JotCast | Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat - 12/6/2021

Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat - 12/6/2021

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Ben Clemens

2:00

Hey everybody, welcome to the chat.

2:01

It's the first one of the locked out era, but I don't think that's meaningfully different than your average offseason chat. In other words, let's talk baseball, but also I'm going to answer questions about food and board games and OOTP and whatever.

aj

2:01

with minoso and buck o'neill now in the HOF and dick allen, bruce bochy, and mcgriff presumably in on their next chance, who do you consider the best cooperstown candidates still outside the hall? personally, i have keith hernandez, grich, whittaker, dahlen, munson and mccormick

Ben Clemens

2:01

That list seems quite reasonable to me. Bill Dahlen is a guy I only know from OOTP but he was amazing!

He just happened to not become a legend, I guess

Bernie Sanders

2:02

How was your trip to Venice? I've heard varying things from people who visited there -- some loved it due to its beauty, some thought it was too crowded/overrated.

Ben Clemens

2:02

I loved it!

It's very beautiful, and a big upside of going in November is that no one was there

Seriously, we went to Santa Maria Gloriosa, which is a big church with cool art inside

2:03

Saw two Titians and a statue by Donatello, for a 3 Euro entry fee, and we were legitimately the only people in the church

The streets were pretty empty as well, which was really cool in such a picturesque place

Was it freezing? Sure!

2:04

But things were cheap and fun, I'll take the tradeoff

Appa Yip Yip

2:04

WoT?

Ben Clemens

2:04

I don't have Prime, believe it or not

I'm considering getting it for WoT though

Drew

2:04

Are you surprised they Padres didn’t make a hard run at Marte. Not a bad contract and his defense would look great in LF. Plus, the base-running man. Imagine a 2023 line-up with Tatis, Abrams, Marte, Kim, Grisham, Machado, Crowenworh. They could steal 300 bases.

Ben Clemens

2:05

I'm not, to be honest. I think they're probably uncomfortable adding much payroll from here, at least on Marte's scale

Normally I'd say 'oh you dang cheap teams', but the Padres are running the fourth-highest projected payroll for 2022 at the moment

2:06

193 million before benefits

Feels like there are better ways to address the outfield, and I'd prefer not to sign Marte if I weren't using him in center

Farhandrew Zaidman

2:06

Are we underselling the Muncy injury? Seems like it could be a legit season-ending (avoiding?) injury and the Dodgers' infield isn't as deep as it once was.

Ben Clemens

2:06

Yeah, definitely a big wild card in their season

2:07

It's hard to handicap the odds of him missing significant time because we don't actually know that much about the injury

2:08

I think that's another reason bringing back Chris Taylor makes sense -- if Bellinger is gonna be playing a decent amount of first, Taylor's ability to play a middling CF matters more

and it also means that if Muncy misses the whole season and the team wants to pick up a one-year rental bat kind of guy to make the lineup work, they can sign someone who plays any of outfield, second, or first, and then shift things around

Farhandrew Zaidman

2:09

Is the Schoop-Castro-Baez-Candelario infield core strong enough to support a 95 win team if the pitching is there? I can't shake the "good-not-great" evaluation I have for them.

Ben Clemens

2:09

I think it's good enough if it's not the core strength of the team

2:10

Plenty of good teams have just-okay infields. The Brewers won 95 games with a meaningfully worse group

2:11

Plus, you can add Tork to that list at some point which will make the whole thin work better

I think it's enough, but I would not want to be in the situation where you end up with average pitching, an average outfield, and that infield

Paul

2:12

I think any hypothetical 95 Tigers team has Spencer Torkelson in its infield

Ben Clemens

2:12

He could DH

but yeah, generally agreed

Derek

2:12

How are you feeling about your FA contract predictions now that ~1/2 of the Top 50 have signed?

Ben Clemens

2:12

I'd say that so far it was a learning experience, but that I'm happy with my overall process

2:13

The crowd and I both missed low overall, but I think that my estimates seem fairly unbiased

2:14

I would re-do my estimate for Kevin Gausman, I don't think I put enough stock into his realized results, basically, and leaned too much on my previous estimation of him

2:15

And the whole two-pitch thing worried me more than it should have, for sure

GBS42

2:15

Board game question: Are you a fan of Ticket to Ride? We started playing a couple of years ago and really enjoy it. Can you recommend anything similar to expand our options?

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