Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat – 8/12/24

Ben Clemens: Hey everyone, welcome to the chat

Ben Clemens: let’s get started, I’m gonna keep things short and sweet today

Mariners 85 win AL West Winner: At what point do we believe Victor Robles is what he is currently showing, ie a 139 WRC+ since coming to the mariners?

Ben Clemens: I mean…. years from now?

Ben Clemens: I’m not saying he isn’t much improved since his time on the Nats

Ben Clemens: but we have about 2000 plate appearances of him being a mediocre hitter

Ben Clemens: and then 123 of him being 40% above averabe

Ben Clemens: witha  .350 BABIP during that time

Ben Clemens: I’m willing to say that he didn’t suddenly turn great, shocking as that might be

Brian: What happens with Cole’s opt out at the end of this year?

Ben Clemens: I think he’s probably gonna stay. not sure whether it involves the Kershaw style deal of the team guaranteeing him an extra year in exchange for declining the opt out, but I think he just makes sense as a Yankee

Mike: Your chat subtitle reminds me of when Carson Cistulli would invite Dave Cameron to “analyze all baseball” on fangraphs audio. Good times.

Ben Clemens: absolutely what I was going for

bosoxforlife: Despite all the hype surrounding Paul Skenes, Jackson Merrill has led the Padres resurgence and is the Rookie of the Year.

Ryan: If the Pirates shut Skenes down in September does Merrill have a real shot at rookie of the year?

Ben Clemens: I definitely think so

Ben Clemens: I think it does involve Skenes getting shut down

Ben Clemens: the trajectory he’s on is just too tough to ignore otherwise

Ben Clemens: but I don’t think it’s out of the question that the Pirates slow him down when they’re out of playoff contention, Merrill keeps mashing while the Padres make the playoffs, and the story looks pretty easy

Mike Cameron Maybin: Bill James anointing Ceddanne Rafaela as the obvious AL ROTY… he’s totally lost the plot at this point, right?

Ben Clemens: I didn’t see this but I mean, that does not make a ton of sense to me

Ben Clemens: like…. I like the guy

Ben Clemens: I think he’s a nice player

Ben Clemens: Can someone pitch me on what the idea is?

Matt: Is Steele someone Cubs should be building around or perhaps more of a “sell-high” candidate with 3 yrs of team control left. He is close to 30….

Ben Clemens: They’re not trading him, and I’m not sure that a lot of teams are lining up to trade for him

Ben Clemens: I think it’s pretty much neither, to be honest

Ben Clemens: nice guy to have on your team, cool, take the wins where you get them

Nene: Over the next 5 years, which SS will be the best offensive player: Willy Adames, Oneil Cruz, Ha-Seong Kim

Ben Clemens: Adames

Ben Clemens: but with reservations

Ben Clemens: I just think Adames is very good and underrated

Judge last 90 games: AVG  .376  (Witt 2nd .360)
OBP  .506  (Soto .427)
SLG  .809  (Witt .615)
OPS  1.315  (Witt 1.022)
HR         38  (Santander 31)
RBI        93  (Ramirez 74)
R            84  (Soto 79)
(prorated per 162: 68 HR  167 RBI  151 R)

Ben Clemens: yeah it’s really crazy

CC: CC did the Kershaw opt out extra year(s) thing too, so the Yankees have been through this.

Ernie Banks: Is Gerrit Cole cooked

Ben Clemens: Hear me out, I know this is wild: no

Kwanbelievable: Which race (divisional or wild card) are you most looking forward to watching down the stretch?

Ben Clemens: Number one is definitely the AL East

Ben Clemens: The two teams who are tied for the best record in baseball slugging it out, plus it features the best player in baseball and the guy i put number one in trade value?

Ben Clemens: after that, though, there are some good ones. I guess I’d put NL West/NLWC as the co-favorites, there’s a lot of overlap there

Derek: Would you take the Dodgers or the field for the NL West?

Ben Clemens: I’ll take the Dodgers, but by less than our model would (we have them at 75%)

Royal with cheese: Bobby Witt Jr. is suddenly the favorite for AL MVP.  Stellar SS defense has his WAR right there with Judge, and having a co-MVP candidate in Soto will only hurt the 2 headed Yankee monster in voting.  Do the Royals have to make the postseason for this to be true, and would you agree?  Thanks.

Ben Clemens: mmm…. no he’s not

Ben Clemens: I just perused the gambling markets, he’s +600 Judge is -1400

Ben Clemens: i mean, Judge could get worse

Ben Clemens: there’s no rule against that

Ben Clemens: but he’s hitting .328/.462/.699

Ben Clemens: like, he’s just winning MVP, stop it

Ben Clemens: no need to dney how outrageous this season is, this is an MVP season

EnglishM: Cal ‘Big Dumper’ Rayleigh – hitting bombs, decisively calling games and a great record of catching stealers. Is hitting for average such a big deal that’s he’s still not recognised as one of the game’s best? No all-star nods, no golden gloves and not even in the top 50 of Fangraphs Trade Values

Ben Clemens: I think it’s less hitting for average than the fact that he’s pretty good at a bunch of things without being great at any

Ben Clemens: but I agree he’s underrated, perhaps even by me

EnglishM: Also with Scott Boras as his agent, where do we see Cal when his current deal expires? Doubtful it’ll be with the M’s from my vantage point

Ben Clemens: I think he actually has a good chance of staying with the Marinres

Ben Clemens: Boras is a rational guy and if you look at the deals catchers have been getting on the open market, holding out for three more years doesn’t sound amazing

bosoxforlife: The Red Sox illusion is coming to an end but my summer is a success. I harvested my first cantaloupe and it was perfect. 8 more still growing, yummmmmmmmmm!

Ben Clemens: that is not a fruit I’ve ever grown, or even had my parents grow

Ben Clemens: sounds great though

Cole: Cole had 10 k and 1 er Saturday. Cole will be fine.

Ben Clemens: no he’s busted

Ben Clemens: we have to do fast takes

Ben Clemens: no time for measured takes

Ben Clemens: Victor Robles for Cole with the Yankees eating all of Cole’s deal, obv the Mariners still say no

Ben Clemens: did you guys see how good Robles has been in the last 13 days? and Cole is cooked, I saw it here already today!

Kwanbelievable: Re: Witt’s case for MVP, would he be running away with it if he were in the NL? I have to believe he’d be the favorite over Ohtani at this point, right?

Ben Clemens: I think so, yeah

Ben Clemens: he’s having an absolutely incredible season. He just has the poor fortune of being in the same league as Aaron Judge when Judge is going full Bonds

AL Central Casting: The Guardians can’t keep getting away with this, right? I mean, they have been getting away with it, but at some point the bloopers have to stop dropping in, the bullpen has to start blowing leads, and the rotation has to just collapse, right? Right?

Ben Clemens: That kinda implies the rotation hasn’t already collapsed

Ben Clemens: it’s so impressive to me that they’re doing this with NOTHING from their starters

Ben Clemens: They’re 27th in RA9-WAR

Ben Clemens: and that’s the BETTER of the two metrics

Ben Clemens: ALC race should be fun down the line, I agree

Maddoning: Cooked, or NOT cooked:  Goldschmidt, Javy Baez, Mitch Haniger, Mitch Garver, Anthony Rizzo, Jorge Polanco

Ben Clemens: so I’m generally the measured take, everyone calm down guy

Ben Clemens: but: cooked, cooked, cooked, maybe cooked, cooked, cooked

Lowe Browes: Do you see anything from Nate/Josh Lowe that looks like a resurgence or are these guys just replacement level players at this point?

Ben Clemens: I guess I’d argue that they’re probably not replacement level, more like average

Ben Clemens: but uh, I think they’re both probably average dudes going forward

HappyFunBall: Victor Robles is still swinging a wet noodle. What he’s improved on is his K% and pull rate. But it’s weird. He’s a touch more aggressive on in-zone pitches, but his O-Contact rate is way down despite not changing his o-swing rate. Basically, it looks like by missing bad pitches more often, he’s eliminated some bad contact from his result set.  I…don’t think that’s a positive sustainable change.

The agresssion on the base paths is worthwhile though, as long ad he’s on base in the first place.

Ben Clemens: this seems reasonable to me, I haven’t dug super deep into it but when you’re missing bad pitches you can get big production on contact bumps sometimes

Ben Clemens: b/c it just strips out your worst contact

Ben Clemens: the thing is, that type of change tends not to persist

Ben Clemens: eventually he’ll start clipping those again

Well-Beered Englishman: Cooked, or NOT cooked: Paul Skenes, Bartolo Colon, your preferred prep of tuna

Ben Clemens: well I heard that Skenes enjoys cooking, so I’m gonna say he is cooked in that sense. Bartolo could never be cooked. And ooh, I like mine seared, which I guess is mostly not cooked

Pat: If you did a “Lowest Trade Value” column, who would come out on top? Benintendi? Baez? Rendon? Bryant? It would be fun to see teams’ thoughts on that. (& would prob never get written because it’s sort of “click baity”.)

Ben Clemens: yeah, just a little too clickbaity

GA Blood: What was the highlight of the olympics for you?

Ben Clemens: Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone just annihilating the field in the 400 hurdles

Ben Clemens: every four years I remember how much I like track, and then seeing such an all-time performance really got me hyped up. Shades of watching Usain Bolt vaporize the competition in the 200 in 2008

Oaktown Blues: Thanks for writing about the surprising aptitude of the A’s. Am I crazy to think they could be in the wild card picture next year with the return of Wilson/Soderstrom? Seems the rotation would be the main thing holding them back

Ben Clemens: I think you’re a little ahead of yourself there, we’d still be talking about a pretty sketchy infield, and their rotation is not good

Ben Clemens: like, Cleveland is getting away with a bad rotation b/c they have elite elite elite defense and bullpen

Ben Clemens: and I look at it and think ‘eh that can’t last, even with them beating up on the White Sox’

Ben Clemens: I do think the A’s could flirt with .500 if things go well though

Phil: True or false: if Vladito were just a regular former top prospect named José Suárez or some such, no one would regard his trajectory as especially surprising.

Ben Clemens: mmmm…. I’m gonna say false, but I agree that the name makes it feel different

Ben Clemens: his 2021 season was really outstanding, though

Ben Clemens: and having a season like that followed by such a big downswing in the next two years would be notable even if he were less heralded

Ben Clemens: it actually gives me flashbacks to Bryce Harper’s breakthrough MVP season followed by a big fallback in 2016. Harper is pretty famous himself, obv, so it’s not a perfect comparison, but he had a .300/.400/.600 season, and then he got much worse over the next two years, and maybe now he’s charging back towards that form?

Ben Clemens: it’s pretty striking, regardless of name

Guest: I don’t think Rafaela is a SS; so what do you think the Red Sox do next year with 4 OF+DH spots for 5 guys – Rafaela/Duran/Abreu/Yoshida/Roman Anthony?   I think Anthony is the real deal and will force an early promotion next year.

Ben Clemens: honestly it’s not looking good for Masa, which is sad to me b/c I was pretty excited for him to pan out

Ben Clemens: but do you prefer him to Abreu against righties? I don’t

Ben Clemens: and so he’s your second defensively limited big-side platoon bat. maybe that works? I dunno, it feels pretty cuspy whether he’s a roster fit to me

Will: If Judge remains this hot, do you pitch to him in any important situation in the playoffs? Not me. Let the guys behind him prove it.

Ben Clemens: I would not

Ben Clemens: i mean, within reason obviously

Ben Clemens: but this is nuts

Olympics: Thoughts on whether the (Summer) Olympics should be held in the same location – say Greece – every four years instead of putting sites into debt building stuff that provides negligible benefit to the people who actually live there?

Ben Clemens: I heard this pitch earlier in the Olympics, I can’t remember from who. I’d be in. I’m not a big pageantry guy, I am more about watching the very best in the world compete in weird things

Spirit of Joel Youngblood: Are the Pirates still close enough in your mind to keep the pedal down? And by that, I mean keep throwing Skenes and try having Jones come back to a full workload? Or pack it in for next year

Ben Clemens: no, I think the last week has pushed them out of contention

Ben Clemens: I would have had a different answer for you if you asked a week ago but they just lost over and over again and have fallen pretty far out of the race. 5 back with 6 teams to pass, that’s too tough

druidiful: is there any way you can get Carson and Jeff back to do one of there fangraph audio podcasts that werent about baseball?

Ben Clemens: never say never, but we don’t even have FanGraphs audio right now

bosoxforlife: The top 6 pitcher contracts in 2024 are Ohtani, Scherzer, Verlander, deGrom, Cole and Corbin. Not one of these men is providing value anywhere to close to their cost. Does this send all GM’s into a catatonic trance and might it affect upcoming negotiations?

Ben Clemens: I mean…. putting Ohtani up there feels a little unfair, given that he signed that deal when he was already expected to miss this season and has actually been amazing

Ben Clemens: I don’t think this has a particular impact on pitcher deal valuation, I think the impact has already happened. like teams are just shying away from big deals, particularly lengthy deals, to pitchers

Ben Clemens: Yamamoto has the biggest deal in history now, and I think that general idea — that only very young pitchers will get long-term deals but that stars can still go through high-dollar deals until they slow down — will continue

Ben Clemens: I was really surprised by the deGrom deal when it was signed, I thought a high-dollar short-term deal was more probable, and I think that’s the real outlier of this group

AL Central Casting: Do the Guards actually have elite x3 defense though? What is your favorite metric for judging team defense?

Ben Clemens: I like looking at some blend of DRS and OAA. I really need to formalize that with an article b/c I noticed I was writing about it a lot in the trade value series

Ben Clemens: probably gonna be an offseason project

Nate: Can you explain why Cleveland has such a big disparity between their Pythagorean and BaseRuns record? PythagenPat has them at 67-51 (+2) but BaseRuns has them at a whopping 58-60 (+11)

Ben Clemens: Yeah, I think I can do this in two stats. With runners on base, the Guardians are hitting .252 with a .435 slug (327 wOBA). With no one on, they’re hitting .232 with a .374 slug (.294 wOBA). That’s one of the biggest gaps in baseball

Ben Clemens: meanwhile, on the pitching side, they’ve allowed a .325 wOBA with the bases empty but only .298 with runners on

Ben Clemens: so basically BaseRuns ignores those gaps and treats the results as if it were a 0 gap

Ben Clemens: they’ve played far better in high run leverage spots than they have in low run leverage spots, baseruns ignores run leverage, voila

Jake: After sweeping the Mets how are you feeling about the Mariner’s odds of making noise in the playoffs?

Ben Clemens: I mean, roughly the same as before, which is that I think they’re pretty good and I think I picked them to win the AL West

Mateo: what would be your proposal for connecting the baseball season to baseball at the Olympics in 2028. Two week break? Or just not let major leaguers play b/c we already have WBC?

Ben Clemens: Yeah, I’d go the soccer route and make it a non-pro sport with few exceptions

Ben Clemens: I’m not against having a ceremonial MLB guy on the downswing, but no need to stop the season and go full dream team

Well-Beered Englishman: My Olympics pitch would be to rotate them among maybe 5 cities. Just for time zone variety so everyone gets live events in prime time every 20 years.

Ben Clemens: Oh yeah, that would work too

Ben Clemens: I do enjoy the Olympics in the Americas, and everyone getting that chance to have the time zones line up would be nice

Ben Clemens: west coast time vs European time was rough

Okra: It’s situations like the one with Jared Jones that make me hate when teams baby young SPs too much early in the season.   Now that he has been out with an injury it’s unlikely he surpasses even 120 IP this season after returning.

Ben Clemens: I was actually a fan of them having him in a six man rotation

Ben Clemens: i think you could argue they babied him a bit much during starts, but he was losing velo and command pretty substantially at the end of these games

Ben Clemens: I think there’s a better argument to be made that his training was letting him down. I have watched a TON of Jared Jones starts this year and I didn’t come away thinking ‘man this guy just needs more work.’ I came away thinking ‘wow he really empties out the tank’

Doc: The Mets 4-6 road trip?  The beginning of the end, or a not great but not disasterous effect of a four-city, three-time zone stretch?

Ben Clemens: Probably the latter

Ben Clemens: but given that it’s the Mets, you have to allow for the chance of the former

bosoxforlife: Have you watched a game in person in which the challenge ABS system has been used? I am  going to Worcester Friday to see it in operation.

Ben Clemens: I haven’t, but I’ve talked to a lot of FG personnel who have

Ben Clemens: I’m curious to hear what you think

DBacks Heater: About how realistic is a “Ketel Marte for NL MVP” run with the way the DBacks have been playing?

Ben Clemens: I think it’s there for the taking if he stays this hot and the DBacks finish strong

Ben Clemens: the NL has a relatively weak crop of MVP candidates this year, it feels like a lot of the guys who were pushing for it early have cooled off all at once

seth: will elly win the NL MVP? would it take 30 HR/80 SB, or would Reds have to make the playoffs?

Ben Clemens: I don’t think the playoffs are crucial if they finish CLOSE to the playoffs

Ben Clemens: like he isn’t having the kind of season where you finish 75-87 and win MVP. I think it mostly matters how well he plays down the stretch though

Ben Clemens: it’s a weak batting line for an MVP, so I think he’d have to improve it a little, make some memorable plays, and have no one in front of him run away with it

Ben Clemens: I should have mentioned this in the Witt answer up above, and I suppose in relation to a Lindor candidacy, but defense matters more for WAR than for MVP voting

Tim Tebow’s Thunder Thighs: Is this just who Jared Kelenic is now?  A fringe average/fourth outfielder on a good team?  He’s 25 with an OBP of .305 across last year and this year (795PA).  This year, despite cutting a couple points off his K rate (from 31.7% to 29.6%) and already surpassing last year’s HR total (13 vs 11), has managed both a lower batting average and slugging percentage.

Ben Clemens: yeah this is it, I think

Ben Clemens: not a bad player, but not a star

Greg: Even when we consider that Corbin was at his peak when he signed doesn’t he still look like the Sesame Street member of that high salaried group (“one of these things is not like the others…”)?

Ben Clemens: oh totally

Ben Clemens: that was at the peak of the Nats deciding they were gonna win now

Ben Clemens: and it worked, to a T

Ben Clemens: but I think even when that deal was signed everyone was like wow, Patrick Corbin, huh?

mrdxol: re cleveland ‘beating up on the white sox’: they actually have *not* done that! they’re 5-5 vs CHW, w/ run differential of just +3. KC and MIN are both 12-1 against the Sox. Chicago’s weirdo competitiveness vs the guardians is arguably what’s keeping the ALC race close.

Ben Clemens: wow that’s wild

Ben Clemens: I didn’t bother to look it up b/c I mean, White Sox

Ben Clemens: I guess that’s the flipside of their crazy RISP stuff

Ben Clemens: all kinds of weird stuff is happening in Cleveland this year

bosoxforlife: Have you noticed that the NL is in danger of not having a qualifying hitter above .300. As of today only Arraez at .306 and Ozuna at .301 are above it.

Ben Clemens: omg I did not

Ben Clemens: the thing that is really surprising to me about this isn’t that Ohtani has slipped below .300

Ben Clemens: (he’s at .298)

Ben Clemens: or that Betts (and Yelich!) aren’t qualified anymore b/c of injury

Ben Clemens: it’s that Luis Arraez is hitting .306

Ben Clemens: man he’s been sneaky bad on the Padres

DBacks Heater: Is there a scarier offense than the DBacks at this point? I know that the NYY have Judge/Soto, but the DBacks’ numbers over the past few months have been insane

Ben Clemens: mmmmm…. I’m more afraid of the Orioles and Yankees, particularly with Christian Walker out

Ben Clemens: the DBacks offense has been awesome though

Ben Clemens: who knew that Eugenio Suarez would be a league average hitter via an 88 wRC+ first half and 155 second half

Ben Clemens: instead of like, 102/102

Ben Clemens: Carroll has picked it back up, McCarthy on a heater, etc.

Farhandrew Zaidman: NL Cy Young is Sale’s to lose, yeah?

Ben Clemens: yeah

Ben Clemens: in factd!

Ben Clemens: we have a predictor

Ben Clemens: https://www.fangraphs.com/projections/cy-young

Ben Clemens: it both looks at season-to-date and projected rest of season

Guardcore Clevelander: RE: Arraez, he’s been playing through a torn thumb ligament. Probably badly affecting his swing.

Greg: Looks more like Arraez has been sneaky bad all season, no? He’s hit about the same as he did in Miami.

Ben Clemens: yeah but the story in Miami was ‘wow what a slow start’

Ben Clemens: and then he went to SD and bam, fixed it

Ben Clemens: but turns out that was just a blip

Guest: Is Chapman opting out this off season? He’s kinda quietly having a great year and there’s not a lot of 3B available this off season.

Ben Clemens: 100% likelihood

Ben Clemens: that said, I think there’s a good chance that he and the Giants work something out in terms of an extension/replacement

Hunter: Does Skubal take any penalty in the AL Cy Young against Burnes and probably Lugo being in the playoffs?

Ben Clemens: i don’t really think so. Cy Young hasn’t worked that way in a while

Ben Clemens: it feels more disconnected from needing to be in the playoffs than MVP b/c it doesn’t have ‘valuable’ in the award title

Farhandrew Zaidman: On the Chapman opt out question – how many of the pillow contract/opt out dudes do you think end up in the same exact spot next year? (I.e. Chapman, Snell, Monty, etc)

Ben Clemens: I think Snell is gonna get a bag

Ben Clemens: teams will look at the dumb stuff they were willing to do to get decent but not great pitchers at this year’s deadline

Ben Clemens: compare that to the opportunity cost of a bad contract 5 years from now

Ben Clemens: and just gulp and pay up

Ben Clemens: like yes, it’s bad to be paying 25 million for a pitchder who isn’t that good 5 years down the road. Is it worse than giving up two top prospects for 3 months of Yusei Kikuchi?

bosoxforlife: Since somebody else brought up the White Sox their next 6 games are with the Yankees and Astros which could easily stretch their record to 28-97. It is difficult to come up with a scenario that produces 43 wins.

Ben Clemens: I’m kinda with you

Ben Clemens: we’re giving them a shocking amount of credit pitching wise, looking through our projections

Ben Clemens: 24th-best rotation in baseball

Ben Clemens: which is around 6 spots higher than I’d expect, haha

Ben Clemens: I suppose if Garrett Crochet pitches 41 more innings (and is basically half their value) it makes a little sense?

Guardcore Clevelander: Speaking of pitchers who signed late, what happened to Jordan Montgomery that has seen him turn into a pumpkin? Like yes, pitchers who sign late typically underperform, but his ERA nearly doubled.

Ben Clemens: Yeah…. I mean, I think he’s a lot better than his ERA so far

Ben Clemens: but honestly he’s looked awful

Ben Clemens: his stuff is worse than ever, his command is quite poor. the rust from starting late really seems to have gotten to him

The Cashman: The Yankees contractually can void a Cole opt out by picking up an extra year. They already worked that out.

Ben Clemens: wow look at that

Ben Clemens: yeah this makes sense

Ben Clemens: this is the classic opt out fix, why not just put it in writing?

Powder blue jersey enthusiast: Do you think the Orioles will re-sign/extend Anthony Santander this offseason, and what would a plausible contract look like?

Ben Clemens: I think there is very little chance they do

Ben Clemens: it just doesn’t fit with their team construction

Ben Clemens: they’ve been so precious with their prospects, and so hesitant to extend people (or maybe just not offering market value, who knows) that doing it suddenly here would be weird

Farhandrew Zaidman: Single most negative defensive fWAR so far is Valdito at -15.4. How much of that is 1B penalty versus messing around at 3B versus genuinely being a terrible defender?

Ben Clemens: I think you can make an argument that OAA over-penalizes his first base defense

Ben Clemens: they have him at -9 runs this year, woof

Ben Clemens: worst in baseball

Phil: Yeah, but Crochet is not going to pitch 41 more innings, right? He was a reliever six months ago.

Ben Clemens: yeah I don’t really think so but I don’t follow the nuances of this stuff as closely as the Roster Resource team does

nats fan: Enjoying james wood? I’m feeling optimistic about his future!

Ben Clemens: the thing that really stands out to me about Wood so far is the opposite field homers

Ben Clemens: where he’s late to the ball and just powers it out anyway

Ben Clemens: every time, I”m just like wow that’s a homer?!

Ben Clemens: like he’s crazy strong

Theo be Praised: What about the Belli opt-out?  Seems kind of 50/50, doesn’t it?  If he opts-in, is there trade value there?

Ben Clemens: hmmmmmm

Ben Clemens: yeah I think it’s gonna be pretty close

Ben Clemens: I think that argues that there isn’t an overwhelming amount of trade value, in that Iim’ not sure whether he’d get more or less money if he opted out and tried to sign a two-year deal right awayl

Ben Clemens: but something along the lines of a jumbo Mark Canha deal, where a team trades for him b/c they are more interested in him than the Cubs (who want PCA in center)

Ben Clemens: and the return is really light, but both teams are happy

Idiotic Failson: I’m old enough to remember when Yankee fans were asking to trade or demote Judge when he was hitting .207 through the end of April

RH: Will MLB ever play a game in Taiwan? Or does the political situation make that a nonstarter?

Ben Clemens: I’m guessing it’s a non-starter

Kiermaier’s Piercing Green Eyes: The FanGraphs crowd is often enamored with guys with uninspiring raw stuff who are still successful, like Zack Littel. I conjecture that there are more pitchers than position players who fit that mold, which is why Isaac Paredes is so much fun to watch: here’s weird even among the set of weird players. Thoughts?

Ben Clemens: I think this is 100% the case

Ben Clemens: we like weird, and since so much of hitting is reacting to your opponents, it’s a lot harder to be sustainably weird

Ben Clemens: like, hey I’m a hitter with this one weird gimmicky trick

Ben Clemens: okay, here’s a 98 mph fastball

Ben Clemens: Paredes is the rare guy who can actually do it

Ben Clemens: I think that a lot of that is that he’s got some Luis Arraez in him, just really elite bat to ball skills

Ben Clemens: admittedly, I’m basing this on his minor league track record

Ben Clemens: but people love Arraez too

Farhandrew Zaidman: Tyler Fitzgerald can’t actually be like a 9 WAR player….can he? (pls say no, thx)

Ben Clemens: so…. no, but I’m 100% rooting for it to be the case

Ben Clemens: it would be hilarious for the Giants to go all in for first Judge and then Ohtani, clearly make that their only priority, and then oops, the next Barry Bonds is actually this skinny utility infielder they had all along

Idiotic Failson: I have Musgrove in fantasy, and I sort of need innings. Do I trust him vs Pitt coming off the IL? I mean, if I can’t I should just cut him, right?

Ben Clemens: i agree with this. if you’re not playing him there, he shouldn’t be on your team

colin: Do you think most of the harder-swinging guys could slow down their swings and make contact like Arraez, and just choose not to?

Ben Clemens: I do not. I think they could make MORE contact, but he’s really an extreme outlier

traced: Two defensive questions

1. A long time ago on the book website, the guys were talking about positional adjustment for DH, and mentioned that the DH isn’t necessarily adding playing time for the worst defensive player, rather it adds playing time for the 7th or 8th best player on the team that is allowed to slot into starting due to the additional lineup slot. Extrapolating this, wouldn’t positional adjustments be at least partially a team adjustment? I saw statcast uses some sort of team runs, maybe for types of shifts, and it feels like the defensive/offense construction puzzle fits better with that.
2. Is there a secret sauce with the defensive runs component Fangraphs is using now? It used to be aligned with UZR, and now that it uses Statcast it looks like there’s a step or two missing. Different park adjustments or something?

Ben Clemens: 1 is something I’ve thought about a lot over the years

Ben Clemens: it’s tricky to do in a context-neutral way, like for comparing people across teams

Ben Clemens: some kind of team-specific replacement level and positional adjustment

Ben Clemens: as for 2, it’s just Statcast’s FRV plus a positional adjustment, I believe

Ben Clemens: I think we’ve talked about reformulating positional adjustments a bit this offseason, so I guess watch this space

Ben Clemens: alright, I’m gonna head out and get working on articles, have a wonderful week everyone

Ben Clemens: sorry the Olympics are over 🙁