JotCast | Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat

Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat - 6/15/26

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Ben Clemens

2:00

Hey everybody, welcome to the chat.

2:01

We're gonna do a longer one today, 1.5-2 hours, before I head out on vacation

I'm gonna be gone from Wednesday to next Tuesday, so no chat next week. Let's make up for it in advance

Braydon Roberts

2:02

JJ Wetherholt is a pretty solid favorite to be NL Rookie of the Year at this point, right?

Ben Clemens

2:02

Yes

both according to me and also according to the betting odds

Justin Krupp

2:02

Sad Giants fan here. On a very basic level, it seems like they have two paths forward, neither of which seems very attractive - try and build their pitching staff up in the off season and hope their offense holds as they age or - sell off what they can and look towards a future with an up and coming farm system. The first is much easier said than done, and the second is difficult because prospects are a crapshoot at best, and their roster doesn't have much to sell with a lot of under water contracts. Which one are you taking, or are you taking a third door?

Ben Clemens

2:04

I'm probably taking door number two? But without much confidence either way. It's not like the pitching staff is necessarily awful, and playing in that park makes it easier, but I don't see this team as one that should start pivoting to the future just yet. THey just spent a while pivoting away from teh future by signing and extending a bunch of high profile hitters, cutting off that effort in the middle seems weird?

Fangraphs Man

2:04

Is it ok to kind of believe in the white sox? They’re slightly outperforming pythag and base runs but going 4-1 in 5 games against the Dodgers and Braves with Murakami or Teel was damn impressive. At very least their offense being good doesn’t feel that fluke

Ben Clemens

2:04

Yeah, I agree

the pitching? eh. the offense seems very real

oaktownblues

2:04

Was it a blunder by the A's to give HR-prone Jeffrey Springs a second start in LV? Ginn would've been on full rest yesterday

Ben Clemens

2:04

um, yes

2:05

when I wrote about this series I assumed they were going to not give Springs a second go

and pitch Ginn instead

JustinPBG

2:05

Rice is no slouch, but it feels like the Yankees have a chance to still have a strong summer without both of their Twin Giant Sluggers, which I don't think anyone would have expected.

Ben Clemens

2:06

agreed, he's been very very good and the Yankees doing okay without Judge is a great sign

jackberris

2:06

Now that Jordan Lawlar is back, what are your hopes for him this year?

Ben Clemens

2:06

health

everything else can come after that

oaktownblues

2:06

Curious what you expect out of Henry Bolte. He's handily outperforming his xwOBA, so I'm sure he's not this good. But he's blazing fast, makes a ton of hard contact (just all on the ground), and plays a good CF. Do you see an above average regular emerging from this package?

Ben Clemens

2:06

maybe? I mean, the current version isn't going to work long-term

so the question will be what adjustments he can make to his swing to basically get the ball in the air more

I like his odds of figuring this out because he already does a lot of stuff that's difficult, like running fast and hitting the ball hard

cosmichero

2:07

How is Jacob Young hitting for so much more power this year? Is he just stronger, or is there something significantly different in his approach or pitch selection?

Ben Clemens

2:07

probably all of the above

2:08

for one thing, his bat speed is up a mile an hour. but also, he's taking longer swings and making contact with the ball further forward in his swing than ever, as in he's starting his swing earlier, thus it's faster when it makes contact

BallparkFan

2:08

I was fascinated to learn the batting average of bunts put in play is over .300! Do you know if the error rate on bunts in play is also higher than other balls in play? My instinct says yes, but I don’t actually know and am curious to know.

Ben Clemens

2:08

it is, but not by as much as you'd think, per Baseball Savant. Fly ball errors rates are very low. Grounders produce a ton of errors though

war2d2

2:08

I was at the game Saturday and saw Ben Brown labor a bit, but still make it through 5 only giving up 1. Do you expect him to continue to be a top-of-the-rotation-ish guy? There’s a lot of red on his Statcast page, so on the surface at least what he’s doing looks sustainable. It’s still weird to me that he was always a guy that needed one more pitch, and that pitch turned out to be another 98mph heater.

Ben Clemens

2:09

top of the rotation? nah. middle of the rotation I'd say yes. I think that we've seen good stretches from him before, and that he'll probably stabilize in that range. It's a better fastball than you'd think from the raw numbers, though, to me. I think we've talked here about how he has some Chase Burns to him in terms of a shape that is not all that common and thus works well

Jasperdog3329

2:09

Every year it seems like there are a ton of injuries. Is there a source that could provide total trips to the IL and total man-games on the IL year over year?

Ben Clemens

2:09

Baseball Prospectus's injury dashboard does this

2:10

they've got some good stuff in there. not always the easiest to find, but I like their injury coverage and contact stuff

didace

2:10

I am starting to believe - he's fooled me before - Keibert Ruiz is now a good hitter. His swing decisions are so much better. He's not turning everything he can reach into a soft ground ball. Am I wrong to think the new Nationals regime are magicians? Don't even get me started on what Mikolas has done lately. He threw 97!

Ben Clemens

2:12

Eh. I subscribe to the theory of prove it to me. If you're going to claim to me that after 1800 PA of being bad, Keibert Ruiz is now good, I need more than 150 PA witha .267 xwOBA

2:13

His stats barely make sense right now. Like, he's not actually hitting the ball hard all that often, and he's not hitting line drives

He has just a startling amount of doubles laced down the right field foul line

I think he's probably still a bad hitter. We'll see, I guess

ImKeithHernandez

2:13

Should the Mets be more concerned about Semien's defense or offense?

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