JotCast | Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat - 8/17/26

Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat - 8/17/26

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Ben Clemens

2:32

oh man I sure hope so

but no, I do not think so. I think the math makes it too tough, the fact that they play each other will push the worst-of record down, while the fact that the other divisions play each other might push their best-of record up.

bosoxforlife

2:33

I have to give Breslow some credit. Picking up Erik Miller for Mayer, who I predicted was leaving Boston, looks like clairvoyance with Whitlock going down. I didn't know much about Miller but he looks solid.

Ben Clemens

2:33

yeah I am willing to believe that I just odn't have the latest facts on the ground on Mayer to know what his value was

2:34

I do think Miller is a nice reliever, legit strikeout stuff

and I appreciate Breslow realizing that if he's going for it this year (which he should be), he should get more relief help, because it's way better to have one too many relievers than one too few

SPArn

2:34

I'm excited to read your article on Jake Bauers

grandbranyan

2:35

Are we past the point of Jake Bauers accepting a qualifying offer and into the three years for forty some million dollars range now?

Ben Clemens

2:35

Ryan Blake just wrote a nice article about him last month:
https://blogs.fangraphs.com/jake-bauers-gets-to-the-heart-of-it/

2:36

Um, I don't think we're at rejecting QO range yet. I think that corner-only bats in their 30s are not exactly a boom market, and also that 2026-2027 projects to not be a boom offseason because of the impending lockout

2:37

I actually wonder if the Brewers will duck giving him a QO. My view is that they were unlucky (and likely unhappy if they were being honest with you in private) that Woodruff accepted the QO last year

just from a salary/roster flexibility standpoint

but the counter to that is that woodruff is coming off the books!

2:38

I kind of think that they will opt not to risk spending resources on something that htey have been pretty good at creating on the open market, in aggregate

but I agree that the outlook for Bauers is much better now. He's having a career year for sure

Jimmy

2:38

Tbf Tucker looked this way last year too. People just assumed it was to preserve himself for a big contract. (Though certainly I did not expect after last year that he'd be below former teammate Willi Castro in WAR on 8/17)

Swings Low

2:39

Yeah by "checked out" I suppose I meant "maybe putting in 80-90% of the work he used to". I feel like that is a big reason why building super teams can go terribly wrong

Ben Clemens

2:39

yeah. I dunno, we'll probably never learn the truth here. But obviously pretty rough start to his Dodgers career, to put it lightly

Jeremy Fox

2:39

Do the Brewers underperform in the playoffs, compared to what projection systems expect, because the Brewers' secret sauce for beating the projections is to do with how they allocate playing time, which is an edge that accumulates slowly over the course of a long regular season?

Ben Clemens

2:40

Well, this is a tricky one. I'd argue that they actually perform about as well as our projection systems think in the playoffs, and that our problem is that we are under-predicting them in the regular season

That said, I kind of do think that, yes. They and the Rays squeeze out so much value from the whole roster

but there's less ability to do so in the plyaoffs

so Dan wrote a thing about the Brewers earlier this year:
https://blogs.fangraphs.com/why-does-zips-hate-the-milwaukee-brewers/

2:41

and I wrote something about how having WAR concentrated at the top of your roster matters more in October:
https://blogs.fangraphs.com/yes-having-stars-matters-in-october/

2:42

basically it's a really hard question to answer because you can't test it experimentally. But my lean is that a lot of the juice that makes the Brewers beat naive projection systems has to do with how good they are at the little things that are tough to model. and that in short series with lots of rest, most of those things matter meaningfully less

Sanford

2:42

Seems like there are a few guys coming up on the are-you-Jordan-Walker-or-are-you-Anthony-Volpe development precipice next year, including Jackson Holliday and Dylan Crews. Any post-prospect guys you're most optimistic about putting something together? (And as a Mets fan, should I be out on Brett Baty?)

Ben Clemens

2:43

yeah. I'm cautiously optimistic about both Holliday and Crews, but in both cases, it's because I recognize that being regarded as highly as they were as prospects has real signal

not because I'm looking at their major league numbers and seeing how it's gonna turn around

2:44

I guess for Holliday you can already see it a little, if he walks enough he can be a solid contributor with no further changes, but if you're dreaming on more, the hope here is that he just gets better, because we saw these traits in him when he was a minor leaguer and just because they haven't shown up in his first few years against grown men doesn't mean they won't appear eventually

bosoxforlife

2:44

"The little things that are tough to model." Isn't that statement a confirmation that the eye test still has a place in predicting baseball?

Ben Clemens

2:44

probably. I mean, if I didn't think the eye test mattered to some extent, I wouldn't be here

'top 50 trade value' isn't just a spreadsheet, that kinda thing

2:45

I think that the idealized version of the FanGraphs ethos is that we're trying to use numbers to describe baseball as much as we can, while recognizing the inherent limits of our approach, and being reasonable about the stuff we haven't measured

I think I've talked some about metric blindness, where once you create a metric you ignore everything that isn't in that metric

Smith_Brickner

2:47

Hello old friend. OOTP calls your name, specifically MEB :/

Ben Clemens

2:47

Hey Smith!

Lot of friends in the chat today

2:48

I didn't download OOTP this year, I needed a break. I'm gonna pick it up again at some point but probably not for MEB. Hope the league has been reset a billion times and yet all the same unexpected players are still dominating

Baseball Learner

2:48

How would you feel if a losing team makes the playoffs? Happens in football sometimes but football is not as random even in a single game so the risk of a losing team winning it's conference is lower than a losing team winning the pennant. I'm oscillating between aghast and feeling it is worth it so that the dodgers could get knocked off.

Meaning the dodgers knocked off in a 3 game wild card series

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