Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat – 4/3/23

Ben Clemens: Hey everybody, welcome to the chat. I’m going to give the question queue a few minutes to fill up while I make a coffee and then let’s get down to business

Ben Clemens: Alright, let’s get going

Dk: before or after  May 1st is when Mets call up Baty?

Ben Clemens: I’m gonna say before. I don’t know what the catalyst will be, but the way they are set up, there are a ton of different Mets whose effective backup is Baty. Left fielder goes down? Slide McNeil out there, Escobar to second, and call up Baty. And the infield rotations are a lot more obvious I think.

Ben Clemens: That even ignores the chances that they just call him up because he’s hitting too much, which is a real thing too. Overall, I think there’s just a very good chance that he’ll find some way to merit a major league job

Guest: With rule changes do you have numerical predictions for increased obps or stolen bases?

Eric: What stat do you feel is the most important stat with the rules change

Ben Clemens: I guess these are kind of similar questions? I think that a 50% increase in steals seems like a reasonable expectation, and honestly I don’t have much view on OPS changing. I don’t think the shift restrictions are going to be easy to measure

Ben Clemens: As for what is the most important stat: wins, baby

Ben Clemens: That’s still the only way to get to the playoffs

Ben Clemens: But I don’t think my player evaluations have changed much at all, and they won’t until I have a better grasp on who will benefit most from these extra steals. Speaking of:

Corbin: with the league stolen base mark up this much, is a player having 70 or 80 grade speed more valuable (They will be able to steal more bases easily) or less valuable (everyone else will too)

Ben Clemens: I looked into that for my article that’s up today and I would say that the results are inconclusive, as is the intuition

Ben Clemens: The average footspeed of base stealers is up slightly this year, but then also there are more people all across the spectrum. Super fast guys have more steals, and slower runners have way more than last year. I think that in terms of concentrated increase in steals, fast guys will benefit the most. But there will be a lot more steals by slow runners this year, distributed across a wide population

Guest: Thoughts on Ashcraft. Will he survive that tiny park and playing for the Reds?

Ben Clemens: I’m really high on him, and I don’t think playing for the Reds is a disadvantage for pitchers. They’ve done a really good job of pitching development. Whatever you might think about the ownership group and the general directionless mess the team has been in recent years, that doesn’t extend to pitching dev, where they seem to be doing a really good job

Ben Clemens: As for the park, that hurts everyone, but I actually like his pitch skills as it relates to the park

Ben Clemens: He gets a lot of grounders and strikeouts, that’s what you want in hitter’s parks

LFGM: How excited should I be over Senga’s start?  He had a rough 1st inning but cruised for the rest of the game.  And Marlins players didn’t have good swings against him after that first inning.

Ben Clemens: I think you should be really excited. He looked really good, particularly when he started locating the ghost fork a bit better as the start went on. One thing that I’m going to keep an eye on is whether people start trying to tee off on fastballs early in the count. His fastball early/splitter late move was really telegraphed by the end of the game and the Marlins just had no answer for it

TroutMichael: Oneil Cruz ran a 34.9 K% in 361 PA last year. SSS, but he only had 1 K in 13 PA in the first series.  Can I feel optimistic about this?

Ben Clemens: You can, though I’d be more optimistic about the changes he was already starting to make late in the second half of last year

Ben Clemens: He was already reining his chase rate in quite a lot by September and looked like a much better hitter as a result

Ben Clemens: He has a 24% chase rate this year! That’s wild

Rob: Can the Cubs really compete this year with such a soft offense?

Ben Clemens: No

Guest: Odds Dylan Carlson is a Cardinal on August 1?
The fact that he was nearly optioned has me wondering if his future is in St. Louis. He’s probably too good of a player to be platooned, but its trending in that direction

Ben Clemens: They’re low! I’m kinda surprised. I still think he’s good, one of their best three outfielders for sure, but you have to listen to what the team does, and they’re burying him a little bit, like you said, to the point of nearly optioning him

Ben Clemens: If someone doesn’t get hurt, I don’t see how you can keep carrying Burleson/Carlson/Nootbaar/Oneil/Walker, it’s just too cluttered

Ben Clemens: and yeah, Carlson seems like the easiest trade candidate of the bunch

Liz: What’s your favorite or least favorite MLB.TV recurring ad? Do you like Baseball Zen?

Ben Clemens: I love Baseball Zen, I want to know who came up with it

Ben Clemens: My favorite ad is one of the Zen ones, of Phil Maton and Ryne Stanek warming up. They don’t seem to know there’s a camera on them, Maton is in no hurry to do anything, it just relaxes me a ton

Josiah Gray: How worried should I be about him being a a homer machine? Should be be the designated pitcher for the home run derby this season?

Ben Clemens: I’d say you should be as worried as you were last year, which is very worried

Adgraphs: Why does this site  publish so few articles?

Ben Clemens: Only five articles and a chat so far today, we should be embarrassed

Tony Plush: Royals are hitting the ball consistently hard but running a comical team BABIP (like .160 or something) so … we’ll be better than this, right? Even a little better?

Ben Clemens: Oh, for sure. It’s only been three games!

Rangers Closer: Will Smith brought in to face 2 lefties (as a lefty). LeClerc closes against righties and Smith against lefties?

Ben Clemens: Yeah, I think it’ll be something along those lines. LeClerc gets the dangerous righties, Smith gets the dangerous lefties, and if it’s all a muddle, I assume LeClerc will get the opportunities

Ben Clemens: Like, let’s say the first three batters up go R/S/L, or R/L/S, I think that’s probably LeClerc’s outing

ENVB: Is Jeffrey Springs better this year than last or was it one start against maybe the AL’s worst offense?

Ben Clemens: One start against a bad offense, until proven otherwise

Ben Clemens: To be clear, Springs was already quite good last year

Ben Clemens: This shouldn’t be taken derogatorily. But let’s just cool our jets on anointing anyone as majorly changed until they’ve made at least two starts

Guest: The dodgers drew 23 walks in their series vs the Diamondbacks and walked a single opponent. And they split the series. What a funny sport

Ben Clemens: Yeah, I watched a fair number of those games b/c the late windows over the weekend weren’t packed and I find both the Dodgers and DBacks really fun

Ben Clemens: I think that the Dodgers role players looked pretty dang good, which was the big worry around them this year. Those are the breaks of baseball, but I am not sure I expected Outman to look like ‘oh yeah this guy just seems like a good major league hitter’

RTJ: Petition for a YouTube channel of baseball zen clips

Ben Clemens: Seconded

Guest: So we know SBs are up, but is there anyway to also see if infield hits are up as well? Feels like there should be improvement there as well.

Ben Clemens: We have ‘infield hit percentage’ on our batted ball page

Ben Clemens: So let’s see: it’s 6.2% so far this year

Ben Clemens: … that would be the lowest mark of the past five years

Ben Clemens: One thing that’s a little confusing, though, is that balls that the shift restriction turns into singles won’t necessarily be infield hits, because the shift took away hard hit balls that would have reached the outfield

Mr. Redlegs: Ashcraft give me Wade Miley +10mph vibes

Ben Clemens: I’m not ready to get THAT excited but the cutter comparison tracks to me

Ben Clemens: I’m thinking Baby Corbin Burnes

Walla Walla Ron Washington: Are Burleson and Gorman going to make life frustrating for Noot, O’Neill, and Donovan, in terms of playing time?

Ben Clemens: Ohhhhh yes. What a puzzle the Cards have, they have like 14 good hitters

Oaktown Blues: Playing at elevation doesn’t affect EVs right (ignoring pitchers potentially being worse)? Just affects how far the ball will travel for a given EV?

Ben Clemens: I’m not a physicist, so I’m gonna annoyingly caveat my answer. But yes, that is my understanding.

Ben Clemens: There could be some second-order effects that I’m not understanding, but given when they measure it, they should be nearly unaffected, if not completely unaffected

Derek: So, after three games, these rule changes are basically all good, right? Between those changes, the WBC, and no labor strife (and in fact some surprising labor harmony with the minor league CBA), MLB, and baseball in general, are on a nice little hot streak! When is the last time we’ve started the MLB season in such an optimistic place, and how long can we expect these good vibes to continue?

Ben Clemens: Yeah they all seem amazing. I watch a fair bit of baseball with people who are less baseball-obsessed than me (because that applies to a LOT of people), and they are universally enjoying the pace of play and the steals

Ben Clemens: The biggest downside for me has been how often the pitch clock and the batter timeouts get explained, but I totally get why they’re doing that and think they should continue for at least a little bit

Chip: Is it time for Yankee fans to start freaking out? They lost a game this weekend and that usually means the fans are out with pitchforks.

Ben Clemens: They’ve bought themselves a bit of time by winning the other two games a combined 11-0. Let’s wait until they lose a series to go truly bonkers

Sad Tigers Fan: Please say something nice about the tigers

Declawed: Tiger look pretty hopeless. Why have they been so bad at player development??

Ben Clemens: Riley Greene

Ben Clemens: Like, he’s fun!

Ben Clemens: Other than that, yeah, the season is not off to a smashing start in Detroit. I am optimistic about E Rod, and looking forward to seeing Manning and Skubal, but it’s not starting great!

Russell E: How much would you read into Kaleb Ort matching deGrom and Springs, at 117, on the FG Stuff+ leaderboard?

Ben Clemens: I’m probably gonna wait for a few more starters to get in the books and then write about interesting takeaways like this in Stuff+. Since we have these fancy new leaderboards, we might as well use them. I would say that I am not reading too much into any one number quantitatively, particularly since the stuff and location metrics are a bit black-box-y, but I’m interested in big gainers from year to year and curious to see what Ort is doing

X Gonna Give it you: Will Xander Bogarets finish the year as the top hitter for the Padres?

Ben Clemens: Nah, but I’d buy second

Ben Clemens: He is a really underrated hitter. He has a little bit of the Mookie Betts/Freddie Freeman vibe to me, where they don’t have huge max exit velos but they just have a knack for maxing out on their contact

Moonlight Graham: Did MLB ever say what the official book symbol for violation strikeout / walk is? GKR had a healthy debate about what they were going to use and I liked Gare’s idea of a sideways facing upwards K

Ben Clemens: If they have, I haven’t heard it. I also listened to that discussion!

Joe Buck Showalter: Is the Soto trade return package ever going to look like it was worth it? Abrams looks like a AAAA guy and Gore has no control. And that was supposed to be the centerpiece of the trade…

Ben Clemens: I do not think that those were the centerpiece of the trade. Woods seemed like the best prospect to a lot of the prospecting types, and honestly I’ve just been waaaaaay down on Abrams for years

Ben Clemens: I still have a lot of hope for Gore, though

Ben Clemens: He really needs to find some control but if he does, the stuff can play

Ben Clemens: I would have ranked the players in the deal Gore/Woods/Hassell/Abrams, fwiw

Ben Clemens: I just don’t see how a guy like Abrams can make it work without getting way stronger or suddenly turning into a great plate discipline type

Ghost of Wade Boggs: RE: Infield Hits
That’s interesting that it went down. I would have thought the shift banning would have increased it alongside bigger bases, instead of decrease. Sure the shift would take away hard hit balls that reach the OF, but I would still wager that the cumulative affect of the shift would be to make infield hits harder to achieve.

Ben Clemens: Yeah, it’s such a small sample that I wouldn’t read much into it yet

Kiermaier’s Piercing Green Eyes: 2022 fWAR ranks:
34 Cole 3.3 (200.2 IP)
40 Springs 3.0 (135.1 IP)
Springs doesn’t need to have turned over a new leaf yesterday, he was already really good. Not 18 K/9 good, but he could very realistically end up having the best season for a Rays pitcher this year.

Ben Clemens: Well said. This is how I feel about him: he’s already good. He didn’t sign a nice extension this offseason because the Rays thought he would take a step forward this year. Maybe they did, but he signed it because he was already really effective

Appa Yip Yip: Chris Bassitt was throwing 91 mph yesterday, down from 94 last year. Seems bad?

Ben Clemens: That’s a big yikes. He was number one on my “I’m worried about the pitch clock with this guy” list, and I have no idea if that’s what’s going on, but it was certainly not an inspiring first start

Ben Clemens: Let’s hope Berrios rebounds

RobertoBeers: Looking at the rule changes while squinting, they could’ve been generated by a 4th grader. They all seem so childish. Bases? BIGGER; You gotta make eye contact or else, No more throwing at me til I cry. If you could propose an extreme, saber-driven rule change, what would it be?

Ben Clemens: Okay, I’m going to give you a non-extreme one first: if you start an inning, you face three batters, period

Ben Clemens: now that they stripped out the dead time between pitches, the dead time of managers letting a guy face one batter to start an inning to game platoon splits and then pulling him REALLY stood out to me this weekend

Ben Clemens: Before, it was just lost in a sea of inefficiency. Now, it’s yelling at me

Nate: It’s still super early, but any new thoughts on Torkelson as whether or not he can start to be more of a thing now?

Ben Clemens: Yeah, no different than before, which is that of course I think he can be

Rocco Baldelli’s Head Polish: Wander Franco eyeballs emoji

Ben Clemens: Love me some Wander Franco

Ben Clemens: I don’t really have anything more than that to say

Ben Clemens: Now that I’ve had a minute to think about it, my more extreme change: One called shot, where you can bring up your best hitter regardless of what’s going on batting order wise. If they’re on the basepaths, that’s fine, the guy who was scheduled to bat swaps with them

Ben Clemens: You want to have some tough pitching decisions? Try to bring in a pitcher knowing they might face David Fletcher, Mike Trout, or Shohei Ohtani

daro: “if you start an inning, you face three batters, period” great one but only if it applies to relievers

Ben Clemens: Yeah, that’s fine with me

Ben Clemens: It’s really the ‘loogy type goes one extra batter’ that’s leading to my grumpiness about it

Dan: If an offense if able to force their opponent to replace a pitcher (non injury) mid inning they get rewarded with an runner runner to start next inning. Less pitching changes, more baserunners, more stretegy. Everyone wins except tradition.

Re: Violation: I thought I head they were going to just circle the K and BB to indicate that. maybe i heard wrong

Ben Clemens: Ah, there’s an answer then

bosoxforlife: In my almost 80 years of watching baseball I have never seen a finish like Saturday’s Red Sox-Orioles game. There can’t be many games ecer played when a team had .000000001 chance of winning and won.

Ben Clemens: That entire series was wild

Ben Clemens: Loooooooved it

Joey Baggadonuts: Is there anything to be optimistic about w/Kopech this year? His spring seemed up and down – not awesome after the great 1st start – but seems like he was struggling w/feel and a sinus infection later in ST. Can he finally realize his upside this year, or is he Just A Guy?

Ben Clemens: I regret to inform you that I think Kopech is just a guy. That doesn’t mean he’ll always be just a guy, though. One thing that really great stuff means, to me, is that you’re always an adjustment or two away from finding yourself and becoming dominant

Ben Clemens: Look at Dylan Cease. He was totally just a guy, and then he worked on changing his fastball shape a little, emphasized his already-great slider, and he’s contending for Cy Youngs

Yeah Well Hiura Towel: xwOBA seems to be missing from this website

Ben Clemens: Oh weird, I’ll run it up the flagpole

Matt Damon: MATT. DAMON.

X Gonna Give it you: Just to add. Jarlin Susana was also a big part of Washington – Soto trade. It was a huge haul. Two former top 10 prospects plus a now top 10 and two more now top 100 (Susana and Hassel). As a Padres fan, I cant see how the Padres didnt overpay. Itll all be worth it if we can win WS in next two years.

Ben Clemens: See, there were so many prospects that I left out a super legit one

Oaktown Blues: Tyler Soderstrom’s EVs at Reno yesterday: 96, 99, 104, 105, 114. Think the A’s will try to keep him at AAA for a full year or will that not be possible to justify?

Ben Clemens: They will not be able to do it. They might move him to first base, and they might push him to July to do some Wander Franco esque don’t even hit the super 2 shenanigans, but there’s no way they can keep him down the whoooooole time

Joe: The Orioles defense was little league level in Boston despite being pretty good last year. How long before that kind of struggle becomes an actual thing to monitor?

Ben Clemens: I’ll probably give it a month

Ben Clemens: Ask and ye shall be rewarded, by the way. Appelman says xStats will be back momentarily

Ben Clemens: What a guy

shortstop: Different broadcasts are incorporating the pitch clock in the score bug differently. What’s your preferred way? I like it better when it’s not showed until the clock hits 10. I really don’t like how Bally puts it on top of the baserunner graphic.

Ben Clemens: I’m a fan of the ones that don’t kick in until 10 seconds left, agreed

Ben Clemens: I haven’t settled on my favorite one yet, I”m going to let them all breathe for a bit and see what sticks with me

Not Mike: Giancarlo Stanton’s HR ball from yesterday was spotted this morning cruising at 35,000 feet westbound over the Pacific Ocean.

Ben Clemens: Goodness GRACIOUS he hit that hard

bosoxforlife: Please define the difference between a splitter and a ghost fork ball?

Ben Clemens: So, a ghost fork ball is one where the pitcher has an amazing glove with a picture of a ghost holding a fork

Ben Clemens: More specifically, they were talking about it a lot on the Mets broadcast this weekend actually. I think the grip is just exaggerated slightly from your standard split change, which results in the sharp downward motion he gets on it

Ben Clemens: Mostly it’s just a)slight variation on splitter b)pitch names are sweeter in Japan

Well-Beered Englishman: The only problem with the new pace is now if I get distracted for a second I might actually miss something cool. Baseball was getting so slow I was reading a book between pitches last year. It’s definitely been an adjustment to watching more actively.

Ben Clemens: This has completely been the case for me. I’ve had a bad habit of checking my phone between pitches, and it’s not completely cured, which means I’m missing more action than I should

Weekend Hack: RE: JP Crawford and your note in positional power rankings that you don’t get the M’s fans interest in one of the big SS.. not being interested in Trea Turner because Crawford seems silly

Ben Clemens: Nothing wrong with being interested, but I think the M’s did their shopping in-season by extending Castillo. Like, obviously, things would have been better if they got TUrner, I just don’t think it’s the end of the world to leave Crawford there. Starting pitching depth was more pressing in my opinion

Guest: You think Brendan Donovan’s power surge is legit (like 15-20 homers, nothing insane)?
4 barrels this year (had 11 all of last year)
New career best Max EV by 2 mph

Brendan Donovan: Brendan. Donovan.

Ben Clemens: I think 10-15, though maybe that’s just my inherent conservatism

Tom: I know we won the WS and I’m forever grateful, but from the outside it seems that the Nats scouting and player development is well behind the rest of the league. It feels like the shine has worn off Rizzo. Even the return for Soto feels questionable (not to mention the return for Scherzer / Turner). Thoughts?

Ben Clemens: I have this discussion fairly often, because I went to college in Virginia and so have a TON of friends who are Nats fans. I think that their development has consistently been behind the curve for a little bit, but I’m not convinced on the scouting side. They’ve done pretty well in trades overall, and it’s definitely too soon to say on the Soto return

Ben Clemens: But I didn’t feel like they got fleeced, I thought they did a good job commanding a premium for how good Soto is. I put him in my top 10 trade value list and got a LOT of pushback from the bean counters of the world who said BUT THE SURPLUS VALUE

Ben Clemens: And then they got a return commensurate with his spot on that list

2023 Stats: How long does it take for Fangraphs to display 2023 stats? They still aren’t on any player pages. Is this punishment all a lesson about not buying into small samples???

Ben Clemens: I think that was just a little hiccup, they appear to be back for me

Andrew: Thoughts on Jack Flaherty? He seems to lack the out pitch to get strike 3 anymore

Ben Clemens: Yeah I am WORRIED

Ben Clemens: Small sample size, don’t overreact, so on so forth, but his slider was not getting chases, and that’s kinda his only move

Ben Clemens: It’s 3mph slower, not great bob

bosoxforlife: There have been a couple of times that I have been stunned, amazed, shocked at how quickly the games were moving along and, I LOVED IT!

Ben Clemens: Concur

Tstats: MiggyV => Barry Bonds? Volpe more steals than Ricky? What is your favorite overreaction from the weekend?

Ben Clemens: Ooh. Brendan Donovan power hitter is a good one, but as a card-carrying member of the Miguel Vargas fan club, I’m with you

Ben Clemens: He’s really fun

Ben Clemens: He’s so confident at the plate. I don’t think that’s predicdtive or anything, but it’s fun as hell to watch

Well-Beered Englishman: another $0.02 in agreement on the “Nats good at scouting, poor at developing” camp. Also, their scouting in trades/intl does seem substantially better than their scouting for the draft.

Ben Clemens: Yeah, well said. They have done a good job finding international talent

Derek: I think the hardest thing about the snappier games is the 1 hr = 3 innings shorthand that’s always been in my brain no longer applies

Ben Clemens: I know! I use that too

Weekend Hack: FWIW, dont disagree regarding M’s starting pitching. Also don’t enjoy Tommy La Stella: Starting DH *sigh*

Ben Clemens: I somehow missed that but yeah, not great

Sad Nats Fan: The Soto trade genuinely made me consider becoming an Orioles fan. I lived across the street from Camden Yards for a year so maybe it was Stockholm Syndrome

Ben Clemens: Do it! The O’s are really fun right now. Even if you’re going to adopt them as more of a junior varsity rooting interest, I feel like there’s a lot of Maryland/Virginia/general DC area synergy going on in following both teams

Wesley: Do you think the pitch clock needs to be in the scorebug at all? I feel like it’s distracting and not really necessary. It isn’t like a shot clock where play is affected by how much time is left on the clock. After players adjust, there will probably only be like one violation every couple games and it’ll be clear what the umpire is signaling without having to double check a clock.

Ben Clemens: I think it’s useful to me for now, as a ‘hey action needs to happen soon’ check, but I could see that falling off as I get more used to it

A Boy Named Yu: SSS – Justin Steele, Cy Young winner

Andoru: Logan O’Hoppe for ROTY?

Ben Clemens: I’m more into O’Hoppe RoTY but I mean, that’s a more realistic prediction. I’m gonna watch Steele’s next start closely, seems kinda fun

Brock: Are prospect lists no longer a priority?  I feel like it must be the single biggest driver of site traffic to Fangraphs.  I was forced to subscribe to BA for more current analysis and I am sad about that.

Ben Clemens: They extsremely are, which is why the team takes the time to get them right. They’re churning them out at maximum speed and have done a TON of prospect content. I get that it’s fun to complain that things aren’t ready now and great and hot and fresh, but the amount of detail in these things takes forever

Ben Clemens: I could write you a prospect list for any team tomorrow, but it’d suck and I wouldn’t know half the players

Walker TR: So deGrom gets shelled but the Rangers still sweep the defending NL Champ Phils.  Hard not to be optimistic even though it’s only one series.  Maybe the Rays, Twins, and Rangers going 3-0 is a foreshadowing of the division winners.

Ben Clemens: Haha yeah, not GREAT to have dG get shelled but absolutely walloping the Phillies anyway has to be a good sign. I think that Texas is gonna sink or swim with their rotation this year in the end, but the offense not starting out as slowly of last year has to be gratifying for fans

Ben Clemens: Seager and Semien were just BRUTAL at the start of last year, to the point where it almost didn’t matter what the rest of the team was doing

Didace: 1 hr = 3 innings  –  I used to be happy that 6 innings took only 2 hours in the hopes that the game would be over in 3. And then the parade of relievers taking 30 seconds between pitches and all their other nonsense would happen. 90 minutes later the ninth inning started.  Three games in, my wife has noticed the change and she’s usually in another room.

Ben Clemens: Yeah it is SO noticeable

Ben Clemens: I really really love it, I’m open to the idea that I’ll tire of it but I’m skeptical that more action per minute will ever get old to me

Guy Who Asks Multiple Choice Questions: What is your favourite colour of shower towel?

a) White
b) Grey
c) Mauve
d) Other

Ben Clemens: What the heck, why not. Probably b), but I have a pink hair towel too, because I’ve occasionally hurt my neck by overly vigorously drying my hair with a regular towel, so I accepted that I’m getting older and got a special smaller towel for drying my hair

Wesley: To add to the response to Brock’s question, I kind of like that FG’s prospect articles take a bit longer. With FG’s lists coming out between BA’s preseason and midseason lists, I feel like I always have a source for pretty up-to-the-minute info

Ben Clemens: Thanks! Yeah, I obviously don’t experience it in the same way as a reader, because if I need to know about x guy I can just bother Eric, but I like that there is prospecdt content popping up everywhere all the time

Ben Clemens: I subscribe to pretty much everything, what with it being my job and all

Re: Pitch Clock: Best thing to be added to the game in years. Force players to make decisions and be engaged. Even if they added 5 seconds to give a little more breathing room, I think it would be a massive net positive on the viewing and playing experience. Forces action

Ben Clemens: 100%. I think it’s clear from watching that the existence of it matters than the exact number it’s set to

Uncle Spike: What do you make of a stat line like the one Brandon Pfaadt had this weekend?  3.2 IP, 7 K’s, 0 BB, 6 H, 4 HR.  It some aspects, looks like the stuff was good and command was there…but also 4 HR’s.

Ben Clemens: I would have to go watch the start to get a better idea, but this reminds me of the start to Corbin Burnes’s 2019

Ben Clemens: And while you might say OOOOOOH, Corbin Burnes, that dude won Cy Young

Ben Clemens: he was ABYSMAL in 2019

Ben Clemens: I just pulled that game up, lol

Ben Clemens: 12k, 1BB, 3HR

Ben Clemens: 7.2 ERA, 0.61 xFIP

Ben Clemens: Basically I’d say if the issue is that he’s throwing pipe shot fastballs in bad counts, that’s worrisome

Ben Clemens: if guys were just knocking well-placed breaking balls out of the park, c’est la vie

Ben Clemens: You should definitely be encouraged by the stuff, and maybe take a look at whether he’s throwing some bad idea pitches too often

Re: Corbin Burnes: He had the goggles back then getting shelled. He glowed up with contacts and performance like a one dimensional love interest in a rom-com post-glasses

Ben Clemens: What a description

A Boy Named Yu: How about adding 5 seconds to the pitch clock when the count is full to prevent PAs being determined by it?

Ben Clemens: Into it

jj: maybe instead of infield hits we should really be trying to look at GB to the pull side hit percentage year over year.  I actually think more infield hits could happen with the extra defender just not getting it to 1B in time (what would have been a ground ball through the infield).

Ben Clemens: Yeah, I’ll probably spend the time to figure out how to look at this more specifically as we get more data in

Ben Clemens: This is probably the right-ish way to look at it, you might want to adjust for handedness and speed and all that good stuff but pull side gb hit% is a great start

Derek: how are you feeling about your Ottoneu team(s) as the season gets underway?

Ben Clemens: I’m feeling solid for once. Rostering Rhys Hoskins hurt, but I’m getting the cap back at least, and my Ashcraft/Senga duo for cheap-ish is feeling nice

Ben Clemens: I also have dG, so uh, I’m just ignoring his first start. And $1 Moncada, Grandal both feel good

Ben Clemens: I went with a bet on bouncebacks strategy for my hitters this year, and if it pays off I’m gonna feel amazing

James: Could you see them dropping the clock in the 9th inning of close games? Or allowing a little more time? The idea of the clock is to reduce down time, not rush the dramatic parts.

Guest: Why remove the stakes from the clock for specific situations? Its a rule and needs to be followed and penalized… if we start having exceptions for random situations they’ll just cause confusion

Ben Clemens: I don’t like the idea of getting rid of it entirely, but as long as it’s rule-based, I don’t mind having a tick or two extra in specific situations. I would be fine keeping it as is, though, to be clear, I haven’t really minded the hilarity of guys getting rung up

Ben Clemens: It might annoy me if it happened in the plyaoffs, though

RTJ: I do like the new rule changes. But, as a researcher, I will say I am a little disappointed they made all the changes at once. I’d love to know the independent effects of say “disengagements vs base size” or “pitch clock vs shift”

Ben Clemens: They did them in batches in the minors, if you’re interested in digging into it

Flip: Im at first-time Ottoneu player this year. Any tips?

Ben Clemens: Read Chad Young’s articles. And doing the re-auction dance adds up

Ben Clemens: That is, if you cut someone, they hit your cap for half their salary. But in 30 days you can re-auction them, get them for half their salary, then re-cut them, which drops your cap hit in half. Repeat to taste

B’ryce Szymbobski: Ben, I need some help! Shallow points league and someone floated N. Lowe or Vinny P and Verlander for my Ashcraft and Matt Olson. I have a rotation of Castillo, Strider, Cease, Senga, Cortes, Detmers, J Ryan, Gilbert, T. Mackenzie….

feels like Verlander isn’t worth the drop off right?

Ben Clemens: So, I’m not always great at htese, because I play a bit of fantasy but not a ton. I don’t think that trade is worth it, because I’m a little bit worried about Verlander’s health, but I’m down on Olson so I’d consider it if it were, say, Scherzer

Weekend Hack: Do you see the “add 5 seconds” to the pitch clock as actually being a realistic possibility? Like, would MLB actually tweak it? (I think I’d like to see ~18s with nobody on and 22s with runners)

Ben Clemens: Yeah, I do. I think that the league would like players to vote in favor of a change to the rules (every player on the rules committee voted against the pitch clock), so if they thought that players would get on board with a few exstra seconds, they’d do it

bosoxforlife: SSS alert! Alex Bregman, while still a good player, has never reached the level predicted and is off to an 0 for the series start. The Astros lineup looks a little shaky when David Hensley is the DH and hitting 5th.

Ben Clemens: I still think Bregman is excellent, he was excellent last year, but that doesn’t change your central point, which is that there are a sneaky amount of ‘who is that?’ types in the Astros lineup at the moment

Ben Clemens: Getting Altuve and Brantley back might be more necessary than I thought

A Boy Named Yu: MLB Opening Day, Super Bowl, or first day of March Madness?

Ben Clemens: oh, first day of March Madness for me

Ben Clemens: Just my favorite sports day period, and I don’t even like college basketball that much

carlo: i was thinking alex cobb’s new sweeper would be used as a get ahead in the count pitch vs righties, but it had a 110 stuff+, his best pitch in the model. do you think he could use that as his go to out pitch vs righties?

Ben Clemens: I do, particularly if he’s using it in conjunction with a lot of other things. As you mentioned, it’s definitely platoon-reliant, but having a good anti-righty pitch seems like an excellent move for a guy with a nasty offspeed pitch already

cpins: How about 1 warning per player? Dramatically lower the odds of the final play of the game being determined by a clock violation without situationally changing the time limit which feels arbitrary to me.

Ben Clemens: Mayyyyyyyybe, I’d have to think about that one more

Ben Clemens: I feel like it’s not quite what I want, though

Tstats: Is it possible that a Bruin takes home both the CY and ROY this year? (Cole and Mitchell?)

Ben Clemens: Yeah, obviously Cole more likely than Mitchell

Wireless Joe Jackson: My current impression is that the pitch clock is an enormous change, and the rest of the rule changes are inconsequential.   The pace of play increase is really quite startling.  The ratio of commercial time to game time is a little brutal, though.

Ben Clemens: I completely agree with the first part of your statement. I haven’t really noticed the commercial time/game time ratio yet, maybe I’ll see it when I watch more

Brendan Donovan future MVP: Do I get extra MVP consideration each time my helmet falls off running the bases?

Ben Clemens: Funny you mention this, in a few innings of watching the Mets/Marlins series, I saw Jazz lose his hat in center like four times

Ben Clemens: Someone’s gotta figure out how to make these hats stay on!

Shane: Since 1950, 3 of the top 4 seasons by ERA- are the 2020-2022 Dodgers. Is this perhaps the greatest three season pitching stretch in baseball history (albeit with 2020 being abbreviated)? Do we appreciate how significant of an accomplishment this is and just how good this pitching staff has been?

Ben Clemens: It’s really remarkable. Their BABIP allowed was just insanity

Ben Clemens: They just turned batted balls into outs at an unprecedented rate

Ben Clemens: We’ll see if they can keep that going but it’s truly a dominant stretch

RTJ: Is it bad for me to assume that by Memorial day, we’ll be down to so few pitch clock violations as everyone continues to adapt, that we’ll not need these nuanced tinkerings

Ben Clemens: Nah, completely reasonable assumption. I hope that the league has a plan in place in case that doesn’t turn out to be true, but ‘hey they’ll figure it out’ is a great baseline assumption imo

Yeah Well Hiura Towel: Anyone else think there were too many stolen bases over the weekend? Maybe I just need time to adjust.

Guest: How many steals would be too many for you? Personally I think this style of play is just so fun

Ben Clemens: Everyone has their own views on this

Ben Clemens: I love steals, I’m pretty happy with the changes

TurangSZN: Brice Turang has been electric for the Brewers on offense and defense so far.  Do you foresee a potential ROTY campaign?

Ben Clemens: I’d say it’s a liiiiiittle early but I’m excited

Ben Clemens: I have loved Turang a disproportionate amount ever since I did the crowdsourced Brewers OOTP series in 2020 and rushed him to the majors

Ben Clemens: Okay, gonna do a quick lightning round and then call it a day. I’ve tried to run the whole chat quickly because you’ve had some excellent questions today, but this will be REALLY fast

Jimmy5: AJ Puk, Evan Phillips, A. Minter.   Who do you prefer ROS?

Ben Clemens: Phillips

Flip: Joc gonna hit 40 bombs this year?

Ben Clemens: 36

Yeah Well Hiura Towel: If the overall rate of steals is THIS successful, it’s not really “stealing” is it? It’s taking an extra base and only if you kinda suck do you get thrown out

Ben Clemens: I cannot discern the difference between 83% (this year’s stolen base rate) and 75.5% (last year’s)

Tstats: do you think we get a whiff distance stats soon?

Ben Clemens: This year is my guess

bosoxforlife: I am looking forward to seeing the effects of the rule changes on pull side batting average. I couldn’t handle, despised, hated watching balls that had been base hits since I first went to Fenway in 1948 being gobbled up by the Industrial League slow-pitch softball  short-fielder.

Ben Clemens: Haha short fielder

Ben Clemens: It’s true!

Eh?: I’ve really enjoyed the pitch clock so far, but one thing I don’t like is the effect it will have on stats like “X pitcher has a .540 OPS against when he starts a batter with a strike/ball”. For example, in the Jays game on opening day, Manoah was penalized with a ball to start off an at-bat because Alejandro Kirk wasn’t ready or something.

Ben Clemens: It’s not gonna happen often enough to matter

Ben Clemens: Plus, it is probably still measuring what you want to measure

Ben Clemens: the big effect of getting to a count is not how you got there, it’s the fact that both pitcher and batter approach change

B’ryce Szymbobski: Not to totally hijack this thread, but uh… why are you down on Olson?

Ben Clemens: Just think that if his power ticks down a tad, like it did last year, the carrying tool isn’t quite so clear to me

A Boy Named Yu: Marcus Stroman enjoys the fact he was the first pitcher ever penalized in a real game.  Good trivia fact to know.

Guest: Well, the difference between 83 and 75 is big since 83 is the benchmark for “do it always”

Ben Clemens: Oh sure. I’m just saying I don’t notice runners getting thrown out at a different clip

Ben Clemens: Teams will probably steal more, and get thrown out more, as time goes on.

Ben Clemens: Alright, with that let’s call it a day, have a great one everyone and I’ll talk to you again this time next week

Ben Clemens: Baseball!