Jay Jaffe FanGraphs Chat – 6/16/26
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AvatarJay Jaffe
12:01
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.
12:03
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.
12:04
And of course we have the World Cup going on, the drama of which has already managed to outrun the awful underlying politics.
12:05
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.
Yesterday I wrote about José Ramírez's broken hamate https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-ultra-durable-jose-ramirez-has-been-fe...
12:06
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
12:08
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...
And now, on with the show...
Phillip Denny
12:08
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*.
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:11
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
12:12
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.
12:13
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
12:13
Guess we can stop speculating on whether Aaron Nola will make the Hall.
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:14
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.
12:15
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
12:16
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?
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:18
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."
12:20
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
12:21
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.
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:21
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
12:24
Has any player led the league in WAR at the break and not get voted into the ASG?
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:24
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
12:25
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?
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:26
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.
12:28
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
12:29
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?
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:30
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.
12:31
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
12:31
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.
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:33
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
12:33
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?
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:36
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
12:37
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
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:41
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
12:41
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.
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:46
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
12:46
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?
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:47
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
12:48
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?
AvatarJay Jaffe
12:51
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).
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