JotCast | Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat - 5/9/22

Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat - 5/9/22

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Smiling Politely

2:26

Is it normal to have all but 1-2 1B with sub-zero def components for WAR? Or is it a SSS? Is that due to the penalty (and if so...seems problematically harsh?)

Ben Clemens

2:27

Nope, that's pretty regular. I also think it's about correct -- I'm doing some research on changing positional adjustments with Statcast data baked in, but 1b penalty is very unlikely to change

2:28

When primary 1B's play the outfield, they are ABYSMAL

laughing

1

A lot of them can't play the rest of the infield b/c they're lefties -- but the ones that do are not good

2:29

It's no accident that Dom Smith is a scratch-ish 1b (per UZR and DRS, 1b OAA is weird) and an abysmal outfielder

Armadillofury

2:29

The hitter vs pitcher imbalance is too much right now. I'm watching Yankees vs Rangers it's painful to watch. The hitters look about as comfortable against Jon Gray and Nestor Cortes as they would against 1999 Pedro and Randy Johnson

Ben Clemens

2:29

It's really something

2:30

I'm curious to see what will happen as things start heating up weather-wise but I'm not enjoying this style of baseball as much as I have recent years. It's not that I need all the homers, but without the homers, offense is just not as fun

Batting average this low is really bad

For my enjoyment of the game

Jim

2:30

The Angels are good and Mike Trout has a 210 wRC+. Would be so good for baseball for this guy to finally get some October exposure

Ben Clemens

2:30

Agreed

Appa Yip Yip

2:30

If you had a pet pig what would you name them? I would go with Sam, short for Sam Hamwich.

Ben Clemens

2:31

What a great name

That's all I have to say about that

joe

2:31

has staff ever floated the idea of having a positional adjustment neutral WAR featured somewhere on the site?

Ben Clemens

2:31

No, but that's kind of interesting

FIP follow-up

2:31

So from a non-predictive standpoint, if you were comparing two SPs with substantial workloads and completed careers, would you place a higher value on FIP or ERA?

Ben Clemens

2:31

Oh, definitely ERA

FIP is not some end-all be-all. It definitely misses part of what makes pitchers succeed

2:32

But the noise in ERA is so great that it's weird ot use a stat that says, maybe, 40% pitcher skill and 60% other stuff to do one-year WAR when you could use a stat that's more like 80% pitcher skill 20% league average

I've talked with Appelman about having some way where our career WAR's use ERA... there really are things that pitchers do to outperform or underperform FIP

It's just, those things are rare and tend to smooth out over time, but they're quite noisy in one-year samples

2:33

Let's say that a pitcher has the true talent to outperform what their HR, K, BB, HBP would imply by half a run of ERA. That's huge!

Five qualified pitchers last year (out of not that many) exceeded that 0.5 mark to the upside (ERA worse than FIP)

2:34

Seven exceeeded it to the downside

2:35

I'm gonna need more than one year's data to say that Robbie Ray is a true-talent FIP beater like that

Joe

2:35

Moncada comes off the DL today. I can activate him today, but would have to drop either KIKI Hernandez or Steven Kwan or Jonathan Villar. Who would you drop?

Ben Clemens

2:35

I think probably Villar? Pretty worried about the playing time there, which really matters

Arrozarena

2:35

Is "on a heater" a new term?

Ben Clemens

2:36

It's not but I guess me saying it has made people say it in the questions? Poker term, for me at least

Yank this

2:36

Odds of the NYY infield looking like this in 2024 : 1B-Judge, 2b- Gleyber, 3B- Volpe, SS- Peraza ?

Ben Clemens

2:36

15%

Ryan

2:36

Which assesses how good Nolan Ryan was the best: bWAR, fWAR, or WARP? It's so strange how large the discrepancy between them is

Ben Clemens

2:36

Over Nolan Ryan's career, I'd actually go with our RA9-WAR (or bWAR)

2:37

I think that bWAR is adding random volatility based on the way they consider defense, but the results are pretty similar to RA9-WAR for Ryan specifically

Cortes

2:37

On the other hand, is Cortes not in fact Pedro?

Ben Clemens

2:37

Can't argue with that!

Judge

2:37

Why would Judge be at 1B in two years? Ignoring that he might leave, he is a very good outfielder.

Ben Clemens

2:38

I assume it's b/c of injury. I don' think he's very likely to end up at first either

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