Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat – 5/1/23

Ben Clemens: Hey everybody, welcome to the chat. Let’s get started right away; I’m going for a minimum of dead time to keep the running time a little shorter, like a pitch clock let’s say

JT: The Giants are 2nd in xFIP and 26th in pitching WAR. What do you make of this?

Ben Clemens: Sounds like they’ve given up a lot of homers

Ben Clemens: I dunno, team-wide stuff like that early in the season is noisy

Aaron: The date is May 1st and the Pirates have the best record in the National League. That is all.

Ben Clemens: Pretty amazing

Appa Yip Yip: Does baseball have an AL Central problem? It’s been the weakest division for awhile but with fewer games against each other holy smokes are they getting the crap beat out of them. It’s kind of embarrassing for the sport.

Ben Clemens: I don’t think it’s usually this bad, tbh. The White Sox folding like an umbrella in a windstorm is making everything look worse than normal

Ben Clemens: But to some extent yes

Ben Clemens: It’s more of a central problem, and I think you can even argue that some of that comes down to where big metro areas are located in the US

Ben Clemens: but when the Chicago teams are both bad (the Cubs are’nt this year, thankfully), yikes

Mike M: Which LA team finishes with the better team and why?

Ben Clemens: The Dodgers b/c they’re better

Didace: Josiah Gray has turned into a very good pitcher. Tell me I’m wrong.

Ben Clemens: I mean, I think you’re wrong, but I’m willing to believe that he just figured something out

Ben Clemens: He has made two consecutive good starts, which I think is a new career high for him

Ben Clemens: Eh, no, that’s not true, he had some flashes last June

Ben Clemens: But I guess I’d say this: his stuff still doesn’t play

Ben Clemens: So he needs to be very fine control-wise to make it work

Whats going on in the Centrals?: Are the Pirates for real? Are the Cardinals and White Sox actually bad? Why do the Brewers consistently get under rated coming into a season?

Ben Clemens: In order: ish, no, yes, they don’t?

Ben Clemens: Or, well, it depends on who you ask, I guess. The Brewers were projected just a hair behind the Cards before this year (by us), which seems reasonable

Ben Clemens: Last year, we had them 7 games ahead of the Cards before the season started

Ben Clemens: The year before that, 2 games ahead

Ben Clemens: 2020 was all messed up but we had them second in the central behind only the Cubs

Ben Clemens: I think that the brewers get less big-fancy-national-media-operation coverage than you’d expect for a good team, b/c they’re in Milwaukee, but I think that statistical models have pretty consistently thought they are good

Pat: AL Central- I think it comes down to Chicago/KC/Detroit being terribly run for the last 5-6 years or more. Maybe that changes with the new FO’s in Detroit/KC..& Detroit has shown they’ll spend if they

Ben Clemens: Yeah, I’m willing to believe that the Tigers and Royals can change things up

Jeremy: If xFIP is less noisy than FIP, why do you guys use the latter in the WAR calculation?

Ben Clemens: i mean, projecting league average or last year’s stats is probably the least noisy of all at this point in the season

Ben Clemens: but c’mon, pitchers are responsible for the hoimers they give up

Ben Clemens: noise is not all there is when it comes to stats

Mike S: You’ve just been named the GM of the Cardinals organization.  What’s your plan for ‘fixing’ this mess?

Ben Clemens: Let’s do some Cardinals question!

Ben Clemens: questions*

Ben Clemens: Uh, I think I’d mostly just keep running the same team out and maybe trade for pitching

Ben Clemens: I would not have brought Walker up to start the season, but that’s small potatoes imo

Indiana Cardinal:

1. Do you have any sense that the players have quit on Oliver Marmol in St. Louis?
2. Regardless of your answer to #1 above, do you think Marmol is on the hotseat?
3. Did the Cardinal front office make a mistake in how Jordan Walker was handled in the first month? The had the same number of OF candidates when the season started as when they sent him down.
4. When Wainwright comes back probably later this week, who will be, and who should be, the man out of the rotation, Matz or Woodford?

Thanks for all the information contained in both your articles and chats.

Ben Clemens:

1. No
2. No
3. Yes
4. Woodford

diadem: Is Matz toast? If not what has to change?

Ben Clemens: I’m higher on Matz than it seems most people are, just b/c I really like the individual pitches he has

Ben Clemens: That said, yeah he’s been awful this year. But he was fine last year in limited innings imo, just a victim of sequencing luck, whereas I’m skeptical that Woodford will ever be a serviceable big league starter

Lucas: Are the Yankees unsalvageable at this point? They certainly don’t look like a playoff team and its hard to put them above Toronto, Texas, or Seattle when their team is so consistently injured.

Ben Clemens: Oh man, Yankees fan problems. They’ve been absolutely devastated by injury this year, per BP they’ve missed the most WAR due to injury by an entire WARP over Houston

Ben Clemens: I don’t think they’re unsalveageable but I do think they should trade for an outfielder

Ben Clemens: This lineup is UGLY right now

Dave: Is there any particular way you discover new recipes? Books you already own? Google searches based on ingredients you don’t know what to do with? Social media posts?

Ben Clemens: All of the above I’d say, though my wife is the one who gets recipes from TikTok

Ben Clemens: I’m more of a google searches based on ingredients, then pair those with books I have

Guest: Jarren Duran’s hot start can’t be sustainable, but he is crushing the ball, is he a legit big league starter now?

Ben Clemens: Yes, but I dunno, I thought he was already a reasonable second-division starter

RTJ: It’s May and things are settling into place. As we all predicted, the Diamondbacks and Pirates lead their divisions and the Cardinals and Yankees are in last place in theirs. Gotta love baseball!

RTJ: Is it time to have a serious conversation about deGrom becoming a closer yet? You can set you calendar to news of his injuries

Ben Clemens: Lol it is not

Sonny: The Boston Red Sox are going to be the most entertaining 78 win team. Are they good? Maybe. Are they chaotic in the most aesthetically pleasing way? also maybe!

Ben Clemens: 100%

The Real Ben Clemens: Don’t let the A’s historically terrible start distract you from the fact that the Royals have gotten off to their own historically terrible start (at least within-franchise). Coaching staff is in a better spot than it was a year ago, but whoof, we’re really seeing the effects of years of Dayton Moore-enabled drafting and development plans. You got Vinnie P and…..not a whole lot else.

Ben Clemens: Yeah, I have high hopes for the Royals in the coming years because a move on from Dayton Moore was overdue

Ben Clemens: But this year? not this year

Oaktown Blues: So Brent Rooker will probably not maintain a 240 wRC+, but he’s legit, right? Do you think he’s potentially a top 10 hitter in baseball or am I jumping the gun?

Ben Clemens: Lol, I think you may be jumping the gun, but I think he’s immediately the A’s best hitter

Jason: Thoughts on Zac Gallen’s start to the season?

Ben Clemens: It’s good

Ben Clemens: I don’t really know what to say aside from that. Gallen is awesome, looks like he has found something with his curveball, and yeah I’m in

bosoxforlife: It was big news when the D’Backs and the Marlins swapped top prospects a few years ago. Who has won the deal so far Gallen or Chisholm?

Ben Clemens: I’d say Gallen, but it’s been a swingy trade

Ben Clemens: Early on I thought it was Gallen by a mile, then Chisholm stormed back between a hot season and Gallen getting hurt…. then Chisholm got hurt and Gallen dialed it in the second half of last year

Patrick Corbin: Patrick Corbin is a sunk cost for a team going nowhere. Why do the Nats keep rolling him out every 5th day rather than experimenting with him? For example, why not see if he can close and return some value, even if they Nats would need to eat the contract?

Ben Clemens: I would certainly try it

Matt: Will Chis Sale sail (be an ace level pitcher) again?

Ben Clemens: Honestly, I don’t see it

Ben Clemens: I know this is not super in depth analysis but he just does not look the same to me

Ben Clemens: His slider is not biting and fooling people the way it did at his peak

Ben Clemens: And he just seems a lot less fine

Ben Clemens: Maybe it is just injury recovery, but at some point you’ve just gone too long without being recovered, you know?

HappyFunBall: The problem with making Corbin a closer is that it means someone who can’t beat out Chad Kuhl will be elevated into the rotation. Is that even an improvement?

Ben Clemens: This presupposes that the point of the Nats’ season is to have the best rotation

The Ghost of Bobby Thigpen: Maybe it’s revisionist history…

But when the White Sox started their rebuild, they opted for “boom or bust” prospects…almost none of their trade acquisitions or amateur signings were “safe” (except maybe Vaughn, who they drafted).

Is this the main culprit (aside from crappy health) why their rebuild hasn’t been more successful?

Ben Clemens: I’ve wondered about this question quite a bit

Ben Clemens: I watch more White Sox games than the average team b/c I really enjoy the booth

Ben Clemens: Health has been a major problem. I don’t think the boom/bust thing has hurt them THAT badly, enough guys have mostly boomed

Ben Clemens: But one thing that has undoubtedly hurt them is an inability to properly self-assess and add from the outside

Ben Clemens: How many times have we looked at the White Sox and said ‘wow, they’re really thin and they don’t have any (X POSITION) on their roster’?

Ben Clemens: They build themselves to be paper-thin every year, both with the boom/bust thing and b/c for years they were like “Oh we have Leury Garcia, he’s our backup at six positions and also starts at second’

Marshall: Kershaw has generally been fantastic but frequently unavailable for the last several years. Is he still a legit Cy Young candidate if he can get to 180 IP?

Ben Clemens: Yeah, I think so

Ben Clemens: He’s been awesome so far this year

BenB: Any reason to hold back optimism on Rooker and Suwinski outside of small track record of success ?

Ben Clemens: I mean, that’s the key thing for sure

Ben Clemens: Rooker’s stats look immaculate so far, it’s really something

Ben Clemens: Suwinski has some strikeouts in his game, but his process is really good, which makes me more tolerant of those

Phil: Duran looked terrible in center on some pop-ups last year and it felt like people gave up on him, but that always seemed fixablr

Ben Clemens: Yeah, I agree with this

Ben Clemens: That seems like a pretty nit-picky thing for a guy who was an IF/OF coming up

bosoxforlife: Should the Cardinals trade one of their excess OF’s and Ivan Herrera plus a couple of lesser prospects  to the Tigers for Eduardo Rodriquez?

Ben Clemens: Hilarious how the E Rod narrative has changed

Ben Clemens: I do not think that the Cardinals would do that deal, that’s a lot of stuff going out the door for a pitcher who everyone thought was cooked last year

Ben Clemens: I think that they should be looking really hard at pitching, though, even if it takes trading fan favorites

Phil: Would you agree that the Yoshida deal looks like it may, in the end, be basically fine? I feel like people were down on it because they were mad at Bloom about some other moves (which I was also mad at him about, but I like Yoshida).

Ben Clemens: Oh totally

Ben Clemens: It might end up being a marginal overpay, or a marginal steal, but I think at this point I’m fine saying that it was in the ballpark of fair

Ben Clemens: I do think that the biggest reason for the negative reactions is all the other decisions Bloom has made

Genesis Cabrera: My slider is legit and I’m now one of the better non-closer relievers in baseball

Ben Clemens: That’s a tough one; I agree with the first part, but there are a lot of good relievers

Jeremy: but don’t the creators of xFIP explicitly state that HR/FB% can be a lot flukier than K%, BB%, and GB%?

Gant: There’s a difference between giving people credit for what they’ve done (FIP and WAR) and predicting what they’re going to do (xFIP)

Appa Yip Yip: How many good Kikuchi starts would you need to see before you began to believe he had baked himself from pumpkin into pumpkin pie?

Ben Clemens: Hmmmm….. like 5?

Ben Clemens: It’s very easy to convince me a pitcher has turned the corner

Ben Clemens: b/c they have a much easier time changing their plan proacdtively than a hitter

RTJ: Petition to have every home run derby in Mexico City

Guest: Can Mexico City ever get an MLB franchise with a joke of a ballpark like the one the Padres and Giants played in?  It makes Coors look like a band box.

Ben Clemens: So, I read that MLB set the humidor settings there as if it were one of the 29 non-Coors parks instead of Coors

Ben Clemens: that seems, uh, dumb

Ben Clemens: But no, I do not think so. I got asked this question by several friends this weekend and so I’ve thought about it a bit already

Ben Clemens: I think that baseball would be best served by continuing to play series there, maybe adding one or two more than the current one per year, but I don’t think you could feasibly have an MLB team at that altitude

Lim: How much upside does Vaughn have at this point?

Ben Clemens: A lot! I think he could be one of the 5 best first basemen in baseball over the next three years

Ben Clemens: Central case is lower than that obv, but htat’s good upside

Guest: Is there any fire to the Juan-Soto related smoke we’ve seen recently in other outlets?

Ben Clemens: I’ve been poking through Soto’s stats looking for some way to write this

Ben Clemens: I think that it’s reasonable to say that his bat-to-ball consistency is messed up

Ben Clemens: Basically he’s pulling too much stuff and it’s messing with him

Ben Clemens: but I dunno, is that an article?

Ben Clemens: I think he’s mostly still fine, tbh

Teddy: At what point would you look for another 1B option over J. Abreu if you were the Astros? They have some lower-level guys that look promising (Loperfido, Clifford). Also Michael Brantley is reportedly taking reps at 1B!

Ben Clemens: Brantley fine. Lower level guys, no

Ben Clemens: C’mon, Jose Abreu is probably still good

Armie: Lance Lynn is a victim of the pitch clock, age, or bad luck?

Ben Clemens: Yes

Ben Clemens: HOnestly I think it’s a bit of all three

12 to 6: just a note that the chatter about the dodgers depth disappearing remains laughable; they’ve started three rookies this year, two of whom should be roy candidates, and have just begun (stone on wednesday) to dip into their oncoming torrent of starting pitching, all while dealing with lineup turnover (and possibly the most fertile clubhouse in baseball). 16-13, first place, and the pieces are coming together.

Ben Clemens: I agree

Ben Clemens: Did you know that I was one of only 3 writers (out of 27) to predict the Dodgers winning the NL west this year at FanGraphs?

Ben Clemens: that’s wild to me!

Ben Clemens: I will say that they set themselves up to RELY on their depth more this year

Ben Clemens: which always spooks me, b/c when you plan on relying on depth, that makes it awkward if you need more depth than expected

Ben Clemens: But yeah, c’mon, they’re the Dodgers

Ben Clemens: Stop doubting them so much

Chip: Speaking of both Yoshida and the Yankees – given that the Yankees had a glaring hole in LF and the Yoshida contract is pretty reasonable, it’s fair to say they sort of missed the boat on him, yes?

Ben Clemens: For sure

Didace: Corbin is doing exactly what the Nats need him to do – pitch 5-6 innings every fifth day. Sure, he sucks, but neither he nor any current potential replacement is going to be around when the Nats are good again. Nats fans need to ease up a bit about him. Without Patrick 2019 doesn’t happen. Flags fly forever.

Ben Clemens: To be clear, I think the Nats would sign Corbin all over again if he guaranteed him that ring

Ben Clemens: And if he were more of a part of the fabric of the franchise, Strasburg or Harper equivalent level, I think they’d just let him play out the string and retire a Nat

Ben Clemens: I think there’s real value in doing that, I love going to the park to see old heroes

Ben Clemens: Brandon Crawford is a god in SF, for example

Ben Clemens: But that’s not really who Corbin is, and I do think the Nats would be well served by trying to see how he fares as a closer. He could be a really good closer! His slider is still nasty

Matsuiiii: How much do you buy into Senga’s struggles being related to a different baseball and also different environment? Or did the Mets pay for a very expensive SP3-4

Ben Clemens: I’m pretty worried about the command, I’ll say that

Ben Clemens: Aside from that, I dunno, he still looks okay to me, the home run luck is probably not gonna stay this way

Ben Clemens: But yeah, he isn’t throwing enough strikes right now. Given that it seems to be a new thing, I’m willing to give him a little bit more ball-construction-related grace period, but that’s a big problem

Ben Clemens: I’d be more worried if the stuff didn’t play, because that seems less fixable, but make no mistake: his command needs fixing

Bob: Why is it that you only published one article all weekend during the middle of baseball season?

Ben Clemens: Because we’re a weekday kind of website

Ben Clemens: We always publish one article per weekend

Todd: What type of starter can you imagine Santander, Hays, or Mountcastle bringing back?

Ben Clemens: Not a playable one, because teams trading playable starters don’t want current blah major leaguers

Marshall: Is “rest of season” (ROS) on a player’s page including their performance to date, or is it just their projected performance going forward?

Ben Clemens: projected performance going forward

Justin: Do you think mlb juices the ball for showcase games? I remember the first field of dreams game having a ton of homers also, along with the Mexico City series

Ben Clemens: I do not

Ben Clemens: I do think they might juice home run derby balls

C-Low: Thoughts on Gray Rod last outing?  Starting to put it together or was it just an overmatched Tigers lineup?

Ben Clemens: I’m in!

Ben Clemens: I was always in, tbh

Madier Yolina: ROS projections now have the Pirates finishing above .500. True or false?

Ben Clemens: I’m gonna say false, but only by the barest margin

Ben Clemens: such a fun story

Yo-Yo: A couple of weeks ago, I asked if the Brewers’ five game lead over STL was enough to say MIL now had better odds of winning the NLC. You said it’s April and why even play the games, which I get. Who knew you were probably right, but only because the Pirates could soon be the odds-on favorite!

Ben Clemens: Lol yeah this is not how I saw it going!

Ben Clemens: that said the Cards have played themselves into a VERY big hole now

Ben Clemens: 8.5 with two weeks less to catch up is a lot worse than 5

Jfast: With Soto’s slow start (plus last year), is Yordan pretty much the best LHH on the planet in your opinion? Best hitter overall?

Ben Clemens: Yes, and yes

Ben Clemens: looooove me some Yordan

Ben Clemens: This feels like the first year where I will not be able to write my annual ‘you’re underrating Yordan Alvarez’ post

Ben Clemens: to be fair only the first one was called that, but the guy bops

Stuff: Is there any reason to worry about Clase yet?

Ben Clemens: It depends what you mean by worry

Ben Clemens: I think it’s reasonable to be worried that he won’t sustain what he was doing the past two years

Ben Clemens: Because I don’t think anyone in baseball is likely to pitch at that level

Ben Clemens: I’m not worried that he’s anything less than an absolutely elite closer, though

Ben Clemens: Except for this one thing: what if he’s hurt

Ben Clemens: And that, yeah, I’m a little worried. His cutter shape is not the same, his velo is down a little

TuckerNeedsaNewJob: Are the starts the Cubs and White Sox having evidence that building up the middle with defense is better than collecting corner sluggers that can’t hit?

Ben Clemens: Are they evidence? Yes. Are they all tha tmuch evidence? No

Ben Clemens: And uh, ‘corner sluggers that can’t hit’ is not a good building block for any team

Ben Clemens: Seems like you might have already made up your mind

Yo-Yo: Were you referring to anyone in particular when you said STL should entertain trading fan favorites for pitching? Off the top of my head, that sounds like Nootbaar, Donovan, or Edman, but I think those three are too important to winning now and in the future. Walker, maybe?

Ben Clemens: I meant Nootbaar or Edman, and I really hope it doesn’t happen

Mag-Neto: Zach Neto is running a 12% HBP rate and 1.5% BB rate. What conclusions do we draw here, if any?

Ben Clemens: Amazingly I’ve written about a version of this player before

Ben Clemens: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/whats-the-de-santiago-line-and-why-should-…

Ben Clemens: a fake baseball player, but still

Marshall: I really enjoy your “what I liked” articles. I’d love to see more content (from you and other writers) highlighting interesting plays or just anything else cool that the average fan would miss from not watching a ton of games. It could be very light on analysis/writing to minimize the time required.

Ben Clemens: Let me say this: those articles are the most time-consuming thing I write by far despite being low on analysis

Ben Clemens: They are the most fun things I write, and I’m not going to stop doing them

Ben Clemens: But I’m not surprised that people aren’t rushing out to copy me. It seems easier than it is

Padres Big 4: Bogaerts leads the Padres in WAR by a large margin despite generally being seen as the 4th best player of the group. Who finishes with the most WAR at the end of the season?

Ben Clemens: ooh this is a fun one

Ben Clemens: I’m gonna go Soto by a hair over Tatis Jr.

Ben Clemens: I’m honestly pretty down on Machado, his batted ball data scares me

Ben Clemens: Soto is second on the team in batting WAR so far, surprisingly

bosoxforlife: I hope you are gloating over your colleagues about Arozarena.

Ben Clemens: Oh definitely not

Ben Clemens: We all love to watch him play

Ben Clemens: Everyone loves to watch him play!

Ben Clemens: It’s just like a collective win when someone that aggressive is really fun

Tom: What do you think of Bellinger’s start – a complete reversal in k rate back to levels not seen since his great years, but without the elite power he’s always shown? The discrepancy between his barrel rate and hard hit rate makes me wonder how sustainable the output is…how long does he keep the k rate down and keep ‘hittin em where they aint’ ?

Ben Clemens: I think he’s going to be able to hit homers or avoid k’s, one of the two

Ben Clemens: And honestly, given how he looked in LA, I kind of like him doing what he’s doing right now and just riding the occasional hot streaks of batted ball luck

Below the Rim: Casas or Torkelson, who do you think is most likely to end up living up to their prospect hype?

Ben Clemens: Tork for me, but I’ve always been low on Casas so take that into consideration

Ben Clemens: I’m not sure that my evaluation of Casas was ex-ante right, but he certainly hasn’t given me much reason to change it

Ray: Are you buying the break out from Yandy Diaz

Ben Clemens: Nah, but I’m buying that he’s a good hitter

Guest: Are the As really just going to be a 35-win team for the next 3.5 years before they move to Las Vegas?  I can’t imagine that would be good for baseball overall.

Ben Clemens: It would be truly disastrous

Ben Clemens: I know that the league doesn’t really step in in situations like this b/c its purpose is to enrich owners

Ben Clemens: but this is ugly and a bad look for baseball

Ben Clemens: Will the A’s even secure the bag from Vegas? What if they don’t?

Scorcese: Is Joey Gallo back to being a legit 35 HR threat? His BB rate is  up, K rate is down.

Ben Clemens: Count me in yeah

Guest: Pirates vs. Rays this week: World Series matchup, amirite?

Ben Clemens: I really hope so, that would be an awesome world series

Tom: Yennier Cano or peak Gagne?

Ben Clemens: Too close to call

Commander Keen: What do you make of Justin Steele? His last 20 starts have been fantastic, but a Spencer Strider and survive with two pitches…

Ben Clemens: I’m generally in but haven’t done a deep dive

Ben Clemens: there are so many dang baseball players

bosoxforlife: Brandon Crawford and Placido Polanco are my two most underappreciated players of my fandom.

Ben Clemens: I LOVED Polanco when he was on the Cardinals, and I assume Phillies fans did as well

Ben Clemens: I didn’t know anything at all about how to value baseball players then

Ben Clemens: I was just a fan

Ben Clemens: But he was always such a glue guy, I thought he was amazing, never understood why people didn’t give him more credit

Ben Clemens: Maybe they did, but living in Tennessee as a Cards fan you are only exposed to so much

ForstBeanes: Fisher walked away from Oakland over $88M in offsite infrastructure financing.

He wants Vegas to give him money because he has no liquidity without selling.

Ben Clemens: That sounds correct to me

Pat: Tigers fans loved Placido Polanco most of all!

Ben Clemens: Good call

Ben Clemens: I associate him with the Cards b/c I”m a cards fan, and then the Phillies b/c he was in the Rolen trade, but he was a Tiger longest of all

Ben Clemens: and he was good at all three spots, what a legend

Prince Valium: Is the batted ball data regarding Machado really that concerning to where you think he’s not just having a slow start with the introduction of the pitch clock?

Ben Clemens: Well it was already down last year

Ben Clemens: I’m not paying too much attention to the counting or rate stats at this point in the season but he’s just putting up a longer track record now of not impacting the ball like he did at his peak

Ben Clemens: Don’t think he’s bad or anything, but I think that he’s probably not the same hitter that he was at his peak

Chip: If you’re Vegas doesn’t Fisher’s management of the team give you pause? Who’s to say he’s not going to just drop into town and put a terrible product on the field there too?

Ben Clemens: I am clearly the wrong audience for this, because I’d already be suspicious of ANY team looking to move to my city

Ben Clemens: but yeah, absolutely

Ben Clemens: the A’s are such a joke of a franchise, and it’s gotten so ugly and memed, that I’m sure there are decision makers in Vegas that are worried

Ben Clemens: I think they’ll get more of a pass than they deserve because Oakland also lost the Raiders and Warriors in recent years

Ben Clemens: But c’mon, a baseball team not being able to hack it in the Bay Area, and a baseball team that repeatedly did hack it in the Bay Area until current management took over?

Izzy: It’s now May… any worries about the two young CFs in Detroit and Miami? Chisholm seems like he’s going to be a platoon player… his overall line is bad, but his righty splits are good. Will Greene ever be useful?

Ben Clemens: I’m optimistic about Jazz tbh. He’s figured out the outfield more quickly than I expected, and stayed above watter with his bat while doing so. His overall line is ugly, and those strikeouts are definitely a worry, but I thought this had a chance of just being an absolute disaster

Ben Clemens: As for Greene, yeah, I’m now pretty worried. He can’t get the ball off the ground at all, and you can’t make it work with his stirkeout and walk rates if that’s the case

Coliseum BART station: Oakland lost the Warriors and Raiders in part because of issues at the Coliseum (the basketball arena was on the same site) You can’t separate the 3 decisions completely.

Ben Clemens: That’s what I’m saying, I think that will give the A’s some cover from other cities when the city says ‘uh why did you fail in Oakland?’

Ben Clemens: if you can say ‘the Warriors, the freaking warriors, failed across the street from us’

Ben Clemens: that’s a pretty decent argument

Ben Clemens: Even if it misses a lot of the point and the Warriors moved 15 miles away instead of across state lines

Guest: So Rockies position players are at -1.9 fWAR already this season; will they set a record for most negative fWAR every by a team?

Ben Clemens: Sadly I don’t think they will. I say sadly b/c that’d be funny. But man, what a bummer

ForstBeanes: Dubs moved because Lacob wanted that sweetsweet techbro money. New digs are noticeably quieter.

Pat: But, the Warriors didn’t “fail” did they? They were successful & just moved across the Bay, into a Taj Mahal arena. That’s different than what the A’s have done.

Ben Clemens: Oh I’m in agreement on both of these

Ben Clemens: I’m just saying what Fisher’s pitch will be

Ben Clemens: Also I’ve never been to the new Warriors arena but it feels extremely dry and corporate from the outside

Ben Clemens: that tech bro juice is no joke, though

Ben Clemens: I did hear someone talking about their Series C funding as they walked past me on the street

Yo-Yo: What’s your least favorite chore? I hate packing my laundry up and taking it to a laudry mat to wash.

Ben Clemens: It varies for me, but probably folding clothes

Kermit: Are you as confused as I am about the Rays sending Taj back  to AAA?

Ben Clemens: Yeah, not sure I get it

Ben Clemens: although he got shelled by Memphis, lol

Guest: These teams will first make the playoffs in the following order:  Orioles, Reds, Pirates, Tigers, As (after moving to Vegas), Rockies.  How close to correct do you think that list is?

Ben Clemens: Ooh, fun one

Ben Clemens: I’m gonna go O’s, Pirates, Tigers, A’s, Reds, Rockies

Ben Clemens: I really just do not believe in what the Reds are doing

Ben Clemens: and I dunno, maybe that’s just me being optimistic about the A’s getting sold, but I went to a home A’s playoff game in 2020

Ben Clemens: They’ve proven us wrong before

Juxtaposition: José Abreu has only one home run in his last 84 games. His strikeout rate is at a career high and his walk rate a career low. Are we seeing the beginning of the end? Or an aging hitter that just needs to change his approach at the plate?

Ben Clemens: I think it’s both, but mainly the second

Ben Clemens: Alright, I’m gonna call it a day after the next 5 questions. It’s been a jam-packed chat today, thanks to all of you for some really excellent questions

RTJ: Matthew Liberatore comes up in May, yes or no?

Ben Clemens: Yes. I think they’re basically waiting for one injury. I’m not sure I agree with that decision but I do think that’s how they’re doing it

B’ryce Szymbobski: Is Matt Chapman just this good now?

Ben Clemens: I mean, no? He’s on a hot streak. But I do think he’s made sustsainable changes to his approach, and he’s also healthier than he has been for a while

Ben Clemens: If he’s a 130 wRC+ hitter, he’s an awesome player

Karl Marx: Should all players have the right to refuse any trade?

Ben Clemens: Oh, fun one. I don’t think that’s reasonble, I think that players are afforded some perks (like a high salary and chance at making generational wealth) and that accepting trades is just part of the whole bargain

Ben Clemens: You could make a kind of baseball that was like that, but I do think that the transactional nature of it fuels the popularity

Ben Clemens: which fuels the money, and so on

Dr. Love: Is Shane McClanahan a top three pitcher in baseball by the end of the year?

Ben Clemens: No, but I think he’s top 10

Guest: How worried are you about rendon? His eye is still elite, average exit velo and hard hit % are in line with his career averages, but has only barreled 2 balls and has run a low babip for 3 years now

Ben Clemens: Alright, last one. I’m very worried. He was never a super loud contact guy, I remember noting that he would actually be the player in baseball most hurt by a deadening of the ball because he makes so much medium aerial contact

Ben Clemens: this was in 2019, the peak year of the rabbit ball

Ben Clemens: I think you can make a similar observation about the consequences of losing a little pop; it hurts more for him than for your average player, because he hits a lot of marginal ones as it is

Ben Clemens: Much as it saddens me, I’m ready to say that he’s just not gonna get back to that 25-30 hr level. I think he’s much better than his stats so far this year (xwOBA agrees, etc), but I think he’s more of a league average type than a star now

Ben Clemens: On that note, have a great day everyone, and I’ll talk to you next week.