JotCast | Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat - 8/29/22

Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat - 8/29/22

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Sonny

2:36

The Angels, for a new owner, would have Mike Trout and probably not Ohtani. The Nationals have a great ballpark but no Juan Soto and lots of deferred salaries to pay. If you're a billionaire looking for a high-profile tax shelter/pastime which would you prefer buy?

Ben Clemens

2:36

Boy I think I'd prefer to own the Nats but it's kind of close

DC is a really good baseball town, at least in my experience, which tilts the needle that way

I wouldn't care overly much about the current state of the team if I were an owner, it's more of a long-term play. But I would care about the MASN deal, and I don't know the specifics of how the O's/Nats profit sharing works, so that's a potential red flag

Didace

2:37

Do you listen to radio announcers? Are they all terrible (except for the home team, of course)? I had to listen to the Cubs radio recently and the announcing went something like this. "It's top of the inning and the Cubs take the field. (A bunch of stuff about non-baseball things.) And there's a grounder to second for the third out and the Cubs are out of a jam." Seriously, I had no idea what was actually happening.

Ben Clemens

2:37

I had the FanGraphs readership crowdsource rankings for radio announcers a few years ago

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/radio-broadcast-crowdsourcing-results-part...

Here's who people like the most

Jacob

2:37

How much does who specifically a GM is matter in this day and age? Given analytics departments, owners, and on field coaches, is it all just by committee at this point? (or, does it even matter who the tigers hire as a GM if they won't pony up for more analytics and scouting)

Ben Clemens

2:38

I think it matters a ton. Setting the direction of the organization is really big. Coordinating an organization so that your scouts, analysts, coaches, etc. are not duplicating work, and are doing the best job of a)helping players perform their best b)finding new players to perform their best

That's just really valuable

2:39

I think you can make an argument that who specifically manages a team isn't very important in the grand scheme of things. But setting the organizational goals by itself is a really hard job

LoveMILBUnion

2:39

Hey Ben! Appreciate all the work! Could you pass along a request? Would really appreciate a sortable leaderboard based on the Roster Resource Power Rankings? Downloading all of the excel files and scrubbing them together is pretty arduous and the algorithm seems to be really good!

Ben Clemens

2:39

I definitely will

Sodo Mojo

2:39

How worried should I be about JP Crawford hitting long term and should the Mariners look at making an upgrade in the off season or their other more obvious upgrade paths for them?

Ben Clemens

2:39

I would not be worried about it at all

2:40

JP Crawford is a career league average hitter. This year... he's league average

I'm curious why Statcast thinks his defense has been atrocious this year, but defensive metrics are still really noisy, so I'm not concerned about that just yet

If you want an above-average OBP shortstop with a good glove, Crawford fits that bill perfectly

And now that they don't have Noelvi, it's not like he's blocking anyone

Trev

2:41

Stats philosophy question: We evaluate hitters by wOBA. Why not pitchers by wOBA? Or wOBA with a FIP element (Tango did this recently - k, bb, hr retains current weight, all others were set to .3 or so)

Ben Clemens

2:41

wOBAFIP is basically the same as FIP

since FIP does the same thing, just on a different scale

So I'd argue that evaluating pitchers by FIP is kind of like using skill-intensive wOBA

GraphsFan

2:42

Ben, ever tried a game called One Deck Dungeon? Had high hopes for it, but the rules learning curve seemed pretty steep.

Ben Clemens

2:42

Never heard of it, but I'll ask some of my board game friends, it sounds like the kind of game I'd only play if one of my friends already knew it

paul

2:42

Andrew Knizner is not a good hitter but can you justify starting Yadi at this point (when it's not wainwright on the bump)? He is slashing .180/.219/.180 since he came back from injury Aug 2 and is 0-17 recently. Since the break Knizner is slashing .306/.414/.429 (with an unreasonably high BABIP)

Ben Clemens

2:42

Yadi looks COOKED

2:43

Catching is just awful on your body

I think the team is already kind of leaning this way, he's getting fewer starts than he used to and just taking time off, etc.

It's going to be interesting to see what they do in a playoff situation

comish4lif

2:44

Are the Nationals measurably bad at developing players? Have they grabbed anyone off the scrap heap lately and "fixed them up?"

Ben Clemens

2:45

Yeah, I don't think they're great? They're notably a tools-over-results front office

And they haven't really turned those tools into results at a high rate

Or even an average rate

It's no surprise to see Cade Cavalli and Josiah Gray with drool-worthy stuff and command that, uh, could be better

Tim

2:45

Did Yelich finally find an answer? He’s been good recently

Ben Clemens

2:46

Seems like hte best thing he's done is hit two homers in two days

2:47

Overall, I'm skeptical that he's suddenly turned back into a home run hitter, but it's encouraging to see him able to turn on some balls

I still think he's more leadoff hitter than slugger at this point

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