JotCast | Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat

Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat - 7/14/25

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Ben Clemens

3:05

'the hitmaker'

Dakota McKee

3:05

Pirates just drafted Jared Jones. How bad an org must they be if their players are abandoning ship and re-entering draft?

Ben Clemens

3:05

trying to get that team control back!

Guest

3:06

If the Nats are trading Gore, wouldn't it also make sense to trade Abrams?

Ben Clemens

3:06

like.... probably?

3:07

but I think that a)pitcher value when they're great right now is higher b)Abrams is more likely to hold value for longer from some combination of extension equity/position player stability
c)also I think they'd get lowballed for Abrams

c) is pretty weak, to be clear

3:08

and I've always been a little down on Abrams relative to consensus, so I'd probably ship him out if I thought I was getting a good deal

but he feels to me like he fits the core better, just in the sense that position players are more stable

sliptoad

3:08

does FG publically display predicted rest of season strength of schedule? this is always a stat that I find particularly interesting

Ben Clemens

3:08

we do!

3:09

it's actually right on our playoff odds:https://www.fangraphs.com/standings/playoff-odds

the way it works is that we first rate each team based on what we project their win percentage to be against neutral opposition

then we average a team's remaining opponents, that's 'strength of sched'

3:10

so it's forward-looking, based on how well we expect each opponent to play the rest of the year, but doesn't consider individual pitching matchups

Sam

3:10

Who are your midway-point Cy Young top 3 in each league?

Ben Clemens

3:11

Skubal
Crochet
Brown

Skenes
Wheeler
Webb

I'd basically say that the NL is quite close at the top

and honestly, you have to say the AL is close 1/2, even though I have a lot more faith in Skubal continuing to pitch at this level

so if I were doing odds, I'd have Skubal as #1 with a bullet in the AL. But based on how well they've played so far? It's a tossup

last ride of the bowtie

3:12

Do you think Winn is still the SS for StL in 2 years?

Ben Clemens

3:12

yeah

in fact I'd be shocked if he weren't

3:13

like, among primary shortstops, he's certainly a first division starter already

3:14

so the odds of someone internally replacing him? basically 0. there's just no one in the pipeline, and he could hit a LOT worse and still have enough defensive value to be useful

so then the question becomes does he get traded, and well, I don't think so?

3:15

players like this (young, premium defensive position, value comes more from long-term surplus than from any superstar power) are classic assets taht don't really get moved very often

b/c they're really valuable.... and yet the team trading FOR them isn't getting a huge one-season playoff odds boost

3:16

like, try to think of the last trade for a good-but-not-great player with tons of team control

Guest

3:16

wasn't than winn question really a wetherholt question

Ben Clemens

3:16

I think pretty clearly he'd play second or third as currently constructed

red sox chat time

3:16

why the hell do you have more faith in skubal pitching at this level than crochet

Ben Clemens

3:18

because I'm rationally considering the fact that Skubal won the Cy Young while throwing 192 innings at this level last year and Crochet is already nearing a career high IP. He slowed down a TON in the second half last year

I expect him to slow down much less this year. but I think that if you polled 100 baseball analysts, 100 would project Skubal ahead of Crochet the rest of the way

not that Crochet CAN'T outperform Skubal

just that the odds are in Skubal's favor

Sam

3:19

Who's your pick to win the HR Derby tonight (asking the important questions for everyone).