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Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat - 2/9/26

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Ben Clemens

2:19

Looking at both my predictions and the crowd's predictions for contracts, I was slightly high ($2m/player after adjusting for contract length) and the crowd was slightly low ($3m/player)

2:20

in other words, the way that we've predicted based on the past seems pretty good still

Mateo

2:20

do you have any winter Olympics events you're keen on following?

Ben Clemens

2:20

all of them

I'm a huge Olympics guy

2:21

woke up to watch Lindsay Vonn (oof), but then I spent a while watching women's hockey and the normal hill ski jump

who doesn't want to see the best athletes in the world play weird sports?

the mixed biathlon relay was amazing too

Naylor Sailor

2:21

Not a question, but I feel so much better about the Mariners roster now that they have Donovan onboard. Feels like the most complete team they've had to start a season in forever.

Ben Clemens

2:21

completely agree. I feel like the Mariners made a bunch of moves where I was like 'and one more...'

and then the Donovan move was the one more

I really like how things are shaping up there at the moment

Sanford

2:22

Aside from the Cards & Giants (& Dodgers naturally), which team(s) do you think you'll most actively watch on MLB.tv this year?

Ben Clemens

2:22

so a more honest ranking is something like 1)Giants 2)A's 3)other west coast teams 4)Mets 5)Cards

don't tell my family, but the Cardinals fandom has subsided to just a general appreciation, and eh, they're gonna be bad this year

2:24

the Mets are up there b/c I just love the broadcast booth, the GIants and A's are up there b/c I get them on regular TV and my wife is a Giants fan. Everything else, I try to just watch as much baseball as possible for Five Things, and I try to watch every team at least somewhat equally and also default to the home broadcast booth

Sandwich

2:24

Not a question, but a note: 3 of the 4 players Boston acquired for Devers are already out of the system.

Ben Clemens

2:24

yeah, let me tell you, my view that the players they acquired for Devers were unimportant and the deal was just a straight salary dump is feeling very correct in retrospect

2:25

Subjectively, I feel that i got far too much pushback for that opinion in my writeup of the trade and subsequent writing

but also, maybe I just feel grievance easily

the point is, the Sox clearly didn't do the deal for guys they HAD TO HAVE

2:26

given that they were willing to trade away prospects just to dump some of Hicks's salary, and also traded Tibbs for a reliever rental, it's not like they had huge grades on these dudes

Dave Kerwin

2:26

Sanity check: Is there actually any chance PIT acquires Paredes? Do they have the pieces to do this without meaningfully subtracting from the current roster?

Ben Clemens

2:26

I'm gonna say no, for a few reasons

2:27

first, this would be one of the worst imaginable fits of player and park

Statcast has a little 'how many homers would you have in each park' type deal. Paredes has 92 career homers, he'd have 57 if he played all his games in PNC. That's because it's death to righty hitters and while he pulls his balls NEAR the line, it's not like every one hits the foul pole. The cavernous left field expanse is still a disaster for someone with his batted ball profile

2:29

second, I think they're done after signing Ozuna

2:30

like, surely they COULD trade some prospects for Paredes, and they have enough that they could make it happen without getting rid of guys expected to contribute in 2026. But it would just be a weird and inefficient way to add offense, in my opinion

bosoxforlife

2:30

Devers had totally worn out his welcome with Red Sox management and it was seen as getting rid of a problem child and a contract that is going to be very ugly, possibly sooner than people think..

Ben Clemens

2:30

well right, that's what happened here

and then for about 3 months you had a lot of Boston-based writers, and national writers too, writing about how this was all about the talent acquired

and eh, it just wasn't

2:31

it was entirely about subtraction

Carlitoooos

2:31

Oh man, loved the tennis chat last week and was sad to miss it. Appelman realllllly should get into tennis stats. The state of play there is absolutely atrocious and it would be SO cool to bring FG-level analysis to tennis

Ben Clemens

2:31

I'd like to recommend tennis abstract if you're into tennis stats

2:32

their blog, heavy topspin, is somewhat of FanGraphs for tennis. there was an awesome one recently about Alcaraz's ridiculous combination of putting returns into play, and hten winning in-play-return points at a silly rate

wheelhouse

2:32

T/f: the yankees are nowhere near as bad as you’d think they are for how moribund everyone is when talking about their offseason

Ben Clemens

2:32

very true

2:33

I think they look pretty good! I love the deal for Goldy, as I just wrote about today

cutch22

2:33

Hi Ben, question about projection system and projected records. Big Pirates fan and love the ranking at 14, but questioning how the projection model can spit out a better record for the Bucs when they have lower projected staff WAR and lineup WAR than a team like the Reds. Writing an article right now about the ranking for a PIrates blog and wanted to get a better handle on this. THank you!

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