Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat – 5/12/25

Ben Clemens: Hey all, let’s chat

Dallas: Will Joey Bart get moved to create playing time for Endy and Henry behind the plate? Hard to see a catcher being moved mid-season, but do they really want to waste another year or development on both former top 100 prospects? Also, would Bart have value?

Ben Clemens: Man…. I don’t know

Ben Clemens: it’s so weird

Ben Clemens: Like I love that the Pirates took a shot on Bart, I think it was very wise

Ben Clemens: you never know how your catching prospects will work out and they were wonderingn about whetehr Davis would stick anyway

Ben Clemens: but yes, now I think they should be trying to trade him. And honestly, I agree that it’s hard to trade him mid-season

Ben Clemens: kinda awkward spot

Ben Clemens: but I don’t see how you can play him less, he’s mashing. I think that he has at least ‘intersting prospect far from majors’ value in a trade and I think at some point soon, the Pirates should look at the year, admit that they’re not making the playoffs, and do it

Ben Clemens: I’ve been a strong proponent of the Pirates going all out to compete this year since they have SKenes, but like… they didn’t

Ben Clemens: and so now they should at least have their decisions line up

Bosoxforlife: Aaron Judge cant keep this up, can he?

Ben Clemens: As John Maynard Keynes famously said, in the long run we’re all dead

Ben Clemens: I’m actually writing an article about Judge right now where I needed to estimate his true talent

Ben Clemens: And instead of just using projection systems, I just used his 2022-2025 stats

Ben Clemens: ….which are a 207 wRC+

Ben Clemens: goodness gracious

Matt Damon: MATT. DAMON.

T2: Thank you for doing this. Hypothetically, if I develop the ability to keep MLB pitchers healthy all season (no pitchers go IL), what kind of contract can I get from a team?

Ben Clemens: oh wow

Ben Clemens: is this like a portable skill? are you magical, or a scientist?

Ben Clemens: I think if it’s magical, a ton

Ben Clemens: like, $20 million a year to have all your pitchers be healthy? Several teams would pay that I think

Ben Clemens: if it’s science, eh, you’re going to get duplicated and FAST

Greg: Do you think the league would consider adding a Friday afternoon nationally televised game? Obviously not Sunday Night Baseball level network fees, but something akin to the Sunday morning Roku window?

Ben Clemens: THey will definitely consider it!

Ben Clemens: They already have the Roku and Apple windows

G4: Fantasy-centric inquiry: ERod vs Hicks in SF on Wednesday; which SP are you starting?

Ben Clemens: ugh, I hate to admit it but I’m starting both in Ottoneu

Ben Clemens: our starting pitching is not doing great

RH: What if it’s a 21st Century Bonesetter Reese, where people can see what he’s doing but no one is quite skilled enough to duplicate it?

Ben Clemens: indistinguishable from magic, then

Steve: Will Baltimore GM ever be proven right on Trevor Rogers? Baltimore needs pitching bad

Ben Clemens: I don’t think so, but look, I was down on him from teh start, so I’m probably the wrong person to ask

Ben Clemens: from a Bayesian standpoint I’m gonna need to see a LOT before I buy it

Kevin: What would be your best hopes and your worst fears for the Rockies for moving on from Bud Black?

Ben Clemens: best hopes: 2025 is incredibly embarrassing to Dick Monfort, so much so that he reads all the press about hte Rockies and sees all the talk about how disjointed and confused their data/analysis team is. Meanwhile, he also reads all the press about how it’s a great place to watch a game, the team spends, this SHOULD work better. And he’s inspired to try a different model because this year is just so bad. The man really does seem to love the Rockies. He personally answers emails from season ticket holders. He’s not some absentee landlord

Ben Clemens: Worst case is bunker mentality, he says ‘tune out all the outside noise’ and doubles down on Rockies mentality

Jeremy: The owners would rather get rid of the minor leagues and outsource player development to the NCAA, right?

Ben Clemens: I actually don’t think so

Ben Clemens: I think that it’s just not enough savings, particularly when you consider that teams often want to teach players new skills

Ben Clemens: or new ways to maintain fitness, etc.

War2d2: Bonus Cubs trade-value question: Moises Ballesteros seems like he’s taken a leap forward on offense but still really has no home on D, as a bad-fielding catcher with a mediocre arm. How much actual trade value does a guy like him have, as a bat-first guy who’s never seen an MLB breaking ball? Feels like someone like that would be worth more to the Cubs as a lottery ticket that could turn into a Pablo Sandoval type in the long term vs. what they’d net in return, but maybe I just don’t value him correctly.

Ben Clemens: Depends on how you feel about the following question

Jed Hoyer’s Burner: Should I be worried about my bullpen because I’m looking around … there’s not a lot available …

Ben Clemens: Ballesteros seems like the kind of guy I’d target if I were trading a good reliever

Ben Clemens: I mean, I really like the guy obviously, he’s been on my sleeper list before and he’s gotten better since then

Jaffe’s powers have weakened: He did not reverse jinx Judge. Judge’s slumps in 2025 are basically a game and a half. He hit .500 vs Sacramento and he didn’t get on base in the first game. What is happening

Ben Clemens: It’s….. just wild

RH: I’ve seen some baseball writers complaining about the Rangers hiring Bret Boone without coaching experience but Bochy’s argument that he is there more for his perspective to be augmenting the more analytics-focused coaches they already have on staff makes sense to me. I am curious what you think

Ben Clemens: Oh yeah, I get it

Ben Clemens: I think it can be taken to excess

Ben Clemens: The Giants of the early 2020’s had 8 trillion coaches and players said it was a little bit much

Noly-moly: Aaron Nola seems to be settling in after a rough April. Do you thinks that’s the long and short of it?

Ben Clemens: Yeah basically

Ben Clemens: Oops sorry didn’t finish up the earlier thread. It can be taken to excess, but I think Bochy will probably not do that

Jeremy: How *should* a team communicate with a star player about his long-term future role, given that it’s impossible to predict the team’s needs, or the player’s skill level, several years in the future? If we can agree that the Red Sox have handled Devers badly, what would good handling have looked like? Like the the Yankees after the signed ARod and kept Jeter at shortstop?

Ben Clemens: So I talked to Ben Lindbergh about this a bit on EW on Friday, if you’re interested in a longer take

Ben Clemens: But I’ll give mine here as well

Ben Clemens: I think that the biggest issue that is going on with the Sox is that they tried to keep a little bit too much flexibility in the whole thing

Ben Clemens: Like, they signed Bregman and said ‘oh maybe he’ll play second’ when they clearly didn’t want him to

Ben Clemens: That started them off behind the 8 ball – generally speaking, if I sign a $300 million contract, I’m not expecting my team to go out and sign another star at my position without talking it over with me first

Ben Clemens: now maybe the Sox did that and Devers just said ‘well screw you’ but it doesn’t feel that way from the public eye

Ben Clemens: So at that point, they’re like “Raffy you’re going to DH, shut up and do it” more or less

Ben Clemens: so I think if you deliver that message instead of “We’re going to have you play first base, a position where you have no professional innings, so spend time learning it”

Ben Clemens: Then you’ve walked yourself into a corner

Ben Clemens: I’m not saying Devers is some paragon of virtue here, but if this happened to you at your work, you would DEFINITELY be annoyed

Ben Clemens: management is jerking him around, and it sure sounds like it’s the front office and not Alex Cora

Ben Clemens: the end solution has Devers at first, imo. But the path there is SO messy, and I think that the team’s behavior is a large reason why

Happy Girthday: Leiter two step vs. Col, and vs. ailing Hou, or Tyler Anderson @ LAD?

Ben Clemens: Leiter

SPArn: Pretty funny time for that Trevor Rogers question. Granted, Stowers slowed down this week, but his OPS starts with an 8, he hit a walk off home run off the best reliever in the game last weekend, and Rogers ERA in Triple A starts with a 7

Ben Clemens: Great time as far as I’m concerned!

Ben Clemens: love Stowers

Mike Elias: Weekly check in to ask what possible steps I should actually take to improve my SP? Go for Alcantara while his stock is low, try and snipe Mackenzie Gore or Liberatore, or dump Morton/Gibson and try out some internal options in AA/AAA?

Ben Clemens: Do you guys think that Bartolo Colon and Jamie MOyer are available?

Ben Clemens: like…. c’mon they’re not doing any of the first three

Ben Clemens: I’d prefer the last, but I just don’t think that Mike Elias and I agree on what steps are possible

Ben Clemens: to the point where I almost think I can’t explain their decisions based on how I see the world

Bosoxforlife: If Devers did get mad then let him get mad more often because he is tearing the cover off the ball since the flap occurred.

Ben Clemens: Right, that’s another good point

Ben Clemens: We love (LOVE! LOVE!) to talk about the drama

Ben Clemens: but while all of this is happening, Devers is mashing

Ben Clemens: certainly doesn’t seem like he’s letting it affect his work

Idiotic Failson: Trying to think of the fanbase that would be most insufferable if one among them were made the Pope. It’s not the White Sox, they’ve had such a rough go. As a Yankee fan I would say Boston, but I feel like it might be us.

Ben Clemens: Ooh, this is a great question

Ben Clemens: It borders on non-baseball, and I’m feeling a little light on non-baseball questions of late

Ben Clemens: What if it was the Astros and he gave them indulgences for the banging scheme

Ben Clemens: I’m not even sure if indulgences still exist, but maybe he could bring them back?

Ben Clemens: realistically it has to be one of the Yankees/Red Sox/Dodgers. Mayyyyyybe the Cubs, Cards, or Astros as teams that are annoying to large segments of the population?

Ben Clemens: obviously the least objectionable pope would be a Mariners pope

Ben Clemens: patron saint of lost causes, etc.

Insufferable Fanbases: The answer is ALWAYS Philadelphia.  Let’s not complicate things.

Ben Clemens: Oh that’s not a bad one either, but really, you’d be more annoyed by a Philly pope than a Yankees pope?

Ben Clemens: I wouldn’t

Ramblin Rod: Cubs or Red Sox pope, absolutely. One of the cutesy large-payroll teams that think they suffer.

Ben Clemens: Yeah see, I agree with this

TJ: seeing enough growth from Jackson Holliday to make him a definite buy in fantasy leagues?  Seems like a heck yeah but would love your thoughts!

Ben Clemens: yeah

Ben Clemens: the strikeout rate and whiff rate stuff getting under control is a flashing ‘buy buy buy’ sign imo

Ben Clemens: it really looked like that might keep him from succeeding in the majors. but if it doesn’t, then you have to start reading the scouting reports again on the tools, and hoo boy theyr’e good

Jeremy: Dodgers pope would be pretty insufferable.

War2d2: re: insufferable fan bases: as a Chicago expat that’s lived in Giants territory for 20+ years, it’s clearly the Giants. Lowkey the worst fanbase in baseball.

Ben Clemens: Wow, harsh take!

Ben Clemens: the Giants would be on my extended list. But c’mon, a Giants pope worse than a Dodgers pope or Red Sox pope? I’m skeptical

The Da Vinky Code: Indulgences still exist, but are no longer expressed in quantity of purgatory years.

Ben Clemens: Wait can we talk more about this? What are they measured in?

The Da Vinky Code: Also, I’m sorry but a Cardinals pope would be annoying both in terms of Cardinal jokes and in terms of Best Fans In Baseball -ism

Ben Clemens: Yeah I agree!

Ben Clemens: and that’s as a Cards fan

the person who asks the lunch question: what’s for lunch

Ben Clemens: yes!

Ben Clemens: welcome back

Ben Clemens: today I’m having leftover pasta that I’ve remade into a pasta salad

Ben Clemens: we tried a sauce made of shredded zucchini and honestly it was AMAZING

Ben Clemens: and also flavorful enough that I want to see how it does cold

Why we gotta discriminate against dinner?: What’s for dinner?

Ben Clemens: Wonderful point

Ben Clemens: I’m thinking takeout pizza tonight

Ben Clemens: My wife’s away on a business trip and while I have a big plan for making mapo tofu soon, it feels like a waste when it’s jsut for me

sgtjunior: rest of season in NL only, Kepler or Moniak?

Ben Clemens: jeez

Ben Clemens: I guess Kepler?

Ben Clemens: slim pickings in NL only!

Phils: What’s up with Orion Kerkering?  Stuff has looked meh, fastball velo is down, and he’s getting shelled.  Worth a trip to AAA to get him right?

Ben Clemens: Yeah

Ben Clemens: I think

Ben Clemens: or an IL stint maybe? I don’t know the deal obviously, but the velo is suggestive

Jeremy: Odds that the Orioles end up like the 2013-15 Pirates or the 2020-21 White Sox? Brief window of contention that closed much faster than fans expected it to due to front office mismanagement, followed by indefinite years in the wilderness?

Ben Clemens: Nah, I don’t see it

Ben Clemens: I think they’re too good at churning out prospects

Ben Clemens: I can see a Rays-y or Brewers-y path though

Ben Clemens: where the window of contention is always open but never all that ajar

Carson: Hey Ben, as a Cardinals fan, what can I tangibly take from Libby this year that gives me confidence his start to the year can be maintained? (I have gone from nervously excited, to optimistic about the team as a whole)

Ben Clemens: A big thing is that he’s figuring out how to throw his pitch mix a bit better

Ben Clemens: and his command has taken a step forward

Ben Clemens: for a lefty who used to be sinker-dominant, those are both huge

Ben Clemens: he’s only 25 and he’s been better than you’d think, career FIP below 4

Ben Clemens: and I think it’s fair to say that when he came over from the Rays, his sinker/curve pitch mix was kinda non-functional

Ben Clemens: so he’s been re-learning an arsenal on the fly. That makes me confident that his real skill — manipulating spin — has been here all along

Ben Clemens: and they’re just finding a better way to express it now

Jeremy: Phils are going to regret not resigning Jeff Hoffman, right?

Ben Clemens: yeah, but one of those ‘good process bad results’ kinda regrets I think?

awy: with bat path becoming more observable and quantifiable when will amateur scouting parameters change to emphasize this sort of stuff, since it’s way more important than almost anything else given a certain threshold of physical ability.

Ben Clemens: it’s tricky because bat path can be changed more easily than a lot of things

Oaktown Blues: Is Luis Urias good again? (Or maybe better than before? 11% K rate is promising)

Ben Clemens: Oh man, I’m ready to be fooled again

Ben Clemens: I’m Charlie Brown to Luis Urias’s Lucy, I keep talking about how he’s a great acqusiition every time some team acquires him for cheap because he failed at hte last stop

Ben Clemens: but yes, this time it’s different!

Namiki: Rōki Sasaki is struggling in MLB, but why do you think his 96-mph fastball isn’t getting any whiffs?

Ben Clemens: have you guys messed around with the Dynamic Dead Zone tool?

Ben Clemens: https://dynamic-dead-zone.streamlit.app/

Ben Clemens: It’s only through 2024, I think, so I can’t exactly put ROki in there, but I think this idea helps explain it generally

Ben Clemens: his four-seamer moves exactly like you’d expect it to, it doesn’t have any particularly outstanding features that I can see

Ben Clemens: it’s no coincidence that our models hate it

Ben Clemens: my guess is that the Dodgers weren’t trying to tinker with what he wanted to do TOO hard before he first encountered the majors, and that we’ll see him change pitch shapes and maybe even add some new breaking stuff later in the year or in 2026

Ben Clemens: but like, Eric gave his fastball a below average grade despite the velo, and yeah, I agree

Kwanbelievable: What would you have put the odds at preseason that both Gabriel Arias and Daniel Schneemann would have 3x the amount of WAR that Andres Gimenez does halfway through May?

Ben Clemens: higher than you think, but becaues of the risk of zeroes and injuries

H: I’ve seen some experts being negative on Elko. Do you see Elko as more than a Quad-A player?

Bullock: What’s the difference among “too old to be a prospect AAA demolisher” guys like Misner, Crim, and Elko?  One comes out good (duh, they mashed AAA) the next is nothing (duh, they’re 27 in AAA).  Help, I see no rhyme or reason

Ben Clemens: I don’t have strong insight into how Elko will turn out, but why in the world wouldn’t you try?

Jeremy: Re: the Orioles maybe following the Rays/Brewers (and let’s add Mariners) path of trying–mostly successfully–to always be competitive without ever going all-in to create a top-tier contender: I would like to hear from fans of these teams as to whether they like it that way? It seems like it varies? I get the sense that Brewers fans like it, Mariners fans hate it, and the Rays don’t really have enough fans to tell what their fans think?

Ben Clemens: I know a good number of Brewers fans and no Rays fans, so I feel more qualified to respond to that one in particular. I think they like it because they get the financial constraints in Milwaukee. YOu can’t not. Chicago is RIGHT there

Ben Clemens: and it’s just very clear that Chicago is hogging a lot of the area resources, as it were

Ben Clemens: we often take the bus to O’Hare to fly home rather than leave from Milwaukee because there are no directs, which is very emblematic

Ben Clemens: I don’t think Baltimore could work with that vibe b/c DC isn’t in the AL East

Ben Clemens: like, it just doesn’t feel like an underdog mentality team to me

Ben Clemens: but I’m a lot less confident in that view than I am in my Brewers fans psychology view, so take it with a grain of salt

Tomboy: I’ve always been curious….Do the best hitters in baseball usually look for certain types of pitches, or do they look for locations?  I’m assuming to look for locations, you would have to possess elite pitch recognition…..Have you ever heard players talk of this?  When I played, I looked for in zone vs out of zone, and wasn’t worried about pitch type…

Ben Clemens: It’s all a matter of degree, but ‘if it’s high let it fly, if it’s low let it go’ is conventional wisdom for a reason

Ben Clemens: I think that things like that — “I’m trying to hit a fastball, and I’m looking high, but I’m feeling aggressive so if I swing over a slider I’ll live with it” is a swing thought I can imagine a major leaguer executing

Ben Clemens: “I’m looking up and in for a fastball or down andn away for a slider” less so

Jacob Wilson: Do you think I could lead a mini-revolution in analytics? Pushing lower bat speed = more time in zone = more contact? Or mixing bat speeds based on counts kinda like pitchers do?

Ben Clemens: mmmmmm…. maybe for guys with similar skillsets?

Ben Clemens: but like, it mostly doesn’t work

Ben Clemens: Jacob Wilson has 70 bat control or something

marc Kartman: Can’t speak for all Brewers fans, but I view fandom as consuming entertainment.  If I can be entertained (i.e. my team is competitive and I like watching them and reading about them almost every day during the season) all season year after year, I’ll take that over winning it all once but going years sometimes where I’m not entertained by my team at all.

Ben Clemens: yeah so, I agree with you on that front overall

Ben Clemens: I love a competitive team more than anything

Ben Clemens: I think that most fans don’t feel that way? Strangely

Ben Clemens: and I think that it’s easier to want a competitive team if you’re at least a little bit thinking ‘yeah because we won’t ever be the DOdgers anyway’

Ben Clemens: the O’s have a private equity billionaire owner and they play in the AL East, it just feels different to me somehow

Brewers fan here: I like it but only to the extent that (1) our track record at the indefinite window model has been nothing short of exceptional over the last 7-8 years and (2) it’s been made pretty clear by ownership that there is no available choice beyond this approach. So, with those expectations in place, the result is we feel positively spoiled when ownership splurges on 2/34 with a player option for Rhys Hoskins

Ben Clemens: Yeah, well said

Kwanbelievable: Had a funny interaction at work the other day where I commented on the irony of calling something Bayesian when it was clearly frequentist and using p-values. Awkward chuckle in the room, apparently nobody understood the difference. Petition for a bring Ben Clemens to work day where he sits in and backs you up on your statistical nerdity

Ben Clemens: I”m not even sure I use Bayesian right every time

Ben Clemens: but, more frequently tha nnot

J: With the Twins and Cardinals playing themselves back over .500 and Alcantara struggling, who’s the best pitcher traded at the deadline this season? At this rate it feels like the market is going to be memorably sparse.

Ben Clemens: I think there’s still a chance it’s Sonny Gray

Ben Clemens: but yeah, the way the season is shaking out, there are definitely fewer options than expected

Roman: Re Joey Bart, the Padres should be knocking down their door trying to get him to replace Maldonado and bridge to Salas, who is developing on a much slower timeline than the Padres may have anticipated

Ben Clemens: yeah, great example

Ben Clemens: and he’s even a former top prospect so I bet AJ loves him

Gaints: Webb looks great as usual, Hicks has great peripherals, Verlander and Ray looked bad early on but have had a couple good starts in a row, and Roupp has been looking shaky. What do you think the Giants rotation will look like at the end of the year?

Ben Clemens: I think that Birdsong is gonna end the year in the rotation

Ben Clemens: probably over Roupp. And I think the team would prefer Verlander to either find a little more juice or end up as the fifth starter

Re: Fanbases: The world needs Heroes.  The world also needs Heels.  Anybody who watched pro wrestling as a kid, or adult I guess, knows this.  The evil Philly fa base is just as necessary and possibly more entertaining than the mild Fanbases of let’s say Kansas City, where everybody is delightful, until you leave the stadium parking lot at least.

Ben Clemens: Oh, completely agree

Ben Clemens: Heels are really important

Kwanbelievable: Update re: Brandon Webb Cy Young odds since last week’s mailbag: tossed a gem against Minnesota (7IP, 2ER, 9Ks), and his odds dropped from +1000 to +1200 and he is still 5th behind Skenes, Yamamoto, Greene, and Wheeler

Ben Clemens: tell you what, I’ll lay you +2000 on a Brandon Webb Cy YOung

Ben Clemens: Logan is certainly being disrespected, though

Re: Orioles vs Rays/Brewers: It’s also easier to tolerate the approach when the team actually has had years of consistent success. The Rays and Brewers have been mediocre at worst since some current college students were born, the Orioles were actively tanking post-pandemic, there just isn’t trust there.

Ben Clemens: I agree with this take

Alex Anthopoulos: Can I realistically maintain the “still early” narrative with a straight face, when this team has glairing holes to overcome in offense that come from last season. Is it fair to say the Braves championship window is slowly closing?

Ben Clemens: I think ‘still early’ is fine, but yeah, “the braves don’t have any depth’ is not exactly a new thing

Ben Clemens: and I’m very surprised that they didn’t address it meaningfully more this winter

Ben Clemens: they’re lucky Nick Allen can pick it

Ben Clemens: otherwise, they’d have soooooo many roster spots delivering almost nothing

tortycraig: Ivan Herrera + Luken Baker for Rafael Devers who says no

Ben Clemens: the Cardinals haha

Ben Clemens: Rafael Devers for a handshake, I think almost every team in baseball is saying no right now

Ben Clemens: that’s a BIG contract

Ben Clemens: when I asked a number of team sources last year on trade value stuff, I put basically all the large-contract stars on the list for feedback

Ben Clemens: and Devers was, by general acclamation, the least attractive combo of deal/player among the All Star types

Brandon Webb/Logan Webb: Too many Webbs…..I can keep track of 200 Rodriguezs, but draw the line at one Webb

Ben Clemens: Doesn’t help that they’re both sinkerballers

Too many puppieeeeeees: Kyle Isbel and Carter Jensen for Rafael Devers…..who says no?

Ben Clemens: Oh man, Kyle Isbel has been WAY better than I thought this year

Ben Clemens: 0.5 WAR, that’s like 1 WAR better than I expected

Ben Clemens: now, what if it was Hunter Renfroe for Devers but you had to play him every day?

Ben Clemens: maybe both sides would say no

Razor shines: Kicuchi or houck ros. Gotta cut one.

Ben Clemens: yeesh

Ben Clemens: I think I’d keep Kikuchi but man, they’ve both fallen off this year huh

Michael Harris: Seems to be the poster child for age based over-projection. Generally, I think most players are going to produce within parameters that can be anchored to their first ~600 PA.
Would you agree with that claim and if yes, who is the player having some success now that everyone is linearly scaling

Ben Clemens: mmmm…. I guess the counterpoint I’d make is that Michael Harris was great in his first 600 PA

Ben Clemens: He had like a 130 wRC+ with elite CF defense

Ben Clemens: I agree with the idea that phenoms have different development profiles than other players, i.e. they’ve probably done more of their development by age 21 than your average player

Ben Clemens: but this concept is notoriously difficult to prove, and it’s one of those ‘I feel it but I can’t put words to it’ thing

Guest: Wow, I had no idea the Devers contract was so underwater. Crazy for a deal that was signed basically two seasons ago, and he’s performed roughly to expectations since

Ben Clemens: I think people disagree on just how underwater it is, but basically it was considered an overpay, ‘we’re boston we need to keep some dudes’ kinda deal even when he signed it

Ben Clemens: and now the best 2+ years have already happened, you know?

Cutting Houck/Kikuchi: There has to be to be two better guys out there…..lol

Cutting Houck/Kikuchi: Porque no los dos?

Ben Clemens: yeah very good point haha

Ben Clemens: but of the options presented!

Bullock: Sugano is throwing six different pitches each more than 10% of the time.  No question, just wow, can’t remember seeing that before

Ben Clemens: it’s so delightful

Ben Clemens: he’s so fun to watch

Birdsong: Is this just the new age of inning restrictions working as it should?  Saving a young stud for the playoffs as opposed to having a limit and having to shut down like we used to?

Ben Clemens: I think it’s better but it’s very early to say for certain

Jeremy: Re: teams that are consistently competitive but never top-tier competitors, in the NFL that’s been the Steelers ever since Ben Rothlisberger stopped being a top-shelf QB. My sense is that Steelers fans are split on this. Some want to blow it up, fire the head coach, and tank so they can try to draft a top tier QB and build an elite team around him. Others like being pretty good every year and are worried that if they fire their head coach and blow it up they’re signing up to suck indefinitely.

Ben Clemens: Yeah, Steelers are a great exmaple

Ben Clemens: although I think they’re more Cardinals-y than Brewers-y

Ben Clemens: Okay, I gotta run soon, but I’m going to make one pass through for questions I’ve missed first

We Are Pham-ily: Any chance the Pirates can dig out of the hole in the standings they currently find themselves in?

Ben Clemens: nah

Sadness: A month in, what do you think Cedric Mullins’ market looks like if the season ended today? 3/50? 4/65?

Ben Clemens: I’d definitely give him 4/65, I’ll tell you that much

Re:Roki: Yamamoto had a long history of dominance AND health, so I had no problem with the hye surrounding him, and same with Shunpeita Yamashita next year, but I’ve been puzzled about the amount of hype surrounding Roki.  The stuff is great, and that’s it.  Every other thing is bad and has always been bad.  Health, attitude, work habits, etc…

Ben Clemens: I don’t feel as strongly about the work habits and attitude parts

Ben Clemens: I think that’s in fact very difficult to discern from the outside!

Ben Clemens: But I agree with the general concept that like… Yamamoto was the best pitcher in Japan for years and years in ar ow

Ben Clemens: Sasaki was a top prospect with a great top-end

Ben Clemens: they are not similar

Ben Clemens: in terms of how likely they were to succeed immediately here

darrenasu: Do you think that people (fans, analysts, etc) or more impatient with prospects now than ever before? I look at guys like Jackson Holliday and Wyatt Langford, and see folks online, including writers here at Fangraphs, that seem unimpressed. These are 21 and 23 year olds that are batting better than the average ML hitter by WRC. That seems…good. Really good. That coupled with the gap between AAA and ML today…I think we’ve been skewed by some rocket prospects in the past and we expect that all the time now…when it’s still REALLY hard to hit ML pitching.

Ben Clemens: 100% yes

Trifecta: What was for breakfast, or are you like 75% the population that doesn’t partake, and just ingests coffee?

Ben Clemens: today I had a bagel with cream cheese, but I’m usually a yogurt and fruit guy

Natural Girth: Haven’t the Royals proven over the last couple of years that speed and defense in the outfield are overrated, when it comes at the expense of scoring runs?  The minute they send down MJ, and stop playing Isbel as much, the team wins 15 out of 17.

Ben Clemens: I think that calling MJ Melendez part of the defensive movement is one of the funniest things I’ve heard all week

Ben Clemens: to be fair it’s only Monday

Ben Clemens: but yeah, THOSE guys are not how you get speed and defense on your team, imo

Bobby Witt = Early 2000s Albert: ‘I shall have my mvp once this mutant goes away’ (but at least he’s a nice mutant this time)

Farhandrew Zaidman: on the Michael Harris point – do you think there’s a bias in favor of projecting young players versus the possibility that his peak was just age 21-24 seasons? Like, there have got to be players that peaked that early, how does that play into a projection analysis?

Ben Clemens: yes, THAT is the tough thing

Ben Clemens: not ‘we look to heavily to their first 600 PA to establish a baseline’ but ‘we don’t have enough different aging curves based on early-career trajectory’ or something along those lines

Ben Clemens: one size does not fit all

Jeremy: Are we starting to see a pattern of GMs/PBOs failing because they only have one plan/strategy they’re good at implementing, and can’t adjust their approach to changing circumstances? Thinking of Elias with Baltimore and Zaidi with SF here.

Ben Clemens: Okay, this is the last question, I came up with this ‘let’s answer old questions’ to give me time to go dig it up

Ben Clemens: Very good question! And I think that it’s a bit too simplified but definitely points in the right direction

Ben Clemens: If you think of the ‘thing’ that the best front offices are known for, it’s tough

Ben Clemens: because there’s no one thing

Ben Clemens: and I think that if you just have a thing, and you do your thing as much and as well as you can and just iterate on it over and over again instead of learning new approaches, the upside is very limited

Ben Clemens: the league isn’t static. your situation isn’t static. and it can be REALLY hard to adapt and adjust to that, but I think that trait is very important

Ben Clemens: I think of it a little bit like how I was describing Matthew Liberatore, actually. His actual skill wasn’t ‘throws a good sinker and curveballl,’ it was ‘manipulates the baseball well, particularly to generate spin.’ And early in his career, he leaned too hard on the sinker/curveball thing and it wasn’t great

Ben Clemens: so the great front office skill to have is ‘keen understanding of the costs and benefits of baseball decisions and uses this to build a fluid organization’ rather than ‘adds velo to pithcing prospects’ or ‘has a great model for finding draft picks’

Ben Clemens: and the best front offices are demonstrating their core skill in many different arenas

Jeremy: It’s hard to show with numbers that young phenoms have different career trajectories than other prospects, because they did more of their developing earlier? Really? Offhand, that doesn’t seem like it would be all that hard to check?

Ben Clemens: let me put it this way – if you could find that bias, it wouldn’t be in ZiPS anymore

Ben Clemens: OKay fine, oooone final one

Mike: Cowboys pope would be the worst.

Ben Clemens: Yes, something we can all agree on at the end of the day

Ben Clemens: Have a wonderful week, everyone.