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Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat - 5/2/22

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Golan Norman

2:39

Do the Cardinals have a fastball problem? Granted, its not so much that they've deviated from the trend, but rather they never really got on it, but they still don't really have high 4 seamer guys (except a couple in the bullpen). I read an article about the Royals at the Athletic that pointed to their 'averageness' of fastball movement. The Cards were included in their charts too

Ben Clemens

2:40

I don't think so. I think that they build their roster to emphasize its strengths. The better your defense, the more it makes sense to allow balls in play. The stadium is enormous, too, and after talking about maybe bringing the walls in they decided not to. Avoiding contact is less important when it's hard to hit home runs and your team turns batted balls into outs as well as the Cards do

Appa Yip Yip

2:41

What happens first, Gausman walks a batter or gives up a homerun?

Ben Clemens

2:41

I'm gonna take the easy out and say a walk. More walks than home runs in the majors, etc. etc. Not gonna say I've put more thought into it than that

Bearman

2:41

What is happening with Trevor Story?

RTJ

2:41

What are you looking forward to seeing play out, story-wise (I do not mean Trevor), during the month of May?

Ben Clemens

2:41

heyyyyyy, transitions!

2:43

I guess I was supposed to answer the first one before pivoting to the second one. I have no idea what's going on with Story. I really don't understand how he's not hitting for more power. He's still hitting the ball hard and everything. Really don't get it. It seems like his timing is just off and he's behind on a lot of pitches, but that's not a satisfying answer

As to what I'm most looking forward to in May, here's another transition: I'm watching every Kershaw start this year until further notice

Gunther Centralperk

2:43

Is Kershaw strictly on one-year deals with the Dodgers going forward? (I could see him signing for multiple years with the Rangers if he leaves.) He looks fantastic so far.

Kershaw

2:43

If I can net 5 more IP than BBs+Hs next start, my career WHIP will drop below 1. Pretty incredible, right?

Ben Clemens

2:43

OMG

2:44

go watch the Royals Cardinals game for Michael A Taylor's catch

wowwwwwww

But yeah, it's SOOOOOOO fun to watch Kershaw turn back the clock. Can't recommend it highly enough

XBA

2:44

In some ways, the Rockies org should be applauded for putting together a consistently ok team with happy fans that pack out the stadium

Ben Clemens

2:45

Dan and I discussed this on last week's FanGraphs Audio. The Rockies are a very frustrating team because their front office operates in ways that just seem knowingly suboptimal

But ownership's goals and their desire to put a good product on the field can't be doubted

2:46

It's good intentions poor execution most of the time, and I think they get too hard of a time for that. Do you know how easy it is to tank? Teams tank at the drop of a hat

The Rockies didn't

Bill

2:46

Is Julio getting squeezed by the umps? His manager sure seems to think so. And boy, is he easy to root for...

Ben Clemens

2:46

Justin Choi wrote about this

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/somebody-save-julio-rodriguez/

Steve O

2:47

Mike King should probably start, right? Like he's throwing 40-50 pitches routinely and has been like the 4th most valuable pitcher in baseball or something as a reliever. He's got 4 pitches. Two insanely good ones. The problem is there's no one to bump from the rotation.

Ben Clemens

2:48

Okay, this is going to turn into a digression about the way fWAR works, but I'll first quickly say that I don't think it's weird to leave him in the bullpen, but if one of their starters is down for an extended period of time, bring him (or Clarke Schmidt) into the rotation ASAP

So, WAR for relievers is weird because we account for leverage. He's thrown 14 innings of really good baseball, but two things are turning that into a wild WAR number

2:49

First, he's come in in big spots so far, 1.49 inLI, which is the average leverage index when pitchers enter the game, with 1 being average

So he's getting a big boost to 'raw' WAR, which makes sense over the course of a season, good way to evaluate relievers, but can lead to some big numbers early in the year

2:51

Second, he's getting a big Yankee stadium boost but it's not clear how much sense that makes given his super-high groundball rate -- probably unsustainably high. And he has 3 popups already, which we add to strikeouts. It's a perfect storm of a way to get fWAR to give you a lot of credit for not too many innings

Anyway -- he should probably be in line to start. But I wouldn't pay too much attention to reliever WAR this early in the season. His ERA and underlying stats are plenty good enough as it is

2:51

The fangraphs change in defense to account for initial position seems to assume that players are not responsible at all for their own positioning. One guy hurt the most by the change is Chase Utley, who was known for positioning himself uniquely well. Is there a better way to give players at least some credit for positioning?

Ben Clemens

2:52

Well, Utley played the fast majority of his career before our defensive change, and all of that value is left exactly the same

2:53

But I think this is kind of an unfixable problem. The two are so linked, and it's very hard to know whether the team or the player is responsible for positioning and how much credit to give to each

You have to pick one way and go with it. I don't know which way is right, to be honest, but I'm mostly comfortable with ours?

Kiermaier's Piercing Green Eyes

2:53

Any experiences with Terraforming Mars or Ares Expedition? I tried Gaia Project recently and it was a great heavy Euro game but I can't see it hitting the table that much with its weight and size. So AE is on my radar as a tighter version of Terraforming Mars, which itself is similar to GP.

Ben Clemens

2:54

I have somehow never played Terraforming Mars. That said, I have one friend whose opinions on board games I most respect, and it's his favorite game

It's just one of those things where when we hang out we usually want to try new games, and his group he plays TM with is old friends, that kinda thing. I assume it's awesome, basically, but can't say from personal experience

Didace

2:55

"Chase Utley, who was known for positioning himself uniquely well" Was he actually good at this? Or is this just what the announcers said?

Ben Clemens

2:55

To be clear, I have no idea

JaysFanInLondon

2:55

Re: OPS+, it seems like it is becoming more mainstream than other more accurate value approximating statistics in media (like wRC+). Any idea why that is happening?

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