Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat – 3/25/24

Ben Clemens: I’m going on Effectively Wild today, and we’re recording soon, so let’s get started and do a turbo round of questions until around 11:45 my time

Ben Clemens: Fast fast fast, and don’t worry, I’ll drop in for the opening day chat as well if you didn’t get all your questions in

Stu Shea: Is the Ohtani issue going to dominate this season?

Ben Clemens: Yeah 100

Ben Clemens: 100%*

romorr: So, if you are sending down a left-handed hitter, to work on hitting vs LHP, what’s the shortest amount of time down there for you to believe that? Of course about Jackson Holliday. I’d feel a bit better if he was down there months, instead of weeks.

Ben Clemens: This is the most talked-about roster decision in a long time and like

Ben Clemens: I don’t get what the O’s are doing

Ben Clemens: I think that it only makes sense to send him down if he’s going to be down for quite a while because they don’t think he’s ready

Ben Clemens: otherwise you have to bet on the variance and have him on the OD roster just in case he wins RoY

Ben Clemens: If he’s called up within weeks, this is a huge error by the O’s

Ben Clemens: if he’s not…. then he’s not as good as we thought I guess? Or at least they don’t think he’s as good as public prognosticators do

MATT DAMON: MATT. DAMON.

Too Many Mooks: Ben, you should do a ‘bold predictions’ article but for real life baseball, not fantasy. (I know someone has done that before, but I can’t remember if it was you)

Ben Clemens: Working on it as we speak

North of the Border: Is this who Jose Berrios is now?  A Harvey Dent impersonator alternating 7IP 1ER games with 4IP 5ER ones?

Ben Clemens: He used to do that with seasons

Ben Clemens: Now he’s refined it down to doing it by the game

RAGBRAI: Jones in Pittsburgh venture a guess on his stats this year?

Ben Clemens: I am really in on him

Ben Clemens: Not to spoil too much, but starting pitcher power rankings come out tomorrow and I got the half that contains the Pirates

Ben Clemens: I didn’t know a lot about Jones before I started this exercise but I like what I’ve seen

Ben Clemens: I think he’s their best pitcher by the All Star break

MATT DAMON: It should be pointed out that yes, there IS more than one of us. No idea who the others are. We are LEGION. We are EVERYWHERE.

Ben Clemens: Always good to know

Sonny: A minor 2024 subplot I’m very interested in is a San Diego (positive) regression to the mean in close games that leads to 90+ wins, a playoff appearance, and a string of deep dives into what sounds like a chaotic and nightmarish ‘23 clubhouse.

Ben Clemens: I think it’s a really interesting subplot

Ben Clemens: the Padres are still pretty good!

Ben Clemens: I mean, very strange roster, Cronenworth is really wasted

Ben Clemens: but good

TomBruno23: Mikolas-Thompson-Lynn-Gibson on tap for the series opener in LA for the Birds. Here we go…crash!

Ben Clemens: Let’s just say that this isn’t the rotation I’d bring into LA to face the Dodgers if I got to pick

Matt: OBP roto league. My OF is a hodgepog. Nimmo, Happ, Jung Hoo Lee, Soler, K Carpenter. Which 3 you starting?

Ben Clemens: Oh man…. Nimmo/Happ/Soler I think until I see a little more from Lee

Cyberdelic space: Do you see this years glut of free agents is a sign NLB is ready for expansion? Or will baseball continue to use potential expansion cities as leverage for stadium funds?

Ben Clemens: I think that they’ll do expansion after the A’s move is done and dusted one way or the other

Ben Clemens: Manfred seems like he’s all in

B: Made some salmon and served it with cubed avocado and a salad of orange, grapefruit, ginger, and dill. You should try it!

Ben Clemens: oh this sounds great

Ben Clemens: I’ve made fruit/ginger salads before and liked them, and that sounds really good with grilled salmon

Bill James: Ken Rosenthal said baseball GM’s are colluding, they just all have the same heritage and Wall Street backgrounds so they naturally think the same. Isn’t the lack of diversity in baseball execs concerning?

Ben Clemens: It’s extremely concerning

Ben Clemens: it’s a closed ecosystem, so in theory if everyone just sticks with the same antiquated and/or suboptimal ideas forever, it’ll be fine

Ben Clemens: that’s kind of what’s worrying about it. there’s no forced innovation in MLB as long as the teams control the hiring and firing

Duff: Pretty depressing seeing fan reaction online to the Shohei scandal. One silver lining, I guess, is it should be pretty straightforward to find out if bets were made on baseball, right? Assuming the answer to that is no, do you think that will take a lot of the air out of this scandal?

Ben Clemens: I’m not sure that this illegal bookmaker has perfectly annotated and definitely not altered records to look through, you know?

Ben Clemens: that doesn’t really feel like the way things go in real life

6 man rotations: When will baseball bite the bullet and embrace 6 man starting staffs? It would help save arms and keep these guys fresh. The only drawback is the need to expand rosters

Ben Clemens: I don’t really agree with this, particularly the expanding rosters part

Ben Clemens: ‘oh let’s let teams use more pitchers’ seems like an awful plan to me

Ben Clemens: just chop everything up worse than it already is

Ben Clemens: teams should use six man rotations anyway, even with roster restrictions

McGraw45: Jackson Holliday – is it not service time related if they keep him down? Or do most consider the new incentives plenty to thwart that?

Ben Clemens: Okay, so let’s game it out

Ben Clemens: if he finishes top 2 in RoY voting, then it counts as a full year anyway

Ben Clemens: so the old send someone down for two weeks to avoid a full year of service time plan mostly won’t work

Ben Clemens: Rutschman got a full year, for example, even though the O’s gamed his time badly

Ben Clemens: so if you’re going to hold him down to gain on service time, you need to do it for a long enough time that you have a good shot at him missing the top 2

Ben Clemens: otherwise, it would make sense to have him on the opening day roster to qualify for the RoY incentives

Ben Clemens: namely, if a top prospect opens the year on the roster and wins RoY, you get a pick after the first round

Ben Clemens: and if they finish second or third, you get an international draft pick i think?

Ben Clemens: Oh, there’s a backup one as well I think? You can finish top 3 in MVP or Cy  Young before hitting arb

Ben Clemens: I guess those international draft picks got stricken indefinitely

Ben Clemens: you know, what with the international draft not happening and QO’s staying

Ben Clemens: but i think in theory if the status DOES change you get picks/

Ben Clemens: not 100% clear

Ben Clemens: anyway the point is, the way the incentives are set up, you shouldn’t hold someone down if they’re going to get enough time to contend for RoY

Alex: What are your thoughts on Jackson Merrill in CF?

Ben Clemens: I don’t like it

Ben Clemens: but I haven’t seen a ton of him out there so I am willing to be proven wrong

Jordan Montgomery: Where am I signing? When?

Ben Clemens: Let’s say the Yankees, when Carlos Rodon breaks down

Rocky Road: Thoughts on the Tovar extension?

Ben Clemens: I love Tovar, and I think the extension makes a ton of sense for everyone

Manfred: His legacy will be getting caught juicing balls by a rocket scientist, right?

Ben Clemens: Unless the expansion teams pan out well

Ben Clemens: otherwise, uh, yeah

Ben Clemens: so he really needs the expansion teams to pan out

Guest: By the time July rolls around, has Joey Votto supplanted Vogelbach as the lefty bench bat, or are neither of them on the team at all?

Ben Clemens: Ugh, I kinda think neither

Ben Clemens: hope I’m wrong, I’d like as much Votto as possible

the person who asks the lunch question: what’s for lunch?

Ben Clemens: leftovers from last night, which was impossibolognese (bolognese using impossible beef) and charred cauliflower

Zaidi: Cancelled Correa’s deal due to known injury concerns. Cut JD Davis and sent a message to players that they should agree to arb deals vs trial. Is Farhan the most ruthless GM in mlb?

Ben Clemens: Ruthless without effect

Ben Clemens: totally

Cromulent: I swear I thought Matt said his OF was a hedgehog. Which, frankly, would be an upgrade on my OF.

Ben Clemens: spiky

Ben Clemens: my Ottoneu outfield would probably be an upgrade on a hedgehog? but not by a ton

Ben Clemens: Robert, MH2, Bryant, Schneider?

Ben Clemens: Suwinski? It gets thin fast

Ben Clemens: that just reminded me to set my ottoneu lineups, so thank you

McGraw45: Also, if they held him down that long (to prevent ROY), would it be enough to think about filing a grievance anyways?

Ben Clemens: No one ever wins these

Ben Clemens: when Kris Bryant lost his, that was kinda it

Ben Clemens: b/c what the Cubs did was so blatant

Ben Clemens: and they got away with it

Lou Purltzman: I thought Rutschman was hurt. They still might have intended to game his service time but his injury didn’t give them the chance no?

Ben Clemens: i mean it’s hard to say, we dunno the exact circumstances of his injury

Ben Clemens: but it certainly made their decision much easier

Baltimore: We sent Holiday down so we can play Westburg and trade Westburg May 1 for pitching.

Ben Clemens: I mean….

Ben Clemens: most of the teams you’d be trading Westburg to woudl prefer that you not burn his major league service time?

Ben Clemens: if you’re looking at it from a cold transactional standpoint like that

Ben Clemens: this just seems bad to me?

MF Luder: Trimmed down Giancarlo Stanton…maybe he can stay healthy?

Ben Clemens: Odds say no

bosoxforlife: How hyped are you about Wyatt Langford? He looks like a monster.

Ben Clemens: I haven’t watched a ton of him, to be honest, I’m gonna let my first impressions form when I watch regular season games

Ben Clemens: That’s always been more fun to me. But the hype is extreme and probably justified

Mark: What is the deal with the Guardians? Outside of Kwan the OF is a disaster. Why won’t they let DeLauter on the Opening Day roster?

Ben Clemens: the Guardians just seem incapable of fielding an outfield. I think it comes down to the kind of prospects they target in trade, and their internal evaluations

Ben Clemens: like, they traded Nolan Jones

Ben Clemens: and they’re not dummies

Ben Clemens: They clearly have a system that pushes them in this direction

Nobody likes the person who asks the lunch Q: Nobody

Ben Clemens: I like you

Ben Clemens: I love talking about lunch, makes me so hungry, and just in time for lunch

Baltimore: I guess we’re not going with the best 25 north.  Will the reporters question it when a GM or manager says it?

Ben Clemens: I don’t know if people remember this, but when Tatis first came to Padres camp as a minor leaguer, Machado started going to every reporter who would listen and saying that Tatis was one of the team’s best players and should start the year in the majors

Ben Clemens: Someone should be doing this if the players actually believe it

Ben Clemens: leadership isn’t just being all rah rah in the dugout, you know?

Ben Clemens: can’t just toe the party line if it’s a bad line

the person who asks the lunch question: oh my god, imagine getting mad at the food talk on a FG chat

Ben Clemens:

Appa Yip Yip: A certain segment of baseball fans will never forgive Manfred for the pitch clock. I think more people will hang on to that than the juiced balls. (I like the pitch clock)

Ben Clemens: That’s definitely a possibility

Ben Clemens: I think that a lot of casual fans love it though

Ben Clemens: I like going to baseball games with my non-baseball friends whenever I can

Ben Clemens: it helps that Oracle is downtown and beautiful

Ben Clemens: and they all love the pitch clock

liam: what do you see happening with the pirates at 1B by end of season? I just don’t see rowdy bringing enough to the table to start all season. back to a connor joe platoon

Ben Clemens: Yeah, I think that Connor Joe is gonna end up as the full time starter there b/c MAT will play well enough in the outfield

Ben Clemens: Rowdy is a career 99 wRC+ hitter, it’s not like he’s untouchable

Jackson H: something tells me I’m in the lineup for the Orioles very soon.

Ben Clemens: If that’s the case then they made a grave miscalculation

Ben Clemens: but I think you’re most likely right?

Ben Clemens: just so weird

Matt: Ottoneu OF: Acuna…Nimmo….Oneill/Marsh/Canha. How screwed am I?

Ben Clemens: I really like Marsh and Canha, actually

Ben Clemens: I think you can make it work, but you’re pretty thin so injuries would be a huge problem

Ben Clemens: and Nimmo isn’t exactly unbreakable

liam: (outside of the whole gambling saga itself) all of this flip flopping from ohtani and his camp is really shocking just from a legal standpoint. the sudden change in stories, him saying he will answer questions then pivoting to a statement today… is this a case of things getting lost in translation? bad legal/PR team? can’t remember anything like this happening even outside of baseball

Ben Clemens: I want to know the answer to this too

Ben Clemens: For a guy whose public image has been so carefully manicured for years, it’s a shocking turn of events

Tom: Oracle for my money is the best ballpark in the majors!! I don’t have a question

Ben Clemens: Okay, I’m going to post a poll of my favorites plus some ones I don’t like but that other people do

Ben Clemens: Because it’s not my favorite, but it’s really close

Ben Clemens:

Guest: Shohei needs an interpreter … oh wait.

scuffy McGee: Give us anything to be excited about this season for the As

Ben Clemens: I think there are some potentially interesting pitchers who will be coming up throughout the season

Ben Clemens: the inevitable reverse boycott day is gonna be awesome, I’ll probably go again

Ben Clemens: I find going to games at the Coliseum actually kinda fun now

Ben Clemens: so that’s a decent number of pluses

Adam: Camden

Ben Clemens: Good one. I haven’t been in a while but was definitely on the short list, I just ran out of space

Ryan: PNC my favorite of the ones I’ve been to, but I haven’t been to Coors and I feel like that might become my favorite if I ever do go

Ben Clemens: Coors was the first one I didn’t have space for, just ahead of Camden

Ben Clemens: it’s sooooooooo good

Ben Clemens: but it’s hard to disentangle that from the beautiful setting

Woeba: guessing you don’t like wrigley/fenway?

Ben Clemens: I don’t but I respect people who do

Ben Clemens: It’s just not the way I want my baseball experience to go

DisgruntledClevelander: Coors is gorgeous, though the on-field product sucking is a downer. Had great experiences there.

Ben Clemens: The only reason I didn’t put Coors on there is that some of the summer sun games are brutally hot

Ben Clemens: those seats just COOK

Tanks again Rockies: Will MLB start using AI for balls and strikes?

Ben Clemens: oh man I sure hope not

Ben Clemens: although it’d be great if players who were most adept at convincing AI to change its answers got rewarded

G4: Thanks for the 2B power rankings. Any projections you personally doubt? Albies felt a little low to me, at least versus Gleyber. Estrada also underrated, though you explained why in the write-up.

Ben Clemens: I was just confused by Gleyber’s, basically

What?: Citi and Oracle are not better than Dodger Stadium, Coors, and Camden

Ben Clemens: I actually haven’t been to Dodgers stadium but…

Ben Clemens: I think that Oracle being really good is a very widely shared opinion

Ben Clemens: these are all just opinions, to be clear

Matt: In Ottoneu, I have 3 Cs because I’m a moron (Naylor, Wells, Herrera). Then Realmuto came on waivers, and I struck. SHuld I drop Herrera? I feel there might be a breakout there, but that roster spot seems more valuable used differently

Ben Clemens: I think so, just because the playing time breakout is gonna be tough

DJ: If one team in the NL Central were to pull away from the pack and win 90+ games, who is most likely to pull it off?

Ben Clemens: I don’t think it’s likely, but I’d take the Cardinals just because if their pitchers are better than expected, things will work really well

Ben Clemens: I don’t think it’ll happen

Ben Clemens: I think their pitchers are bad

Ben Clemens: but if they’re like 4-ish ERA guys down the line, they’re gonna soak up a ton of innings and the offense is good

liam: i feel like target field should get an hm, underrated imo

Ben Clemens: I’ve never been, and I’d like to go

Ben Clemens: I think Minnesota is a really good sports city, so I assume a summer game there would be glorious

DisgruntledClevelander: I mean. That’s every summer sun game. Progressive Field’s upper decks are awful in the early afternoons in the summer.

Ben Clemens: I think that Coors is a little worse b/c of the bright mountain sun and some of the layout, but fair

TomBruno23: EW is set to record before Shohei speaks? Why…

Ben Clemens: We’re drafting bold predictions

Ben Clemens: they may record something else about that part separately, but also might just do a whole separate pod about it

Dan: I wouldn’t put it past a bookie to change records in light of being investigated and possibly leaned on but I would suggest a bookie without perfectly annotated records (or at least the ability to create them) doesn’t last very long

Ben Clemens: Oh sure

Ben Clemens: I’m just saying, front book vs. back book

Ben Clemens: obviously they need to be able to keep track…. but I’d imagine that as soon as the track has been kept, the obfuscation would start

challenge system: what’s your preference on robo umps vs challenge system? I like the players being able to use a certain amount of challenges on balls and strikes, not so much the automatic system

Ben Clemens: I think that it’ll go the way of tennis

Ben Clemens: challenge system for a while, then after a decade they just switch to full auto

Didace: The only bad stadium I’ve been to is Chase Field.

Ben Clemens: I went to Chase for the WBC and it was so clear that they weren’t used to it being full to capacity

Ben Clemens: I went to go grab a beer and nachos and it took me three innings

Ben Clemens: also that’s when the roof was still broken, I think that has changed

bosoxforlife: My favorite ballpark experience is having lunch on the 1st base patio while watching the Greensboro Grasshoppers play.

Ben Clemens: I’m writing about this soon, in fact, but my favorite ballpark experience is leaving pennies on the train track outside Bill McGee field in Knoxville and then going after the game, in the darkness, to look for my flattened souvenirs

Ben Clemens: also baseball I guess

Ohtani: Percent chance he gets banned for life?

Ben Clemens: Let’s say 0.2%

Ben Clemens: it’s super low, and it’s in no one’s interest

Ben: I don’t hear Citi about spoken about as a top-tier stadium as much as say PNC/Petco/Camden, but I try to block out most Mets chatter online

Ben Clemens: Yeah this is more of a hot take by me, and maybe influenced by how many games I went to there when I lived in NY

Ben Clemens: but it does a really good job of having unobstructed sightlines around the entire lower bowl

Ben Clemens: and the food options were excellent relative to other stadium options at the time, I haven’t checked recently to confirm

Guest: Citi, compared to new Yankee Stadium and MetLife Stadium, is basically a heavenly oasis for us tri-staters

Ben Clemens: okay so this is probably an unpopular take

Ben Clemens: i HATE yankee stadium

Ben Clemens: just an unpleasant experience, too many tunnels and bad views, too expensive, the lines to get in beggar belief

jj: Wong said Holliday should be on the team didn’t he?

Ben Clemens: he did but Adley and Gunnar need to be saying it, or Corbin Burnes

Ben Clemens: love Kolten obviously

Ben Clemens: but c’mon, he’s an NRI

speed: volpe has 72nd percentile h-1b, gelof has 80%+. they had a 45/40 and 55/50 run grade from Eric respectively. How can we identify players going forward who are better than and outproducing their run grades.

Ben Clemens: I dunno man, minor league statcast maybe?

Ben Clemens: I tend to just discount speed grades

Ben Clemens: they seem to change a lot and also don’t seem to matter much?

Guest: Following up on the Guardians’ OF question earlier – is Estevan Florial going to get real run in CF? It only seems like he made the roster because he’s out of options. If it’s Tyler Freeman, are they just trying to take the Padres’ “Shortstops Everywhere” model, except with slap hitting backup SS? And why wouldn’t DeLauter get an early look (in a corner) for a team so devoid of OF power?

Ben Clemens: I…. don’t know

Most Boring Stadium: Easily Nats park. Has the character of vanilla white man in a black suit. It looks well-kept and fine, but it has the substance of a Walmart

Ben Clemens: globe life is costco-esque

Ben Clemens: I don’t hate Nats park, but I agree it’s really boring

Ben Clemens: I love the area across the street whose name I forget though

Ben Clemens: I’ve played many a cornhole game there to forget how the Nats are doing

Guest: I also hate Yankee Stadium, as a die hard fan. The old stadium was miserable getting in and out of, terribly outdated, had the worst food options in the league…but it had a great vibe and electric crowds. The new one is just a concrete block with good sandwiches and no electricity whatsoever. It’s the opposite of a home-field advantage.

Ben Clemens: yeah I agree with this

Ben Clemens: I went to the old stadium several times and it was gross and also super fun

Appa Yip Yip: Hey do you think that the league jumping into sports gambling with both feet and no parachute might end up being a bad thing?

Ben Clemens: Nah, never

george: why does it take so long for comment/question to post?

Ben Clemens: There are 100 or so questions in the queue

Ben Clemens: so I’m just clicking on them as they catch my eye

Kiermaier’s Piercing Green Eyes: RE: Food, Citi Field does a perfectly cromulent pastrami on rye and deserves credit for that. That’s good ballpark eating.

J: I’ll go to bat for Minute Maid… when the roof is open (sadly only ~5% of the time). Platonic ideal of the 90’s-00’s retro stadium design wave IMO

Ben Clemens: that’s another place I’d like to go

Ben Clemens: it’s tough b/c I’ve heard exactly that, that you should go when the roof is open

Ben Clemens: but since I don’t live there, it’s really hard to control

RTJ: speaking of ball parks, what do you think the chances of the red sox or cubs playing in a new stadium in your lifetime

Ben Clemens: 0%

Ben Clemens: at this point they’d just upgrade

liam: also ended up with 3 catchers in ottoneu (adley, willson, kirk.) adley feels pretty untouchable to me, and willson is only $5. Worth it to have two studs at the position, or try to flip willson and hope kirk keeps hitting and stays healthy?

Ben Clemens: yeah, you can’t mess with Adley, so I’d just be trying to flip Kirk and Willson

Ben Clemens: I’m in a similar position where I have Kirk and Will Smith for cheap so they’re just stuck on the roster

Ben Clemens: and that’s that

onomatopoeia: My DMV hot take: Nats Park > Camden Yards

Ben Clemens:

Troy: T-Mobile Park in Seattle is just a wonderful place to watch a game. High quality stadium, tons of beers, food options from some of the better restaurants around Seattle (ie moto pizza, DTF, etc)

Ben Clemens: sorry there’s a din tai fung in the stadium??

george: For my 5×5 draft tonight, with OBP, better to use BAT X or ATC projections

Ben Clemens: I use ATC

Ben Clemens: they are both excellent

Mr. Redlegs: Great American deserves more love. The view of the Ohio River from the upper deck is

TomBruno23: Any summer concerts on your calendar?

Ben Clemens: A few, actually

Ben Clemens: Vampire Weekend and Cold War Kids

Ben Clemens: also I will probably find some excuse to go to the Greek in berkeley and see someone

speed: its been shown to matter significantly for sb and defense which impact fantasy players – a real portion of your readership. obviously information that isn’t publicly available who help. I’m asking, with the tools currently available, how can you help us help ourselves?

Ben Clemens: use projections, I guess? Ask the fantasy analysts? This is a really hard thing to figure out without data is the point

Ben Clemens: I think it’s just unavoidable that something like that is gonna be volatile

Ben Clemens: public-side analysts are getting SO much data these days and are still finding this tough

Jestaplero: My favorite ballpark is not MLB: Maimonides Park, home of the Brooklyn Cyclones. Nestled between Coney Island amusement park and the Atlantic Ocean. Ever been?

Ben Clemens: I have! and it’s good

RTJ: see you Thursday, Ben!

Ben Clemens: well now I’m very curious as to who this is

Ippei You Back: @onomatopoeia: That hot take fills me with rage. I used to live across the street from Camden Yards and I loved it. AndiTookThatPersonally.gif

Ben: Favorite Minor League park you’ve been to?

Ben Clemens: Hudson Valley, which is not great, but I got married in Beacon and went to a game two nights before so it has a real soft spot in my brain

Ben Clemens: failing that, Knoxville b/c I just spent sooooo much time there as a kid

Ben Clemens: Greenville and Sacramento are both objectively very good stadiums too

Ben Clemens: salt river fields rocks

Andy Friedman: LA pitching prospect (River Ryan) for BAL middle infield prospect (Jordan Westburg). Doesn’t this type of trade make sense for both teams?

Ben Clemens: I think River Ryan is more highly regarded enough that there would be more throw ins. BUt I also think that LA needs pitching badly enough that it doesn’t really suit their long-term org goals

Uncle Spike: Have you ever had an all-hands on deck moment while work at Fangraphs where it was expected that everyone meet about a topic immediately and articles/media start being produced ASAP?  Like if Ohtani came out and said he bet on baseball, what would happen at FG?

Ben Clemens: We have a decent amount of them when it comes to big players signing

Ben Clemens: there was some lockout stuff like that too

Ben Clemens: generally speaking though, since we’re doing non-collaborative projects (write article, publish article), individual people get assigned all hands on deck things

Ben Clemens: there have been trades where Eric and I (or Tess and Dan, or some combination thereof) are waiting to write

Ben Clemens: like when Soto got dealt at the deadline

Ben Clemens: I was on Soto watch for days beforehand

Buck: Ben, I’m about to be in an auction draft of an NL-Only league. Who would you pursue the hardest among a group of Trea Turner, Ketel Marte, Nolan Arenado and Paul Goldschmidt? Could have enough cash for two of that group. Also trying to decide which Padres starting pitcher I want to go all-in for, but have been hoping for Michael King all winter. What would you do? Thanks.

Ben Clemens: I think I’d go for K Mart (is that his nickname? can it be?) hardest out of that group

Ben Clemens: I’m a little down on Turner

Ben Clemens: I’m just worried that his bat will be more okay than great this year and that he isn’t stealing enough to pya you back for that

Ben Clemens: the Cards guys both strike me as intersting bounce back bets if they’re cheap

Ben Clemens: so I’d be looking to scoop them if hte price is right, but I think their lack of multi-category appeal and the fact that they play in a pitcher’s park means they’re not ride-or-dies for me

Dan: I don’t really remember any stadium being good or bad. My take away is always oh right I forgot how awesome the energy of a crowd at live sports is.

Ben Clemens: couldn’t agree with this take more

Ben Clemens: or well, the second part

Ben Clemens: I  remember stadiums very well

PNC Park Goated: I went to the University of Pittsburgh in the mid-2010’s and my engineering class all received nosebleed tix to see the Pirates play back when they didn’t suck. Best nosebleed seats in baseball for sure. The view is scenic and it’s so walk-able. The veggie options as a vegetarian made me happy too. Properly highly regarded

Ben Clemens: oh yeah great veggie food there, which is also true at oracle and Citi

Ben Clemens: I’m definitely not vegetarian but I don’t eat a ton of red meat so having options is very important to me

J: If you to Houston in April you’ve got a very good chance to catch an open roof game. Otherwise the roof remains pretty much permanently closed until mid/late October

Ben Clemens: I need to line up a Houston trip for next year then

Ben Clemens: I’m dying for some great Vietcajun food

Ben Clemens: and if I can do that plus see some ball, how can I go wrong

Ben Clemens: Alright everyone, thank you so much for chatting today and for letting me veer hard off topic into stadiums

Ben Clemens: “letting me” as if you had a choice, but tolerating me while I did it!

Ben Clemens: I’m gonna go make some bold and bad predictions on Effectively Wild

Ben Clemens: happy opening week everyone