JotCast | Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat

Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat - 2/20/24

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Guest

1:17

How do you feel about the innings projections for Sale? I know its really hard to predict but they feel high to me.

Ben Clemens

1:17

they feel very high to me as well

birds birds birds

1:18

Early extensions for superstars is obviously great business. But what about extensions for "solid regular, but not future MVP contender"? I'm thinking about guys like Westburg, Frelick, Wallner, etc. The Rays do these, which makes me think it's probably smart, but I don't see many of them

Ben Clemens

1:18

It's smart but you have to thread a needle for sure

Ben

1:18

How do you guys deal with when you, if you don't mind my blunt language, completely whiff on a prospect?

I seem to remember you not thinking much of Strider before his rookie year, for example, because you thought he had real reliever risk.

Is there a process you go through to figure out, like: "Ok, what did we miss here?"

Ben Clemens

1:18

Well I can't speak for the prospect team, but I'm happy to speak for myself

I miss a lot

I would feel liek I was doing a poor job if I didn't miss a lot, b/c my job is to have a lot of opinions about baseball

1:19

and a lot of these are like 55/45 leans

I definitely try to learn from my mistakes too, of course

Long answer in a lightning round but I have a work story from my finance days

I'm a big process over results guy

so I am hedging a trade, we get absolutely wrecked

my boss is like 'well do you think you did that right?'

I just say yeah, of course

he's like, well we got absolutely wrecked

'yeah but I think my process was good'

1:20

'do you have any evidence?'

well no

and this was just a fundamental disagreement we had forever

i update my priors VERY slowly

that guy was one of my closest friends in finance, worked with him at multiple places, we both did very well for ourselves via our partnership

and just fundamentally disagreed forever

1:21

on how quickly to adjust priors based on incoming information

both methods can succeed

Dylan Stein

1:21

So if the Padres do pull a rabbit out of a hat, and sign Snell, will Shildt give him more innings?

Ben Clemens

1:21

yeah I believe so

Dylan Stein

1:21

How long do you think it will take for yamamoto to get used to the MLB

Ben Clemens

1:21

not long. he looked good right away in the WBC

okay, on this note, I'm gonna head out

sorry to hijack a lightning round to reminisce about rates trading but hey, that's what you sign up for with my chats

more lunch talk next time hopefully

have a great week, everyone, and I'll see you in two weeks (gonna be in Oaxaca next Monday)

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