JotCast | Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat - 2/28/22

Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat - 2/28/22

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Ben Clemens

2:25

That said... the league is acting like it will feel no pressure at all but I think that it's not true in practice

They just might be better about stifling communication of that discontent

2:26

But if you're the debt-funded Marlins and you start worrying that you might not get your 80 million dollar check for nationally televised games and playoffs

Gulp

Guest

2:26

have you seen marco luciano? observations?

Ben Clemens

2:27

Haven't seen him play, but luckily our crack team of prospect writers just published their favorite ONE HUNDRED prospects

with a writeup on Luciano

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/2022-top-100-prospects/

Noah

2:27

If someone were to own an mlb club, treat minor leaguers well, and pay mlb players fairly like $3M for pre-arb players how many seasons do you think it would take for the team to continuously be a top 5 team in baseball?

Ben Clemens

2:27

I mean, I sadly don't think it's that easy

You have to spend at a reasonable rate too

2:28

and I don't think you'd really get anywhere by paying your pre-arb players that much extra, though paying meaningfully above the going rate and being easier in arb would probably help out long term

but the system is designed to give you advantages if you're willing to play hardball with your player comp

Joe

2:28

If the players offered the owners the exact deal the owners have offered the players would the owners take it?

Ben Clemens

2:28

Yes?

Guest

2:28

If a lockout means no pay for the players, isn't the contract broken and players free to sign in another league like in Japan or a big city in the US?

Ben Clemens

2:29

I think they might be able to while the lockout is ongoing? But I really don't know the answer to this

Greg

2:29

With so much of one's success as a hitter coming down to approach, it seems like there's somewhat of an unexploited market inefficiency in practicing for this. Do you think teams would benefit from implementing pitch tracking drills to help hitters improve their swing decisions? Why do you think this isn't done at a larger scale already?

Ben Clemens

2:29

I think that this is being done, and that the scale is hard to judge but is surely being held back by inertia

But yeah, absolutely

2:30

If teams aren't spending some time working on pitch recognition and tracking in drills, they should be

ha worant

2:30

(Edit) are owners whose teams are currently contending more likely to want to compromise? thinking abt reinsdorf in particular right now

Ben Clemens

2:30

I think mostly yes

But only mostly

2:31

Owners whose teams are currently contending but who have a nice sustainable model where they don't spend too much money and make juicy profits to plow back into the team

May not be

Owners who are built to win now and want to win more than they want to make money will definitely want to compromise

Appa Yip Yip

2:31

"why don't teams do x to help players be better at y" feels like it can always be answered by "because doing y is really f***ing hard" speaking of which is this the year Randal Grichuk learns to lay off the breaking stuff?

Ben Clemens

2:31

:)

If I had a dollar for every time a Cardinals fan said that

Well, I'd find a way to end the lockout with my newfound wealth

2:32

Yeah, baseball is tremendously hard

Better training methods help, but that doesn't make it not hard

The other guy lives in a big house too

Dan

2:32

Even if the players where free to sign and play for other league a brand new league would need stars and they would have to massively overpay for those stars to consider playing in a competing league. Mike Trout isn't worth 35 million if he has to play in front of 8000 people every day.

Ben Clemens

2:32

Yeah.... a rival league is just really tough

2:33

the players are too important

so you need to attract the best players... and to do that you need an income stream

Jeff

2:33

I remember your mentioning that you think Pena has a real chance to be a star in the league. He's ranked as a 55 FV in FG's top 100 with below average power projections (which is still very good!).

Could you expand a little on what you like about him?

Ben Clemens

2:34

I am not one of the prospect team, and they do a lot of good work on both making their own in-person, video, or data observations and getting a broad set of opinions from the team side of things

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