JotCast | Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat

Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat - 8/11/25

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Ben Clemens

2:55

and thought eh, no good, let's get a MONSTER closer

and then yeah ,the high profile guy is bad

Weaver's still great though

2:56

Hi Ben, as an Athletics fan I'm beginning to fear that Lawrence Butler has zero chance of a second half surge offensively. Anything positive you see that can give me hope on Law Dawg? Thanks a lot!

Ben Clemens

2:56

sadly I'm probably the wrong person to ask on Butler because I think he's a roleplayer

rather than a star

2:57

but what I'd be looking for is better swing decisions, or at least more aggressive swings in the zone

looking through his numbers I kind of think last year's strikeout rate was a mirage, he made an absolute ton of contact on bad swings that kept him at a reasonable level

i think he's more like a 25-30% strikeout guy, which means that he should be looking to detonate the ball when he swings

2:58

oh, but here's a positive thing, he's 24 and an incredible athlete, so I like his odds of continuing to both dynamically improve and add tons of value in random things like defense and baserunning in the meantime

Guest

2:58

As are playing at home 9/15 - 24!

Ben Clemens

2:58

there you go

Big Buckston

2:58

Do we see a Sam Basallo major league debut before season's end? And what do you think Baltimore's plan for him next year is - full-time 1B? A mix of C/1B/DH? The guy really doesn't have much left to prove in AAA on the offensive side.

Ben Clemens

2:59

I'm thinking the latter, C/1B/DH with mostly 1B/DH as his role

if I were them I'd give him a classic September callup, but make sure he's eligible for rookie of the year in 26

as an earlier commenter pointed out, O's prospects have had a rough transition to the bigs of late, why not give him a soft opening?

MATT DAMON

2:59

MATT. DAMON.

DeeBo

2:59

Feels like vlad guerrero Jr has never had the same season twice. After looking like his power outage 2023 self earlier in the year, he’s now knocking on the door of a .900 OPS despite a pretty pedestrian home run rate for a 1B. BB% way up and still getting to enough doubles power to pad the slug

Ben Clemens

3:00

Vlad is a great hitter without an obviously consistent approach

which is how you get years like htis. the man just demolishes the baseball and hasn't quite figured out how he wants to turn that into production

alright, sorry for the abbreviated chat but I have to run and take care of some errands. I hope a strong hour of baseball commentary sated your desire for it for now, and let's do this again, same time next week. Have a wonderful day, everyone

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