JotCast | Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat - 8/19/24

Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat - 8/19/24

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Ben Clemens

2:00

Hey everyone, welcome to the chat, let's get started

Guest

2:01

how much of a skill do you think is clutch hitting

Ben Clemens

2:02

Pretty close to not at all. I'm not denying that you can have a clutch or unclutch at bat but let's put it this way

if clutch means performing better in big spots.... David Ortiz has a 0.02 "clutch" int he playoffs

he hit just about as well in high leverage situations as in low

He had a 140 regular season wRC+ and 144 playoff wRC+

And that is, by popular opinion, the most clutch hitter of the 21st century

so everyone else is LESS clutch??

Gronch

2:03

What is a reasonable expectation for Heliot Ramos and Tyler Fitzgerald going forward? 3 WAR starters?

Ben Clemens

2:03

I think that would be an absolutely unreasonable expectation for Fitzgerald

2:04

I don't really buy his defensive value being high enough to carry that, and I think he's probably just about an average hitter, and that this will be his best year by a mile

clearly even the Giants don't believe it, they're having him bunt in extra innings

2:05

Ramos, I think I'm in as a 2-3 WAR guy, his offensive performance looks a lot closer to the underlying stuff and I'm more willing to shade upwards from projections b/c of his prospect pedigree

bringbackpologrounds

2:05

What would be a more hitter-friendly ballpark: a straight wall that's 350 at the corners (triangle shaped park), or a parabolic wall that's 300 at the corners but 400 in center?

Ben Clemens

2:06

this is a great question. Off the top of my head the 350 one would be b/c the power alleys and center have a ton of batted balls in the 350-400 range, but this sounds like a fun question to look at in more depth later

Pat Murphy

2:06

Which one of Jacob Misirowski and Craig Yoho are joining my pen for a playoff run? Or both?

Ben Clemens

2:06

Yeah I think both actually

Lindorphin Rush

2:06

This is random but wondering what you think: Innings eaters are kind of like volume scorers. Teams are moving away from them because their value comes from bulk, their skillsets tend to be context dependent and higher variance, and they're usually more efficient when asked to do less (ex. air it out off the bench, as a max effort five & dive guy). Does this make any sense?

Ben Clemens

2:07

Yeah totally makes sense to me. The logical extension there is that innings eaters with above average quality mirror the guys who got underrated by basketball analytics when PER was all the rage

Tacoby Bellsbury

2:07

Worse NL West injury news (and why) -- Ketel Marte, Tyler Glasnow, or Ha-Seong Kim?

Ben Clemens

2:08

Marte, for me. I think that he and Glasnow both have arguments as the best player of the group, not that Kim is bad. And then the DBacks feel like they have less behind him, whereas the Dodgers can do their normal use a ton of pitchders you haven't heard of who look great and then blow out their elbows

wheelhouse

2:08

anthony volpe: utterly hopeless? zero redeeming qualities at the plate

Ben Clemens

2:08

Yeah I think he should probably just retire

2:09

He has a miserable 104 wRC+ since the All Star break, that wouldn't even play in little league

2:10

I think Volpe is just going to be a defense first guy who ends up with roughly average offense in a way that makes Yankees fans burn him in effigy

gonna be a great time for us non-Yankee fans

laughing

1

woahBA

2:10

When we say someone has a .400 wOBA in the month of july, how are the run expectancy weights calculated? Is it always using the previous 162 games or just the data from that month?

Ben Clemens

2:10

data from that year

all of our wOBA is done on a per-year basis

sonny

2:11

If you're going to walk Juan Soto why not also walk Aaron Judge? Bases loaded one out against any yankee not Soto or Judge has to be a better expectancy than two on one out for Judge

Ben Clemens

2:11

mmmmm... I think the issue here is that if you take Sizemore at his word and look at this in the most positive possible life, it's not about run expectancy but about the odds of one or more runs scoring

And if that's what you're optimizing for, you can't put a guy on third with less than two outs

Who's Fabio?

2:12

Hi Ben - a bit off topic but have you planned any ski trips for the upcoming season?

Ben Clemens

2:12

It depends on what you mean by "planned"

2:13

Specific trips, not yet. But we've set up a few flight trackers and such, planning on our annual Alta/Snowbird trip, some Tahoe trips, and probably a Colorado double dip where we fly into one and drive to another

Guest

2:13

When WAR totals are close enough that they are more or less the same, what do you like to use as a tiebreaker?

Ben Clemens

2:13

Depends what I'm trying to choose

2:14

but generally speaking if I'm trying to determine who IS better, not who has played better, I focus more on the statistics I consider more stable/predictive

Guest

2:14

I would like to defend Masataka Yoshida. He presently has an OPS of .813 which would be 16th in the AL if he had enough PA's to qualify and has been carrying the offense since returning from his injury.

Ben Clemens

2:15

I would LIKE Yoshida to be a useful contributor, I really enjoy his whole game

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