Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat – 8/28/23

Ben Clemens: Hey everybody, welcome to the chat

Ben Clemens: Busy day so I’m gonna aim for an hour of focused chatting

Rick Dugo 3000: Trevor Story striking out in 1/3 of his red sox at bats and having not been an above average hitter since 2020 is fine right?

Ben Clemens: Honestly I’m not *that* worried about the beginning of his 2023, he hasn’t played in a while and this is as much about shaking the rust off as anything else

Ben Clemens: to the extent that it matters, he also has 48 PA of hitting the cover off the ball in his rehab games, he just hasn’t played that much yet. I’d give it more time

Ben Clemens: the broader question of whether he’s an above average hitter? I mean, we have him projected for a 100 wRC+ the rest of the year, and I imagine the next few years will look like that as well

Ben Clemens: That’s okay, I think? That’s kind of what I expect from Story. But he’s not Corey Seager, you know?

CAL: Hey Ben – has baseball ever had a more bummer week of player news (i.e. not a lockout) than last week? I can’t think of anything in the past 20 years.

Ben Clemens: I think if you exclude players dying, yes

Ben Clemens: If not, no

John Bowker Appreciator: Hey Ben – Why isn’t WPA more heavily factored into MVP discussions? I fully understand that it is not a predictive measure of success (I am not a “clutch gene” truther), but aren’t we trying find who WAS the most valuable over the year anyways? It seems to me like we should care about the contexts of the player’s at bats and their contributions to the teams success in order to understand the value that they brought.

Ben Clemens: I’m with you!

Lunch Angle: I’m curious about reports that Strasburg will continue to receive the entirety of his contracted salary even after retirement. I’m all for player rights but.. it seems that by choosing to retire rather continue a fruitless rehab, Strasburg is not fulfilling the terms of his contract. And if he isn’t honoring his contract, why do the Nats have to? Is this the standard for players retiring while on contract, or do you suppose this is something specific to Strasburg’s contract language or situation?

Ben Clemens: I’m assuming that the two sides came to some kind of agreement about this

Ben Clemens: I don’t know the wording of his contract but this is not the standard. Thinking back to Prince Fielder, who was in a similar situation, he never officially retired despite not being able to play for some insurance and salary reasons

Benny: If a time traveler told you at the beginning of the season, that at the end of August, all 3 of the Yankees, Mets, and Cardinals would be in last place, what would your reaction have been?

Ben Clemens: I think I’d be least shocked by the Yankees just b/c the AL East is really tough, no obvious weak link

Ben Clemens: but yeah, I’d be incredibly surprised

Guest: Un-fun fact for the Angels: You could make an entire starting lineup out of their position players on the IL, and the only thing even slightly out of the ordinary would be Urshela in the middle infield.

Ben Clemens: Yeesh

Sad Yankees Loser: Would love your thoughts on Rodon and Severino for the sad yanks. Their stuff looks nasty and they appear mostly healthy, what do you think that’s making them so ineffective? Is it a Yankee pitching philosophy problem? Is it in Rodon’s case just a wretched case of bad luck?

Ben Clemens: It really looks like bad luck to me, particularly from Rodon. When I watch him pitch I don’t think ‘oh this guy is washed’ or anything

Ben Clemens: I’m a lot less convinced about Severino. His absolute inability to miss bats is a huge red flag imo

Ben Clemens: it basically boils down to his slider, and it’s breaking less and drawing a ton less chases, and also hitters are making far more contact when they do swing

Ben Clemens: just a really bad omen

Mike M: Mookie is now the Vegas odds favorite to win NL MVP.  You agree?  Leads NL in fWAR, bWAR, OPS, SLG.  Huge positional flexibility.  Great smile.

Adam: Mookie Betts mvp?

Ben Clemens: He’d get my vote right now by a hair

Ben Clemens: The tear he’s been on for the past, I don’t know, half season, has just been insane

Ben Clemens: He’s never had power numbers like this in his career, and it’s a decorated career

Ben Clemens: what can you do but marvel

marginal utility player: Has there been any work done on measuring hitter performance based on the quality of pitcher they are facing?

You’d expect a hitters wRC+ vs “bad pitchers” (however you wish to define that) to be higher than when they face “good pitchers”. But I wouldn’t expect the rate of performance drop to be consistent at all across MLB hitters.

For example, anecdotally, I view Paul Goldschmidt to (obviously) be a great hitter against poor-mediocre RHPs and basically any LHP, but it really seems to me he struggles more than most great RHHs when facing “elite” RHPs (like Nola, Wheeler, Woodruff, Scherzer). This specific example could be confirmation bias on my end, but I feel like there is something to some players being “good against the best”

Ben Clemens: I looked at this once but I’m having trouble finding the article now, I guess that’s the downside of writing so frequently about random topics

Ben Clemens: There’s an expected performnace drop, and from what I remember, having a different drop in one year wasn’t particularly predictive of the next, but I’m gonna do some more research and get back to you, potentially in article form

Sodo Mojo: Given the cost and early results does this years free agent class go down as the most expensive per win?

Ben Clemens: It seems unlikely, just because Albert Pujols exists

Byron Denniston: When will the insane refrain that a young man should “just get TJ surgery out of the way” go away? This year has been horrific for that overrated, archaic medicine! It had it’s day, still has it’s moments, but we can do better

Ben Clemens: “just get TJ” has always been kind of crazy to me

Ben Clemens: like…. it’s major surgery. people don’t always come back. sometimes they get TJ again

SP: Think I saw last week that you’re out on Keibert – is this because of his poor defense? Offensively, it seems like production is catching up rapidly to consistency/quality of contact.

Ben Clemens: Yeah defense essentially. Whatever you think of his offense, I don’t think it’d play well at first base. And his defense is ‘maybe he should just play first’ level

Ben Clemens: I’m not enamored by the offensive production, just because it’s really reliant on softly hit line drives

Ben Clemens: Like, his quality of contact is not great! He’s below average in hard hit rate, barrel rate, average exit velocity

Ben Clemens: He does MAKE a lot of it, but he’s really slow, so grounders aren’t great. He needs line drives to make it click

Ben Clemens: it just doesn’t sound like a profile I want from a bad defensive catcher

SP: Do you ever play Marvel legendary? If so, what are your thoughts?

Ben Clemens: I played it early on in my adult board game journey, as in when my wife and I walked into a store and were like ‘recommend us some games;

Ben Clemens: Loved it, played a ton, I think that deckbuilders like that are super fun. We’ve moved on, but we play a lot of similarly styled games. Aeon’s End is probably my favorite of the genre

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

Princess Leia: Roll with CES, Ke’Bryan Hayes, or Candelario in a points league this week?

Ben Clemens: This was the full message in Star Wars, kinda messed up that they cut it off short

Ben Clemens: also this is a good spread of Star Wars sounding names. Jeimer Candelario could totally be a smuggler in Mos Eisley

Ben Clemens: Let’s see. I might actually go outside hte box and take Ke’Bryan

Ben Clemens: The other two have tough pitching slates, whereas he gets the Royals and the bad part of the Cardinals rotation (Hudson, Drew Rom, Wainwright)

Ben Clemens: He’s been leading off, too, so lots of opportunities against these awful pitchers

Ben Clemens: (I’m assuming this is weekly rosters)

Derek: Don’t look now, but Ke’Bryan Hayes is raking! And his underlying metrics seem to support the results! Is he finally “figuring it out”?

Ben Clemens: Oh, I’m looking now

Ben Clemens: I’m always looking, I can’t help it

Ben Clemens: I’m sure I’ll get sucked in again next year

Nick: With Strasburg’s retirement, I’ve been thinking about how everyone was freaking out about how he had a *changeup* that could top 90. We’ve always had elite changeup specialists but never ones that threw them that hard. Was he the first of his kind in that regard? He feels like the harbinger of pitch gifs.

Ben Clemens: My initial instinct was Felix

Ben Clemens: and looking back at it, he averaged 89.2 on his changeup in 2009

Ben Clemens: and hey, now that I look at it, Strasburg never actually topped 90 in average velo, though obviously he threw quite a few of them that hard

Ben Clemens: so yeah, I’ll say Felix slightly predated him, but that both did a lot to put the pitch GIF era on the map

Bryzzo: I am still very sad about Shohei. What do you believe to be the most likely outcome for his rest-of-career pitching? If he turned into a relieve like Kerry Wood, how does that work with the DH? Can you DH and then come into the game later on from the bullpen?

Ben Clemens: I think that warming up would be really difficult, and you’d have to lose the DH, but there’s no rule against it specifically. I think I’d prefer to have him play outfield if he wasn’t going to start, though. Hey, it worked for Babe Ruth

bosoxforlife: The Mets are now comfortably ensconced in last place. It is very seldom that anything drops to its 1% probability but this has to come awfully close. The story of the season is actually the complete disintegration of so many highly rated teams. Even a $10 parlay on the Mets, Cardinals, Padres and Yankees all finishing below .500 would have set one up for life.

Ben Clemens: Yeah, the story is less ‘topsy-turvy standings’ than ‘some good teams were BAD’

Ben Clemens: AGain, the Yankees didn’t completely disintegrate, they’re in last place with a better record than the Guardians, but still a very disappointing year

Ben Clemens: The other three? Hindenburgian

Insert Witty Name Here: Food ?: how often do you stick with what you like vs making something new that may or may not be good? Follow up question, how do I tell my partner to make meals that don’t use our entire supply of cookware that I have to clean afterward?

Ben Clemens: Ah, now THIS is a question that’s in my wheelhouse

Ben Clemens: I try new things a lot when I’m cooking for two, and almost exclusively old standards when I’m cooking for one

Ben Clemens: As for cookware, I don’t mind that so much, I’m a clean as you go type. The big adjustment for me has been buying a lot of bowls so that I don’t have to IMMEDIATELY clean something for use later in a recipe

Guest: Also worth pointing out re: “Strasburg isn’t honoring his contract” that the injuries have taken a toll on him to the point where even basic everyday tasks are painful for him, so it’s not exactly an apples-to-apples argument.

Ben Clemens: Yeah I mean, he’s not able to play

Ben Clemens: no one is disputing that

Ben Clemens: the question is just whether he’s obligated to keep faking the motions in order to get his money, and I think it’s reasonable for team and player to decide that the right answer is no

Jrod: Am I putting myself in consideration for AL mvp votes?

Ben Clemens: 100%

Guest: Why is Nootbaar’s injury described as an abdomen?

Ben Clemens: because we can’t say that he got hit in the noots

mmddyyyy: Is there a systemic reason the central divisions are weak?

Ben Clemens: The best argument I have is a geographical one

Ben Clemens: The biggest cities and thus budgets tend to congregate on the coasts

Ben Clemens: That’s particularly true since Texas has two teams that are both in the “west”

Ben Clemens: instead of the central; Houston is pretty much due south of Kansas City, for example

Ben Clemens: but really, what it comes down to is that rust belt cities don’t spend like New York/LA/SF/Texas

Ben Clemens: I think that’s a huge structural issue

J: When’s the last time an MLB season has been this surprising? I think there are going to be exceedingly few pre-season predictions that got even 7 of 10 playoff teams correct, depending on how things shake out this next month.

Ben Clemens: This sounds like a great question to answer with our playoff odds, so I’m probably going to write something about this at the end of the year

Ben Clemens: but it also gives me a chance to look at my own predictions. I got: BAL, HOU, MIN, SEA, TBR, LAD, ATL, and potentially the Giants

Ben Clemens: so like…. yeah not great

Ben Clemens: randomly sampling someone else, Dan Szymborski got: ATL, LAD, MIL, HOU, TBR, SEA, and maybe TOR

Ben Clemens: I feel like the real surprises have not been the misses — yeah almost everyone had the Cards Mets and Padres making it, but it’s not like there are THAT many other surprises

Ben Clemens: but just how badly those have missed

Ben Clemens: no one picked any of those teams to finish where they did in the division

Colton: Cardinals said they were going to be in play for 3 SP’s this offseason, one of which being the Nola, Urias or Snell. For a team that’s never went out and spent big in free agency this is a bit of a red flag in my opinion because it signals desperation to me and that they really don’t know where the team is going. Do you have any opinions about this statement and the state of the team moving forward?

Ben Clemens: I think they should go be in play for three starting pitchers

Ben Clemens: if you made me pick two weaknesses of the current Cardinals regime, it’d be developing pitching and understanding when they need to push the budget to make up for internal weakness

Ben Clemens: The ’16-’19 Cardinals were notable because they had some nice homegrown players, and the team did NOTHING to support them in free agency

Ben Clemens: so I think this is a welcome change. Like, obviously their pitching is bad

Ben Clemens: I don’t think sticking their heads in the sand this winter would make me MORE confident in them

mmddyyyy: Would the trade deadline go differently the year before an expansion team/draft?

Ben Clemens: It would for sure, but how much differently would depend on the timing of roster protection. Basically teams that have really stuffed rosters would more aggressively try to consolidate, because they know a lot of the players they’re trading would get taken in an expansion draft otherwise

Trout: Sean Murphy’s second half wRC+ is lower than any of his individual months. How is that?

Ben Clemens: It’s because halves don’t break up evenly by months, they split at the All Star break. Murphy hit .444/.524/1.111 in six pre-ASB games in July, goodness

Ben Clemens: And then .105/.227/.132 the rest of July, whoops

Ben Clemens: that’s a heck of a one-month turnaroudn though

Mike: Does the service time construct still work in today’s MLB, especially as it relates to relievers who are shuffled back and forth, pitch three innings to save a bullpen and then go back down immediately?

Ben Clemens: No, it’s pretty detrimental to pitchers particularly, like you said

Ben Clemens: I think that’s unlikely to get bargained away meaningfully, though. THe system doesn’t value relievers much if you use them that way, so teams are just gonna keep doing it. It’s cost effective and also just effective

Baseball Philosopher: Re. marginal utility player question. I have always been curious about a “strength of schedule” type metric. Would be interesting to see, over a season long, who faced the “easiest” and “hardest” pitchers. Same for a career too!

Ben Clemens: Yeah this would be really cool, I think

Wither Wander: I’m a bit surprised that FanGraphs hasn’t had any pieces about the troubling reports behind the absence of one of the game’s biggest names and brightest starts from one of its best teams. I always appreciate how FanGraphs handles difficult matters thoughtfully and with care, so when should we expect to read more about the Wander Franco move to the restricted list, here?

Ben Clemens: Probably when there’s anything on the record about it, but don’t take my word for it

Ben Clemens: That’s just when I’d feel comfortable discussing it

mmddyyyy: Are player agents paid when the contract is signed or paid? Thinking of Strasburg’s case

Ben Clemens: They’re paid as a percentage of each check the player receives

mmddyyyy: Do you get more questions about players who are struggling or players who are succeeding?

Ben Clemens: Succeeding, but only by a hair

Ben Clemens: I used to keep track of it, actually, because I was really curious

Guest: Even more un-fun fact re: injured lists: If you looked at both LA teams’ ILs and also included “pitching Ohtani”, not only is that enough for a full team, but it might be enough to win the AL Central itself.  By no means would it be perfect (back of the rotation and bullpen look shaky, 3B is middling, LF relies a lot on Adell finally turning it around), but that wouldn’t be an easy team to face either.

Ben Clemens: ‘win the AL central’, so you’re saying they’d be about as good as the actual Angels have been this year

Kirk: Mariners? Mariners.

Frame Frame go Away: All of the sudden the AL West is loaded with young catching talent that can hit. Which AL West catcher do you take next 3 years?

Ben Clemens: I think I’d do the unwise thing and bet on Diaz’s upside

Ben Clemens: I think the percentage pick is Heim, with O’Hoppe next

Freddie Freeman: Chances I set the modern era doubles record? I have 50 and it’s not even Sept 1

Ben Clemens: I’m looking this record up right now

Ben Clemens: 59 by 2000 Todd Helton, wow

Ben Clemens: ZiPS actually projects him to tie the record

Ben Clemens: that’s amazing

Ben Clemens: I think there’s a 40% chance of you setting it, I could see the Dodgers sitting him

Greedo: Oona goota Candelario?

Ben Clemens: flows right off the tongue

mmddyyyy: Is the list of things you liked this week a living document or is it born every Thursday night?

Ben Clemens: It’s more the former than the latter for sure, and it’s usually done Thursday afternoon

Ben Clemens: I just keep a notes document in my phone, and every time I see a play I like, I write it down

Ben Clemens: then I look at those, pick a few favorites, and go over what I’m thinking with Meg

Ben Clemens: sometimes I’m a few short, or two of them don’t play well together, and we have to improvise – I’d say 10% or so are suggested by her rather than me. But for the most part, I know what I’m going to be writing baout before Thursday morning

Random Fact Generator: If Anthony Rendon was only being paid per homerun on his current contract he would have made $6,047,619.05 batting lefthanded.

Jason N: I think Todd Worrell had a 90mph changeup

Ben Clemens: Eh, I think starters doing it feels a little different, plus now a lot of guys do it. But yeah, I bet some of the big stuff relievers of the 80s and 90s would have a field day with Pitching Ninja

v2micca: How does Wheeler have half a game lead on Strider in fWAR?  They have nearly the same number of innings pitched, and Strider edges Wheeler in xERA, FIP, and xFIP.  I know park factors and team defense play a roll, but it seems like those shouldn’t be giving this much of a lead to Wheeler.

Ben Clemens: So, xERA and xFIP aren’t components of WAR, just FIP

Ben Clemens: so Strider has a lower FIP, but in an easier pitcher’s park. Then we add an additional transformation, we count infield pop ups the same as strikeouts

Ben Clemens: You don’t see this in our FIP, but it accrues to WAR

Ben Clemens: because an infield pop out is just an out

Ben Clemens: Wheeler has 10 extra on Strider, so that’s like 10K’s per our formula

Ben Clemens: it’s an attempt to account for the batted balls where there’s no luck involved, they’re just outs every time

Ben Clemens: actually, the park factors are kinda the same now that I’m looking

Ben Clemens: so it’s just that and the five extra innings

Sodo Mojo: I am guessing prime Randy Johnson Change Up was over 90

Matt Damon: MATT. DAMON.

RAH: I just wanted to say how happy I am that the Orioles are having a pregame ceremony in September to honor Adam Jones and retire him as an Oriole… this after hearing over the last few years that the relationship between Jones and the O’s was rocky and he wasn’t invited to different O’s alumni events.

Ben Clemens: Totally agree, I really enjoy Adam Jones and the more he is around, the happier I am

Alf: Is there a feasible alternative to TJ? Obviously nobody wants to get surgery as a first option. Are you saying that doctors/teams are too quick to recommend TJ?

Ben Clemens: No, I (and the questioner) were specifically talking about a strain of youth coaches/baseball thinkers who say “everyone gets TJ, might as well just get it out of the way”

Ben Clemens: I mean, nothing they’re saying makes sense

Ben Clemens: no one does this, and no one considers it seriously

Ben Clemens: it’s just a thing people say to provoke a reaction

Appa Yip Yip: My favourite moment from the HR Derby was when JD Martinez was giving Mookie a pep talk and telling him to just pull the s*** out of the ball in the air and Mookie said, “I don’t know how” what a player.

Ben Clemens: ah yeah that was great

Ben Clemens: it’ll be funny when he out-homers every other Derby participant

Ben Clemens: It looks like he’s only trailing Alonso right now

Joe: comment got cut or something. In a world where teams followed markets, the only teams currently in the MLB from the Centrals would be the Chicago teams. American sports need to figure out a way to get teams in the actual top 20 markets.

Ben Clemens: Yeah… I mean, or have more revenue sharing and mroe expansion

MLB parity: If you want parity in MLB, shrink TV markets of the east/west teams. Add teams to Charlotte, Sacramento, Portland, maybe even San Antonio.

Ben Clemens: Right

Ben Clemens: Particularly the South, Michael Baumann had an award-winning article about this

Ben Clemens: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-playoffs-arent-too-big-the-league-is-w…

Appa Yip Yip: The noots shot so far up into his stomach they rattled around like pinballs and bruised his abs

Ben Clemens: oof

Ben Clemens: that sounds awful

That Guy: Thinking about the Angels losing Trout and Ohtani’s pitching in the same day – can you think of a time that team lost more WAR in one day? I don’t think I can.

Ben Clemens: It’d have to be a team losing a great player early in the season. But on a per-game basis, nope

Getting tired of it: At what point do you say “F it”. and END a trade conversation that is getting….tiresome?

Ben Clemens: Oh man, I do this way too easily

Ben Clemens: In fantasy, I mean

Ben Clemens: if I’m not enjoying myself, I don’t want to keep doing it

Ben Clemens: I think that’s a completely reasonable reaction at any point. the point of a game is to have fun, and the marginal gain or loss from haggling over the finer points of a trade just isn’t going to be that high

Ben Clemens: just give a last and final offer and move on if nothing is there

Kretin: Ok, weird question for you. Where do Players keep their money? Like, do they use regular banking accounts like us or is there some sort of special account to store those millions? Or do they keep it in investment accounts?

Ben Clemens: I’m not a player accountant, but I have a fairly good idea of the general mechanics

Ben Clemens: There’s no special account; if you remember the whole Silicon Valley Bank ruckus, a lot of what caused that run is that there AREN’T special accounts for if you have a lot of money, and in fact having a lot of money in one bank account means that money isn’t insured

Ben Clemens: so the responsible thing to do is split the money you keep in the bank across a wide swath of accounts, each under the FDIC limit

Ben Clemens: And then yea, a ton of the money is going to be in investment accounts of various types. Athletes seem to favor venture-style investments, and private markets in general, so I would assume that some portion of their money is tied up in share certificates of various types in non-traded companies. But then they probably hvae a ton in mutual funds and ETF’s, at Fidelity or something similar

KC Pain: Will we have a knuckleball starter in the next 5 years or is that art dead?

Ben Clemens: dead sadly

Pat: How far back does the “thing you like” go? Other than the EDLC throw to nab Carroll at the plate, the best thing I saw this weekend was Parker Meadows walk-off with his family in the stands on Friday Night.

Ben Clemens: There’s definitely no hard cutoff

Ben Clemens: Kim hasn’t faked a 3-0 bunt in weeks

Ben Clemens: I just felt like writing about it

Ben Clemens: amazingly, I have something from that game, even from that INNING, written down, and it’s not Meadows

Ben Clemens: it was Miggy turning back the clock and breaking Ryan Pressly’s chokehold on the inning with some old school singles hitting

Pat: Joe is wrong. Detroit is clearly a top 20 market

Ben Clemens: I haven’t looked up markets recently, but I believe you

Ben Clemens: I think the point is just a braod structural one, the particulars I’m not perfectly sure of but the two central divisions definitely hvae the smallest average market sizes

Ben Clemens: if nothing else, each other division has either a New York or LA team in it

Dusty Runtz: If you were Ohtani’s agent? Wouldn’t you make him get TJS now? The longer he waits, the more money it will likely cost him

Shohei: Why doesn’t Ohtani shut it down for the year?

Ben Clemens: Dude loves baseball, in my opinion

C-Low: The injury to Felix is much more damaging in the playoffs where he can pitch every game than the regular season. How do the Os cope with such a loss?

Guest: Thoughts on giving Hall a chance at the closer job and keeping rest of bullpen rolls in place. Has the stuff and mentality if not the experience.

Ben Clemens: I’m kind of interested in letting Hall give it a try, that sounds fun

Ben Clemens: but yeah, this one hurts. I think they just have to hope the bullpen holds up, like what else can you really do?

Jake Marogersnik: Re team spending and market size, its not really down to TV viewers in a meaningful way, the people who own these teams are among the richest people in the world, they could spend if they wanted to. Detroit used to run a tax breaking payroll because Mike Illitch felt like spending the money, I don’t think the market was that bigger a decade ago

Ben Clemens: Sure, owners CAN do that

Ben Clemens: but like, on average they don’t

Ben Clemens: the AL Central played bigger when Ilitch was doing that

Ben Clemens: there’s definitely some correlation in coastal teams being owned by richer owners, I won’t argue that

HappyFunBall: Bryan Woo … the skills are tremendous but with an innings cap looming large I have trouble starting guys who I don’t think will go deep enough to earn a QS. Do you think he’s going to be allowed to approach 100 pitches in an outing at all the rest of the year?  Not just his own IP limits are in question, but thinking specifically about SEA not wanting to aggravate his injury

Ben Clemens: Yeah, I think they’re going to treat him with kid gloves

Ben Clemens: very tough from a fantasy perspective

Buster Olney: Who is the best historical comp to Kim Ha-seong?

Ben Clemens: I’m actually partial to Baseball Reference’s similarity scores for him, Brian Dozier but with better defense

Billy: How do you feel about teams using the threat of moving to get more tax dollars for stadiums? After the A’s, it seems like Milwaukee, Tampa, Baltimore, and potentially Anaheim could all use threats to move their teams in the upcoming years. Do you see cities like Portland, Nashville, Salt Lake City, Charlotte, etc being used as leverage for new stadiums before they get expansion teams?

Ben Clemens: I don’t like it, haha

Ben Clemens: I think it’s pretty gross, and I’m not gonna lie, I am enjoying how poorly this is all going for John Fisher

Ben Clemens: I hope the Vegas project brings him nothing but vexation

Ben Clemens: the Milwaukee shakedown is also really frustrating

Ben Clemens: I don’t know what to say; I think this is a real downside of baseball, I don’t like it, and yet I still like the sport in spite of all the money they’re extracting from local and state governments

Farhandrew Zaidman: Don’t look now but the Dodgers are on a 100 win pace…

Ben Clemens: always bet on the dodgers

Ben Clemens: i mean, unless we’re talking ‘To win the World Series’

KC Pain: Slade Cecconi good SW name?

KC Pain: or his wingman Blade Tidwell?  (Meant to he one big SW question but fat fingered on phone)

Ben Clemens: Oh man, these are both excellent Star Wars names

Ben Clemens: Slade Cecconi was Poe Dameron’s wingman 100%

Ben Clemens: Alright, we’ve hit the one hour mark and I have to go finish writing about how the Rangers are falling apart. Have a great day, everyone, and hey, the Rangers are falling apart

Ben Clemens: Read all about it here tomorrow

Lake Meade: Don’t worry, y’all, I’m taking John Fisher down with me.

Ben Clemens: Fine one last comment 🙂