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Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat - 1/5/26

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Ben Clemens

2:26

They'll do SOMETHING

I don't know what but it's been too long without any outfield progress, they need to find some kind of trade

Mo Jiggles

2:27

Speaking of FRV, has anyone delved into establishing equivalent values for FRV and wRC+ with respect to WAR? For example, 10 points of wRC+ above 100 provides as much value as x amount of FRV.

Ben Clemens

2:27

Well, it's all in runs, so this is easy enough to do. The tricky part is that we report weighted runs created for each player, but wRC+ gets turned into a rate statistic

so like, 10 points of wRC+ is worth different run values over different playing time. But +10 FRV is 10 runs

regardless of PT

2:29

as a rule of thumb, I looked at Steamer/600 projections, Andy Pages has 6.8 non-baserunning runs worth of offensive value at a 110 wRC+, Daulton Varsho has 0.3 non-baserunning runs of value at a 100 wRC+. So, 6-7 runs for 10 points of wRC+

Guest

2:29

Eflin and Mahle got the same contract. Is that a weak result for Mahle or a strong result for Eflin?

Ben Clemens

2:31

On the margin I guess the former, but I had them fairly close in my free agency rankings to be honest

Eflin was one of the last guys off, Mahle one of the last guys on

I think they're at least in the same bucket

Sacratlanta

2:31

Any key parallels you see between the Braves' and A's' extension sprees? I can't decide if the A's feels riskier now than when the Braves did it or if my bias is that Atlanta's effort was ultimately flawed.

Ben Clemens

2:32

The parallels are that the team is handing out a ton of early-ish extensions to key players, often before they hit arb, even if they're not obviously perennial All Stars

The Braves would feel riskier if they didn't get an Acuna level guy in there, imo

2:33

like, the MH2 contract has aged poorly compared to what we all thought at the time. The Strider deal will end up being good becuase it's already delivered so much value, but eh, pitchers break

Murphy deal, similar to MH2, it's a win but not a huge one

2:34

I'd argue that the Braves outcome ex Acuna and Albies (I'm excluding him b/c that deal was just silly, you can't count on signing another of those) was below average, and yet it hasn't really crushed them or anything

I really do think it's good team building

quonk

2:34

How are defensive metrics from before the advanced stat era calculated? There are plenty of discrepancies between different metrics for current players, how are we confident in Derek Jeter's dWAR, let alone Honus Wagner's?

Ben Clemens

2:35

We use something called total zone. I'm not intimately familiar with the ins and outs because I'm the modern baseball guy, not the historical baseball guy, but essentially it cares about how many outs you were responsible for making (and it handles errors somehow too) relative to the average player at your position

and it accoutns for innings and maybe fields and such

but yeah, lots of volatility for sure. we measure offense better than defense, and more so as we go back in time

bookbook

2:35

Is starting Colt Emerson on a hopeful WS contender unprecedented? (I don't mean THE Colt Emerson--because of course that's unprecedented--I mean a comparable 21-year-old rookie with very limited upper minors experience.)

Ben Clemens

2:35

definitely not

2:36

I was thinking Kristian Campbell, but maybe Jackson Chourio is a better recent example

Injury statistics

2:37

Do you think people will quantify how well a team keeps its players healthy or is there too much noise to be reliable?

Ben Clemens

2:37

I think there's too much noise

Big Buxton

2:37

Do you think it's fair accompli that there's a substantial lockout next offseason? Players and teams both seem to be operating under that assumption and the great uncertainty that would come with that. The media seems to be assuming that as well.

Ben Clemens

2:38

No, I don't. I think that it's obviously in the realm of possibility, but if you told me you were confident that it was either 30% likely or 70% likely, I'd wonder how you were so confident. There are still a ton of unknowns. I think it's more likely than it was six months ago, and that the Dodgers winning definitely pushed it in that direction, but no way is it a lock

David Wright Brothers

2:38

NYM fans keep asking if David Stearns has a specific plan, but is it more likely that he has several plans and just moves on certain things if the right price point materializes? Like, I didn't see them getting Polanco, but that opportunity presented itself.

Ben Clemens

2:38

sure, 'a plan' that has only specific players is a crappy plna

plans should have contingencies and whatnot

2:39

I think that Stearns has a strategy. I think that it is probably flexible on purpose. If you have a strategy for building a baseball team that isn't flexible, man that's probably VERY hard to execute

David Wright Brothers

2:39

Fans often say they want a FA signing period with a deadline. How would this work structurally? I get that a player might be able to only sign a one-year deal for the upcoming season after the deadline, but what would owners have to give? A high payroll floor? Thanks, Ben!

Ben Clemens

2:39

I think it'd be more like the NBA way, is my guess. It's not so much a deadline as a quiet period

a deadline is really tricky, but some enforced off days seems much easier

2:40

you could imagine them moving the winter meetings to the beginning of January and then having a transaction freeze for December

Scott

2:40

Thanks for the reply, Ben, and I'm sure you're sick of questions about IBBs getting special treatment in wOBA. But I'm curious to know why you're so confident that the season average method works really well. Certainly the range of imputed values is much narrower for longer timeframes, and therefore the effects are smaller and outliers are less extreme. But the impacts being small isn't the same thing as a method working well. How are you validating that an Aaron Judge IBB was worth about twice Elly De La Cruz IBB in 2025? Why is it fair to credit Oneil Cruz with a wRC+ of 86 for his 4 IBBs in 2025? It seems to me that an IBB has a theoretical minimum value at wRC+ = 100 and a theoretical maximum value at the value of an unintentional walk. I get that this doesn't matter that much, but that's just because IBBs are rare and not that valuable. You could justify doing something weird with ROEs or HPBs the same way.

Ben Clemens

2:40

I'm not valuing them that way. I'm just saying 'that player didn't get a chance to bat. bummer. well, we have another estimate of what they do when they bat - what they did when they batted. let's use that'

seems like pretty sound reasoning

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