JotCast | Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat - 2/22/21

Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat - 2/22/21

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Ben Clemens

2:12

It's incredibly insulting

How well do you think Mather speaks Japanese?

angry

2

Julio Rodriguez learned English as a teenager and has already conducted interviews exclusively in English

2:13

Get the hell out of here with insulting someone for their language skills

Sharps

2:13

What stat(s) should I teach my baseball fan family (who wants to learn) to understand to better critically think about baseball?

Ben Clemens

2:13

Oh, what a great question

2:14

There's actually a good old 538 podcast on this: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/batting-average-is-so-19th-centur...

The idea is to walk from batting average all the way to OPS and wRC+ to explain why we like those more

I think that wRC+ is a great one, because it's a one-number thing, but you can see that it works well because good hitters have good wRC+'s and vice versa

2:15

For pitching, this is a little reductive, but I think you could teach people a lot just by looking at swinging strike rate

Pitchers who make batters miss do well, and that's a good way of driving that point home

Baseball is a game about one person throwing a ball past another, the people who are best at that are great

Moose_Bolton

2:16

Is rooting for a team inherently supporting the negative aspects of that team? I have thus far been able to separate the negative things a member of an organization has done from the "laundry" the players are wearing. How bad of a thing do you think would have to happen to completely negate that benefit of the doubt? I hope it never happens.

Ben Clemens

2:16

This question is something I always struggle with

2:17

I think I've settled on being honest with myself that teams are generally not bastions of morality

Mather said these things, but there's no way that plenty of other executives aren't thinking it

They're just not dumb enough to go on the record

I like baseball, and I like watching baseball, and I'm happy to just do that and accept the fact that major league teams mostly suck

2:18

In exchange, just call out the bad things that your team does and don't be satisfied with poor explanations of their behavior

2:19

Ethical consumption under capitalism is impossible, etc. etc.

Appa Yip Yip

2:19

Also re: Mather the dude straight up called Asia the Far East like he's some spice merchant from the 1700s like it's not the Far East dude Tokyo is closer to Seattle than London is I bet he doesn't think of London as being some far off mystery land. The casual racism here is infuriating.

Ben Clemens

2:19

Yeah, agreed

Dodger Fan

2:19

TO Sharps' question: What about defensive metrics?

Ben Clemens

2:20

I think I'd ignore defensive metrics, basically

Unless people are really big baseball fans, trying to explain the noise and signal in defensive metrics is just going to be more trouble than it's worth. You can generally reference them -- oh, Andrelton Simmons is a great defender, and both the eye test and statistics agree

2:21

But if you're trying to make people who don't like baseball stats YET get into them, trying to explain the plus-minus zone rating way that we consider defensive value is just overkill

Kiermaier's Piercing Green Eyes

2:21

Do you have a favorite Mapo Tofu recipe? This is a new dish to me, but I saw the Food Lab's version and it looks amazers.
https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2011/07/real-deal-mapo-dofu-tofu-c...

Ben Clemens

2:21

This is our favorite recipe, lol

My wife LOVES mapo tofu

2:22

I'd also say that a tofu press has added to our enjoyment

But this is pretty great, didn't even have to dig up the recipe because you sent it to me

Julius

2:22

Will Ke'Bryan Hayes see the next Pirates contender?

Ben Clemens

2:22

What a sad question to have to consider

2:24

I think he'll be on the next Pirates contender. Ben Cherington is not normally the type to trade away young controllable stars like that

Childish Bambino

2:24

Smart Baseball by Keith Law is a great introduction to advanced baseball stats.

Bookie Metts

2:24

As a Red Sox fan, I was not happy when the team rehired Cora so easily as if he wasn't one of the main drivers behind one of the biggest baseball scandals in recent years. My question is how do you think the Sox players viewed the move to bring Cora back? I would hope leadership wouldn't have brought him back if the player's objected at all.

Ben Clemens

2:25

I'm a lot less aggrieved by the Cora one, because he got suspended for a year, and I'm pretty much positive that if the team's best players didn't want him to come back, he wouldn't come back

Managers are far more fungible than stars

Guest

2:26

Not baseball, but the past decade has been... Interesting rooting for Ben Roethlisberger and the Steelers.

Dodger Fan

2:26

I drive past the mall where Julio Urías assaulted his girlfriend on a weekly basis, and it makes it hard for me to stomach the celebratory feeling I have when I rewatch him strikeout Adames to end the World Series. Do you have any advice on how to reconcile this?

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