JotCast | Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat - 1/4/21

Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat - 1/4/21

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Mr. Burrito

3:21

if the dodgers buy a FA bat, say DJ, would they then try to trade pollack? and if they do, could they find a taker? he had a nice comeback year in '20 -- and feels like a solid above avg. regular at this point -- but could he be at peak value right now?

Ben Clemens

3:22

They'd struggle to find a taker this year, I think, just b/c money has gotten so tight everywhere. If they ate his salary lots of teams would be interested, though. The rebound doesn't completely pass the smell test to me -- I don' see him holding onto all the power -- but I agree that he looks a hair above average

As a bat, at least, advanced metrics are really down on the defense

Guest

3:22

How did Trent Grisham get so good, especially defensively, when his scouting report was meh?

Ben Clemens

3:23

Offensively, I'm not shocked

3:24

He made a huge leap in 2019, and it was basically power-based; he already had the eye to make it work, and Eric and Kiley always like his raw power, he just wasn't accessing it during games

3:25

As to how he became a good center fielder, there's a little bit of Harrison Bader to the way people missed on his defensive projections

He's fast!

Fernando Tatis-Buck Jr.

3:25

Regarding Grisham - front offices grossly underrated his raw speed

Ben Clemens

3:26

Yeah, basically this I think

The guy can fly, and I think it's just easier to miss defensive instincts a little bit on minor league corner outfielders

JR

3:27

Could Trammell be Grisham 2.0?

Ben Clemens

3:27

I think he could be a Grisham remix, maybe

I don't think the eye is tehre in the same way

3:28

Grisham consistently walked 15% of the time in the minors

Trammell has never walked 15% of the time in the minors

TT is a little bigger, though

And faster, likely, though i haven't seen any home to first splits to compare

3:30

Kind of crazy that Grisham had a 50 FV on his speed in the minors, but Bader had a 60 before becoming one of the fastest players period and Tyler O'Neill had a 55 and is 99th percentile in sprint speed now

I think it's just hard to accurately judge speed and separate it from game speed

Guest

3:30

Can Nick Madrigal's bat play at the big league level once teams start to shift more accurately against him?

Ben Clemens

3:31

Yeah, at least in a David Fletcher kind of way.

That's not a bad outcome; Fletcher is a nice player

3:32

It's not like Madrigal is easy to shift against or something, either

He sprays the ball and is fast

Kurt

3:32

What would you do to fix MLB's problem of player compensation and free agency?

Ben Clemens

3:32

Nothing like a little gimme question at the end of the chat :)

3:33

That said, I think the main thing I'd do to change the game is drastically raise the minimum salary (to either 1.5mm or 2mm)

and revamp the arbitration system

This can come at the same time as some kind of reasonable revenue split, I'm not saying players should just get way more money in perpetuity

3:34

The way the system works now just creates bad incentives. Changing the relative production/valuation ratio of younger players and older players seems like the easiest way to fix this

As long as you can keep getting three years of Blake Snell at 600k per, and then the next four years cost you 10 million per (or whatever, painting with an extremely broad brush), teams are going to act accordingly

LenFuego

3:34

Your recent Best of 2020 post about Bauer’s late 2019 experiment kind of begs for a follow-up for 2020 based on his Cy Young results ... any plans to look at whether the experiment continued?

Ben Clemens

3:35

I didn't bother to, b/c here's the one word summary: Yes

3:36

8 of the 10 highest single-game four-seam spin rates that Bauer has produced in ihs entire career were in 2020

The other two were in September 2019

Guest

3:38

Does that make him a riskier buy given that there's a chance that once he gets some money he'll go back to his moral high ground and try to beat guys without his sticky stuff?

Ben Clemens

3:38

I mean, you could just ask him that

But nah, I don't see it.

It's a weird moral high ground to take, anyway

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