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Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat - 5/12/25

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Ben Clemens

3:00

he's so fun to watch

Birdsong

3:00

Is this just the new age of inning restrictions working as it should? Saving a young stud for the playoffs as opposed to having a limit and having to shut down like we used to?

Ben Clemens

3:00

I think it's better but it's very early to say for certain

Jeremy

3:00

Re: teams that are consistently competitive but never top-tier competitors, in the NFL that's been the Steelers ever since Ben Rothlisberger stopped being a top-shelf QB. My sense is that Steelers fans are split on this. Some want to blow it up, fire the head coach, and tank so they can try to draft a top tier QB and build an elite team around him. Others like being pretty good every year and are worried that if they fire their head coach and blow it up they're signing up to suck indefinitely.

Ben Clemens

3:00

Yeah, Steelers are a great exmaple

although I think they're more Cardinals-y than Brewers-y

3:01

Okay, I gotta run soon, but I'm going to make one pass through for questions I've missed first

We Are Pham-ily

3:01

Any chance the Pirates can dig out of the hole in the standings they currently find themselves in?

Ben Clemens

3:01

nah

Sadness

3:01

A month in, what do you think Cedric Mullins' market looks like if the season ended today? 3/50? 4/65?

Ben Clemens

3:01

I'd definitely give him 4/65, I'll tell you that much

Re:Roki

3:01

Yamamoto had a long history of dominance AND health, so I had no problem with the hye surrounding him, and same with Shunpeita Yamashita next year, but I've been puzzled about the amount of hype surrounding Roki. The stuff is great, and that's it. Every other thing is bad and has always been bad. Health, attitude, work habits, etc...

Ben Clemens

3:01

I don't feel as strongly about the work habits and attitude parts

3:02

I think that's in fact very difficult to discern from the outside!

But I agree with the general concept that like... Yamamoto was the best pitcher in Japan for years and years in ar ow

Sasaki was a top prospect with a great top-end

they are not similar

in terms of how likely they were to succeed immediately here

darrenasu

3:02

Do you think that people (fans, analysts, etc) or more impatient with prospects now than ever before? I look at guys like Jackson Holliday and Wyatt Langford, and see folks online, including writers here at Fangraphs, that seem unimpressed. These are 21 and 23 year olds that are batting better than the average ML hitter by WRC. That seems...good. Really good. That coupled with the gap between AAA and ML today...I think we've been skewed by some rocket prospects in the past and we expect that all the time now...when it's still REALLY hard to hit ML pitching.

Ben Clemens

3:02

100% yes

Trifecta

3:03

What was for breakfast, or are you like 75% the population that doesn't partake, and just ingests coffee?

Ben Clemens

3:03

today I had a bagel with cream cheese, but I'm usually a yogurt and fruit guy

Natural Girth

3:03

Haven't the Royals proven over the last couple of years that speed and defense in the outfield are overrated, when it comes at the expense of scoring runs? The minute they send down MJ, and stop playing Isbel as much, the team wins 15 out of 17.

Ben Clemens

3:04

I think that calling MJ Melendez part of the defensive movement is one of the funniest things I've heard all week

to be fair it's only Monday

but yeah, THOSE guys are not how you get speed and defense on your team, imo

Bobby Witt = Early 2000s Albert

3:04

'I shall have my mvp once this mutant goes away' (but at least he's a nice mutant this time)

Farhandrew Zaidman

3:05

on the Michael Harris point - do you think there's a bias in favor of projecting young players versus the possibility that his peak was just age 21-24 seasons? Like, there have got to be players that peaked that early, how does that play into a projection analysis?

Ben Clemens

3:05

yes, THAT is the tough thing

3:06

not 'we look to heavily to their first 600 PA to establish a baseline' but 'we don't have enough different aging curves based on early-career trajectory' or something along those lines

one size does not fit all

Jeremy

3:06

Are we starting to see a pattern of GMs/PBOs failing because they only have one plan/strategy they're good at implementing, and can't adjust their approach to changing circumstances? Thinking of Elias with Baltimore and Zaidi with SF here.

Ben Clemens

3:06

Okay, this is the last question, I came up with this 'let's answer old questions' to give me time to go dig it up

Very good question! And I think that it's a bit too simplified but definitely points in the right direction

3:07

If you think of the 'thing' that the best front offices are known for, it's tough

because there's no one thing

and I think that if you just have a thing, and you do your thing as much and as well as you can and just iterate on it over and over again instead of learning new approaches, the upside is very limited

the league isn't static. your situation isn't static. and it can be REALLY hard to adapt and adjust to that, but I think that trait is very important

3:08

I think of it a little bit like how I was describing Matthew Liberatore, actually. His actual skill wasn't 'throws a good sinker and curveballl,' it was 'manipulates the baseball well, particularly to generate spin.' And early in his career, he leaned too hard on the sinker/curveball thing and it wasn't great

3:09

so the great front office skill to have is 'keen understanding of the costs and benefits of baseball decisions and uses this to build a fluid organization' rather than 'adds velo to pithcing prospects' or 'has a great model for finding draft picks'

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