JotCast | Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat - 3/20/23

Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat - 3/20/23

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Ben Clemens

2:36

Randy Arozarena has been lighting it up, Juan Soto hit .400/.500/1.000 lol

Euji Yang, one of my favorite players who will absolutely never play in MLB, was a bright spot for Korea

Ohtani has been bopping, Moncada got scalding hot for a bit there

2:37

pitching wise, uh, maybe no one? The WBC is not really about pitching

Ohtani looked good, Yoshinobu Yamamoto was unconscious in his four innings, Roki Sasaki too (3.2 instead of 4 for him)

Luis Garcia had that epic performance against the US

Crone Zone

2:38

Let’s say everything works out swimmingly for the Cardinals. What position player do they end up trading from their surplus? Gorman, Donovan, Edman, Carlson? Walker feels like the only sure bet to stay

Ben Clemens

2:38

Gorman, I think. I think they'd have a hard time getting what they consider to be fair value for Donovan, Edman feels like a really good fit for the way they like to build their infield, and they'd be trading Carlson low right now

New UK fan

2:38

Just wanted to say thank for the options article - very much enjoyed it. Next up, Black-Scholes for baseball contracts?

Ben Clemens

2:39

Haha, no. I think one of the benefits of analyzing real-world options like this instead of derivatives-market ones is that you don't need a Black Scholes like formula with implied volatility and all that

You can just Monte Carlo it out without the need for fancy math

Let's just say I considered it at length when coming up with how I wanted to build my options models

tortycraig

2:39

most underrated benefit of the pitch clock is reducing the amount of time I ever have to listen to John Smoltz talk about the pitch clock in a game without a pitch clock

laughing

1

Ben Clemens

2:39

Pat

2:40

I'm a Tigers fan, I love fans of successful teams like STL complaining that they can't fix "broken" hitters..Hell, we can never get a hitter good enough to see what they look like "unbroken"

Ben Clemens

2:40

Yeah, Cardinals fans agonize over the team's inability to fix broken hitters. Other teams agonize over how the hell these guys on the Cardinals they've never heard of are just BOPPING

Brendan Donovan? c'mon, man, that's a create-a-player, or maybe one of the MLB The Show devs sneaking himself into the game

Lucas/DBITLefty

2:40

Hey Ben, hope all is well. I know there was a Volpe question in here earlier, so I'll frame it this way - if the Yankees end up making him the Opening Day shortstop, which at this point I think they will, what happens to Oswald Peraza? Taking it a step further, if they chose to trade Peraza prior to the start of the season, what would they realistically be getting in return? (I think it's much more likely they trade IKF.)

Ben Clemens

2:41

Yeah I think they'd trade IKF. I imagine they'd option Peraza rather than trade him, because it's hard to get fair value for a near-majors ready prospect type when teams are already mostly set for the regular season

My guess is that their ideal long-term consideration involves Volpe and Peraza up the middle in some configuration

RTJ

2:42

"even Mike Trout is going nuts" - well he must enjoy playing in a real competition for once.

laughing

1

Ben Clemens

2:42

Harsh, but fair

I have an article that covers this thought more in depth coming out tomorrow, but I really love the immediacy of the WBC

a lot of these guys have never played in a tournament like this since becoming professionals

Trout conducts himself all year like he knows he's trying to play hundreds of baseball games in a year

2:43

That's fair -- he's trying to play hundreds of baseball games in a year!

But when it's win tonight or stop playing, and you could legitimately lose to Fairleigh Dickinson or UMBC or Team Great Britain, the emotions flow a little more freely

Dan

2:43

Josh Donaldson has a ___ week leash with the Yankees before losing his starting job.

Ben Clemens

2:43

2

2:44

Myabe I'm just too down on him

But as Lucas mentioned up above, they have a really complicated infield situation, and Donaldson is the weak link in my eyes

Dave

2:44

Hayden Wesneski and Javier Assad are battling for the 5th spot in the Cubs rotation. Are they both already top 5 pitchers in the org?

Ben Clemens

2:44

I was really impressed by what Assad looked like in the WBC when he was geared up for relief

2:45

I think there's research to be done, maybe by teams maybe public side, on figuring out which pitchers will most benefit from a velo boost

or from a spin boost, or whatnot; from throwing harder in shorter intervals

Insert Witty Name Here

2:46

No questions about Soto’s injury yet? How many bags do you think he’ll steal this year?

Ben Clemens

2:47

Doesn't seem that bad? I guess we'll have to monitor it, but he looked fine in the WBC and it sounds like this was just precautionary since he hadn't done a normal spring ramp-up with SD

no clue how that translates into steals, I'm not a projection system sadly

Kevin

2:47

A friend told me baseball has too many TLAs (three letter acronyms).

Ben Clemens

2:47

they aren't wrong

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