JotCast | Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat - 5/4/20

Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat - 5/4/20

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Haray Caray

2:37

If you were a hot dog, and you were starving, would you eat yourself?

Ben Clemens

2:37

Now we're hitting the key questions that inquiring minds want to know.

Hm.... probably depends on how starving and if I had money.

2:38

Like, sometimes I get starving at home.... and so I walk to the kitchen and get food, or in the before times I could walk to a restaurant.

Now, if it were just me on a desert island?

Yeah I'd probably have to, right?

Now, a dessert island... I'd just eat the dessert.

Curtis

2:38

Who were some of your favorite "terrible" MLBers? Guys you rooted for and were generally not very good overall?

Ben Clemens

2:38

On the Statcast Podcast, I learned that Tony Womack wasn't very good.

But I only remember him from the Cardinals 04 season so I thought he was great.

Not sure if that counts.

2:39

Let's see.... always wanted Hansel Robles to be better.

I'm a huge Aledmys Diaz guy, though he's actually turned out pretty well.

Oh and you'll never convince me that Colby Rasmus shouldn't have been better.

Sam

2:39

How would you have money if you were a hot dog?

Ben Clemens

2:40

Now *this* is a question I hadn't considered. I mean, we're leaving reality pretty far behind at this point if I have a mouth and I'm a hot dog. So I'm going to say yes.

But if I had no money, do I have other access to food somehow? That would really matter.

Ezra

2:40

Interesting. Do you think Moneyball holds up today? Or are we in a new era of metrics?

Ben Clemens

2:40

Depends. If you think of Moneyball as the concrete lessons that Billy Beane names, then no.

"We're not selling jeans," "how hard can it possibly be?", OBP above all else

2:41

Those are not really the way you want to go about things.

But the general concept that you should be taking an evidence-based look at baseball, I think that's more true than ever.

2:42

If you think of Moneyball not as five easy hacks but the story of people who are willing to let the data lead them wherever and follow that conclusion, then it's great.

I think that's actually generally true of Michael Lewis books, fwiw.

aaronsaron

2:42

When are you looking at for the next OOTP stream? Also got ESPN+ so I could watch some extra hockey and soccer like a month for sports stopped... please feel bad for me. Thanks! :]

Ben Clemens

2:43

Next OOTP stream will either be tomorrow or Wednesday, gotta figure out what fits best into our existing schedule. I'll announce it later today.

On the FG twitter and mine as well.

Ezra

2:43

well that's interesting because I wonder how much Micheal Lewis simplified his philosophy to make the book more approachable to the average fan?

Ben Clemens

2:44

Yeah that I'm not sure about. His writing is an interesting mix of approachable and jargon-y, I think he does a great job of it.

But as a former finance guy, I did find some of his finance stuff dumbed down past being useful *in finance*

It was always useful to me from a 'how do smart people think' perspective

Curtis

2:44

What will replace Batting Average and Wins in the eyes of the casual fan moving forward? How long until advanced metrics will show up on the back of baseball cards? (or are they there already?)

Ben Clemens

2:44

I think OPS is there already

2:45

Huge fan of it

ERA has replaced wins, I think

Which is good.

2:46

Maybe K% or K-BB%? Those are easy to understand and very useful.

FIP has a shot as well, because it's on an ERA scale so people can grok it easily.

Mitch Keller learned FIP from a scoreboard!

2:47

(the Giants scoreboard, they're generally pretty good about advanced stats out here in the bay)

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