JotCast | Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat

Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat - 3/23/26

Prev Page View Full Chat

Ben Clemens

3:21

but whatever, I'm just one man making a snap guess while I am knee deep in pitching depth charts

Mr. Fister

3:21

I guess call it a "bold prediction" of mine then. Misiorowski is in the minors by the ASB.

Ben Clemens

3:21

love it

it's bold, and possible

Farhandrew Zaidman

3:21

do you have a take on using ERA estimators versus straight ERA for purposes of pitcher awards?

Ben Clemens

3:21

i would consider neither sufficient, and both necessary

3:22

both can be very misleading

I think that if I were given an award vote (I'm not even a member of teh BBWAA, so don't hold your breath), I would not come up with a single rubric

when I vote for fielding bible awards, I first build an initial ranking rule, then do a lot of manual adjusting around it. I'd do the same if I were voting for pitching awards

3:23

I think that a responsible weighting would have to include both run prevention nubmers and the peripheral numbers that, in the long run, stably lead to good run prevention

bookbook

3:23

Won't it always be a problem that the return on investment in quality play for New York and Los Angeles and a few other big cities is just so much higher than it can ever be in Pittsburgh or St. Louis or the other half of the league? Never mind the market-distorting effects of Goodwill Tax-loss shelters, etc.

Ben Clemens

3:23

i mean, perhaps

3:24

but that's another thing that doesn't have an obvious solution without revenue sharing

also like, look at the differential spending bteween PIT and STL

3:25

so there's still plenty of variance even if you accept that some markets will have a perpetual advantage

bosoxforlife

3:25

What do you think of my bold prediction of Durbin outperforming Bregman at 1/30th of the cost?

Ben Clemens

3:25

very good one

cost I'd say is slightly misstated in that his salary is being held down in a collectively bargained way, and thus his cost came in players

3:26

but I think it's clear that Durbin outperforming Bregman is a bold take, and I also think it's more likely than the market has it

I noted in my third base rankings that I think Bregman is a weird fit for Wrigley, and like, generally speaking guys like Durbin have very solid WAR relative to their reputation

(defense matters, etc)

EccentricATLFan

3:26

Also, aware that Jay was the one who wrote the RF article, but since the chat started, Carson Benge's been named to the Opening Day roster for the Mets. Out of curiosity, if that news were broken before the RF power rankings were published, how much would that have affected the projections for his service time from what the article ultimately predicted with 308 PAs? (Mainly asking along the thought process lines more than specific PA numbers, to be clear.)

Ben Clemens

3:27

probably a question for the Roster Resource chat

to go a little inside baseball, I don't create the depth charts, or the projections

the RR team creates depth charts

projections are a blended mix of steamer and zips, with RR playing time

then I just get a list and write about it

3:28

I just looked at our live Mets depth charts (https://www.fangraphs.com/depthcharts.aspx?position=ALL&teamid=25) and we have Benge down for 385 PA now

so, not a ton, but defeinitely moved him

Farhandrew Zaidman

3:28

if I could lightly push back on "ERA can be misleading" - I 100% agree with you if the purpose of the exercise is forecasting ahead. However, wouldn't you agree that end of year awards are inherently backwards looking instead of forward? Whether a pitcher will be the best in the league in 2026 plays no part in whether I think he was best in 2025.

Ben Clemens

3:29

well, why didn't we include unearned runs then? or strip out the effect of defense? or opposition? should we count a homer surrendered to Ohtani less than one surrendered to Miguel ROjas?

I guess what I'd say is that 'who is the best pitcher' is not exactly the same as 'which pitcher had the lowest ERA'

3:30

and that my conception of best involves both preventing runs and being great, and that while those two are pretty correlated, they don't overlap 100%

3:31

also! I'm less certain in my estimation that a pitcher is great if they do it in ways that are historically noisy. I don't know how to isolate random variance from the pitcher's skill. For me, pitcher skill has to feature at least a little in. I wouldn't begrudge other people choosing differently, but I think that a holistic consideration of a pitcher's season has to include both what happened and what was likelyt o happen based on the impact they had on the game

alright guys, this was a fun chat, and I realize that I ended up pontificating at the end, so didn't get to every single question, but I do think that I got some good answers in

so, I'm gonna go make some lunch

er, probably reheat some lunch, we made pasta last night and have leftovers

3:32

have a spectacular day, everyone. Baseball is coming back! For real!

Connecting…

Message History

On Off

Your current subscriptions

None

E-mail Address	Chat Owner	Status	Remove

Enter your email address to be notified when Ben Clemens hosts a chat