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Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat - 9/10/24

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laughingstock

12:15

Why are stolen bases always assigned +0.2 runs of value in the calculation of WAR, regardless of era, situation, or even which base you steal? I've never understood the reasoning there of not calculating the value dependent on the base-out state and run scoring environment, like is done with the value of caught stealing

Ben Clemens

12:15

it's a great question that has to do with the way wOBA is calculated, and I completely don't understand it

12:16

Another thing we talked about at saber seminar

2025

12:16

Which of these guys do you think will be able to repeat their success next season: Houck, R Lopez, Schwellenbach

Ben Clemens

12:16

I think I might be most in on Lopez, which feels weird to say

12:17

b/c I really didn't think he'd play as a starter

I was just way off on a lot of these starter conversions, to be fair

Fernando Ludwick Jr

12:17

Is the NL wildcard race the most exciting years? Can't remember a race this tight....hope it bodes well for baseball in general.

Ben Clemens

12:18

I'm having a tough time thinking of one I personally enjoyed more since 2020

The Giants/Dodgers division race in 2021 was awesome but that's not wild card

Gotham

12:18

Are the days of Cashman getting a pass over? The Dominguez / Verdugo conundrum aside, if he can't sign Soto, what is the most sensible path forward? Judge and Cole cost a ton of money, the farm system stinks, and outside of Wells there have been very few pleasant surprises this year...

Ben Clemens

12:19

I mean... the Yankees are good! They have a lot of good players, and they have the best record in the AL

for what it's worth, our most recent update has their farm system 11th in baseball

12:20

I do love that now Yankees and O's fans now want to burn everything to the ground at the same time

they're out-disappointing each other

James

12:20

Do you know of any way to get stats on check swings? My hypothesis is that umpires are less likely to call strikes when a batter checks his swing, even if it is a strike, but I've never seen anyone research that

Ben Clemens

12:20

Sadly no. I've been interested in researching this exact question for a while, but the data just doesn't exist

I wonder if bat tracking is going to make it possible

Liam

12:21

Hey Ben! I'm curious about your technical chops and tools you use - I want to become a little more savvy there, and was wondering when you talk about running your monte carlo sims and other projections, is that done in python? r? and did you learn primarily by tinkering?

Ben Clemens

12:21

Oh sure. That's all done in Python, but R might honestly be better

I just started with Python and it works for my purposes

12:22

I use that and SQL fairly often, SQL because we have a FanGraphs database and I need to query it in intelligent ways. I learned first largely by tinkering, but I'll be totally honest: AI has been a massive help in improving my skills recently

12:23

If you're willing to engage Gemini (or whatever your preferred LLM is) in a conversation about how to code something you're trying to do, and if you mostly understand the logic behind it, you can go far

I've gotten MUCH better at doing complex calculations or just tricky stuff that isn't obvious at first glance by asking an LLM how to do it, finding where their instructions goes wrong, and just iterating and refining

Refugee

12:23

is there a premium premium membership that gives us access to that SQL database?

Ben Clemens

12:24

Ha, I don't think so, but you could definitely create your own from the data downloads that come with membership

We don't really maintain a lot of the stuff I'm messing with to the high standard of quality we like for official FG stuff

Esix Snead

12:24

I find myself getting burned out from baseball due to the inundation of metrics and general computer optimization. Feel like there is no "fog of war" or mystique because every team has identical Trackman and batted ball data. When every team has identical information in a zero-sum game, it feels like the only differences in teams are how much money ownership is willing to spend, and how near-death your owner is as to whether they're willing to eschew future success in favor of a current run. How do I not feel jaded by this?

Ben Clemens

12:25

That's definitely a real issue facing baseball today

i do think that teams are doing interesting and smart things around long-term strategy, development, things like htat

but it's not particularly visible to us as fans, which makes that less interesting

12:26

The reason I write 5 things, and why I look at whimsical stuff in general, is b/c the amount of joy I get from that hasn't changed

but the amount of joy I get from trying to figure out whether the Cardinals are using hte wrong fifth starter based on advanced metrics has definitely declined in the past decade

Oddball Herrera

12:26

If you're bummed that everyone is using analytics, just remember the Rockies are still out there asking why guys can't hit good if they're such good hitters

Ben Clemens

12:26

It's a great question

Insert Witty Name Here

12:26

Thoughts on the US Open finals? Sabalenka is amazing, I love how she goes full throttle on every shot. On the men’s side, what do you think about the aptly named Sinner’s failed test?

Ben Clemens

12:27

Love Sabalenka, and I completely agree, her style is really fun. I think it also leads to great matches b/c when she's off she just gets boat raced, which keeps things close

12:28

I guess I'm okay with Sinner getting to still play, it seems like a silly thing to get suspended over at the concentrations he had. That said, it does feel like special treatment, maybe everyone should get the benefit of the doubt like him

I love watching him play, though. It's wild how he gets so much power into his shots, it feels like he's using every single inch of his body to do so

New GM

12:28

I'm looking at the free agency classes in the next couple years after this one and there's not a ton of position players at the top of the market after Kyle Tucker, who may or may not even make it to FA, and Vlad who is position limited. Could we see spending this offseason inflated due to that or do most teams not look ahead?

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