Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat – 10/26/26
Hey everybody, happy Monday. Really fun pair of World Series games, and I'm getting excited for Game 3 tonight. I'm happy to talk about really pretty much anything baseball-wise, in addition to World Series questions, so if you're wondering whether something's topical enough — it is.
But surely, still most of the questions will be about the WS. Let's get started.
Down 2-0, do you think Kevin Cash wishes he would've brought in Baker at some point in the series? Should he? I get not wanting to expose your guys too often to the opposition, but at some point you need to win the game in front of you.
Hm, I'm sure he wishes he came in at some point. But I think Game 2 was the only realistic place where he might have, and the truth is that shuffling the deck chairs around is just shuffling the deck chairs around.
Like, in Game 1, it's actually good he didn't use Baker? They just didn't score enough, you know? Bringing in your closer when you're down the entire game is just a low-percentage play
In Game 2, yeah, the Rays had a lead, bummer Baker didn't pitch. But Cash was trying to use all of his best relievers in that game, which makes sense. The guys who coughed up the lead, Seymour and Wells, have been in his high leverage crew this month.
If you bring in Baker earlier, you're just using those guys to close instead, you know?
I am sure he wishes it was different. But like… sometimes the plans are good and the other team is better.
Please tell me that MLB is going to address this awful checked swing mess. Nobody has any idea what is going on, least of which the umpires.
I really hope they move forward with the absurd 45-degree angle on the automated check swing system because it’d be really funny to see slow bat guys like Arraez abuse the hell out of it
Super glad for all the check swing dialogue we're going to get this winter, he said sadly
I don't know, this is a tough problem. I think it's pretty clear that the 45-degree angle is not something they'd use in the majors, as it's very hitter-friendly. But I'm open to the idea of making check swings mean something different than they do now, because they haven't really been umped the same way throughout history.
anyone who tells you that some central intent is being preserved is trying to deceive you
Like, watch old videos. The things that umpires count as swings change over time. That's fine! The strike zone changes over time too. But I'm really annoyed by anyone who thinks that the way it is, right now, is just so blindingly and obviously right that talking about change is for dummies
I'll just say that it wouldn't be the worst thing if a little sensor in the 1B or HP ump's ear beeped on swings that exceeded the threshold.
would require testing. don't do this next year. but it's okay to think that check swings are annoyingly over-judgment calls. I give you permission to think that.
How many regular season games will we have next year? Set the O/U at say, 119.5?
Over!
i mean, I do not think an over/under is the right way to do this. I think I'd probably lift 161.5.
Losing games is a tail scenario. Both sides are trying to avoid it. The odds of missing games, to me, have to be below 50%
and then, if we miss games, I mean, I have no idea.
so I think I'd just say we're -500 (~83%) to have a full 162-game regular season. maybe 90%?
If World Series teams could pick one player to take for another playoff team, how high does Gavin Williams go? Both these teams could use another great starter.
I mean, I do think he'd go fairly high. But I wouldn't take him over Skubal, Yamamoto, or Sale
Pitchers would all go very high. Williams would go high among those pitchers. But I would probably lean on the guys with demonstrated long track records of dominance who are also pitching well right now
Not a question, but hi Ben!
hi mom!
"Bauers came back for the health insurance" is this year's "Kershaw and Stafford went to the same high school" I regret to inform
Boy, you aren't kidding. I guess I'm happy that it shows the populist anger sweeping the country right now
the fact that this resonates means that people get the feeling of needing to stick something out or make some decision you wouldn't normally make b/c you need insurance
but yeah, we get it. good story. there are other cool stories too. let's hear those.
Ben, thanks for chatting. If you're the White Sox, what do you do with Antonacci? Baseball rat, sparkplug, but poor defense…and is being hit by pitches a sustainable skill?
so, I do think that being hit by pitches is a sustainable skill
One example might be that Antonacci got hit 35 (!) times in the minors in 2025
but yeah, he clearly behaves in a way designed to increase his odds of getting hit, and that does help his OBP. I wonder if it might not help him stay on the field as much as is optimal long-term, but that's a question for hte future, I see how his scrappiness and basically taking a general view of maxing out every edge has helped him succeed
I think he's going to get more acceptable at defense. It's not like he's a complete plodder out there. He didn't play outfield in the minors, let's give him a winter of working on it before we say he's just a DH
what I would do with Antonacci is make him my everyday left fielder, tell him that playing good solid hard-working defense is yet another skill that will keep him on the field, and let him loose
big fan of his, I would like to bet on him figuring out defense at an easy position. And the bat plays.
What issue might be the most difficult for the two sides to come together on or is it really just cap and floor?
well 'counting what baseball revenue is' is probably the real central sticking point
if you say cap floor but also say that player salaries are going up 22% next year, well, do you actually think they're going to say no?
I'm not really sure how this is going to work. To me there are some clear points of agreement, largely around TV revenue redistribution. And then a lot of the differences past that are window dressing. Both sides are proposing cap/floor systems, just soft vs hard. And the reason that the hard cap is such an anathema to the union is partially their ideological opposition, but it's also partially that they (correctly, imo) don't think the owners would play fair in the revenue department.
That's, like, blindingly obvious. They don't play fair in the revenue department. They all pretend they're losing money using accounting tricks, it is what it is. That's business.
the players aren't some noble group looking out for hte fans, to be clear. Don't get that mixed up. To a first approximation, both sides are in favor of shearing the sheep for as much wool as possible. The disagreement is over who gets the sweaters.
While we're fixing how check swings are called (I am 100% behind making enforcement better for the batter), can we do something about how pick-off throws to first by left handed pitchers are almost always balks? (No particular WS play in mind, it just irritates me.)
Oh, please no. I would be in favor of just abolishing the balk, personally.
keep the step-off rules if you want, fine. but ugh, i do not want more judgment calls going to review on stuff that is a relatively minor part of the game. and you just know that every single playoff pickoff through would get challenged for a balk if you could. they give them two challenges, managers are ITCHING to use them
Players with >5 bWAR & 30+ homer seasons at 31 or older: Nolan Arenado, Francisco Lindor, Jose Ramirez, Aaron Judge…… and Brandon Lowe.
So, Lowe is a free agent this winter. I just put together the top 50 to get started on blurbs and contract projections and stuff. I had a REALLY hard time putting him in the right spot.
Lowe or Clay Holmes? I dunno! Lowe or Jazz? Closer than you might think. Lowe or Gleyber Torres? …. well, Lowe, actually, I didn't have that one THAT close
When the FO says the team had "accountability problems", what does it really mean? Players did not get punished for sloppy plays?
I think the thing it means most is 'we lost more games than expected this year'
but yeah, something along the lines of the clubhouse not having a virtuous cycle kind of culture where people try to improve and correct mistakes, either b/c they fear punishment or b/c they want to help out their friends
I don't think it has to be about punishment. I feel like the Rays are a great example of a very accountable team where it seems like they're doing it b/c they don't want to let the team down. I think it's more about people being willing to buy in for the collective improvement, and there are a ton of different ways to achieve that buyin
Did you catch the slick Pratt play on the Chandler Simpson ground ball in Game 2? Making the difficult routine, not just Taylor Walls!
Pratt is a maddening defender to watch b/c he goofs easy plays but also is clearly very skilled
sometimes he makes plays that I didn't think he could, and doesn't even make them look hard. and then yeah, he'll get in his head and chuck one in the dugout
Chandler Simpson, too. Gold Glove finalist who I voted for 2nd in LF in fielding bible. He makes many of his catches look preposterously easy b/c he is so fast. and hten he drops gimmes
If you had your pick of any reliever in baseball, in the form we most recently saw them, how many are you taking over Aaron Ashby right now? Is the answer… zero?
Maybe this is cheating, but I think I'd take Aroldis Chapman. He struck out 100% of the batters he faced this postseason
Yeah Ashby is rolling. I might still take Mason Miller just b/c I like betting on longer-term talent too, but obviously relievers and pitchers in general can get hot or cold, be on a roll, etc. And Ashby is on some kind of roll right now.
I'm working on an article for tomorrow about what pockets of hitters in the TBR lineup he's facing. That's the kind of stuff I'd be worried about if I were the Brewers, or at least if I were teh guy on the Brewers who is paid to worry about what might go wrong.
If/when the league expands to 32 teams, do you think it's likely that they also add 4 MiLB teams for each of those teams or do you think this means they restructure the entire MiLB system? Do away with low-A or complex leagues? And if they add 9 MiLB teams, where should they put them? Tons of states out west that have nothing. Put a team in Cheyenne!
Two immediate thoughts came to mind on me for this. First, Meg and I actually wrote a cool article about this back in 2021:
https://blogs.fangraphs.com/redrawing-the-milb-map-visualizi…
The interior northwest and Appalachia got hit pretty hard in the previous round of affiliated ball shrinking
I think that most likely those teams would need MiLB affiliates, redoing the affiliate system seems very fraught to me. but there are options, b/c there used to be many more minor league teams
Second, my cousin used to run (help run? run the business of?) the Casper Cutthroats, a summer wood bat league team in Wyoming. I went to a game and it was charmingly low-budget and fun
put a team in Cheyenne, indeed
"accountability problems" just means that the (field) manager did something differently from how the FO wanted. It's a fun buzzword because it appeals to the frustrated fan who thinks the players don't care as much as they do, but it doesn't actually mean anything.
Yeah, that's another interpretation. I think I generally agree that it's used as a post hoc justification, though, and doesn't mean much.
if you have a team that really does have an accountability problem, that sounds suboptimal. But I'm guessing that accountability is hard to define and that 'well this didn't work out like I hoped' is the main way people decide whether tehre was an accountability problem.
if the rays lose, what off season move do you think they should focus on? and same for the brewers
I think that the Rays, win or lose, should be focused on assembling a rotation for next year first, and on hunting for bargains who can bulk up their depth at 2b and RF second
Martinez and Peralta are both FA's. Rasmussen is an FA after next year. If I'm them, I have already been trying to figure out which minor leaguers and whatnot are options for the next few years' core rotation, but I'm also hunting for some offseason pitching bargains who I think can give me a lot of acceptable innings. The Steven Matz/Nick Martinez role, essentially.
but really, if I'm the Rays, I want to keep Rays-ing. Their model is working pretty well. I'd keep doing it – and I'm pretty sure that one of the key parts of the model is to keep the pipeline of solid contributors flowing.
As for the Brewers, I think that I'd be interested in going outside the org for another starter if a good opportunity presented itself. and honestly, I think they might be interested in retaining Jake bauers
Oh yeah: I can't remember who was mentioning this all summer, but some commenter was very insistent that Bauers was going to draw a QO, and I was fairly dismissive/skeptical. But a mea culpa is in order. The longer I looked at my free agency rankings the higher I slid Bauers, and yeah, even though it feels a little weird, he's going to be one of the top free agents this winter
Don't get too caught up in the past is my advice here
Who's been your favorite player of the World Series so far? I think I go William Contreras. He's such a showman. He's on his way to challenging 25% of called strikes. He winked after he caught a pop up. The stacking bricks celebration. And he hits the ball hard as hell, throws it strong. Just a fun baseball player
Yeah, Contreras is very fun to watch. I really enjoy Victor Mesa Jr. too. I like watching a lot of players on both teams. Really enjoyable vibes world series for me, in addition to being a really enjoyable series
Hypothetical: lockout drags on, cities of MLB teams decided to create their own league and literally recreate MLB, with slight changes to bypass IP law. How quickly do you think they could get revenue to like say ~80% of where it is today?
I think this would take a very long time.
The laundry matters. The built-up relationship with the team matters. The history matters. I don't think that you can quickly fix that. Now, if you were saying 15%? Probalby quickly. But 80% is a lot.
What would it take to get relegation to mlb. &Think it would be so fun and even if it introduces variance in owner’s finances, I think it raises their ceiling
Um, it won't happen
I don't see how it could raise the owner's ceilings, either, to be honest. Like, they certainly won't see it that way.
It would require completely changing the affiliated ball system, you'd have to have a league of teams taht could realistically be promoted, etc.
We've talked here about having different 'structure of baseball' ideas to go during the winter and hte lockout, when 'how will baseball look in the future' is more top of mind. I have a few ideas for systems that would mimic promotion/relegation in that there would be some kinds of costs and benefits for doing well and poorly. But that style of system wouldn't work in the US, I don't think, so you'd have to be very creative about how you do it.
I've pondered the Brewers bringing back Bauers but keep running into the need. Yes, a bird in the hand is better than 2-3 prospects in the bush but they are already going to face tough decisions with Turang, Ortiz, Frelick, Mitchell. Bauers is the on the wrong side of 30 with a short history of success, fantastic uptick aside. But, is it worth having a farm system if you don't have space for the prospects and aren't willing to spend on free agency? I may be wording it poorly but it seems they can comfortably move on.
Yeah, it's really interesting. I spent the summer (and some of the offseason) focused on how the Woodruff decision (give him a QO, he unexpectedly accepts) kinda burned the Brewers b/c they weren't expecting to spend that money there, and that they just overcame it. But as I look through their farm system, I don't see a lot of immediate guys who I think might help them with what Bauers does; lefty power with little defensive value.
I'm not saying give him 5/100 or something. But surely, they won't 'comfortably' move on from the best first base season they've had in…. i dunno, a decade?
it's historically been a problem spot for them. I'm looking through their primary 1b seasons and like, 2018 Jesus Aguilar? Eric Thames for just a brief instant? The Brewers have a bunch of team building skills, 1b is not one of them, and Bauers worked out better than anyone hoped. If I were them, I'd at least have a long think about the fact that they're really good at filling in middle infield and basically the whole outfield with an endless stable of athletic dudes, and haven't really done that at the big bopper positions.
Who is the #1 guy you would love to see have a "world series moment?" For me, I would say Brandon Woodruff.
That's a very good one. I'd put Peralta and Yelich on the list, too. And Cedric Mullins. Basically veterans who I think of as pretty good, but who haven't been to the series before
doesnt Milwaukee have a big bopper in the minors, Andrew Fischer, who hits left handed and plays first bas?
yeah but you don't get to where the Brewers are by counting on one guy. that's very un-Milwaukee. They are defense (or offense) in depth.
like, if the Brewers are patching in right or center field, they have a lot of options, and that's why I think it works. Maybe Garrett Mitchell will barely play for two years because of injury, but that's fine. They have 15 dudes who can fill that role (only a slight exaggeration)
I think of them as building teams with overlapping coverage a lot of places. I also think of them as pretty weak at overlapping coverage for the positions where you should play power hitters b/c it's pretty cheap defensively to do so (DH, 1B)
Probably gets more complicated than that, and I'm not certain I'm right or anything, but if I'm them, I default to being more willing to leave the org in spots that I'm generally worse at filling.
Those are good points and hard to sand over. He's obviously a fan favorite and perhaps the only legit bopper on the team, although many have power potential. I hope they don't QO him and really want him to get what's best for him after this phenomenal rebirth.
I said in a recent response that I will be very interested in how Bauers is seen in this off-season. Beyond just what the Brewers will do, do you see other teams ready to offer him a multi-year deal at least $15M/yr?
I'm really unsure. I know that he's in a group of four hitters who I'm very uncertain about but who had great years this year. And I might be least willing to give him a deal out of that group, but it's really close, and this is a WEAK class.
Here's one thought I turned over in my head quite a bit during my ranking process: I got granular ZiPS projections for every free agent. Bauers has the third-best projected offensive production over the next x years, for pretty much any x.
Seiya is ahead of him, and Teruaki Sato is marginally ahead. Arozarena is marginally behind him.
I wouldn't just give out offers based on one projection system, obviously. But i think that's pretty telling. He's done enough, and this class is weak enough, that he looks like one of the best bets to be a good hitter going forward out of the bunch. And he plays a position where teams generally pay more than a WAR-based projection would imply.
I do think he'll end up getting 2+ years at 15+ per, I guess? I still haven't exactly nailed down all my projections and one dial that I'm really struggling with is 'lockout effect on overall guaranteed contracts', which could swing my numbers pretty significantly
but there are only 4-5 hitters in this group who I would be more excited about paying than Bauers, it's a seriously thin group
Calling my shot- one of the lefties will take Peralta deep tonight. Yelich would be awesome but could see Bauers, Turang or Mitchell going yard, too.
The margins for error are smaller in a small market and you could've certainly said the same for the Cubs a decade ago, for instance, but with the Dodgers' core aging, Milwaukee increasingly seems set up for multiple titles if they indeed pull this out don't they? I would argue moreso than any non-Dodger winner of the last decade.
i mean, I think I might give the edge to the 2021 Braves, who had all those great contracts and indeed have been pretty good postseason contenders for years even with things breaking poorly for them since then. But the Brewers have to be up there.
Tell me you saw the Yandy Diaz AI slop picture during Game One. And if so – just go off for a second
I mean, all the AI slop graphics they're using just reek of laziness.
I think that one of my biggest beefs is with these dumb google commercials, though. Like, really, you're using the most powerful supercomputers and models in the world to get baseball insights, you want to share them with us, and they're : games are weirder when there's a full moon? players play better on their bobblehead days?
Google cloud, do you believe these things? Are you just doing lies, damn lies, and statistics? Do you assert that these are useful? DO you think this is the kind of advanced research people should be doing with Google? I sure hope not (the bark in the park commercial gets a pass b/c the dogs are cute)
it really irks me b/c when people say they have a problem with statistics, they often have a problem with BAD statistics. and now an official partner of MLB is out here making people distrust statistics.
the one last year about whether hitters who tapped the plate with their bat did better… who greenlit that?
just say google helps baseball teams make decisions if you have nothing useful to say, imo
and thank you for listening to today's 'Ben Rants'. I'll be here all week – but you won't be able to talk to me about it until next Monday, when my regular chat might be pre-empted by a top 50 free agents chat. Have a wonderful week, enjoy this awesome world series, and I'll talk to you again soon.
Ben is a writer at FanGraphs. He can be found on Bluesky @benclemens.
I’ve made that exact same rant at least twice, according to my wife
The 2017 Astors were probably better set up than the Brewers, especially when accounting for division competition.
“just go off for a second” ask and you shall receive. That rocked. My take is they are aware of the AI fear (well founded) and are trying to make it cloying and whimsical in those commercials. Thanks for the chat as always, Ben
Thank you Ben. Stuff like the useless Apple TV stats are one thing, those Google commercials are an abomination.