JotCast | Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat - 4/20/26

Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat - 4/20/26

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Ben Clemens

2:45

I'm a little worried, just because their problem spots (infield) come where they have no backup options

2:46

but hey, the rotation depth is already paying off, with Crochet scuffling and Gray on the IL, they still have a great 1-5

Opifijikl

2:46

Happy Patriots day from MA. Got passed on the right by a Minuteman going 80 in a Yaris on 128 this morning.

laughing

1

Fyandor

2:46

Blue Jays, Red Sox, Mets, Phillies. Of these four teams with high preseason expectations and bad starts, who do you feel best about turning it around and who do you think is most likely to miss the playoffs?

Ben Clemens

2:48

I think I feel best about the Jays turning it around, and that'sonly partially because they have the best BaseRuns of the group so far. i also think that their issues have, more so than the other teams you named, been a temporary availability issue. They're missing nine-ish key contributors at the moment, none of whom are out for the year

Oaktown Blues

2:48

Not sure if you saw the A's/CWS extra inning game on Saturday. A's had man on 3rd, 1 out, tie game bottom 11th. The in-the-hole hitter was a pitcher (A's having lost the DH and emptied bench). CWS opted to pitch to the batter and lost on a sac fly. Just curious, would you have handled it any differently? Would it make sense to walk the bases loaded to face the pitcher, even if you have to get one more out after him?

Ben Clemens

2:50

I did watch that game and I was wondering about that! I had the Sox broadcast on and they dutifully kept track of where the pitcher's spot was in the order. I don't know what the right choice was there, to be honest. Like, I think I would? But it was close because I hate walking the bases loaded

Oblivious M's Fan

2:50

This morning someone on r/baseball made a chart showing each manager's ejections to games played, and it gives me an oppertunity to bring up my pet theory that Aaron Boone's only actual job as Yankee's manager is to get ejected. He's the fall guy for the big ego players on the roster and one of the most entitled fanbases in Baseball. Everything else is secondary. Most likely an exaggeration, but an interesting one I think.

Ben Clemens

2:50

I 100% think you're going in the right direction here, that a lot of Boone's job is to take heat

There's just so much heat when you're talking about the Yankees. You need a heat sink. And Boone is very very good at doing that job

2:51

He's also seemingly pretty good at clubhouse management and getting people comfortable with their roles. But yeah, the Yankees manager job is a lot about PR

mike

2:51

no real question, but as a White Sox fan, seeing a Sox player consistently in the top couple spots of the fangraphs player search bar is really blowing my mind. Even in the brief contention window none of the stars were ever close to that. No idea how sustainable Murakami's output is but for now it's awesome to watch

Ben Clemens

2:51

Murakami is proving very fun to write about

2:52

I'm loving this, a quote from our offseason scouting report: "...if Murakami is only ever the quality of contact hitter we’ve seen the last three years, with no changes or improvements, he basically can’t be a good MLB hitter.”

and well, that's what I'm trying to figure out. Because if you've watched the Sox, um, he can't hit the ball

he's one of the batters in baseball least likely to make contact when he swings

but if he does make contact, ball go far

Dude

2:53

To recast my earlier question: Ty France's Savant page makes him look like Ted Williams. In NL-only 10-team, how much should I care that he's getting at-bats?

Ben Clemens

2:53

I think you should care almost exclusively about the AB's at this poitn in the season

and like, preseason projections

now, having a Savant page that looks like Ted Williams makes the ABs more likely to keep flowing, don't forget!

Jimmy (Catching) Crooks

2:53

I use the Team stat pages very frequently but these say they are being deprecated. Is there a replacement planned or would I need a custom dashboard to see the same team info?

Ben Clemens

2:53

which pages are thoes?

Sonny

2:53

Do you think there’s velocity/effort range for every mlb pitcher where they have 80 command? Like, if X pitcher tried throwing their 95 mph fastball 85 they could burn edges all day and who is the Greinke acolyte that will try this?

Ben Clemens

2:54

no, I don't. The reason for that is this great old test from Sam Miller. In 3-0 counts to pitchers, zone rate is around 70%

Sully

2:54

Weathers, Warren, Gil: rotation, pen, AAA: go

Ben Clemens

2:54

rotation/pen/AAA is really fun. Um, Gil has to be last, right? So I'd just do them in the order you have them, even though I love Warren

2:55

also, I think Warren might play up a lot in relief. He feels liek a guy where a harder fastball might make the whole package play better

Troy

2:55

How concerned are we about Luis Castillo? The fastball just hasn’t played as well as recent years despite strong enough velocity

Ben Clemens

2:55

yeah I'm worried

Derek

2:55

Am I wrong in feeling that the Orioles just spent an offseason *doing things* and ended up, at best, only marginally better than where they were before doing all those things? Alonso is obviously a big get, but otherwise it just felt very performative from Mike Elias and I continue to believe he should be fired, as I have for the past 3 or 4 years

Ben Clemens

2:56

nah, I concur with you. As you may know, I have a long history of writing that the Orioles are great at tactics but poor at strategy, and I think this offseason was more of that

2:57

It's jsut weird to have a core of good hitting like the O's did and to be really stubborn around how to build out from it. I don't have a perfect counterfactual for what they should have done, but I do think that the strategy has not really been good enough

Guest

2:57

Luke Raley is making Murakami look like Luis Arraez in contact frequency

Ben Clemens

2:57

fun stat from tomorrow's article: 201 hitters have swung at 50 or more secondaries, Murakami's 53.3% whiff rate is third-highest

.... and Raley's whiff rate is 7 percentage poits higher than that

James

2:58

Aaron Judge's average bat speed is down 2 mph this year. His max bat speed is similar to previous years. Does bat speed go up during the summer? How much is the contact point a factor in bat speed?

Ben Clemens

2:58

so a) yes it does

FanGraphs wrote a reserach article about this recently

but the answer is that it doesn't go up very much

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