Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat – 6/5/23

Ben Clemens: Hey everybody, welcome to the chat

Ben Clemens: Let’s get started

Tres Rios: Would the Pirates really entertain trading Bednar if they’re hanging around 1st come deadline time? Heard a little chatter about this, and how the Os did something similar last  year. Thanks

Ben Clemens: I don’t really think the Pirates will, because at least as far as I can tell, Pittsburgh as a city is hungrier for a postseason berth than Baltimore was, and it feels like the Pirates really need the jolt

Ben Clemens: they haven’t won the NLC for probably 30 years

Talfred: Why does JBJ still have a major league job? He’s 33 years old, in his third straight year of negative fWAR, and his wRC+ is 6. I understand the glove is still excellent, but there’s no reason the man should be allowed in a batter’s box.

Ben Clemens: Because Royals

Appa Yip Yip: Is José Berríos good again?

Ben Clemens: I guess so, huh?

Ben Clemens: how it happened I have no idea

Ben Clemens: but on the other hand, I don’t know how he turned bad in the first place

Ben Clemens: So I’m just gonna say that he’s extsremely inconsistent

Kal: I know you are not a big fantasy guy but if you had to choose 1 C to trade away in a dynasty league, would it be Realmuto, Sal Perez or F Alvarez? (Looking to win now)

Ben Clemens: oh surely Sal

Jason: Thoughts on Corbin Carroll? Given his success, what do you see as his ceiling performance wise?

Ben Clemens: I really do not like the concept of ceilings for players

Ben Clemens: like, his ceiling is that he wins multiple mvp awards

Bruce & E Street: Need pitching help( who doesn’t) was offered Miles Mikolas for Lane Thomas. 12T deep Mixed Daily Roto. I belive I have enough Bats, will Mikolas be helpful with W, Whip, Era ? Thanks

Ben Clemens: I’m quite skeptical of Mikolas being a difference maker in fantasy

Ben Clemens: I’m sure he’ll be a reasonable starter for the cardinals

Ben Clemens: Pretty skeptical about him helping you on WHIP though

Wrights Back: What exactly (or approximately) is wrong with the Mets’ offense (let’s leave their offensive pitching out of the frame for now);  Lindor is making Baez look like a contact king, Baty seems overmatched, Alonso is all or nothing, McNeil  is striking out way more than the past, Vogelbach is AWOL… Are they reaping the bitter fruits of a sabremetrics heavy “let’s discover an inefficiency in batters who DON’T hit home runs” approach to offence?    Or is this a problem laid at the feet of their hitting coach?  I note the same group (plus or minus) were beasts until Marie went down late last year….
Please give me hope that ‘meaningful Octobers’ aren’t receding into the past (again).

Ben Clemens: I think that the end of your question has a lot going on

Ben Clemens: the same group were indeed beasts last year

Ben Clemens: baseball is maddening that way

Joe: Hi Ben, thanks for taking my question. I have a question about WAR. I read that WAR is an approximation and can have margin of error of 1 and you would have a clearer picture looking after a sample size of a year. With that understanding, I am confused why people use WAR to compare players early in the season. Like a player A is 2.5 fWAR vs player B is 2.0 fWAR, so player A is having a better season. Is my understanding of WAR is incorrect? What am I missing here?

Ben Clemens: Nah, you’re pretty right. I think people overuse WAR in that specific way

Guest: Seiya’s statcast page is covered in red, yet his xBA remains .248.  Would you use this as an example of how statcast can deceive you into thinking a player is better than he is, or an example of how we should wait for results to catch up with skills?

Ben Clemens: I think it’s also a great reminder that xBA isn’t a great stat

Ben Clemens: but no, seiya’s hitting the snot out of the ball, that’s a good thing

John: Can Bobby Miller (Dodgers) keep on his hot start? Or this is another case of small sample size? Will we see a regression because he isn’t supposed to be this good?

Ben Clemens: Can he keep pitching to a 1 ERA? I doubt it

Ben Clemens: Can he be a good major league starter right away? Totally

Ben Clemens: the stuff looks very real

Everybody: Thanks for the welcome, Ben

Ben Clemens: For you specifically!

Guest: You’re in PT, but your chat time shows in ET. SAD

Ben Clemens: We know where our bread is buttered

Ben Clemens: ET is the de facto time zone of the US, you know?

Wingedbeater: Is there a place to find an expected k% stat? I’m thinking that it could be relatively easily derived from the plate discipline stats available on the player pages and related league averages. (LeMahieu, for instance, has more than doubled his k% and while his plate discipline specifics are worse they don’t seem to warrant that increase. Maybe they do, though—is there a less hand wavey way of making that claim?)

Ben Clemens: I’ve tried making a few versions of this and never quite gotten to one I’m happy with

Ben Clemens: I think that Dan occasionally shows some zK% type stats

Ben Clemens: the problem is that there’s a lot of difficulty generalizing because behaviors change based on the count

Yo-Yo: Good afternoon, Ben! A couple of STL Q’s for you. What will STL do with Wainwright if he continues to be smashed (only hitting 85 mph at the end of his last start), and does Jordan Walker refusing to change his swing change your evaluation of him? He’s over 60% grounders and still looks terrible in the outfield.

Ben Clemens: I mean, they’re gonna call Wainwright their ace and let him keep going

Ben Clemens: He’s Adam Wainwright!

Ben Clemens: As for Walker, my evaluation hasn’t changed much

Ben Clemens: i mean, he was mashing through the minors last year with the same swing

Ben Clemens: He’s 21

Ben Clemens: let’s take a breath

Ben Clemens: I was against him being up to start the year, though, and I don’t completely understand why the team is so insistent on making him help this year

Ben Clemens: like, it’s fine if your 21 year old mega prospectd isn’t immediately major league ready

Geoff: regarding JBJ – the only reason he was signed was because Drew Waters was hurt preseason, and the only reason he’s on the team now is because Kyle Isbel is currently hurt. There are a lot of reasons to clown on the Royals but this isn’t one of them imo

Ben Clemens: I would have rather played a lot of other maybes than JBJ

Ben Clemens: if I’m the no-hope Royals

Ben Clemens: like, I totally understand the idea of signing competent veterans so that your squad is not a disater

Ben Clemens: disaster*

Ben Clemens: liked the Greinke signing and so on

Ben Clemens: I don’t put that in the same group

Sirras: Played Terra Mystica for the first time with my Monday night game group last week. Very fun, very strategic. The asymmetrical play styles help keep things interesting!

Ben Clemens: I have never played, but I’d really like to

Ben Clemens: I’ve heard it’s very fun

Liam: pirates have never won the nlc 🙁

Ben Clemens: Oh wow, I guess they won long enough ago that it was the NLE then

Thomas: If you are the Dbacks, what do you do about the Starting Pitching situation? They probably need 1-2 more decent arms, but they really need to see what they have in their glut of pitching prospects

Ben Clemens: I’d give the prospects more run

Ben Clemens: I agree

Ben Clemens: I think that yhou have to find out what you have, particularly with pitchers

Ben Clemens: sometimes they just click right off the bat

Bruce: Farhan stated that SF Giants will be aggressive during the trade deadline. Isn’t it a little early to state this for a team under 500 and seems to be a pretty flawed team?

Ben Clemens: Respectfully: who cares

Ben Clemens: actions speak louder than wores

Ben Clemens: words*

Ben Clemens: why not say that and give the team confidence?

Steve E.: Re Francisco Lindor: Any theories or applicable analytics to explain the crash? He’s … awful.

Ben Clemens: take a breath, Steve

Ben Clemens: is my honest advice

Ben Clemens: he’s been worse than expected

Ben Clemens: if this is awful, like, jeez

Ben Clemens: there are probably not very many non-awful players in MLB then

RTJ: Had a discussion with a friend last week about batter splits versus right- and left-handed pitching. Why do some players have worse (more different) splits than “average”? Is it an approach issue, is it something that is innate? For someone like Pete Alonso who has relatively similar results versus both sides – does it mean he underperforms against lefties or overperforms against righties or neither it’s just random?

Ben Clemens: I think it’s probably a mixture of the two

Ben Clemens: as to the first question

Ben Clemens: I’m sure that some of it is innate, and that some of ti changes

Ben Clemens: Sorry for my slow response time today, by the way

Ben Clemens: I am feelnig a bit under the weather and just moving slowly

Jazzy: I get that Ohtani is Ohtani, but am I crazy in thinking that Wander Franco (currently +2500 at my local sportsbook) could end up taking home the AL MVP as the best player on what might be a historically great team in a loaded division?

Ben Clemens: You are not, that seems very reasonable to me

Broken Bat: 2 guys getting it done.. Keller of Buc’s and Eflin of Rays. Tossing away salaries, who would you want for 2024-2025?

Ben Clemens: Ooof….. probably Eflin, but I’m maybe too down on Keller

Farhan: What is a reasonable expectation on return for a Joey Bart trade?

Ben Clemens: depth and lottery tickets I think

sharps: Are the Nationals out-performing expectations or did I just think they were going to be utter trash?

Ben Clemens: I think they are, yeah

Pat: Speaking of Baez, his K% is down around 18%, but, he has turned into a Larry Bowa type power hitter..ISO is at .090..Is this a case of Detroit trying to help him, but, only making things worse by taking him away from what he does well?

Ben Clemens: I definitely think that

Ben Clemens: Maybe with a side of aging, but Baez has always been really good at making the most out of bad swings

Ben Clemens: so taking away the bad swings doesn’t help him as much as it helps many plyaers

JC: This whole chat: what are your thoughts on X? Answer: eh, I’m not worried.

Ben Clemens: People worry too much!

Ben Clemens: I think that there are appropriate amounts of worries but like

Ben Clemens: ‘Francisco Lindor is awful’

Ben Clemens: no he’s not

Ben Clemens: like, c’mon, we all know he’s not

VitalGonzoGore: Not random on splits imo. The way hitters see the ball. Not just the LHP or RHP. Also release point can affect this greatly. All batters see the ball differently

Ben Clemens: Oh it’s very clearly not random for pitchers

Ben Clemens: release point and arsenal matter a ton

Ben Clemens: since hitters by definition see a ton of different types of pitchers, though, theirs can be harder to parse

Ben Clemens: I agree that it’s not all random

Ben Clemens: But I do think that it takes a long time to tease out signal from noise

Ben Clemens: because there really is a lot of noise

Captainjameshook: No q just a thanks for the taverns rec. Smash hit after we figured out what we were doing

Ben Clemens: I’m really glad you like it!

Ben Clemens: Remains one of my favorite games

Phil: Who ARE you worried about Ben this season?

Ben Clemens: Ooh, fun one. Javy Baez I’d say, for sure

Ben Clemens: plenty of pitchers

Ben Clemens: I”m willing to believe pitchers are getting worse much more quickly than hitters

Ben Clemens: Trout, just because I’m afraid that time is catching up to him

RMR: With De La Crurz and CES crushing AAA and Votto on the mend, what would your Reds infield look like on July 1st?

Ben Clemens: It really depends on who is willing and or able to move to the outfield

Ben Clemens: But I think I’d want McLain 2b, DLC ss, Steer 3b, and I guess India DH/OF/etc

Ben Clemens: Votto is just really an awkward thing, like, ideally I’d want CES at first

Ben Clemens: but it’s just so tough to bench Votto

Ben Clemens: hopefully India plays a mean LF/RF

Ben Clemens: and then it all works

petey bienel: dom smith’s iso is at pete gray levels. seriously. gray .043, smith .038.

Ben Clemens: Yeah, poor Dom, but power hitting is just not his thing

Phil: Re: Afraid of trout in the sense he’s no longer a true talent 175 WRC+ player and just a normal great hitter?

Ben Clemens: Exactly this

Guest: Odds the Phillies pick up Scott Kingery’s options?

Ben Clemens: I think it’s just 0

Ben Clemens: They’re 14, 15, 16

Ben Clemens: like, nah

Guest2: How much do you think the Rangers offense is going to regress after this ridiculous start?

Ben Clemens: For what it’s worth, we project them to have the 8th-best offense the rest of the way

Ben Clemens: maybe 7th, really, depending on park effects

Ben Clemens: so they’re not the braves/dodgers/astros/jays, but in the nexts tier

Appa Yip Yip: Do you ever think about how we’d talk about Mookie Betts if he didn’t play in the era or Trout and then Ohtani?

Ben Clemens: I sure do

Ben Clemens: Mookie is so great

Ben Clemens: He’s probably underrated

Ben Clemens: in that people talk about the dodgers as a team with a bunch of stars, instead of a team with Mookie Betts and then some stars

Ben: How was Wrigley?

Ben Clemens: It was cold! And really, really fun

wally whitehurst: what’s your reaction if edwin diaz makes it back this season?

Ben Clemens: I’ll just be amazed and happy

Guest: what do you make of Masataka Yoshida’s hot start, do you think it’s sustainable or that his defense will get better

Ben Clemens: I am a little skeptical that his defense is suddenly gonna get great, but maybe better than it is now?

Ben Clemens: Fenway LF is a great place to hide him anyway

Ben Clemens: I do believe in his offense though

Crane: How difficult is it to trade a player with a player option? Like is the return lower than expected or can you put in something like cash considerations if the player ends the season on the IL/picks up the player option due to regression?

Ben Clemens: I do think that PTBNL stuff happens fairly often. I also think it’s a lot easier to trade players with player options in the offseason, when there’s time to talk to the player about it first

Ben Clemens: Arenado had an opt out when he got traded, and they basically negotiated a new contract before doing the deal

Ben Clemens: You can’t exactly do that on July 29

Ben Clemens: Also, it’s easier if the option is either certain to get picked up or certain to get declined, of course

Danny: The Os are an enigma.  Seems like the standard take is Mullins+Adley+bullpen+luck=profit, but there has to be more going on.  It looks like the starting pitching has been a lot better than advertised, though still not exactly trustworthy.  No?

Ben Clemens: Yeah, I think that they’ve shown the abililty to get a lot out of their pitching

Ben Clemens: And yeah, great hitters

Anon21: Soroka sent back to AAA after two poor starts. Do you think he’s going to figure it out, learn his new mechanics, and get back to being a respectable rotation option, or is the beginning of the end?

Ben Clemens: I do not think it’s knowable right now

Ben Clemens: I watched one of his two starts, and yeah, he didn’t look good

Ben Clemens: time will tell on this one. I am really rooting for him, but these ‘will a pitcher come back from injury’ deals are just crapshoots at times

Ben Clemens: particularly with his incredibly long injury history

Ben Clemens: Okay, I’m gonna call it a wrap for today, sorry for a short chat. Talk to you all next week