JotCast | Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat

Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat - 6/16/25

Ben Clemens

2:00

Yeahhhhhhh let's chat

But to be clear.... we're probably gonna talk a LOT about Devers

and probably less about lunch than I'd like to

News of the Day

2:01

Today's top story -- "500 Internal FanGraphs Error, 0 is Undefined". How can Red Sox fans use this as fuel to get John Henry to sell the team?

Ben Clemens

2:01

We're still trying to figure out the outage but I think there's a reasonable chance that Red Sox fans actually made the site a little unstable by hate-clicking on teh story so much

appa yip yip

2:01

"surplus value" escaping front office containment and entering general baseball discourse has made every conversation about trades worse. who cares if Devers' contract doesn't have surplus value he's one of the best hitters on the planet and worth every penny and framing it as "the Red Sox had to get out from under it" just capes for ownership and distracts from this fundamental truth about sports: the entire point is to watch insanely talented people do absurd things that regular people can only marvel at. we are here to have fun watching the game and Devers is fun to watch. the Giants did a good and cool thing and the Red Sox should be embarrassed.

Ben Clemens

2:01

I.... I mean, yeah, I feel similarly. I'm pretty freaking excited that I just suddenly get to watch Rafael Devers every time I go to the ballpark. That's cool

Phil

2:02

You would think that after all the money the Dodgers have spent the past 2 offseasons on Yamamoto, Snell, Glasnow and Ohtani (not to mention Roki Sasaki), that there is NO WAY they would need a starting pitcher at the deadline... and yet here they are relying on the likes of Knack, Wrobleski, Sheehan, Casparius, Gonsolin and a 1000 year old Kershaw. Do you think they count on the return of Glasnow and Snell to buoy them or are they going out and getting another arm once again?

Ben Clemens

2:02

I think they'll probably go get another arm, they just always seem to

2:03

I think they'll do it even if they're not sure they'll need an arm. they should. you can't fix it after the deadline, and well, why would you take the risk given how great the rest of the team is?

Oaktown Blues

2:04

Not me pulling the Jotcast link from the page source so I don't miss the Ben Chat while FG is down lol. Love these chats

Ben Clemens

2:04

Haha yeah I did the same to get in

Bosoxforlife

2:04

Before we get to the elephant in the room I want to give you a huge shout out for directing me to cross the Roberto Clemente Bridge during my trip to PNC Park. It was great!

Ben Clemens

2:04

love it. I'm very glad that was fun, it was seriously one of my favorite parts of the trip

Jim

2:04

What is the record for comments on a FG article? Will the Devers trade article break the record?

Ben Clemens

2:04

I don't think it will. It might set a past few years record, but we've had some bangers over the eyars. trade value posts, big trades, those tend to get swamped

Oaktown Blues

2:05

Hi Ben. Last year, you wrote the article "Brent Rooker Is Who We Thought He Was", about Rooker having success swinging hard in 2 strike counts, strikeouts be damned. At the time you published, he had a 34.6% K rate. He lowered that rate to 28.8% by season's end. This year, his K rate is all the way down at 20.6%, better than league average. Is Brent Rooker still who we thought he was? Is he better?

Ben Clemens

2:07

He might be. I'm with you that there's been an approach change. I think he's going to strike out more than he is right now, because it's hard to have a swinging strike rate this high and not strike out a bit more

I haven't decided if I like Rooker more with fewer strikeouts and a tiny bit less power like this

but hey look, he's still graet

anotherusername

2:07

I keep hearing/seeing that the Devers contract is underwater - is there a chance that the contract is not valued correctly as underwater in light of the Soto/Guerrero contracts? Or should those be treated as outliers?

Ben Clemens

2:08

Great question. I share your confusion on that point. I assume that the 'all the models in baseball' that Jeff Passan referred to also consider those deals underwater

2:09

The way I put it to Meg last night when I was pitching her on the way I characterized it in the article is this: I built a little modified surplus value calculator and overlaid ZiPS projecdtions and contract details for Devers. It's not perfect, but if you're dead set on viewing things in a surplus value framework, as in here's how much your production would fetch on an open market, I think my assumptions were reasonable

first WAR is worth less, bit of an escalating shape of WAR value as you have higher WAR, based on free agent contracts '21-'24

anyway, the first four years of his deal, counting this year, are fairly positive. tens of millions of dollars. the last five years are much more negative, 20s of millions of dollars

2:10

that's what people are referring to when they say that, and well, yes, the contract, taken as a whole, will very likely cost more per WAR than the going open market rate? But.... there's not really a going open market for players who post 4 WAR projected seasons. those guys can't be easily traded for or signed

2:11

if baseball awarded the World Series to the team who had the most 'above water' contracts, then I am confident that Devers would not be in demand

but what? no. that's not how it works. it's a bad contract for a good player, but players play baseball, not contracts. That's an oversimplification but I think it works as a first order pass

Eric

2:12

Would the Devers trade get less hate if it was done during the offseason since the ownership could immediately promise to invest the money elsewhere?

Ben Clemens

2:12

I think so

This felt weird, right?

honestly the winter felt like they didn't REALLY want to spend even

aside from Crochet, of course, loved that, and loved the extension

2:13

but like, a deal with an opt out after a year for Bregman? a rehabbing walker buehler?

so I am very skeptical that they're actually interested in re-deploying Devers's money. And I'm gonna be skeptical all year. At least if they'd done it in December, yeah, they could have shown that they'll use some of it

Key Flaw

2:13

You mentioned in the Devers article that you are a visual learner. You do know that learning styles like that was debunked generations ago, and the data shows that they cause harm in learning? Not to be a "well actually", but learning styles is one of the more persistent toxic ideas in education.

Ben Clemens

2:13

I had absolutely no idea. That's interesting. I love diagrams of things, they just click better for me.

John B

2:14

The Red Sox taking a lot of heat for dumping Betts, Bogarts and Devers for a bag of baseballs. But that group produced and insane amount of WAR for controlled prices (80 + WAR). Isn't this what you are supposed to do from a value:price standpoint?

Ben Clemens

2:14

Right, like I said, value:price is one axis that is important to pay attention to. You're not gonna get very far if you don't know how it works. But if that was the entirety of the correct way to build a team, wouldn't team building be far easier?

John B

2:16

Isn't Mark Prior as your pitching coach simply a bad omen? Why can't they see this ?

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