JotCast | 2025 Trade Value Series Chat

2025 Trade Value Series Chat

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HappyFunBall

11:50

But great athletes aren't always good at sports. I mean they are, but not every physical freak turns into a good baseball player. Sometimes they're Elijah Green. GM's clearly value the potential of a physical freak to become a top-10 baseball property, but it's only the ones that DO fully actualize those physical attributes that become one.

Ben Clemens

11:50

Yeah, I agree with this for sure

I just think that it's getting a lot easier to get the kind of evidence-based coaching necessary to get the best outcomes out of people than it used to be

11:51

not that it's 100% effective and didn't work before or anything

but I think it's inarguable that the game has changed. and the easier it gets to actualize people's skills, even if it doesn't become a lock, the more important it is to have other stuff

that other stuff can be Mookie Betts super-fast cognitive processing, you know

like, he's a freak athlete, mayhbe more so than these other guys

11:52

but I definitely think that, perhaps across all sports, training has gotten a ton better

and I think that absolutely has to play into how you think about the relative merits of various skillsets

Logan

11:52

How long do you think guys need to "prove it" for teams to be sold on their value? e.g. PCA who's been doing this for less than a full season, or Wilson, Kurtz, Anthony etc., vs. say a Gunnar or Carroll.

Ben Clemens

11:52

Great question. I honestly don't have a good feel for this. I can try to cuff how my various industry contacts feel about it but I have no strong reason to think that their views should mirror the league in aggregate

11:53

What I would say from talking to people is that the WAY the production comes matters a lot

like I had no problem getting people bought in on James Wood last year (he was #35 on the list and ahead of Langford and Holliday, who were both getting more hype)

11:54

and people took notice of Kurtz, for example. I talked about Kurtz a few times from the same 'man this very large man is hitting a lot of large man homers' point of view

but Jacob Wilson? I dunno, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence

you want to tell me someone can succeed by just swatting a bunch of bombs int eh same way that good players always have? cool, I'm in, I'll regress it but I'm in

11:55

you want to tell me that a guy is going to lead the league in chase rate, do off-the-charts damage on his lunges way out of the stirke zone, and play defense that recalibrates the scale?

i mean..... let's maybe get some more observations there

11:56

so for me, the PCA's and Wilson's of the world who deliver the goods in a non-traditional shape get more heavily discounted until they've done it for a while

while the Kurtzes and Anthonys of the world get less regressed

if Anthony were posting a 170 wRC+ he'd be a lot higher on the list

and honestly, if we did this list in Sep instead of July I bet he'd be higher too

11:57

maybe that means I'm doing it wrong. I dunno.

Talfred

11:57

Would you agree that the wider the range of possible career outcomes (this applies especially yo young players), the less likely the player is to be traded?

Ben Clemens

11:57

Yes, for a given minimum outcome

like, guys who are either out of baseball or useful utility infielders have huge variance too

but no one cares

but I think that the ones who have huuuuuuuge ceilings are less likely to be traded

Guest

11:58

Where would you put Ohtani if he were on Soto's contract?

Ben Clemens

11:58

same place haha. I really think the economic thing is just too big

and I really do think that it's completely unlike other players

I thikn that my general star accounting, based as it is at least partially on real-world returns in excess of surplus value for good players, probably already takes into account attendance bumps, marginal marketing bumps, etc.

I just think Ohtani is operating on a different scale

11:59

let me put it this way. I did trackers based on a Monte Carlo simulation for the likeliest days for Judge to hit his 62nd and for Pujols to hit his 700th

popular articles, fun tools

12:00

I did one for when Ohtani might hit 50/50, and a Japenese TV station put two people on a plane, flew them to SF, did an hour and a half interview with me in my apartment, and put it on the air

we're talking about a huge group of baseball fans, very united in their fandom of the best player in baseball, and as a whole a super rich country

Michael Jones

12:01

Maybe I'm the weird one, but I feel like Acuna is the only player in the league who is on the right side of 30, has put up an MVP season, and is on a deal that literally every single team could afford. If he were put on the market there would be no one who would be automatically excluded because of his contract. He's come off the second ACL tear hitting at essentially his MVP level.

Ben Clemens

12:01

yeah, I could see it

I think that if he were around for five years still, I could maybe talk myself into it?

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