Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat – 2/1/21

Ben Clemens: Hey everyone, and welcome to the chat.

Ben Clemens: Gonna be a lot to talk about today, so let’s get right to it.

George: Hey Ben! I was hoping for your thoughts on Kieboom/Garcia in Washington. Which would you pick to be more likely a contributing player for the Nats?

Ben Clemens: Big fan of Kieboom, not like I have a ton of inside information on him but I find how much people have come down on him after a few partial seasons of at bats strange

Ben Clemens: He has 165 PA’s in the majors, give it a little time

>this guy<: Ben “pretend” I am not all that smart and explain to me why we do not know whether there will be a DH in the NL by February 1!

DH: How ridiculous is it that it’s Feb 1 and there’s no news on a universal DH for 2021?

Ben Clemens: Okay, I actually explained this to a relative who doesn’t follow baseball at all last week, so I’ve got you

Ben Clemens: The owners think that the players would pay a lot of money to have a universal DH

Ben Clemens: So they keep asking for valuable concessions in exchange for the DH

Ben Clemens: The players don’t actually care that much. They’d take it, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not an extra roster spot or anything

Ben Clemens: So the owners keep saying “Hey we’ll give you the DH in exchange for that pot of gold”

Ben Clemens: And the players are like “no what this pot of gold is full of gold you idiots”

Pumpsie Green: The Jays are looking for pitching, and may be looking to move an outfielder. How about Randal Grichuk for David Price? Helps the Dodgers stay under the luxury tax by spreading the outlay over 3 years instead of 2.

Ben Clemens: This trade would make sense if the Dodgers decided they wanted to get worse by a good amount for no reason

Ben Clemens: So I mean, never say never

Ben Clemens: But yeah, that feels like something the Dodgers don’t at all need to do

Ben Clemens: They hvae other levers to pull cap-wise and also, it’s a marginal penalty

Ben Clemens: Certainly not enough to move a valuable player to fix it

Gil McDougald: What is your reaction to the MLB proposal to play a 154-game season starting in late April, keep the universal DH, expand the playoffs, etc.?

RE: NL DH: I understand that expanded playoffs is huge for the owners and worth more than the DH, but what else would the players even want to even out that deal that isn’t big enough to be decided by the next CBA?

Ben Clemens: I don’t think the players should accept expanded playoffs for this year, period.

Ben Clemens: Like you said, anything big enough to work as a value offset is big enough for the CBA negotiations

Ben Clemens: That said, the OWNERS should chip in the universal DH in exchange for some marginal thing, getting their way on spring training or something like that

Ben Clemens: It’s equally annoying for players and front offices to not have resolution on this

Guest: while driving, i just heard mlb radio announce that ST is being pushed back a month and that the season for 2021 will be reduced to 154 games.

Ben Clemens: That’s what MLB proposed. The union is extremely likely to reject it.

bosoxforlife: On a scale of 1-10, where do you put the level of distrust between the owners and the MLBPA and how will it manifest itself right now.

Ben Clemens: It’s like a 9

Ben Clemens: It will manifest itself in the players not countering the owners’ offer

Ben Clemens: And likely in the 2021 season playing out as the CBA dictates rather than with some concessions from both sides for COVID

Guest: Will there be an Eddie Rosario signing piece?

Ben Clemens: Yeah, it should be popping up soon

Simon Garf, Your Uncle: If Ozuna is a DH, would you rather have 3 years of Nelson Cruz decline phase or 5 years of Ozuna at 1.5x the price?

Guest: Do you reckon the reason Ozuna hasn’t signed is partly to do with MLB dragging their heels about the universal DH and partly about Ozuna wanting to get paid like someone who can play in the field?

Ben Clemens: I think this is totally why there’s a holdup on Ozuna

Ben Clemens: Even if a team thinks he can play the outfield, there’s a very different market for him based on whether teams have 8 or 9 hitters

Simon Garf, Your Uncle: Do you believe Ozuna’s 2020 is a reflection of his future worth, or was he just hot for a lot of 2020?

Ben Clemens: It’s lame but I say somewhere in between

Ben Clemens: He’s not goin to hit like he did in 2020, of course

Ben Clemens: But getting healthy after his shoulder bothered him the entire time he was with the Cards was big

Ben Clemens: And he’s been a 121 wRC+ hitter over the past 3 years even with him being hurt for 2 of them

Ben Clemens: That’s a nice batter

bosoxforlife: Is it possible, perish the thought, that 2021 is the season that has the work stoppage. Lockout or strike, call it what you will, even before a new CBA is attempted to be negotiated.

Ben Clemens: Nah, I don’t think so

Ben Clemens: Doesn’t really seem like a solid bargaining position for either side to move early to stop play

Guest: Do you agree that the Cardinals taking on 7yrs / $165M for Arendado is a huge risk?  I feel like everyone is overlooking just how bad he was last year and acting like there is a 100% chance his shoulder is fine for the longer term.

Ben Clemens: Surplus value is only part of the picture

Ben Clemens: It’s hard to concentrate that much WAR in one player, and the Cards have done a really good job finding excess value out of random roster spots

Ben Clemens: With a huge problem developing 4 WAR players

Ben Clemens: Even if Arenado ends up underwater on a surplus value front there’s a ton of value in concentrating it like that

Ben Clemens: No one has looked at Cardinals rosters in recent years and thought ‘oh if they didn’t have Matt Carpenter on the books they’d be able to afford so much more stuff’

Ben Clemens: They’ve thought ‘how come this team has no all stars’?

Al Roquefort: What FA signing or trade would you characterize as sneaky good and why?

Ben Clemens: I’m still gonna say Mike Minor here

Ben Clemens: The Royals needed pitching, the contract is a nice level such that if he’s good while the team is bad he can be traded, and I also think it was just a bargain either wya

George: What do you make of the weird corner outfield market? Eaton, Schwarber, Joc, Rosario all got basically the same contract but it felt like the money amounts were in a extremely weird order.

Ben Clemens: Yeah, shows there was value in signing early

Ben Clemens: For players

Ben Clemens: Teams who wanted to make big acquisitions in free agency were willing to sign whoever would accept the deal first

Duffy Dyer: What is your favorite junk food?

Ben Clemens: Tortilla chips and salsa, and it’s just not even close

Ben Clemens: Definitely my biggest junk food weakness

Simon Garf, Your Uncle: The Mariners have a number of prospects who have yet to make their debut (Kelenic, Trammell, Gilbert, Cal Raleigh) and a number of guys whose major league value is as yet unknown (JP Crawford, Ty France, Shed Long, Dylan Moore, Evan White).  As you can see, that’s a lot of uncertainty.  Would you sign a few known quantities (e.g. Wong, Tai Walker) to raise the floor and give the team a chance at competing in 2021, or, just kind of sort the wheat from the chaff this season and gear up for 2022?

Ben Clemens: I think that plan is reasonable, teams signing a few people the year before they’re ready and figuring out who works has been a good plan in general

Ben Clemens: I’m more into Taijuan Walker than Wong for them just b/c Wong is probably going to take a shorter deal and will cost a bit more, but I’d like either move for them if the prices were reasonable

bosoxforlife: Am i just hallucinating or are the Red Sox a lot better than they are being treated by the various media?

Ben Clemens: Oh totally agree

Ben Clemens: I think they’re in the Jays/Rays tier in the ALE

Houzer: What would the Tigers need to offer Washington in order to nab Kieboom? Would Skubal do the trick?

Ben Clemens: Prospect-for-prospect challenge trades don’t happen very often, and I don’t see why this one would

Ben Clemens: It’d be different if they weren’t both roughly similar levels — limited MLB time should probably be in AAA

Ben Clemens: Skubal is actually older

Guest: The Fangarphs depth charts have the Yankees with the best rotation in baseball.  You buying the big bounce-back from Kluber and Taillon?

Ben Clemens: I am, at least a little bit

Ben Clemens: It also helps to have Gerrit Cole!

RIP Harambe: Giants clear books post 2021 + their recent track record of free agency success = a near future dark horse?

Ben Clemens: Yes, I think so

Ben Clemens: The major downside is that the NLW is going to be really tough for the next few years at least

Matt: What do you think Willy Adames’ trade value is?  Seems like the Rays could roll with Wendle and Walls until Wander is ready and not suffer that much

LB: Out of the multitude of potential trade options (with varying levels of feasibility), which SS would you expect to make the most sense in terms of acquisition cost/performance expectations for the Reds? There are obvious financial *and* prospect limitations, but I still believe that the Reds want to make a “winning” move

Drew: How would you address SS need for the Reds ? Would you think T. Mahle would be good starting point for W. Adames trade ? Thanks

Ben Clemens: Reds shortstop questions are so hot right now

Ben Clemens: I’m not an ‘industry sources’ type guy but I can tell you with 100% confidence that Adames’s value is a source of great disagreement across the league

Ben Clemens: Mahle is a broadly similar player to Adames at a different position, though with a lower floor and higher ceiling

Ben Clemens: I keep hearing a lot of Rays fans agitating for Luis Castillo, but I don’t see it; it’s an extra year of control for Adames but in exchange Castillo is a lot better right now

Ben Clemens: I think that the most likely outcome might still be Amed Rosario

Simon Garf, Your Uncle: I fail to see how the Padres do not have the best rotation in baseball.  Maybe Gore and Lamet are being discounted?  Or maybe I’m counting Clevinger in my mental calculus.

Ben Clemens: Yeah, eh, with Clevinger I think they might have the best rotation

Ben Clemens: I think the only thing holding them back is that thye have one of the best 10 starters in baseball as their ace

Ben Clemens: Instead of one of the best 2, like the Mets and Yankees have

Simon Garf, Your Uncle: Do you think Trevor Bauer has also befuddled the market with an amazing 2020 stat line, but underlying doubt about his future performance, particularly if “grippy stuff” may have helped the spin?

Ben Clemens: This is definitely a hot question with Bauer, but I think it misunderstands the state of the rest of the league

Ben Clemens: I hear a lot of people saying that hey, maybe enforcement will step up and Bauer will lose some spin

Ben Clemens: Yeah uh, 90% of pitchers are using grippy things on the ball

Ben Clemens: It’s not like only Bauer would be affected

Ben Clemens: I think that a bigger question about Bauer’s 2020 is whether his ERA is reflective of a huge step forward or just variance

Ben Clemens: It’s not like he ascended to some new plane of swinging strike rate

Ben Clemens: the NLC had a weak overall slate

Ben Clemens: He ran a .215 BABIP for 11 starts and we’re saying he was just some pine tar away from being an ace? Eh

Ben Clemens: Big eh from me

Isolated Thinker: What subtle move(s) can the Marlins make to remain somewhat competitive?

Ben Clemens: I think they could use a starter to spell the youngsters (Elieser Hernandez is 25 and the oldest starter in their rotation at the moment)

Red Ruffing: Fill in the blank. The next market inefficiency in baseball is ____.

Ben Clemens: I thought Kevin’s answer on this earlier today was quite solid, injury prevention

Ben Clemens: I think pitcher usage remains a potential large one. Six man rotation injury research is where I’d be dropping some R&D coin if I were a tema

George: I know this is crazy, but if the Nats offered Soto for Franco, Arozarena, and Patino would the Rays accept?

Ben Clemens: I think they would, but it’s so outlandish that it’s hard to exactly pin down the specifics

Ben Clemens: As great as someone might be projected, Juan Soto is basically Wander Franco’s ceiling

Ben Clemens: Because Juan Soto is basically everyone’s ceiling

Ben Clemens: And he’s still cheap too!

Carlos Chick Correa: Are the Rays admirable for doing a lot with a little or deplorable for not getting a better stadium and having cheapskate owners?

Ben Clemens: I’d argue that they are both of these things

Ben Clemens: It’s impressive to see what they do with their constraints

Ben Clemens: Restriction breeds creativity, and seeing how the Rays front office makes it work is cool

Ben Clemens: That said, the fact that Stu Sternberg gives them so little to work with, that sucks

Ben Clemens: They are just using the fact that MLB has a weird structure that lets you squeeze excess value out of players’ first 3-4 years to pay no money

Ben Clemens: We’re supposed to celebrate that? They could be better by spending more money, I don’t know how it’s admirable that they don’t spend more

bosoxforlife: Do you think teams are fighting a ghost when they try to find a way to prevent pitcher’s arms from falling off but still get enough usage to warrant the massive salaries?

Ben Clemens: I do in some cases. If you have Jacob deGrom, yeah, shut up with the 6 man rotation

Ben Clemens: That said, I think that teams with more middling rotations are probably not doing enough to protect their investments in players

Successful Steals: One of the many articles you have written that I enjoyed was the one answering whether successful steals apply measurable pressure.  In that article, you wrote that “[The Book] found a large advantage to batters when a runner was on first — exactly what proponents of steals suggested. There was a big problem, however. That advantage was for all runners on first base. The faster the runner, the smaller the advantage.”  Just so I understand then, The Book found that having a faster runner at first was worse for the batter than having a slower (i.e. non-steal threat) at first?  And “worse for the batter” means just plain worse for run production (all else being equal)?

Ben Clemens: Yeah, exactly

Ben Clemens: That said, a lot of the disadvantage (enough to make it statistically insignificant) from a faster runner

Ben Clemens: Is that batters perform worse when runners take off

Ben Clemens: The faster runners take off more often, etc etc

George: I asked the Soto trade question mostly because of the Houston Texans’ possible trade of Deshaun Watson. I am just trying to think up a comparable MLB trade of a young mega-star years away from FA.

Ben Clemens: Yeah, football is just so weird compared to baseball that way

Ben Clemens: A frequent conversation topic between me and my friends is how many first round draft picks the Jets would need to put on the table for the Chiefs to trade Mahomes

Ben Clemens: I’m of the opinion that it’s more than 10

Ben Clemens: Football just puts so much value into QB

Guest: Even stripping out ballpark effects, Arenado runs a big home/road split (128 wRC+ at home, 108 wRC+ on the road, for his career).  Should we expect a similar home/road split going forward?  Is that kind of split normal for hitters?

Ben Clemens: So, it’s a bigger split than normal, but Coors batters run bigger splits than normal. There’s been some good research that I don’t feel like digging up right now showing that batters who leave coors tend to improve on their ‘road numbers’

Ben Clemens: Going from altitude to not altitude is tough

Kiermaier’s Piercing Green Eyes: I think a vast majority of neutral observers prefer what SD is doing this season compared to, say, TB’s approach. But there’s a very real sense in which the latter is “smarter,” at least in terms of maximizing long-term WS odds with a given budget. And the league continues to incentivize mediocrity with expanded playoffs. Could we have our cake and eat it too if the postseason were made less random by playing more games? It’d be a completely different setup, it couldn’t all fit in October, but it could disincentivize the Moneyball era’s strategy of building a team to get to the playoffs and then shrugging and saying playoffs are a crapshoot.
To be clear, this is a question if it could work hypothetically, not whether the owners or players would want or agree to it.

Ben Clemens: Yeah, for sure

Ben Clemens: If you make it smart to build a super team, it will be smarter to build a super team

MB: How would you respond to a fan of a small-market team (actually small market, not whatever the heck the Cubs think they are)who is sympathetic to wanting to pay players what they are worth, but is worried that adjusting how and when players get paid will hurt their team’s ability to compete with larger market teams?

Ben Clemens: I’d say that’s a totally reasonable concern that would need to be addressed by the other changes that are being made

Ben Clemens: That said, with the amount of revenue sharing and playoff money splitting going into the game right now, even small-market teams are just starting wiht a giant pot of money

Guest: Re: the proposal from “Kiermaier’s Piercing Green Eyes”: Is it at all realistic to think that MLB ever could play enough postseason games to take out more than a negligible amount of randomness?  Even a 162-game full regular season doesn’t result in the best teams coming out on top.  Would we see any significant difference in, say, 7 versus 9 game series?

Ben Clemens: You’d have to give byes and stuff

Ben Clemens: Or give some teams game advantages in various series

Gord: What would you say needs to be done about the amount of teams that have seemingly thrown in the towel on the season already? It seems like half the league is non-competitive. Is a salary floor a possible option?

Ben Clemens: Teams are going to argue against it really hard

Ben Clemens: Because salary floors have a multiplicative effect on player salaries

Ben Clemens: Because teams completely not trying to spend money limit free agency markets

Ben Clemens: I just don’ think they’ll give it up period

Ben Clemens: The owners are incentivized to minimize their outlay on players, because they’re just profit-maximizing

Ben Clemens: And a salary floor would have a big effect if it was set at a reasonable level

Guest: What would the baseball equivalent to the Stafford-Goff trade be? Hockey twitter was trying to figure out their equivalent and there’s no real answer

Ben Clemens: Iiiiiinteresting

Ben Clemens: So it’s a good player on a big contract in exchange for a medium player on a big contract

George: Have you ever thought about writing about football analytically? I’m always on the hunt for an NFL-fangraphs

Ben Clemens: Not writing about it, but I love following football from a play design standpoint

Ben Clemens: So I read whatever Chris Brown of Smart Football writes, for example

Ben Clemens: I have a weird relationship with football, played it a lot as a kid and love the tactics but I find myself watching less and less of it

EbenezerBatflip: How many years on the ballot before David Ortiz makes it into the HoF? 1st year? 2nd?

Ben Clemens: I think he’s a first-ballot HOF’er

Ben Clemens: In that I think he’s a hall of famer and I hate the idea of ballot gating

EbenezerBatflip: Does Pedroia make it into the Hall? 50+ WAR, gold gloves, RoY, AL MVP, 3 rings, no PEDs or domestic abuse, played the game the right way every single day

Ben Clemens: So, I think he should

Ben Clemens: I dunno if he will, voters haven’t loved the short-career types

Ben Clemens: Chase Utley will be a good barometer

Orioles Tragic: It’s obviously small potatoes but thoughts on the Orioles/Angels Cobb for Jahmai Jones trade?

Ben Clemens: Think it makes sense for both teams, I’m writing it up for tomorrow actually

Appa Yip Yip: I’m partial to the idea that division winners go straight to the division series, but there’s a bunch of wild card teams that go through a quick two round mini playoff with a one game elimination round followed by three game series. Just a meat grinder from which one wild card team per league emerges beat all to hell to face a rested division champion.

Ben Clemens: Yeah totally fine with this one

Ben Clemens: This is what I mean by advantages for the best team

Guest: Goff equivalent:  Treat Turner (two years of relatively expensive arb eligibility, like two years of relatively expensive salaries remaining on Stafford’s deal) for Xander Bogaerts (expensive long-term contract much like Goff’s).

Ben Clemens: Doesn’t work b/c Bogaerts is better than Turner

Ben Clemens: Goff is probably a below-average starting QB

Gord: Soo how big of a nightmare are the next labor agreement meetings gonna be?

Ben Clemens: Oh yeah it’ll be incredibly contentious

Ben Clemens: I think one of the biggest things here is that the MLBPA has gotten their butts handed to them in the last two CBA’s, often without even attempting to extract anything

Ben Clemens: The last CBA, they were crowing about the fact that they all got extra seats on the Spring Training buses

Ben Clemens: So the PA is going to come in with a bunch of asks this time. They’ve been hiring up and coming up with big substantive plans

Ben Clemens: And the owners are going to think, because past experience has borne this out, that they can just browbeat the players into accepting a few trinkets in exchange for accepting the status quo

Ben Clemens: So the players will ask for a lot, the owners will counter with nothing, and blah blah blah so on so forth

George: Was there any reason besides money that other teams were not in on that Arenado trade? Feels like a deal that could have been matched/beat by a bunch of teams (DC, LA, ATL)

Ben Clemens: Supposedly the Rockies flatly told the Dodgers to stop calling them about Arenado, which explains that

Ben Clemens: I think that teams are just still equating surplus value to actual value too much

Ben Clemens: That said, the Nats really do seem willing to spend a lot of money

Ben Clemens: I will never fault htem that

Ben Clemens: But they truly do have a bit of a salary crunch upcoming

Guest: STL has had a first rate infield defense. Adding Arenado must add to that strength. If they resign Wong I am all in on STL pitchers (see Dakota Hudson). Thoughts?

Ben Clemens: Honestly I don’t even think it’s necessary to bring back Wong

Ben Clemens: Tommy Edman can pick it

Ben Clemens: When they have their max defense lineup in (O’Neill/Bader/Carlson behind Arenado/DeJong/Edman/Goldy) that’s probably the best defense in baseball

Ben Clemens: The biggest downside from a defensive standpoint in losing Wong was that Edman couldn’t play third anymore, and uh, now they have literally Nolan Arenado

Mike: Were there some trades that the Dodgers burned the Rockies on?

Ben Clemens: Amusingly, not really

Ben Clemens: That said, I get the feeling that the Rockies wouldn’t relish having the most popular player in franchise history this side of Todd Helton come back to town so often

Isolated Thinker: Stafford/Goff analogy:  K.Jansen for A.Chapman

Ben Clemens: Yeah this is a good one

Ben Clemens: It has the right salary/performance dichotomy

Ben Clemens: That said, the difference is in magnitude. Closers don’t affect your otucome that much compared to QB’s

Ben Clemens: But still, best one so far

MoKo: Benintendi and Vazquez for Adell and hector yan; who says no?

Ben Clemens: Angels, they will want a real starter back if they move Adell

Darren: breaking news that the Mets acquired Jordan Yamomoto for a low prospect.  More competition with Lucchesi for fifth starter

Berk Wendell: Mets just traded for Jordan Yamamoto. Thoughts on the salvageable upside there?

Ben Clemens: Yeah into it

Ben Clemens: Not sure I can tell you honestly that he’s going to be a plus fifth starter

Ben Clemens: But I like the idea of just adding bulk and seeing if someone figures something out

Guest: We’ve seen some very team-friendly extensions signed the last few years (e.g., Albies).  Conversely, what are some examples where what looked like a team-friendly extension turned out to seriously burn the team?

Ben Clemens: There just aren’t any

Ben Clemens: That’s not how it works

Ben Clemens: The first 6 years of service time are such a cudgel that teams can sign these deals that simply don’t have true fail cases

Ben Clemens: Like, yeah, Jon SIngleton didn’t work out

Ben Clemens: It cost the Astros 10 million bucks, whatever

Cakes&Kakes: Jon Singleton seems like an early extension that burned

Ben Clemens: 🙂 on the same page here

Ben Clemens: It’s just, the downside is so low

Ben Clemens: Compared to the upside when you hit it

G4: Has a team ever committed to a season-long positional platoon of a same-sided power vs contact duo? In such a case, would you start each player based on opposing SP arsenal, ballpark, etc? I’m thinking about how the Brewers should best go about approaching shortstop PT for Urias (contact/OBP) and Arcia (defense/ISO with swing and miss) until one breaks out. Did you think about this while managing OOTP?

Ben Clemens: I think the reason you don’t see it much is because it’s an inefficient use of resources. Same-handed hitters with different profiles aren’t THAT different based on the pitcher/park combo they’re facing

Ben Clemens: To where you shouldn’t just play the better one as much as possible

Sea Monkey, Not a Monkey: It seems there must be about 25 teams whose fanbases are incredibly bored or frustrated this offseason. How many of them are justified in resenting the baseball business model and how many should just resign themselves to the fact that free agents are a bad way to build teams and trades are inherently risky/frustrating?

Ben Clemens: So, this whole ‘free agents are a bad way to build a team’ narrative has gotten out of hand

Ben Clemens: The Dodgers won the WS this year, and they don’t go big on free agents, but Mookie was essentially a free agent acquisition

Ben Clemens: The Nats won the year before that, largely on the back of their free agent signings

Ben Clemens: The Red Sox won before that on the back of their free agent signings

Ben Clemens: The Astros won before that, and trading for and then extending stars was a big part of that

Ben Clemens: When’s the last time a team won the WS without a major free agent chunk to the team? The Astros probably count

Ben Clemens: But even they went out and got Verlander and Cole

Pessimistic Mariners Fan: Too early to say the Evan White extension burned the Mariners?  24 million in guaranteed money and a 66 wRC+ last year.

Ben Clemens: Nah, again, worst case is 24 million lost, but they would have paid him probably 8 million even without an extension to find out

Ben Clemens: That’s if he never gives them ANYTHING

Ben Clemens: He’s capable of getting in the conversation for worst deal ever for an early extension, it’s just, the fail case isn’t so bad

Montreal Tampa Bay Rays: What do you think Arozarena will do next year? Is he anything like he was in the postseason?

Ben Clemens: I used to be a huge positive outlier in terms of my Arozarena forecast

Ben Clemens: From my time as a Cardinals writer, I fell in love with the skillset

Ben Clemens: I think I’m still a little higher than projections — I’d set an over/under at around 120 wRC+ this year

Ben Clemens: But I mean nothing like the postseason, sadly

George: Re: Salary Floor How would you ever see a Salary Cap if there was no Salary floor? I don’t know why the players would ever agree to it and it feels like owners would want a hard cap.

Ben Clemens: Oh, yeah, you’d need a floor with a cap

Ben Clemens: But the owners don’t actually care THAT much about a cap because they’re doing a good job of enforcing a soft cap without bothering to conceded anything in exchange

Ben Clemens: Concede*

Guest: For less random playoffs: the best team in each league gets 10 free ghost runners they can use in any inning they want (limited to one runner per inning) during the course of each post-season series.  The next best team gets 5 ghost runners, and the other teams get no ghost runners.  Do it.

Ben Clemens: Love it

Sea Monkey, Not a Monkey: Hm.  So, one thing you mention about Mookie being essentially a free agent signing piques my interest.   Do you think many players are amenable to signing long term extensions when they are acquired with a single year left on their contracts (e.g., maybe Corey Seager, Lindor, Kris Bryant now)?  Does the agent matter?  It seems a smart way of circumventing competition (for the reasonable price of 1-year of said star) if in fact an extension can be secured.  Presumably, teams cannot verify the potential for this kind of extension with a player prior to a trade (e.g. discuss hypothetical terms)?

Ben Clemens: I do think so

Ben Clemens: I don’t think it’s necessarily that you get a big discount

Ben Clemens: But your odds of signing them go way up

Ben Clemens: Agent matters I think

Ben Clemens: Player matters

Ben Clemens: But team matters too. The Marlins couldn’t trade for Mookie and extend, or something

Cube Jockey: Did St. Louis have to add an additional year at $15M for Arenado to get the union’s approval to allow for salary deferral?  Was giving him an extra opt out not sufficient?

Ben Clemens: I have no specific info on this, but htat’s my assumption

See! You! Later!: Pro Football Focus has a WAR metric, and the little bit they do publish of it top QBs appear to be at around 4 wins, which is insane compared to baseball. Like if Mike Trout had a WAR of 40.

Ben Clemens: Yeah that sounds about right

Ben Clemens: Touching the ball on every play really helps!

Guest: Which pitching reclamation project (for example, Kluber, Quintana, etc.) works out best for the team that rolled the dice?

Ben Clemens: I’ll say Kluber. I’m into Paxton as well, but Kluber had the highest peak before, so if he works out, he’ll work out the most

Oh Doctor: Re Expected 2021 innings limits due to last yrs short season.  Will the over 27 yr old pitchers who have already handled large workloads be free from such inning restrictions?

Ben Clemens: Honestly, I have no idea and I don’t think teams do eitiher

Ben Clemens: We just don’t have a lot of history to know what would happen

Jeff: Are the Braves still the best team in the NLE?

Ben Clemens: I think the Mets are better now

Ben Clemens: But it’s within margin of error. Both of them miles ahead of the competition though

Oh Doctor: I would bet there’s a lot of history from the past where veteran pitchers had an injury shortened season and came back to a full workload.

Ben Clemens: Yeah, uh, these guys weren’t injured though!

Ben Clemens: That seems like an important difference

Ben Clemens: It’ll be interesting to see what happens, and it will provide data for if this ever happens again

Ben Clemens: But there just aren’t many instances of healthy pitchers going 200-100-200 in terms of IP

EbenezerBatflip: Should the Red Sox trade Vazquez if they aren’t contending in 2021 even though there is no likely quality catcher replacement by 2022 to fill that spot?

Ben Clemens: I don’t think so, I tihnk they might as well keep him around. The return wouldn’t be huge, and if they decide they’re going to try to win in 2022 they can just offer him a good deal?

Plutarch: when is the next twitch stream scheduled?

Ben Clemens: Not scheduled yet, but either Wednesday or Thursday this week most likely

Ben Clemens: I generally like Tuesday but I have a vet checkup tomorrow

Moonlight Graham: Could the Mets possibly piggyback Lucchesi and Yamamoto as their fifth starter or is that wasting a roster spot?

Ben Clemens: Eh, I don’t think it’s a waste of a spot but I also don’t think they’ll do it

Ben Clemens: I think they’ll just have one of them as a long reliever/spot starter and the other as the fifth starter

Guest: wow fangraphs health insurance isn’t great i guess

Ben Clemens: 🙂

Ben Clemens: For my dog Ruby!

Adge: thoughts on jays piggybacking pearson, ray, roark and matz with stripling, chatwood, yamaguchi and merryweather?

Ben Clemens: I don’t know if they’re going to be hard-piggybacking, but it’ll end up looking a bit like it, in that they’re going to hvae a lot of long-ish arms in the pen and a lot of short-ish arms in the rotation

EbenezerBatflip: You excited for Mass Effect Legendary Edition coming out? or MLB The Show now that its on XBox?

Ben Clemens: I hadn’t heard of Mass Effect Legendary Edition until just now, but probably that. ME1 was one of my favorite games of the last 10 years

Ben Clemens: Er, probably more than 10 at this point, jeez

Plutarch: Second Q, is there a chance that McKenzie Gore has real problems? Everyone is very pro-PADRES

Plutarch: for not giving him up but I wonder if the Rays preferred Patino…

Ben Clemens: There’s absolutely a chance!

Ben Clemens: Prospects, particularly high-ceiling pitching prospects, aren’t exactly sure things

Ben Clemens: I have very little confidence in either of them becoming an ace

Steve: Wouldn’t Peterson be the 5th starter if sign Bauer and then even Peterson is out once Thor comes? Jake/Bauer/Thor/Carrasco/Stroman  with Peterson,Luchhesi, and Yamamoto as depth

Ben Clemens: Yes, if they sign Bauer. Unclear if that happens. They really do have a lot of depth, but hey, adding a little extra never hurts

Ben Clemens: On that note, I’m going to call it a chat today. I hope our solid block of Monday chatting satiated everyone’s appetite to talk about baseball this week, and I’m looking forward to some new perspectives on the site! Thanks everyone for hanging out today, and have a great week

Ben Clemens: Oh, and please remember to vote in the SABR awards!

Ben Clemens: You can vote for them on our website right here: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/2021-sabr-analytics-awards-voting-now-open…

Ben Clemens: Meg and I are nominated in Contemporary Baseball Analysis, as is Craig Edwards, but every single article nominated in every category is worth a read

Ben Clemens: Have a good one, everyone.