Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat – 6/8/20

Ben Clemens: Good afternoon, and welcome to a FanGraphs chat sponsored by FanGraphs.

Ben Clemens: I’ll be your host, Ben Clemens.

Ben Clemens: I may be a little bit flighty at the start of the chat — my dog just inadvertently stabbed me in the ankle with the stick she was carrying on our walk.

Ben Clemens: So I’m gonna be doing some first aid while I chat.

Ben Clemens: But let’s get started!

Jake: Do you think today’s proposal from the MLB gives any room to move forward in negotiations or is it a complete step backwards?

Ben Clemens: I mean, basically yes? I haven’t talked about it with the rest of the staff, but I tihnk it’s a positive sign that the owners are improving money, even if there’s no chance the PA accepts this deal.

Ben Clemens: A positive sign relative to their prior position of ‘screw you bye’, to be fair.

Ben Clemens: But still an improvement

Chris: Are the owners just going to keep offering terrible one sided deals until they are forced to play a short season and players can’t sue

Ben Clemens: I think we’re going to end up with something like a 65-game season with pay for roughly 65 games.

Ben Clemens: I don’t have any inside sources on that or anything, but I can see the owners basically stringing out negotiations until we get to the poin where that’s the longest avialalbe season and then just running it.

aaronsaron: Hi Ben! Will there be an OOTP stream tomorrow? :]

Ben Clemens: Yes indeed. Sadly it won’t be a draft prep, because whoops, the draft was last week, which I missed because I was preparing for hte real life draft.

Ben Clemens: But instead it will be a draft review.

Chris: The owners want 16 teams in the playoffs?

Ben Clemens: Yeah, more $ that way. The players agreed to that in their prior proposal so it looks pretty likely for this year.

John: Do you see any hope that the two bullheaded sides find an agreement soon?    I am fed up with the money arguments.    As a baseball fan of over 50 years, I am done if there is no 2020 season.  Neither side cares about the fans.

Ben Clemens: Maybe

Ben Clemens: I really strenuously disagree with the both-sides-ism going on here though

Ben Clemens: There’s an agreement!

Ben Clemens: They can play

Ben Clemens: If the owners wanted to abide by the agreement that they signed and play an 82game season

Ben Clemens: That would happen tomorrow.

Ben Clemens: This is the owners trying to take extra money.

Ben Clemens: Now look, they’ll probably get extra money

Ben Clemens: They’re good at getting extra money!

Ben Clemens: But this isn’t a case where both sides hate the fans

Ben Clemens: Like what if the owners offered minimum salaries to every player, and they get to punch Max Scherzer in the chest once a day for leading the union, and 81 games

Ben Clemens: Should the players take that?

Ben Clemens: If you think it’s no, then it’s just a matter of what the fair middle is

2-D: Which parts of this new proposal do you see the MLBPA not agreeing to?

Ben Clemens: I haven’t talked to anyone about it, but basically the money? I just don’t think it’s the right amount relative to the deal

Ben Clemens: Getting the players to play 82 games, with the attendant COVID risk, and paying them for like 60?

Ben Clemens: Just play 60 games at that point, if you’re not willing to pay them for the 80

Sanford: Any experience with Terraforming Mars?

Ben Clemens: Sadly not, though I was reallllllly looking forward to playing some literally the week that shelter-in-place was announced here

Ben Clemens: I have a group of gaming friends, one of whom is a huge fan

Ben Clemens: We had it all set up, my wife and I planned on making nachos…. and then we stopped being able to go places.

Ben Clemens: I’m looking forward to re-scheduling to an outdoor porch at some point in the near future, though.

Ben Clemens: It gets realllly good reviews and I love the theme.

The Stranger: It seems like there are too many unmet conditions in the March agreement for the players to just accept MLB’s right to decide on a 50-game season. If MLB tries that do you think we see baseball in 2020?

Ben Clemens: I think they’ll probably play anyway

Ben Clemens: A 50-game season sucks but I don’t think anyone is interested in having no baseball at all this season without resolving the CBA

Ben Clemens: That’s just a great way to get both sides to dig in more, and I do think that this is a pivotal point for baseball in general

David: What would be so bad about just skipping 2020 at this point and coming back for a normal 2021?

Ben Clemens: Aside from another year of trying to make up baseball topics for me? 🙂

Ben Clemens: Lost playoff contract revenue would be a HUGE deal for the owners

Ben Clemens: That’s money that they just ignore when calculating their ‘per-game costs’ that is a windfall for every team

Ben Clemens: And the national networks have a lot more leverage than RSN’s in just saying ‘haha okay bye not paying’

Ben Clemens: Then there’s the fact that if baseball doesn’t play when every other sport does, they’ll likely miss the interest bump of ‘oh finally thank god there are sports on tv again’

Ben Clemens: The league office has been talking about the declining interest in baseball and their desire to remain relevant for quite a while now

Ben Clemens: Not playing when the country is starved for sports seems like… not the smartest move from that perspective.

tomerafan: We can never ignore history… and the players have reason to question the prior conduct of the owners in negotiations… but if you look at just the here-and-now in 2020, the MLBPA signed an Agreement in March to consider modifications to that March agreement if there are no fans in the stands.  Now the Union says that salary modifications are, per se, a nonstarter and they are unwilling to negotiate salary on any terms.  The Owners may be “greedy” or <insert your word here> but it takes two parties to negotiate, and one side has spent the last couple weeks refusing to even come to the table.  So how are the Owners the bad guys right now?  How is the one side willing to talk the villain in this current setting?

Ben Clemens: Uh, to be clear, the players have negotiated.

Ben Clemens: They’ve already given up more concessions than the owners by far

Ben Clemens: It’s also very unclear whether the lack of fans is legal cause for a re-negotiation.

Ben Clemens: If you’re unclear on that, any of Craig Edwards’ articles on the topic would be a good way to get familiar with it, or his podcast where he discussed it

Ben Clemens: The league is claiming that’s obvious in the agreement, and they produced a smoking gun

Ben Clemens: Their smoking gun is an email between league officials

Ben Clemens: With no PA officials on it

Ben Clemens: That says ‘oh hey I talked to a guy in the PA who asked me if we meant no players means renegotiate’

Ben Clemens: ‘and I told him yes’

Ben Clemens: So uh

Ben Clemens: I dunno

Ben Clemens: I do think that the whole ‘not willing to negotiate salary on any terms’ will have to change

Ben Clemens: But they’ve given a lot of other sweetners, while the owners haven’t

Ben Clemens: So, call it what you will, but I think the current player position is closer to equitable than the owners’ by far

Ben Clemens: For example, what if the owners offered my above deal — minimum salaries and league-sanctioned Scherzer punches.

Ben Clemens: Is that an offer?

Ben Clemens: I’d say no

Ben Clemens: And that’s close to the league’s first offer

Ben Clemens: I do think the second offer is promising

Ben Clemens: And if the players don’t counter wiht something, then I’ll move closer to your view

Ben Clemens: Because now both sides have given *something*, though the players have still given more

David: A significantly shortened season with possible Covid rule changes and altering the playoffs all just feels like a gimic.  NBA and NHL playoffs that they are going to do, I see as just exhibition tournaments that don’t actually mean anything.

Ben Clemens: Oh yeah, to me it’s definitely a gimmick

Ben Clemens: Sorry, one second

Ben Clemens: My fire alarm just went off

Ben Clemens: False alarm, AND Ruby didn’t start barking

Ben Clemens: We are really winning today

Jake: How much longer do you think the league will wait before just saying “screw it we’re playing 50 games”? I imagine they still want to try and be the only sport in town for a little bit

The Stranger: To me, the 50-game season just feels like the ultimate screw you move from the owners. It’s just, “oh, you don’t want to play for $X? Well that what you’re going to do.” Seems like a bitter pill for the players to swallow if that’s what it comes to.

Ben Clemens: Yeah I think they’d need to do more than 50 to really get that bump

Ben Clemens: They’d need to start by August 1 probably, right?

Ben Clemens: Yeah basketball starts July 31

Ben Clemens: So actually they’d want to start July 15, and that’s more like the 60 game plan

Ben Clemens: I think I’m mostly okay with that

JoJo: How do you see an agreement impacting rookies? More or less likely to be called up and play this season?

Ben Clemens: Sadly, I think less

Ben Clemens: The existing agreement, which I’m assuming would hold, calls for pro-rated service time.

Ben Clemens: So if you play for 50% of the season, you get half a year of service time, 90 days or so

Ben Clemens: I think teams are gonna be really hesitant to give someone 90 days of service time in exchange for 30 games of production

Ben Clemens: Now, one way where that wouldn’t be the case

Ben Clemens: Is if a team with a top prospect is unexpectedly in a playoff position

Ben Clemens: Weird playoff runs are going to be a LOT more likely the shorter the season gets

Ben Clemens: Like if you’re the Orioles and you’re randomly in first place on September 5

Ben Clemens: You’re calling Adley up, right?

Ben Clemens: I would

Ben Clemens: So my initial view is no. But if there are playoff race surprises I could be extremely wrong.

David: So I guess I am in the minority when I say wake me in 2021 for sports when they get back to normal season with normal rules.

Ben Clemens: Yeah, I think so.

Ben Clemens: I mean, it’s not real baseball in the way that we grew up thinking of baseball

Ben Clemens: I won’t argue with you there.

Ben Clemens: But I watch the WBC, which is pretty clearly a different format

Ben Clemens: And man, I’d love to see Andrelton Simmons fielding a grounder right about now

Ben Clemens: I will 100% thikn of it as a weird one-off season, but I’d still love to see it

Nathan: If Correa can stay healthy for an entire season, is he the WAR leader at shortstop?

Ben Clemens: Hm

Ben Clemens: I like this question a lot. Shortstop is reallllly deep but the top end is basically Lindor and some dudes

Ben Clemens: Everyone in the tier below that is up for debate

Ben Clemens: I think that if Correa stays healthy for the whole season, he’s solidly in that Semien/Story/Baez/Bogaerts tier

Ben Clemens: I’d put him just behind Bogaerts there, probably

Ben Clemens: And I dunno, Gleyber is somewhere in there too.

Ben Clemens: Paul DeJong? Probably not

Ben Clemens: Seager if he’s healthy, too

Ben Clemens: But I’d give Correa as good odds as any of those guys

Curtis: Does a shorter season benefit the streaky hitter?

Nathan: Are there types of players that will become more or less valuable in a 50 game season? Are multi position guys less valuable? Do starting pitchers become even more valuable or can teams lean on there bullpen for a full season?

Ben Clemens: I’ve been pondering this streaky hitter question for a bit in the background while I played ‘name that shortstop’

Ben Clemens: I think it depends on who you are?

Ben Clemens: Like if your baseline is a 4 WAR player, and you’re streaky btw 6 and 2 in a real true-talent way, then not really

Ben Clemens: Because you’re going to play either way, and a single player can’t budge their teams’ odds enough. Like there are teams where adding 2 wins is more helpful than subtracting 2 wins is hurtful, for sure

Ben Clemens: There are plenty of those

Ben Clemens: But I don’t think it’s reasonable for any of them

Ben Clemens: I do think that a streaky *team*, or just a high-variance team in general, might be well served

Ben Clemens: But I’m struggling to articulate why so maybe ignore me

David: I definitely want to see some baseball, but also want to be able to put this chaos behind us and forget about it.  Speaking of SS, what ceiling do you see for Dansby for near and long term?

Ben Clemens: I’m a little more down on Dansby than I believe the industry consensus is. That’s the “popular” consensus, by which I mean what you’d hear if you listened to MLB Network or ESPN or whatnot

Ben Clemens: I think that ZiPS and Steamer are pretty close to my view; league average player

Ben Clemens: Bat won’t kill you

Ben Clemens: He definitely has the potential for a big season in there, but I think it would need to come from season-long power

Ben Clemens: I don’t see him improving his plate discipline enough to get it there

Ben Clemens: That’s by no means out of the question, but not my base case

Kiermaier’s Piercing Green Eyes: Assuming there’s a season, do we switch to WAR/600 as the standard productivity benchmark, or does every article have to have an asterisk next to the 2020 numbers to explain why no one was valuable?

Ben Clemens: Hm

Ben Clemens: I could see it being that way for a few years

Ben Clemens: That seems like just good logical thinking.

Ben Clemens: I do not think it will switch forever, though

Ben Clemens: No one uses WAR/600 for 1994, or for the careers of players who played in 1994

Derek: It really doesn’t seem like it should be this hard to figure out how to play some damn baseball…

Ben Clemens: Completely agree!

Ben Clemens: I did a radio hit on a Toronto radio station yesterday, where the host had a lot better idea of the hockey details than I did

Ben Clemens: And remember, hockey has had some really vicious labor battles in recent memory

Ben Clemens: And he was just baffled at how baseball was somehow negotiating changed salaries and long, sweeping changes ot the game in all of this

Ben Clemens: instead of just saying let’s play you nerds we want to be popular

Ben Clemens: I just…. don’t get it

David: WAR……bleh (watches for arrows to come flying in)

Derek: At this rate everyone will just have 0.0 WAR 2020s.

Ben Clemens: Hey, I tend to like WAR as a nice objective analytical tool, but I think anyone who tells you it’s the only stat that matters is being a little ridiculous

Ben Clemens: I really like the framework of WAR, and I think that a replacement-level based framework, in the ideal sense, is the best way to think of player value

Ben Clemens: But it’s completely reasonable to disagree with the particulars of WAR, and to think that the way we calculate it today misses exciting and useful plyaers

Ben Clemens: And might actually keep those players from getting the chances they deserve

Nathan: Is there a rule change that would lead to more aggressive base running? I appreciate teams not running into stupid outs, but base stealing is fun to watch.

Ben Clemens: There are things you could do on the margin; get rid of the stupid pop-off-the-base replay reversal, which is the worst rule in baseball in my opinion

Ben Clemens: You could limit pickoff throws, though how to do that is tough

Ben Clemens: You could expand the bases, as the Atlantic League tried last year, though without much success in changing baserunning

Ben Clemens: I’d like to see the league enforce balks incredibly strictly

Ben Clemens: Like, codify the rule better

Ben Clemens: And enforce it

Ben Clemens: I dunno how much it would help but I hate that pickoff moves are either balks or not based on, eh, what the umpire had for breakfast that morning or whatever

Sam: Who’s your favorite low WAR, but fun to watch player?

Ben Clemens: Ooh, this is an excellent question

Ben Clemens: Billy Hamilton is up there

Ben Clemens: Aledmys Diaz is really high on my list, though I guess he’s just pretty good

Ben Clemens: Andrelton Simmons is, I think, far more fun to watch than he is valuable, and he’s pretty valuable

Ben Clemens: Emmanuel Clase fits the bill

Ben Clemens: Honestly, Mike Trout is very clearly not my favorite player,despite the fact that I enjoy his preposterous skills

Ben Clemens: I’m more of a fan of players with outlier skills

aaronsaron: Billy Hamilton is my favorite!

Ben Clemens: Yeah if baseball were a purely entertainment sport, with no one keeping score, he’d be so great

David: What about overall philosophy change from swing for the fences to manufacturing runs. How long until we see a swing back in that direction?

Ben Clemens: Ooh, that’s sometihng a lot of people have written about, and that I should surely do a better job hunting down the articles for

Ben Clemens: I’m not going to, though, because eh, I’m doing some silly data-mining draft project right now

Ben Clemens: But I think you’d need to change a lot of things about hte game to get that to happen

Ben Clemens: Make home runs harder to hit; either with fences or the ball

Ben Clemens: But then you need to make strikeouts harder to achieve for pitchers too

Ben Clemens: So that you don’t get a 2014 situation

Ben Clemens: I don’t think banning the shift is really the answer, but maybe making infields livelier?

Ben Clemens: At the same time that you shrink the strike zone or allow one non-strikeout foul tip or something weird like that

Ross: Do you think any of the AA teams on the chopping block will manage to remain in business next year, even in an independent league? As a Cardinals fan, I’ll miss getting to see the Reds prospects playing for the Chattanooga Lookouts.

Ben Clemens: I really hope so.

Ben Clemens: I had my seventh birthday party at the Chattanooga Lookouts stadium!

Ben Clemens: Or maybe 8th; it was a long time ago

Ben Clemens: (I grew up in Oak Ridge in east TN)

Ben Clemens: And Chattanooga is awesome these days, a fun city by all accounts

Ben Clemens: My parents like going there, and they’re kinda bougie

Ben Clemens: Gonna be a real shame if it closes down

Ben Clemens: Sadly, I think that they’re probably done for

Ben Clemens: With no draft picks, what the heck are they going to populate the system with? And then, also sadly, it’s a bad time to start an indy team right now

Ben Clemens: What with the recession and all

Chris: Craig Edwards wrote an article about how much worse the new offer by the owners is than the last one. It’s crazy that mlb thinks this is the route they should go

Ben Clemens: Yeah, to be clear, it is worse than their grim-trigger ‘screw you minimum games’ offer

Ben Clemens: It’s better than their initial offer in most cases

Ben Clemens: Which should tell you how bad their initial offer was!

Ben Clemens: If it’s significantly worse than something they could unilaterally impose without the players’ consent

Ben Clemens: Craig’s article is excellent, and you should check it out:

Ben Clemens: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/mlb-owners-latest-offer-even-worse-than-th…

Joe: There’s talk about an expanded Fall League with all 30 teams fielding a team. With NBA/NHL not playing in November like they normally would, wouldn’t this be a good opportunity for revenue and content for fans? MLB could sell ~30 games of inventory with more top prospects than usual to RSNs that are starved for content in Nov. without NBA/NHL, to partially make good on their 162 game contracts. Give some games to ESPN and Turner who are missing NBA/NHL too. Fans get to see top prospects on TV every day. Prospects get paid at a time of year they normally wouldn’t. Win-win-win

Ben Clemens: Oh for sure. The league isn’t going to offer a dime of that to the PA though, because their members won’t even be playing

Ben Clemens: So they’ll probably try to do this

Ben Clemens: But they won’t change their negotiating stance at all as a result

Ben Clemens: I do think it would be good TV though

Ben Clemens: Honestly, the league has a lot of avenues to get some extra dough

Ben Clemens: Expanded playoffs, with like you said less competition from other sports, are nice

Ben Clemens: And already baked in, the players agreed to it

Ben Clemens: Extra prospect stuff; selling expanded access packages with mics and backstage interviews and so on

Ben Clemens: There will be interesting new things that come out of this work stoppage no doubt

Curtis: If the season is between 60-80 games in length, who hits the most home runs this year?

Ben Clemens: I’ll take a dark horse, Jorge Soler

Ben Clemens: No real reason to feel that way

Ben Clemens: I just love Soler irrationally

Ben Clemens: But in theory the shorter season shouldn’t impact your prediction for most homers, just make the favorite less likely to win

David K: Does Fred Wilpon still own the Mets a year from now?

Ben Clemens: I’m going to say yes, though I hope I’m wrong

Ben Clemens: From what I can see, the sticking point in the sale to Cohen was that a)the Wilpons want to sell a majority stake, but still get to be the majority owners

Ben Clemens: and b)they want to kepe their ownership of SNY, which is valuable b/c the Mets gave SNY an absolutely sweetheart tv deal

Ben Clemens: Given that a) is more or less impossible and b) lowers the franchise value, uh

Ben Clemens: It’s gonna be tough!

Sam: Given how contentious these negotiations have been after a prolonged period of relative labor peace, can you imagine what would be happening if someone like Marvin Miller was still running the union? Or do you think having a background in labor law would have increased the productiveness of early talks e.g. a clearer March agreement?

Ben Clemens: Wonderful question

Ben Clemens: I honestly don’t know enough to be confident either way here

Ben Clemens: My sense is that one of the big issues in this negotiation has been the accumulated weight of the last 10-ish years of labor unease

Ben Clemens: Where the plyaers are unhappy with the owners, but keep not getting great deals

Ben Clemens: It both increases player dissatisfaction, which was already at a recent peak this offseason

Ben Clemens: and emboldens the owners to push for insane asks

Ben Clemens: So if Marvin Miller were teleported into February, yeah, I htink things would be a lot worse right now in terms of the players just being like well okay bye enjoy your empty stadiums and voided tv contracts

Ben Clemens: But if he’d been running the show for 10 years I’d be far more hopeful

David: Just gotta give you props, one of the most engaging Chats I’ve been apart of in a long while.  Thank you.

Ben Clemens: Thanks!

Ben Clemens: I’d like to thank baseball for having some interesting things to discuss

Ben Clemens: But also my fire alarm for not continuing to go off

Derek: Do you think it’s possible that we see an active player-owned major professional sports team (not necessarily just baseball) in the somewhat near future? With rising salaries and the ability of athletes like LeBron to make even more money beyond their salary, it at least seems like it should be economically feasible.

Ben Clemens: Hm

Ben Clemens: Does tennis count?

Ben Clemens: Oh, hm, you said team

Ben Clemens: I think it’s tough. The fixed costs to starting one up are really high

Ben Clemens: You’d need to have a situation where the league is just absolutely unwilling to negotiate with the players, because I think the breakeven to make a baseball league, for example, more profitable for the players to run themselves would be quite long

Ben Clemens: Even in the current environment

Ben Clemens: They’d have to get TV deals. They’d have to compete with the existing owners, which would dilute the value of each given baseball game on TV

Ben Clemens: They’d have to find places to play, and hire a league office, and so on

Ben Clemens: This should really be a symbiotic relationship

Nathan: this whole reducing the minor leagues seems like a bad marketing idea. Most of the other sports don’t have them, so in a lot of parts of the country, if you want a live professional sporting event, you go watch baseball. With fewer minor league teams it puts more pressure on baseball to compete with other sports on TV (which everyone seems to think it fails at) as well as all the other entertainment options. The league is giving up a competitive advantage.

Ben Clemens: Yeah I agree SO much with this point

Ben Clemens: I love minor league baseball

Ben Clemens: It is my favorite in-person sporting event by so far

Ben Clemens: And I love that you can get it almost anywhere in the country

Ben Clemens: Meg and I wrote about this in December:

Ben Clemens: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/take-me-out-to-the-ballgame-mapping-the-ne…

Ben Clemens: Using some sweet mapping software

Ben Clemens: It’s just a tragedy that this is happening, from a kids having fun doing things standpoint

Curtis: Who is the best catcher in MLB today?   how far away will Adley be when he debuts?

Ben Clemens: Oh hm

Ben Clemens: Gotta be Realmuto right now

Ben Clemens: With Grandal in the mix as well

Ben Clemens: Catcher is not at a high point right now, I think it’s fair to say

Ben Clemens: I do not think Adley is better than either of them, but when he debuts, assuming he follows the trajectory I expect, he’ll be in the top 10. How well he adjusts to high-minors pitching will tell us a lot more about where in that group

Curtis: Extend to who is currently the best player at each position? real life, not fantasy

Ben Clemens: Let’s do this as a lightning round: Freddie Freeman, Ketel Marte (if he plays second), Bregman, Lindor, Yelich, Trout, Mookie

Ben Clemens: Going around the diamond 3-9

Nathan: Are we going to see more offensive oriented catchers in the near future or will good hitters always be moved off the position to limit wear and tear?

Ben Clemens: Love this question

Ben Clemens: I think it can be a little bit of both, to be honest, though I know that’s a cop out

Ben Clemens: Bryce Harper is still not going to be a catcher

Ben Clemens: But it’s a lot more reasonable to put someone back there without plus framing when framing stops mattering

Ben Clemens: I think that the offensive bar at catcher will go up significantl

Ben Clemens: But there are actually two things keeping catcher offense down; one is that we like good-framing catchers, sure

Ben Clemens: we being the general league consensus these days

Ben Clemens: but two is that catching is miserably hard on the body, and that will still be the case

Ben Clemens: Everyone knows Ryan Doumit was the worst framer ever, but he wasn’t even a good hitter.

Ben Clemens: So catchers in 2019 batted .236/.308/.405

Ben Clemens: That’s awful, and will go up

Ben Clemens: But it won’t suddenly be league average or anything

Nathan: Does the salary tax actually help the super rich teams? It seems like many teams can run their budget up to that point, but only a few can really go over it for multiple seasons.

Ben Clemens: Interesting. I’d say it benefits all teams, because free agency is a winner’s curse type deal

Ben Clemens: If you win a free agency negotiation, you’ve offered the most money

Ben Clemens: Removing the ability for one team to win, say, 10 free agency auctions (they’re basically negotiated auctions) over three years

Ben Clemens: Because they won’t just not spend up in those 10

Ben Clemens: Them not being there will lower the winning price in others

Ben Clemens: I really don’t have enough clarity on how much teams are aware of each others’ offers though

Ben Clemens: The more that’s the case, the more the salary cap just helps everyone

Derek: Catching should be significantly less grueling with robot umps though, right? Like, if no one is on base the catcher doesn’t even need to try catch the ball. Not sure if that will actually make a substantial difference in reducing wear and tear long term though…

Ben Clemens: Yeah that I’m really not sure about

Ben Clemens: Like how much is the framing

Ben Clemens: And how much is the crouch

Ben Clemens: You’ll still have to crouch, or at least sit or something

Ben Clemens: You can’t just let the ball go to the backstop every time; the league certainly own’t allow that

aaronsaron: In regards to pace of play, isn’t the main issue simply that pitchers take forever to throw the ball (and to a lesser extent batters stepping out of the box every time)? I feel like this isn’t brought up enough when trying to find the issue/solutions for pace of play. Some pitchers just take forever, and most aren’t quick. I always was quick when I pitched, although I wasn’t in the majors.

Ben Clemens: Because of pace of play!

Ben Clemens: Segues on point today

Ben Clemens: This is definitely some of it

Ben Clemens: Read this, though:

Ben Clemens: https://www.sbnation.com/a/mlb-2017-season-preview/game-length

Ben Clemens: I always like advertising Grant, because he’s awesome

Ben Clemens: But this is a particularly good one

Ben Clemens: There are a few causes, with time between pitches leading

Ben Clemens: So you probably want to work on all of those

Ben Clemens: I’d say his overall conclusions match yours, which is why pitch clocks are a thing in the minors

Ben Clemens: I would say that yes, if you fixed that you’d fix a lot

Ben Clemens: So the question is how to fix that, and how much do you want to try to fix the other nitpicky things as well

Nathan: when did you realize that all your favorite players from your childhood were actually only kids as well and about 8 to 10 years older than you?

Ben Clemens: LeBron is like 8 months older than me

Ben Clemens: That’s the one that really sticks with me

Ben Clemens: But I met Ozzie Smith in Cooperstown when I went to a Hall of Fame induction in 2013

Ben Clemens: Lame induction year, btw

Ben Clemens: Wouldn’t suggest

Ben Clemens: But Ozzie was in his 50s then, late 50s

Ben Clemens: He was my favorite player when I was a kid, and one of my big early baseball memories was going to a game in St. Louis hoping to see Ozzie, and Royce Clayton played instead, my uncle told me Ozzie was getting too old

Ben Clemens: So I saw him as this colossally old guy

Ben Clemens: And nah, he’s significantly younger than my dad and uncle

Ben Clemens: It’s like that tweet, behold the ancient miracle, this 33-year-old man can still play a sport

Nathan: Do people who don’t like baseball not like it because it is too long and boring or do they think it is too long and boring because they don’t like baseball?

Ben Clemens: Definitely the second

Ben Clemens: Baseball does have too much dead space

Ben Clemens: But all sports have too much dead space

Ben Clemens: Like, have you watched a football game?

Ben Clemens: Jesus, it’s all replays and showing Troy Aikman’s impressively manicured hair

Ben Clemens: I like football, though I struggle with the moral implications of modern-day gladiator fighting given how awful it is for those who play

Ben Clemens: But it’s notn like it’s a thrill a minute

aaronsaron: I mean even if games still take long, as long as pitchers are throwing the ball something is still happening, unlike when they take forever and the game is taking long and nothing is happening.

Ben Clemens: Yeah, this I agree with

Ben Clemens: Baseball’s problem isn’t game length

Ben Clemens: It’s percentage of the time where nothing is happening

Ben Clemens: Like actually nothing, no one at all is moving and no attempt to play is being made

Ben Clemens: I don’t think it’s disqualifying; I still love going to baseball in person

Ben Clemens: I do think that time between pitches helps to take you out of the groove of watching, though

Derek: Is there any chance minor league contraction makes indy leagues more popular or at least raises the quality of play in a significant way?

Ben Clemens: Ugh, I dunno

Ben Clemens: I’d like to think so

Ben Clemens: Indy league salaries are not exactly lucrative, though

Ben Clemens: A lot of the reason they exist is becaues players are willing to make those wages hoping they hit affiliated ball

Ben Clemens: If affiliated ball shrinks, there’s less chance of that working. I think you’d need to see increased gate receipts that upped their pay

Ben Clemens: That then attracted the guys who would otherwise be in affiliated ball

Ben Clemens: I do not know if that’s likely, though I’m skeptical it would be immediate

Ben Clemens: Particularly now, with going to a stadium not being high on most people’s lists of fun activities given COVID

The Stranger: My takeaway from Jay’s article about 50-game windows last year was that the playoff teams looked surprisingly reasonable. Can we actually feel okay about the results from a short season?

Ben Clemens: Sorry, big leap back to earlier, but I missed throwing this in and liked the point

Ben Clemens: I’m curious what it would look like if you sliced EVERY 50 game sample

Ben Clemens: Curious enough to write it myself? We’ll see

Ben Clemens: I think that feeling okay about the results isn’t a huge deal, though

Ben Clemens: Who cares how we feel about the results

Ben Clemens: I don’t watch baseball because I’m going to look back in ten years and say, yep, those 2018 Rockies deserved to tie for the NL west crown, lose in the tiebreaker, win the WC game, then lose in the NLDS

Ben Clemens: I’m gonna say, jeez, the Rockies almost beat the Dodgers? Baseball is wild!

Ben Clemens: I think I’ll just say that more this season

Ben Clemens: That’s why I want a tournament if it’s going to be THAT short. That would be a blast.

BASEBALL SZN: Do you have any unwavering food takes like Dan and chili?

Ben Clemens: Well, one is that Dan is wrong about chili

Ben Clemens: Shots fired, etc.

Ben Clemens: But beans can absolutely be a part of chili, and I like beans in chili

Ben Clemens: Aside from that, hm

Ben Clemens: I like hot sauce on pretty much anything, which I don’t think is a common take

Ben Clemens: Not particularly uncommon, but not common

Ben Clemens: I’m really into dried mangos

Ben Clemens: Doubt that’s controversial

Ben Clemens: Oh, I think that most chicken and turkey sausage is as good as most actual sausage

BASEBALL SZN: What’s your go to hot sauce?

Ben Clemens: Hard to beat Cholula for accessibility and versatility

Ben Clemens: I’m such a sucker for random hot sauces, though

Ben Clemens: I think I like trying new ones more than I like any one hot sauce

Ben Clemens: Our fridge and pantry are always full of random ones

Ben Clemens: Whatever I see at the store, or at a farmer’s market, or whatnot

Ben Clemens: Moving to California has been great for that; I tend to like Mexican and Asian spices and yeah, right place for those

Ben Clemens: Oh, honorable mention to the chili paste that the Sriracha company makes

Derek: Oh that sausage take is a bad one.

Ben Clemens: Ha, see, it’s a hot take!

Ben Clemens: I’m not a huge red meat guy though

Ben Clemens: I wouldn’t give up bacon

Ben Clemens: And I wouldn’t give up hamburgers

Ben Clemens: But aside from those, I don’t really eat very much red meat at all

Ben Clemens: I know some people swear by sausage, but to me it’s just easy to get close to its taste, and so much of sausage is the grease, which I think chicken and turkey do well

Ben Clemens: Less sold on some of the vegan/vegetarian options

Nathan: Are you pro DH? As an Astros fan always hatred but to be honest I haven’t missed the pitchers hitting and didn’t even notice it at first.

Ben Clemens: I’m pro-DH

Ben Clemens: I wish I weren’t

Ben Clemens: Not like I wish I just thought differently, but I wish pitchers could hit well enough that the variation mattered

Ben Clemens: But eh…. they just don’t hit at all!

Ben Clemens: If every pitcher hit like Zack Greinke, sure, I’m in

Ben Clemens: But I don’t like the strategy implications enough for it to be worth just how awful pitchers are at batting

aaronsaron: The range of pitching pace last year was about 20-29 seconds. If we say everyone shaves off 8 seconds a pitch (which not every pitcher would of course, but humor me), at an average of about 290 pitches a game, that would save 38.66 minutes a game! That’s crazy!

Ben Clemens: Yeah; I mean, you wouldn’t save that much, but even if you save half of that (not a terrible guess), that’s some value

Ben Clemens: Just clone Mark Buehrle

Ben Clemens: One big problem with this, though, is that there’s decent evidence that taking more time between pitches increases your velocity

Ben Clemens: Which makes perfect sense

Ben Clemens: And so convincing pitchers to not take whatever the most time they can

Ben Clemens: happens to be

Ben Clemens: Is gonna be a hard sell when velo matters so much

Nathan: It’s hard to find good sausage. Kaspers in Wiemer TX has the best

Ben Clemens: I grew up near some verrrrry good bacon (Benton’s Bacon)

Ben Clemens: So I’m willing to believe that I just haven’t tried great sausage

Ben Clemens: But I find replacement level sausage to be pretty blah

Ben Clemens: And if you’re going to spice it, the meat stops being the highlight

Ben Clemens: Chicken chorizo and chorizo are realllllly similar

Ben Clemens: Because the main taste is the spice

Ben Clemens: So I’d need a really good, plain sausage

Ben Clemens: Next time I’m near Wiemer I’ll try to stop by Kaspers

Ben Clemens: That will be, uh, maybe not soon

Ben Clemens: Looking at a map

Ben Clemens: I guess next time I’m in Houston maybe it’s worth a trip?

Ross: Are there any knuckle-ball pitching prospects on the horizon (meaning in AAA or AA)?

Ben Clemens: I’m not the guy to ask on this, but certainly no surefire major leaguers, that I’d know about

Ben Clemens: I’d say ask Eric, but probably next week

Ben Clemens: He’s busy this week

Ben Clemens: I called him this weekend to bounce some deep finds off of him

Ben Clemens: And you know, he’s an awesome guy, very giving of his time

Ben Clemens: But I could just tell he was buried in draft stuff up to his ears

Nathan: It’s an interesting cultural experience. Their beef jerky is amazing too

Ben Clemens: Now jerky, I think beef is better than chicken and turkey by a decent margin

Ben Clemens: Something about the way those meats dry

Ben Clemens: Turns out I have a lot of food takes, but I have no idea whether they’re terrible

Nathan: and a LeBron has always looked like a 35 year old

Ben Clemens: Yeah I went from saying ‘there’s no way I’m the same age as that guy’ to ‘yeah it makes sense that lebron is my age’ as we both aged

aaronsaron: I wonder if in the clubhouses, for pitcher’s birthdays, rather than a cake, they give them meatballs. See what I did there? Since we’re talking about meat…? Okay.

Ben Clemens: Lol

Ben Clemens: I think we are headed to the end of the chat at this point

Ben Clemens: My brain is getting a little fried

Ben Clemens: And I’d like to go put some neosporin on my dog-induced wound

Ben Clemens: So let’s leave it with htat.

Ben Clemens: I hope a good time was had by all, and I’ll talk to you guys next week.

Ben Clemens: Be safe, everyone.