JotCast | Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat - 3/31/25

Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat - 3/31/25

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Ben Clemens

2:11

but you have to be encouraged by the early performances against reasonable opposing pitching

Jonah

2:11

Who are some players you've meaningfully changed your evaluation on through 3-4 games? Easy to overreact to the small sample but are there any who've risen or fallen in your eyes from this weekend's games?

Ben Clemens

2:11

i mean, none

that's not a good way to be an analyst

it'd be pitchers if anyone but, no, i need more than this many games

Bosoxforlife

2:11

Pat beat me to it but it is going to take a lot more than I have seen so far to make me take down my belief that the Dodgers are going to win 110+. A .700 winning percentage looks very achievable with so many weak teams in the game now.

Ben Clemens

2:12

Interestingly, I'm not sure I agree with you about so many weak teams given how many finished .500 or better last year. But there are more VERY bad teams (Rockies, Marlins in the NL), so maybe that'll help. Also the Dodgers are just great, and the obvious threat to them is injury

md

2:12

Ben - thanks to you and the rest of the FG staff for the work recently, honestly awesome output to kick the season off

trophy

1

Ben Clemens

2:13

thank you very much!

We worked hard to crank out a ton of stuff to get your baseball viewing off on the right foot

Oaktown Blues

2:13

If Soderstrom continues to hit, and Kurtz finds his way to the bigs soon, how do you handle playing time? Kurtz 1B/Soderstrom DH/Rooker LF? Or maybe try Soderstrom in LF? (assuming his catching days are mostly over)

Ben Clemens

2:13

Man, this is a great question, and something that I spent a lot of time thinking about when I wrote about the A's first base situation in power rankings

2:15

I think they'd probably end up trying Soderstrom in left and seeing if it works. If not, they'll move Rooker out there. I don't see a trade in the cards, that just doesn't really fit with the valuation of first basemen across the league

I'm pretty high on Soderstrom. I don't have a strong view on Kurtz. But I don't really think this is a big problem. All three of these guys working out would be great, and yeah, one of them can fake left field I'm sure

5 Run Homer

2:15

Alan Roden and Will Wagner: legit starters or useful bench bats? They've got me feeling a little better about the Jays' season right now

Ben Clemens

2:16

I'm learning a lot about Roden on the fly, so I'm not confident with my answer there, though I noted that Eric re-evaluated him in the top 100 update that came out today

I'm very in on Wagner. I think that his hitting style feels well matched with his talent and that he's going to be versatile enough defensively to find the field a ton

Bad teams

2:17

The White Sox, Marlins, Rockies, and Angels were the four worst teams last year. Could you (1) make a Wild Card contending roster from this group, and (2) would any of the players be White Sox?

cool

1

Ben Clemens

2:17

Ooh, fun one

2:18

I think that you probably could. The Marlins have some pitchers, the Angels have some hitters, the Rockies have a shortstop and maybe a few other random contributors. I'd definitely want Miguel Vargas for my version of this squad, too

so at least one White Sock

and Robert obviously

that might be it though. Maybe a depth reliever or two

Matt Damon

2:18

MATT. DAMON.

Guest

2:19

Am I crazy for saying that baseball in general hasn't fully contextualized how dominant Aaron Judge is? He has 2 top of the top 10 seasons (2022, 2024) by qualified wRC+ since integration. The only other players with more than 1 is Barry Bonds and Ted Williams

Obviously, he's not going to have the counting stats of any "inner circle" HoFer (whatever that amorphous group may be), but he's having a significantly better 3+ year peak than Pujols, ARod, Mays, Aaron, Schmidt...

Maybe missing 50 games in 2023 hurts this argument, but he's just been so insanely good and I feel like most people think of him a "routinely" phenomenal player that the league gets every so often, not a once-in-fifty-years caliber hitter

Ben Clemens

2:19

Yes, I agree with you on this

Aaron Judge is doing something that very few hitters have done

It won't feel the same way, because he just isn't going to do it for a whole career. He started late and took a while to get cooking

2:20

but on a per-PA level I think people are underrating him. There's great player fatigue, and people like me are at least part of it, because there's so much sports coverage these days and writers love to talk superlatives

but Aaron Judge is superlative

more so than a lot of the things that we write about

anotherusername

2:20

Fun website error - the wrong Max Muncy's image is being displayed on the Dodgers Max Muncy.

Ben Clemens

2:21

and that muncy has no picture!

strange

I let Sean know

Logan

2:21

With rumors that the O's are open to moving Ryan Mountcastle (possibly Walltimore's biggest victim during its short tenure), who do you see as good fits to maximize his value? I can't help but think of the wonders that GABP would do for him, but the Reds' openings are more in the corner OF, which he has barely played (and very poorly).

Ben Clemens

2:21

I mean....

c'mon

no one's giving up anything of value for Ryan Mountcastle

I wrote about this in first base PPR's (https://blogs.fangraphs.com/2025-positional-power-rankings-first-base/)

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