Jay Jaffe FanGraphs Chat – 6/23/26

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks! Welcome to the latest edition of my weekly chat. The queue for question is rather sparse so I’m going to give it a few minutes to fill up before I dive in. Remember, that while you don’t need to be a FanGraphs member to post a question to the chat, you do need to be logged into your user account to do so.

Jay Jaffe: On the subject of membership, please read David Appelman’s “The State of FanGraphs,” which is currently featured on the home page. https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-state-of-fangraphs-2026/

Jay Jaffe: I have a piece on Freddy Peralta that should go live during this chat.

Jay Jaffe: Prior to that, I wrote about Jackson Chourio’s step forward, which may be flying under some radars given that he missed the first 5 weeks of the season https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/jackson-chourios-big-step-forward

leoneforthird: Lets assume that Skubal comes back and is Skubal and the Mariners are still in a playoff spot at the deadline.  Does a Logan Gilbert for Skubal trade make sense for both sides.  The Mariners have young pitchers that they can slide in next year when Skubal leaves and the Tigers get a pitcher who can help them compete next year.

Jay Jaffe: That’s an interesting one to ponder, but I don’t think it makes great sense for the Mariners. Gilbert is a very good pitcher with one more year of club control, and the Mariners do seem to have rotation depth, but the margin between him and Skubal just isn’t big enough — to me at least — to give that up. I can certainly understand the impulse to go for it, though.

Peter Maclaren: what do you think we can realistically expect from Shane Bieber?

Jay Jaffe: I don’t expect the 2020 version of Bieber to come back anytime soon, and I imagine he’ll be on a short leash to begin with, but I’d expect him to settle in as a useful #3 behind Cease and Gausman in that rotation.

BillyBeaneisnotmylover: Thinking about this being the end for Verlander and Scherzer, made me wonder about next HoF chances for pitchers. How are Sale and Cole’s chances?

Jay Jaffe: The short version is that Sale looks like the next Hall of Fame starter outside the Greinke/Kershaw/Scherzer/Verlander group. He doesn’t have the bulky counting stats of CC Sabathia but as of today, the two are tied at 50.8 S-JAWS, 56th all-time. https://www.baseball-reference.com/leaders/jaws_P.shtml

Jay Jaffe: Cole once seemed to be the heir apparent to that quartet but elbow issues culminating in Tommy John surgery have limited him to 23 starts since he won the 2023 Cy Young and he’s now 35 years old, with a 39.1 S-JAWS. If he can make it to 200 wins and 3,000 strikeouts he’s a likely Hall of Famer but he’s going to have to be productive through the back half of his 30s.

cboone21: Foster Griffin has been a bright spot in the Nats rotation. He doesn’t have ace peripherals, but I’m still surprised that his fWAR (0.9) seems really low for a guy with a sub-1.100 WHIP.  bWAR is 2.2, so what explains the difference?

Jay Jaffe: Two things going on here. He’s a guy with a 3.15 ERA (76 ERA-) but a 4.41 FIP (105 FIP-). His low ERA is benefiting from a .243 BABIP that owes something to strong defensive support (note that his xERA is just 4.05  and he’s got an 11% barrel rate — he’s not doing a great job of suppressing hard contact). bWAR is going to credit him with most of that, though it does have adjustments for defense. Meanwhile, he’s also got a 1.58 HR/9 rate, which is what’s pumping up that FIP, and FIP is what drives his fWAR, which in this case is middling.

war2d2: Jay! PCA is going HAM. I realize we’ve seen this before, and he came down to earth hard in the second half last year. The difference seems to be that he’s gotten way more selective in his swing decisions. Do you think this is somewhat sustainable? I only say “somewhat” because I don’t think his true-talent triple-slash is .437/.481/.930 like it has been for the month of June so far. But the swing decisions seem at least a little bit sticky.

Jay Jaffe: Yeah I don’t expect a 1400 OPS going forward but the big leap forward in his swing decisions is something that should provide a better floor for him during his slumps while helping him sustain better production.

Eric: Thanks as always for the chat Jay! A friend of mine recently suggested that staying somewhat in the public eye via Sunday Night Baseball (and a string of MLB Network appearances) might help Joey Votto secure a first ballot ticket to Cooperstown down the road if he keeps it up. I disagreed, thinking that a) that certainly isn’t Votto’s motivation and b) it won’t have any appreciable effect. Do you think PR of any kind (beyond making sure you don’t go full Schilling) can actually, or has actually, pushed many guys into the Hall?

Jay Jaffe: I think that for your average non-slam dunk Hall of Fame candidate it generally helps to stay in the public eye around the game in one capacity or another — coaching, broadcasting — and remain accessible so long as you’re not going off the rails like Schilling or joining the Former Players Fainting Couch group chat that finds fault with every little thing players are doing these days.

Jay Jaffe: That said, I don’t think Votto has much to worry about because he was already very accessible, particularly during the latter days of his career, and the writers who are going to be voting on his candidacy already love themselves some Votto AND understand the numbers that show how great he was.

Bobzilla: Besides Soto, do you feel like the best young hitters (Acuna, Tatis, Guerrero, etc.) who have debuted in the last 7-8 years are less consistent than their peers in the past were?  While injuries could be a factor, could it be driven by everyone pushing for max performance creating a higher level of competition?

Jay Jaffe: I don’t have the means of quantifying this but it does seem many of the players who would fit that demographic — particularly if you’re drawing a line so that doesn’t include, say, Aaron Judge or Mookie Betts — have had their ups and downs, with injuries part of the story. I think it’s also true that the game is harder than ever in a lot of ways, with better nutrition and training a big part of it, and in the age of analytics, the amount of data that can be used to exploit players’ weaknesses.

Jay Jaffe: At the same time it’s also worth pointing out that the same data, and what we’ve learned about swings and pitch grips and so on, has made player improvements much more possible than before.

Mr. Redlegs: What do you do if you’re the Reds? An earned 5th place in the central, extreme lack of heart/hustle, mediocre to poor farm and a poor record for out of nowhere player dev (Bleday is the outlier). Hope for a healthy Hunter Greene resurgence and ride it out? Or sell off parts?

Jay Jaffe: I think we’ve seen the pitching be good enough recently enough not to give up entirely, and anyway it’s not like this is a team that has Skubal in his walk year; their top pending free agents — Singer and Stephenson — have been replacement level and the guys with some kind of options (Suárez, Pagán, Johnson) have been replacement level-ish as well.

Jay Jaffe: So you’re not going to add a ton of talent to the roster by selling.

maximus74: did the city of New York just break Devin Williams?

Jay Jaffe: It does seem that way, but it mostly comes down to the guy’s ERA being much higher than his FIP and xERA; this year, he’s given up a .370 BABIP despite decent contact stats.

That said, Williams’ signature Airbender changeup isn’t so special; he’s throwing it harder and the differential between that and his fastball has shrunk, and its shape has changed. Lance Brozdowski noted some mechanical stuff in late April that’s worth checking out: https://lancebroz.substack.com/p/mets-devin-williams-breakdown-pirates…

mragbayani: Further to Eric’s question above re: Votto, do you think Keith Hernandez’s quarter-century in the Mets broadcast booth would have an impact with a future Committee (or Committee nomination panel)?  It seemed to work for Kaat, and at the risk of homerism, Keith is a much better announcer and was a much better player.

Jay Jaffe: Beyond the fact that he doesn’t have counting stats that scan as fitting in with the typical HOF first base candidate, and that much of his value comes from defense, I have to wonder if there’s some personal conflict behind the scenes that’s thwarting his attempts to get on a ballot. He should be getting some of the repeated Era Committee reps that are instead going to Steve Garvey, an inferior player with a lot more baggage — particularly post-career baggage — attached to him.

tjcook87: Re: the last 7-8 years, consistency, et al. How much of that can we ascribe to the Covid lockdowns and how that affected development time, reps, etc. Are we past a lockdown effect, so to speak? Or will ripples of that continue to show up?

Jay Jaffe: At most i think that has to be a very small part of it. It’s not like it caused the performances of Tatis or Vladito or Acuña to fluctuate

Anselm: Hi Jay — curious to know your take on the owners’ latest proposal regarding the international draft, the age limit, the cutting out of high school players being drafted — it seems like a total non-starter on its face. Do you detect any real strategy on the owners part, beyond just putting terrible offers up front and hoping to find a middle ground closer to what they generally want? Thanks

Jay Jaffe: it is a laughably contemptible proposal that has less than a zero chance of being accepted by the players. The young players this would cut out are the ones who become the face-of-baseball types — Junior Griffey, Harper, Soto, Trout — so this is cutting off nose, eyelids, ears, and lips to in order to save 30 of America’s biggest assholes some money, to borrow Craig Calcaterra’s phrase.

Jay Jaffe: That said, MLB has to know this, and it’s a way of making the mere adoption of an international draft seem reasonable. That’s the obvious end-game here.

hoo5151: This year, Steven Kwan’s bat speed seems to be showing the opposite trend of Jung Hoo Lee’s recent approach.

After returning from injury, Lee largely avoided swings above 75 mph and was able to rack up a tremendous number of hits. However, over the past few games, he appears to be taking more aggressive swings.

In yesterday’s game, he recorded a career-high bat speed of 83.3 mph.

Do you think Lee’s approach of varying his bat speed depending on the situation is a sustainable and effective strategy? Or would he be better off sticking to the more controlled, contact-oriented approach that brought him so much success after his return?

Jay Jaffe: It’s a good question to which i don’t know the answer but I think it’s worth remembering that there’s more variance and situational awareness for most players when it comes to swing speed than a single number conveys. Even Lee has a fast swing rate of ~3% over the past couple seasons.

Jay Jaffe: Given how lost the Giants season is, I don’t think it would hurt for him to experiment with swinging harder more often. I mean, what’s the worst that can happen? The bullpen is gonna become MORE bigoted? Vitello gonna lose that clubhouse even more?

Athletics Fan Surrounded by Guardians: I recently read “Maybe I’ll Pitch Forever” and “Veeck as in Wreck”, which were both entertaining if flawed. Do you have any favorites in “baseball autobiography” genre?

Jay Jaffe: Ball Four is the heavyweight champion even if it is in diary form. Nice Guys Finish Last, by Leo Durocher with Ed Linn (who also served as the as-told-to for Veeck) is fantastic.

Jay Jaffe: More recently, Cobra, by Dave Parker with David Jordan, was outstanding.

Alby: Speaking of SF’s bullpen bigots, do teams ever take into account things like a player’s fit with the city they’ll be playing in? It always seemed to me that Dombrowski erred in bringing a thin-skinned guy like Castellanos to abrasive Philadelphia, for example, just as anti-gay players seem a poor fit in San Francisco.

Jay Jaffe: I think for the most part teams focus mainly on the talent at hand and rely more on the player to do his due diligence about whether he can handle the specifics of a given locale, whether it’s NY, Boston, Philly or whatever. I don’t know that Castellanos’ issues were particularly obvious at the time he signed with the Phillies or became more manifest as his play slipped and his conflicts with Thomson were exacerbated.

Jay Jaffe: But you’re right in that I do think teams could do better here. Especially the Giants.

souldougie: Do you see any active players as someone who may have a hard time getting elected to the HOF with the metrics that we have now, that perhaps would’ve been a shoo-in with “old voters”?

Jay Jaffe: Sal Perez, at least if anyone cares about on-base percentage and pitch framing.

mike sixel: Twins and Dodgers had no issue playing while the vendors were on strike last night, so I’m having a hard time sympathizing with the union at this point (though the owners make it easy to hate the owners…..and I generally support labor).

Jay Jaffe: I haven’t had time to look at this particular instance, but the MLBPA generally publicly expresses solidarity with striking stadium workers. I know they did when Dodger Stadium workers struck a few years back.

wwins: Endy Rodriguez has played well, alot of what’s made him good so far has been everything he was more or less expected to be good at before the injuries. He’s pretty clearly their starter, for now. A finally healthy player or fluke? Is it enough to dissuade a possibly buying pirates team from seeking C help?

Jay Jaffe: I don’t expect him to keep posting a 134 wRC+ but I do think Rodriguez should be the starter. I’m surprised the team traded Joey Bart when Henry Davis is the alternative because man, has that been a disaster. The Pirates are going to need a better backup than him, i part because there’s generally some value to having an experienced and successful catcher helping a younger one learn the ropes.

hamiltonthebabeporter: The Pirates constructed a pretty solid starting lineup (even as Ozuna has been disappointing and they’ve solved(?) it by just not playing him) but their lack of depth has been revealed with Cruz and Griffin on the IL. Do teams actually keep good players on the bench to plan ahead for this scenario? Should they have actually brought in a bigger name SS/3B over the offseason and benched Gonzales or not brought up Griffin if needed because of another injury? Or is this scenario just something that happens that fans should just accept and realize that Triolo is a serviceable bench player that has been thrust into a starting role for the time being?

Jay Jaffe: One thing that separates the best teams from the rest is depth, and the Pirates don’t have that, not that many teams can easily overcome the simultaneous loss of both their starting shortstop and starting center fielder. As with Davis, I think it’s important for the Pirates to upgrade over guys like Triolo if they’re going to sustain this bid for a playoff spot.

Jay Jaffe: Apologies for the abrupt cut-off! I meant to end the chat, but intended to write the damn sign-off before I did. Thanks so much for stopping by. Next week I’ll be rappin’ at ya from the field office in Wellfleet, possibly with a Cape Cod League game already under my belt and certainly with a daunting amount of fried seafood already consumed.