Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat – 8/18/25

Ben Clemens: Hey everybody, let’s get chatting

Bazooka Joseph: Do you think their great framing grades mean that Patrick Bailey and Austin Wells should be everyday catchers despite the woeful offense they provide?

Ben Clemens: I do, though I’m more confident about Bailey’s defense than Wells’ because he’s done it for longer and it’s more standout.

Ben Clemens: I think both are better hitters than their 2025 performance, too; like last year we were talking about Wells for his bat as much as his glove

Ben Clemens: the big thing is that sure, if these teams had Cal Raleigh, Bailey and Wells wouldn’t deserve the job

Ben Clemens: like plenty of teams start guys who are bad at hitting and okay at fielding. I’d rather start the guy who’s great at fielding in the toughest position there is, and hope they can become an okay hitter

Ben Clemens: not sure if that’s right but I’d definitely give them everyday PT if I had them on my team and didn’t have an elite option

Oaktown Blues: Was the real prize of the Springs/Boyle trade actually Jacob Lopez?

Ben Clemens: sure looks that way, right?

Ben Clemens: look for FG content on him coming this week

RAGBRAI: Does Gallen get a QO? Does he take it? What would he get on the open market?

Ben Clemens: I’m guessing he will get a QO and decline it, but I’m more confident about ‘get a QO’ than ‘decline it’

Ben Clemens: the DBacks should absolutely give him one. they’d probably happily bring him back for a year at the QO anyway

Guest: The fangraphs 20th had me remembering past versions of the site, and I am remembering right that Jeff Sullivan for a time was churning out two articles PER DAY? I haven’t been able to find an easy answer to this from searching, but I guess my question is, am I remembering this wrong? And if not, uhhh what? How?

Ben Clemens: I don’t think it was ever like 10 a week consistently, but yeah

Ben Clemens: I didn’t overlap with Jeff, which was great because it means I worked a desk job and read blogs by him all day instead

Talfred: Many Red Sox fans think Yoshida’s a good player, but a bad fit for their roster. I think he’s a bad fit for anyone’s roster; a 32-year old slap hitting DH with a career 111 wRC+ is hard to roster in the current environment of short benches. Also, I think Fenway is probably as good a park for him as you can find, so I don’t know that anyone else values him much at all. Do you agree?

Ben Clemens: I’m a lot closer to your view, let’s just say

Ben Clemens: it’s not like he’s completely unplayable, clearly a major league caliber hitter, nice second-division regular in my eyes

Ben Clemens: but like…. you can’t have a nice second-division regular playing DH for a team taht has serious playoff aspirations

Ben Clemens: he’s a very weird player to contort your roster around

Ben Clemens: this David Laurila note in yesterday’s sunday notes should rankle Sox fans:

Ben Clemens: Through July 11, Rafaela had played all but one of his 90 games in center field and boasted a 114 wRC+ and 3.0 WAR. Since July 12, Rafaela has had little stability, starting 15 games in center and 13 games at second base. Moreover, he’s had a 44 wRC+ and 0.0 WAR.

Ben Clemens: I understand that there’s plenty about their roster that requires weird contortions, but part of it is to play Yoshida, and yeah, I just don’t quite understand that, he’s not one of the team’s best hitters or anything

Ben from DC: Too early for any takeaways from Cavalli’s encouraging recent starts? Seems like a different pitcher than the one that was struggling in the minors the past few months.

Guest: Is Cade Cavalli as good as he looks?

Ben Clemens: I need to watch some complete Cavalli starts before coming to a conclusion for sure

Ben Clemens: and yes, ‘seems like a different pitcher’ is a GREAT description

Ben Clemens: but that’s probably right. he’s coming back from injury, he threw 8 innings combined in 23 and 24

Ben Clemens: I don’t think he’s this good, just because I’m a reasonable person and betting on a guy with a 2.20 ERA to continue being that good is silly

Ben Clemens: but I’m not going to write him off for some minor league numbers racked up while trying to get used to pitching again

Ben Clemens: stuff looks good, too soon to say if it’s the same old cavalli (too many walks, can’t quite put it all together) or he’s leveled up

Ben Clemens: but I think you can take ‘never recovers from injury’ off the table now

Ace: Seriously, what the hell is going on with the Giants and the Giants offense? Is there some sort of psychological factor at Oracle that just destroys all hope in some Sisspheyisan Metaphor? Talent wise, they shouldn’t be THIS bad

Jung Hoo Lee Enjoyer: Why have the Giants forgotten how to win over these last few weeks? Can’t imagine nothing happening as a result of this stretch of play

Ben Clemens: I mean… the Dodgers went 3-15 in an 18-game stretch this year

Ben Clemens: the bigger issue is that the Giants offense has been very bad all year

Ben Clemens: I’m not sure what will change. surely something will, if just to shake things up

Ben Clemens: the lineup really does not have enough length, though, that’s clear. year one of Posey in charge did a decent job of addressing this in that two of the team’s best hitters (Devers, Adames) are new

Ben Clemens: but they need more

Ben Clemens: side note, it’s wild that Devers is the team’s second-best hitter this year even though he had that hellacious slump to start his Giants career, is massively underperforming his expected stats, and has a 114 wRC+ in SF

Ben Clemens: Dom Smith is the team’s third-best hitter!

Ben Clemens: I can talk myself into Heliot Ramos as a solid bat/fringy D option, but there are just a lot of not so great positions on the Giants roster right now

Lowe Distribution System: I know the Dodgers take lots of injury-riddled pitchers so we should expect them to have a lot on the IL, but man, when do we start considering that maybe the Dodgers are bad at keeping pitchers healthy?

Ben Clemens: like, 2019?

Ben Clemens: yeah it’s worth considering, incredibly hard to measure though

Bookie Brent: Brewers in the WS – o/u 2-in-5 chance?

Ben Clemens: under

Ben Clemens: what?

Ben Clemens: 40%, that’s so much

Ben Clemens: like, forget our specific playoff odds, I think we’re probably low on the Brewers

Ben Clemens: we have the Dodgers with the best WS odds at 31%

Ben Clemens: 40% is basically not achievable territory in terms of playoff odds

Ben Clemens: to reach the WS

Ben Clemens: I think they’re awesome but the postseason is just so dang random

Arn Anderson: Is there reason to believe Nate Lowe will make an impact in Boston? He sure looked washed in Washington. Its amazing how the late 20’s hit most 1B like a truck.

Ben Clemens: oh man, I looked at his Nats production and thought ‘eh maybe’

Ben Clemens: even though it wasn’t great overall, it wasn’t disastrous or anything. I think it’s totally worth giving him a shot

Ben Clemens: not if you have a great 1B, but like, the Sox don’t? I’d absolutely be interested in having more options that could work out well. I guess the weird part is that since he can’t be on the playoff roster, giving him a lot of PT now might weaken the playoff roster

SPArn: I think you need to eat some crow on the Nats handily winning the Lowe for Garcia swap, sir! (Getting this jab in before he inevitably OBP’s .380 and hits 10 bombs down the stretch for the Sox)

Ben Clemens: oh most definitely, haha

Ben Clemens: I’d do the trade again if I were them, but they did not win it

Ben Clemens: all you can do is judge things at the time they happen and I loved their process, but Garcia has been

Ben Clemens: well, no, Garcia hasn’t even been that good

Ben Clemens: but he’s going to be around for longer

Guest: Do players have personal analytics consultants? Like that just look at their data and try to come up with suggestions? Or is that mostly what driveline and teams are doing for them? Would there any benefit to them having their own guys just looking at their data?

Ben Clemens: I think that’s kind of what Driveline, teams, independent coaches, other labs, and so on are doing in consultation with players

Ben Clemens: I’d say more ‘with’ than ‘for’ because as I continually learn from Laurila’s work, a lot of hitters are VERY hands on with the data

Ben Clemens: I think Boras does this for his clients, too

Ben Clemens: one of the tricky things is that a bad suggestion could be awful

Ben Clemens: it’s definitely a measure twice cut once situtation

Ben Clemens: I write 4-5 articles a week, I wouldnt’ want to be giving 4-5 suggestions a week to a hitter

Bosoxforlife: The very fact that Dom Smith is starting says it all. Egads!

Ben Clemens: well said

Indecisive Fantasy GM: Who would you have more confidence in ROS, Adley or Drake Baldwin? Adley looks so rough recently.

Ben Clemens: I think Drake, honestly

Ben Clemens: Adley coming back from the IL and being bad still has changed my estimation of him in a big way

Ben Clemens: or at least, my estimation of his near-term performance

Ben Clemens: I like betting on the talent in the long run but like…..not over the next month!

Ben: Why can’t Lowe be on the postseason roster?  I thought as long as you are on the 40-man by September 1st or did they change that rule recently?

Ben Clemens: oh yeah brain lapse there

Ben Clemens: I was thinking we’re past the trade deadline and so the roster stuff is locked but no, that’s just trades, you’re right

Ben Clemens: so take back that reservation, I’m even more into it

Snek fan: Why so confident the Dbacks give Gallen a QO when he had such a terrible year (2 years getting worse in a row) and it’ll be for around double his current salary? I think they’d take him back, but not at a 100% raise

Ben Clemens: because they want to make the playoffs soon

Ben Clemens: and imagine finding a player as good as Zac Gallen for less than he’s getting paid in 2025

Ben Clemens: sure, yes, he’s had a terrible year

Ben Clemens: do you really think you could sign a guy who feasibly projects as well as Gallen for, like, 1/15

Ben Clemens: ?

Ben Clemens: the downside here is just small. one-year deal, guy who’s been very good for you

Ben Clemens: ‘they’d take him back’

Ben Clemens: people will be offering Zac Gallen tens of millions of dollars to pitch for them this winter

Ben Clemens: Charlie Morton got a bunch after being bad in 2024, then after being worse for months in 2025 a playoff team went out and traded for him

drplantwrench: i, an angels fan, would be one of those guys willing to offer tens of millions for zac gallen

Ben Clemens: yeah, I mean, look, he might be broken for good

Ben Clemens: it could definitely happen

Ben Clemens: but given the relatively low opportunity cost of giving him a QO, and the multiple ways to win (free draft pick, boucneback season) I think it’d be a poor and overly-short-term-influenced decision not to offer him a QO

Oddball Herrera: I keep reading about how hard it is to hit in Seattle and how the batter’s eye is the problem…and it’s talked about like the batter’s eye is not something  under the control of the team and I have yet to read of some effort to correct things. Why can’t they just go try and fix it? Or is the batter’s eye thing wholly speculative

Ben Clemens: as best as I know, it’s speculative

Ben Clemens: I have looked into the Comerica Park BB/K park factor before for similar reasons and never made any headway

Bob Myrick: Do you think Oneil Cruz has another gear or is he just a tremendous athlete without consistent baseball skills?

Ben Clemens: I lean the second way at this point. to be clear, that’s still a great player

Ben Clemens: or, well, ‘great’ is subjective

Ben Clemens: valuable?

Ben Clemens: but we’re 1500 PA into his big league career and he has a 103 wRC+

Ben Clemens: and is hitting like 25 HR/600 PA

Ben Clemens: I don’t think he’s going to turn into Barry Bonds

EccentricATLFan: If drplantwrench indeed has those tens of millions available, petition to make him the owner of the Pirates, he’d instantly be an improvement.

Ben Clemens: Oh man, could we crowdsource the Pirates and do better than them?

Ben Clemens: I’d chip in a few bucks for sure

Wes: Some FanGraphs slander on the Cubs broadcast this afternoon. Boog Sciambi mentioned the recent article describing about Cade Horton that compared his windup to a gnarled tree trunk. Jim Deshaies responded “Normally you don’t think of FanGraphs when you think of great literature and poetic language!” I like JD, but he needs to read more of your articles!

Ben Clemens: hey, respect to JD and Boog, and honestly I’m kinda with them on that one. come here for the math, stay here for the literary references

Ben Clemens: but presumably you’re coming here for the math first

Ben Clemens: as an aside, they’re both great and I believe both FG users for stats? not 100% on that but I am a huge fan of both

DBRuns: Cleveland fan here. If you were to redo the 2024 draft today, where does Bazzana go? I would have to think he goes outside the top 5, after Kurtz, Wetherholt, Cags, Burns, and Konnor Griffin.

Ben Clemens: I think it’s really hard to do these without a lot of detailed knowledge of the players, and as a mainly MLB analyst I don’t have that. i mean, I don’t think I feel tremendously different about Cags’s development than Bazzana’s

Ben Clemens: Yes, I think that Kurtz/Griffin/Wetherholt/Burns have all absolutely shoved

Ben Clemens: but I’m not super confident in my evaluations thereof, and i’m definitely not confident that Bazzana (138 wRC+ in the minors and already in Triple-A) is gonna be bad

Bob Myrick: Does it look like the first round of the 2024 draft was far better than average?

Ben Clemens: it really does, right??

J: Kyle Tucker’s big slump illustrates why people are short sighted when they say “why wouldn’t this guy test the market instead of extending”, right? Obviously players by nature are the kind of people to bet on themselves, but it seems people just forget the downside risk of waiting for free agency.

Ben Clemens: yeah, although to be clear, he’s still gonna get a boatload

Ben Clemens: here’s a better example, imo: Michael Harris II

Ben Clemens: ‘oh he signed such a ridiculously team friendly extension, how did the Braves do it?’

Ben Clemens: well, he high-pointed that extension

Ben Clemens: (although maybe not? he’s been incredible since the break, I’m actually writing about him right now)

Wes: Yes, Boog and JD both use info from FanGraphs pretty often! I like both of them. I miss having Len Kasper in the booth, but that’s a complement to Len rather than a slight against Boog

Ben Clemens: concur totally

Ben Clemens: they’re one of the booths I seek out

Ben Clemens: I mostly just listen to the home broadcast but they’re on the exceptions list

EccentricATLFan: Also, in “it’s almost sadly impressive to pull that off”, Angel Chivilli is in the 85th percentile in whiff rate…but the sixth percentile in K%.

Ben Clemens: i mean that’s actually very impressive

drplantwrench: i think we should crowdsource me to have tens of millions of dollars first

Ben Clemens: if you can find a way to do that, I’m all ears (and I’ll definitely cross out your name and write mine)

Guest: how devastatingly stupid was it needing fantasy SB (albeit not *just* that!) to hold j.sanchez on aug1 instead of grabbing j.marsee at any point before someone else got there on aug5

Ben Clemens: I couldn’t tell you because I put in an irresponsibly high bid for Marsee in Ottoneu (in the FG staff lead) and have been enjoying the fruits ever since

Ben Clemens: I’m super impressed by him so far

Cashman: Am I cooked? Made good moves in the offseason (Williams, Goldy) and deadline (all those pen dudes) but some just not panning out.

Ben Clemens: I mean, probably not

Ben Clemens: given that basically the same process made teh WS last year

Bal’mer Boy: Basallo the next Yordan? He shoulda had 4 RBI in his debut without a stolen homer!

Ben Clemens: i mean, maybe!

Ben Clemens: when he has one of the top 10 rookie batting lines of all time next year in his full-season debut, then I’m ready to call him the next Yordan

Ben Clemens: for now, I’m excited to watch him  hit

Bosoxforlife: Cora’s handling of the glut of outfielders, along with Yoshida, is awful. Rafaela should be in CF every day and the odd man out is the DH. He must be under pressure from the front office to use Yoshida.

Ben Clemens: It’s so hard to speculate on these things, but I will admit to thinking that at times too

Ben Clemens: it’s very hard to understand, at the very least

Lowe Distribution System: Is there such a thing as “pitcher who’s hard to hit but when he does get hit he’s clobbered”?  I’m looking at Cade Povich, who FIP and xFIP think is great, but xERA thinks is awful.  How can you be great at striking guys out but also get tattooed whenever a hitter gets bat on ball?

Ben Clemens: oh 100%

Ben Clemens: to bring things back to Jeff, he wrote something on Jose Fernandez’s tendency to get shelled if teams made contact that had a theory I really like and have believed ever since

Ben Clemens: basically that it’s possible for your secondaries to be nasty enough that they don’t get much weak contact b/c it’s all whiffs

Ben Clemens: so if you turn the crappy contact into whiffs but leave the rest, it’ll look like you’re getting hit harder

Ben Clemens: it’s not a perfect theory but I 100% believe int he broad outline

Guest: Fair way to split up the eras of fangraphs…
– Graph era
-Notgraphs era
-Sullivan era
-Modern era?

Ben Clemens: yeah, broadly

Ben Clemens: there’s too much of it for there to be a ‘dave cameron era’

Ben Clemens: b/c he straddles many

T2: Someone on this site (might have been you) stated while ago that the Brewers constantly beat projections. What are the areas do they do it?  Is it known who is responsble for that? Thanks.

Ben Clemens: Um, the areas where they do best are baserunning and defense

Ben Clemens: generally speaking

Ben Clemens: but yeah, our projections have definitely consistently been low on them

Doctor, doctor: Will the Astros be able to fix Jésus Sanchez? Isn’t Sanchez supposed to be a contact guy?

Ben Clemens: I mean, I dno’t think he’s THIS bad

Ben Clemens: but he has a career 26% strikeout rate, he’s not a slap hitter or anything. His big standout tool was power

Lowe Distribution System: Did you see Jesus Sanchez rob a grand slam AND a three-run homer in the same game?  And that the Astros still gave up 12 runs??

Ben Clemens: I did not… but that’s kind of amazing

Opifijikl: If you were the Red Sox, would you call up Tolle or some other prospect to help with their relief pitching down the stretch? Am I overreacting to Campbell (the pitcher)’s bad performance? Trade deadline’s over so don’t say you’d have done more then!

Ben Clemens: Oh yeah, haha, the deadline has passed and I didn’t hate their decision-making in terms of relievers then, so I’ll leave that out of my response

Ben Clemens: but yes, I would

Ben Clemens: I think that throwing a bunch of high-variance spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks is ag reat idea

Ben Clemens: I see that Red Sox fans have already gone through the Jordan Hicks fandom arc, which I’ve seen firsthand as a Cards fan living in SF

Ben Clemens: ‘oooh, shiny velocity! let’s make him our closer’
‘wait where are the striekouts?’
‘this is bad’
(one good appearance) ‘oh my god, he coudl be so good’

Ben Clemens: and like, sometimes he is!

Ben Clemens: but yeah, he’s a known quantity at this point, try some new stuff and try to build a great playoff bullpen

Ben Clemens: I’d try Kyle Harrison in relief too, unless they have specific starting plans for him that preclude that. He looked way better in relief on teh Giants

Uninvited Guest: I come here for the writing first and the math second…the writing is so good!!

Ben Clemens: well, thank you very much for that, then

Ben Clemens: we obviously think it’s good too

Ben Clemens: and I think that hiring guys like Baumann has upped our literary cred for sure

Alby: At that point in his career, Barry Bonds wasn’t Barry Bonds either.

Ben Clemens: no, but he had a 124 wRC+ and an incredible approach at the plate (re Oneil Cruz)

Ben Clemens: also he was 23, Cruz is 26, and Bonds accrued more WAR in his first two seasons than Cruz has in his career

Guest: I’m here for that sweet shade of blue when your question gets answered.

Ben Clemens: I didn’t even know that existed

Ben Clemens: but here

DBRuns: Any chance Devers gets 3B eligibility for Ottoneau (5 GS or 10 GP)?

Ben Clemens: I don’t think so, sadly

Ben Clemens: I think it’s smart to let him stay at first and learn there. Chapman’s gonna be around for a while

Guest: *was* goldy a good move? surely they knew he didn’t hit rhp last year, and well that definitely didn’t change this season

Ben Clemens: I think it was a neutral one

Ben Clemens: like, it was fine. it’s been fine. the cost wasn’t awful, they didn’t have any obviously better options

Ben Clemens: i thought the Devin Williams move was actively good even though it hasn’t worked out

d’Rake Baldwin: Depending on what you read, it’s either me or Isaac Collins for NL ROY. Which way do you think it goes?

Ben Clemens: I think it goes to Collins because voters will want to recognize the Brewers for such a great season in award voting

Taeko Okajima: As a NPB and MLB fan, it will be bittersweet to see Munetaka Murakami move from my hometown Swallows to the MLB soon. What teams does he seem like a good fit for?

Ben Clemens: All of them

Ben Clemens: everyone should want him; translating NPB performance to MLB is never an exact science but I don’t know how you look at his performance and see anything other than ‘potentially spectacular hitter’

Ben Clemens: I guess maybe you can say that parks with short porches in right are slihgtly better because he’s a lefty, but he has such huge raw power that I doubt it matters all that much

Ben Clemens: I think Eric has him down as sticking at third base, so maybe a team that can let him play third…

Ben Clemens: oh god, it’s the Dodgers

drplantwrench: also do you think murakami could stay at 3B, or is he doomed for 1B/DH?

Ben Clemens: I’m just basing this on Eric’s writeup, I’ll have a more detailed answer after the WS when I do free agent rankings

drplantwrench: i, an angels fan, would be willing to pay tens of millions of dollars for murakami

Ben Clemens: alright, maybe we should crowdsource the Angels

Ben Clemens: our new GM drplantwrench has some big plans

Kevin: Turned out to be a funny thing – when the trainer came out unexpectedly between pitches to see Jalen Beeks, it looked ominous. Until, it was later revealed, it was because Beeks had swallowed a fly while pitching!

Ben Clemens: um….. amazing

Sonny: I’d like to join an Ottoneau league and want to know what was one thing you wish you knew before you played your first season?

Ben Clemens: oh, I have a few for you

Ben Clemens: don’t be afraid to cut players if you need the salary. focus on players who are good more so than trying to optimize cost/talent because there are always ways to squeeze a little more out of the roster via cuts, loans, etc, but talent generally wins out

Ben Clemens: you’re never truly rebuilding because between inflation and re-auctions, any team can be turned around in a year

Ben Clemens: you should bid on more waiver players than you think, and bid higher numbers. the second-best price is the one you pay, so it’s not usually that expensive budget-wise, and one of the biggest assets in Otto is a 25 dollar player you have for 5 bucks

Ben Clemens: liek I mentioned Marsee, I have him for 5 bucks, I got Harris for a similar amount his rookie year. Jarren Duran, etc.

Ben Clemens: i missed plenty too, of course

Ben Clemens: but by taking tons of swings, I was able to get a cheap-ish core, and then splurge on players to surround them with

Ben Clemens: oh! if you can, co-manage with a friend. doesn’t have to be a 50/50 split

Ben Clemens: i’ve had a great time playing with a good friend, and I miss fewer starts/benchings that way

Murakami: Not concerned about his strikeout rate? He strikes out like 50-60% more than league average

Ben Clemens: I mean of course I am

Guest: i’d have tried ottoenu by now and i understand the operational costs but i’m not used to fees like that

Ben Clemens: just so we’re clear it’s all in-game budget, not real money, but yeah, it’s kinda messy and nerdy

Ben Clemens: if you don’t like that, I’d say play regular fantasy. if the baroque nature is a draw, Otto is amazing

drplantwrench: GM drplantwrench?? what happened to owner drplantwrench? (plz get rid of arte and keep Perry)

Ben Clemens: whoops

Bosoxforlife: Aaron Nola was battered around again yesterday. Will teams ever learn that the risk in signing pitchers into their 30’s makes it not such a great idea or is the state of pitching so bad that they have no choice?

Ben Clemens: probably the latter. it’s also why true difference making pitchers are so coveted

Ben Clemens: because filling all those innings is just tough

Jeb: Do you think Murakami San is gonna clear 9 figures?

Ben Clemens: I do, and I’ll have a better answer after more due diligence

Tacoby Bellsbury: Hey, where’s my sweet shade of blue?

Ben Clemens: Better late than never

M’s fan: Am I the only one that thinks it’s wild we could see a catcher hit 55 HRs and 20 steals? In a season!

Ben Clemens: i mean, you had me at 55 homers

DB: Thoughts on where the Red Sox are headed? They look good but a  little shaky this year, do you think they’ll be more stable next year or doomed to inconsistency?

Ben Clemens: I think that it’s too soon to say but that surely the front office has seen the same stuff we have

Ben Clemens: like, this is a very strangely built team with many talented players

Ben Clemens: so hopefully they spend the offseason trying to use B) to solve A)

Ben Clemens: I like their odds of doing so, it’s much better to have this issue than ‘we really know where everyone should play and the roster fits well, just everyone is bad’

Ben Clemens: alright, on that note, I’m going to head out and start making lunch

Ben Clemens: (lunch guy, I’m gonna do a grilled chicken caesar salad, I’ve pre-cooked the chicken so it should be pretty fast)

Ben Clemens: hope you enjoyed this chat and I’m gonna try to do a jumbo-size one next week in anticipation fo a break the week after that

Ben Clemens: have a great week, talk to everyone soon