Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat – 2/28/22

Ben Clemens: Hey everybody, welcome to the chat.

Ben Clemens: Not a great day for MLB fans so far, so let’s shake it up by answering some silly questions (and let’s be real, a million questions about the lockout)

Inaccessible Rail: How does Steve Cohen feel about the MLB CBT proposal? He can’t possibly like it, right? Or maybe he does like it because no one else would dare exceed it with such harsh penalties?

Ben Clemens: Quite likely that he’s against it

Ben Clemens: The problem is, there are more Nuttings than Cohens

Ben Clemens: Not that he’s some benevolent dictator who actually wants to pay players more and do everything right for the world — it’s clearly not that

Ben Clemens: But he’s an owner who wants to spend money to improve his team’s chances of winning baseball games, which puts him squarely in the minority

Insert Witty Name Here: Should the players just accept the owners offer instead of fighting for a slightly better offer? I’m 100% for the players, but how much of the fight is really worth losing games and fans?

Ben Clemens: Lol

Ben Clemens: no

Ben Clemens: SHouldn’t the owners accept the players offer that’s worse than the current CBA instead of fighting for a slightly better offer?

Ben Clemens: How much of the fight is really worth losing games and fans?

Matt: Lets get it out of the way…what’s your prediction around when the season starts?

Ben Clemens: July 1

Joe Don: Since top prospect Josh Jung is out for probably the whole season, What should Texas do about 3b?

Ben Clemens: Put one of their 3 shortstops there

Ben Clemens: I think I’d probably play Seager there if we played baseball on a spreadsheet

Ben Clemens: Given that he’s their big free agent signing, IKF would work too

Ben Clemens: I don’t think the defense will be noticeably different with those two flip-flopped between short and third

Ben Clemens: Like, it’ll be worse! But not by a ton

Appa Yip Yip: So the owners impose a lockout, threaten to cancel games, and then don’t pay players for the games they cancelled despite there being contracts stating rates of pay? This does not seem legal? Keep in mind I don’t know anything about this and am dumb.

Ben Clemens: I haven’t actually seen a copy of the uniform player contract, but if 2020 is any indication, contracts are based on a 162-game season and there would be pro-rating

Ben Clemens: That’s why owners are trying to keep the pace of the season and cut the number of games

Ben Clemens: That lets them pay less and still get the playoffs

Insert Witty Name Here: The owners should absolutely just agree to the players offer. But that’s just not happening.

Ben Clemens: Ah, labor bargaining

Ben Clemens: If I were the players I’d absolutely be holding firm like they are

Ben Clemens: The owners act like they have nothing to lose but good luck with your TV, debt, and gambling partnerrs if you burn your own league to the ground to make an extra few bucks

The Sid: Has there been any thought of starting the season using replacement players?

Ben Clemens: Behind closed doors? I’m sure there has

Ben Clemens: Seems like a really good way to lose the antitrust exemption, though, so I think there’d need to be overwhelming consensus on the ownership side that this was a good idea

Inaccessible Rail: Can there be an amateur draft this year if there’s still no CBA by the draft date?

Ben Clemens: I don’t believe so, but they could just reschedule it

J-Shot: Who was your baseball idol growing up?

Ben Clemens: Ozzie Smith

Ben Clemens: I had a video called “Ozzie, That’s a Winner” that was a highlight tape of his produced by some St. Louis gas station interspersed with clips of him talking about baseball

Ben Clemens: I watched it until I burned out the tape

Ben Clemens: I’m lefty, but I’d practice shortstop throwing motions backwards trying to look like Ozzie

Sirras: Ben, can you share a fun fact (baseball related or not) to help give our collective minds something nice to think about?

Ben Clemens: Let’s do food-related

Ben Clemens: Here’s mine: if you like spicy food, it’s actually really easy to make your own chili oil

Ben Clemens: You can find some recipes online, but it boils down to heating up vegetable oil and putting red pepper flakes (plus some other stuff) into it

Ben Clemens: I added star anise, a cinnamon stick, a bay leaf, nutmeg, and ground sichuan peppers, but different recipes use different things

Ben Clemens: It’s super simple and gives your food a nice spicy and flavorful kick, also it lasts forever b/c it’s just oil

Jacques Pederson: Ben, very nice article on financial stuff that makes my head spin. It brought up a very important question though. Is OIBDA an acronym you say in your head like “Oh-Eye-Bee-Dee-Ay” or is it more like “Oyb-duh”?

Ben Clemens: I didn’t do balance sheet stuff when I was in finance, so I don’t know how people “in the industry” say it

Ben Clemens: But in my head I say either “oh-ib-duh” or “oyb-duh”

Jason N: If MLB teams don’t want to open their book (esp to the Union), why did they approve public corporations to become owners?  Do you think it’s likely a public corp would gain approval to own a franchise in the future?

Ben Clemens: Teams do open their books to the union

Ben Clemens: That’s a required part of the bargaining process

Ben Clemens: I do think that teams are generally not huge fans of reported profit lines though

Dan: Imagine you’re a GM on the west and a time traveler tells you in 2016 that Juan Soto will be the best player I’m baseball from 2021-2025, What can you do with this information?

Ben Clemens: Trade for him?

Ben Clemens: It’s not like the Nats would be likely to take you up on it, they were super high on Soto

Ben Clemens: But make them an offer they can’t refuse, I guess? Otherwise there’s not much you can do about it

Mike: Whoops missed the Cohen question. Guess I’ll rephrase. Do the Mets potentially just go all in for 2022? Like trade the whole farm away, punt all draft picks, sign Correa etc. followed by a full scale rebuild in 2023 if the CBT is this harsh?

Ben Clemens: Umm… I’m gonna say no

Ben Clemens: I don’t exactly understand why this would make sense, or how they’d go big this year and then small in the future, or the point of trading away the farm in 2022 only to rebuild in 2023

BobbyAce: why do top amateurs even acknowledge the draft? Shouldn’t they be considered free agents by the law of the land until they are part of an organization?

Ben Clemens: I don’t understand the legal stuff that goes on here

Ben Clemens: But yeah, drafts are by their nature anti competitive, but they’re allowed, b/c as we all know, billionaires are socialists when it comes to working together for the common good of billionaries

Insert Witty Name Here: Hypothetical: each major US city starts their own baseball club as a civic pride idea, modeled after soccer’s pyramid.  How many years until this would be a legitimate league?

Ben Clemens: Sadly I think it wouldn’t take off unless they got MLB players

Ben Clemens: An under-mentioned thing about the lockout is that the players are the product. I think Jeff Passan has done a good job highlighting this recently, but the reason MLB is great is to a great extent b/c the players are awesome and make for good games

Ben Clemens: Without that kind of talent pool, I don’t think another baseball league would be intriguing

Dan: I guess I was more asking what would an “offer they can’t refuse” for soto look like

Ben Clemens: Right, in that case I don’t know, a top 15 prospect with a productive major leaguer attached? The Nats needed outfield help, so maybe you trade them an average regular outfielder who is on a good contract plus your best prospect (who is really good)

Appa Yip Yip: Underrated aspect of Juan Soto is how fun his name is to say. Just the complete package of a ballplayer in every way.

Ben Clemens: There are a lot of things underrated about Soto despite his being rated very highly

Ben Clemens: but I totally agree, whta a fun name

Ben Clemens: “3-2 Juan” a la Effectively Wild discussion of 3-2 Jack only enhances how great the name is

Insert Witty Name Here: The idea would be for each city to use the current big leave players, considering how profitable baseball already is, they would be able to pay the players relatively quickly once the money starts pouring in. ESP since the teams would be city owned with no greedy owners, wouldn’t the players be able to make even more money?

Ben Clemens: I guess I don’t know how that works given that all of those players are under contract with teams

Ben Clemens: Or at least, most of them

Ben Clemens: I’m not a lawyer but I am fairly certain this league would get sued to the moon and back immediately

Jordan: It feels like a prolonged lock out will hurt the owners more than the players…RSN’s will need to be paid back for missed game, no ticket sales, no concessions, merch sales likely through he floors, no parking, ect (plus potential future damage to sales). Whereas the players making little money will still make little money through union payments and the more established players are unlikely to even need the union stipend. Seems like the longer this goes the more pressure MLBPA can put on MLB, your thoughlits?

Ben Clemens: ticket sales and concessions aren’t a huge deal in April, but the RSN repayments are

Ben Clemens: The real pressure for the league comes if anything happens to their precious playoffs

Ben Clemens: If I’m the players, I absolutely say that expanded playoffs are off the table if the season doesn’t go 162 games

Ben Clemens: If the owners could make the entire season be two games but keep the same playoff structure, they absolutely would

Ben Clemens: That said… the league is acting like it will feel no pressure at all but I think that it’s not true in practice

Ben Clemens: They just might be better about stifling communication of that discontent

Ben Clemens: But if you’re the debt-funded Marlins and you start worrying that you might not get your 80 million dollar check for nationally televised games and playoffs

Ben Clemens: Gulp

Guest: have you seen marco luciano? observations?

Ben Clemens: Haven’t seen him play, but luckily our crack team of prospect writers just published their favorite ONE HUNDRED prospects

Ben Clemens: with a writeup on Luciano

Ben Clemens: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/2022-top-100-prospects/

Noah: If someone were to own an mlb club, treat minor leaguers well, and pay mlb players fairly like $3M for pre-arb players how many seasons do you think it would take for the team to continuously be a top 5 team in baseball?

Ben Clemens: I mean, I sadly don’t think it’s that easy

Ben Clemens: You have to spend at a reasonable rate too

Ben Clemens: and I don’t think you’d really get anywhere by paying your pre-arb players that much extra, though paying meaningfully above the going rate and being easier in arb would probably help out long term

Ben Clemens: but the system is designed to give you advantages if you’re willing to play hardball with your player comp

Joe: If the players offered the owners the exact deal the owners have offered the players would the owners take it?

Ben Clemens: Yes?

Guest: If a lockout means no pay for the players, isn’t the contract broken and players free to sign in another league like in Japan or a big city in the US?

Ben Clemens: I think they might be able to while the lockout is ongoing? But I really don’t know the answer to this

Greg: With so much of one’s success as a hitter coming down to approach, it seems like there’s somewhat of an unexploited market inefficiency in practicing for this. Do you think teams would benefit from implementing pitch tracking drills to help hitters improve their swing decisions? Why do you think this isn’t done at a larger scale already?

Ben Clemens: I think that this is being done, and that the scale is hard to judge but is surely being held back by inertia

Ben Clemens: But yeah, absolutely

Ben Clemens: If teams aren’t spending some time working on pitch recognition and tracking in drills, they should be

ha worant: (Edit) are owners whose teams are currently contending more likely to want to compromise? thinking abt reinsdorf in particular right now

Ben Clemens: I think mostly yes

Ben Clemens: But only mostly

Ben Clemens: Owners whose teams are currently contending but who have a nice sustainable model where they don’t spend too much money and make juicy profits to plow back into the team

Ben Clemens: May not be

Ben Clemens: Owners who are built to win now and want to win more than they want to make money will definitely want to compromise

Appa Yip Yip: “why don’t teams do x to help players be better at y” feels like it can always be answered by “because doing y is really f***ing hard” speaking of which is this the year Randal Grichuk learns to lay off the breaking stuff?

Ben Clemens: 🙂

Ben Clemens: If I had a dollar for every time a Cardinals fan said that

Ben Clemens: Well, I’d find a way to end the lockout with my newfound wealth

Ben Clemens: Yeah, baseball is tremendously hard

Ben Clemens: Better training methods help, but that doesn’t make it not hard

Ben Clemens: The other guy lives in a big house too

Dan: Even if the players where free to sign and play for other league a brand new league would need stars and they would have to massively overpay for those stars to consider playing in a competing league. Mike Trout isn’t worth 35 million if he has to play in front of 8000 people every day.

Ben Clemens: Yeah…. a rival league is just really tough

Ben Clemens: the players are too important

Ben Clemens: so you need to attract the best players… and to do that you need an income stream

Jeff: I remember your mentioning that you think Pena has a real chance to be a star in the league. He’s ranked as a 55 FV in FG’s top 100 with below average power projections (which is still very good!).

Could you expand a little on what you like about him?

Ben Clemens: I am not one of the prospect team, and they do a lot of good work on both making their own in-person, video, or data observations and getting a broad set of opinions from the team side of things

Ben Clemens: I do think that their below average power projections seem reasonable, he’s never hit for much pop and the frame doesn’t scream Correa 2.0 to me

Ben Clemens: But I’m a sucker for a good defensive shortstop with a 50 hit tool, and I’ve been very impressed by his statistical record as well. Handling the jump from Hi-A in 2019 (and internal competition in 2020) to Triple-A in 2021 is a huge mark in his favor

Ben Clemens: And I just like betting on hit/field shortstops

namiki: Do you think the low spin sinker will be reinstated in place of the high spin four seam due to sticky substance regulations?

Ben Clemens: I kind of think pitchers will just find a new way to increase spin

Ben Clemens: That said, I think sinkers are on the rise because there’s better understanding of how to use them and which pitchers should throw them. The 2014-era ‘everyone throws a sinker’ plan was not great, but some pitchers are well-suited to the pitch shape, either due to their delivery or due to how it works with the rest of their pitches

DJ: Are there any current players you don’t think get credit for being as good as the numbers they’ve put up recently? Mine is Jeimer Candelario who tied for the MLB lead in doubles last year and has had a pretty solid last 800 plate appearances.

Ben Clemens: This is gonna sound silly but Brandon Lowe

Ben Clemens: People know he’s good but uh, he’s great

Jack: Soto for a top 15 prospect and a “productive” player.  WHAT???????????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ben Clemens: To be clear this is Soto before he’d played a game in the majors, in 2016

Ben Clemens: and you just happen to know the future

Ben Clemens: Brandon Lowe in his career: .255/.341/.518. That’s a 134 wRC+

JT: I never went back to hockey after its lockout cost the entire 2004/05 season. I had had other issues with the league before that, but I really just got even more caught up in the NBA and never looked back.

How much should we worry as MLB fans that the owners are risking the security of the league by costing itself casual fans like I had once been for hockey?

Ben Clemens: I don’t really know how to handicap this

Ben Clemens: It didn’t happen in 1994, and hockey has a different fanbase in the US than baseball

Ben Clemens: But it should absolutely be a worry

Ben Clemens: I think it helps that a lot of TV deals are locked in for reasonably long spans at the moment, and the national deals have just been re-upped

2022: MLB lost 6000 fans a game in 94 to 95, 20%

Ben Clemens: Yeah, and by ’97 they were better than ever

Ben Clemens: I’m not claiming things won’t be bad right after the lockout ends but it’s not a given the league would end

Appa Yip Yip: The hockey season also runs concurrently with football and basketball so casuals can just hop sports if they’re so inclined. Baseball is on its own in the summer.

Ben Clemens: Very good point too

Brian: I never thought I would be a “BUT THINK ABOUT THE CHILDREN” person but I have a 7 year old that asks everyday when baseball will start and I cant keep saying “in 2 weeks”.

Ben Clemens: I’m going to Savannah to see a Bananas game (my dad lives nearby)

Ben Clemens: College baseball exists

Ben Clemens: But yeah it sucks

JT: Keep in mind, I am a Canadian surrounded by hockey, getting Leafs and Canadiens updates on Sportscentre before I get the MLB All Star Game in July.

And I still left the sport.

Ben Clemens: A hockey leaver in Canada, now that takes some doing

hombre: Hey Ben, how are you doing? Tough question, but what do you think is the probability that Wander is better than Tatis in, say, 3/4 seasons?

Ben Clemens: I am doing alright

Ben Clemens: My dog has an upset stomach which is no fun for anyone, and I stubbed my toe really badly yesterday, so you know, there are some minuses

Ben Clemens: Plus, well, everything

Ben Clemens: But there are some pluses too!

Ben Clemens: I wrote a reported piece about a really wild online sim baseball league that I’m gonna publish either tomorrow or Wednesday that I think people will really like

Ben Clemens: As to your question: in that league Wander is better than Tatis. But in real life, I’m gonna say like 30% chance? I know I said I’m a sucker for hit/field shortstops but I’m also a sucker for 70 raw power shortstops with Tatis-level athleticism

Dan: Can Brian watch classic games with his 7 year old? Would that get you the same bonding time and guaranteed it’s a good game? Or is seven old enough to demand the unique entertainment value of live sports

Ben Clemens: I watched a lot of old sports as a kid but my dad just never told me they were old

Ben Clemens: or maybe he did and I was a kid so I don’t remember

Sirras: Did you ever read the sim leagues of one player as the entire team? Think there was a Bartolo team, an Ichiro team, an Adam Dunn team, and a Koji Uehara team if I remember correctly. Those were fun pieces…

Ben Clemens: Yeah, the Adam Dunn one is an all-timer

Ben Clemens: the peak of NotGraphs

Bryan: If the players offer is fair. And every report seems to verify that. Why are they so against outside mediation? Seems like a neutral side would only benefit them?

Ben Clemens: I’m not an expert in mediation but I’m quite certain that it’s not based on some high-minded concept of ‘fairness’. Look at arbitration that goes in front of mediators

Ben Clemens: I don’t know the MLBPA’s reasons for declining mediation but I think it’s fair to say that I’m not an expert in bargaining tactics as a whole

Pirates Hurdles: It took until 2006 for average attendance/game to match 1994. They had only recovered a bit less than half of the losses by 1997

Ben Clemens: I found this discussion of the effect of lockouts very helpful

Ben Clemens: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/effectively-wild-episode-1809-how-harmful-…

Ben Clemens: Also this by Ben Lindbergh about the steroids era

Ben Clemens: https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2018/9/28/17913536/mark-mcgwire-sammy-so…

Ben Clemens: had a nice tidbit, that shows how little owners actually care about attendance:

Ben Clemens: League revenue surpassed 1993 levels by 1997

Ben Clemens: Owners don’t actually care about per-game attendance nubmers above all else, and i know that because I’ve seen what they charge for tickets

Dan: can someone link to that Adam Dunn notgraphs piece?

Ben Clemens: https://not.fangraphs.com/dangerous-experiment-a-roster-of-25-adam-dun…

Pirates Hurdles: yeah no doubt agree, the owners dont care yet, but eventual decline in fanbase will erode cash streams

Ben Clemens: Sure, but no one seems to be a lot of long-term ‘best interests of baseball’ thinking in this debate

Ben Clemens: I agree with you but I just don’t think that anyone is looking that far ahead

Rival Baseball League: Since the Saudis have a few hundred billion that they want to use to sports wash, you think they could buy enough MLBers to set up their own baseball league?

Ben Clemens: Yeesh

Ben Clemens: If they really wanted to, probably?

Ben Clemens: They could just buy MLB!

Appa Yip Yip: Why would the Saudis buy baseball when cricket is way more popular around those parts?

Ben Clemens: Haha they probably wouldn’t

Ben Clemens: Plus soccer seems to have the ideal structure for someone who can make up sponsorship deals and so on

Teddy: Who are some players you personally admire most, and why?

Ben Clemens: I’m just going to say one person: Curtis Granderson

Ben Clemens: There’s no player since I’ve followed baseball who made me think “that guy seems like a great guy” more than Granderson

Ben Clemens: Teammates all loved him, he was really personable and did a ton of charity work in New York, and was just an absolute delight at the ballpark

Ben Clemens: Ask players what they think of him, and I’m not sure you’d get a single negative reply

jfast: ZiPS has Yordan projected to have the 9th most WAR in all of baseball (ahead of Mookie, Correa, Acuna, etc) in 2022. How is he not regarded as a top 3 hitter? Is he behind the scenes?

Ben Clemens: Oh sorry I missed your Yordan question up above

Ben Clemens: For me, Yordan is a top 5-10 hitter in the game

Ben Clemens: Top 3 vs top 5 vs top 10 is not an easy thing to parse

Ben Clemens: When we did our trade value series last year, I can’t tell you how many people called me and Kevin absolute dummies for putting Alvarez just outside the top 10

Ben Clemens: ‘he’s just a DH, there’s no value, look at the projections you morons’ was the basic argument

Ben Clemens: and yeah…. the projections (with a little bit of surplus value estimation) had him as the 8th most valuable player/contract combination in the game

Ben Clemens: Criminally underrated despite everyone realizing he’s good

Ben Clemens: Several commenters have asked about this, so I’ll just make a quick mention: if you don’t want to pay a full-season rate for MLB.tv, today is the last day to cancel your auto-renewal

Ben Clemens: Given that there won’t be a full season, you’ll be able to get a bit of a rebate here if you cancel and then re-subscribe later

Ben Clemens: auto renewals: they suck no matter who does them!

Ben Clemens: eh, that’s not fair

Ben Clemens: they’re useful if you get a note telling you when they’re coming up

Ben Clemens: MLB does not do that

Teddy: Thanks for holding these chats – always appreciate your measured takes on here! How’s life on the west coast?

Ben Clemens: It’s great

Ben Clemens: Everyone should come live out here — though not in SF, my rent is high enough as it is

Ben Clemens: Going skiing in Tahoe this weekend, meanwhile it’s 64 and sunny in the bay

Ben Clemens: Hasn’t been much rain of late, so that sucks, but aside from that the weather and outdoor activities in California just continually remind me of how happy I am that I moved out here

JT: I’ve just held off on doing our drafts for fantasy baseball, and I’m already losing good owners to other commitments.

Did you just do drafts/keeper deadlines, or did you hold off, too?

Ben Clemens: All of my drafts have been postponed, but I dunno what we’re gonna do if this wears on much longer

hombre: Imo, Brad Miller is an underrated versatility piece coming up to the market. He mashes lefties and has been drawing walks, has CIF/OF utility, I’d be interested to hear who you think he fits with

Ben Clemens: I agree with this take overall, and enjoyed his contributions to the Cardinals

Ben Clemens: I do think that he’s stretched defensively at third, so he’s more 1b/cof

Ben Clemens: But as a nice platoon bat (and I assume you mean righty masher), he’s a nice piece

Ben Clemens: Teams that don’t have a clear 1b vR should be calling him up

Ben Clemens: I thikn that the Freddy Freeman market makes things tricky at 1b but the teams who miss on Freeman will be looking for a bit of lefty juice, and I think Miller could be a bargain in that vein

Bob: Is the Jeter thing as simple as he wants to spend and the Sherman group doesn’t? And being a former player, he’s sticking up for the players in the midst of a lockout?

Ben Clemens: I don’t think we’re ever going to know

Ben Clemens: But I do think that the team’s hesitance to spend has a decent amount to do with it

Ben Clemens: It turns out it’s very hard to build a baseball team the way you want to (somewhat in the image of the Yankees, presumably) when you’re not spending much money

Inaccessible Rail: Autorenewals: Fangraphs does them too, and I’m thankful for this, as I’d probably forget to renew otherwise.

Ben Clemens: That’s why I quickly hedged lol

Ben Clemens: I get our ‘hey your subscription is about to auto-renew’ email every year

Ben Clemens: and then promptly forget about it

Teddy: [Perhaps too hard to answer in the chat]

Would you mind speaking briefly about your decision to change industries/careers as a younger person? How did you think about the costs/benefits of doing something that (presumably) gave you more happiness on the day to day vs. higher salaries?

Ben Clemens: This is a great question, so sorry other people in the chat who don’t actually want to hear about a no-name baseball writer’s past job life

Ben Clemens: I don’t think I can tell you how to value compensation vs. on-job happiness

Ben Clemens: But while I enjoyed my coworkers and found the day-to-day stuff I was doing very interesting, I found the stress level and inability to write for others to read really frustrating

Ben Clemens: “stress level” is a really generic thing, I know; for me it wans’t day to day swings so much as the fact that you really don’t get to turn off ever, because there could be profit opportunities (or loss avoidance opportunities) at any hour on any day

Ben Clemens: One thing that really set me on the path to leaving was when Jenna and I were on a vacation in Japan and the Bank of Canada unexpectedly hiked rates

Ben Clemens: I was like hey, it’s not healthy that I have to care about this right now, I want to go eat a delicious omakase dinner

Ben Clemens: But I did have to care, and that need to be on grated over time

Ben Clemens: That said: I’m a big fan of doing what you love, though it’s a little easier for me to say that after working in a field noted for its high compensation for a decade

Ben Clemens: Try to have fun at work, it’s so much of your life!

Tacoby Bellsbury: What’s the least interesting thing to happen to you today?

Ben Clemens: Woke up at 6:46 (that’s when my alarm goes off) and solved the Wordle in four guesses, which is my average

Ben Clemens: bam!

Bob: Could we see more free agents signing one year deals in KBO or NPB if it becomes clear the lockout is gonna cost them 1/3-1/2 of a normal 162?

Ben Clemens: Lower-end free agents, I’d say yes

Ben Clemens: That said a lot of the KBO teams are already at their foreign player limit

Dave: Ben, why are my allergies so bad right now?

Ben Clemens: Sign of an early spring?

Ben Clemens: or maybe you’re allergic to my long rambling answers that aren’t really about baseball

ben simmons’ jumper: It’s true that Yordan is DH-only but 1) everyone will need a DH now and 2) that means less injury risk now

Ben Clemens: Yeah plus he rakes

Ben Clemens: or well… your things are the pluses

Ben Clemens: (unlike your username, that’s a solid minus)

Ben Clemens: The main thing about Yordan is that he’s a low-strikeout high-power hitter

Ben Clemens: who takes walks

Ben Clemens: I think that’s good

Guest: I thought the draft was more of a competitive balance thing rather than the owners working together to help themselves – so the Yankees don’t get all the good players and win 16 of 27 World Series like they did from 1936-1962.

Ben Clemens: Baseball is no stranger to calling cost-saving competitive balance and vice versa

Ben Clemens: but yeah, it can be both!

Dan: Is the KBO limit on signing foreign players mostly a cost saving measure? If not, I can imagine them upping the limit for one year.

Ben Clemens: I’ll be honest, I’m not sure and I don’t think I’ll be able to reserach that quickly enough to give you a good answer here

Ben Clemens: But that would be cool

Ben Clemens: And if the league follows through on their threat to start the cancellations at a month, there’s going to be a space for baseball

ben simmons’ jumper: other DH thought: is there any analysis or whispers of teams figuring out how to counter the DH penalty (ie same hitters do worse when DHing than fielding)

Ben Clemens: Don’t have a specific answer for you, but Jeff Zimmerman (I think?) did some research that indicated a lot of the DH penalty is really just that teams put players in DH when they’re banged up

Ben Clemens: probably worth revisiting at some point

Ben Clemens: but it makes sense that the average player is feeling better on days when he’s in the field vs when he’s DH’ing

Ben Clemens: if you’re a little banged up, well, that’s why you get a day at DH

Teddy: Favorite baseball-related book/show/movie?

Ben Clemens: The Sandlot

Appa Yip Yip: If you’re the Blue Jays and you can only lock up one of Vlad or Bo who do you pick and why? (Obvi they can and should do both but there’s no baseball and hypotheticals are fun)

Ben Clemens: I think I’d lock up Vlad?

Ben Clemens: It’s a really interesting questeion

Ben Clemens: My thinking is basically that I don’t trust Bo to stick at short long-term, at least as a difference-making defender

Ben Clemens: And if he’s an average third baseman in a few years, I’ll take Vlad’s bat by a ton

Ben Clemens: I just feel like the shape of Vlad’s total contribution to the team is safer

Ben Clemens: I freely admit that this isn’t the most I’ve thought before a take

Ben Clemens: But that’s my gut instinct

Ben Clemens: Pay for the truly transcendent tools

Ben Clemens: Alright, I’m gonna call it a day here, because I need to feed my sick dog some baby food and me some human food

Ben Clemens: Have a great day, and hopefully YOU won’t cancel a month’s worth of baseball games today

Ben Clemens: Rob Manfred if you’re reading, please don’t do it.