JotCast | Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat

Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat - 6/3/26

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Ben Clemens

1:06

and eh, right at .500, funny

warpath

1:06

Re Cubs: I think they might make a move simply because Shaw and Ramirez are blocked long-term and they lose value wasting away on the bench/in AAA.

Ben Clemens

1:06

I guess that's fair. Maybe an unblocking trade

1:07

but I don't think that this is a 'net a meaningful return' or 'need to fill a hole' situation so much as just like, business as usual

I think that's a good thing to do!

ajake57

1:07

Very excited about this propect valuation number update. You had a post in last year's prospect week that referenced Craig Edwards' seminal 2018 valuation piece, but used a different methodology. Are you now doing a secret new 3rd thing or revisiting one of those two?

Ben Clemens

1:07

more on this in the weeks to come, but think of it as running with Craig's, I'd say

1:08

we talked about the different ways to present prospect value and I guess we'll see what people like, but htere's a reason Craig's is considered seminal

it's really good!

metties

1:08

You were quite high on both the Red Sox and Mets offseasons. Do their poor records make you rethink your take or do you just chalk it up to [injuries / underperformance / bad luck]

Ben Clemens

1:08

I mean, if I weren't reconsidering it at all, I'd be a bad analyst

Definitely ascribing some of it to those three factors

1:09

maybe even a majority of it

but definitely not all

I think one thing that was worth focusing on in the Red Sox one was that I didn't do a good job going from local/granular views like 'I love their pitching redundancy'

to treating the whole roster holistically for whetehr it looks as good as it should for the resources expended

1:10

like I was talking about the Sox having a big problem in the left side of the infield

but since they upgraded with Durbin, I just said 'oh that's good' instead of stepping back and saying 'well it's still very risky'

so that's a point of learning for the future

another thing that I'm not sure how to deal with is whether to take my own idiosyncratic views of free agents into the pieces

1:11

like, should my view of Bo Bichette (and its differential from how his industry-wide view is) matter for the Mets writeup? Should I handle the fact that integrating a bunch of free agents makes the error bars wider? I dunno

I'll probably do more post-morterms later. But hey, I got the Brewres right!

SPArn

1:12

Park effects is such a good one re: prestige zone. For every Cody Bellinger, there's a Ke'Bryan Hayes.

Ben Clemens

1:12

I mean, sadly, Ke'Bryan's problems on offense run a little deeper than that, but yeah

it's a sneaky one, though

because we know it! we know that it's hard to pitch some places and hard to hit others

but then I still look at who hit the most dingers, or who had the lowest ERA

HappyFunBall