Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat – 3/1/21

Ben Clemens: Hey everyone, and welcome to a Monday chat. Now that Spring Training games are on TV, it really feels like baseball again to me

Ben Clemens: So let’s talk about it!

Jess: Are you expecting a big bounce back from Laureano or was the 2020 regression a warning sign?

Ben Clemens: I’m worried

Ben Clemens: I was always a little down on his ability to reproduce his 2018 season

Ben Clemens: And honestly was just a little baffled when he managed it in 2019

Ben Clemens: But 2020 looks more to me like who he is. A few too many strikeouts to be an absolutely elite hitter, but a guy who can do enough other stuff (he walked more in 2020, but he’s hit for more average or power in the past) to make it work as overall average

Ben Clemens: An overall average hitter who can play center is a nice piece, which is why we’re projecting him for more than 3 WAR, but I think if you’re expecting his 2019 slash line (.288/.340/.521), eh, you might be waiting a while

Jason N: Is it possible Preller isn’t done?  Local rumors have the Padres asking about a Yelich/Hader deal with a return centered around Myers and “pitching”.  No way he can pull this off, right?!  What does the rest of that package need to look like – Gore, Paddack and maybe Cronenworth?

Ben Clemens: I’m skeptical that Yelich is involved, far less so that Hader is. The Brewers aren’t exactly incentivized to move Yelich at the moment

Ben Clemens: Whereas Hader fits the sweet spot of acquirable but also impactful

Billy Goat: Were the Cubs really worried about payroll, or were they just trying to find a polite story to trade away Darvish because they think he is going to break or regress? It seems like they had the money for approximately everyone else.

Ben Clemens: If it was really just about Darvish, then they played a masterful three-year-longn game where they whined about money and didn’t make their team better when there were easy spots to do so

Ben Clemens: I probably should have put masterful in quotes, b/c uh

Ben Clemens: That would be silly

Ben Clemens: Maybe they’re ALSO concerned about Darvish breaking, it can be both

Ben Clemens: But the Cubs have acted like they’re constrained by money for years, so it doesn’t make sense to say that it was just a PR gambit to trade Darvish

Derek: Live professional baseball is happening right now!

Ben Clemens: So so true

Appa Yip Yip: What do you think of Rowdy Tellez? Last season caveats apply, but he cut his K rate from 28% to 16%

Ben Clemens: I’m still skeptical that he can make his approach work, because he chases SO MUCH

Ben Clemens: a lot of his reduction in strikeouts came down to the fact that his o-contact spiked

Ben Clemens: So he was making contact with a bunch of bad pitches, basically

Ben Clemens: But that’s no way to live long-term

Ben Clemens: Basically I haven’t changed my evaluation of him much based on 2020; above-average bat, but not by enough to offset the lack of defensive home

Ben Clemens: Hope I’m wrong, but that’s where I’m at right now

Sean M.: Can you talk a little Pablo Lopez? Saw FG has him pegged for significant regression, but seems pretty solid to me outside of that historically horrible Braves start. Why so down on him?

Ben Clemens: I’m not making the projections, of course, but I don’ think it’s crazy for us to project a career 4.47 ERA, 4.03 FIP pitcher for a…. 4.0 ERA and 4.04 FIP

Ben Clemens: You could maybe convince me that changeup-centric pitchers with good command are generally undervalued by Steamer and ZiPS

Ben Clemens: He’s got a little Kyle Hendricks to him, which you can see here:

Ben Clemens: https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/savant-player/pablo-lopez-641154?stats=…

Ben Clemens: In the movement profiles

Ben Clemens: I would take the under on his projections

Ben Clemens: Under as in, lower ERA

Ben Clemens: But not b/c of what he’s shown in the majors — I think the projections have done an adequate job of that part

Cube Jockey: Can Alex Reyes cut it as a fifth starter?

Ben Clemens: Personally I think Alex Reyes can cut it as a first starter

Ben Clemens: I’m SO in on Reyes

Ben Clemens: Injuries will always be an issue, but the stuff is just so preposterous that I’m going to keep believing

Ben Clemens: Nothing we’ve seen him do says ‘this guy can’t pitch’

Ben Clemens: And he also has a streamlined delivery he’s testing out this year, which I’m always a fan of

Curtis: Most surprising contract of the off season thus far? Good or bad…

Ben Clemens: I’m most surprised by the Trevor Rosenthal deal

Ben Clemens: I’m happily surprised, I personally root for him b/c of the Cardinals ties

Ben Clemens: But given the early reliever market, I wasn’t expecting a boom/bust kinda guy to get that much money

Pumpsie Green: Would Hendricks and Heyward have positive, neutral or negative trade value? Man, looking at Roster Resource, with a couple of good trades and a non-tender or two, the Cubs could go into next year with an all-minimum salary. At that point, would ownership stop complaining?

Ben Clemens: Hendricks positive, Heyward negative; I htink the package works out to a small positive

Ben Clemens: You get 3/60 for Heyward basically, 4/60 for Hendricks

Ben Clemens: I think Hendricks is enough of a value at that rate that I’d net take the whole package

Ben Clemens: The return would be tiny, though

Ben Clemens: To be clear, I don’t think the Cubs are considering trading Hendricks

Ben Clemens: But if they did, I do think they’d try to package him with Heyward

brad penny for your thoughts: Nolan Arenado with 0-2 with 1 strikeout in his StL debut on Sunday.  Is he now the biggest trade bust ever?

Ben Clemens: It’s over

Not Sandy Alderson: Given all the stories and trades we have already seen due to strained finances of some teams, and without knowing if/when fans will be allowed into stadiums, do you think we might see more trades during the season than a “normal” year?

Ben Clemens: Yeah, this wouldn’t shock me. Teams that get out of it early might just cut bait on salary

Nate: No question, just enjoying tea from my newly arrived Official FanGraphs mug. Thanks for all the great content!

Ben Clemens: I am too!

Ben Clemens: A nice Celestial Seasonings peach tea at the moment

Ben Clemens: This is my first mug of this shape — they’re on the shorter, wider side

Ben Clemens: And it’s very pleasing to hold

Curtis: What’s the difference in value of Kyle Seager before the season and then at the trade deadline? Lots of factors but assuming the Mariners paid some of the salary, what could the return conceivably be in each scenario? or what would be the difference in the return. Thanks!

Ben Clemens: I think the move is to wait, even though I *think* the return will be worse then

Ben Clemens: Here’s why

Ben Clemens: The actual return you’re going to get for Seager, right now, isn’t enormous

Ben Clemens: I suppose you could eat the contract and try to get something interesting, but who are the teams who really want a 3B right now? NYM arguably (eh) and MIL in the NL

Ben Clemens: And that’s kinda it of the top line contender

Ben Clemens: If you wait until midseason and Carter Kieboom has struggled, or Gio Urshela is hurt, you might just have what they need

Ben Clemens: You might also not, and end up with nothing, but I think the rewards if you manage to wait are meaningful

Chris: Why are mlb teams (besides the angels) so bad at broadcasting spring training games?

Ben Clemens: I think they’re messing around with new camera angles maybe? And also it’s not like they need to reach out to an audience with this one.

Ben Clemens: But yeah, teams’ lack of dedication isn’t great for me, the most engaged baseball watcher

Appa Yip Yip: I like to get the Celestial Seasonings mix pack and open them all and mix them together for Surprise Tea. Pandemic entertainment baby!

Guest: I just discovered peach tea- the Bigelow variety. I did not know this was a possibility before, and am enjoying it immensely except for the extremely judgmental reactions from my wife, who wrinkles her nose as if I am sipping boiled turds…

Ben Clemens: It’s a tea chat now

Ben Clemens: We get bougie teas sometimes, but I’m partial to Celestial Seasonings. It’s as good now as it was when I was a kid

Ben Clemens: And I LOVE hot beverages

Derek: I thought you only drank plain hot water?

Ben Clemens: Hey now, I drink plain hot water when I don’t have tea handy

kevin: Is it wrong to be excited about the brewers pitching? With the defensive upgrades they’ve made they could be really good

Ben Clemens: I’m very excited about Milwaukee’s pitching staff

Ben Clemens: Eno Sarris has Brandon Woodruff as SP4 in fantasy, I wouldn’t say I’m THAT excited

Ben Clemens: But switching from Keston Hiura to Kolten Wong is SUCH a big upgrade

brewers optimist: better breakout candidate: freddy peralta or josh lindblom. lindblom might get more innings but freddy has a higher ceiling.

Ben Clemens: On that topic, I think I’d take Lindblom as a breakout pick

Ben Clemens: Here’s my thinking: I know that Lindblom spent the offseason tinkering with his fastball to try to add ride

Ben Clemens: That might not work out, I have no clue

Ben Clemens: But I know that a thing has changed there, which makes a change in results more believable to me ex ante

Ben Clemens: Not that I’m down on Peralta, I just think breakouts are more likely when a player has done a specific thing differently

Sharps: Yogi brand Kava tea is amazing.  Nice flavor, very relaxing vibe

Ben Clemens: any more tea recommendations? I have a Yankees bullpen esque tea selection these days, an embarrassment of riches that I struggle to deploy correctly, but I’m always looking for more

Guest: There’s a bunch of SPs coming back from injury or otherwise—Kluber, German, Paxton, etc.  Do you have a preferred dart throw among the lot?

Ben Clemens: Reyes is my favorite if you count him

Ben Clemens: If you don’t, I have Kluber first and Taillon second

Sharps: you get tasked to make a promo for Pandemic featuring a current MLB player.  Who would it be, what would they do?

Ben Clemens: I’m gonna take Lindor, because he’s such a joy overall and has already said some things to the effect of ‘wear a mask dummy’

Ben Clemens: I’d have him doing vaguely recognizable baseball things

Ben Clemens: Only with a six-foot pole attached to his glove

Ben Clemens: Socially distanced tags, socially distanced celebrations, that kind of thing

Moonlight Graham: Are there any players where you’re especially interested in their spring training news? Pitchers adding / losing velo, batters changing approaches, prospects …

Guest: I know we often talk about how ST stats don’t really matter, but what things can we look at and glean something? Statcast things like exit and pitching Velo? K%?

Sodo Mojo: Given the short season and lack of MILB season last year do spring training stats take on more significance as you are looking to evaluate players or are they still noise to be generally ignored?

Ben Clemens: All these questions get at roughly the same thing, so I’ll lay out how I feel about ST this year

Ben Clemens: One, more parks have Statcast setups, so that’s huge

Ben Clemens: Velo, max EV, new pitches; you can look out for all of these things

Ben Clemens: I’d focus on stats like that, b/c pitch mix is goingn to be tough and most production-based stats just don’t have the requisite mix of competition and sample size to matter

Ben Clemens: But if you see a guy add 3mph of velo, that’s super relevant

Ben Clemens: So the people I’m most intersted in are pitchers where we don’t have a velo reading for 2020 or where their 2020 was markedly different from prior years

mmddyyyy: How would you explain to someone why trout is a better bet to age well than pujols was?

Ben Clemens: I think the easiest way would be to do this

Ben Clemens: Have them name some transcendent players from the past

Ben Clemens: Then ask how each of them aged in their 30s

Ben Clemens: Pujols is one of the worst aging outcomes for someone of his dynamism in his 20s

Ben Clemens: So everyone is a good bet to age better than Pujols has, because he aged so poorly

Appa Yip Yip: The Jays seem to be operating on the assumption that one of their many depth starters will take a step forward this year (and that Robbie Ray will throw strikes (26 strikes on 28 pitches today!)) and the difference between said starter and Odorizzi isn’t going to be enough to justify a multi year deal. What do you think about this? Are they holding back to try and get one of the older elite guys next off-season on a short high aav deal?

Jake O.: What happens with me now – are teams overlooking a good value at my reported asking price of 3 / 45, or am I over-estimating myself? Any chance this ends up as a Keuchel situation that bleeds into June?

Ben Clemens: I am into Robbie Ray, I think that you can throw out 2020

Ben Clemens: I don’t think he’s gonna be a Cy Young candidate or anything, but he can go back to being his ARI self — frustrating b/c his stuff is elite and his results are merely above average

Ben Clemens: That said, yeah, i think that’s the Jays’ rough point of view. They have a lot of 5th starter types if they pan out. They don’t have much proven pitching, but I think they believe that enough of their lottery tickets/prospects will pan out that by season’s end, they’ll have an Odorizzi-esque 4th starter

Ben Clemens: You could argue that it’s dangerous in a tight playoff race to wait to figure things out, but I think it’s defensible

mmddyyyy: Does it bother you when different announcers pronounce player names differently?

Ben Clemens: It does, although a little less during spring training tbh

Ben Clemens: There are media guides! The pronunciations are in there

Ben Clemens: It’s literally their job

Ben Clemens: In Spring Training, where teams have wildly expanded rosters, I can kinda see it

Ben Clemens: In the regular season, do your job

jamesdakrn: I think the Braves 10-K filing (LIberty Media that is) showed us some interesting findings, that a self-sustaining team like that (for better or worse, they use their own budget essentially from their own earnings as part of Liberty Media), it is going to be essential that we move back to “normal” by summer. otherwise their payroll next year might be…brutal

Ben Clemens: Kinda depends on what you mean by a lot of these words

Ben Clemens: If you’re saying that htey’ve literally retained every dollar of profit over the years, that’s just not true

Ben Clemens: They’ve put some into the battery, but they’ve also paid out some profits

Ben Clemens: That said, if you wash away every dollar of profit every year either via paying it out or via investment, yeah, downturns can be tough

Ben Clemens: But let’s say that they made $500 million in profit over the last ten years andn spent it all on improving the area around the park

Ben Clemens: If they lose $50 million this year, and that somehow blows up their business and forces them to give up on being competitive, they’re clearly running this business wrong

mmddyyyy: If you had to field a team and could only roster active shortstops, who would you put in the outfield?

Ben Clemens: Good question, let’s see

Ben Clemens: Chris Taylor, Jonathan Villar, Nick Senzel

jamesdakrn: And by rough I meant not in like Rays terms or anything, but that they probably won’t be able to spend as much as their fans would want, not even close & possibly contract payroll with a competitive team

Ben Clemens: Well yeah, if they claim they can’t lose money on ongoing operations

Ben Clemens: Then it’s gonna be rough

Ben Clemens: But have you ever heard of a business that makes huge profits in boom times, then has to blow it up the second there’s an economic downturn? Smart businesses understand that there’s a business cycle

Ben Clemens: Now, will they CRY poor?

Ben Clemens: 8000%

Ben Clemens: But if whether you spend is wholly dependent on how many tickets you’ve sold in the past year, and you’re a team that is making the kind of long-term money that the Braves are, that means your management is doing it wrong

Trea Turner: I played a pretty good centerfield back when I came up for that SS question

Ben Clemens: Ooh, that’s an oversight on my part

Ben Clemens: There are actually a lot of SS/OF types these days, and Turner just slipped my mind because he hadn’t done it in a while. He’d be great

Appa Yip Yip: Jerry Howarth used to have a list in front of him when he was on air with all player names spelled phonetically specifically so he’d never mess one up.

Ben Clemens: If I were an announcer, I’d probably do this for visiting teams

Ben Clemens: Or you know, the other team if my team is on the road, etc

Ben Clemens: It’s just smart, you know?

Ben: I always forget that Madison Bumgarner is younger than Strasburg. Do you think MadBum will have a rebound?

Ben Clemens: From his 2020? I think so. I don’t think he’s a below replacement level pitcher

Ben Clemens: But some pitchers are Felix, while others are Scherzer. You have to be worried about a 3 mph drop in velo over a single year

Derek: Assuming you’re making an entire lineup (9 players) out of shortstops, would any of Taylor/Villar/Senzel even sniff consideration? Wouldn’t it just be like, Corey Seager and Xander Bogaerts in the corners or something?

Ben Clemens: That’s a fair point, I was just thinking fielding. Presumably you’d have Lindor play actual shorstop, maybe Tatis at second

Ben Clemens: Yeah, I think you could argue that Taylor would play against lefties, but in all likelihood every position except center would just be some dudes who can hit

Ben Clemens: like, 1B/LF/RF

Ben Clemens: So center is the only place where these guys could fit, and that would be Turner

Ben Clemens: does Ketel Marte count?

fake baseball fan: On the shortstop question, who would catch?

EbenezerBatflip: In this entire team of SS, which SS is playing catcher?

Ben Clemens: Kiner-Falefa

Ben Clemens: It’s handy to have a C/SS

EbenezerBatflip: Seeing a bunch of smaller market/budget teams sign guys to smaller/team friendly deals and then seeing Mookie asking Red Sox for 400M+/12 years, do you think John Henry/Red Sox ownership want to change the narrative about them being big spenders since players see them as the type of organization that will sign record breaking deals instead of team-friendly extensions?

Ben Clemens: Eh, not really, because you can be both

Ben Clemens: I don’t think that if the Red Sox were a smaller market team, they’d be MORE likely to be able to extend Mookie

Ben Clemens: He wanted to test free agency, and they missed their chance at guaranteeing certainty in exchange for a discount early in his career

Ben Clemens: I can see that it might matter slightly, but the Dodgers sign plenty of team-friendly extensions

Element of Surprise: Can a team choose to not disclose ST Statcast numbers?

Ben Clemens: I truly have no idea

Ben Clemens: My guess is that they cannot, they’re used on the broadcast and such

Ben Clemens: But I just don’t know

Hank: Will we ever see statcast numbers on body language?

Ben Clemens: I don’t know if you have seen some of the mo-cap stuff that Darren Wilman occasionally posts, but I hope so!

mmddyyyy: When a pitcher practices in the offseason, does he pitch to a real catcher?

Ben Clemens: Depends on what you mean by a real catcher

Ben Clemens: As an example, I was reading about Lindblom’s offseason workout, and he either threw to a pocket mat (when there was no catcher available) or a local college’s bullpen catcher

Ben Clemens: The flatground app and things like that, and honestly Pitching Ninja’s overall proselytizing of pitching, seems to have really helped pitchers link up with catchers and each other, which is awesome

cortezthakillah: Keeper league.  Just traded Aaron Judge & Dustin May for Adalberto Mondesi and Daniel Espino.  How’d I do?

Ben Clemens: I’m not incredible at fantasy, so take my advice with a grain of salt. There are also plenty of contextual questions in play here. That said, I’m very down on Mondesi, and more so now that Benintendi might be batting second

Ben Clemens: That’s a lot fewer PA’s over the year if Mondesi is hitting 6th/7th unless someone gets a day off

mmddyyyy: Do players ever have surgeries we don’t hear about until years later?

Ben Clemens: I think it depends on the severity of the surgery, but probably yes

Ben Clemens: Knee scopes and such in the offseason might not come up

Moonlight Graham: Sale or Syndergaard for better bounce back after TJ?

Ben Clemens: I’m on Thor, but answering these types of questions correctly is a crapshoot. A lot depends on how their rehab goes and I can’t observe that

Jack C: Ben! Do you play Strat-o-matic?

Ben Clemens: I haven’t played in a while, but I used to. I got one of the steroid era boxed sets when I was a kid, and I used to spend the summer at my dad’s house (where I didn’t have any school friends), so he and I played a TON of stratomatic with those sets

mmddyyyy: Really is there any team that doesn’t benefit from signing Odorizzi?

Ben Clemens: No, which is the magic of pitching. It’s a cascade thing where it’s just impossible that he’s your 13th-best pitcher

Ben Clemens: There are teams where the improvement relative to the cost doesn’t make sense when you consider what else they could do

Ben Clemens: But if a team tells you they don’t think Odorizzi would improve their overall talent level, they’re lying

BringBackDeSpanielHair: Halelujiah! Baseball is back!

Hmmmm: Would a team of all Mike Trouts in the lineup be able to overcome also having a Mike Trout pitch every inning? Would they win 100 games?

Ben Clemens: Effectively Wild has covered this in more depth, I think. But no, they would not win 100 games. Mike Trout pitching is a HUGE disadvantage

Ben Clemens: Same with him catching or playing shortstop

Guest: Is Purdue the “local college” where Lindblom threw to a bullpen catcher? (He went to my high school in West Lafayette, and still lives there, I think)

Ben Clemens: Just pulled up the article, and it sure is!

Ben Clemens: https://www.mlb.com/brewers/news/josh-lindblom-does-analytics-deep-div…

Question: In relation to the Trout hypothetical, do you think a team of all Mike Trouts would be better or worse than a team of all Jacob DeGroms?

Ben Clemens: I’d like to see deGrom hit against Trout before I weigh in on this

Ben Clemens: But if I have to pick right this minute, I’ll give the edge to 26 deGrom’s

Ben Clemens: It’s quite interesting, though, b/c we can approximate what Trout will do when facing deGrom (with deGrom’s in the field)

Ben Clemens: But what happens the other way is a pure guess

Pizzacutter: Have you been following Russell Carleton’s OOTP series at BP? Any thoughts on it?

Ben Clemens: I have been, and it’s a lot of fun. I’d read Russell write about almost anything, because I get a lot of value out of the way he lays out his thoughts, but I think the subject matter works too

Derek: Is this season Ohtani’s last chance to prove he can be a two-way player?

Ben Clemens: I think it is unless he is bad at both things

Ben Clemens: If he struggles to stay healthy on the mound again and is a 120 wRC+ hitter, he’s just going to end up as a hitter most likely

Ben Clemens: If he struggles to stay healthy but the bat totally disintegrates, I think the Angels will give him more rope on the mound

G4: Over/under one all-star quality season by Spencer Howard in next 5 years. What’s your bet?

Ben Clemens: The safe bet is under, b/c he’d need 2 to avoid a push

Ben Clemens: If it’s at 0.5, though, I think I’d take the over but it would be really close. I like Howard’s fastball well enough and he’s gotten so many whiffs at minor league levels that it’s hard to believe he can’t miss bats in the majors

Ben Clemens: The reason it’s not an easy over is because there are only so many All Stars

Ben Clemens: I think Heyward has a good shot at being good at some point soon, but being one of the 8 best starters in the NL? Can definitely happen, but not a guarantee

Matt Damon: MATT. DAMON.

Ben Clemens: Hey there Matt, great to hear from you

EbenezerBatflip: Expectations for JD Martinez now that he can watch video of pitchers again? Does he bounce back or is he in decline now?

Ben Clemens: Yes

Ben Clemens: I think the video thing is generally overhyped as a reason for failure, but he’s certainly bouncing back at least a bit

Ben Clemens: I do think the days of 150 wRC+ are over, though

Appa Yip Yip: Who runs with the starting C position in Toronto? Does Alejandro Kirk take it from Danny Jansen, or do questions about how his body will hold up keep him in a backup C/DH role?

Ben Clemens: I think that Kirk is best served as a C/DH type, at least for now, so that gives the job to Jansen by default

Ben Clemens: That said, I’d want to do something like 60 Jansen/40 Kirk

Ben Clemens: And give Kirk some run at DH too, when you aren’t using Vlad/Rowdy there

Ben Clemens: I think a true time share is completely reasonable

JoeD: Heaney or Montas for 2021?

Ben Clemens: Heaney for me. I can’t really explain why but something about the Montas profile just worries me

Ben Clemens: I’m open to believing that I just have Montas evaluated wrong, but I dunno. The fastball doesn’t wow me, and neither does the splitter/changeup thing, which means it’s basically just how his slider plays

Derek: Was watching ST on Sunday and Vladito looked noticeably leaner – do you think that translates to noticeably better performance? Either short- or long-term?

Ben Clemens: He lost like 45 pounds!

Ben Clemens: I’m not clear on whether I think it’s good for his game or not. It’s certainly good for his fielding, and the knock with Vlad has never been power, it’s been his inability to get the ball off the ground. So I’m a qualified yes on this translating to better performance, but I want to see some numbers. Is he still hitting the ball as hard?

Tashika: Do you see Maeda as a top 10-15 SP after last year or does that over-weight the 2020 small sample?

Ben Clemens: I think that’s probably overweighting 2020 slightly. I think saying he’s in the 15-25 range is reasonable, though, and honestly I wouldn’t fight you too much if you wanted to say he was #15

Ben Clemens: It’s not like he wasn’t good before, you know?

Ben Clemens: The Dodgers just sliced his performance up weirdly between starting and relieving

Ben Clemens: He’s 25th per Depth Charts, and I like him over some of the people in front of him

Kevin: I have not seen a single article on this site (or many others) mention the home park for the Blue Jays. Dunedin, what do we know about it, how will it play? Will playing outdoors in Florida in May/June affect the players? Assuming Canada does not allow sports team to travel into the country until mid-summer at the earlier

Ben Clemens: This is a huge problem that we’re still wondering about

Ben Clemens: Literally no one has played in the new Dunedin stadium, because they renovated it in 2019

Ben Clemens: Park factors are going to be a complete guess until we can get some data there, and even then, like you said the weather plays a huge role

Ben Clemens: I think there’s some chance they end up in Buffalo by June, do you want to play in a spring training stadium when US cities are opening up due to vaccinations?

Kevin: Anthony Santander showed some strong gains last year before being shutdown. Do you think this is a new sustainable level or was it a SSS mirage?

Ben Clemens: I don’t really buy the power — like, I think it improved, but not by as much as his numbers show

Ben Clemens: I’m also confused by the strikeout improvement — he was AWFUL in lots of the granular parts of plate discipline last year

Ben Clemens: too many chases, not enough in-zone contact

Ben Clemens: I guess in other words no, I think it was a mirage?

45 blows billygoats: What’s the deal with Varsho? He’s starting, he’s not, he’s platooning…jerking with a kid like that is how you fail in development…

Ben Clemens: Agree. I think I’d just give him a near-everyday outfield slot? I could also see sending him down. You can’t let him mostly back up Kelly and Vogt, though, it’s just weird

Bender Bending Rodriguez: What would be your shallow-league (8-team) H2H auction strategy? Last couple seasons I’ve tried stars and scrubs to mixed results. Tried pitching heavy last year which blew up in my face. Any thoughts?

Ben Clemens: I’ve never played in a league that shallow, my initial thought is to go pretty heavily stars and scrubs just due to the higher replacement level though

Ben Clemens: Probably a better question for the actual fantasy writers, though I’m happy to give you my under-knowledgeable opinions

Moonlight Graham: It seems like Ha-seong Kim will start the season as the backup 2B, but will / when he become the starter? Is it possible he won’t be the starter this year at all?

Ben Clemens: It’s certainly possible he won’t seize a starting role this year. We don’t know how he’ll adjust to major league pitching still

Ben Clemens: I think he’s maybe 50% to be a starter by season’s end, because all it takes is a single outfielder going down for the dominos to make him look like a starter

Ben Clemens: But we just don’t know what to expect from him

Kevin: G-Force is a good game. I am a HUGE fan of acquire which i believe you are too. Any other betting/gambling type board games you like? Not splendor more in line with hidden wagering

Ben Clemens: Acquire is great, of course

Ben Clemens: I don’t actually play all that many wagering games aside from poker

Ben Clemens: So I’m not super knowledgeable on this. I do think that Android Netrunner is good for hidden information but it is very  niche, you need to be a very particular type of gamer to enjoy it

EbenezerBatflip: Lets say in the future the Red Sox look like a playoff team, do you expect Chaim Bloom to *ever* spend big in free agency or is being thrifty just always going to be his philosophical approach to roster building?

Ben Clemens: I do expect him to spend

Ben Clemens: It’s fine to be philosophically in favor of hitting singles, as it were, but I’d argue that the real Rays legacy is that the team is really smart about pressing every advantage it can dream up

Ben Clemens: Money is a great advantage

Ben Clemens: Will he be more hesitant to go to money as a crutch? Entirely possible

Ben Clemens: But I don’t think people are one-note in the way that if they didn’t spend money before due to ownership preference, they can’t flip the switch

Appa Yip Yip: All the players who’ve played in Dunedin are warning the Jays pitchers that the ball flies. Supposedly an extreme hitter’s park

Ben Clemens: Yeah, it’s interesting b/c they changed the dimensions to match the Rogers Centre, but with Dunedin’s weather and wind patterns

Ben Clemens: Not sure what to make of it, definitely gonna watch some ST games there when I can

Ben Clemens: Alright everyone, I think I’m going to wrap this chat up, because I’m wildly hungry

Ben Clemens: I’m on a pitch count this early in spring training

Ben Clemens: Thanks for all the questions, baseball and otherwise, and I’m sorry that I couldn’t get to everyone’s. I’m off skiing next week, so next time I’m here, there will likely be some ST performances to read too much into

Ben Clemens: Until then, have a great day and a great week(s)!