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Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat - 4/5/21

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Ben Clemens

3:08

Love Dahl

They have a messy outfield situation in general, lots of positionless players that need to do something

3:09

But giving Dahl 600 PA to find out if he's for real is a no brainer

Estevão

3:10

for about five + years Pujols is mostly collecting money from the Angels that he earned with St Louis. Baseball is funny that way

Ben Clemens

3:10

Strange situation for sure, but yeah, baseball compensation is weird

Cueto's Shimmy

3:11

What % of the season is generally considered to have left small sample territory? As a rule of thumb, obviously different for different stats. Maybe one cutoff for hitters and one for pitchers?

Ben Clemens

3:11

FIrst, I'd recommend data beast Sean Dolinar's article on this, it's old but I still use it a lot

3:12

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/a-long-needed-update-on-reliability/

Well, that's the Jonah Pemstein update of his and Sean's original article

But yeah, this one

3:13

That said, basically focus on smaller htings -- whiff rate, quality of contact, strikeouts and walks

until the season gets deeeeeeep

johndarc

3:13

What type of "personal services" do we think Pujols will provide to the Angels after he is finished with this contract? Would such a contract preclude him signing a 1 day contract with St Louis just to retire as a Cardinal?

Ben Clemens

3:13

I think that's the exact kind of services the contract is in place for

3:14

They want him to retire as an Angel, and keeping him locked up after his career ends is a good way to do that

I imagine he'll also be kind of a team ambassador, that kind of thing

Ben from EU

3:15

Hello Ben! What do you think about JT Brubaker? If he performs well like last season will the Pirates trade him at halftime?

Ben Clemens

3:16

I think he's interesting, and I have been making an effort to pay more attention to sinker/slider pitchers who have a four-seamer they can at least show

3:17

I think they'll probably hold onto him, though, even if he does well, because he's still young and controllable. Not that he's a stud, but you can see him being on the next contending team there

at 30, or whatever

I guess the reason they'd trade him is that they think they're far away from contending... .fair enough if so

Christian

3:17

Thoughts on Akil Baddoo? Just stole a base...

Ben Clemens

3:18

Great story, hope he rakes, just a phenomenally talented guy

That said, I wonder about the hit tool

3:20

Realllly smart idea to pick him up, though, the error bars are huge and he could be a power/speed combo guy

Also Ben

3:20

R.e. Brubaker it could be worth noting I think the Cubs saw something in Trevor Williams where throwing his 2-seamer (which was getting crushed) actually helps the rest of his pitches play up. He had gone away from it after looking at the pitch data the last couple years

Ben Clemens

3:21

Yeah, I've struggled to find these effects, because they're really hard to isolate. I do think they're real, though, and I'm constantly trying to figure out how to prove that they exist

jaysfan9293

3:21

any thoughts about how the jays' bullpen is shaping up and whether it could rank league-wide? merryweather is obviously the talk of the town but on a macro-scale outside of dolis' 3 walks on saturday their performance has been almost spotless so far (against a dangerous lineup in the yankees no less)

Ben Clemens

3:23

They've looked quite good, and Merryweather looking great might make me bump them up some in our power rankings,b ut we had them in the 8-15 range already, and that seems rasonable to me

They're not the Yankees, White Sox, Mets, Brewers, or Padres, at least to my eyes

(those are the 5 we have the highest and the 5 I like the most)

Guest

3:23

Do you think any Angels players look at Pujols and resent the lack of production from the roster spot?

Ben Clemens

3:24

I mean, any? Maybe

The Angels in general LOVE him, though

You have to remember; for a lot of them, he was the best player in baseball when they were kids

Zach

3:24

Gavin Lux had a 30+ ft/sec sprint speed this weekend and currently is number 1 in baseball (SSS obviously). Where did that come from?

Ben Clemens

3:25

he was fast already (28.8 ft/sec sprint speed in 2019), but yeah, I dunno, he got faster?

3:26

I'm not sure why his speed wasn't considered more of an asset, but he's definitely been fast when measured

Steve

3:26

Any plans for picking up OOTP simulation articles again?

Ben Clemens

3:26

Yes indeed!

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