JotCast | Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat

Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat - 5/20/24

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Ben Clemens

2:19

and he's shown the ability to adjust before

so I think that's just still the smart bet

Sooooo

2:19

Shota is having a better May than April!

Ben Clemens

2:19

Truly amazing

Archer

2:19

Wenceel Perez: flash in the pan or a sustainable surprise?

Ben Clemens

2:19

wise, considered answer: it's too soon to tell and I haven't done enough of a deep dive into his numbers to have a strong view either way

2:20

hot take: I picked him up in fantasy and am running him out there daily until proven wrong

birds birds birds

2:20

Is there research showing whether a six man rotation helps/hurts the starters involved?

Ben Clemens

2:20

There's not, at least not great well-balanced reserach

however, I did write this:

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-costs-and-benefits-of-six-man-rotation...

2:21

The overall point, however, is that extra days of rest seem to have a small but beneficial effect on pitchers’ results. For each extra day of rest, their xFIP improves, relative to their seasonal average, by roughly 0.06.

there we go

Sodo mojo

2:21

Is it time for the mariners to move on from Ty France and is someone like Connor Joe a reaonable target

Ben Clemens

2:21

I.... I don't think so?

2:22

move on from Ty France, yeah, I suppose I can see that if they had good alternatives. I still think he's a plus bat but with essentially zero defensive value, he's not THAT useful

2:23

but like, Connor Joe hasn't looked that great this year? Not hitting the ball particularly hard, no obvious new skills, it seems like he's just cashing in a ton of doubles on weak contact

I'd take France to outperform Joe straight up the rest of the way this year, and that's before figuring in the cost to swap them

deck

2:24

My assumption is that pitchers like Bob Gibson or Don Drysdale could throw 300 innings because they had the sense not to go at 100% all the time. You don't need to pitch Dal Maxville like you would pitch to Willie Mays. Expand by at least ten teams and remove the DH. They would thereby bring back to defensive specialists who can't hit, along with pitchers batting, and the starter could return to baseball. There's my unsolicited opinion.

Ben Clemens

2:24

I do think that expansion would probably help a lot of problems baseball is facing

the weird paradox that there are too many good pitchers, which makes it feel like there are'nt enough good pitchers, can be solved by just having more teams to fill

2:25

Like, everyone these days complains about how you can never have enough pitching

and yet, run scoring just goes down and down and down

sure seems like we have enough good pitching!

bosoxforlife

2:25

Do you think there is a level where the continuing drop in offense causes the game to act.? A league average of .240 and 20+ strikeouts per game is beginning to wear me down..

Ben Clemens

2:25

Yes. I think we've passed that point, and that the league is going to continue to try to act

They're trying. They banned shifts. They added the pitch clock. They've messed with in-game pitching changes. They regulated sticky stuff more harshly

2:26

They need to come up with better solutions, but I think it's fair to say that they're trying

The Ghost of Wade Boggs

2:26

Would you consider pitcher's inducing IFFBs a skill or is that something you would expect to stabilize toward league averages over the course of a year? Thinking about it in terms of Hunter Greene who has a 23.9% IFFB rate.

Ben Clemens

2:26

Yes and no

Is his quite high? yeah

but there's real skill in this on the pitcher side

2:27

the way I think of it is this: pitchers exsert a lot of control on whether a batter hits the ball

hitters exert a lot of control on how hard they hit the ball

both sides exert influence on launch angle

here's a study I did on pop up rate:

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/for-your-begrudging-enjoyment-a-batted-bal...

2:28