JotCast | Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat

Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat - 5/9/22

Ben Clemens

2:00

Hey everybody, welcome to the chat

2:01

I'm gonna keep this one to around an hour today, so let's get right into it.

Nikhil

2:01

How are you feeling about this batch of rookies? As exciting as you hoped?

Ben Clemens

2:02

I'm having fun with them so far, but I wish Witt and Rodriguez were hitting a little bit more

Armadillofury

2:02

How many BBE's does it take for barrel rate to stabilize?

Ben Clemens

2:02

Boy, are you in luck, I wrote about this just today!

The answer is: I don't love the word stability, but hitter barrel rates become meaningful really quickly and pitcher barrel rates don't

Sirras

2:02

My wife and her friends played through King's Dilemma recently. Highly recommend! (I played the board and the prompt reader as a way to shoehorn in an extra player who couldn't commit to every session)

Ben Clemens

2:03

I had not heard of this game but it sounds amazing

Mike Soroka

2:03

If I'm back after the ASB like the Braves say I'll be, what are you going to expect from me the rest of 2022?

Ben Clemens

2:03

I'm going to expect nothing and be pleasantly surprised at whatever they get

2:04

Soroka is a really fun pitcher, I hope he does well, I'm a big fan of the super-grounder-heavy young pitchers across the league these days

But he's pitched so infrequently due to freak injuries that you can't really rely on him for length, and he's super rusty too

James

2:04

Should the Astros consider using 5 infielders in some situations with Framber pitching? His GB/FB ratio is insane.

Ben Clemens

2:04

Speaking of!

2:05

Probably, in some very specific situations. I wrote about this once when the Dodgers did it against Eric Hosmer:

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-dodgers-get-shifty/

Overall, though, the cost of not fielding a fly ball is high. So I think they should do it in circumstances where it makes sense (vs. extreme gb hitters basically) but be very judicious about it

bill

2:06

Oops - continuation of FIP vs other metrics. So you and others point out that FIP is predictive. Its a great indicator of a pitchers talent level. Totally agree with that. But it isn't reflective of things that have actually happened, and I think for that reason it isn't a good indicator of WAR, in the strictest terms. Were talking about WINS above replacement, not hypothetical wins. FIP seems to miss the variable swings that pitchers have on days where they are on or off. Yesterday Erick Fedde had a FIP disaster, but he continually had the angels off balance and was really effective with his pitch selection, and didn't allow a run. The batters were clearly frustrated and were not making great contact. That is a thing that actually happened. He presented value. FIP shows that he has tons of weaknesses as a pitcher, but that is a separate issue than assessing what he did yesterday. Is FG also going to start using XwOBA to calculate war? its just a fundamentally flawed approach to assessing what happened

Ben Clemens

2:06

Eh, I just wildly disagree with this. We don't use RBI to calculate WAR either, and that's closer to ERA than anything else is

Should we penalize Juan Soto b/c his homers have all been solo? That's WINS he's not getting

Is FIP perfect? Most certainly not

2:07

But we don't use heavily context-dependent stats for hitters, and no one argues that we should

FIP does a pretty good job of capturing the things that pitchers do that help their team win, as opposed to htings that happen to them that help their team win, like a good defensive play or whatnot

I think some kind of SIERA-based WAR or something like that would be interesting

2:08

But like.... the whole 'it's what happened on the field' thing doesn't make much sense to me. We very specifically de-contextualize hitter statistics to make WAR

batting WAR is very much not what happened on the field

2:08

Are you buying into Eric Lauer's breakout being sustainable?

Ben Clemens

2:08

I'm still not

2:10

Maybe I'm just being a dummy, but I keep looking at him and keep not seeing what he's doing that has made it work. I'm just going to keep thinking he's an above-average pitcher, keep looking at him, and see if something clicks -- but I'm not sold on it yet

The guy who asks the lunch question

2:10

What's for lunch?

Ben Clemens

2:10

Impossobolognese that my wife made last night (that's Bolognese made with Impossible meat)

Mike

2:10

It's May and Taylor Ward is still good. Is he good, an all star, or let's wait for pitcher adjustments?

Ben Clemens

2:11

Good, not All Star

Dan wrote about this recently: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-angels-hot-start-is-partially-taylor-m...

Seems good! I just don' believe he's gonna keep it up, and the BABIP kinda looks that way too

Smiling Politely

2:11

How is Kershaw still great at lower velocities (and is it replicable and worth teaching to others?)

Ben Clemens

2:12

Pinpoint control and two excellent secondaries. I think it helps that his fastball has always gained a lot of value from deception and location, too

bill

2:12

thanks for responding! - but if that really reveals a pitchers ability, itll even out over time! and it shows what happened.

Ben Clemens

2:12

But... so should it for batters, right?

Load More Messages

Connecting…

Message History

On Off

Your current subscriptions

None

E-mail Address	Chat Owner	Status	Remove

Enter your email address to be notified when Ben Clemens hosts a chat