JotCast | Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat

Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat - 1/26/26

Ben Clemens

2:00

Hey everyone, welcome to the chat.

2:01

I've been on a deals rampage of late. FanGraphs has covered 8 trades or free agency signings in the last week, and I've written six of those. So no prospect questions, please: we have two great prospect writers who chat about them. No Hall of Fame or projection questions; you know who to ask those two. I want to talk deals, deals, deals

Klubot3000

2:01

Hi Ben! Are you doing the underrated prospects piece again for prospect week? I liked your approach and wondered whether you'd highlight someone fun like Jadher Areinamo!

Ben Clemens

2:01

I am not

Babip Roberts

2:01

Mets roster looks pretty well fleshed out at this point, but the outfield depth is still worrisome. Looks to me like they could use a righty mashing backup/platoon type who can handle center. Is there anyone available that fits that profile?

Ben Clemens

2:01

I don't really agree; I think you just described Tyrone Taylor, and he's on the Mets already

2:02

I think they're actually very well set up now, and I think that the Nimmo trade did a good job of that. I have an article mostly written, probably out tomorrow, about this, so stay tuned

Bill

2:02

Are we going to see any SPs exceed signing predictions? How do you see the market rolling out for remaining SPs (FA, Trade)? Why are there so many SP available?

Ben Clemens

2:02

I looked at my spreadsheet and I have been almost exactly bang on in my aggregate predictions to starters this year

the crowd has actually been about a million dollars low per player in aggregate

2:03

so I'm not exactly sure what you're talking about here. there's been a bit of a hitter slowdown, to be fair largely influenced by Murakami, but pitcher contracts have been basically as expected

Fin

2:03

What do you think of Bader's deal (more from a Giants perspective than from a Bader perspective)?

Ben Clemens

2:03

seems fine. Giants needed some outfielders

2:03

Conversely, are the Padres or Reds the 2025 playoff participant most vulnerable to failure in 2026?

Ben Clemens

2:04

I think the Padres, but I agree that those two are the most likely

Mr. Redlegs

2:04

Inspired by your post about Seranthony and the goal of signing a player just to trade for him. What's to stop the White Sox from trading him now? Basically sign a guy for $20M, assume most or all the salary and trade him for the prospect you really wanted? Seranthony gets his money, the Sox get the prospect they wanted all along and team B gets Seranthony for a full season instead of just the stretch.

Ben Clemens

2:04

I don't know but like, what?

2:05

This would not fly for any length of time

also why would that team do this? imagine going to your owner to pitch that

Ryan

2:05

Hey Ben! What do you think the market for Geno Suarez is looking like right now?

Ben Clemens

2:05

cold, gloomy

free agents who last this long generally do because their market is cool

tortycraig

2:05

2/20 pretty light for Bader?

Ben Clemens

2:06

light to my projections, but honestly given the context of hitters this winter, about right

mopete12

2:06

Can you help me understand why the 2026 projections on Steven Kwan's Fangraphs page project him with a negative dWAR? I assume there is a large negative positional adjustment for playing LF, but shouldn't the projections take into account his previous years?

Ben Clemens

2:06

I cannot!

but check back in a few weeks

2:07

when we've gone from transactions chat to projections chat. my guess is that something's messed up with defense until we fold in ZiPS projections, but also, you should really really not read too much into our defensive metric projections when half of our models haven't been turned on yet, in late January

also I see him as +3.7 Def on the player pages so I'm not 100% sure what you're talking about here

Mr. Redlegs

2:07

Why is it any different than hoping he performs well, still eating some money and then trading him in July? If everybody agrees now the Sox effectively could buy a prospect and Seranthony gets paid more than if he had signed with Team B in the first place

Ben Clemens

2:08

it's different because it makes a clear mockery of the signing process and the White Sox payroll

i don't have a lot of patience for pretending this is not different. It seems very clearly different unless you're being willfully obtuse

Jack Z

2:08

Are the cardinals overvaluing donovan? A lot of teams could use him and seems they've tried to squeeze as much out of other teams unsuccessfully

Ben Clemens

2:08

Nah, I think it's a good move

2:09

I think that generally holding out to be blown away is the right way to go on hitters with multiple years of control remaining

will it work out? not always, might get burned, but good bet

mopete12

2:10

Steven Kwan's page

Ben Clemens

2:10

weird, I now see this too but didn't when I first pulled it up, I think we might be doing some maintenance ont eh projections

in any case.... don't pay attention to it

it's wrong, definitely wrong, has to do with the way that some models regress defense

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