tweaking, or at least exploring the justifications for, WAR positional adjustments.

Have you been part of this discussion/research at all, and do you have any general thoughts on it? I’ve long thought it was worth looking at these myself as the game has really changed a lot over the last decade-plus, although it’s certainly not an easy task.

Jay Jaffe: I have not, at least not in awhile. Dan Szymborski is a better person to ask about this stuff.

One thing we’ve been a bit nervous about in years past with regards to tweaking WAR is the fact that those figures can influence player salaries and valuations, and so if we adjust our model, that may have a big influence on who does/doesn’t get paid the big bucks. It’s not something we take lightly.

elfpants: There seems to be a bit more chatter recently about Raleigh as a possible MLB expansion site. (Go Canes!) Any fire behind that smoke, or is it just a narrative designed to extract further concessions from the front-runners?

Jay Jaffe: I haven’t heard much specifically about Raleigh but the expansion talk generally seems to center around choices between Salt Lake City and Portland on one side and Nashville/Charlotte on the other. I don’t have a great sense of the differing demographics of Charlotte vs. Raleigh and the specifics of the two cities but they are drawing from the same general region and to some extent probably competing for the same subsidies.

dirtypuer: Am I wrong for not wanting a salary floor because it makes for better underdog storylines? Maybe the real Cape Verde was the White Sox all along

Jay Jaffe: I love a good underdog story as much as the next but I’m pretty cool to the idea of a salary floor, mainly because it would come with a salary cap and put more money in the pockets of billionaire owners.

The White Sox (whom I wrote about last week, just before they took over first place, https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-white-sox-are-in-the-midst-of-an-impre…) are a much different kind of underdog story than Cape Verde. They’re a storied franchise in one of the country’s biggest cities, but had been mismanaged for a long time! not quite as much fun as the Cup’s 64th-ranked team battling a heavyweight to a draw, but a worst-to-first story nonetheless.

Loubrock Shakur: Are the Cardinals a playoff team? Playoff projects have them at an even 50% to qualify, and they hold the top wildcard slot. But, this is still their rebuild year, and Bloom has suggested he won’t trade from depth for short term gains.

Jay Jaffe: They lead the NL Wild Card race and have a lot going right for them; right now, they have the fifth-highest playoff odds of any team in the league (50.3%), and the #6 one (Cubs, 44.9%) are still waiting for NASA to get back to them with a count of how many injured starting pitchers they have. The Dustin May move has worked out well, obviously, the long-awaited Jordan Walker breakout has arrived, JJ Wetherholt is the leading ROY candidate, and Ivan Herrera and Alec Burleson are raking as well. I suspect STL will take a pretty reserved approach at the deadline unless they go into a tailspin.

mike sixel: Given the “parity” in the AL especially, will we see a delayed trade season while teams try to decide if they are going in or out?

Jay Jaffe: figuring out in/out for teams in the middle is already why most of the trade action doesn’t happen until after the All-Star break and comes in a flurry at the end, which in this case won’t be until August 3. So yeah, wouldn’t surprise me if the trade market takes a little longer by the calendar than usual.

Kellen Voss: Is it officially time to give up on my Tigers optimism and just accept that Skubal is getting traded, the Framber signing was a huge swing and miss and this group of young-ish hitters has peaked?

Jay Jaffe: Given the Tigers’ Illich-era history of retaining their stars (for better or worse), an extension wouldn’t shock me, bu at this point neither would a trade. I don’t think that means writing off a whole group of players, though I do think that Spencer Torkelson is never going to be the guy they want him to be (which bums me out as he grew up across the street from my oldest cousin).

showbusiness77: Do you believe in Devers (having a really down year) rest of season over players like Seiya, Casey Schmitt, JJ Bleday?

Jay Jaffe: I’m writing about Devers for later this week, and my preliminary impression is Take Someone Else.

war2d2: Jay! That poster saying Yamamoto being a righty instead of a lefty is a “knock” got me thinking. We baseball people historically have put lefties in general on a pedestal, but I’m not sure they deserve it (Spahn, Koufax, Carlton, Glavine, Kershaw notwithstanding of course). I know it’s an imperfect way to look at it, but if you look at BbRef WAR leaderboards it gets dire in a hurry. My personal rule of thumb for whether or not I’ll support someone’s case for HoF inclusion has always been: are you better than Chuck Finley? Well, Mr. Chinley has 58+ bWAR, putting him at #15 all time among lefties. Among righties you have to get all the way down to #50 all time (Saberhagen) to drop to that level. No real question, just an observation about cultural biases among the baseball-literate populace, as well as an obvious excuse to showcase my favorite spoonerism.

Jay Jaffe: Along those lines I looked into why CC Sabathia was only the third lefty to reach 3,000 strikeouts (https://blogs.fangraphs.com/cc-sabathia-joins-the-3000-strikeout-club/), with Clayton Kershaw the fourth. Among the lefty pitchers I found what seemed to be a disproportionate number of hard-luck stories in terms of injuries that have contributed to both your observation and mine — certainly there have been more talented lefties who did not have the longevity of Finley.

Phillip Denny: Are you yea or nay on the idea of expansion? Is the talent level deep enough league-wide, and/or enough AAAA type players that expansion teams have a reasonable shot of not being cellar dwellers for their first 5 years of existence?

mike sixel: I live in Portland. No way we have enough big companies to buy up the season tickets. The tax base is shrinking….

Jay Jaffe: I’m generally in favor of expansion because the player pool has grown so much since the last round of expansion in 1998. Having said that, I know that for cities, getting a franchise is something of a boondoggle that results in large chunks of money being transferred from the public (subsides) to private (owners), with a lot of handwaving and propaganda about economic benefits that study after study has shown simply don’t exist.  

Portland seems to be a site that missed a window of opportunity for expansion, which might be a sign that it was a less-than-ideal locale for that purpose in the first place. I have roots in Salt Lake City, and I see them as having the inside track because the public has been more willing to subsidize a potential site than most, but environmental factors pertaining to global warning and the evaporation of the Great Salt Lake could turn the whole thing into a fiasco.

Jay Jaffe: Wrote about this stuff a bit 3 years ago https://blogs.fangraphs.com/salt-lake-citys-bid-for-a-major-league-exp…

Marc Kartman: Has anyone noticed that Jackson Chourio has been one of the best players in baseball since he came off the IL and had a few weeks of “spring training” after that?

Jay Jaffe: Somebody probably has, but I’ll admit he’d flown under my radar. .322/.370/.572 in 35 games is pretty great!

Jay Jaffe: it’s worth a round-up of guys like him who got late starts to the season and aren’t on the leaderboards

Jeremy Fox: Over/under on number of AL teams that make the playoffs with losing records? 1.5?

Jay Jaffe: .5. maybe one slips in but no way there will be two.

kingkash7788: Do you think someone like matt chapman ever makes it to the hall? As the value of defence has increased in the public eye, along with the value of WAR, I think that archetype of pretty good hitter + elite defence will be viewed differently

Jay Jaffe: It already has been! Guys like Scott Rolen, Todd Helton, and Larry Walker were elected in part on the strength of their WAR/JAWS, with impressive defensive metrics helping to cover for less noteworthy counting stats.

Chapman is sort of at the periphery of my radar because he has 3 7-bWAR seasons so far, though his 7-year peak score (37.3) is still shy of that magic 40.0 mark where the needle points to “more likely than not.” it will be interesting to see whether the Giants try to deal him this summer as they look to, uh, do whatever it is they think they’re doing these days.

Jeremy Fox: Re: expansion, how generous should an expansion draft be to the new teams? What are the pros and cons of erring on the side of generous, from the perspective of setting up the new teams, and MLB as a whole, for long term success?

Jay Jaffe: I don’t think you have to be terribly generous to the new teams, who are going to have to pay an arm and a leg to get 1/32nd ownership of a massive stream of revenue but I do think one thing that needs to be done as with the 1998 additions is starting their player development pipeline a couple years ahead of the big club’s debut. So, if we’re getting 2 new teams for 2032, they start drafting and fielding rookie-level teams in 2030, and adding Single-A the next year. Could look at stretching that out by an extra year — the point is that you want these teams to have a chance at growing into something good.

kingkash7788: who do you think the next unanimous first ballot hall of fame is going to be, and why is it Mike Trout?

Jay Jaffe: it won’t be him. Somebody is going to Be Very Mad he didn’t demand a trade away from the Angels.

Jay Jaffe: And going to look at his injuries and forget just how awesome he was in his 20s.

kingkash7788: let me reword that then, will there ever be another unanimous first ballot hall of famer. I feel every player has at least a hint of controversy (and mo would not be unanimous if voted in right now)

Jay Jaffe: I think Shohei Ohtani is probably the best bet, but I also think we should probably spend less time fretting about it because to do otherwise is to reward one cowardly, anonymous piss-baby hater with the attention he does not deserve.

Jeremy Fox: Two views of the Phillies, which do you lean towards? Glass half empty: they only have three good hitters, three good SP, and three good relievers. They’re only in a playoff spot because of a combination of the expanded playoffs, good sequencing luck, and being surrounded by other mediocre teams. Glass half full: they’re likely to make the playoffs, and once they’re there they’re going to be very tough to beat because they have 3 good SP and three good relievers.

Jay Jaffe: I tend more towards the second view — they’re a decent-to-good team — but hardly invincible even with three good SP. They have some holes right now and a whole bunch of underperformers, some of whom will turn it around this season and some of whom will be patched over. the thing the Phillies have going for them is an ownership willing to devote resources to winning, so if they have to take on some money to get what they want, they can do that.

warpath: For the first time since 2022, we don’t have a team at midseason vying to set records for futility (2023 A’s, 2024 White Sox, 2025 Rockies). In fact, there are very few teams who are truly out of it at this point, and only very few teams have separated themselves as clear favorites. Am I wrong in saying that this is the most parity we’ve seen in the league in quite some time?

Jay Jaffe: parity is a pretty nebulous concept and as such it’s tough to compare, especially at the drop of a hat. What I can tell you based on my 5-year dynasty calculations (see https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-dodgers-dynasty-takes-its-place-among-…) is that the current standard deviations in winning percentage in each league (76 points in the NL, 65 in the AL) are both lower than last year but not as high as 2023 or 24.

dan999999: Who is that player that if someone says they don’t belong in the Hall on baseball talent grounds your opinion of the speaker flips from “small hall proponent” to “someone who fundementally doesn’t understand baseball”?

Jay Jaffe: Steve Garvey!

Jay Jaffe: I kid.

Jay Jaffe: I do think there’s something about Jack Morris that still pushes my buttons with regards to his proponents waving off the fundamental importance of run prevention, but it’s not like he didn’t rack up some big counting stats that parallel others in the Hall.

I’m trying to think of something I read in the past month that was decades old and proposed a fairly outlandish choice of a potential HOFer — somebody very mid, as the kids say — but it’s escaping me right now. Shoulda written it down.

jackberris: I know it sounds crazy, but is there a world where Kevin Gausman pitches himself close to hall consideration?

Jay Jaffe: I jut noticed the other day he has a sub-.500 won-loss record for his career (116-117) so even with nobody really caring a whole lot about that stuff anymore, it’s very difficult to see unless he has a couple of seasons like 18-4 or whatever during the back half of his 30s.

Jay Jaffe: and even then, his run prevention has been unremarkable, and he needs almost another thousand strikeouts to get to 3,000.

Jay Jaffe: back to the previous question, I do have things to write down, so I’m going to call it a day. thanks so much for stopping by!