JotCast | Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat

Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat - 2/19/26

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Ben Clemens

1:02

'Will the Dodgers defeat their greatest hardship - the fact that sometimes the risotto in the team buffet for lunch is gummy?'

like, I'm not clicking on that story

Appogies

1:03

I accidentally hit sent again before finishing and called “Crabcakes” “crapcakes”. I’m sorry crabcakes.

Ben Clemens

1:04

there's another comment that goes with this, but I wanted to put this one first, out of order, b/c it made me laugh

Response to crapcakea

1:04

I feel like the optimization of player approaches has become too cookie cutter. Luis Arias seemed like a bat to ball savant who could use his fringe power to hit thr ball 330-370 feet down the left field line for home runs. It turns out he only ended up hitting the ball 290-320 feet. Optimizing his skills look very different.

Ben Clemens

1:04

Yeah, for sure

1:05

that said, I do think teams are doing more than we see to work on this

we just don't hear about it

Arraez was a lot better before he bought into the 'you must never strike out' myth, for the record

like, he's become more unique, but less good

1:06

I don't know if you've looked at his graph on the Squared-Up Explorer, but it's silly. just like, a straight vertical line at 90% squared up rate ,with the softest bat speed in baseball

Jack

1:06

How do you feel about the Orioles pitching moves so far? I like the Helsley bounce back buy, and Baz is controllable if a bit underwhelming and has injury risk, and Bassitt is a floor raiser. But get the sense that "more" or "bigger" would have been preferred by the fans

Ben Clemens

1:06

I like a lot of them in isolation, but I'm not bought in on the overall strategy

1:07

they're probably gonna get an offseason overview treatment in the same vein as the Mets and Red Sox now that the heavy lifting of getting the Lab running is done

Tacoby Bellsbury

1:07

I'm clicking on the Dodgers headline about the risotto because I know Baumann wrote it.

mike

1:08

Are we supposed to believe that losing Lopez and replacing him with a guy with a 5 ERA is only going to cost the Twins 3 wins? I'm not sure I get how pitcher war reflects reality here?

Ben Clemens

1:10

I mean, you probably are. one way to think about it is 150 innings of Lopez's 3.75 ERA is 62.5 runs, 150 innings of a 5 ERA is 83 runs

20 runs in 25 starts. the guy allows an extra run a game or so, and it'll probably be chunked out, plenty of games with many extra

1:11

i mean, just as another example that isn't proving much but shows how noisy this stuff is, Lopez made 14 starts, 75 innings, 2.74 ERA 5-4 record. Zebby made 16 starts, 79 innings, 5.56 ERA, 5-6 record

don't use win/loss records

but also don't overestimate how many wins you can add with one dude

Surplus Valuez = Stolen Wages

1:11

Pete Alonso and Gunnar Henderson or Kurtz and Wilson?

Ben Clemens

1:12

Pete and Gunnar for me by a bit

like... I love Kurtz

I am verrrry skeptical of Wilson

Arraez and sliding scale for square up rate?

1:12

I was just about to reply about his squared up stats when you said that. Yes, it’s clear he should sacrifice some of that for more bat speed. I’d be curious what his 90% would look like. Also, does it make sense to create a sliding scale based on bat speed. As it currently stands, 80% is great for evaluating (part of) the hit tool, but a sliding scale would allow us to see whether guys like Stanton could go down to 65% to hit home runs with more regularity or Arraez needs 95% for extra base hits. I’m losing syntax rapidly but getting excited.

Ben Clemens

1:13

yeah, i mean, I think that this extra analysis probably has merit, I think 'blasts' or whatever are basically this

that's why we have the little table out to the right with bat speed, hard hit rate ,that kinda thing

1:14

it's tricky, though. it's not like there's an easy tradeoff between squared-up rate and bat speed. and then would you just want exit velocity by launch angle? I suppose that's what the endgame would be. maybe that's another option for the future, but I enjoy thinking about things in terms of how frequently a batter gets to the ball square, and then to think about bat speed on a seprate axis

EccentricATLFan

1:14

Just also saying that I'm yet another one who's finding the new FangraphsLab tools to be awesome (and of course cutting into work productivity). Especially loving the PitchingBot visualizer tool, and currently using it to see which pitches might be more interesting than expected. For example, currently looking at Colorado's Seth Halvorsen, and while the focus generally seems to be on his raw fastball velo (no surprise since he averages 100), it turns out that his splitter might be worth taking a closer look at since he seems to command it surprisingly well.

Ben Clemens

1:15

thanks for the kind words. I'm pretty excited to see what people come up with with these new tools

alright, I'm gonna call it a chat and go read some of the feedback we've gotten on the Lab. Again, I want to say thanks to everyone for all of their suggetsions. And I apologize for the lack of nonsense in the chat today, we'll have to make up for that next time

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