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Jay Jaffe FanGraphs Chat - 4/11/19
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AvatarJay Jaffe
12:01
Good afternoon folks, and welcome to today's chat. I'm going to give the queue a few moments to fill up while I order lunch, please hang tight.
Kenny Williams
12:04
Does a rebuilding baseball team have a responsibility to put a team on the field that is moderately entertaining?  Or is losing and planning for the future the only priority?
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:04
Ok, poke bowl ordered. On with the show
12:08
Kenny, that's a fundamental question that the union and owners really need to think hard about in advance of the next Collective Bargaining Agreement, because the current rules have clearly made rebuilding — while profiting handsomely by fielding low-payroll teams with much less threat to decreasing revenue — an enticing option. Baseball is a business, but also entertainment, and if you can't convince fans that you have SOMETHING to see, even if it's green prospects finding their way at the major league level for the first time, then something is wrong. I do think the next CBA needs to work on tightening the connection between winning and revenue (especially revenue sharing) in order to prevent so many teams from being non-competitive at the same time.
Ben
12:08
How much of the Yankees early issues can be blamed on the injuries? They have been massive, but even the healthy players aren't performing - Britton looks bad, and Boone has made some awful decisions lately
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:13
For all of the lineup's losses (Stanton, Andujar, Gregorius, Hicks), the offense has scored over 5 runs per game and is fourth in wRC+ (127). Where they're feeling the injuries the most, i think, is the bullpen, where Betances' absence has exacerbated the struggles of Britton, Green, Kahnle and even Chapman.

Let's remember that the one thing that makes managers look the worst in the public eye is when the relievers he calls upon don't do the job — regardless of his options or what the data says, the knee-jerk reaction is that he's chosen poorly.
JuanTeixeiraBeer
12:14
Would the Padres have to surrender the no. 6 pick in June's draft if they were to sign Keuchel?  Do you prefer Stroman trade?
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:17
If I recall this correctly, their top-10 pick is protected, and they would lose their second pick (number 48 overall). Via Craig Edwards' recent look, that's a $23 million difference in expected yield, from $29.3 million for the number six spot to $6.3 million at number 48. That's probably more than the cost of a single Keuchel season will be, and should really boost the Padres' incentive to sign him (if they can't wait until after the draft). See https://blogs.fangraphs.com/an-update-on-how-to-value-draft-picks/
Lilith
12:18
Do high school draftees have a better chance of going to the HOF because they're able to enter the league at a younger age?
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:20
I haven't specifically studied the issue directly, but based upon what we know, arriving in the majors by age 21 really does boost a player's odds of future enshrinement. Granted, much of that owes to the performances of players from the days before MLB had a draft. It's a good thought for a research topic.
Marc
12:22
For the projection systems that FanGraphs runs, do you guys incorporate batted ball data, or do your systems only incorporate more publicly available stats such as z-swing%?
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:23
It's better if you ask Dan Szymborksi (ZiPS) or the Steamer folks, but my understanding is that neither uses batted ball data but the latter uses pitch tracking data (such as fastball velocity)
Cito's Mustache
12:24
Can you explain to someone who wasn't alive in 1974 what in sweet heck the MVP voters saw in Steve Garvey? Nothing statistically about that season set him apart from his peers all that much.
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:30
1974 (which was actually three years before I started watching) was a breakout year for Garvey, who collected an even 200 hits while batting .312 with 21 homers and 111 RBI (both more than doubling his previous career highs) while helping the Dodgers back to the postseason for the first time since 1966. He third in hits and RBI, seventh in batting average, and was the MVP of that year's All-Star Game. With no WAR to tell voters that he wasn't in the top 10 (4.4 bWAR/3.8 fWAR to league leader Mike Schmidt's 9+ in both), he got the nod, beating out Lou Brock
Slurve
12:30
At what point does the Mariners start become "Believable" (Possibly Sustainable)?
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:36
For the 2012 Baseball Prospectus book Extra Innings, Derek Carty found that at the 16-game mark, a team's current record reaches a correlation of 0.5 with their final record, which is to say that their year-to-date performance became more predictive than simply assuming they'll finish at .500 (as the largest possible sample of teams inevitably does).

Now, that number may have shifted a bit in the past seven seasons, but it's a decent rule of thumb. That said, for me it really isn't until about the 1/4 mark (40 games) when I start thinking about whether a team is for real, positively or negatively.
Colonel
12:37
Hey JJ.... Been watching Tim Beckham and yippee his bat seems to have improved, but his D is meh (5 errors).   Curious with mega-advanced stats if GM's will take dWar seriously enough to roll out a Mark Belanger type rather than the Aledmys Diaz, Jordy Mercer types.....
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:41
As I wrote for the shortstops edition of our Positional Power Rankings, offense from shortstops has hit an all-time high, and I think that's in part because more teams understand the scale of the tradeoffs, that while a Belanger with elite defensive numbers but a wretched bat may still be worth playing, an Adeiny Hechavarria might not. The fact that there are fewer balls in play than ever — requiring a bit less skill from all infielders — due to the rising strikeout and home run rates furthers this trend, as does the increased use of advanced positioning data to help cover for the limits of range.
Rich
12:42
We’re two weeks into the season... the NL East has a three-way tie with the Nationals one game behind. Small sample size, but are things playing out the way you expected? Has anything surprised you about the four teams yet?
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:46
I am surprised that Mike Rizzo hasn't taken daily full-age ads out in the Washington Post pleading with Nationals ownership to sign Craig Kimbrel, damn the cost.

The teams are closely bunched together on both sides, with good offense but only the Braves preventing fewer than 5 runs per game. The lousiness of the other three teams in that area, particularly the Mets given their rotation, is the big surprise.
Donjuan
12:46
What did you order for lunch?
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:47
Poke bowl with tuna, salmon and yellowtail plus a whole lot of other goodies. Pricey but healthy.
Henry
12:47
Is staving off entropy a reference to Pynchon? Or just general sentiment? ((Optional question: how does that affect how you write about baseball?))
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:51
Not specifically — though I've read several Pynchon books (and bailed on Gravity's Rainbow in the 150-200 page range). I was a biology major who fulfilled pre-med requirements in college (Brown University) and so have four semesters of chemistry under my belt (getting an A in second-semester organic chemistry, including a class-high 98 on one test, is my academic high point). Plenty of talk of entropy in all of that, a concept I took into my examinations of end-of-season chaos (Team Entropy) and one that's oh-so-applicable to life as a first-time parent.
mmddyyyy
12:52
Have you ever had to use an emergency exit?
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:55
In the NYC subway system, when I'm pushing a stroller I go through the service/emergency doors all the time, though since the alarms have virtually all been disabled, that probably doesn't count.

Now that I think of it, once I snuck into a rarely-used office stairwell with a gal for some privacy and I think we set off alarms when we exited. That was almost 20 years ago
Derek
12:55
How concerned should the Red Sox be? Everything with them just seems... out of sorts.
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:58
Historically, 3-9 is a VERY bad place to be, as I wrote in connection to the Cardinals in 2017 for SI.com (https://www.si.com/mlb/2017/04/17/st-louis-cardinals-losing):

"Dating back to the start of the wild card era, only the 2000 Giants (3-9), 2007 Phillies (3-9) and 2001 A's (2-10) have overcome such sluggish starts to play into October. Expanding to include the Division Play era (1969 onward) but excluding the 1981 strike-shortened season, the 1974 Pirates (2-10) and 1991 Twins (3-9) also join the list, with the latter the only such team to win a championship. The Cardinals last went 3-9 in their first 12 games in 1988, the year after being upset by the Twins in the World Series; to find a St. Louis squad that did worse one has to go back to their 1-11 bellyflop in 1973."
12:59
The Cardinals missed the playoffs that year. So did last year's Rays, an otherwise good team that started 3-9.
1:01
As to the specifics, presumably the Red Sox bats will come around but I'm very concerned about the rotation (Sale included, after his latest performance and comments — where before it sounded as though it was just Something We're Working On). Price and Eovaldi, in particular, shouldered some big workloads last October, and I have to wonder if there's a hangover of sorts.
mmddyyyy
1:01
Are your work nightmares about baseball?
AvatarJay Jaffe
1:02
No. I have weird dreams but rarely bad ones, and baseball rarely enters them either way
Kevin Kouzmanoff
1:02
Does Marcell Ozuna have CTE? What's his deal? Made two more really weird plays last night (getting thrown out at first from right field after rounding, did an actual 360 trying to track muncy hr ball)
AvatarJay Jaffe
1:04
I didn't see either play last night. I know he's got a shoulder problem, and while I'm always hesitant to put myself in the head of a player, I do wonder if that issue is causing him to overcompensate in other areas (hence overrunning the ball the other night), or distracting him more than he's letting on.
Ray Liotta as Shoeless Joe
1:04
In Trevor Rosenthal's last two batters faced, he has recorded outs. What kind of odds do you have on Chris Davis getting two hits in two consecutive at-bats this season?
AvatarJay Jaffe
1:06
if he's in the lineup enough it will surely happen at some point. without doing any kind of math I'd say there's a 75% it happens so long as he's playing regularly. IF he's benched or reduced to pinch-hitting that number falls dramatically.
Derek
1:06
What part of baseball most deserves to be flung into that black hole 55 million light years away? Intentionally throwing 95+ mph projectiles at other humans? Built-in wage suppression? Something else?
AvatarJay Jaffe
1:07
Those are two good candidates. I'd also include crusty old announcers who are fixated on What's Wrong With Today's Players/Game.
Jason Heyward
1:08
Is my current hot streak just a fluke, or do the statistics prove that I’m worth what I’m making in Chicago?
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