JotCast | Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat

Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat - 2/14/22

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Ben Clemens

3:25

As a Tennessee native, allow me to assure you: there are no grizzlies in Tennessee

Particularly not in flat-as-a-pancake West Tennessee

(there are black bears in East Tennessee, where I grew up)

Tacoby Bellsbury

3:25

If the bases were run clockwise instead of counterclockwise, who would benefit most?

Ben Clemens

3:26

Lefties, is my guess

Suddenly they could play 2b, ss, and 1b instead of just 1b

and also 3b, obv... that would be an either-handed position

Appa Yip Yip

3:26

Did you know you can eat beets raw and they're crazy delicious? You can slice them thin and use them like crackers you just put like fruit and goat cheese and walnuts all over them.

Ben Clemens

3:26

I didn't but it makes sense

3:27

Beets are delicious and crisp, I feel like you can make thin slices out of any crisp veggie like that and enjoy it

Didace

3:27

"they also proactively locked out the players" Let's just say the owners didn't do this and decided to just go forward with the season without an agreement. What are the chances that around Aug. 15 the players didn't strike? I put it at zero. Implying the owners are the villains here is a canard. This is just a typical management/labor disagreement where each side is waiting for the other to blink. I'm not on anyone's side, and of course I'd like baseball to start on time, but this will be over as soon as one side - owner or player - decides it is.

Ben Clemens

3:27

Everyone's entitled to their opinion, and there's no disproving a hypothetical

But the players played without a CBA in '95 and '96

so there's precedent

3:28

honestly the players would probably be very happy to

there would be no CBT if the teams played without coming to a new agreement

why would they be against continuing on the same system? the new system the owners have proposed is significantly more onerous tax-wise

Guest

3:28

Congrats, you've been awarded an MLB team in Nashville. What do you name your new franchise?

Ben Clemens

3:28

Nashville Princes, if the hot chicken place would let me

3:29

Nashville AirBnB Regulations

3:30

I think I might try to connect something to country music if Princes is a no go

Inaccessible Rail

3:30

Wouldn't the Royals object to the name Prines?

Ben Clemens

3:30

They probably would, but I think it's a cool enough city shoutout and also different enough (depending on the logos and iconography) that I think it would be fine

Nashville Firebirds? another hot chicken reference, albeit a weak one

Teddy

3:30

Alex Bregman is a top __ player in MLB

Ben Clemens

3:31

This is a really tough one

I think I'm willing to bet on his 2021 being an injury aberration. I don't think he's about to replicate his 2019 season, but I'll say top 15

Guest

3:32

I'm largely baffled by the optimism regarding getting most of the season played on time. There's a chasm, which everybody acknowledges. There's also an end game of the owners, which nobody has a firm grasp on. If they want something extreme, like a variation of a cap system, why are we thinking the two sides are going to agree any time soon?

Ben Clemens

3:32

I'm optimistic that we'll get, eh, at least 140 games

The reason is that while I think the two sides are far apart and that a deal is not imminent, both sides have incentives to not sacrifice too much revenue

3:33

'the owners are all billionaires' is a bit of an oversimplification, in that a lot of them derive a ton of their net worth from the valuation of their team and many of them are pretty levered as well, in team-related investments that don't do well when there's no baseball

So I think that the ownership group will be a bit fractured around playing hardball while costing itself money in the short term, because some teams are already hurting cashflow-wise from 2020

3:34

it's all well and good to take a short-term loss for long-term gain, but if the long-term picture is already good for you (and it is for the owners, even if they "lose" the negotiation by going 85% of the way to the union's side baseball teams will be great assets)

Playing chicken with your short-term money is risky

3:35

I think the reason this negotiation has felt so fraught is because it feels more dire for the players

Appa Yip Yip

3:35

Plus owning a team is not a good investment compared to the stock market

Ben Clemens

3:35

I was going to write this article, about how Manfred's nonsense was nonsensical on that front

but everyone else did and the math was pretty obvious?

3:36

I'm certain that you could find a window over which stocks outperformed franchise ownership