Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat – 7/6/26

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

2:00	Ben Clemens: just an hour from me today

2:00	Ben Clemens: I’m behind the eight ball on some projects and need to get back to work

2:00	Ben Clemens: but let’s talk about baseball first

2:01	puddle: Everyone needs to have a take on the Balogun red card apparently. Let’s hear yours.

2:01	Ben Clemens: hey, I’m glad we’re in the soccer big leagues now

2:01	Ben Clemens: FIFA seems to bend the rules to favor whoever they like, particularly if they’re stars

2:01	Ben Clemens: fun to be in the conversation for that too

2:01	Ben Clemens: of course the whole thing seems horribly corrupt and ridiculous, but like, I knew that two weeks ago too

2:01	Samuel Buchwalter: Is there something to the RedSox almost  all lefty rotation because of the increased number of left handed hitters + you don’t see a lot of decent left handed pitchers in the minors as they get promoted so fast?

2:01	Ben Clemens: My guess, honestly, probably not

2:02	Ben Clemens: but we’ll never know through looking at data, because we just won’t get enough data to know

2:02	Ben Clemens: so I guess I’d say that this is just something you either believe or don’t. I don’t really

2:02	mlommler: Otto Lopez is currently 4th on the combined WAR leaderboard. Huh?

2:03	Ben Clemens: it’s wild. I’m writing something about Juan Soto right now and as I keep looking at leaderboards and seeing Lopez, every time I’m like ‘wait really?’

2:03	Ben Clemens: I don’t really have anything more productive to add. What an awesome year so far

2:03	oaktownblues: This isn’t a fully formed thought, but I look at the times-through-the-order penalty for pitchers, and the pinch-hitting penalty for batters, and I wonder if batters are just worse in their first PA of the day?

2:03	Ben Clemens: definitely could be

2:03	Ben Clemens: I don’t really know how you’d tell the difference

2:03	maxjusttyped: Is the trade value game coming back this year? I’ve been looking forward to it

2:04	Ben Clemens: it sure is. expect it in the second half of this week

2:04	Ben Clemens: waiting on some data to feed into the machine to get it back running again, but we had a meeting about it just today

2:04

philly: Did you consider looking at age groups separately for the prospect value project? An FV40 could be an older player who projects as a role player and also a very young player with a high ceiling. Those two player types should get to the same value, but in very different ways that would be notable.

2:04	Ben Clemens: no lol

2:04	Ben Clemens: the data is hilariously fragmented already

2:05	Ben Clemens: like, I feel really confident that the broad strokes of mine are right

2:05	Ben Clemens: if you want to get more specific you need to be doing modeling-based stuff

2:05	Ben Clemens: and really getting into the weeds

2:06	Ben Clemens: like, that’s not what I was attempting to do. I’m trying to tell people what our grades tend to look like. I’m already extremely hamstrung by not having a lot of historical fangraphs graes

2:06	Ben Clemens: so the more I fragment it, the worse it would get

2:06	Ben Clemens: I think asking someone like Dan, or the prospect team, about this might produce a different answer

2:06	Ben Clemens: they’re trying to predict the future

2:06	Ben Clemens: i’m measuring the past

2:06	fanoftheman: What the heck should the cardinals do at the deadline? Obviously, a lot could change in a few weeks. But if they’re still hanging out in the middle of the wild card seeds with a slight positive run differential, what should their approach be?

2:08	Ben Clemens: I think I’d just stand pat, honestly. It feels defeatist but it seems like trying to add is not really going to be a great choice either

2:08	Ben Clemens: like, y hou can see them adding some marginal bullpen pieces and then eh, the pitching’s just bad anyway

2:08	Ben Clemens: I don’t mind letting the guys who they have play and see what shakes out

2:08	Ben Clemens: you don’t have to be playing 4d chess all the time

2:08	Phillip Denny: Let’s normalize chanting “shame” when the manager makes a decision the crowd disagrees with, yeah?

2:09	oaktownblues: Thoughts on the decision to take out Eury Perez yesterday? I get he’s coming off injury and they want to baby him some…but he had 6 batters max to go (since they could just pull him at any point if he lost the perfecto) and was at 92 pitches

2:09	Ben Clemens: oh man. I think I’d take Eury out too, because he in particular has dealt with a ton of injury problems

2:09	Ben Clemens: and also, I don’t want the shame chants to get TOO popular, because you know they’d be mis/over-used

2:09	Ben Clemens: but in this case, it was incredible

2:10	PC1970: How much lower in trade value than Skubal is Casey Mize? Obviously, a small sample but he’s actually outpitching him by a fair amount recently.

2:10	Ben Clemens: I mean, meaningfully

2:10	Ben Clemens: ‘by a fair amount recently’ is doing a lot of work there

2:11	SPArn: Since 6/16, Dylan Crews is slashing .279/.347/.412, good for a 112 wRC+. K% 24, BB% 8. Sock and a shoe yesterday, career max EV around 113 last week. I think I’m starting to believe (again). You?

2:11	Ben Clemens: this is why earlier this year, when we were talking a lot here about the potential of trading Dylan Crews, I think our chat consensus was that they couldn’t do it

2:12	Ben Clemens: and not entirely because of his current form, but because come on, he was a huge prospect once, he might bounce back, and if he does we’d be quick to believe

2:12	Ben Clemens: so yeah, I’m cautiously optimistic for sure. takes less to convince me when the tools are there

2:12

oaktownblues: Let’s say you had a player with a guaranteed 1:1 K/BB ratio. What is the optimal BB and K rate under this constraint? I imagine it depends how good the player’s results are on contact: If you can’t hit at all, 50% is optimal, but if you’re the greatest hitter ever, 0% is optimal. But what about someone with, say, league average results on contact?

2:13	Ben Clemens: i think with average results on contact you’d probably prefer 0% too, honestly. Like, mathematically you would in a linear weights sense, and I think that’s true even if you account for leverage

2:13	Ben Clemens: but like…. no one can strike out never

2:13	Ben Clemens: basically for an average power on contact hitter, you’d want 0/0. but not striking out tends to make your production on contact go WAY down

2:14	Ben Clemens: gotta swing slow to avoid whiffing

2:14

Phillip Denny: No Wheeler for the ASG feels gross. But the two pitchers I’d point to as the replacements would be Skenes and Webb, both of whom are already their sole team representatives. Also Manfred could have picked Wheeler over his teammate Harper for the “Legend Pick,” which feels like a miss.

2:15	Ben Clemens: agreed. I would like to have Wheeler in the game, and I also agree that Webb and Skenes would make sense but for the all star rule. but yeah, just add another spot? or use the legend pick? it’s weird that he’s not in the game

2:15	warpath: Hey Ben, the White Sox finally in the last couple of weeks have indicators like Pythagorean record and Baseruns record more in line with their actual record after some big wins. To paraphrase Laurence Fishburne, are we beginning to believe?

2:15	Ben Clemens: yeah why not

2:15	Ben Clemens: I feel like we’ve talked about how I think their odds are too low in our model a few times

2:16	Ben Clemens: I’m not quite sure I’m convinced. but like…. the evidence seems good

2:16	Ben Clemens: and the rest of the ALC is not good

2:16	Ben Clemens: so…. clearly if I’m being a rational actor, I have to put their odds of being real enough to make the playoffs at at least fairly high

2:16	Marc Rosenberg: Ben, I was also at SCG Vegas for the Team Sealed event! Did you enjoy the weekend? How did your team do?

2:17

Ben Clemens: it was very fun. our team did poorly, but i won a side event rcq so that was cool. and just generally a fun event, great weekend with my friends. I highly recommend playing games and doing activities with people you like. I thought my non-gaming weekend was every bit as fun as the gaming part

2:17	Philip Christy: If you knew you were going to get exactly this level of production from each of them for one season, would you rather have Bobby Witt Jr. or Yordan Alvarez?

2:17	Ben Clemens: I think I’d take Yordan because for me, it’d be cheaper to get someone to handle some of Witt’s defense and make my team that way than someone to handle some of Yordan’s offense

2:17	Ben Clemens: now, if Witt has more of a 150 wRC+ than his this year mark of 128, that changes a lot

2:18	Ben Clemens: and Yordan is MASHING

2:18	Ben Clemens: Witt has a higher margin for error, basically

2:18	Ben Clemens: but if we’re stipulating these exact performances? yeah gimme the guy who’s hitting .320/.429./.637

2:18

SPArn: Webb isn’t even the Giants only rep! Really don’t like getting worked up about all star snubs, and Wheeler will likely be invited (if you recall, Miz was like the 13th replacement invited last year). But also – come on, don’t make Wheeler wait around to decide whether he’s going on vacation or not!

2:19	Ben Clemens: ah yeah, I blanked on Arraez

2:19	Ben Clemens: then cut Webb, who like you said, will probably get in anyway

2:19	Ben Clemens: and give it to Wheeler

2:19	fangraphsreaderbutwoke: Skenes has a era abov 5 his last nine starts right? Wheeler should be in over him.

2:19	Ben Clemens: one player per team etc. plus paul skenes shoudl be in the all star game

2:19	Ben Clemens: should they just have more pitchers? looking at this list, it is kinda wild figuring out who to cut

2:20	Cheeknbut: Rays now favored to win the division. How big of a failure for NYY would that be ? Do divisions really not matter anymore or should Boone be a hot seat candidate ?

2:21	Ben Clemens: um, I definitely don’t think Boone should be a hot seat candidate, that sounds like some real ridiculous New York nonsense to me (I lived in NY for 10 years, I feel like I get to say that)

2:21	Ben Clemens: how big of a failure? I mean, medium

2:21	Ben Clemens: we had them at 42% to win the division before the year, and Aaron Judge got hurt

2:22	Ben Clemens: if your’e taking the pitchforks out now, you should probably fire 24 managers out of 30 a year

2:22	SPArn: “Life can only be understood backwards, but must be lived forwards.” Thanks for all the work on prospect valuation. Appreciate your attempt to make baseball work in the context of that Kierkegaard quote

2:22	Ben Clemens: haha yes that’s a good way of putting it

2:22	Ben Clemens: the prospect stuff was fun, albeit much more tiring than expected

2:23	Ben Clemens: the amount of cross-checking to make sure the numbers made sense, double-checking methods, grabbing data, bothering sources and friends to look at it…. it was great, not planning on doing this again anytime soon

2:23	pepper69fun: I have both Baldwin and Basallo in a 15 team roto dynasty with no round or salary restrictions.  If I move one of them, could you give me a couple of OF examples that would be even swap?  Thanks

2:24	Ben Clemens: honestly, no, I don’t really know how to think about roto dynasty. sorry. just to head off future questions about niche formats. I kiiiiind of get ottoneu and a standard 5×5, but I’m kinda useless the more exotic the format gets

2:24

Fangraphs Man: I think I tepidly believe in the White Sox, especially their offense (esp with Teel just coming back now and Mune by the end of the week). But they really could use upgrades in the rotation and bullpen, but I just dont think it makes sense for them to spend prospect capital on that this season, whereas I’d think Cleveland would be much more primed to upgrade because of where they are in the contention cycle

2:25	Ben Clemens: yeah, i can agree with this. I think what I said about the Cardinals applies here too. I definitely don’t want to see them sell, but doing a lot of buying is kidn of weird too. if this group is a magical group, let them be magical

2:25	Ben Clemens: but don’t mortgage the future just yet, let’s see how they develop

2:25	Cheeknbut: Sorry, don’t mean Boone should be fired because of his failure (injuries obviously at play here), but more cuz Yankees blowing another division lead might lead to a shake up

2:25	Ben Clemens: oh yeah. I mean, if you agree that it’s all outside of his control but heck, we just want to do something, then sure

2:25	Ben Clemens: then they just want to do something

2:25	Ben Clemens: but I can’t really handicap that. I have no clue how much Hal Steinbrenner wants to do a shake up, not because boone is bad but just because he likes shaking things

2:26	dirtypuer: If baseball suddenly vanished from the Earth, what sport would you enjoy writing about in it’s absence?

2:26	Ben Clemens: ooh, good question. Maybe tennis?

2:26	Ben Clemens: I can tell you it’s not soccer. I have a great time watching the world cup, and my heartrate during England/Mexico was borderline scary, but I feel like the central frustration I have with officiating and acting in soccer is just too muich

2:27	Ben Clemens: tennis is just really a good combination for me of fun to watch and analysis that seems like it’d be cool

2:27	Phillip Denny: over the next 4.5 years, Hunter Goodman will be a top __ Catcher in the league?

2:27	Ben Clemens: so, I’ve been looking at catchres quite a bit in trade value

2:27	Ben Clemens: and like, I dunno, 10? one thing that is VERY clear is that catchers don’t stay great for long

2:28	Ben Clemens: like, where am I gonna put Dillon Dingler this year? Or Raleigh for that matter? The best catchers from a few years ago aren’t even top 10 dudes anymore

2:28	Ben Clemens: catcher in particular is SO hard to handicap

2:28	Ben Clemens: I think I wrote about this in last year’s trade value intro (“the catcher vortex”) and then basically every catcher I ranked last year should probably be off the list this year except Cal and maybe Kirk

2:29	Ben Clemens: so, who knows man

2:29	SPArn: Miami above the Braves in today’s power rankings. Do you believe?

2:29	Ben Clemens: I personally do not

2:29	Ben Clemens: but I mean, who knows

2:29	HappyFunBall: Very Important Update: Our long Nationals nightmare is finally at an end. With a solid pitching series against the Red Sox last week, the pitching staff has FINALLY accumulated enough WAR to pass Joey Wiemer, who has been back in the minors since the middle of May

2:30	Ben Clemens: um, amazing

2:30	Ben Clemens: the Joey Wiemer pitching (and ridiculous, short-lived hitting hot streak) month was fun

2:30

war2d2: Bennnnnnnnn! <taun taun sounds> PCA is currently sitting at .292/.383/.527. He’s hit over .400 for almost a month and a half. He’s  at 5.2 bWAR, almost a full bWAR up on the second place guy. What do you think the chances are this winds up being the best Cubs position-player season in history? Current record is 10.3 bWAR by Sosa in 2001. He’s off that pace, but also he was sitting at 87 OPS+ at the beginning of May so he had a slow start.

2:31

Ben Clemens: oh man. I think it’s gonna be hard to catch up to Sosa because it’s just hard to play well for that long. BUt I think bWAR is the place for it, because DRS is less regressed than OAA as best as I can tell, and since PCA gets a ton of value from defense, he’s a threat to spike something truly ridiculous there

2:31

aldrinbatistarocks: Now that I root for an okay team, I find it harder to be an enlightened “I don’t care about the ASG” guy. But it’s downright unpatriotic that we the proud voting public have risked adding a second name to the list of primary SS with 40 homers to not play in that most time honored midsummer tradition. Would a cool nickname have gotten Colson Montgomery to Philadelphia?

2:31	Ben Clemens: I think he’ll get there

2:32	Ben Clemens: Like, it’s hard to argue with McGonigle as SS2, and Witt as SS1. But spots will open up

2:32	drewsylvania: Will the 2026 season be considered a season with one of the highest variances in player output from the previous season, or is that just recency bias?

2:32	Ben Clemens: probably recency bias, but this sounds like a fun thing to write about during the lockout

2:32	Ben Clemens: I mean, if there’s a lockout

2:33

fincampbell05: If the Red Sox decide to sell, and most likely they will to some extent, how should they handle their relievers? They have Chapman/Whitlock/Slaten/Guerrero. Do they sell all of them and put all their eggs into the “relievers are volatile, never count on them” bucket? Do they keep all of them because they’re all under control next year? If in between, which do you sell?

2:35	Ben Clemens: Hm, I think I’d sell some but not all, and honestly, looking at the contract status, I think it’d mostly depend on what I could get for them. No one’s a rental, but you can’t exactly bank on many years of reliever performance

2:35	jonmberra: Cardinals starters are top 10 in fWAR since May 1st, should that change what they do at the deadline? Rotation being even just okay seems like a big deal for them.

2:35	Ben Clemens: I’m trying to talk myself into it right now as I look at them

2:37	Ben Clemens: and like….. maybe? I dunno, I can get myself to ‘average rotation’ but not really farther, even with my cards fandom engaged

2:38	Ben Clemens: so mayyyyybe if there are some essentially free relievers to be added I’d be interested?

2:40	Ben Clemens: but like…. I dunno, maybe it’s just my sabermetric brain but I don’t like rotations that don’t strike anyone out, and that definitely describes the cards

2:40	Ben Clemens: I do like that they have a lot of good command guys

2:40	Ben Clemens: I dunno, maybe I’m talking myself into it, I guess? But I just hate throwing good money after bad in these situations where I look at the team and go ‘eh, maybe, but it’s a year or two before I would expect it’

2:41	Bobzilla: Do you find today’s young talented hitters under the age of 30 to be less consistent than their peers from previous generations?  Thinking about players such as Acuna, Tatis, Guerrero, etc.  If so, besides injuries, what are some possible explanations?

2:41	Ben Clemens: i have no clue, and I’m sure that my brain could not correctly do this without having some kind of recency bias in one direction or the other

2:41	Ben Clemens: like…. you remember the inconsistent guys less, ex post

2:41	Ben Clemens: sounds like another interesting article for the lockout!

2:41	SPArn: Rather than snubs, any favorite all star STORIES? I love ERod getting his first nod over a decade in, on his fourth franchise

2:42	Ben Clemens: oh that’s a fun one, yeah

2:42	Ben Clemens: I think that CJ Abrams being the NL starter at short is absolutely delightful

2:43	Ben Clemens: strong bounceback from a bummer end of last season

2:43	fanoftheman: Since you started modeling baseball, what has changed the most in how you philosophically approach building models for baseball?

2:43	Ben Clemens: I hope that I have become more “humble” about accepting that I really don’t know all that much

2:43	Ben Clemens: and trying not to ignore what I can’t model

2:44

Ben Clemens: i mean largely I just keep trying to be less wrong by looking for old biases. but I think one of the biases I’ve been fighting against longest is that I am a confident person. So if I’m not being careful, sometimes I stick with what I’ve always done because, well, I’ve always done it and it’s worked well

2:45	Ben Clemens: when I had just started doing baseball analysis, I think I was just really into my own stuff and my own numbers. Now I’m a lot more like ‘well I think these are good but why might I be wrong?’

2:45

Alex Remington: If you were in Alex Anthopoulos’s shoes, what would you do? Your talented team had a brilliant first two months and an absolutely terrible third. You probably have to buy at the deadline, but how hard do you push? Are you expecting the rest of the year to play out closer to 2023 or 2024?

2:45	Ben Clemens: I think I’d buy aggressively, honestly. Good team, but not getting any younger, and there are some clear places for upgrades

2:45	Ben Clemens: like, this team has a very high top end, and is also playign some extremely marginal players

2:45	Ben Clemens: seems like an ideal place to be aggressive

2:46

war2d2: Also Colson Montgomery is having a nice season, but he’s probably going g to end the year with a WAR somewhere around the Ian Happ range of “solid but not elite.” Layered on top of that is the name Colson. GTFO with that noise. There’s been a real inflation of Cole-based names at the expense of traditional, boring, white bread names and I for one will not stand for it. #BringBackBob

2:46	Ben Clemens: colson and colton and colten are so hot right now

2:46	Ben Clemens: you’re not wrong

2:47	bosoxforlife: Those darn Red Sox. Just when I think I can give up on the season they suck me back in. The young pitching is so interesting that, if nobody breaks down, they can put together some some long runs of special stuff. Please help me get my senses back.

2:47	Ben Clemens: I mean, isn’t this why baseball is great?

2:47	Ben Clemens: if no one breaks down and they climb back ahead of the A’s, O’s, Jays (or some mixture thereof) to be only two teams out of the WC, maybe they’re even buyers!

2:48	Ben Clemens: we’ll know a lot more in 20 days, though, that’s part of the delight of baseball

2:49	PC1970: The Tigers are like the mafia- everytime I think they’re out of it, they go 5-1 for a week & pull me back in.

2:49	Ben Clemens: Tigers and Red Sox both

2:49	Ben Clemens: alright guys I’m going to call the chat slightly early today, some work to get to and I’m dragging a little mentally so I need to get focused

2:50	Ben Clemens: have a wonderful week, and let’s do this again next Monday

Source

* This article was originally published here