Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat – 3/3/25

Ben Clemens: Hey everyone, I’m starting the chat a little early today. I have a dog training session around 11:45 (ish), and I’ll squeeze out all the time I can before then, but plan on me bailing quickly when I get a 5 minute warning or so

Ben Clemens: In the meantime, let’s answer some questions about baseball. And board games, since I see one in the queue already

Some kinda Mook: Also, my wife and I have played through almost all of the Baker Street Irregulars pack in Sherlock Holmes: Consulting detective. Really fun! Thanks for the recommendation like a year ago!

Ben Clemens: Amazing, I’m glad you like it. We just played a Sherlock a few weeks ago. We’ve been on an Azul and Cascadia kick recently, both of which remain great

Some kinda Mook: Ben, who ya got over the next five years: Yordan or Vlad?

Ben Clemens: Oh man, Yordan by a mile

Mike: Outside of the White Sox finishing last, would any order in the AL Central standings surprise you?

Ben Clemens: Agreed, that’s the only thing that feels definite

Ben Clemens: The rest of the teams are really evenly matched. Also, they all have pretty well-defined weaknesses, so it’ll be easy to improve at the deadline if that appeals to any of them

Ben Clemens: Should make for a very fun race

Birdsong: Last year around this time, Hayden Birdsong was the #17 prospect in the Giants organization. Then he added the kick change and almost immediately became a top 50 overall prospect. Would you say that he was being undervalued in the original report, or is the kick change just that much of a game changer? (I know there’s been a ton of articles praising the pitch.) Also, what is Birdsong’s future outlook like?

Ben Clemens: I think it’s probably many things all together. Pitching prospects are notoriously tough to get a handle on, first of all, as my research into prospect grades showed

Ben Clemens: I think that makes general sense because single pitches sometimes — not always but sometimes — completely change the outlook for a guy

Ben Clemens: I think that in retrospect, he was probably underrated, but I think that happens with a lot of pitchers

Ben Clemens: The changeup is good, and I mean, he’s always had many plus pitches. The bigger issue has been command, and well, he walked 14% of major leaguers he faced

Ben Clemens: I’d basically say he’s overrated now, but in a ‘you can never tell if pitchers will develop command’ way

Alby: “Yordan by a mile” even with the greater injury risk? I worry about a Tony Olive/Rico Carty situation with those knees.

Ben Clemens: People have worried about that every day since Yordan debuted

Ben Clemens: I’m not saying there’s no risk

Ben Clemens: but

Ben Clemens: From 2021-2024, so including Vlad’s two spike years, Yordan has racked up 2290 PA, 165 wrC+. Vlad has 2783 PA, 145 wRC+

Ben Clemens: Yordan’s been worth comfortably more while playing less time, and we’re picking the sample to flatter Vlad there

Corbin Barrels: Bummed about Carroll getting pulled early, but he’s been hitting some absolute moonshots during the Cactus League; is it “just Spring”, or how much should I buy into the continuation of last half-season’s power surge?

Ben Clemens: I think it depends on what you mean by surge

Ben Clemens: One thing I feel good about, despite what both Carroll and the team have been saying, is that something slowed him down and made him produce meaningfully less power late in ’23 and early in ’24

Ben Clemens: Injury? fatigue? Given that team and player aren’t giving anything away, I can’t really speculate. But I think that Carroll’s raw power is real, and I buy early ’23/late ’24 more than the gap in the middle where he got very slap-hitter-y

wheelhouse: is there gonna be an odd man out in KC’s infield? maybe i’m wrong but it seems like a really odd use of resources to trade singer for india and then shuffle india so far down the defensive spectrum that he’s in LF/DH territory where his bat isn’t exceptional. massey or garcia on the trade block?

Ben Clemens: I mean…. have you seen the other players KC is considering using at LF/DH?

Ben Clemens: Royals LF’s had a 75 wRC+ last year

Ben Clemens: DH’s were at 77, and that’s including 200 PA of Salvy and Vinnie P playing DH

Ben Clemens: His bat is not exceptional compared to all DH’s and LF’s. But compared to Kansas City’s other options? It’s a big improvement

diadem: How concerned are you about Steer’s injury?

Ben Clemens: mmmm…. I want to see some results before I change my evaluation

Ben Clemens: I didn’t think Steer looked bothered by injury in ’24

Ben Clemens: But I hardly watched every game

Ben Clemens: shoulder injuries are always scary. but until I see some evidence that it’s bothering him, I’m willing to give it the benefit of the doubt

Ben Clemens: Now that we have swing speed data from the second half of 2023, I can say things like “Steer’s swing speed, rate of fast swings, and barrel rate didn’t budge in 2024, so injury probably didn’t slow his bat”

Ben Clemens: Kinda cool to be able to do that

comish4lif: Is there anywhere here at FG that projects playing time by percentage? For example, for the Rockies, what is the % breakdown for someone like Hunter Goodman at C/1B/OF/DH?

Ben Clemens: It’s there, in our depth charts, but you’d have to pull the data out yourself ot see the split that way

Ben Clemens: On our depth chart pages: https://www.fangraphs.com/depthcharts.aspx?position=ALL&teamid=19

Ben Clemens: You can see the playing time at each position and then do the math yourself

Jim: Over/under .500 record for the A’s in 2025?

Ben Clemens: I mean, I’ll take the under. Vegas has them around 72, so

Ben Clemens: That said, I had the over last year, and that was a cakewalk

Ben Clemens: it was like… 58? something wild

Ben Clemens: I do like the A’s quite a bit relative to that line, still, as does our model

Ben Clemens: But I’d have it in the 75-80 range, basically

Eli: Given the value of marginal wins to the Yankees, why are they not getting a real third baseman?

Ben Clemens: I’m not sure, to be honest. I think that their commitment to a strict budget is a bit stronger than I expected, basically

Ben Clemens: But I agree, it does feel a little weird to have a team that looks one hitter short

RP: Campbell or Holliday?

Ben Clemens: I’m on Campbell. I can’t shake the “I don’t see how this will work” vibes with Holliday

Ben Clemens: I’m wrong all the time on things like this, obviously. The consensus of evaluators and models tends to be pretty good, much better than my intuition

Ben Clemens: But look, I’ve been lower than consensus on Holliday for quite a while, and taking flak for it right up until people asked me how I could have guessed it

Ben Clemens: so I’ll just say, eh, something about his game feels off to me, even though I can’t put my finger on it. Gimme Campbell, whose game is more of a mystery to me

Insert Witty Name Here: I’ve been coming to your chats since however long you’ve been here but I’ve never actually seen what you look like. I imagine you looking like a typical tech bro.  How far off am I?

Ben Clemens: I mean, you’re not completely wrong, although I wear a FanGraphs hoodie instead of some startup you’ve never heard of

Ben Clemens: Beard, gray hair I don’t bother to dye, etc. SF does have a style

Ralph: Do you sense a Volpe breakout coming? The bat speed gains look real

Ben Clemens: Yeah but similarly, I’m always seeing a Volpe breakout

Ben Clemens: I’ve predicted 3 of the last 0 Volpe breakouts

Ben Clemens: I think that his style of defense plus bat control tends to play, and that the chances of a big Jose Ramirez style power spike are generally underestimated for guys like him, so I’m a buyer

Ben Clemens: but like…. more often than not, players don’t become Jose Ramirez

Holliday: Is having Holliday on my fantasy roster in 2025 a year or two too soon? (In contrast, ARod outplayed Holliday in the MLB at a younger age.)

Ben Clemens: For all my pessimism on Holliday, I’m not saying he can’t work

Ben Clemens: all these views are just probabilistic

Ben Clemens: I’m more of a fantasy football player than baseball player b/c it just feels too close to my actual day job, but in fantasy sports in general, I think that having a good amount of youth and upside on your roster generally pays off

Ben Clemens: so like, even if the expectation is low, the tails look good. I’m not saying break the bank, but generally speaking, betting on hype works out better than it has any business doing

RH: Does the MLB have the guts to play a preseason series in the Taipei Dome? The WBC qualies were amazing, especially compared to the bland Spring Training feel of the Tucson bracket

Ben Clemens: No way is my guess

Ben Clemens: I don’t have any inside info on that, but Taiwan is not a global sports destination, and uh, no points for guessing why

Insert Witty Name Here: revisiting a trade from 2019 – Curtis Mead for Christopher Sanchez.  How do you feel about that 6 years later now that we see them in the bigs?

Ben Clemens: Gotta love when trades work out for everyone is my view

Ben Clemens: I think both teams are probably quite happy with what went down

Drey Jameson: Drey is looking pretty nice so far, getting up over 100 mph with his 4S. He’s even showing much more feel for his Slider than you’d expect from somebody coming back from TJ; do you think the DBacks try to run him out as a MIRP, or is he strictly SIRP for now?

Ben Clemens: I think they’ll go SIRP, maybe with some longer and less frequent outings in the second half

Ben Clemens: Given their enviable rotation depth, I think they’ll take the long view, and I concur with that plan

Kevin: People seem to be very excited about Jordan Westburg, but I see some plate discipline issues. What are your thoughts on him?

Ben Clemens: Oh, I’m very in. I also don’t think it’s plate discipline, exactly. He seems like he knows what he’s doing at the plate and is just aggressive. He has some swing-and-miss, though

Ben Clemens: I think that will probably always be in his game. His swing is very aggressive

Ben Clemens: But I think that his style of aggression is one that often plays well

Bosoxforlife: Buehler looked good in the post-season last year and yesterday he was impressive. Do you think he can be the pitcher he was and if he is do the Red Sox win the AL East?

Ben Clemens: I thought Buehler was a great risk by the Sox

Ben Clemens: can he be the pitcher he was? for sure. And I think that it’s more likely than the contract he signed would imply

Ben Clemens: One of the better signings of the offseason imo, particularly in the ‘cheap but good upside’ bracket

Ben Clemens: like, the best signing, for me, was Soto. it’s good to lock up a probable hall of famer for a decade. But that’s not really what we’re talking about here

Henry Dodger: Quintana just signing with the Brewers reminds me that Blackburn and Canning are likely starting the season in the NYM rotation. Even with Manaea likely back early and Sproat seemingly close to the bigs, this is not optimal, is it?

Ben Clemens: Yeah I just wrote about this: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-mets-need-more-pitchers-already/

Ben Clemens: I mean, it’s not great. I think that the team is set up to handle it if they don’t have any other injuries. But if I were them, I’d be trying to grab one more pitcher as a stopgap

Jim: I’ve read that Jacob Wilson added muscle this off-season. But I never know what’s reality or just “best shape of his life” garbage. Is there any sign he’s developed more power/ability to drive the ball?

Ben Clemens: Not really much way to see so far. He has 14 tracked batted balls in spring training

Ben Clemens: also, spring training is always weird

Ben Clemens: but it’s certainly something I’ll be keeping an eye on. He’s an intriguing player

Ben Clemens: The A’s have historically been very into these better-game-than-raw-power guys

Ben Clemens: Esteury Ruiz was the apple of their eye after he had his wild slug-without-pop season in the minors

Ben Clemens: That gives me pause with Wilson, but I really WANT to believe he can have an impact. My models all love him

Guest: thoughts on ivan herrera? his 127 wRC+ for a 24 y/o catcher (with statcast that backs it up) was impressive

Ben Clemens: Yeah, I think that the Cards’ general disfunction around the catcher position obscured what a good season he had. I know he needs some work behind the plate but I think that they’ll give that to him this year, particularly with Contreras moving. The Cards have had a lot of ‘next great catching prospect’s over the years… maybe Herrera is the one to hit

Ben Clemens: no offense, but Pedro Pages definitely isn’t it, no matter how much the team likes his defense

Jordan Lawlar: To the “best shape” cliches, Lawlar showed up to camp noticeably bulked up; is that necessarily ideal, considering he’s already a 60 raw/70 speed kind of guy without the added mass?

Ben Clemens: I don’t have a strong view here, because I’m not a kinesiologist or anything. I think that a smart move is to not buy these stories too much and focus on how the players perform once games start

Ben Clemens: best shape of their life is just so often uncorrelated to performance

Bosoxforlife: As I watch a very large, in every way, part of the AL East puzzle is making his first appearance since 2023. As Felix Bautista throws his first pitch, then blows Trayce Thompson away, his presence makes the Orioles pitching look a lot better.

Ben Clemens: Yeah, huge news for the O’s. Their bullpen situation was not great last year, even with them spending money to bring in Kimbrel

Ben Clemens: I’m looking forward to hearing Omar’s whistle in lots of games this year

Henry Dodger: Which team is likely to beat their preseason wins projection by the biggest number? I’m guessing the Red Sox. Who would you choose?

Ben Clemens: Oh, this is a fun one. I think I’ll take the Guardians, actually, because our model has them at 78 and that seems surprising to me. But relative to market lines? Maybe the Giants. Below .500 implied, and that gives them a decent amount of upside

Alby: “No offense, but Pedro Pages definitely isn’t it.” I see what you did there.

Ben Clemens: Man, I didn’t even mean it

Guest: “Cards’ general disfunction around the catcher position” remains a bit of a funny thing to me. Cause I agree with you re the perception of the Cardinals catchers and their defensive issues (which seems to evoke even more handwringing inside the org than outside of it)

But Cardinals catchers were the 3rd best unit in MLB last year by fWAR (though still in the bottom half by total DEF)

Ben Clemens: let me put it this way — the players might be good, but the team behavior around them isn’t

Ben Clemens: it doesn’t have much to do with Contreras and Herrera. Certainly nothing to do with Pages, who’s a perfectly acceptable backup

Ben Clemens: It has to do with the team constantly talking like they hate their catchers, and then doing weird things like giving each of Pages, Herrera, and Contreras equal playing time even though their WAR broke down 0.5/1.9/2.5 at the catcher position

Scouting: To what extent do the tools affect each other? For example, let’s say there are two players who you know for a fact are identical hitters, except one has 80 speed and the other has 20. If you looked at the surface level, the faster player will have better stats, since he’ll get more infield hits and extra bases. But would you give them the same grades for their hitting?

Ben Clemens: I can only answer for me, but for me, tools affect each other

Ben Clemens: like, game power and hit tool are so correlated

Geraldo Perdomo: This is probably an odd question, but how do bunts interact with Average Exit velocity? Does a player that frequently bunts look worse by avg EV and LA? Players like Perdomo and McCarthy have always had me wondering…

Ben Clemens: I can’t speak for everyone, but both I and the baseball savant default exclude bunts

Ben Clemens: There’s a little flag for it in the search

Ben Clemens: Mathematically speaking: without bunts, Perdomo was at 87 mph EV and McCarthy at 84.5 in 2024. Add in the bunts, and they drop to 84.2 and 81.8

jimmy: Is SF making a mistake with their rotation? You have Webb and then 4/5 guys that you have no idea what you’re getting from them.

Ben Clemens: I’m actually kind of into it. The minor league options as replacements are pretty good. Birdsong, Beck from the bullpen, Roupp, I think Mason Black is kinda fun, various Carsons

Jim: What does Zack Gelof need to do to bounce back at the plate this year?

Ben Clemens: Make a little more contact. He had the lowest contact rate among qualified players last year. Like…. worse than Oneil Cruz, Adolis Garcia in his worst year, Elly, Ezequiel Tovar

Ben Clemens: He’s never going to be a super high contact rate guy — but he needs to be bad, not awful

ppenayr: why must the pirates continually disappoint me, one legit bat in that the middle of that lineup and they could compete.

Ben Clemens: I really don’t get it

Ben Clemens: It’s so discouraging to see them win the lottery with Skenes, and then just kinda ignore it

Alex Anthopoulos: Am I officially regretting the Murphy trade, now that he is going to miss 4 to 6 weeks?

Ben Clemens: if 4-6 weeks is gonna change that, you probably have your priorities a little wrong

Ben Clemens: I mean, if the Braves could eitehr do that trade again or not, they wouldn’t. But regret it? I don’t think so. I think it was a smart swap, and I think that even in a bad-ish case (Contreras better than expected, Murphy worse than expected) they still got a lot of value out of it

Jb: What are your thoughts on Eduard Julien this year? The Ty France signing was odd

Ben Clemens: Julien is a guy I’m just going to bet on forever. I really buy the skillset. I agree that France cuts down on his PT — but they can be platoon partners, and honestly Julien’s going to provide you a lot more juice if he can fake second than if he plays first. I think that he’ll get plenty of time to given the general brittle nature of Minnesota’s best players

Vader: Hi Ben!  What one or two metrics are your personal favorites for quickly evaluating hitters and pitchers?

Ben Clemens: Oh hm, fun question

Ben Clemens: I think that barrel rate is just a great one-off for understanding hitters. You have to look at their other stats too, but it provides really useful context. “Does the ball explode off the bat” is something we all use when we watch people in real life. I think that one statistic to explain that is about as good as it gets for a quick test of hitters

Ben Clemens: re: pitchers, it’s kinda cheesy but swinging strike rate

Ben Clemens: so much stuff that pitchers do is hard to tease out. Do their pitches work off of each other? Do they tip cdertain ones? Are they tiring out early? Do they need more options for when they don’t have the platoon advantage? You have to watch guys for a long time to know the answers to those questions

Ben Clemens: “Can batters hit the ball?” is much easier to measure and probably more important for performance, though

Ben Clemens: so barrel rate and swinging strike rate, if I had to pick only one stat for each. But the great part about baseball is that you can pick a ton of stats, if you want to

Jim: Why is Shea Langeliers so bad at framing and blocking pitches? He had a reputation as a defensive catching prospectCan he improve?

Ben Clemens: I don’t have a good asnwer for you here. Hey, he’s a good thrower

Ben Clemens: Honestly, he’s not a disastrous receiver or anything

Ben Clemens: Generally speaking, though,catcher defnsive reputation has a ton to do with throwing, and he’s great at it

Ben Clemens: so

Tom: Do you use K-BB% or CSW% to supplement whiff rate for pitchers, or do those have too many other variables at play (for instance, chase/BB rates in low-mid minors are inherently much worse)?

Ben Clemens: I mean, sure. I’m kind of skeptical of CSW just because I haven’t had a ton of luck getting it to work with the way I think about pitchers. I’d prefer just strikeout rate at that point

Ben Clemens: because I feel like called strikes are so variable in their distribution among counts based on who the pitcher is that CSW ends up pretty noisy

Ben Clemens: but K-BB is obviously a better statistic in the long run than swinging strike rate, because it captures more of what makes a pitcher good

Ben Clemens: not walking people is good, and that doesn’t show up directly in swinging strike rate (it does a little b/c a walk requires four pitches someone didn’t swing at, but that’s indirect)

Ben Clemens: just, it’s noisier, and I’d rather look at swinging strike rate over a small sample to know if I should be paying attention to a guy

Henry Dodger: Is Gerrit Cole still elite?

Ben Clemens: He is to me

Ben Clemens: Our projections think he’s not, though – they have him as the 26th best pitcher

Ben Clemens: I’d have him in the 10-15 range, which to me is still elite

Tim: I’ve been. Doing my reading on Yoniel Curet. Don’t see too much ink about him. Does he have a shot at the Rays’ rotation this year, and if so, how high on him can we be?

Ben Clemens: He’s in our preseason top 100 and got a big writeup there:

Ben Clemens: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/2025-top-100-prospects/

Ben Clemens: I’d say he definitely has a shot – that writeup notes we predict a mid-2025 debut

Ben Clemens: how high on him can we be if he cracks the rotation? Well, contingent on him cracking a good rotation, he’s probably better than our projections. And given that he has huge stuff and more of a walk issue, I think that a world where he’s in the rotation as a major league starter implies he’s great. His stuff would already play in the bigs, imo

Ben Clemens: Okay, dog trainer is here, so as promised, I’m making a quick exit, thanks for all the questions and talk to everyone again soon. Baseball is coming!

Tacoby Bellsbury: What was the last thing you listened to that made you go, “Hmm, I need to check more of this out?”

Ben Clemens: Ooh last second one. Chappell Roan is great