JotCast | Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat - 3/9/26

Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat - 3/9/26

powered by

Prev Page View Full Chat

Ben Clemens

3:01

boy, I think the Marlins would, but I love the idea of the A's offering this

Guest

3:02

re FG Labs: i noticed on the leaderboards you're starting to roll out attack zone plate discipline stats, some way to combine that with bat tracking would be very cool (sorry this is such a vague suggestion lol)

Ben Clemens

3:02

I mean, I'll take that as a generic suggestion

I've been more on the pitching side so far but one suggestion we got was a squared up explorer only for bat path instead of launch angle. interesting!

something about changing behavior by attack zone based on count sounds good too

Mike Lommler

3:02

Via some form of wizardry or sci-fi technology, you can transport one non-HOF-caliber player to 1968 and see how they would do. Who do you choose?

Ben Clemens

3:02

oh man. Oneil Cruz

could you imagine?

Welland Jackfish

3:04

Would Bob Gibson throw at Oneil Cruz just because he was insulted by the long hair?

Ben Clemens

3:04

I mean, Bob Gibson would probably throw at him and not really care why

3:05

but could you imagine the staredown after a 600 foot bomb or whatever?

god, it'd be delightful

Idiotic Failson

3:05

Aroldis Chapman throwing 104 in '68 would melt brains

NPO

3:05

Do you know if there's been an attempt to quantify the value of taking pitches in regards to wearing a pitcher out? Like a 6 pitch at-bat against a good starter is worth 0.001 more WAR/WPA than a 5 pitch at-bat, etc.

Ben Clemens

3:05

People have definitely tried this in the past

3:06

I've never seen anything approaching evidence that it exists. doesn't mean it doesn't, just that we can't measure it yet

Sad

3:06

I understand internal development “hit” rates differ organizationally, I just can’t figure out the why. What makes teams differ in their scouting and development? The Guardians and Rays are always praised for their developmental system and they always seem to be better at churning out consistent major league talent than say Cincinnati or NYM. Are different data points held in higher regard, is coaching better, is traditional scouting more important than modern age analytics will admit, or something else entirely? Obviously if we knew every reason, all teams would be better lol, just curious if you have any specific insights?

Ben Clemens

3:06

I mean, if you knew the answer to this, the Reds would hire you

3:07

I think that there's something to good organizational culture. I have plenty of experience in the past of being the same Ben at two different places and thriving or struglging based on the way things worked at those places

3:08

so I'd say there are two things. First, there's data. New techniques, new ways of sorting players, etc. This advantage is generally not stationary, b/c personnel changes, and obviously the teams taht are behind are incentivized to hire guys from the teams who are ahead. people talk, etc.

then there's some nebulous organizational culture/health/process term that is a lot harder to copy

it's not quite the same, but Meta spent a trillion dollars basically signing all the good AI free agents

but bummer, they work at Meta! And so they haven't produced anything coherent

3:09

b/c the organzational culture sucks, in my opinion

so there's surely some of that going on on the team side, and it's really hard to measure from the outside but also clearly impactful

bosoxforlife

3:09

I have completely lost touch with ST. I am watching Colombia-Panama right now on the big screen and DR-Israel just ended. The Red Sox have 16 organization players in the WBC and their ST lineup is unrecognizable

Ben Clemens

3:09

same. I like to have some random baseball on all the time. and for most of spring, I don't really care what the results are

3:10

but yeah, some of these spring rosters are so bad now that I'm not even going to really watch them

until the WBC is over

plus, hey, I can watch the WBC

3:11

alright, I gotta go eat some lunch

3:12

lunch question guy, we're having leftovers of an NYTimes calendar recipe, sheet pan gnocchi and veggies. It was spectacular, I'd never had baked gnocchi before but I highly recommend it

have a wonderful week everyone, and let's check back in for some clashes of titans in the WBC before long

Connecting…

Register

Message History

On Off

On Off

On Off

On Off

Your current subscriptions

None

Register now to continue managing your subscriptions

E-mail Address	Chat Owner	Status	Remove

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