Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat – 3/23/26

2:01	Ben Clemens: Hey everyone, welcome to the chat. Let’s just get started, as I’m sure there are many fun opening day questions to answer and right now, I’m not writing anything so I’m at full focus

2:01	Guest: If you’re GM of the Tigers, do you put McGonigle on the opening day roster, or wait a few weeks to manipulate his service time?

2:02	Ben Clemens: put him on the opening day roster

2:02	Ben Clemens: the value of that service time manipulation is down with the various incentives (both making it easier for the player to recoup the PT and giving the team bonuses if they start the player up)

2:03	Ben Clemens: it’s a contingent thing, to me: in the worlds where McGonigle ends up being the kind of player worth doing something underhanded to get extra service time out of, you a)probably won’t get it b)could have gotten a draft pick if you weren’t so shady

2:03

Oaktown Blues: How much credence can I give improved statcast metrics in Spring training? The samples are small, but are at least approaching the threshold of significance for statcast (which IIRC is ~50 BBE). For example, Jacob Wilson: avg EV up from 84.6 to 89.1, HH% up from 24.7% to 41.5% in 41 BBE. Significant or just noise?

2:04

Ben Clemens: sadly, noise. I think particularyl this year, the level of competition was really uneven thanks to WBC. But also, I think the raw elemental stats (pitch velocity, bat speed) are worth caring about, but the ones that involve batter/pitcher interaction are just too noisy in a sping sample

2:04	Ben Clemens: like, it’s not worth 0. but it’s not worth much

2:06	Ben Clemens: honestly, though, we’re about to get real games. the fun is in seeing what happens

2:06

War2D2: Hey Ben! I just got back from Scottsdale and had a nice time even though the temps were anywhere from 10° to 30° hotter than I’ve experienced in the past. I highly recommend it. Have you ever been? If so, where would you rank the various venues? For me it’s Salt River and then a multi-way tie for second, with the Angels’ godawful stadium in dead last.

2:06	Ben Clemens: yeah Salt River by a mile

2:07	Ben Clemens: I don’t even have a ranking of the second-tier ones. I’ve been to a few and they kinda slip through my memory like grains of sand. Whereas the whole Salt River complex rocks and I’ve been back multiple times

2:07	Mr Redlegs: Finished the Tainted Cup this weekend. Absolutely loved it. Thanks for the recommendation

2:07	Ben Clemens: amazing, glad you liekd it

2:07	bosoxforlife: I hope you have seen Max Clark’s WTF reaction to the 102.4 mph heater Seth Hernandez zipped past him the other day. It was hilarious.

2:07	Ben Clemens: concur

2:07	Ben Clemens: check this out

2:07	Ben Clemens: Hernandez is fresh out of high school and firing bullets

2:07	Look At This Sotograph: How much does the challenge system kill Patrick Bailey’s value? 2nd part to the question: I see ABS changing the catcher position to focus more on hitting and throwing out baserunners, as framing becomes less valuable. Do you think this is how it will play out?

2:08

Ben Clemens: I don’t know, but I think that assuming much change is probably not a good plan. There are a LOT of pitches per game. There won’t be that many challenges per game. Maybe Bailey will be better at challenging, too. He sure seems to know where the strike zone is. I think I’d say that it’s a)likely to be a small effect b)something we just won’t know until we calculate it

2:09	Ben Clemens: hoenstly, though, I’m not going to bother to have a pre-formed opinion of what will happen, becuase I’m going to get to find out, and that’s fun

2:09	Ben Clemens: I’m planning on doing a lot of research on challenges this year, and coming into it without preconceived notions is my plan

2:09	Oaktown Blues: As a follow up, do you know if bat tracking metrics for spring training are available anywhere? I agree that those would be more reliable but I just can’t find them

2:10	Ben Clemens: i have legit no idea how to find them

2:10	Alec: how concerned are you about a handful of higher-rated prospects getting demotions to start the year? Crews and Klassen starting in AAA, and Dollander starting in Colorado’s bullpen?

2:10	Ben Clemens: I’m not quite sure what concerned means here but I’m pretty sure that these three, at least, make sense

2:11	Ben Clemens: the Dylan Crews arc is definitely the scariest of these. Unless you want to say that Dollander’s arc is the scariest because it includes ‘pitcher for rockies’

2:12	drplantwrench: this is the worst ive felt about the angels upcoming season in probably the last 20-30 years.  do you have a wild take that might make the angels more watchable?

2:12	Ben Clemens: it’s not gonna be about the wins, but um…. maybe this will be the year for Jo Adell?

2:12	Ben Clemens: this time is different ™

2:13	Farhandrew Zaidman: Under what circumstances would a team give an Ondrej Satoria (or similar skill set) a real shot to make a team? We know from multiple WBCs and position player pitching that being under the bat speed is a real thing.

2:13	Ben Clemens: I basically think it would never happen. There are guys like that with better command, or slightly better stuff, etc. I think that a lot of the Satoria magic is that it’s spring

2:13	Ben Clemens: seriously, if you look at the command values from my article on WBC pitch modeling today, everyone’s command is abysmal in spring

2:13	Ben Clemens: so he stands out much more

2:14

Baseball learner: The USA offense in the WBC disappointed relative to its billing. Some pundits seem to think this has to do with a lack of good fun energy (which was definitely there). To me it looked like small sample theater plus maybe a lack of walks and a ditching of the catcher who hit 60 home runs last year from the lineup. What do you think?

2:14	Ben Clemens: small sample, and also a lack of walks is not good in a tournament where no one has command

2:14	Ben Clemens: the catcher thing is tricky. I agree that DeRosa was overreacting to small samples in benching Raleigh but also, Raleigh was a big part of the team not hitting

2:15	Ben Clemens: I’m not saying vibe-wise or anything, I would never presume to know what it’s like inside that clubhouse. But just on-field results wise, he was putrid when he played. I probably would have stuck with him but I see where DeRosa was coming from at least a little

2:15	Jeremy: I hate the new checked swing rule that’s going to be trialed in the minors this year. From the sound of it, lots of partial swings that currently count as swings will become checked swings. What are your thoughts on this rule? How much is it likely to benefit batters?

2:15	Ben Clemens: i have no clue how much it will benefit batters. But also, like, it should

2:16	Ben Clemens: the check swing rule has changed markedly in the last 40 years, in the direction of benefiting pitchers. It’s completely undefined in the rulebook. it can be whatever you want it to be. why not make striekouts less common?

2:16	David Wiers: Assuming ownerships push for a hard cap, do you see the MLBPA asking for a year fewer of service time, raising the league min, or a salary floor? I don’t know if any seems likely, but the former would be interesting for Rule 5 drafts.

2:16	Ben Clemens: so, a salary floor is completely non-negotiable

2:16	Ben Clemens: a cap/no floor system makes no sense. the cap has to have a guaranteed salary chunk going to players

2:16	Ben Clemens: not that I’d put it past the owners to go for a cap/no floor system, but like…. c’mon, that’s not gonna fly

2:17	Ben Clemens: league minimum higher, undoubtedly. fewer years to free agency, 100% necessary, the current system wouldn’t work with cap/floor b/c crappy teams aren’t going to spend money on free agents

2:17	Ben Clemens: the truth is that if you look at what the ownership side has said so far, they are basically not asking for something realistic or putting numbers on anything

2:17	Ben Clemens: I actually don’t think there’s a cap/floor system that is anywhere near reasonable and will also get majority team support. The cheap teams might want a cap, but they HATE a floor

2:18	Guest: Do you expect the Blue Jays to over-perform their expected wins/losses this year despite their injuries? I feel like the Yankees and Red Sox have a better chance to win the division this year than them, but it’s so hard to tell.

2:18	Ben Clemens: no idea! baseball analysis like that is hard. i like our models in the aggregate so I’d say I trust them unless I have a solid reason not to

2:18	Cameron Kear: World Series prediction for this season?

2:18	Ben Clemens: predictions for everyone on the site come out on opening day

2:18	Big Buckston: On Raleigh in the WBC, I’ll add that in addition to the raw production not being good, Cal just didn’t visually look competitive in his at-bats. Lots of weak contact, swings and misses.

2:19	Ben Clemens: yeah. it’s hard! tournaments are unforgiving

2:19	Farhandrew Zaidman: Serious question – should more players try to bunt for hits? If your game is OBP and not power, why not try the thing with .400 BABIP?

2:19	Ben Clemens: they should, but they should take into account what it does to their count leverage. if you end up falling behind a lot and are a chase-prone guy, maybe not

2:19	wheelhouse: would you rather a pitcher with 4-5 pitch types strictly platoon his pitches based on per-pitch results, or throw all of them to all hitters to maintain more unpredictability? or is it a big It Depends?

2:19	wheelhouse: thinking in particular of certain pitchers who just won’t stop throwing their sinker and sweeper to opposite-handed batters no matter how many XBH they give up on them

2:20	Ben Clemens: definitely an it depends situation here. like, having different pitch mixes based on platoon viability is very important. i think that completely zeroing out a good pitch you throw is not a great idea, but cutting it a ton still seems very viable to me

2:21	Ben Clemens: a fun one is Zack Wheeler. He throws 35% sinker/26% sweper to righties, 4% sinker/6% sweeper to lefties

2:21	Ben Clemens: I like that…. zeroes seem bad, but pitches with differential success should be used differentially

2:21	Ben Clemens: also, it matters how it makes your total pitch mix look. like if you cut out a bridge pitch (a cutter, say) because it doesn’t work well against a given handedness, you still need to think about whether that pitch was necessary for otehr pitches to tunnel off of, that kinda thing

2:22	Ben Clemens: I guess the point is that I would want to sit down and think about it for each pitcher individually. Good thing teams employ so many coaches

2:22	Matt Damon: MATT. DAMON.

2:22	Farhandrew Zaidman: Players would also likely fight for a floor at 75-85% of the cap like what NHL, NGL, and NBA have.

2:22	Ben Clemens: yeah

2:22	Ben Clemens: it’s a complicated situation. I know that many players and player representatives say there’s never going to be a cap, don’t ask, stop asking

2:23

Ben Clemens: and I think that that’s a reasonable position to have, particularly when you think about the fact that the league isn’t really arguing in good faith about the reasons for it when they are surveying fans about whether they dislike the dodgers winning all the time, but not surveying them about whether they dislike the pirates and their allergy to spending

2:23	Ben Clemens: but I disagree that there are no good structures that involve a cap and floor. I think that a cap/floor system could be good if well-constructed

2:24	Ben Clemens: I think it’d have to involve fairly narrow bands, like you said, and probably a major reworking of the service time system

2:24	Cameron Kear: Whats your expectations for my Rangers this season?

2:25	Ben Clemens: I’m down on their chances this year. The range of outcomes is wide, but I was struck by the fragility of their pitching staff, and I expected to like their hitting more than I actually do

2:26	Ben Clemens: like, we have them below average, basically middle of the pack in batter WAR. And that, plus a pitching staff that depends on two old guys with injury concerns, Jack Leiter, and MacKenzie Gore? Seems risky!

2:26	didace: A cap and floor system (with the floor being reasonably high) would benefit more players that then current system.

2:26	Ben Clemens: right. Like I’m saying, there’s a way to do this

2:27	Ben Clemens: I don’t think the owners seem to be offering anything like that at the moment. And I don’t think they’ll be able to, because again, lots of them are not interested in spending more money

2:27	Ben Clemens: but I think that both sides’ absolutist positions (“the league needs a cap to stop the dodgers” and “no cap ever”) are unreasonable

2:27	Baseball learner: If baseball set a cap, how do you deal with retroactively penalizing the teams already way over it?

2:27	Ben Clemens: with a long phased transition period

2:28	Ben Clemens: that’s not so hard. just have the hard cap kick in in 2030 or something

2:28	Cameron Kear: The Rangers are still the last team not named the Dodgers to win the WS so at least we got that going for us.

2:28	Ben Clemens: hard to argue iwth that

2:28	Andrew: what about Langford, down on him too or is he one of the few Rangers you’re high on this year

2:29	Ben Clemens: no I like him. I don’t have any hot takes about the inaccuracy of projections of their players or anything. It’s just…. it’s not that great of an offense for a team with durability concerns on the pitching side

2:29	Ben Clemens: I think we’re mostly getting the players right. or at least, we’re making responsible projections. I just don’t like the depth is all

2:29	Andrew: As a tigers fan should I be as optimistic as I am (not just about this year but the future) or should I be tempering expectations more. I love our gm manager combo

2:30	Ben Clemens: I’d say overall optimistic, but I think that the Skubal arb situation is a very bad sign for management

2:30	Ben Clemens: like, I’ve read some of the reporting, and no one’s saying whether they were just carrying the league’s water by trying to keep arb salaries down, really wanted to make a point, just goofed up and submitted an insultingly low number on accident, whatever

2:30	Ben Clemens: but that situation was not good, it definitely will not play well with players

2:32	Ben Clemens: and I think that there’s at least some chance that it suggests some extreme aversion to spending on ownership side. the valdez contract makes that more complicated to evaluate and makes me more optimistic

2:33	Ben Clemens: good gm, good manager, no argument there. want to see how they handle a)competing with Skubal on an expiring deal b)this winter

2:33	Insert Witty Name Here: How would the cap work for existing contracts? Like how would the dodgers get under their massive payroll?

2:33	Ben Clemens: just a phased implemtnation. The Dodgers have 150 million in payroll commitments for 2030, for example. The Mets have 80 million. you can do this. you just can’t do it next year

2:34	Mike Tyson: designated hitter: I keep thinking Mcgonigle most realistic scenario is he’s more of a 40-60 range player for the next 10 years than a top 15 superstar.  Am I crazy?

2:34	Ben Clemens: most realistic is always “not a top 15 superstar” so I totally agree

2:34	Ben Clemens: that’s just math

2:34	Insert Witty Name Here: How do you mentally update the projections of a player where their stat history isn’t great (which is the majority of the inputs I think) vs their talent level? Specifically thinking McLain here.

2:35	Ben Clemens: check out Dan’s boom and bust hitters for 2026 for a discussion of McLain

2:35	Ben Clemens: I basically just leave myself much wider error bars for guys like him, injury recovery cases

2:35	Ben Clemens: his true talent might have legitimately been temporarily depressed in 2025, then bounce back

2:35	bosoxforlife: Do you see a cloud developing over the season as the impending labor situation (strife) edges closer and closer? The thought of another 1994 already has me in need of therapy.

2:35	Ben Clemens: Oh 100%

2:35	Ben Clemens: the amount of airtime already dedicated to it is miserable

2:35	Ben Clemens: let us watch baseball!

2:36

Babip Roberts: Tong’s inability to move the ball east-west is becoming increasingly concerning. If he continues to fail at this, would you move him to the bullpen straight away? Or would you tinker with his arm slot and see if the worse fastball shape might is worth whatever horizontal gains might be made?

2:36

Ben Clemens: Nah, I mean, pure north/south guys can be okay I think, and his fastball is so good taht messing with his arm angle and delivery feels off to me. I’d just keep letting him try to develop, and if it reallllly won’t work, we can re-evaluate in a year. but like…. you have a guy with an outlier pitch. I’d much rather work with that outlier than try to mess with it

2:37	mike: I agree you need a floor if you have a cap, but will bad teams just sign a couple mediocre vets? I can’t see them overpaying young guys. I’ve noodled this some, and will bad teams just sign one great player (will they want to sign there, I think money>winning for most)?

2:37	Ben Clemens: well, the supply of good players isn’t going to change

2:37	Ben Clemens: that’s why I think that you need to overhaul service time rules

2:37	Ben Clemens: the current free agencdy system doesn’t have enough mobile, freely available talent to work

2:38

David: In your excellent piece on how long Aaron Judge will hold court, you said people could quibble over who the greatest player is at the moment. Given that, why do so many people persist in calling Ohtani the GOAT? Sure he’s uniquely talented, but don’t you agree that it’s debatable whether he’s better than Aaron Judge – let alone an handful of inner-circle Hall of Famers?

2:38	Ben Clemens: it’s because he pitches and hits, and because you watch him play and go ‘oh, yeah, no one’s been like that before’

2:38	Ben Clemens: but it’s semantic and honestly, I try to stay out of it

2:38	Ben Clemens: i love watching both of them play

2:39	Ben Clemens: no need to diminish one to appreciate the other

2:39

Pat: The other thing reason to bring up McGonigle is Detroit not some 65-97 team that has nothing to play for this year. This is the last year with Skubal,  they’re a slight favorite for the AL Central & will be battling for that or possibly a WC spot or playoff seeding if they exceed expectations. Would be a shame to lose out on the division/WC/bye by 1-2 games because they decided to play games & play Javy Baez for 4 weeks at SS to start the year. In fact, it would be criminal if they did that.

2:39	Ben Clemens: Yeah, I skipped over this but it’s a great point as well

2:40

Nate: Seems like several star pitchers in recent years have struggled to rebound from TJ surgery…have any thoughts on guys like Strider/McClanahan struggling to bounce back (but Ohtani being seemingly fine with his)? And what it might mean for guys like Cole/Burnes this year? And if I should be worried about Skubal being a ticking time bomb in my keeper league?

2:41

Ben Clemens: Several have struggled, several haven’t. It’s very  hard to tell who will be in which group, ex-ante. Also, it’s very hard to tell if guys will just need a few extra years to recover. I basically increase my mental estimation of volatility, because it’s hard to know who will be unaffected and who won’t, but if you look at the population of TJ returners, the average result is ‘worse than before’ with big variance

2:41	Ben Clemens: also: I do two things differently in my head. One, I pay a lot of attention to the first month back or so to see if a guy is going to hit the ground running, and I look at that (particularyl the peripheral stats from that) to think about them the rest of the year

2:42

Ben Clemens: two: I re-evaluate in the offseason. Sometimes guys just need a year to get right, and theyr’e good the next time they try to throw. So like, Strider was looking pretty sharp in spring training! Ohtani might have needed a year to truly get sharp, we don’t know. Re-evaluate at hte start of a new year and be willing to accept talent level changes, basically

2:42	Realism Man: No system works with the Dodgers bringing XXXXX times more money than the Pirates. Lotsa systems would work if the Dodgers only brought in XX times more money than the Pirates.

2:43	Ben Clemens: sounds like the owners should agree to some type of revenue sharing if they want a cap, then

2:43	Ben Clemens: kind of seems like this isn’t the players’ problem at all…

2:43	Insert Witty Name Here: What are your thoughts on the Phils extending Sanchez and Luzardo? Do you think they’ll live up to the standards the projections are giving them?

2:44	Ben Clemens: I’ve always been a little low on Luzardo relative to consensus, so I guess I’ll say that I think that one’s okay, good use of money but not some crazy slam dunk

2:44	Ben Clemens: Sanchez? great, glad they’re giving him a little more and it looks fair to both sides

2:44	Ben Clemens: I think the projections are reasonable. they’re high for sanchez b/c he’s been great for a while now, and medium for Luzardo because he’s been boom/bust. Dan had a whole article on extensions where he noted that ZiPS would not offer Luzardo that much, for example

2:45	Ben Clemens: if I’m the Phils, though, I make this move, 100%. THeir hitting core seems like it’s still working. Their pitching core was aging. This extends their window, I think?

2:45	Davy Andrews: Hey Ben!

2:45	Ben Clemens: hi Davy

2:45	Baseball learner: Would reducing service time kill the minor leagues? I feel like teams put in time/money on minor leaugers and are hoping to get a payoff from that before losing them to FA. 6 years is too much, but how many years is fair?

2:46	Ben Clemens: well, it’s tough to say, because the minor leauges are in the process of being killed

2:46	Ben Clemens: by the league, on purpose, to cut costs

2:46	Ben Clemens: i think it might be fair to say ‘well, we’ll artificially limit how much players earn via a salary cap. that’s the payoff you get for letting them reach free agency’

2:47	Ben Clemens: ‘We want a salary cap.’ ‘Well would you give the players faster time to free agency?’ ‘What? no! that would require a concession and we want our cap without giving anything up’

2:47	Ben Clemens: not a very reasonable argument

2:47

bosoxforlife: There are few things that I find difficult to accept but shortening the time a player is under team control is one. Finding a better way to pay good young players is the answer. I love long term deals for young players because it means I get to watch Rafaela, Anthony and Bello for many years. Attaching yourself to a team also means attaching yourself to the players.  Just like Williams, Yastremski, Rice and Evans watching the same men for many years is special.

2:47	Ben Clemens: no cap, then

2:47	Ben Clemens: look at the capped sports. they have short team control. that’s how the caps can work

2:48	Ben Clemens: it’s just too difficult to actually have teams spend money within that band otherwise. because if you have long, cheap team control, and Pittsburgh is bad, they just are NOT going to sign 15 bad vets to add to that

2:48	Ben Clemens: they probably can’t even

2:48	Ben Clemens: if you have these long, fixed, cheap contracts for lots of your team, you just can’t do cap/floor

2:48	Ricky: Do you believe the offensive production Grisham and Rice showed last season will continue, or are you expecting a regression?

2:48	Ben Clemens: yes to both?

2:48	Ben Clemens: I’m a huge Grisham fan

2:49	Ben Clemens: I’ve had him on multiple top 50 trade values (not recently, but when he had more team control remaining)

2:49	Ben Clemens: but I don’t think he’s gonna have a 130 wRC+ again

2:50	Ben Clemens: Rice, I mean, I’m closer to thinking he could repeat it. he looked really good last year, and he was still adjusting to the bigs too

2:50	Ben Clemens: but he was REALLY good last year. he could be a little worse and still be quite valuable

2:50

noah lowry appreciator: The Rockies playing at Coors field seems like a severe disadvantage. I get it, yes their front office decision making/ownership also leaves a lot to be desired. But it seems like other factors that are setting them back. On the pitcher side, how can they ever attract a pitcher of decent value to sign with them? Not to mention that they likely have to go through more pitchers each season due to the amount of batters faced/runs scored. On the hitter side, it seems like the disadvantage is the adjustment to road ballparks. I feel like this needs to be addressed, but maybe I’m crazy.

2:50	Ben Clemens: I mean… what’s the solution?

2:51	Ben Clemens: I’m not sure if I buy it, but also, even if I do, so what?

2:51	Ben Clemens: should we lower Denver’s elevation?

2:51	Ben Clemens: if the answer is to just not have a team in Colorado, I don’t like that at all. It’s a great baseball town. Incredible stadium. Ownership spends money

2:51	Ben Clemens: not well, but they spend it!

2:52	Ben Clemens: they have a humidor. they’ve tried stuff. maybe they’ll try more things. But I almost don’t think it matters whether there’s a disadvantage, because there’s no solution

2:53	Ricky: I was honestly surprised he accepted the QO. Even though he probably wouldn’t have reached 22 AAV, I certainly thought he could get 16-18mil per for 3-4 years.

2:53	Ben Clemens: (Grisham, presumably) yeah me too! I think that a desire to hit FA again with no QO played a part, but next year sounds liek a VERY bad year to hit free agency, personally

2:53	Ben Clemens: maybe he was pre-emptively worried about that and just decided to take the cash?

2:54	Ben Clemens: Also, his entire career earnings until the QO had been 18.5m

2:54	Ben Clemens: take 22m, get set for life, relax for the winter instead of fretting contract offers? oh, and you get to play for the Yankees, and they let you have facial hair now

2:54	Farhandrew Zaidman: Could also do some version of NBA Bird rights where a team can go over the cap to re-sign a home grown player.

2:54	Ben Clemens: yeah, reasonable

2:54	Ben Clemens: yoiu could figure it out, is my point

2:54	Dan’l: Have you heard how the revenue is working out for teams who’s broadcast rights were taken over by MLB network? Are they making substantially less or close to their most recent network deal?

2:55	Ben Clemens: I haven’t heard specifics, but: less, across the board, but how much less seems to vary

2:55	Yojimbo: Last off season the Yankees wouldn’t include Luis Gil in a trade for Kyle Tucker. Now he’s getting squeezed out for Will Warren and Ryan Weathers. That’s an interesting turn of events

2:55	Ben Clemens: I’ve talked some in recent weeks about how you can both give players too much opportunity too early (and tank their value), or hold onto them too long without enough opportunity (and tank their value)

2:56	Ben Clemens: and that the good teams do a good job, in the aggregate, of avoiding prospect faceplants, but also avoiding letting guys wither on the vine

2:56	Ben Clemens: think about the Dodgers cashing out on any number of prospects (Keibert Ruiz comes to mind for me),b ut then also the White Sox calling up Andrew Vaughn too early to play LF when he was a first baseman

2:57	Ben Clemens: I was just never that high on Gil in the first place, so I was shocked by reports that they wouldn’t include him in a trade for Tucker, but I think that they thought that the rising tide of pithcing prospect valuation would lift all boats

2:57	Ben Clemens: but yeah, then you have a season where you miss ab unch of time and don’t strike anyone out, and it’s over. life comes at you pretty fast

2:58

Mr. Burrito: One question, one comment. Question: Will Tibbs or any of the Dodgers minor league outfielders get a sniff this season? Comment: When America generates a salary capped industry that allows you to make enough money to buy a major league baseball team, the players should consider saying yes to a salary cap. Until then, it’s kinda odd for a hedge fund titan or real estate guy or whatever to make tens of billions of dollars in their industry and then demand that major league players adhere to a salary cap. The fact that major league players are way less White than the general population has something to do with the brazen gall of this particular ask, imo.

2:59	Ben Clemens: I think that some Dodgers OF in the minors will get significant run. Probably in some kind of time share situation that requires them to be good at defense

3:00

Ben Clemens: I’ve been high on Tibbs for a while, so I guess I’ll say he will get the PT. But raelly, I’m not sure who it is, I just know that the Dodgers always seem to have some PT to fill out there thanks to the age of their starters and the fact that they’re rarely pressed in the divisional race and thus can give their vets some rest

3:00	If the Richard Fitts: Is this the year that Liberatore becomes a good MLB starter?

3:01	Ben Clemens: I’d like to ask you a question I asked on a Cards podcast earlier this month: can you imagine a world where Liberatore is not considered the team’s staff ace at year’s end?

3:01	Ben Clemens: i think the answer is no. And that’s despite agreeing with you that he has not yet become a good MLB starter

3:01	Ben Clemens: basically I think he is what he is at this point, an average innings eater, which is valuable

3:01	Farhandrew Zaidman: Dustin May is back up to 97 and has two breaking ball shapes….this time it’s real, right? Right??

3:02	Ben Clemens: another popular Cards podcast topic

3:02	Ben Clemens: he looks electric. he’s beein in the majors since 2019 and has thrown 324 innings

3:02	Ben Clemens: I buy in every time, and the guy is just electric when he’s on the mound. But man, he’s made of glass unfortunately

3:03	Ben Clemens: I love what the Cardinals did by signing him. If he does put it all together, he’s either an extension candidate (mayyyybe) or a great trade chip. and seriously, if you watch him pitch, it’s quickly clear that the talent is there

3:03	Ben Clemens: I sure hope he stays healthy, he’s fun to watch

3:03	MM: Just curious, why are you lower than the consensus on Luzardo? Interested to hear…

3:04	Ben Clemens: well, because he’s got a long history of inconsistent, up-and-down stuff and results. so it’s hard for me to think of him as a no-doubt top of rotation guy. dude got traded for not very much one year ago, it’s easy to forget

3:04	Ben Clemens: so my base assumption is ‘talented guy with a TON of volatility and availablility concerns’

3:05	Ben Clemens: whereas I think the industry consensus is closer to ‘talented guy in the middle of putting it together’

3:05	Nolan Gorman: So…….is this the year?

3:05	Matthew Liberatore: So……..is this the year?

3:05	Ben Clemens: maybe!

3:05	Ben Clemens: I think more likely for Libby than Gorman (two high school teammates)

3:05

noah lowry appreciator: RE: Rockies – I do not have a solution, but I wanted to acknowledge it . If I were a fan of them I would feel pretty hopeless at the inability to attract talent outside of the draft.  I think the stadium has more to do with that inability more than the FO, maybe you disagree with that (or the premise that they are disadvantaged).

3:05	Ben Clemens: oh yeah. I don’t see a way to measure it. and I don’t think it matters

3:06	Ben Clemens: so like, very hard problem to measure it, little utility to producing that measurement, so I am just not gonna try

3:06	Ben Clemens: I wouldn’t argue about whether a disadvantage exists. I don’t really know how to disambiguate it. and eh, it’ll probably still exist next year if it existed last year

3:07	Ben Clemens: Not sure where I end up based on that, but basically I think that if you have “There will be a team in Denver” as a constraint, it doesn’t really matter if Denver’s environs provide a disadvantage. There’s gonna be a team there

3:07

vin scully’s inner voice: not to beleaguer the salary cap discussion but candidly it seems as though the poor owners in this sport are what keeps the payroll disparity in place over time. They use their teams as cash flow mechanisms, rather than taking profits and investing back into teams for equity appreciation. As more of those families sell teams to rich guy billionaires, perhaps we get to a majority of ‘rich guy billionaires’ that can effectively force the legacy families to sell to other ‘rich guy billionaires’ /institutions that will actually deploy capital into those enterprises. Is that too simplistic a view of ownership?

3:07	Ben Clemens: broadly mirrors mine

3:07	Guest: I personally hate the dead deal cap space trades that happen in the nba

3:07	Ben Clemens: yeah. I think there’s a good argument that baseball is better for not having a cap/floor system, to be clear

3:08	Ben Clemens: I think it’s GOOD to have league villains/end bosses

3:08	Ben Clemens: and I take bosoxforlife’s points about team continuity. Salary cap sports just don’t have that

3:08	Ben Clemens: but if you have, as your goal, making the Dodgers spend an amount of money that’s closer to the rest of the league, and you don’t care about anything else? well, there are ways to do it

3:09

didace: “it’s kinda odd for a hedge fund titan or real estate guy or whatever to make tens of billions of dollars in their industry and then demand that major league players adhere to a salary cap”  Don’t non-sport unions accept salary caps as a matter of course by agreeing to wage scales? What makes baseball different?

3:09	Ben Clemens: a collectively bargained deal. nothing has to make anything different. but to be clear, the guys buying teams didn’t have wage scales at their hedge funds. they either owned them, or got paid a percentage of their gains until they made enough money to start their own

3:10	bosoxforlife: I think the Red Sox threw $130 away on Ranger Suarez, not that he hasn’t been a good pitcher, but that they have two very exciting young lefties with nowhere to pitch and Suarez is now blocking them.

3:10	Ben Clemens: I wrote the 1-15 rotation blurbs for positional power rankings that are coming out tomorrow, so I spent a lot of time considering Boston’s rotation

3:11

Ben Clemens: I do agree that Suarez is currently blockign those guys, but I guess I’d say a few things. First, I think the lefty part is kinda irrelevant. I wouldn’t feel different about Suarez if he were a righty with the same results. More importantly, though, I think that they’re kind of making an investment in durability.

3:11	Ben Clemens: you can’t think the odds of all of crochet, gray, and suarez being healthy by the end of September are THAT high

3:12	Ben Clemens: and you can’t be that certain that both Tolle and Early will pan out. Neither of them might. one of them might get hurt

3:12	Ben Clemens: so I look at Boston’s plan as satisfying the following constraints: maximize the odds of having a good playoff rotation while minimizing the odds of Tolle and Early languishing in the minors

3:13	Ben Clemens: I’m a fan of redundancies, particularly in places where volatility is likely. and I think the Red Sox ahve built their team that way. It looks weird on a depth chart, but after you take into accoutn how fragile pitchers are, I’m more into it

3:14	Ben Clemens: Especially considering Gray is gone after this year, I’m just having trouble seeing the extreme downside outcome here

3:14	Ben Clemens: and if there’s any place you want too many options, it’s the rotation

3:14	Alby: Just me, but I don’t watch any of the capped sports because I don’t get my jollies by reading endless articles about how GMs are going to build their teams under those restrictions. If baseball gets a cap, well, I have other things I can spend my time doing.

3:15	Ben Clemens: haha the funny thing is, people are always asking me for those articles!

3:15	Ben Clemens: but I agree with you. I think that writing about baseball is fun because so many strategies can work and because you can be an armchair GM without talking about the second apron, the split contract minimum, post-June-1 designated cuts, etc.

3:16	Ben Clemens: I’m sure we will adapt if this comes to pass, but I’m with you, analysis gets a little less exciting when a lot of it boils down to the cap rules

3:16

Insert Witty Name Here: What are your thoughts on a hefty portion of our chat here (and in general nowdays) is about the financial aspect of the game rather than the game itself? It’s interesting and fun to debate, but it’s kinda weird.  Like imagine if our own coworkers salary’s and contracts got discussed as much (although that actually might not be a bad thing…)

3:16	Ben Clemens: I don’t like it!

3:16	Ben Clemens: I will probably not do any more of it once the season starts

3:16	Ben Clemens: baseball’s freaking amazing

3:17	Ben Clemens: but I do think it’ll be easier to talk about the game on the field after the regula rseason starts

3:17	EccentricATLFan: Since you mentioned writing the 1-15 rotation blurbs, how much rewriting is Strider’s injury causing for the Braves’ blurb?

3:17	Ben Clemens: not zero!

3:17	Ben Clemens: but not infinite given that we only lowered him from 159 projected IP to 149

3:18

Mr. Fister: Am I the only one who has this suspicious feeling that Misiorowski is going to string off a bunch 3.2IP, 4hits, 4BB, 4ER, 5K starts and then promptly find himself in the minors?  I feel like the industry as a whole is being overly optimistic for a guy who historically AND currently can’t throw strikes.

3:18	Mr. Fister: And don’t take that the wrong way….. Misiorowski is exciting!  I want to see him succeed.  I just don’t think it’s likely to happen, and I feel like I’m in the ever-shrinking minority

3:19	Ben Clemens: I don’t really feel that way. I’ll be watching carefully, but I haven’t seen a lot of evidence that he’s going to suddenly start walking as many as he strikes out. Like, he can’t currently throw strikes, you say, and it’s true, double digit walk rate in ST. Also, 15K 5 BB

3:19	Ben Clemens: he’s definitely extremely high variance for a top pitching prospect because his game is quite non-standard

3:19	Ben Clemens: can’t find the zone is more live for him than your average starter, for sure

3:19	Ben Clemens: but I don’t have a strong lean away from consensus here, I guess

3:19	bosoxforlife: The season is three days and Yoshida is still on the Red Sox and the Braves have lost their DH and most of the rotation, as Strider breaks again. Sandoval, Crawford and Yoshida should be able to get something in return. I am willing to see anything done to Yoshida off the roster.

3:20	Ben Clemens: makes sense to me. Maybe the Sox are still smarting from Sale-for-Grissom? Maybe the Braves and Sox both have no salary cap flex? I’m not quite sure, but I agree, this makes too much sense

3:20	Farhandrew Zaidman: Who ya got for most fWAR over the next 5 years – Skenes, Skubal, Crochet, Yamamoto, or mystery player?

3:20	Ben Clemens: I’ll just take Skenes, age + workload reasons

3:21	Ben Clemens: my thinking is that SKubal is older, Crochet I at least wonder about the workload issues, Yamamoto will get innings limited b/c the Dodgers are just too good and want him healthy in October

3:21	Ben Clemens: but whatever, I’m just one man making a snap guess while I am knee deep in pitching depth charts

3:21	Mr. Fister: I guess call it a “bold prediction” of mine then.  Misiorowski is in the minors by the ASB.

3:21	Ben Clemens: love it

3:21	Ben Clemens: it’s bold, and possible

3:21	Farhandrew Zaidman: do you have a take on using ERA estimators versus straight ERA for purposes of pitcher awards?

3:21	Ben Clemens: i would consider neither sufficient, and both necessary

3:22	Ben Clemens: both can be very misleading

3:22	Ben Clemens: I think that if I were given an award vote (I’m not even a member of teh BBWAA, so don’t hold your breath), I would not come up with a single rubric

3:22	Ben Clemens: when I vote for fielding bible awards, I first build an initial ranking rule, then do a lot of manual adjusting around it. I’d do the same if I were voting for pitching awards

3:23	Ben Clemens: I think that a responsible weighting would have to include both run prevention nubmers and the peripheral numbers that, in the long run, stably lead to good run prevention

3:23

bookbook: Won’t it always be a problem that the return on investment in quality play for New York and Los Angeles and a few other big cities is just so much higher than it can ever be in Pittsburgh or St. Louis or the other half of the league? Never mind the market-distorting effects of Goodwill Tax-loss shelters, etc.

3:23	Ben Clemens: i mean, perhaps

3:24	Ben Clemens: but that’s another thing that doesn’t have an obvious solution without revenue sharing

3:24	Ben Clemens: also like, look at the differential spending bteween PIT and STL

3:25	Ben Clemens: so there’s still plenty of variance even if you accept that some markets will have a perpetual advantage

3:25	bosoxforlife: What do you think of my bold prediction of Durbin outperforming Bregman at 1/30th of the cost?

3:25	Ben Clemens: very good one

3:25	Ben Clemens: cost I’d say is slightly misstated in that his salary is being held down in a collectively bargained way, and thus his cost came in players

3:26	Ben Clemens: but I think it’s clear that Durbin outperforming Bregman is a bold take, and I also think it’s more likely than the market has it

3:26	Ben Clemens: I noted in my third base rankings that I think Bregman is a weird fit for Wrigley, and like, generally speaking guys like Durbin have very solid WAR relative to their reputation

3:26	Ben Clemens: (defense matters, etc)

3:26

EccentricATLFan: Also, aware that Jay was the one who wrote the RF article, but since the chat started, Carson Benge’s been named to the Opening Day roster for the Mets.  Out of curiosity, if that news were broken before the RF power rankings were published, how much would that have affected the projections for his service time from what the article ultimately predicted with 308 PAs?  (Mainly asking along the thought process lines more than specific PA numbers, to be clear.)

3:27	Ben Clemens: probably a question for the Roster Resource chat

3:27	Ben Clemens: to go a little inside baseball, I don’t create the depth charts, or the projections

3:27	Ben Clemens: the RR team creates depth charts

3:27	Ben Clemens: projections are a blended mix of steamer and zips, with RR playing time

3:27	Ben Clemens: then I just get a list and write about it

3:28	Ben Clemens: I just looked at our live Mets depth charts (https://www.fangraphs.com/depthcharts.aspx?position=ALL&teamid=25) and we have Benge down for 385 PA now

3:28	Ben Clemens: so, not a ton, but defeinitely moved him

3:28

Farhandrew Zaidman: if I could lightly push back on “ERA can be misleading” – I 100% agree with you if the purpose of the exercise is forecasting ahead. However, wouldn’t you agree that end of year awards are inherently backwards looking instead of forward? Whether a pitcher will be the best in the league in 2026 plays no part in whether I think he was best in 2025.

3:29	Ben Clemens: well, why didn’t we include unearned runs then? or strip out the effect of defense? or opposition? should we count a homer surrendered to Ohtani less than one surrendered to Miguel ROjas?

3:29	Ben Clemens: I guess what I’d say is that ‘who is the best pitcher’ is not exactly the same as ‘which pitcher had the lowest ERA’

3:30	Ben Clemens: and that my conception of best involves both preventing runs and being great, and that while those two are pretty correlated, they don’t overlap 100%

3:31

Ben Clemens: also! I’m less certain in my estimation that a pitcher is great if they do it in ways that are historically noisy. I don’t know how to isolate random variance from the pitcher’s skill. For me, pitcher skill has to feature at least a little in. I wouldn’t begrudge other people choosing differently, but I think that a holistic consideration of a pitcher’s season has to include both what happened and what was likelyt o happen based on the impact they had on the game

3:31	Ben Clemens: alright guys, this was a fun chat, and I realize that I ended up pontificating at the end, so didn’t get to every single question, but I do think that I got some good answers in

3:31	Ben Clemens: so, I’m gonna go make some lunch

3:31	Ben Clemens: er, probably reheat some lunch, we made pasta last night and have leftovers

3:32	Ben Clemens: have a spectacular day, everyone. Baseball is coming back! For real!

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