Page 38 - Jay Jaffe News Today

Daily baseball statistical analysis and commentary.

March 4, 2021 Jackie Bradley Jr. may or may not be the best defensive centerfielder in the game. Metrics have never loved him quite as much as the eye test suggests they should — accordingly, he’s never been honored with a Fielding Bible award — but there are those who believe he’s without peer among his contemporaries. At worst, the soon-to-turn-31-year-old “JBJ” is on the short list of top defenders at his position. Those talents will now be display in Milwaukee. According to The...

March 4, 2021 Last week, I woke up to a bit of a Chicago-area Twitter kerfuffle based on some things Cubs outfielder Ian Happ said on local sports radio about how RBIs are a skill and not based on luck. Let’s face it: When wins and RBIs are praised, somebody somewhere is going to get worked up about it. Happ said these things on Dan Bernstein and Leila Rahimi’s morning show on 670 AM The Score, and based on the tweets, it sounded like an argument, which surprised me. Dan is a thoughtful guy...

February 26, 2021 By the time Dustin Pedroia officially announced his retirement early this month, it was already apparent that he’d never return to the Red Sox as a full-time player. One of the last active members of the 2007 championship team — Jon Lester is still kicking around, and I don’t believe Clay Buchholz has officially retired — his run ended prematurely thanks to the consequences of a 2017 knee injury. This was no random injury, either; it was the result of a collision at se...

Cron joins a list of players competing for the starting first base job

February 7, 2021 Garrett Richards has an uncanny ability to spin a baseball. Per Statcast, the 32-year-old right-hander — recently signed to a free-agent contract by the Boston Red Sox — was 99th percentile in curveball spin last year, while his four-seam spin ranked in the 97th percentile. Moreover, the most-effective weapon in his arsenal, a 2,746-RPM slider, was topped only by Sergio Romo’s 2,913 RPMs among hurlers who threw the pitch at least 200 times. Richards’s least-effective of...

Royals Rumblings - News for February 2, 2021 Share this story Royals Rumblings - News for February 2, 2021 Key fact: Finished 11th in AL Cy Young Award voting while leading the league in innings The trade that netted Shields and reliever Wade Davis but cost the Royals top prospects Wil Myers and Jake Odorizzi, as well as Mike Montgomery and Minor League infielder Patrick Leonard, was strongly questioned at first. It’s stunning how successful this trade worked out for the Royals. Of course, Da...

January 29, 2021 More than 10 years ago, my first piece of published baseball writing appeared on the Community Blog at FanGraphs. It was on Adam Wainwright’s curveball. About five years later, I joined FanGraphs as a part-time contributor. I read the offer email in line at Costco of all places. A few years after that, I joined the staff full-time. For nearly six years, I’ve written almost every day, doing work I love focused on a sport I care deeply about. It is a privilege to work at FanG...

2:00 Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon and welcome to my first chat in this new time slot as well as my first one of 2021! 2:01 Jay Jaffe: While I wait for the queue to gain steam, some housekeeping… First, a fond farewell to colleague Craig Edwards, who’s making a leap to becoming an analyst for the Major League Baseball Players Association https://blogs.fangraphs.com/goodbye-and-thank-you/ 2:04 Jay Jaffe: Second, I awoke to the pleasant surprise of having my Missed Time and the Hall of Fame se...

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2021 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated. The surge via which the Baseball Writers Association of America elected a record 22 Hall of Fame candidates over a seven-year span is over, as the...