JotCast | Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat - 6/8/20

Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat - 6/8/20

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Ben Clemens

2:41

I dunno how much it would help but I hate that pickoff moves are either balks or not based on, eh, what the umpire had for breakfast that morning or whatever

Sam

2:41

Who's your favorite low WAR, but fun to watch player?

Ben Clemens

2:41

Ooh, this is an excellent question

Billy Hamilton is up there

Aledmys Diaz is really high on my list, though I guess he's just pretty good

2:42

Andrelton Simmons is, I think, far more fun to watch than he is valuable, and he's pretty valuable

Emmanuel Clase fits the bill

Honestly, Mike Trout is very clearly not my favorite player,despite the fact that I enjoy his preposterous skills

I'm more of a fan of players with outlier skills

aaronsaron

2:42

Billy Hamilton is my favorite!

Ben Clemens

2:42

Yeah if baseball were a purely entertainment sport, with no one keeping score, he'd be so great

David

2:43

What about overall philosophy change from swing for the fences to manufacturing runs. How long until we see a swing back in that direction?

Ben Clemens

2:43

Ooh, that's sometihng a lot of people have written about, and that I should surely do a better job hunting down the articles for

I'm not going to, though, because eh, I'm doing some silly data-mining draft project right now

2:44

But I think you'd need to change a lot of things about hte game to get that to happen

Make home runs harder to hit; either with fences or the ball

But then you need to make strikeouts harder to achieve for pitchers too

So that you don't get a 2014 situation

2:45

I don't think banning the shift is really the answer, but maybe making infields livelier?

At the same time that you shrink the strike zone or allow one non-strikeout foul tip or something weird like that

Ross

2:45

Do you think any of the AA teams on the chopping block will manage to remain in business next year, even in an independent league? As a Cardinals fan, I'll miss getting to see the Reds prospects playing for the Chattanooga Lookouts.

Ben Clemens

2:45

I really hope so.

I had my seventh birthday party at the Chattanooga Lookouts stadium!

Or maybe 8th; it was a long time ago

2:46

(I grew up in Oak Ridge in east TN)

And Chattanooga is awesome these days, a fun city by all accounts

My parents like going there, and they're kinda bougie

Gonna be a real shame if it closes down

Sadly, I think that they're probably done for

2:47

With no draft picks, what the heck are they going to populate the system with? And then, also sadly, it's a bad time to start an indy team right now

What with the recession and all

Chris

2:47

Craig Edwards wrote an article about how much worse the new offer by the owners is than the last one. It's crazy that mlb thinks this is the route they should go

Ben Clemens

2:47

Yeah, to be clear, it is worse than their grim-trigger 'screw you minimum games' offer

It's better than their initial offer in most cases

Which should tell you how bad their initial offer was!

2:48

If it's significantly worse than something they could unilaterally impose without the players' consent

Craig's article is excellent, and you should check it out:

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/mlb-owners-latest-offer-even-worse-than-th...

Joe

2:48

There's talk about an expanded Fall League with all 30 teams fielding a team. With NBA/NHL not playing in November like they normally would, wouldn't this be a good opportunity for revenue and content for fans? MLB could sell ~30 games of inventory with more top prospects than usual to RSNs that are starved for content in Nov. without NBA/NHL, to partially make good on their 162 game contracts. Give some games to ESPN and Turner who are missing NBA/NHL too. Fans get to see top prospects on TV every day. Prospects get paid at a time of year they normally wouldn't. Win-win-win

Ben Clemens

2:48

Oh for sure. The league isn't going to offer a dime of that to the PA though, because their members won't even be playing

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