Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat – 6/8/26

2:00	Ben Clemens: Hey everybody, welcome to the chat.

2:00

Ben Clemens: We’re trying out a new system where you’re required to log in to FanGraphs to ask a question. You don’t need to be a Member, but you do need to have an account, just like you need an account to comment on any article. We’ll see how it goes. If you have feedback, feel free to just leave it as a question, or you can send a note to support@fangraphs.com.

2:00	Ben Clemens: So if you’re having some login issues, try that, and if not, email us; we’re hoping to get this seamless sooner rather than later

2:00	jackberris: Do you believe in the Kumar Rocker semi breakout this year?

2:01	Ben Clemens: I had to look, and I have to be honest, I’m not getting breakout vibes here

2:01	Ben Clemens: like, maybe an ERA breakout. but blah xERA, blah FIP and xFIP, worse SIERA than last year, stuff looks close to unchanged, lower SwStr%

2:02	Ben Clemens: I’d probably be trying to trade him in fantasy if I had him, basically

2:02

Phillip Denny: Hey Ben! Great article on bunts, which coincidentally is exactly what I wanted to ask about. Without trying to sound like a sabermetric neophyte, I’ve always thought that the bunt was maligned by the greater analytics community because when some people hear “bunt” they think they hear “sacrifice bunt.” Are we now at a point where we can agree that sacrifice bunts are almost always bad, but bunts for hits (and their ~.330 BABIP) can sometimes be good? Especially in circumstances where OBP may be more useful than SLUG? (I.e. runner on 2nd and/or 3rd with less than 2 outs)? Thanks!

2:02	Ben Clemens: I’d say yes

2:02	Ben Clemens: I mean, I’ve been saying yes for years

2:02	Ben Clemens: but it seems that teams are starting to agree

2:02	Ben Clemens: no one has told announcers, who still like sacrifice bunts too much. But like, safety squeezes and sneaky bunt-for-hit-with-sacrifice-backup plays are working really well

2:02	Alby: What’s your take on the competing proposals from the players and owners for the next labor agreement?

2:03	Ben Clemens: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/mlb-and-the-mlbpa-have-made-their-opening-…

2:04

Ben Clemens: wrote a very long writeup, tl;dr is that neitehr side’s proposal is all that realistic, the owners have done a lot more lying/misleading with their public statements though both sides are of course talking their own position, and most importantly: No one’s looking out for the fans in this negotiation. Your tickets aren’t going to get cheaper. That’s not what anyone wants. So when anyone invokes the fans, your radar should go up.

2:04

InsertWittyNameHere: Let’s get our Roland Garros talk out of the way: didn’t see the women’s final but is Andreeva now in the Sabalenka/Swiatek tier?  Obviously Zverev isn’t in the Alcaraz/Sinner tier, but that was still a fun final.  If Cobolli lost that 4th set, could you imagine the lifelong mental anguish he would have had with that missed shot at set point?

2:04	Ben Clemens: oh yes we get to talk about tennis

2:05	Ben Clemens: I think the tiers are not quite like that. I dunno what has happened with Iga but I think she’s in the second tier with Coco, Rybakina, and Iga now, with Sabalenka still top dog

2:05	Ben Clemens: sorry that should say that Andreeva is in the second tier

2:06

Ben Clemens: inside tennis story for you, I saw Andreeva play at Indian Wells last year when she won and I’ve been WAY too high on her ever since. She gives me generational prospect vibes. Like, Konnor Griffin, maybe? She’s just enormous and also fast and athletic, in a way that makes her look like an alien compared to the people she’s playing against at times

2:06	Ben Clemens: strength and conditioning training throughout her 20s? She’s gonna be an absolute monster. She’s definitely my #1 prospect in tennis, if we’re betting on year-end #1 in, say, 2028 she’s the first pick by a mile

2:07

SPArn: So glad you wrote about the bunt. So glad Nasim Nunez (who looks a lot like Francisco Lindor in that photo!) is now the face of the bunt. One of my favorite moments of the season so far is the Brewers dying by the bunt against the Nats on a Saturday, living by it the very next day. I was at the Phillies game this weekend, and am curious when public perception catches up to the bunt being hip again. The crowd sighed when Justin Crawford squared down 6-1, implored them to HIT HIM when a light hitting White Sox dared to square up 6-2

2:07	Ben Clemens: I think it’ll catch up as people realize how frequently good things are happening

2:07	Ben Clemens: but again, bad sacrifices should still be massively booed

2:07	Mario Mendoza: I admit I haven’t been paying attention. Why is Strider’s velo down so far this long after injury, and is it something that makes it unlikely he’ll regain it?

2:07	Ben Clemens: I dunno, honestly. I think that some people just do not come back the same from surgeries, and that it’s kind of unpredictable

2:08	Ben Clemens: it’s encouraging that his arm angle is trending back up, and our pitch models like the shape of his fastball this year mroe than last year, as do I

2:08	Ben Clemens: but yeah, look, injuries are scary! I don’t have a great answer for you but things seem bad

2:09	K’d Cavalli: Thoughts on my theory that the owners are pushing salary cap as distraction so when they finally concede and a cap isn’t implemented, they aren’t forced to change the completely corrupt international signing process?

2:09	Ben Clemens: I do think that there’s a decent chance that the cap is a negotiating position

2:09	Ben Clemens: because the risk/reward is just kinda weird, at least in my opinion

2:10	Ben Clemens: like, the risk is just very high, and I would not be as sure as they are that the drag in franchise valuations is about a lack of salary cap instead of just not seeing enough transactions, and the teams that tried to sell recently being very Twins-y (mostly, the Twins)

2:10	Ben Clemens: the Padres just sold for a pile

2:11	Ben Clemens: you want to risk your golden eggs to try to make them even more golden? I think it’s much less compelling 4 billion dollars later

2:11	Phillip Denny: Follow up on bunting – do we know the actual league-wide BABIP of bunts for hits? I know bunts are generally excluded from BABIP due to the sacrifice of it all, so is there anywhere I might find that information?

2:11	Ben Clemens: so, you can do this (and honestly, tons of things!) on Baseball Savant’s search

2:12	Ben Clemens: so let’s talk about how to really quickly. First, go to this page: https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/statcast_search

2:13

Ben Clemens: Next, let’s do what we want. So, I want batters. I want to look at the league rate. I want plate apperances. I want bunts. and i want the percentage of bunts that are hits. So I check those flags in ‘flags’, check the results I want in ‘pa result’, go into ‘change total pitch parameters’ so that I’m getting hits as a percentage of PA’s that end in bunts: https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/statcast_search?hfPT=&hfAB=single%7Cdou…

2:13	Ben Clemens: 31.5% of PA’s ending in bunts turn into hits. there you go

2:13	oaktownblues: What was your opinion on the no-call yesterday in the potential out of the basepath situation? Right call?

2:14	Ben Clemens: ehhhhh…. judgment call. I think I’d probably have said out of the basepath? But I don’t feel confident in that view AT ALL

2:14	Ben Clemens: it was really close

2:14	Ben Clemens: and the rule is purposefully very hard to pares

2:14	Ben Clemens: prase*

2:14

bosoxforlife: Your article on bunting beat me to it but in my opinion the percentage of runners failing to score from 3rd with less than two outs has risen as K’s increase, most noticeably with weak hitters, such as Nasim Nunez, as you mentioned. It is a pleasure to see this part of the game return.

2:14	Ben Clemens: yeah, I’m a longtime pro-bunt-for-hit guy. I love seeing this. I agree that it’s noticeable, and particularly with weak hitters. And I think there’ll be more stuff like this, more small edges. Big fan for sure

2:14	SPArn: Curious if you’ve had any chance to look into the Ben Brown surge, and whether you’re a believer. I was positing last week that his fastball profile (high arm angle, etc) could be similar to Chase Burns, who succeeds despite some “hittability” as you wrote on.

2:16

Ben Clemens: Not really. I have a lot of big projects going on at the moment, hope you’ll get to see many of them soon. It’s an interesting idea though. I think that the high arm angle fastball style is under-researched because everyone saw the way that low-release, flat-VAA fastballs produce the good number everyone wants to go up (whiff%), while the benefits of the steep ones are harder to pin down. It’s one of those ‘once you have a model, you stop paying attention to the things your model doesn’t do well’ problems

2:16	Nate: This is maybe a silly question, but why do the percentages on the live scoreboard for today not match up with the results from the Baseball Sim in the lab? It’s not usually much or a difference, maybe a percentage point or two, but they’re never exactly the same.

2:16	Ben Clemens: No, good question. It’s a matter of two different ways we simulate games, which is understandably confusing. The ones we show on the page are just our playoff odds methodology applied to a single game, based on the projected starters and lineups

2:17	Ben Clemens: so we just figure out how good we think each team is (BaseRuns-implied Win%) with the team they’re putting on the field for that game, and compare it to the other team (plus homefield)

2:17	Ben Clemens: whereas the sim goes through each game granularly. They’re very similar (which shows to us that both methods are probably doing something good) but yeah, the sim is not deterministic, whereas the game odds are just a formula, which explains the difference

2:18

oaktownblues: Earlier this year when you guys changed the JotCast chats so that they show up without clicking into a new tab on mobile, there was a little “expand” icon you could click to get it to still open in a new tab. In the past few weeks, that button is gone. Any chance that could get put back? The current set up feels cramped on mobile

2:18	Ben Clemens: I’ll ask

2:18	kingkash7788: Have you found any good baseball variants for 82-0?

2:18	Ben Clemens: no but it’s not for a lack of trying

2:19

dan999999: I recently saw a clip of consequence successful bunt against a closer (can’t remember the teams) but there was a suggestion that scouting reports told them this pitcher would particularly bad a fielding an unexpected bunt. Does the recent decrease in bunts mean defenses are less prepared for bunts and that explains much of the current increased value?

2:19	Ben Clemens: that’s surely some of it. Like, I think that explains why bunts are succeeding more frequently than ever before

2:19	Ben Clemens: But I really do think that a bigger part of it is the situations you bunt in

2:19	Ben Clemens: It’s not immediately evident to everyone that a bunt is a very different play, and so different that it can go from good to bad or vice versa, based on situation

2:20	Ben Clemens: so fewer of the bad-situation bunts, more of the good-situation bunts, that is a huge lever to pull

2:20	Ben Clemens: in fact, teams are getting better at defending safety squeezes b/c of how many there have been in the past few years

2:20	Ben Clemens: but it’s still a good play

2:21

Hollis: Hi Ben, Any idea why Tito dislikes Noelvi Marte so much? Noelvi can’t earn his way into playing time from the bench. Plus he’s being sat for guys who routinely go 0 for 4. Puzzling why they brought him up. Could there be a disconnect between management and the head coach with regard to Marte’s upside? Thanks!

2:21	Ben Clemens: could definitely be. I haven’t paid clos eattention to the daily ins and outs but I do sometimes go “huh Marte’s not in again? weird’

2:21	Ben Clemens: and more often than I expected

2:21

PC1970: The bunt is a fun play- Good to have it back. Always prefer plays with movement, running, snap judgements, etc. A salutory effect is it forces the infielder to play closer to the positions we all grew up with & less of the “3B covers the whole left side, SS just left of 2B, 2B in the hole between 1B/2B” de facto shift that has become too common. In theory, should open up holes some, esp for left-handed hitters.

2:21	Ben Clemens: for sure. and at least in some spots. Moving the fieldres around and changing the context of the game is, from my perspective, strictly good for my enjoyment

2:21

InsertWittyNameHere: I finished reading Everybody Loses about the rise of sports gambling.  I find it absurd how the league saw $$$ and reversed their stance on it so quickly.  My issue now though is how the books will blacklist anyone who wins too much, and lavishes “gifts” on the biggest losers to lose even more.  On moral grounds, how can we turn a blind eye that the league pushes engagement with companies whose literally business plan is a rigged game in this economy?

2:22	Ben Clemens: I have not read that book, but I think I might have already been on the bandwagon, because I think the systematic restriction of advantage gamblers shows what these companies are really about

2:23	Ben Clemens: it’s not about someone being able to win or lose based on their knowledge of sports, and it’s not about gambling, or price discovery, or stuff like that. it’s about finding people they can bilk, and then bilking them

2:23	Ben Clemens: How can you turn a blind eye to the league doing that? Because there’s no ethical consumption under capitalism

2:24	Ben Clemens: The system is set up to encourage bad actions. Hard to blame the bad actors – or at least, hard to blame them primarily. If you just never want to watch sports or vote or pay attention to politics or leave your home or eat or consume media, you can do that

2:24	Ben Clemens: but like, man, it sucks!

2:24	Ben Clemens: Sports gambling needs to be far more regulated, and the current paradigm is gross

2:24

oaktownblues: Speaking of baseball sim discrepancies: I submitted some feedback a couple weeks back about a discrepancy I had found where the projected run totals for the cached projections were significantly higher than the projected run totals I get when I re-run the simulation with the same settings. Not sure how quick you guys get through feedback so not sure if this was investigated already

2:24	Ben Clemens: not through it yet, I don’t think, I’ll mention it to somebody

2:24	Daron: The Brewers have done a lot of winning over the past decade, and yet this is the fastest they’ve made it to 40 wins in franchise history. Is this the year they break character and “make a splash” at the deadline?

2:25	Ben Clemens: I don’t think so. I think that sticking with the process is what they like

2:25	Ben Clemens: keeps working. why deviate?

2:25	Ben Clemens: I think I might even agree with them on that

2:26

Ben Clemens: It depends who’s available. But I think that the Brewers have a really smart way of looking at prospect value over time, particularly when you consider their other constraints, and that it would behoove them to stick with it unless they are very sure that things line up on the rewards for zagging instead of zigging

2:26	bosoxforlife: I don’t understand why the Red Sox should wait until the deadline to move their very useful trade candidates. Gray Chapman, and Contreras should get a better return if moved quickly.

2:27	Ben Clemens: I think that you have to at least consider that the front office might be under pressure to make the playoffs this year

2:28	Ben Clemens: I agree with you that I’d be interested in at least talking to a lot of teams about jumping the queue and moving guys now

2:28	Ben Clemens: but if you think that a teardown comes iwth Breslow being replaced, well…

2:28	Ben Clemens: and to be clear, by teardown, I just mean for 2026. They’re not trading the long-term pieces almost no matter what

2:28	Ben Clemens: and the Duran trade window is well and truly closed for now

2:29	Phillip Denny: What’s your favorite idiom/every day vernacular that has baseball origins? (i.e. out of left field, batting a thousand, etc).

2:30	Ben Clemens: I don’t know if this counts as everyday but my wife has started using ‘little league home run’ in non-baseball contexts, like when something good happens but it’s b/c of a bunch of nonsense and not because you actually deserved it

2:30	Ben Clemens: separately, I like ‘the closer’ for a lot of things, and referring to going to the bullpen or that kind of stuff in many contexts. taking care of a baby, a pet, whatever

2:30	Seuss2004: According to the defensive metrics used here, Bryce Harper’s defense has devolved this season from roughly average to Hot Trash. Any idea what’s behind this?

2:31	Ben Clemens: no, and wow yeah

2:31	Ben Clemens: it’s across both systems, it’s a really big number

2:31	Ben Clemens: let’s dive in slightly

2:32	Ben Clemens: https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/savant-player/bryce-harper-547180?stats…

2:32	Ben Clemens: Savant has some really fun ways to break down fielding. So Harper’s estimated success rate hasn’t budged much in his time at first. 70, 72, 69, 69 over the last four years

2:32	Ben Clemens: as in, he’s getting about the same difficulty of plays. But he’s converted 72, 74, 69, 64% of them

2:32	Ben Clemens: so converting far fewer than he used to. Big problem appears to be going laterally towards third, as in away from teh bag

2:33	Ben Clemens: and that’s consistent over 2025 and 2026. So like, range to his right? Seems to be a big issue for him. I’d expect some of this to be small sample noise, defense is noisy, but there’s enough of a signal over two years that I’d be a bit worried

2:33	K’d Cavalli: Do you put any stock into something like Skubal looking enormous post-surgery or is it more of a “until it inhibits him I could care less” idea?

2:33	Ben Clemens: yeah, the second

2:33	Ben Clemens: My general rule is that it’s easy to get information overload in baseball and I barely even know what makes a pitcher good out of actual stats

2:34	Ben Clemens: so anecdotal evidence about how they look has to be way down my list

2:34	Matthew Tobin: Is there any chance Houston moves sooner rather than later in trading Yordan? I mean he is healthy NOW, so you probably want to start kicking the tires before he suddenly isn’t. He could command a massive return that Houston needs to kickstart the rebuild.

2:34	Ben Clemens: I dont’ have any inside dirt here at all, but my assumption is no

2:34	Ben Clemens: trade Yordan Alvarez? That is like REALLY giving up

2:35	Ben Clemens: he’d be more of a prize than Skubal if he were on the market, maybe? Like, not a lot of worry that he’ll hit if he’s healthy, and two more years after this one, both at great rates?

2:36

Ben Clemens: I think that if you saw it, it’d be the kind of thing that was happening quietly for many weeks that we’d never heard about. I think that generally speaking, in-season is not the place for big long-term control trades. Soto is the main one I can think of happening recently, generally speaking teams like to wait for the winter so that they can negotiate at a deliberate pace

2:36	comedicgamble: Royals fan here, trying to figure how to feel, top 2-3 in QS, top 5 in hard hit and we suck. Running bad or nah, coach and hitting coach need to go, etc? I feel like JJ wins every trade and hasn’t saddled us w any bad deals (could have w Santander/Profar)

2:37	Ben Clemens: I mean, I think that just goes to show you that hard hit rate is not a great measure of offense

2:37	Ben Clemens: or at least, not one you can solely rely on

2:37	Ben Clemens: given that the Mets, Royals, and Phillies are all in the top 5 this year and not doing well

2:37	Ben Clemens: that said, winning every trade is fine, but that probably means you aren’t doing enough trades

2:38	Ben Clemens: and never signing any deals might mean you avoid the bad deals, but you also don’t sign a ton of good ones

2:38	Ben Clemens: like, you have to agree that this year’s offseason was basically ‘do nothing’

2:38	Ben Clemens: sign Starling Marte, trade for Isaac Collins

2:39	Ben Clemens: when you have a 93 wrC+ in 2025 and then add Starling Marte and Isaac Collins, that’s how you have a 90 wRC+ in 2026

2:40	Ben Clemens: now, there are constraints to think of. The Royals aren’t going to spend infi, they have to think about long-term implications and so on. But don’t mistake ‘not doing anything’ for ‘doing all the right things’ is what I’d say

2:40	Matthew VanWinkle: I can imagine there being a lot of possible answers to this, but what has been the biggest contributor to closing the Duran trade window? Declining performance? Unrealistic asking price? Dwindling remaining team control?

2:40	Ben Clemens: yes

2:40	Ben Clemens: I mean, I think it’s 1 and 2 combining

2:40	Ben Clemens: I think that basically it’s fine to hang a high asking price on someone and be fine keeping them

2:41	Ben Clemens: but you’re implicitly saying that if they decline, that’s cool, you accept that risk

2:41	Ben Clemens: well…

2:41

bosoxforlife: One of the stories this year has been the resurrection of the post prospect, or bust to use the proper term. Jordan Walker leads the list with Mickey Moniak not far behind and even J. J. Bleday has shown a pulse. I will put Kyle Harrison in a slightly different tier but two franchises sent him packing and nobody, but nobody, saw this coming.

2:41	Ben Clemens: there was a BP article from Jeff Paternostro earlier this year that was titled something along the lines of ‘never wrong, only early’

2:41	Ben Clemens: about Walker

2:41	Ben Clemens: and like…. yeah, it’s really fun!

2:42	Ben Clemens: not that these guys will always pan out later. but it’s a good reminder that you don’t need to be the kid from Toy Story and toss things away if they don’t thrill you immedateily

2:42	Ben Clemens: Mike Soroka! (though that is more about injury than busting)

2:43	Ben Clemens: baseball players are super good these days and there’s so much money in the game that htey’re rationally heavily invested in improving

2:43

PC1970: So, if you’re The Tigers, how long before you seriously take offers on Skubal? They’re 27-39, but, all of a sudden everyone is almost back (Torres & Carp just came back, Mize & JV & Skubal & Jansen within 1 week) in the next week. They’ve been bad, but, are only 5.5 games out & the bones of the division favorite are still there. Obviously would have to get red hot.

2:43	Ben Clemens: I think the timing on this works out great, actually

2:44

Ben Clemens: the right time to trade Skubal, if you’re going to, is around the trade deadline. Leverage will be high. People want him for the playoffs, so waiting a month to trade him probably isn’t going to lower his trade value much. You also get to see if you unexpectedly go on a heater and don’t want to trade him

2:44	Ben Clemens: and of course, teams get more chances to see that he’s healthy

2:44	Ben Clemens: I think this is a plan that almost has to happen. even if they’re gonna trade him, I think they need to take it to the wire

2:44	ashortking: Ben, how does it feel as a fellow Cardinals fan to be playing with this much house money in June? And do you think there’s a way for the Cardinals to address 3B from outside without sacrificing the greater vision long term? (Would love some ideas, I had Royce Lewis in mind)

2:45	Ben Clemens: I mean, I’m largely experiencing them through my family at this point, and yeah it’s absolutely wonderful

2:45	Ben Clemens: fun to not have expectations

2:45	Ben Clemens: i mean, surely there is. I don’t know what it is right this minute, though

2:45	Ben Clemens: I don’t think it’s a magic bullet situation, and I don’t think they should want it to be

2:46	Ben Clemens: they should be on the lookout for good players and trying to just build a huge crop of good hitters, more so than trying to fill in roster weak spots

2:46	Ben Clemens: I’m pretty sure that’s exactly how Bloom operates, so I think this is gonig to happen

2:47	Ben Clemens: like, of the 9 Cards who have batted most frequently this year, 5 have a wRC+ below 90

2:47	Ben Clemens: let’s get some more boppers. you can pick where they play

2:47	Ben Clemens: (Masyn Winn is at 86 and he’s obviously nowhere near getting replaced, just saying that this team could use many more good players, not just 1)

2:47	Carson: I agree! Big fan of Chaim and his transparency. Thanks!

2:47	Phillip Denny: Barrel rate is less predictive than ever, hard hit rate never really was predictive, x-stats need calibrating every season…what on earth are us pleb fans supposed to do with our savant red and blue bars, Ben??

2:48	Ben Clemens: oh baby – I can’t tell you anything specific yet but if you like stats being red or blue based on whether they’re good or bad, but would perhaps like some different stats to turn red or blue….. check out FanGraphs over the next month or so

2:49	Ben Clemens: you know what I do with the bars for now, though? I go ‘oh I kind of get what kind of hitter this guy is’ based on the relative distribution, but mostly ignore the numbers

2:49	Ben Clemens: you know, there’s the slap hitter shape (low bat speed, high squred up, low whiff), the bopper (big whiff, big xSLG and exit velo, high bat speed), the pull goofs, etc.

2:50	Ben Clemens: and then if somebody doesn’t fit one of those archetypes (Juan Soto is a contact hitter who is also 94th percentile in barrel rate), then you can be like ‘oh right this guy’s amazing’

2:50	djtofu: If you were Posey, how would you fix the Giants?

2:50	soupmonkey: If the Giants sell at the deadline, would you expect that they’re finally entertaining a rebuild?  And if they are going to rebuild, would it be wise for them to trade Casey Schmitt at the deadline?

2:50	Ben Clemens: as I watch a lot of Giants games, this is something I’ve thought about a lot

2:51	Ben Clemens: I don’t have a great answer for how to fix the Giants, as in I don’t think I could tell you a silver bullet. But I’m not in love with how they’re built, and I feel like they learned only half the lesson that baseball has been teaching teams in the last decade

2:51	Ben Clemens: We’ve seen the price of top-end players, both in free agency and trade, outstrip the rest of the league

2:52	Ben Clemens: that’s because teams are realizing that juicing those top-end spots is really important, particularly for playoff success. You can’t just build a team of average players and expect it to work, is essentially my view of what that boils down to

2:52	Ben Clemens: but the Giants didn’t ever get that ‘team of average players’ to add their stars to. They took a team with a meh farm system and not much depth, added some stars, and were like ‘and this is winning right?’

2:52	Ben Clemens: i mean, it might still be

2:53	Ben Clemens: but it’s a really boom/bust looking roster, and when the stars they picked haven’t played well, uh….

2:53	Ben Clemens: like, it’s great to have great players. but the whole idea of them is that it’s harder to get a 4 WAR player than 2 2 WAR players

2:54	Ben Clemens: but the Giants have bottom 10 projections in a LOT of spots on their offesnse, the rotation does not have enough arms, and the bullpen isn’t great

2:55	Ben Clemens: like…. the whole reason stars are getting more valuable is because the competitive teams first filled themselves out with good players

2:55	Ben Clemens: and then upgrading from there is hard

2:55	Ben Clemens: the Giants haven’t yet hit that first step

2:55	Phillip Denny: Padres has been trying stars and scrubs for years now and never made it further than the CS in 2022.

2:55	Ben Clemens: yeah, and the Padres have better stars than the Giants imo

2:55

flightsongs: Hey Ben, how do I talk to my friend better about baseball? His interest in the game exploded in the mid-oughts analytics boom and he delighted in the snarky commentary that ridiculed old-school thinking that refused to learn new things about the game. 20 years later, he’s still very sure of that era’s insights and I fear wouldn’t be able to appreciate your article about bunting, for example, because he’s so slow to update his priors. How do I break it to him gently that he’s being the new Joe Morgan and needs to fire himself?

2:55	Ben Clemens: oh man, this is a great question, and one I’m constantly wondering about myself

2:56	Ben Clemens: one of the big downsides of analytical thought is that it’s easy to get trapped in past analytical views. I think I’ve talked about model blindness before – once you quantify something, the things outside that quantification stop existing to you

2:56	Ben Clemens: I’m not quite sure how to break it to him gently. But i guess one way to think about it is that we’re never quite sure of how to win at baseball, and it’s also changing all the time

2:57

Ben Clemens: we still don’t know what’s right. but we’ve gotten a lot more data and cameras and stuff and tried to get rid of some of that model blindness over the past few decades, and you can see that as teams spend more and care more about this kind of stuff, they’ve branched out massively from ‘saber 1.0’

2:58	Ben Clemens: I guess I’d say that my interest also boomed in that time, particularly b/c the Cards got really good. But I just love baseball? So the thing that keeps me coming back is not the numbers, it’s the game

2:58	Ben Clemens: which makes it easier to accept that the numbers I thought were the good ones might not be

2:58	bosoxforlife: Royce Lewis is mind-boggling. His stint at AAA blows the mind. He hit 10 HR’s in 60 AB’s then comes back up and, in just 2 games, does nothing again. He needs a change of scenery but what is he worth?

2:58	bosoxforlife: Brayan Bello for Royce Lewis looks like a deal that just has to happen.

2:58	Ben Clemens: I don’t think the Twins are interested in taking on payroll, even very affordable payroll

2:58	Ben Clemens: maybe if the Sox eat a ton of it?

2:59	Ben Clemens: but yeah, they should just deal him. Like, let’s just try something new. it’s for the best for everyone

2:59	Ben Clemens: maybe you swing a bigger deal with Joe Ryan in it if the Sox still want to comepte to make the money kinda even out

2:59	jason shure: Is it conceivable that Trout could continue this way and then his contract would no longer be underwater?

2:59	Ben Clemens: yeah, for sure

3:00	Ben Clemens: he has 4 more yeras after this one, at 35.5 per

3:01	Ben Clemens: if he’s a 4 WAR dude this year, I’m fairly certain that with the current cost of a free agent and ZiPS aging curves, he’d be like scratch surplus value in my model

3:01	Ben Clemens: and if a 4-WAR trout season seems wild to you, we’re projecting him for 4.2, so it’s not outside of the realm of possibility at all

3:01	Ben Clemens: health is the big issue, rigth?

3:01	Ben Clemens: so if he’s healthy, and if he’s still a 140 wRC+ hitter, I think that’s basically ‘not underwater’

3:01	K’d Cavalli: Eli Willits showing more pop, less contact, and the swing decisions than we expected. Where are you on him and is that different from a year ago?

3:02	Ben Clemens: I’m not ‘nowhere’, but I’m close to nowhere

3:02	Ben Clemens: we have a lot of really smart, really diligent, and really focused prospect guys at FanGraphs

3:02	Ben Clemens: they’re working tirelessly to write about these guys

3:02	Ben Clemens: I do data stuff, write a column about funny baseball things I see, and evaluate major league talent

3:02	Ben Clemens: so honestly, ask Eric. I just parrot his and Brendan’s (and the rest of the team’s) views as a default, because they’re really good at what they do

3:03	TraBuch: Am I crazy to think the Braves should let Acuna walk when he’s a FA? I’m assuming he’s gonna want a huge contract after signing such a team friendly deal, is his risk worth that money?

3:03	Ben Clemens: I mean, depends what the deal is, right?

3:03	Ben Clemens: if you think that free agent deals are actually open market htings, what he wants matters less than what the market wants to give him

3:03	hayz11: Fun Kevin McGonigle trivia because he’s awesome: He is currently running a 13.7% BB rate and a 13% K rate. Only one rookie in the past 30 years has hit those marks – can you guess who?

3:03	Ben Clemens: hmmmmmmm

3:04	Ben Clemens: A Rod?

3:04	Ben Clemens: not A Rod

3:04	hayz11: The answer is John Jaso in 2010 – he had a 14.6% BB rate and a 9.7% K rate.

3:04	Ben Clemens: now that is great

3:04	Ben Clemens: such is baseball, such is life

3:05	Ben Clemens: McGonigle is really fun. The crop of young hitters this year has been a smash success so far, I love it

3:06	Ben Clemens: him, Wetherholt, Griffin, Murakami if you count imports, Sal Stewart is kinda fun, DeLauter and Bazzana and Antonacci all playing well….

3:06	Ben Clemens: it’s great. It’s going to be miserable for the trade value series, but like, fun miserable

3:06	Phillip Denny: I need someone to tell me I’m not going crazy – Ryan Feltner’s 4S is literally just a cutter, right….RIGHT??

3:06	Ben Clemens: I mean, he definitely cuts it. But I think it’s kind of a cut four-seamer if anything

3:07	Ben Clemens: still a lot of spin efficeincy, if htat makes sense

3:08	Ben Clemens: Let’s compare it to Cam Schlittler, who throws a 94 mph cutter. 80% of Feltner’s spin is transverse (contributes directly to backspin). 57% of Schlittler’s cutter spin is transverse

3:08	Ben Clemens: so I think Feltner is just kinda somewhere in between. Throwing with a four-seam grip and cutting it just a little, maybe naturally

3:08	Ben Clemens: one way you can tell he’s not fully throwing a cutter is that pretty much none of them run arm side

3:08	Ben Clemens: but I agree with you that it’s a weirdo pitch

3:09	Mr. Redlegs: That just proves that McGonigle is destined to retire at 30, grow his hair into dreads and live on a boat

3:09	joseph falls: Pale hose Antonacci fun to watch, think he has a touch more XBH in him, Walk rate higher in Minors, Loves to get a HBP, can he keep that up and stay healthy?

3:09	Ben Clemens: I think his HBP rate will go down if he’s good

3:09	John Church: How do the run of big contracts signed early in (or even before) a player’s rookie year impact the trade value series?  I’d imagine in other years, a Griffin or Emerson might have been a shoo-in for the series, but with the big contracts already signed, they are probably lower, right?

3:10	Ben Clemens: Griffin is gonna be on the list and probably high honestly. He’s got a ton of PA of reasonable results at 20 in the majors

3:10	Ben Clemens: and the deal provides a ton of upside still

3:11	Ben Clemens: but yeah, deals change the calculus for sure

3:11	Ben Clemens: here’s one way of thinking about it, though. if the deal made a player a worse ‘asset’, however you want to considder that

3:11	Ben Clemens: the team would probably try not to offer it

3:11	Ben Clemens: it does definitely mess with the risk reward. and you have to get more worried about eating the downside

3:12	Ben Clemens: so I think that for less proven players, it’s always going to be tricky to manage for the purposes of the trade value series

3:13	Ben Clemens: but man, I dunno…. I like Konnor Griffin a lot, and 6 years of discounted but uncertain salaries vs. nine years of discounted and certain salaries, where you might take a whack on the last few if he’ worse than we thought?

3:13	Ben Clemens: yes to both please

3:13	hayz11: Is Jackson Merrill hurt, or is there something else going on with him? Kind of shocking to see how far he has backslid in such a short amount of time.

3:13	Ben Clemens: no idea but I need to figure out

3:13	Ben Clemens: because he’s going to be one of the toughest cases in trade value

3:13	JasonT: The Dbacks rotation strikes me as all #4s and 5s. Sometimes they pitch above that and sometimes they pitch below that. Is it realistic for them to stay in the playoff hunt with this group?

3:13	Ben Clemens: realistic? definitely

3:13	Ben Clemens: yeah, it’s like an average rotation overall imo, I’d say it’s like a bunch of 4s

3:14	Ben Clemens: with some 3s

3:14	Ben Clemens: they’re pitching SO well though

3:14	Ben Clemens: when they’re on

3:14	Ben Clemens: that it’s easy to look at the merrill kelly implosions and whatnot and go ‘oh okay

3:14	Ben Clemens: like Soroka and E Rod are really cooking, and I want to bet on Gallen bouncing back

3:14	Ben Clemens: I dunno, it’s a tricky evaluation for me

3:15	Ben Clemens: I don’t think it’s like a disqualifying rotation, is I guess what I’d say

3:15	dirtypuer: no love for ChasinBase as an 82-0 alternative?

3:15	Ben Clemens: I’ll try it out. but like…. I’m gonna build my own if I decide there’s something I want. this is the kind of thing the lab was made for, and vibe coding is great for it

3:15	bosoxforlife: Speaking of funny baseball things, yesterday something occurred that might have never happened before. In the Dodgers-Angels the two catchers went a combined 9 for 9. Sebastien Rivero, who came into the game hitting .133 went 5 for 5 and his counterpart, Dalton Rushing, went 4 for 4.

3:15	Ben Clemens: um yes, that’s amazing

3:16	Ben Clemens: the bottom four hitters on the Angels going 13-15 with 10 RBI was also something

3:16	Ben Clemens: oh and 4 walks to 1k, jeez

3:16

ankoalec: Colt Keith is consistently getting pinch-hit for by Jahmai Jones when a lefty comes up, presumably because Keith can’t hit lefties. The issue is… Jones can’t either? Jahmai is hitting .141 this season almost exclusively against left-handed pitching. How bad does that have to get before Hinch says “may as well give Keith a shot against his splits”? (Sorry for the specific example, maybe it can be a question about over-platooning in general?)

3:17	Ben Clemens: I think teams over-platoon

3:17	Ben Clemens: I wrote a whole article last playoffs about Jones hitting for Riley Greene against a tough lefty

3:18	Ben Clemens: Jahmai Jones is an interesting case b/c he really does kill lefties overall

3:18	Ben Clemens: but like… I think teams should be more comfortable giving up small tactical edges in pursuit of strategic stability. let your players figure out their weak points, give yourself more future flexibility, that kind of thing

3:19

Ben Clemens: alright everyone, this was a really good chat but I’m going to pack it in and eat some lunch, I’ve had a long day already and have a few more things to get done. You were incredible today! More questions than I could answer, despite my best efforts. These chats are really fun for me, so thank you as always for your participation, and have a wonderful week.

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* This article was originally published here