Jay Jaffe's NL Central comments

[mikechamp]

These comments came from a chat with FanGraphs' writer Jay Jaffe that occurred on September 15. If you like him, you can find him on BlueSky at https://bsky.app/profile/jayjaffe.bsky.social.

Not too many NL Central questions this time, and no bonus Q&As. Enjoy anyway!

The link to the entire chat can be found here: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/jay-jaffe-f ... t-9-15-26/
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PCA HOF?

Jay Jaffe
LOL, it’s a bit early for that but 9.3 bWAR is certainly going to provide a boost to his JAWS down the road. But as Alex Bregman — who has never approached his 8.9 WAR from his age-25 season — one year doesn’t elevate a Hall case by itself.
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I had brought up to Ben yesterday that the Cubs had both the most position-player fWAR and the least pitcher fWAR. Which made me think about: What’s the worst pitching staff that went the farthest in the playoffs that you can remember? BBRef makes searching for this easier, and I was able to find a couple pretty good numbers, namely the 1993 Phil’s’ pitchers only amassed 12.7 bWAR and the 2024 Rangers’ pitchers had 10.1 bWAR. Both, of course, blow away the Cubs’ current total of 5.8 pitching bWAR as a team.

Jay Jaffe
Wow. Offhand I can’t think of better/worse examples but those are some interesting precedents. The Phillies did have Curt Schilling, who had a 4.07 ERA that year but was very strong in the postseason at least. The 2023 Rangers (which I believe is who you meant based on their championship and WAR total) had the impressive October contributions of Jordan Montgomery.
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2006 Cardinals had 6.2 bWAR

Jay Jaffe
The less said about the 2006 Cardinals, the better. Some of us break out in hives.
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Which Cardinals catcher is the most exciting?

Jay Jaffe
Ted Simmons.
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Do you buy this version of the Dodgers’ being more vulnerable heading into the postseason than the last two iterations? I think I might have the Brewers as the favorite out of the NL at this point.

Jay Jaffe
My refrain last year was “not with that bullpen” but the Sasaki move helped mitigate that. I’m not sure they can pull the same rabbit out of a hat twice, and I’d be a lot more worried about Ohtani and Freeman. So yes, I think it’s fair to view them as more vulnerable.
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As good as PCA has been this year, Mike Trout had about 5 of those seasons.

Jay Jaffe
To further the point, Trout had 47.5 bWAR through his age-24 season, the highest of any position player (Ty Cobb 46.5 is second). PCA is at 17.4, and while he has almost two weeks left, my math says he probably won’t catch up.
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