Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat – 2/6/23

Ben Clemens: Hey everybody, welcome to the chat

Ben Clemens: Let’s talk some baseball, and maybe some improvised wok recipes if you have any, because I made a spin on kung pao chickpeas last night and I was very proud of it

Mer: Vegas has Mets and Braves at 94.5 wins over or under for both?

Ben Clemens: Oof, that’s a good line. I think I’d lean over on both for choice but there’s negative correlation of course, so I’d probably pick the two I like more and go over on that

Who’s Fabio: Hey Ben – just curious is you have ever skied the interior of BC?  Big White, Revelstoke, Sun Peaks are my favourite. Have you ever done a powder highway trip, different mountain every day for a week or so?

Ben Clemens: I wish, we’ve talked about doing just that but never actually done it

Ben Clemens: I’ve skied Banff, all three resorts there, and that was awesome, but Revelstoke is still on my ski bucket list

Justin: I’m getting into collecting baseball cards again. Any advice?

Ben Clemens: Talk to someone who knows what they’re doing instead of me, I just hoard the cards i had when I was a kid

Well-Beered Englishman: Purely from an entertainment standpoint – not necessarily quality, just fun to watch on TV – which teams are you most excited to watch this year?

Ben Clemens: I’m excited to watch the Guardians because they run a lot and put the ball in play, and the Angels because of the star power

Ben Clemens: I also enjoy the Giants because they do weird stuff, and the Padres b/c I love Soto

Guest: Will assume that the “Mid-Tier Hitters I Like” article will be making a return this year.  In your mind, is Eduard Julien worthy of appearing on it, or would he not qualify based on how he might be ranked in upcoming rankings?

Ben Clemens: I would assume that he’s too good of a prospect to be included

Guest: Could somebody PLEASE! fix that depth chart projecting Mike Trout to get 658 plate appearances over 152 games?? It’s been 7 years since Trout met those numbers. 4 years since he came within the same Zip Code of them.

Ben Clemens: That’s just not how Depth Charts work

Ben Clemens: They’re going to consistently overproject playing time for everyone because they generally don’t project injuries

Ben Clemens: Look at deGrom; he has 172 projected IP in depth charts and 100.7 projected by ZiPS

Ben Clemens: The point of them is to project how teams will operate at full strength. Jason does them manually

Jack B.: How are those OOTP leagues you were a part of going?

Ben Clemens: I made the playoffs this year as the Phillies in MEB. I also was on vacation when the Rule 5 draft happened so lost a top 10 prospect in baseball

Ben Clemens: So, up and down!

No fake, it’s Dan McGrew: Who puts up more combined WAR: Cole/Rodon or Gaussman/Manoah? Got a bet with a friend on this

Ben Clemens: I’d take Cole/Rodon but it’s a very good bet, seems quite close

Insert Witty Name Here: Who said this quote you mentioned in a recent article: “It was an insurance run, so I hit it to the Prudential Building”?

Ben Clemens: Reggie Jackson

GBS42: Lost Cities (original card game) vs. Splendor: do you have a favorite?  My partner and I enjoy the nice balance between luck and skill both offer.  And would you take Carcassonne over either/both of them?

Ben Clemens: I was not a huge fan of Splendor when I played it, whereas I have played a ton of Lost Cities and think it’s a wonderful game to take on vacation, which gives it a big boost in my book

Ben Clemens: I have heard Splendor is very good, so I think I just had a bad experience or was in a bad mood that day or something

Ben Clemens: I think Carcassonne is better with 3-4, so I’d say Lost Cities for 2 and Carcassonne above t hat

No fake, it’s Dan McGrew: have you ever played stratomatic baseball?

Ben Clemens: Oh yes, I grew up playing it. I lived with my dad for the summer in middle/high school and didn’t know many people where he lived, so I bought Strat-o-Matic, drafted my own teams, and would play long series with them, either me against myself or me against my dad

Reds West: Who do you think will have the better 2023 season: Eugenio Suarez or Winker?

Ben Clemens: This might just be me refusing to accept logic, so take it with a grain of salt

Ben Clemens: but Winker!

Ben Clemens: I just have a hard time believing in Suarez, and I always have, even when he was popping 4 WAR seasons regularly

Ben Clemens: that style of production (k’s and homers without massive raw power) just sticks in my head as likely to fail, like an upscale version of Keston Hiura

Chuck: Michael Harris … You like his EVs, but some (KLaw) worry about his approach. Seems like a low floor, high ceiling guy. Do you think he meets his projections?

Ben Clemens: I also worry about his approach

Ben Clemens: I left him off the top 50 trade value last year b/c of questions about his approach, which in retrospect was a mistake (obv)

Ben Clemens: The thing is, I think he’s actually fairly high floor because of his defensive value and pop

Ben Clemens: Like, it’s hard to imagine him being worse than an average player just thanks to running into some bombs and playing center

Ben Clemens: Even if he puts up an 85 wRC+ or something

Matt: Hey Ben, with the Cubs teardown (hopefully) starting to turn a corner, when do envision them returning to the playoffs?

Ben Clemens: A lot is gonna depend on the shape of the roadmap from here. Like, their current roster is not a legit compete for the playoffs roster, they have Eric Hosmer starting and don’t have Tatis/Machado types to offset that. Likewise, their rotation is really light on impact guys — I like Stroman and Taillon, but not as 1/2

Ben Clemens: The farm system is great, our updated 2022 report has them as the 5th-best system overall and they’ve got plenty of depth, though no truly can’t-miss types

Ben Clemens: But the question is what they do to transform this blah major league roster and good farm into a contender. How PCA and Brennen Davis develop this year is gonna have more impact on their future trajectory than you’d like for a team you’re expecting to contend soon

Manfred’s Fatuous Ass: Can you share any insight into the editorial schedule coming up? When is “prospects week”? What are the features coming up (position previews somewhat soon I’d think)?

Ben Clemens: Last week of Feb, and then power rankings will start in the middle of March

Dan: Having just read your article on exit velocity (and now wondering how much I believe Oneil Cruz makes real contact improvements), who do you prefer as a fantasy SS in a dynasty format – Wander Franco or Oneil Cruz?

Ben Clemens: I still prefer Franco, because even though top-end power is very important, it’s not the only important thing, and Franco is MUCH better at the other skills

Bill me later: Why would Toronto sign Chad Green now and player from 40 man roster, could they not sign and dl Green during spring training and not lose a player

Ben Clemens: Because someone else might sign him in the interim and despite the endless gnashing of teeth and rending of garments that some in the baseball community just love to do for every transaction, that 40th man being DFA’ed doesn’t come back to bite you very often

Oaktown Blues: Thanks for chatting Ben! Is someone at FG planning to writeup the Cole Irvin trade?

Ben Clemens: Probably! Maybe me if not, I’m trying to come up with an article for tomorrow as we speak

Josh Bell: Big resurgence coming in Cleveland after my slump in San Diego? I called myself a power hitter, but the baseball savant predicted home runs by park for last year didn’t look any better in Cleveland. But with new shift rules, new home park, and Kwan/Gimenez/Ramirez hitting ahead of me, can I have a big year? 20/100 with a .280/.360/.480 triple slash seem reasonable for back of a napkin prognostication?

Ben Clemens: That’s a pretty aggressive projection

Ben Clemens: I’m down on Bell, and it showed in my free agent rankings. I hope he does really well, I’m just skeptical basically

Theo Epstein Truther: How overrated are the Cardinals for the coming season? As a biased cubs fan I just don’t see many bright spots on the roster outside of Arenado

Ben Clemens: Haha look, I’m a Cardinals fan, but I think I’m also a fairly unbiased analyst

Ben Clemens: The Cardinals are probably going to win 88-95 games and win the Central comfortably, and probably 6-8 of their players will be as good as the Cubs’ best player

Ben Clemens: I’d take Lars Nootbaar over any Cub and I doubt you think he’s a top 5 player on the team, for example

Ben Clemens: For what it’s worth, ZiPS and Steamer pretty much agree. It’s easy to look at a team of people you don’t like because of the pajamas they wear and assume they’re all bad, but like… the Cardinals are pretty good at winning a lot of games every year

Ben Clemens: They’ll probably be good at it again this year

Mark: Not a question, just wanted to say that you’re my favorite baseball writer

Ben Clemens: Oh I’m definitely publishing this

Ben Clemens: Thank you!

Guest: Why don’t the Rockies just push the stadium down to sea level

Ben Clemens: They could call it “The Pit”

Kiermaier’s Piercing Green Eyes: So I actually just picked up a wok, chuan, and some cooking chopsticks. Recs for good first recipes? (This will inevitably end in a plug for Kenji’s book.)

Ben Clemens: Haha it sure will

Ben Clemens: Kenji’s book is amazing

Ben Clemens: But if you want something extremely simple, like simpler than anything in that book, I’ve derived a recipe for making veggies when I am cooking for myself

Ben Clemens: you need some doubonjiang (broad bean paste), and basically you get the wok hot, put in oil, then cook minced ginger and garlic for about 10 seconds. Then you toss in the doubonjiang and let it go for about 30 seconds, the mixture should turn very red

Ben Clemens: Then you toss in your veggies (I like matchsticked carrots and pre-microwave-steamed broccoli but you can use whatever) and stir fry it for a little bit, then serve it over rice

No fake, it’s Dan McGrew: Montas for Kepler – could there be a trade centered around those 2?

Ben Clemens: In a word, no

Ben Clemens: Montas is gonna miss the first month of the season, and he’s hardly guaranteed to be healthy after that, he was hurt basically the entire time he was on the Yankees last year. Kepler has a club option beyond this year

Ben Clemens: I know the Twins are shopping Kepler, but not like htat

John: Kind of feels like Gerrit Cole is starting to be underrated? Mostly from contract/NY and maybe a bit of the HR bug but seems like the industry is a bit too low on him now

Ben Clemens: Oh I totally agree

Ben Clemens: I would have him in my top 5 starting pitchers

Guest: Is it only a matter of time before Milw trades Burnes to the Dodgers for a prospect haul? #1 pitchers won’t come cheap.

Ben Clemens: I do think they’re gonna end up dealing one of him or Woodruff. If I were them I’d deal Woodruff and keep Burnes, we’ll see

re: poutine: (No idea where that name came from but I left it)…..nootbar over seiya and dansby?

Ben Clemens: Look, you should probably take Dansby over Nootbaar, but I’m just a sucker for the potential

Ben Clemens: Nootbaar over Seiya for sure though

Derek: I think the Cards are pretty clearly miles better than the Cubs, but I’m pretty sure Dansby Swanson would be something like the Cardinals’ 3rd best position player… (Though not their 3rd best hitter necessarily)

Ben Clemens: Haha yeah yeah, Dansby good, it’s true, though I don’t think he’s definitely better than Noot or Tommy Edman

Ben Clemens: But he’s definitely in a tier with those guys

Insert Witty Name Here: Which current player would you like to see do the TB12 method and end up playing until their 45?

Ben Clemens: Brandon Nimmo, but he sprints to first base the whole time

Teddy: Have you explored any of Ottolenghi’s books? Almost every recipe in “Flavor” is a 55-65, with some 70s sprinkled in (in my opinion)

Ben Clemens: No but that sounds like a great recommendation so I’ll try it and report back

Cito’s Mustache: If owners new how high Steve Cohen was going to set payroll, do you think they would’ve voted to approve the Mets sale two years ago?

Ben Clemens: I think they still would’ve, but I’m certainly not confident

Donovan: Hi Ben, I am quite worried that Brendan Donovan will end up being a flash in the pan because his exit velo is quite bad. Sure, he’ll take a ton of walks, but as the Church teaches us: Walks Along Will Not Sustain wOBA. Is he in line for a major regression?

Ben Clemens: Yeah…. I mean, he’s got really good plate discipline and it’s not impossible that he makes it work in a Kwan/Arraez lite kinda way

Ben Clemens: His skills are such that I do think he’ll be able to sustain something like average production just by hitting a ton of singles and not striking out much. But he’s definitely a future empty average kinda guy

TMI, but needs to be asked: Would Brandon Nimmo incorporating the TB12 method mean he’d also have to take a mirror selfie in his underwear?

Ben Clemens: I mean, of course

Ben Clemens: He’ll also have to give up eating nightshades

Ben Clemens: Bright side: he’ll get to marry and then divorce a supermodel and golf against Peyton Manning

marginal utility player: I think Steven Matz has a chance to be the Cardinals best starter this year. That’s not saying all that much, but his FIP and xERA/xwOBA last year were wayyy better than his ERA, and his xFIP was even more impressive because of how high his HR/FB rate was

Ben Clemens: Yeah, I think Matz has flipped over into underrated territory

Chip: Hi Ben, hoping you can speak some faith to Brandon Lowe after a down and injured season. My AL-only league has most of the top 2b eligible guys kept and basically I will be paying for him or shopping in the Kemp, Gordon, Schoop tier.

Ben Clemens: The injuries are definitely a risk. But I don’t think that anything in his profile screams that he can’t keep doing it, so you’re betting on health and depending on what you’re keeping him for, I think that’s a very reasonable idea

GQ: Do you think Steven Kwan is an all-star in CF ? and if you were the guardians, what would you do with the 6 45-50 FV (and Rosario) 2B/SS guys they have

Ben Clemens: mmmm…. I’m not sold on him being an average center fielder, though he’s undoubtedly very good in left

Ben Clemens: bat wise, he’s luxury Donovan, and that plays, but I think his defense would determine whether or not he was an All Star there. Also, though, it’s not gonna happen while they have Straw

Steven: If it was swoBA (statcast wOBA) and not xwOBA (expected), would people ever use them?

Ben Clemens: Fewer people would for sure. Name is a key part of statistic utilization

Matt: What do you think is a realistic goal for the phillies this season?

Ben Clemens: Make the playoffs as a wild card and see what happens after that

T-Wizzy: Is Carson Kelly going to be a DBack come opening day? Feels like a bounce back candidate who could help a team with a need behind the plate

Ben Clemens: Hmmm…. I haven’t heard any smoke about him moving, but it does make sense. I’ve been a long-term believer in Kelly, in the ‘he has all the tools it’s just a matter of putting them together’ way

Ben Clemens: I still think that’s true, so if you’re a team that is in need of a catcher I think you should see if the DBacks are willing to let him go for cheap to give Moreno more run. I don’t think they will, because Kelly is a great guy to learn from and by all accounts a great clubhouse guy (which seems valuable while you have a rookie catcher), but it’s worth asking

Theo: does Jordan Walker make the opening day roster? I feel like he should but the Cardinals have so many guys who need ABs…

Ben Clemens: I don’t think he should, to be honest. He’s awesome, obviously, but he’s still 20 and hasn’t played in Triple-A. It’d be one thing if there was an obvious place to play him but I don’t think he’s one of the team’s best 9 position player options right now, so why rush him when he has legit things to work on in Triple-A still (dealing with the soft stuff/pitch around approach that he’ll likely see in the majors, basically)

Pedro: Should Astros be concerned about Framber Valdez this year?  Threw a lot of innings in the regular season, threw a lot of high stress innings in the playoffs and the WS, and now more added on the WBC?  Thanks

Ben Clemens: They should be absolutely terrified. Every time Framber throws, he’s at risk of an arm injury that could cause him to miss the entire season

Ben Clemens: Note: that’s because he’s a pitcher. I don’t think his workload was particularly worrisome last year, any more so than it is for any pitcher

Colton: Hi Ben, hope you’re doing well today! What do you make, if anything, of Suwinski’s home/road splits?

Ben Clemens: I make nothing of them, basically

Jason Adam: 3 plus pitches in 2022, do Rays stretch me out as a starter? I throw strikes and 95mph FBs. Rays had me ditch my fourth pitch

Ben Clemens: I’m not seeing it

Old Hoss: Best names in pro baseball right now? Top 3?

Ben Clemens: Oooooh I haven’t seen a good all-name team in a while

Ben Clemens: This is extremely down to personal preference, obviously

Ben Clemens: I love Seranthony Dominguez, very pleasing to say

Ben Clemens: Lars Nootbaar is a personal favorite, particularly since he’s trademarked Noot Baars as an energy bar

Ben Clemens: Last on my list is a guy who I just like b/c he was a hyped Cards prospect for me, but Elehuris Montero, just such a pleasing first name to say

Chief Keefe: Stone Garrett is up there

Guest: Best name is Skye Bolt, and it’s not even close

Chief Keefe: And of course, Richard Lovelady

Good names: Bobby Miller is a sleeper for me, also PabloLopez

DeJong and DeRestless: Not sure if he’s still in the league, but Archimedes Caminero is one of the best names ever

Ben: You believe Lars Nootbaar will be better than Dansby Swanson in 2023?

Ben Clemens: Yeah, I do, or at least that it’s <50%. Heck, this is not as wild of a take as it sounds. Depth Charts projects Nootbaar for 3.5 WAR/600 and Swanson for 3.8 WAR/600

Ben Clemens: And uh, whoops, that should say >50%

Liz: Jazz Chisholm Jr. is high on the name tier list

Henry: Aristides Aquino!

Lou Perltzman: We’re all used to it now but Mike Trout is a funny name

Broken Bat: barrel % or exit velo. What is more important?

Ben Clemens: Alex Sonty asked me about the stability of barrel rate as well, and I need to look into it. Basically I’d say both are important but if you’re looking for guys who might get better, I’d pay more attention to exit velo and if you’re looking for confirmation that a currently good hitter is doing the right stuff rather than just getting lucky, I’d look at barrel rate

Joe Don: Sorry if you’ve already answered – where does one find a specific player’s EV>95%?

Ben Clemens: It’s hard to do!

Ben Clemens: In the comments from the EV article today, there’s a link to a website Chris Clegg maintains that does it

Ben Clemens: Also, I just threw a google doc online with it, which I’ll link here

Ben Clemens: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1UtyQ_m7FI1X-R7uUbsYrlFEtvOuV2S…

Insert Witty Name Here: A few years ago I made a spreadsheet of the cheapest and most nutrient dense ingredients to try and find the optimal meal.  Not sure how it ended up after inflation happened, but I did learn that nutritional yeast is vastly underrated.

Ben Clemens: Nutritional yeast is wildly underrated. Not just for that, but because it’s like a cheat code for texture in sauces

Eh?: How about worst baseball names? James Outman and Scott Blewett have to be at the top of the list.

Ben Clemens: Bob Walk

Ben Clemens: Homer Bailey

Tim: Have you ever received not-so-nice messages from people in the industry after you’ve written a piece?

Ben Clemens: Honestly, no. The closest I’ve gotten is some snarky messages about me blowing up their spot in a fantasy trade or something similar

Important Question: Name your top 3 wet guys rn

Sergio: Who are your favorite wet guys these days?

Ben Clemens: Oh man

Ben Clemens: I’m not the premier chronicler of wet guys, but let’s think

Ben Clemens: Crawford and Marsh are clearly way up there

Wireless Joe Jackson: Uh, what is a wet guy?

Ben Clemens: Those guys who look like they’re just drenched in water for no obvious reason

Ben Clemens: Like, watch Brandon Marsh play and you’ll be like, dang, that guy is soaking wet

Ben Clemens: And he is!

Lou Perltzman: Isn’t the Wet Guys thing more of a David Roth question?

Ben Clemens: Or the BBQ boys

Ben Clemens: I’m merely a pretender to the ‘funny observations I’ve made about baseball’ throne compared to them and Brisbee

Sandwich: What is the best candy? (Not your favorite. The best.)

Ben Clemens: The best candy is my favorite candy, of course

Ben Clemens: How else could I judge this?

Ben Clemens: And it’s Sockerbit, this swedish salty candy

Ben Clemens: I will accept no other responses. My wife gets it for me for my birthday every year and I devour it

Richard: As an article suggestion: we tend to look at plate discipline in terms of swinging at balls and strikes, but each player is going to have their own individual zone where they are comfortable hitting a pitch.  Do you think it would be possible to calculate players’ individual target zones and then assess their efficiency at swinging at pitches within their individual zones and laying off on others?

Ben Clemens: Shout out to Robert Orr from BP for a really good take on this

Ben Clemens: https://www.baseballprospectus.com/news/article/74813/the-crooked-inni…

Sam: Max Kepler’s EV numbers were average this last year but have usually been above average – is he underperforming these peripherals or is he performing in line with what they show? Does he have a launch angle issue?

Ben Clemens: He has a babip problem and I think the best way to explain it is via launch angle distribution

Ben Clemens: He doesn’t hit many line drives, basically

Ben Clemens: He used to just be all fly balls all the time and get under things too much

Ben Clemens: I’m not surprsied that he posted his highest xBA last year, he had fewer wasted batted balls. Interested to see what 2023 looks like for him

G4: I hope your logically sound confidence in the Cardinals is utterly (and finally) shattered this year. That is all.

Ben Clemens: Finally seems unlikely

Ben Clemens: Utterly certainly possible

Best Names: Jazz, Yastrzemski, and Sanchez (pick one) could always start a law firm if this baseball thing doesn’t work out

Yaz, Jazz, and Sanchez – Attorneys at law

Ben Clemens: Let’s get tennis phenom Carlos Alcaraz in there too

Ben Clemens: also…. watch Carlos Alcaraz

hebrew: re: the baseball card guy – twitter is a great place to learn! I just got back into the hobby this year myself!

now for a baseball question: if we assume that Ohtani isn’t re-signing with the Angels (seems more likely every day,) do you think he’d be more likely to be traded at the deadline, or hit free angecy from the Angels?

Ben Clemens: Very useful, thanks for making the chat more informative without me having to know things

Ben Clemens: I think he’s gonna make free agency. I think it’d just be a bad PR move that isn’t worth the return unless they get an unprecedented haul for a deadline deal

Zach: The Dodgers roster looks a lot better than people are making it out to be. Would you be surprised if they won 100 games again this year?

Ben Clemens: I wouldn’t be surprised, but I think it’s higher than their median outcome, if that makes sense

Uncle Spike: I was hoping we were going to see a list of the 4.4% of players that saw their EV95 change more than one standard deviation.  Do you have that list handy?

Ben Clemens: It’s in that spreadsheet I posted up above, but honestly I didn’t look through them all, it was more of a giant data pull kinda deal, there were 1,900 season-pairs to dig through so I just ran it in Python without investigating each one

Matt Damon: MATT. DAMON.

Ben Clemens: Boy, we almost missed this this week, because this chat is going to be wrapping up soon so I can eat lunch.

Sam: Odds the yankees infield ends up with Peraza and Volpe up the middle while they fake it at third with some combo of Lemahieu and Donaldson?

Ben Clemens: Oh yeah, well within the realm of possibility, let’s call it 35%

Ben Clemens: I think it has a lot to do with how the rest of the ML team performs, unless Volpe is just truly undeniable in the minors

Appa Yip Yip: I like how nobody is forecasting the angels keeping Ohtani because the angels will be good and chasing a playoff spot it’s all PR considerations

Ben Clemens: We’re realists here

Henry: Who are some of your favorite “that guy hit how many home runs??” From the extreme juiced 2019 season

Ben Clemens: for me it’s just Eric Sogard

Ben Clemens: He hit 13 bombs that year, it’s wild

Ben Clemens: He hit 13 in the rest of his career

Ben Clemens: The best part is that I remember I was doing some digging on it, and even then he massively outperformed expectations. It was like 13 homers, 12 wall scrapers

Ben Clemens: and all of them just doinked over the right field fence

Ice Cream Helmet: Oh my gosh, I haven’t been a chat regular for like 2 years now. Logged on today and I see the MATT DAMON thing is still happening. Ripkinian devotion to the bit.

Steven: Last year the average MLB team had 17 WAR from their position players, 14 WAR from their pitchers and 31 WAR overall. Looking at the basic depth charts tab, FG DC projects the average team to produce 28 WAR from their position players, 14 WAR from their pitchers and 42 WAR overall. Why is this? Is their a flaw is the projections (either the stat or playing time)? Or a flaw in my understanding?

Ben Clemens: We’re over-projecting playing time for stars and not fixing WAR to 1000 overall, basically

Ben Clemens: I think we had a discussion about hard-forcing the WAR back to 1,000 but ended up just letting it be

Ben Clemens: I don’t know what the right answer is, but basically we’re projecting a ton of playing time for stars, and so the projected league we show is heavier on star performances than “real baseball”. If that happened for a year, replacement level would go up and it’d be back to 1,000 WAR overall. But we use actual replacement level rather than a theoretical recalculated one, hence the “extra” projected WAR

Steven: So then do you think just sorting by FG DC underestimates teams that are more pitching dominant? Because the issue seems to only affect the hitting side of things.

Ben Clemens: Nah, I don’t think that would be stable year to year

Ben Clemens: but…. maybe this year it does?

Farhandrew Zaidman: Is the Miggy Ro extension more a product of trying to save on the CBT or lack of confidence in Lux at SS you think?

Ben Clemens: porque no los dos?

Sam: If you’re the yankees and you need a LHH OF bat, where are you looking on the trade market? Hoping PIT makes reynolds at the deadline or are there other candidates?

Ben Clemens: I just… I don’t think they need to be aggressively pursuing this. I like the mix they have, and I’m not enamored with Reynolds at the price point the Pirates are reportedly asking (Soto+)

Ben Clemens: Oswaldo Cabrera had a very solid rookie season and everyone just hates him

Colton: Have you heard anything about who is pursuing Alex Reyes? Injuries aside, the guy has been downright nasty when he’s played.

Ben Clemens: Haven’t heard anything but I’m a sucker for Reyes, I’d give him a shot

Uncle Spike: A few interesting items of note from the EV95 spreadsheet.  Luis Arraez has increased his EV95 for 4 straight years, Christian Yellich just had his highest EV95 ever by a decent amount, same goes for Alex Bregman. Anything to glean from that?

Ben Clemens: Hm, I’ll have to think about it more but that’s definitely interesting

Old Reliever Fan: Any word on Joe Smith? Think he’s done or will he get a non-roster invite somewhere?

Ben Clemens: I have heard nothin at all about him

Ben Clemens: but like, that’s Joe Smith for you

Ben Clemens: He’s probably currently on a team and I still just haven’t heard anything

Ben Clemens: He’ll be a serviceable reliever at 66, pitching 50 good innings, and no one will remember that he’s active

Chris: If there is a White Sox tear down come trade deadline, who are the most likely trade candidates from the team?

Ben Clemens: So you’ve got the pitchers, Lynn/Giolito/Lopez

Ben Clemens: Lynn has one more year of team control, Gio and Lopez each are free agents after this year

Ben Clemens: You have to imagine Joe Kelly is available if anyone wants him, and maybe Aaron Bummer if they get a reasonable haul, he has four more years left before free agency

Ben Clemens: I think their hitters will generally not be on the block, I just don’t see them trading Tim Anderson, who would be the obvious name from a contract standpoint

Ben Clemens: Maybe people are higher on Moncada than I am and he’d fetch something, I’m just kinda skeptical

Guest: Re: Position adjustment for DH/ LF. Team context seems important? Like the Rangers for instance could use a replacement level player if it got them some 5 or 6 hole guy who strikes out too much, runs a low OBP and has power

Ben Clemens: Oh totally

Ben Clemens: Teams don’t build their rosters in a vacuum

Ben Clemens: We need an in-a-vacuum statistic for applicability purposes but there’s no way that good GM’s are just going ‘okay let’s look at WAR and end the story there’

Guest: Lars Nootbaar #1 on the trade value list this year?

Ben Clemens: Let’s just say he’ll very likely be top 50

Ben Clemens: and well, he probably should be. Excellent breakout 2022, under team control for forever, peripherals look great and projection systems are bought in

Scouting Stats: Will minor league TrackMan data ever go public? And if you think so, when?

Ben Clemens: I don’t think it will

Ben Clemens: I just don’t see why anyone would be incentivized to do it

North Side Sam: Do you see any hope of the Pirates remotely achieving a .500 season this year, or will it more of the same from this ownership/organization?

Ben Clemens: This year? I mean, it’s not out of the question, but it’s unlikely

Farhandrew Zaidman: This is a very niche question but I’d just like for you to tell me that the Dodgers’ positional core of Kemp/Ethier/Loney/Martin/Furcal was not good enough to compete for a championship in the late 2000s.

Ben Clemens: Mmmmm…. I can’t say for certain, I was definitely way less into the numbers then than now, but I always felt like if that team put it all together they would have been a problem

Appa Yip Yip: In just a few short weeks spring training will begin and then about a week after that we’ll all remember how long and boring spring training is. Baseball.

Ben Clemens: Yeah, spring training is neat and I’m glad it happens but also, not a ton happens during it?

Ben Clemens: its like getting hyped over NFL training camp or something

Ben Clemens: It’s a great sign of baseball being back soon but I’m ont gonna be watching 5 hours of spring training games every dya

Uncle Spike: I’ll be in Scottsdale in early March.  Best park to see a spring training game?

Ben Clemens: I’m not the expert on this, but I’ve loved Salt River when I’ve been to AZ to watch fall league

Carson: Is there anything to be said for the huge difference in Joe Kelly’s ERA (6.08) and FIP (3.06)?

Ben Clemens: Eh, it was 37 innings and a hilarious amount of bad luck. He had a .382 BABIP against, somehow only one unearned run so almost all the runs he allowed counted for ERA, and he had a comically low strand rate, which means that almost everyone who got on base scored

Ben Clemens: Anyway, on that Joe Kelly related note, I’m gonna call it a chat and go reheat some kung pao chickpeas

Ben Clemens: Have a great week everyone, and I’ll talk to you again next Monday