JotCast | Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat

Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat - 9/12/22

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Ben Clemens

2:00

Hello everyone, and welcome to a Monday baseball chat

2:01

A lot has happened since the last time I chatted (thanks, Labor Day), and there are both some fun playoff races and some fun milestone chases going on in the last month-ish of the season. Let's talk about it (plus whatever else comes to mind, of course)

Appa Yip Yip

2:01

Did Bo Bichette make the adjustment?

Ben Clemens

2:02

Starting to look like it. Someone here is going to be writing about him in the next week or so, not to spoil anything

Who's Fabio?

2:02

Ben - do you think that with Statcast there could be such a thing as measuring 'clutch' performance. I am thinking about Matt Chapman on a run scoring play from second where he was clocked running over 1MPH hour faster than his season average sprint speed. Is that clutch?

Ben Clemens

2:03

I guess so, but I guess I'm not sure that's clutch. I bet you every batter runs harder than their season average on plays like that. I feel like the clutch I actually want to measure comes at the plate, and I stlil have no idea how to get that

Bruce in 2023

2:03

Time to drop Luis Robert? Especially if he doesn't start tomorrow. Redraft mixed roto

Ben Clemens

2:03

Yeah... I think he's still a good keeper but there just aren't a lot of weeks left and he's not healthy

Derek

2:04

What postseason will be the next with fewer than 3 AL East Teams? 2029? (/s, kind of.) Yankees & Red Sox can basically always contend if they choose to spend the money they have available to them, Blue Jays don't appear to be going anywhere, O's on the upswing, Rays always Rays-ing. And the new balanced schedules are probably only going to make things easier for them! Meanwhile we have the AL Central...

Ben Clemens

2:05

Yeah, I'm trying to do the math

Ha, not really! I'm trying to pick a number for shock value

I'll say 2023 b/c that'd be funny but yes, the AL East looks extremely good top-to-bottom and the balanced schedule is gonna be a huge tailwind

Nathan

2:05

Sean Murphy is trending towards a 5 Win season. How does that affect his trade value projection (referring to the Trade Value series) going into the offseason?

Ben Clemens

2:06

I mean, he'll still be one of the top few catchers in baseball there, just like he was at mid-season. I think he's raised his stock somewhat, but there's also less time until free agency, so it nets out

Nas

2:06

I recently noticed Eduardo Escobar is third in batter fWar for the month of September(behind only Bichette and Judge). Does his hot streak move the needle with how other teams will gameplan the Mets lineup in October?

Ben Clemens

2:07

I don't think so, b/c the kind of hitter Escobar is hasn't changed. He's really aggressive, he wants to spray the ball, and he's gonna hit the ball in the air

2:08

Your plan against Escobar: make him chase or make weak contact up in the zone, b/c he's an excellent low ball hitter, particularly when he's batting lefty

blondie

2:08

Enjoyed the recent Aaron Judge piece! Any chance you’ve run the math on Pujols’ shot to get to 700?

Ben Clemens

2:09

I thought about it, but I haven't come up with a great way to do it yet b/c of his playing time being less consistent than Judge's. He's still part of a platoon for the most part, even if they're giving him some extra starts to chase the record

2:10

I think if it gets down to a homer or two and the Cards sew the division up (and also fall just a little further behind the NLE for the 2 seed), I'll start doing that, b/c at that point why not just play him every day

CoryMC

2:10

In the AL Wild Card round, what incentive is there to finish in the 2nd wild card slot? Finish 1st and you play at home. 3rd and you face the weakest team in the AL playoffs (Guardians). 2nd, most likely, leads to playing the Rays on the road.

Ben Clemens

2:10

The biggest incentive is that if you're in second and then fall off the pace, you finish third

If you're in third and then fall off the pace, oof

2:11

It could definitely lead to some chicanery on the last day of the regular season, though

2:12

It used to be that finishing as the top overall seed was kinda bad b/c you generally played a better opponent in the DS than if you were the second overall seed (the average WC winner is better than the worst division winner)

so they've just moved the weirdness

Tim

2:12

Liked the Karinchak piece, but more importantly, can we get a lip reader for that first clip? I NEED to know what Hedges is nonchalantly chatting with the ump about while he caresses those silky locks.

Ben Clemens

2:12

"Good technique, Ted!" is my guess

Insert Witty Name Here

2:12

Of course we’re going to talk rule changes for next year, how much of their ‘stuff’ do you think RPs will lose because they have less time to recover between pitches?

Ben Clemens

2:14

I don't think my guess has any useful information in it, because I haven't been a major league reliever and it's a tough thing to study with correlational data

"some"

lou harrison bader

2:14

I was wondering what your thoughts are on how a team might take advantage of the new shifting rule by dramatically increasing or decreasing the size of their infield?

Ben Clemens

2:14

You can't, as far as I know

so uh.... I don't think any team will try

Keith

2:14

The Royals have had a few young players come up with mixed results. What should their first priority be this off-season?

Ben Clemens

2:14

Travis

2:14

I have a dumb question. How come, despite hitting the ball significantly harder and hitting way less grounders, Julio Rodriguez has significantly lower expected stats than Michael Harris?

Ben Clemens

2:14

it's because of the way expected stats work, essentially

2:15

they're not trying to measure what the most valuable hitting profile going forward will be

2:17

They're just measuring how each batted ball does on average. It looks to me just from a quick check that Harris has done pretty well at flares and such that generally produce hits, but aren't particularly stable year-to-year

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