Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat – 8/21/23

Ben Clemens: Chat time

Farhandrew Zaidman: Is it an oversimplification to say the addition of the cutter saved Julio Urias’ season?

Ben Clemens: I hadn’t looked into this very much, to be honest, and I’m doing so now

Ben Clemens: Pretty interesting

Ben Clemens: Seems like an article waiting to happen, but it’s pretty intersting how much better he’s gotten since adding this pitch

Ben Clemens: I guess the counterpoint is that he added it early in the year

Ben Clemens: and he hasn’t really popped until recently

Ben Clemens: but maybe?

Jadon: Has Corey Seager’s 2023 success been enough to solidify him as the number one shortstop in baseball?

Ben Clemens: Oh man, solidify is tough. But yeah, if I’m picking a guy for just this year, I’d take Seager narrowly over Lindor

Ben Clemens: Lindor is quietly having an incredible season

Tacoby Bellsbury: If you had to get a statue of a player who disappointed and flamed out to keep on your desk, which bust of a bust would you go with and why?

Ben Clemens: Ooh, so my one hit wonder bust would be Bo Hart

Ben Clemens: b/c that 2003 season was amazing

Ben Clemens: But in terms of a disappointment, I think I’d go with Alex Reyes. He was my favorite prospect for SO many years

Historically Mid: Andrew Benintendi (prior to this year) always struck me as the most average player in baseball. His 2019 season has to be up there as most middling season ever

Ben Clemens: He’s a good answer as well

Corey Seager: I AM A GOD!!!

Paul Skenes: Over hyped or the next Stephen Strasburg/Gerrit Cole??

Ben Clemens: Mmmm, I’m on the overhyped side of this debate because those guys were just slam dunk type prospects

Ben Clemens: I think he is good, I would not have taken him with the first pick in the draft

Guy Who Asks The Multiple Choice Question: Which Jackson is most likely to be on the cover of MLB The Show 2027?

a) Merrill
b) Chourio
c) Holliday
d) Another Jackson (please specify)

Ben Clemens: I’m gonna go with Holliday, as the most likely to be a star on a good team

John Angelos is a Man Child: Curious your take on John Angelos’ revelatory comments in the New York Times today. It can’t possibly be true that the team cannot afford to extend young players, right? Seems like he’s using the “I can’t afford to extend my young stars” fib as leverage to try and get more state funding so he can build a Braves-esque development surrounding the stadium – and in turn, of course, make more money. Quite a contrast from the shockingly good on-field product seemingly beginning a 4-6+ year stretch where they should be consistent title contenders…

Ben Clemens: I can’t say much beyond the fact that John Angelos likes to put his foot in his mouth, and ‘we can’t afford to extend young players’ is entirely in keeping with the way he’s been running this team since assuming operational control

Ben Clemens: Like, he doesn’t like spending money on the team, we get it

Guest: How much should we care about fielding when evaluating pitching prospects?  What about in evaluating MLB pitchers?

Ben Clemens: Prospects, I think basically zero

Ben Clemens: I want my pitchers working full-time on getting better at pitching

Ben Clemens: In the majors, I think it’s slightly underrated, particularly for groundball heavy pitchers

Guest: Looks like Mets have about $130m coming off the books next year (including the $20m they’re still paying Robbie Cano!).  What’s a realistic guess as to how much of that Cohen reinvests in the 2024 team?

Ben Clemens: Like….. 50-110 million?

Ben Clemens: This free agent class is not particularly appetizing outside of Ohtani

Ben Clemens: But obviously the Mets are gonna roll out a bag for him

Jeremy: If the Phillies make the playoffs, should Aaron Nola get a start?

Ben Clemens: I mean, yeah

Ben Clemens: What?\

Ben Clemens: I understand that he’s been kinda homer-prone this year and has a blah ERA, but I don’t think there’s any argument that he’s outside their top 3 pitchers

Jesse Pinkman: How does AJ Preller still  have the top job in San Diego? He can’t keep getting away with it, right?

Ben Clemens: I mean, this window that ends after 2024 (and maybe after this year) is what he has

Ben Clemens: if there’s no WS in that time frame, I can’t see them keeping him

Jon Daniels: Will Rangers fan hate me forever or will they warmup back up to me over time?

Ben Clemens: Warm back up over time almost certainly

Ben Clemens: This year’s team is pretty heavily constructed by you

Wrights Back: Another, decidedly fan centric question,Ben:  when should I be buying season tickets for the Mets?   Was 2022 a mirage?  Statistically it doesnIs their underperformance (on all counts) a failure of coaching or of players who were ideally suited for the game before the rule changes?

Ben Clemens: I had a 20-game season ticket package with the Mets throughout the bad times

Ben Clemens: 2016-2018 (2016 was a good time but the others weren’t)

Ben Clemens: I’d say that you should not get them based on whether you think the team is going to win a world series

Ben Clemens: you should get them based on whether you want to have fun going to baseball games

Ben Clemens: I think that failure of players ideally suited for the old game is unlikely as an answer, personally

Princess Leia: Help us Obi-wan Clemon-obi! You’re our only hope!

Ben Clemens: on loop in my head for an hour now

Justin: Pete Alonso has a 135 wrc+ while only having a .199 babip. I think this is incredible, and he’s not getting enough credit for how good he’s been this year bad luck aside.

Ben Clemens: Agreed

Ben Clemens: He’s had a really good season somehow

Nervous Flyball Pitcher: A lot of people (e.g., Leo Morgenstern) foresaw Lance Lynn regressing positively because of his unsustainably bad HR/FB rate. Turning from a current Dodger to a former Dodger prospect, Dean Kremer has regressed negatively in that his HR/FB has more than doubled (7.3% to 15.2%), while he’s striking out more guys and doing perfectly fine on BABIP. By RV alone, his cutter has gone from good to bad and his sinker has gone from bad to good, but his secondaries are otherwise the same. I know it’s a lot of blue on his Statcast page, but what gives?

Ben Clemens: These fly ball pitchers are always going to be a bit susceptible to homer blowups imo, particularly if they don’t have an excellent contact management plan

Ben Clemens: like, sinker/sweeper to same-handed batters with a cutter and something else to deal with opposite handed guys kinda works

Ben Clemens: but if you’re putting the ball in the air, the hitters supply the power, so you’re gonna be prone to blowups

SvenClemens: Are we at the point we are really starting to see the effects of the Astros loss of draft picks? Or has it been an issue already?  The back half of their lineup is struggling and I wonder how much it is because it’s harder for them to find cheap, in house talent right now.

Ben Clemens: Yeah, a little bit. Of course, they’re also shipping out talent to get players, which adds up

Ben Clemens: but I remember when those penalties were levied, people equated them to monetary because the Astros would need to spend extra to replace those holes

Ben Clemens: and eh, they haven’t really? and so yeah, that hurts

Ethan: Very much enjoyed your WPA article from last week. I was curious if you think that WPA/LI or RE24/boLI align with the MVP voting criteria. Personally I think they hit the sweet spot on the context dependent-context neutral spectrum but I’d be interested to hear your thoughts.

Ben Clemens: I don’t really, because of the weird “actual value” phrasing

Ben Clemens: both of those adjust the value, on purpose, and they’re good stats because of that

Ben: I’m sure that I’m missing something here, but how can 7 AL teams be 60% or better to make the playoffs when there are only 6 spots?

Ben Clemens: Well, if you had three teams for two spots, and each was 2/3 likely to make it, you’d have 6/3 or 2 teams make it in the end

Ben Clemens: so, kinda that

Ben Clemens: that’s kinda what’s happening here, tbh

Ben Clemens: so the Rangers and Astros are each 80% or so, that’s 1.6 teams

Ben Clemens: the Jays and Mariners are each call it 60%, 1.2 teams, so 2.8 teams

Ben Clemens: then 3 teams are roughly 100%, 5.8 teams

Ben Clemens: and eh, scraps make up the next

Appa Yip Yip: On a scale of 1 to 10 how silly is it that baseball, in the year 2023, is still rubbing balls up with the mystical mud from the secret river?

Ben Clemens: Truly, it’s a 10

C’mon Son!: Why doesn’t Adolis Garcia get more recognition?

Ben Clemens: I think it’s because he broke out when the Rangers were not good, and then the team supplemented itself with a bunch of stars everyone knows, who are now getting the credit for improvement

Ben Clemens: but he’s been awesome this year

Ben Clemens: And really, he’s been quite good since 2021

Eh?: Why did we need to add the “Sweeper” pitch this year? Isn’t it just a certain shape of slider? If we’re adding a pitch for that, shouldn’t we also add one for 12-6 curveball vs normal curveball? Or an? overhand vs 3/4 vs sidearm vs submarine release point fastball?

Ben Clemens: I’m kinda with you, to be honest, but I think it comes down to this

Ben Clemens: enough pitchers were throwing a sharp slider and a sweeping slider that the aggregates couldn’t handle them

Ben Clemens: a lot of systems just called the sharp one a cutter, that’s what I would have done

Ben Clemens: But I have been researching pitchers because their sliders looked weird, only to find that it was two sliders

Ben Clemens: And it’s useful to have those split out, in my opinion

Ben Clemens: even if the name is a bit cheesy

Liam: My early guess for the (hopefully) upcoming mid pitcher article: braxton garrett

Ben Clemens: That article will come up as soon as I need to fill an empty day, haha

Nervous Flyball Pitcher: Re: Urias cutter, can you describe the process of pitchers adding a pitch? Sometimes it seems like guys add a sinker or sweeper at the drop of a hat, but I seldom hear about someone adding a changeup or curveball.

Ben Clemens: So, here’s my mental hierarchy, with the caveat that I’m not in development or anything

Ben Clemens: The easiest pitches to add, it seems, are fastballs

Ben Clemens: so adding a 4-seamer or sinker if you predominantly throw the other one is largely a matter of seam orientation

Ben Clemens: and then some intent as well

Ben Clemens: but those are pretty easy things to teach. Same grip, same finish

Ben Clemens: the cutter that they’re teaching a lot these days is similar; seems to have a very similar grip, just different finish

Ben Clemens: So with those, you can take a thing the player has done a lot over many years, not change much, and let him work with it

Ben Clemens: I get the sense that sweepers are similar in that it’s a relatively simple grip/intent modification

Ben Clemens: changeups are HEAVILY based on feel and arm speed and a lot of stuff that isn’t “oh just move the ball this way and do this with your finger”

Ben Clemens: so those are harder

Ben Clemens: I think curves are similar

Ranch Flowerbed: Aren’t the Mets still in a solid position to sign Ohtani despite their recent sell-off?

Ben Clemens: I assume so

Appa Yip Yip: Just looked up Corey Seager’s numbers after seeing him proclaim himself a god and thought, dang he could win MVP then immediately remembered Shohei Ohtani exists

Ben Clemens: Haha yeah, Ohtani is just wild

JRod: Am I back to being a superstar?

Ben Clemens: I think so

Ben Clemens: I mean, I never thought you weren’t to be fair

knuckle_49: What is the ideal swing decision?
I don’t think Z-OSwing% is sufficient.

Ben Clemens: I wrote an article on this last year, let me dig it up

Ben Clemens: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/who-makes-the-best-swing-decisions-in-base…

Ben Clemens: I thought this was a pretty good way of doing it

Ben Clemens: Basically look at how important it is to swing vs. not swing in each zone, and adjust for that

Ben Clemens: Also Alex Eisert expanded on that general idea last week

Ben Clemens: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/does-swinging-less-mean-swinging-at-better…

Jadon: What are your general thoughts on Evan Carter. I’ve heard some people criticizing his swing, what are your thoughts on that?

Ben Clemens: I’m a Carter believer

Ben Clemens: I definitely underrate swing concerns in general

Ben Clemens: but…. I don’t think it’s that much of a concern!

EnglishMariner: Long time listener, first time caller – J.P Crawford gets spoke about as a defense first SS who makes eye catching high quality players, but his UZR is amongst the worse in the league

Ben Clemens: yeah, these statistics are really noisy in general but statcast has not liked his defense at all of late

Ben Clemens: also, don’t use UZR

Ben Clemens: it’s kinda deprecated at this point; I much prefer OAA

Jake Marogersnik: Re: Spencer Torkelson’s recent hot streak, is it just a standard hot streak or a sign of things to come? Not much changes I can see in batted ball data and he was underperforming his expected stats all season

Ben Clemens: My read is that it’s just a hot streak

Ben Clemens: Like you said, it doesn’t look like the process has changed all that much

Appa Yip Yip: I would like Bo Bichette to be a Blue Jay for life. What contract makes that happen? 12/350?

Ben Clemens: yeah, I think that would do it

Ben Clemens: seager-esque deal

EnglishMariner: Accidently submitted my question without the question bit – essentially is JP Crawford actually a bad fielder and the Mariners commentators are lying to me? UZR suggests he’s shocking, but the eye test suggests he makes plays others wouldn’t be capable of.

Ben Clemens: Ah yeah; I’d say that he’s a below average defender, perhaps largely because of range, but that he has dazzling hand-eye coordination

Ethan: Last week the topic of pythag and blowouts came up. I mentioned a game level version and I was able to track down the original blog post for “pythagenmatt” https://web.archive.org/web/20071205030737/http://detectovision.com/?p…

Ben Clemens: Ooh, sounds like this will be fun to dive into later

Did Chewbacca use TP?: What changes has Cody Bellinger made this year to regain this success?  How what do you think he’ll get in the open market? would you be buying?

Ben Clemens: I liked this article by Esteban Rivera

Ben Clemens: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/for-bellinger-and-paredes-it-pays-to-pull/

Ben Clemens: I…. don’t think I’d be buying on Bellinger

Ben Clemens: I think he’s gonna get the biggest non-Ohtani FA deal for a hitter this year

Ben Clemens: And I just need more than one year’s evidence, even though this year has been really good

Ben Clemens: That’s kind of all I have to say about it…. I get that he’s been better but I just can’t lock it in as fully changed yet

Sporter’s Five Horses: I was pretty bullish on the Nats heading into this season as a mid 70s wins sort of team (and boy did I face a lot of probably well warranted mockery for my views), but now it seems my faith is being rewarded.

Ben Clemens: They’ve outperformed their underlying stuff a bit, but who cares? I think the Nats have done a good job of trying out some new guys, getting something for their rentals, giving young players PT, there’s just a lot to like here

Oaktown Blues: Looking at the A’s trades of the past couple years, it strikes me that the worst results came in trades where the player traded was due a lot of money (by A’s standards) the next year (Olson, Chapman, Murphy, Bassitt, Manaea), as opposed to the relatively successful Irvin and Montas trades. Do you think it was an open secret that the A’s were not going to pay those players, leading to a lack of leverage and underwhelming returns?

Ben Clemens: Yes, and I think they did not understand their leverage particularly well given that

Ben Clemens: Like, yes, the A’s were not going to pay Sean Murphy but someone was going to

Ben Clemens: I think that impatience around playing teams off against each other hurts them more because of that known market

Ben Clemens: but look, the A’s could have had a better return for Murphy if they didn’t involve the Brewers in that trade

Ben Clemens: so it’s hard to say that was about leverage. There were several teams looking around for catchers

Ben Clemens: The Cardinals were confirmed to have been interested

Ben Clemens: and they splashed out for Contreras instead

Eh?: Have you ever heard of people looking into how to quantify deception in a pitcher’s delivery? Obviously the easy way would be to point to career-long trends in stats vs expected stats, but I mean REALLY dig into it. Look at which deliveries, release points, etc. yield the best results.

Ben Clemens: I have, and teams are doing this for SURE

Ben Clemens: It’s really hard to dig into from the public side just because we don’t have granular info

Bob: Umpires this weekend we’re terrible with the strike zone…will this speed up implementation of automated Kzone?

Ben Clemens: Angel Hernandez had the worst zone I’ve seen this year over the weekend

Ben Clemens: hitters were just chuckling

Curious: Word is Nats are extending their GM and manager. Safe to say Rizzo is in the top half of the league? Maybe top 10?

Didace: The Nationals are now an interesting team.

Ben Clemens: It’s Nats day

Ben Clemens: I think that Rizzo is a really good trader

Ben Clemens: And really understands the macro picture well

Ben Clemens: He knows when he needs to add outside talent, knows when he needs to give up, that kind of stuff

Ben Clemens: I have not been impressed with the Nats’ internal development, either of hitters or pitchers

Ben Clemens: so I think there’s room for improvement on the scouting end

Ben Clemens: But he’s definitely quite sharp at the big picture stuff and that’s really important, I think a lot of GM’s mess that stuff up

Matt Damon: MATT. DAMON.

J: Any idea if pitcher stuff metrics or pitch movement profiles account for when a pitcher has multiple variations on a pitch? Thinking of pitchers having a sweeping and more traditional slider, or of Kyle Hendricks having a cutting and tailing changeup. Feels like these are likely wildly off if they’re not explicitly accounted for, because the two movement profiles will average out to terrible.

Ben Clemens: Yeah that’s what I was talking about with separate labeling earlier

Ben Clemens: They just rely on whichever labeling system they use, I know PitchingBot uses Statcast

v2micca: So, this past week I believe, the film Oppenheimer has the distinction of becoming the most commercially successful film of all time without ever spending a single week as number 1 at the box office.  In that vein, I propose referring to hall of fame greats like Mike Mussina who always seemed to be overshadowed by someone in a given season as Oppenheimers.

Ben Clemens: Love this

Ben Clemens: Also, I loved Oppenheimer

D: Will you expand a bit on your thoughts about the Brewers dealing Urias? To paraphrase, you wrote that it was a wise move for them to save money (~$1 million) on a guy who they would likely nontender and to acquire a pitcher who was extremely hot recently. Urias’s recent heroics aside, shouldn’t the Brewers have been willing to shell out $1 million to sure up their 2b/3b situation?

Ben Clemens: I mean…. I would have been, but I don’t run the budget that the Brewers do

Ben Clemens: It seemed pretty clear to me that they were not considering him as a major league option this year

Ben Clemens: You don’t option a guy making $5 million to the minors if you want to use him as a depth piece

Ben Clemens: And he wasn’t even hitting well in Triple-A

Ben Clemens: So if he’s going to be in your minors, and they already preferred Monasterio et al over him, I don’t know what value they were getting out of keeping him around

John: What value does Maldonado add to the Astros at this point? Just veteran leadership? he still can’t hit and his defensive metrics are awful this year.

Ben Clemens: Yeah, I truly don’t get it

Ben Clemens: I would have cut bait

Ben Clemens: They just love him

Guest: If Mookie Betts were converted to a full-time shortstop, where would he rank on your list of the best?

Ben Clemens: First

Jadon: This is more of a personal question for you Ben. Do you have a favorite baseball youtuber/content creator?

Ben Clemens: I’ll be honest, I don’t consume a lot of baseball content

Ben Clemens: I do a lot of baseball stuff myself, you know?

Ben Clemens: I watch hours of games a day and also spend hours writing and thinking about it, I’m kind of maxed out on my baseball

Ben Clemens: that said: Effectively Wild and Foolish are two that I check out

Didace: Swing decisions should be split into two categories – <2 strikes and two strikes. With less than two strikes it does no good to swing at a pitch you can’t do much with just because it’s a strike. If you can’t hit a back-door curve that’s in the upper corner, why swing if you don’t need to.

Ben Clemens: Totally. I stripped out the two strike stuff in looking at it, but splitting them out makes sense too

Sandwich: Is baseball the most ownership dependent sport in North America? It feels like it should due to the lack of salary cap and long timelines between acquisition from non-professional ranks into the major league, but at the same time there are teams in Football/Hockey that seem to be stuck in a nearly endless loop of sucking

Ben Clemens: I think the fact that teams in salary cap sports are stuck in perpetual tanking loops says a lot about how much ownership and front office leadership matter

Ben Clemens: if you can’t get that stuff together, the money is just not going to fix it

Vlad’s Dad: Maybe more up Jay’s alley, but wondering what odds you’d put on a HOF career out of Pete Alonso?

Obviously got a late start but already looking like he should put up a big HR total and has some great early seasons under his belt.

Ben Clemens: 65%? I think that he’ll make it if he continues at this pace for sure despite the late start

Ed Luvah: Has Mitch Garver done enough to warrant a 3-4 year deal? 3/30?

Ben Clemens: mmmmm

Ben Clemens: I mean, I would not offer him that!

Ben Clemens: that doesn’t mean no one else will

Ben Clemens: or like, I’m not even a team

Ben Clemens: But surely the lack of durability is worrisome

Dan: If the Orioles spend 100 million in free agency are they going to be good for the next five years and thus get a new generation of fans and make far far more than 100 million extra dollars over those fans lifetimes?

Ben Clemens: Mmmmmmm, this is a really interesting question and I don’t know the right answer but I think it’s asking something really important

Ben Clemens: Should the Orioles be increasing payroll with the specific aim of supplementing their young core?

Ben Clemens: the answer is obviously yes

Ben Clemens: Investments like that have multipliers, like you said

Ben Clemens: now is the time to strike if you’re the O’s, being good is new and hot, and you have a lot of cost control in the future

Farhandrew Zaidman: Are minor league promotions getting more aggressive, or am I going crazy?

Ben Clemens: They most definiltey are

Ben Clemens: the Angels are making it a little confusing just because they’re throwing everything at the wall, but even without that, I think teams are reacting better than I expected to the incentives to call guys up

Ben Clemens: and particularly, I think the O’s experience with Rutschman last year raised some eyebrows

Ben Clemens: It really stings to not get a first round pick out of that, to antagonize your player (maybe not Adley, he just seems imperturbable, but most players), and also to have the same service time

Not buying?: You think Belling reverts  to who he was a few years ago?

Ben Clemens: I don’t know!

Ben Clemens: It’s a tough question

Ben Clemens: I wouldn’t pay up to find out though

Ethan: Given the limited data the public do has access to really I like this article on pitch tunneling which briefly mentions deception/release point. https://www.prospectslive.com/prospects-live/2022/8/23/the-mystic-art-…

ryan: re: deception, Kyle Boddy of Driveline posted this https://twitter.com/drivelinekyle/status/1692323265136767008 regarding a deception/occlusion model that spits out a result on a 20-80 score. So yes, this is absolutely done

Ben Clemens: Lots of ways to look at it

Trout: Where should the Angels go from here? It’s not often that I think a team should blow it up and do a full rebuild, but it seems like that’s where the Angels are. (White Sox too, but that’s another story.) They do have plenty of money to spend. But what are they going to do, sign a bunch of guys to do patchwork across the roster for the next two years?

Ben Clemens: i mean, whether they blow it up or not, it’s getting ugly

Ben Clemens: no farm, the current team isn’t even that good

Tom: Given the changes in the standings, do you think the Mariners would like to undo the Sewald trade?  Or has Canzone filling in for Kelenic and Rojas for Wong actually made a larger impact and helped drive the turnaround?

Ben Clemens: I actually think that they would not undo it

Ben Clemens: they just needed hitters badly enough that it worked out

Ben Clemens: and as meg has often pointed out, they have a real skill for developing relievers

Phil: What is or should be a closer, nowadays? Thinking of the Red Sox, for whom Chris Martin is pretty clearly the best reliever, even if they have another guy who bears a striking resemblance to someone who used to dominate for the Dodgers. But would there be an appreciable benefit to swapping those roles, enough to overcome whatever clubhouse effect comes from, I don’t know, disrespecting a veteran? Does it matter?

Ben Clemens: I don’t think there’s enough benefit to offset any potential costs

Ben Clemens: Though, I’d like to see the Red Sox use Martin a biiiiiit more in big spots

Ben Clemens: but like, those two guys get the most important opportunities consistently

Ben Clemens: that’s the key for me

abhi: do you have any recommendations on baseball books to read and whatnot?

Ben Clemens: my favorite baseball book of all time is The Only Rule is it Has to Work

Ben Clemens: by a mile

Ben Clemens: Ball Four is also very good

D: Thanks for your answers on the Urias trade. A lot of your answer comes down to how the Brewers viewed him, which is fine for what it is. But if we’re evaluating the trade, I think we have to include evaluating how they view him.

Ben Clemens: Ah yeah. I don’t agree with their evaluation at all

Ben Clemens: but I think that the trade was consistent, which is important

Ben Clemens: I think that internal consistency is at least as important as player evaluation

Ben Clemens: or like, adjusting for how good you can be relative to the crowd at player evaluation

Phil: Can’t wait for robozone, not convinced by those who are nostalgic for framing. Give me an elite athlete like Connor Wong (did you see the play on the popped-up bunt?) over somebody who just sits there and nuances the glove a bit.

Ben Clemens: I really love the challenge system

Ben Clemens: because it’s the best of all worlds

Air Horn: BWOW WAH WOW WOW OWWWWWW

Ben Clemens: excellent point

Farhandrew Zaidman: Matt Olson or Pete Alonso, the rest of their careers?

Ben Clemens: Gimme Alonso but without much conviction

ryan: Is there any player that has ever pandered as well to a city as Bryce Harper does with Philly?

Ben Clemens: Philadelphians, earmuffs: I think that Philly is one of the cities that it is easiest to pander to

Ben Clemens: just because of their strong identity

Ben Clemens: that’s not a bad thing, to be clear

Ben Clemens: But Carlos Correa tried that stuff with Minneapolis and like, it just doesn’t hit the same

Trout: A sweeper is really a new word for a slurve.

Ben Clemens: I don’t 100% agree with this

Ben Clemens: it’s like some slurves?

Ben Clemens: but some slurves are heavily two-plane

Appa Yip Yip: Wasn’t one of the justifications the Orioles used for their miniscule payrolls during the tank years that they were saving money to spend later? Lmao.

Ben Clemens: Ah, internal inconsistency!

Appa Yip Yip: Do the angels even have anyone of value to trade off if they were going to blow it up?

Ben Clemens: No

Adam: Wondering if you have any insight into why the ATC RoS Projection for Eury Pérez went from bad to worse after his last amazing start. ATC has such a good reputation for pitching, i’m a bit confused.

Ben Clemens: I do not. ATC is an aggregator of other projections

Ben Clemens: So, I’d look to the projections it aggregates

Ben Clemens: but yeah, I disagree

Ben Clemens: Eury looks dominant

Ben Clemens: That start is going to be one of the things I liked this week, as a preview of sorts

Rick: Is getting consistently better carry on balls a skill? I see high EVs sometimes with distances that seem low and vice versa. Wondering if there’s more to it than hitting conditions

Ben Clemens: Totally

v2micca: I was reading recently that the human eye is capable of seeing between 30 to 60 frames per second.  Your brain then takes this data and fills in the gaps between each frame so it appears that the world is moving in smooth continuous form to our eyes.  If they could find a way to definitely measure it, do you think the baseball players with really good command of the strikezone would be those individuals whose eyes are capturing data at the high 60 to 70 frames per second end of the average?

Ben Clemens: Some of those, some people with extremely good kinesthesia, some people with really quick mental processing and pattern recognition

Ben Clemens: it’s not JUST eyes, but that’s obviously a big part

ryan: I would imagine that a non-zero amount of their thinking comes from watching what happened with the Cardinals pitching staff when Yadi retired (even though Maldonado hasn’t been around nearly as long and never graded out as well)

Ben Clemens: Oh, this is about Maldy and I forgot to post it earlier

Ben Clemens: I mean… that shows a misunderstanding of what happened to the Cardinals (their pitching was bad because they had bad pitchers) and also very little faith in the pitching staff and coaches

Ben Clemens: so if that’s what happened, that’s a negative in my eyes on their front office’s ability to process information

Liam: does skenes throw a pitch for the buccos this season?

Ben Clemens: I don’t think so

Ben Clemens: I’d feel differently if they were still in the race at all

Ben Clemens: But I’d be worried about workload enough that I’d say hm, he might get prettttty amped to pitch int he big leagues, maybe we let him build up to it with a normal offseason instead

Ben Clemens: that said, I’ll be shocked if he’s not in their big league rotation next May

Cito: What is up with Buxton, and what are the Twins going to do with him?  Is he washed?  Can’t seem to hit.  Won’t let him play the field

Ben Clemens: Man…. he kinda seems washed

Ben Clemens: I wonder if he should have just missed this season to recover from whatever injury he has

Ben Clemens: because what they’re getting is not *better* than that

Ben Clemens: but it’s obviously been way worse for his health

Seamus: What is your favorite social deduction game?

Ben Clemens: any variation of mafia/werewolf

Ben Clemens: Among Us was a fun distraction but I like ones that get played 100% in person, personally

MLB: Riley Greene and Torkelson will combine to produce how much WAR next year?

Ben Clemens: 3.9 (3.7 Greene, 0.2 Tork, for the hot take)

Ben Clemens: but no, let’s call it 5, 3.7/1.3

Ben Clemens: Riley Greene was one of my dudes coming into this year and whie he’s not gonna keep babiping like htis, maybe he’ll play some more games for once

Jadon: Do you think the Tigers made the right move going with Clark instead of Langford? If so, why?

Ben Clemens: Eh, I’m not good enough at that kind of prospect evaluation to give you a reasonable answer

Re: baseball books: The baseball subreddit used to do an annual winter book list that has a lot of great picks, both retro/romantic and modern/nerdy.  I’ve found a lot of great picks over the years, most recently The Glory of Their Times.

Ben Clemens: Good call

Doug: Has the game and players passed Bob Melvin by? Seemed like he used to get everything out of his players. Now he can’t do anything to help turn the team around. I understand they made the NLCS last gesr

Ben Clemens: Wasn’t this like…. hailed as a genius managerial hire very recently?

Ben Clemens: I don’t think he deserved as much credit as he received for being great, or as much blame as he’s getting for being bad

Ben Clemens: but yeah, that clubhouse does NOT seem like it’s in a good place

Bmore Orioles: Bradish and Grayson have been lights out for 2 months. Our offense comes and goes, but can be quite strong. Good D. Good bullpen, with help on the way. Are we WS contenders?

punter hence: Looking at Baltimore’s starters, relievers and position players, only 1 of 3 (RP) is truly standout or even solidly above average by fWAR. Does this concern you at all in terms of being a real threat in the playoffs? I think there’s a lot to be excited for this core, but maybe not expecting a deep run this year

Ben Clemens: This is fun!

Ben Clemens: I think of Baltimore as a legit playoff threat, largely because I don’t think the AL has anyone clearly better

Ben Clemens: for my money, the Dodgers and Braves are the class of baseball by a wide margin this year

Ben Clemens: but all of the AL contenders have flaws

Tom: What happened to all the FA SS’s this year?  It just doesn’t make sense that they would all have down years right away?

Ben Clemens: No idea but it really is weird

Wrights Back: OMG, if  you call ’16-18 the ‘bad times’ for the Mets, I suggest you root for the Yankees.   Too outcome focused!

Ben Clemens: haha well 2017 was pretty bad; they went from being a good team to losing 92 games and they were trying SO hard to fill the stadium by the end

Ben Clemens: I went to two ‘fan appreciation have a luxury suite with other fans’ games that year haha

Jadon: Who do you think is the best  American born black player in the league currently? Guy sitting next to me wants to know lol.

Ben Clemens: hmmm… well my extremely biased self wants to say Masyn Winn

Ben Clemens: he’s so fun already

Ben Clemens: but clearly it’s Mookie

Ben Clemens: and like…. I don’t think it’s particularly close to being close

Appa Yip Yip: I forgot about Milwaukee inserting themselves into the Murphy trade like the dude at the party who didn’t pay for anything and left with a box of donuts and half a case of beer.

Ben Clemens: Good way of putting it

Guest: Here’s to hoping Trout made some adjustments and comes back as the 170 wRC+ hitter he’s always been tomorrow

Ben Clemens: 100% agreed

Did Chewbacca use TP?: Yelich and Bellinger are having similar 2019 revivals after some down years (the lows are obviously lower for Cody)…who would you prefer to have for the next 3 years?

Ben Clemens: Bellinger, for the defense

Appa Yip Yip: Have you played Baldur’s Gate 3?

Ben Clemens: Yeah, and it’s amazing

Ben Clemens: (we’re going to a speed round here before I go make lunch, I should have mentioned)

Mr Redlegs: If you would have told me before the season that all of the Reds prospects were in the majors and somewhat thriving and we’d be within shouting distance of a playoff spot in late August I would have been thrilled! Now I’m just kinda bummed. Expectations are weird

Ben Clemens: yeah path dependency is lame

Ben Clemens: the Reds got too hot!

abhi: what are your thoughts on the giants rotation going forward with kyle harrison?

Ben Clemens: I’m extremely excited to watch his debut

Guest: Still hunting a playoff berth this year, but clearly the Reds are well ahead of schedule, so looking ahead, the Castellinis are raking in $ this year, and have to be surprised by this turn of fortune. The FO can likely work a good trade or two for pitching this offseason, but they should also be active in the FA market, IMO. Tell me there’s hope! And if not, any way to estimate how much more the franchise might be worth in a sale now than we would have thought in April?

Ben Clemens: I wish there was a way to do that, but I don’t know it. I think they should be active in the FA market, but they haven’t really made strong indications to that effect that I’ve seen

Greg: It feels like we are watching Julio becoming the best Non-Ohtani in baseball right now, doesn’t it? Never in my entire life  have I seen a  hitter look so confident.

Ben Clemens: That’s pretty tough on Mookie and Acuna

Ben Clemens: but yes, I was not at all worried about ranking Julio in the top 3 of trade value even though he was struggling at the time

Ben Clemens: just like, yeah, watch the dude

Ben Clemens: you’ll get it

John Mozeliak: do you believe me when i say 3 outside SP for 2024?

Ben Clemens: Yeah, it’s not like they’re gonna play in a dome

Sanford: Here’s the link if that’s allowed: https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2021/9/28/22695180/yusmeiro-petit-decept…

Ben Clemens: For sure, and always a fan of shouting out Ben Lindbergh

Sanford: Re: the deception question, not sure if it’s what you’re looking for but Ben Lindbergh wrote an excellent piece for the Ringer a couple years ago about Yusmeiro Petit and how teams have been thinking about deception

J: Mookie definitely is the best black American-born player, but I think you’re forgetting Judge.

Ben Clemens: Ah yeah fair, I suppose it’s close to being close

Appa Yip Yip: Well what class are you playing? Who’s in your party? Isn’t Karlach the best?

Ben Clemens: I’m not that far into it but sorcerer, and because I don’t know D&D even a little i did githyanki sorcerer, my friends have told me that’s bad. I have Karlach/Shadowheart/Wyll but I might mix it up a bit

Nick: Who is your AL ROY pick, given that Jung is hurt and Brown is struggling?

Ben Clemens: Masa

Farhandrew Zaidman: SPEED ROUND: Are Michael Busch and/or Miguel Vargas part of LA’s long term plan?

Ben Clemens: Yes, yes

Ethan: Is this Joey Votto’s last season?

Ben Clemens: I hope not, but yes

Guest: Have you been watching any of the LLWS?

Ben Clemens: No

Sandy: Assuming Gray & Lopez are locks to start the first two games of a wild card series, who do you have pitch game three, Ober, Maeda, Ryan or Keuchel?

Ben Clemens: Ryan for me

Dan: I remember reading about a doctor who gave eye tests to all the dodgers minor leaguers and then said who would be good based on that. And it was two future rookies of the year.I also suggested Mike Piazza would become good. Not a large enough sample to be sure it wasn’t luck but also long enough ago the eye science has advanced a ton since then

Ben Clemens: Fun story

Guest: As you said, Lindor is quietly having a great season. Why is it so quiet? His first three years in the NY market, no all-star games, no gold gloves, not totally treated by media and non-Mets fans like an exciting superstar in his prime, and yet he’s put up 15+ WAR. Why?

Ben Clemens: no idea, it’s baffling

Nolan: Battle of the Colors: Hunter Greene or Hunter Brown, if you can only have one for a career.

Ben Clemens: Brown by a nose

Ben Clemens: alright, have a great day everyone, I have to go make lunch and then buy a new phone

Ben Clemens: talk to you next week