JotCast | Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat - 3/2/26

Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat - 3/2/26

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Ben Clemens

2:18

There's some good evidence that bat speed in spring training does a better job of predicting regular season bat speed than previous-year bat speed

2:19

now, how does that map to in-season performance? it remains unclear. but physical things have good correlation - bat speed, ptich velocity, etc.

Bill Dewallet

2:19

I think taking Kurtz over Griffin is the correct choice imo. The players who have put up a rookie season roughly that good as a hitter are literally just Judge, Pujols, him, and Jose Abreu. Like there is a legit chance Grffin has to be Trout/Witt to be better than Kurtz.

Ben Clemens

2:20

Yeah. I think that's where I'd end up. I totally understand that I may be in the minority relative to major league evaluators, who have a very high grade on Griffin

I just love players who have proven it at the highest level, what can i say?

dylan

2:20

any more book recs in the vein of the culture series (started & loving thanks to your mention of the player of games a few weeks ago)?

Ben Clemens

2:21

I'll do a quick little recent book reads thing because I've been thinking about this a lot lately and I like both giving recs and hearing what readers like. For the record, though, I don't know of a lot of other series like The Culture, maybe Asimov stuff? Maybe Ancillary Justice/Sword/Mercy?

2:22

Latest general fiction: Heart the Lover by Lily King
Not really my preferred genre, leaned a little more romance-y than I usually like, but she's an incredible writer and I'm just such a writing nerd that I loved this book anyway. I thought it was too short if anything - I wanted more of the rabbit holes to be explored, even though I think it was more of a gesture-painting of a book than something that's richly detailed in every corner. Big fan, gonna try some more King books as this was my first one

2:24

Latest sci fi/fantasy: There is No Antimemetics Division by qntm
Definitely my preferred genre, and the conceptual framework on this one is great. It's a really fun concept, the twists actually feel like part of the cohesive hole instead of just Shyamalan'ing you in the back of hte head every time, and the SCP style world is very fun to me. That said, the writing is uneven at times, and I think it's better as a concept than as a book. The concept is REALLY good though

Latest nonfiction: Breath by James Nestor
Really fascinating, made me rethink breathing and meditation, highly recommended

2:25

Latest re-read: The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett
Sherlock Holmes in a fascinating fantasy world. This one is one of my favorite books of recent years. I like a lot of Bennett's books and had read both of his previous series, but this one is even more to my liking. I think the writing is very good, the cahracters are very well developed, and the mysteries are just phenomenal, which is where some Holmes-homage books fall apart.

Shandy Koufax

2:25

For culture like stuff, foundation trilogy by Asimov is bang on

Ben Clemens

2:25

Yeah, good call

bosoxforlife

2:25

If you saw Griffin in his game against the Red Sox you might change your mind. He looked like a combination of ARod and Ozzie.

Ben Clemens

2:26

Like, totally. The potential! It's so high. Nik Kurtz played in 120 major league games and slugged .620 last year.

Oaktown Blues

2:27

I've thought about reading Breath but I'm worried it will make me aware that I'm breathing wrong and then I'll have to deal with that

Ben Clemens

2:27

Oh, it definitely will

and then you'll second guess yourself for weeks

so you know, be warned!

Shandy Koufax

2:27

When you started writing how did you balance the desire to get it right vs. get it out there.
it Seems easy to fall into the trap of “I need more work before this is ready”

Ben Clemens

2:27

well, we have to publish, so that helps

Kyle

2:27

What's the panic meter at with Strider fastball sitting 92-94 first spring training outing?

Ben Clemens

2:28

first start? not too high

some guys just need to limber up

but check again on March 15 and let's keep an eye

bosoxforlife

2:28

The Japanese stars who came over, Okamoto and Murakami, signed for amounts far less than what was anticipated. In today's inflated market, do you see them as bargains? Especially Okamoto at $15M/yr for 4 could be a great deal.

Ben Clemens

2:28

I definitely think that all three might be very good bargains. I am in the middle of finishing up a retrospective of offseason free agency contracts right now, and "NPB players all signed for bargains, maybe it's a posting system thing" is one of my big takeaways

2:29

That's a structural thing to look into for future years, because if you look at the major prognosticators, and here I'm counting myself, we consistently did very poorly on Murakami, Imai, and Okamoto

Shandy Koufax

2:29

My question about writing was definitely poorly phrased.
I meant when you first started on VEB and the like, before it was your full time job.

Ben Clemens

2:30

Oh, I missed 'started'. Mmmmm.... even then, I jsut had a schedule. Two articles a week, Tuesday and Saturday. And for those, I had to write them the night before, because it was a part-time unpaid job and I was doing a real life very difficult job. So I'd come up with a concept at say 7pm, and at 10pm, well, it was getting submitted

red sox

2:30

there was a quote a few weeks stating duran would platoon some against same sided pitching. do you believe this or is this just coachspeak? is there even a viable platoon partner to do this with?

Phil

2:30

Given Jarren Duran's looking good in spring, do you have an update on how you expect the Sox outfield situation to be managed, or is that like three weeks premature?

Ben Clemens

2:31

Yeah, this is how I feel about it: way too soon to tell. I think that one of the big edges I have on a lot of people in similar roles is that I just cannot keep track of all the coach speak and small sample stuff in spring training

I just let spring trianing wash over me as an experience

people like Jason and Jon are absolutely in the weeds, they know everything like this very well and keep track of all of it obsessively

2:32

I had to look up Duran's stats. I think that benefits me, honestly. This stuff is noisy! there's only so much time to analyze baseball. Dispositionally, I just need to be doing the big analysis stuff to feel like I'm learning, so I try to tune out the noise

now, come the regular season, I'll switch gears because you can start getting bigger samples and learning mroe stuff about in-game performance. But spring training? I can't help thnking of it as practice

Josh

2:33

What is it specifically that you think projection systems consistently miss on teams like the Brewers, and is it fixable?

Ben Clemens

2:34

I'm also currently working on an article about how our playoff odds turn projections into team strength estimates. I think that the Brewers' baserunning is overrated as a thing that projection systems are missing, for the record. I think that as a team-building strategy, it's underrated, but their XBR (statcast baserunning) was worth maybe a win and a half relative to league average last year, that's not enough for the kinds of big errors we're talking about.

2:35

I think that defense is a tougher thing. It's very reasonable to me that our projections are too conservative defensively, as in regressing things to the mean more than they should be, because our measurements are still too imprecise and thus noisy

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