JotCast | Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat

Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat - 2/19/26

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Ben Clemens

12:39

like we were looking at how to show Attack zones (heart/shadow/chase/waste) on FG, and you just get so many columns so quickly

Jeff in Jersey

12:39

Hi Ben. Thanks as always. Do you have a "dark horse" among the projected-to-be-around .500 teams that you have a strong feeling will surprise? Conversely, is there playoff-projected team you don't feel good about? (Mine: Reds might be really good if the kids make a step forward; Yankees are one Judge injury away from being a middling offense)

Ben Clemens

12:40

I would cheat and say teh Brewers because I think our odds are too low on them

excluding that, I think I'd say the Diamondbacks. There's a lot of risk but couldn't you see Gallen just shooting back to stardom and that driving a really good team?

12:41

oh, and playoff team wise, I think the Phillies are a lot more at risk than our odds indicate. they're always kinda injury-brittle, just because of how Dombrowski likes to build teams, and I think that leaves them very vulnerable on the pitching front this year

to be clear, I think Dombrowski is a great GM and that his method of building teams is smart risk/reward thinking. but there's risk!

Michael - FG since 2016

12:42

if I had good suggestions for an article suggesting real solutions for CBA, who should I email? I used to contact Mr USS Mariner but he abandoned us.

Ben Clemens

12:42

the community blog! Not that we publish stuff from it all that frequently, but we do, and I like a lot of the articles in it

https://community.fangraphs.com/utility-in-a-pinch-does-versatility-br... was the last one

Colton

12:43

Apparently Kurtz worked with Judge's hitting guy over the offseason. Have you or anyone at FG ever thought about looking into some of his stuff for an article? He's very abrasive and single-track minded, but he's had a hand in helping the best hitter we've seen since Bonds/Pujols and it doesn't seem like he's slowing down anytime soon.

Ben Clemens

12:43

Me? definitely not, not really what I do

anyone at FG? Couldn't say, I think it would have a lot to do with whether he's crossed paths with David Laurila, but it's not like our daily article roll is full of a bunch of reported interview stuff

Jack

12:44

Zac Gallen is so interesting to me as it feels like 2026 could be a huge bounce back year, or he could be possibly out of a job in a year's time (not just because of a lockout). What needs to go right for him this year?

Ben Clemens

12:44

Yeah, I'm with you

Gallen is one of my least favorite pitchers to analyze, believe it or not. I can't figure out what he does to make it work

and I also can't figure out what hcanged to make it stop working

so I will just say that he needs to get back the ability he had to basically sequence and disguise his fastball into usefulness

JamesStirling

12:44

Hi Ben, Who will get more holds in the Toronto bullpen, Rogers, Varland or Garcia? Who would be next in line if Hoffman is injured?

Ben Clemens

12:45

it's gonna be fun to see rubber armed Rogers and rubber armed Varland compete for this

I think it has to be one of those two. And if it were me, I'd go Rogers first up for more saves just b/c of his lack of platoon splits

but I'm not super confident in that

Nomar6

12:45

Just wondering what effect the new ABS system will have on pitchers heavily dependent on their sweeper pitch.

Ben Clemens

12:46

I'm gonna do a quick live search to answer this one

12:47

okay - 5132 sweepers taken in the shadow zone outside the regulation strike zone, 747 strikes (15%)

20% called balls on sweepers in the shadow-in zone, taken

12:48

so right now, the umps have been slightly under-calling sweepers

that said, i ran the same thing for changeups and it's 11% accidentally called as strikes, 24% accidentally called as balls

12:49

so I'd say that sweepers will probably be like a lot of other pitches

Velocity is a Vector

12:49

Why do we talk about pitch velo(city) or exit velocity when we really mean speed? Velocity is speed in a direction, but there's never a direction component included. Do people just like using big words?

Ben Clemens

12:49

we do, and yes, people like using big words

I used to try to write speed instead of velo on every single article

and eventually it's just like, no, sorry, the industry term is velo, you have to use it

Inspector Houlihan

12:50

If salary wasn't part of the equation, what silly baseball roster trope would you most want to be?

Would you want to be the bizarre reliever who brushes his teeth between innings, the hyper-energetic Kike Hernandez, crusty veteran pitcher who's been pitching since the Cold War, the Matt Stairs-esque pinch hitter who shows up to do one job in the 9th?

Ben Clemens

12:50

I'd want to be John Brebbia. I guess that's closest to the bizarre reliever

Square up explorer

12:50

is this career or single season based? Is there a way to see individual weeks/months to co hot streaks

is there a way to track square ip statistics on a week/week basis in comparison to hot/cold streaks? Could be useful injury return information

Ben Clemens

12:50

mmmmm..... probably not

12:51

to get into the nitty-gritty of it, the squared up explorer isn't actually calculating the bubbles live for every point of data you give it. I'm pre-calculating it because the math involved is annoy8ing enough relative to the raw stats that the webpage would lag

so i've pre-calculated the data and saved it into its own pre-transformed state for every player you look up. I think doing that for every span would basically be impossible.

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