Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat – 4/19/21

Ben Clemens: Hey everyone, welcome to a Monday afternoon chat.

Ben Clemens: I might be a little bit intermittent in my responses today, as I’m multi-tasking some personal life stuff in the background, so I apologize in advance, but let’s talk some baseball!

Joe Ross: I know it’s 11 innings and I don’t want to jinx him tonight but he looks good so far. Are we buying him as legit?

Ben Clemens: Definitely legit when he gets to face the Cardinals!

Ben Clemens: Good news, he gets to face them again today

Ben Clemens: That said, I mean ,no? He looks like the same old Joe Ross to me, nothing wrong with that

Chris: You excited for the big mariners vs dodgers first place battle?

Ben Clemens: The Mariners have been a lot of fun this year, and the Dodgers are fun as an immovable object to root against, so absolutely

Appa Yip Yip: Thoughts on Vlad’s defense at first? He looks good to me but I am an uneducated prole.

Ben Clemens: Honestly, I haven’t really been able to tell anything, and I’m realllllly bad at judging first base defense

Ben Clemens: I totally believe in the broad sweep of the metrics — there are no +20 first basemen, first base defense is generally not a huge differentiating factor, etc

Ben Clemens: But if you asked me to grade first basemen? No idea. I’d ask scouts and people who are watching them more than I am

Cubbies: Do you think Alan Trammell will stay up once Lewis comes off the IL and eventually Kelenic gets called up? Seems like he’s destined to be sent down (high K-rate) unless he starts hitting.

Ben Clemens: Alan Trammell, most likely not 🙂

Ben Clemens: Now Taylor, honestly, I think you’re right?

Ben Clemens: This isn’t one of those ‘he’s mashing the ball and getting unlucky’ situations where you see teams increasingly ignoring the small sample results and focusing on the process

BettsBellingerCaruso: ESPN screwed up greatly not putting the entire Dodgers-Padres series on national TV

Ben Clemens: My wife and I were on vacation this weekend in Big Sur, actual middle of nowhere

Ben Clemens: And we watched the games on my phone anyway

Ben Clemens: That was really compelling baseball, absolutely worth watching even if you’re not a fan of either team

Solitaire: How long does it take a team to decide a guy might not just be a platoon player?  Luplow crushing lefties in Cleveland while Naylor flailing against righties, do they ever start shifting the playing time or just find a different left-handed batter?

Ben Clemens: I think you really have to focus on the piecewise splits on these

Ben Clemens: What I mean by that is, Naylor hasn’t been awesome against righties this year

Ben Clemens: But, he’s got an above average wRC+, isn’t striking out too much, seems like he mainly isn’t hitting for power

Ben Clemens: It’s not like he’s been some great righty masher in his career or anything

Ben Clemens: But lefties are better against righties in general, and he hasn’t shown that he’s particularly one way or the other

Ben Clemens: If your question is more ‘is Josh Naylor a good enough hitter to be a lefty platoon bat?’

Ben Clemens: Yeah I dunno

Ben Clemens: He was pretty hot in that one postseason series though!

Marko from Tropoja: For aces, is there an inflection point for K% where it starts to become a net negative at the expense of IP because strikeouts require about 50% more pitches than in-play outs IIRC. My guess would be about 35%.

Ben Clemens: Interesting question. My guess is that the answer is no

Ben Clemens: Think of it this way: from 2018 to now, when batters have made contact against Jacob deGrom, they’ve put up a .329 wOBA

Ben Clemens: That’s everything; jam shots, homers, groundouts, whatever

Ben Clemens: On a strikeout, it’s a 0 wOBA

Ben Clemens: Even if you exclude home runs and say he’s just going to induce weak contact

Ben Clemens: That’s a .278 wOBA

Ben Clemens: If strikeouts require 50% more pitches, you get 2 K’s per 3 balls in play

Ben Clemens: the reliever who needs to replace that one batter would have to be AWFUL

Ben Clemens: for the numbers to work out in favor of fewer K’s

Ben Clemens: Announcers aren’t wrong when they talk about contact finding holes, though I think they’re wrong about the tradeoff hitters should be making there

Appa Yip Yip: Are you buying what Steven Matz is selling? Not the 1.6 ERA but the solid mid rotation starter?

Ben Clemens: Yeah, I think so

Ben Clemens: I’m interested in the fact that he’s held onto last year’s velocity gains, as it was scary to see him throw harder AND perform worse

Ben Clemens: I’m a little bit worried about the fact that he’s still not hitting the zone as much as he did when he was at his most effective

Ben Clemens: But he SHOULD get grounders, he’s a sinker-heavy guy

Ben Clemens: Seeing him do it again is reassuring

Jacob: The Jay Bruce career write up was nice.  Who decides which players do and which players don’t get write ups?  I was wondering if we’d get Alex Gordon and Nick Markakis pieces this offseason.

Ben Clemens: Kinda up to whether someone has something they want to say

Ben Clemens: Interestingly, I would have been into writing about Bruce too, though I think Brendan did an awesome job and I’m glad I got to read his

Ben Clemens: For a guy who didn’t quite reach his ceiling, he was a lot of fun

Carlson burner: How much would production for the cardinals offense change if they bat Carlson 2nd? So far he’s top 20 in his chase rate and he made an adjustment in the Washington series that seems to have brought down the whiff and GB rates?

Ben Clemens: I’m very into Carlson, I picked him for RoY and nothing I’ve seen so far has changed my feelings about htat

Ben Clemens: With that said…. it wouldn’t make much difference to bat him 2nd

Ben Clemens: It would help, but like, fractionally

Ben Clemens: I dunno, I hvaen’t run the numbers, but if it was 5 runs in a year I’d be surprised

Estevão: it’s early in their respective career but so far Will Smith seems like a slightly better version of Pete Alonso. Thought that was interesting

Ben Clemens: Imagine how hyped people would be if Pete Alonso could catch!

Ben Clemens: Will Smith is underrated in my opinion

Ben Clemens: I got some flack for putting him in a tier with Realmuto, and I’m feeling VERY self-satisfied about it

Ben Clemens: (feeling self-satisfied is one of my specialties)

Kiermaier’s Piercing Green Eyes: Does Yoshi Tsutsugo have a job once Choi gets healthy? A platoon 1B who doesn’t hit is unrosterable. He can’t be sent down without his consent and is paid a king’s ransom by Stu Sternberg standards, but the Rays can call up any of those middle infielders they have and they’ll hit better while playing anywhere on the dirt.

Ben Clemens: At this point I am worried that he doesn’t have a job

Ben Clemens: Lot of hedge words there, because I haven’t dug down to the studs or anything, but there’s not a lot to hang your hat on

Ben Clemens: The swinging strike data doesn’t look great, the production on contact isn’t making up for it, and it’s not like there’s a huge backlog of major league data to rely on to say this is just a blip

AC/SD: Pads pitching delivered against LA, but the offense has been spotty. Pham isn’t performing and the Pads will need another big bat at some point to compete with LA. Who are the best bats on the trading block? Thanks.

Ben Clemens: Hm…. J.D. Martinez might technically count, he has an opt out after this year, but with no NL Dh, eh

Ben Clemens: Kris Bryant? Not a natural fit but maybe

Ben Clemens: Trevor Story same deal. If they decide to rest Tatis, maybe, but otherwise you’re wasting his value basically

Ben Clemens: I think a lot of the Cubs guys could be had, I’m not sure that the Padres would move aggressively for them though

Ben Clemens: I don’t see this as a team that is in dire need of an offensive infusion

Adam H: Brusdar Graterol was back last night with 101mph bullets, but was as hittable as ever. Why exactly is he so bad at getting whiffs and K’s, and is he doomed for huge regression from his sub-2.00 ERA last year?

Ben Clemens: It’s just the shape of the fastball, basically

Ben Clemens: I don’t think he’s bad or anything

Ben Clemens: I think he’s a nice reliever, though I share the Dodgers’ skepticism about him as a starter

Moose_Bolton: What is your hottest early season take that you actually believe in?

Ben Clemens: Carson Kelly, All Star

Ben Clemens: Hotter?

Ben Clemens: Corbin Burnes is the second-best pitcher in baseball

Matt Damon: MATT. DAMON.

Ben Clemens: Hey friend

Hot Take: Hottest early season take you don’t believe in?

Ben Clemens: Something something the Mariners have it this year

Ben Clemens: Or, alternately, the Yankees’ cold start dooms them

Guest: What is the forecasted service time manipulation date of I think 172 days?

Ben Clemens: We are actually past it already. The end of the regular season is scheduled for October 3rd

Ben Clemens: Which means the cutoff date would be April 14

Estevão: baseball is such a volume business that one of the worst organizations robbed an ace (German Marquez) from one of the best in terms of front office. Imagine the Jets getting their franchise QB or something like that from NE or BAL

Ben Clemens: Yeah, baseball prospects just aren’t the same

zurzles: This has probably been brought up before, but the era of Suarez-the-shortstop and increasing TTO warrants it – why don’t fWAR positional adjustment values ever change with the times? rWAR has always done it (possibly not enough at this point). If shortstops are getting like 20% fewer fielding opportunities than a decade ago, and teams themselves care much less about putting good fielders there than they did a decade ago, why is playing at SS worth the same fWAR as it was a decade ago?

Ben Clemens: This is a really interesting question, and one we’ve discussed internally from time to time

Ben Clemens: It might be worth doing another dive to see about it. I’m generally the layman bothering the smart statistics people on these, but I have fun playing devil’s advocate in the discussions at least

Greg: Pirates are preaching patience with their literal black holes in CF (Fowler 38 OPS+ and Alford -5) and backup C (Perez -19 OPS+). At what point do they make some roster moves/acquisitions to address this?

Ben Clemens: Honest answer? They don’t actually care

Ben Clemens: Or well

Ben Clemens: They do care!

Ben Clemens: That’s really unfair of me, I take it back

Ben Clemens: But they don’t care enough to sacrifice future value to patch the hoe

Ben Clemens: hole*

Ben Clemens: I think they’ll be willing to cycle through semi-prospects, waiver wire claims, things like that

Ben Clemens: They’re not gonna spend real money or real prospects to fix it, though

Cynthia: With the runner on 2nd rule for extra innings, is there any consideration of how it affects certain relief pitcher’s ERA?

Ben Clemens: They’re unearned runs, so probably not

Ben Clemens: Maybe their RA/9 WAR or something, though

EG: Is wRC+ less accurate this early in the season? Particularly the park factors adjustment? Just looking at the Nats cause that’s who I follow – they’re getting dinged for playing in a hitter’s park, but Nats Park plays much larger in April weather. And their away games have all been in pitcher’s parks. I’m curious because it totally changes how we should look at the Nats offense so far.

Ben Clemens: Yeah, that’s definitely a thing. Our park factors are season-long and there are several parks that play differently in spring — Nats are one but Wrigley is the canonical example

Ben Clemens: The park factors are multi-year numbers, so they won’t be overly affected by weird games or anything like that, but if a place plays differently by month, that will certainly not be captured

Gleyber Torres: Should we be worried about me? Should I be shipped off for a package of Ty France and a back end pitcher with upside?

Ben Clemens: In fantasy? I’m a big believer in Ty France, and I think he provides really fantasy-friendly production, so I’d at least think about it depending on the back end starter

Ben Clemens: In real life? No way

Ben Clemens: He has 60 pa this year, only 160 last year, and he’s a really above average hitter for his career

Not THAT strike: Is there a set date when the MLBPA and the owners officially begin CBA negotiations?  If not, shouldn’t they start asap to avoid a(n inevitable) work stoppage in ’22?  At least talk on a weekly basis.

Ben Clemens: Oh, the negotiations are ongoing

If the Richard Fitts: As a Royals fan, trust me, we will implode at some point.  Our pitching is getting by with smoke and mirrors.

Ben Clemens: Hey, I picked Royals pitching as a breakout this year, take it back!

Ben Clemens: That said, Yeah I dunno, I certainly didn’t expect Junis to be their best pitcher so far

Ben Clemens: This is not how I would have guessed things would be going

Gil: Yerman Mercedes made an appearance today down 6 with 6 offensive outs left for the White Sox. Is this good or bad strategy? I’m all for position players pitching but this seems like too slim a lead to wave the white flag given how potent the White Sox offense can be.

Ben Clemens: Depends what it would cost them, but 6 runs in two innings just to get to a tie is a LOT

Ben Clemens: Like, maybe you’d prefer it to be 8 runs? But if they’re a normal offense, the away team comes back in that situation 0.8% of the time

Ben Clemens: If they’re at like 3%, it’s SUCh a small edge

Unseasonal park factors: So where can we find data on how parks play by month?

Ben Clemens: There was an interesting BP article about this recently here:

Ben Clemens: https://www.baseballprospectus.com/news/article/64534/an-updated-syste…

Guest: Thoughts on Pham? Hitting the ball hard, but not “producing”

Ben Clemens: He’s one that I feel fine about

Ben Clemens: If you look under the hood,nothing is particularly terrifying

Ben Clemens: The swing-level data looks good, he’s not missing a ton, like you said, he’s hitting the ball hard

Ben Clemens: 62 PA isn’t a ton

Ben Clemens: Maybe get Mookie Betts out of centerfield next time he hits a fading liner

Billy: Did you pay any attention to the $h1tstorm in the European Soccer leagues as they attempt to start a no relegation Super League? Some very, very unhappy fans.

Ben Clemens: I’m the ‘man eagerly eating popcorn’ gif when it comes to the Super League

Homer: Acuna, any Dodger or the rest of the field for NL MVP? (I know, April)

Ben Clemens: Any Dodger seems like the smart bet here

Ben Clemens: You get a lot of coverage

Mo Jiggles: Why didn’t the Yankees give Bruce a final at bat?

Ben Clemens: I don’t know!

Ben Clemens: I mean, he’s not a Yankees legend or anything

Ben Clemens: But still

Ben Clemens: He was a fun player, had a sweet Player’s Weekend jersey, New York fans seem to like him

Ben Clemens: One AB, c’mon man

Sharp: Astudillo, ace reliever?

Ben Clemens: Love the velo gap

Ben Clemens: Love the hair

Ben Clemens: Love everything honestly

Ben Clemens: Alright, I’m sorry for the short chat, but having a minor personal life crisis at the  moment (it’ll be fine, I just have to jump on a bunch of annoying phone calls), so I’m going to call the chat a day and bring in Yermin Mercedes to lob up some meatballs until we’re done

Ben Clemens: And by that I mean, now, because the chat is ending

Ben Clemens: Sorry for the brevity today, and I’ll see you all next week