JotCast | Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat

Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat - 9/11/23

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Appa Yip Yip

2:14

Blue Jays vs Rangers this feels tense I think it's gonna be a tense series

Ben Clemens

2:14

Oh yeah, definitely the series I'm most excited for this week

Derek

2:14

(I promise I'm not a dog)

MilwaukeeBeerJays

2:14

If you could start a franchise with any current player, who would it be and why is it Davis Schneider?

Ben Clemens

2:15

I'd start it with Spencer Strider b/c he seems like a cool dude to hang out with

Guest

2:15

What kind of dog do you have? I bet it’s a good boy (or girl).

Ben Clemens

2:15

She is, of course, a very good girl. She's a retriever/pit mix of some type, a nice large lady (75 lb), and has some anxiety issues that we are working through

Jake Marogersnik

2:15

*eyes emoji* Spencer Torkelson currently leads AL 1B in home runs

Ben Clemens

2:16

Wow, that's kind of amazing

2:17

I don't think it's completely true, because Anthony Santander has played 11 games at first and is tied with Tork ,but man no first basemen are hitting homers this year huh?

in the AL at least

If you don't count Santander, there are three first basemen in the top 30 AL HR hitters

Torkelson, Casas, Vlad

Noodles Hahn

2:18

Blake Snell's Cy Young case seems to really revolve around how his walk issues are viewed. At what point do the results just outweigh the peripherals? On the flip side, when I look at Striders numbers, I can't justify him being close with a 3.83 ERA. I get the underlying metrics suggest he's been unlucky, but am I wrong for mostly not caring about xStats or FIP that much in Cy voting?

Ben Clemens

2:18

I'm kind of off Strider at the moment

I do think that 'what happened' is an overused way of thinking about it, because plenty of stuff that goes into ERA is out of a pitcher's control

2:19

but this isn't a Corbin Burnes case, where his ERA was a little higher than his FIP but he was lapping the league in FIP and not far off in ERA

I mean, Burnes literally led the league in ERA that year

and had a 1.63 FIP

2:20

Strider is getting tagged for way too many homers, in my book. 20 this year

I think I might vote for Justin Steele tbh

luckily the season doesn't end today

TomBruno23

2:20

Help us Won-Bin Cho?

Princess Leia

2:20

Has anyone suggested Taijan Walker yet?

Ben Clemens

2:21

Excellent choices

Derek

2:21

If (obviously huge "if") he gets traded: Trout to the Phillies seems almost too perfect. Dombrowski isn't afraid to empty the farm, Phillies can (and have show the willingness to) afford at least some non-trivial portion of his contract, Trout is closer to home, Harper + Trout on the same team (!!!)... And perhaps most importantly, Trout gets to experience what seem to be his two favorite things in the world - actual weather, and the Philadelphia Eagles!

Ben Clemens

2:21

Honestly, I don't see it. It's just too much of a logjam with their existing long contracts

2:22

And you can take whatever kind of rich people transportation you use from NY to see the Eagles 8 games a year

it's not like Trout will only buy a house in Philly if he gets traded there

v2micca

2:22

Do you have copy editors on staff to proof-read articles. I ask because in spite of the amount of datapoints and sometimes difficult to spell names, I rarely find any grammatical or spelling errors in your articles. So, massive props to whoever handles your proof-reading.

Ben Clemens

2:22

Oh yeah, huge shout out to Meg

and Jon Tayler

2:23

They handle the copy-editing and also the factual stuff, which is far harder given how many baseball players exist and how many statistics we're using in every article

I am pretty good at spelling and I'd say middling at grammar, and then they polish it up to perfect

Giant Gonzales

2:23

Now that they're down to 1% playoff odds, Boston should have plenty of money to spend in the offseason. After trading Verdugo, what two starting pitchers should they target? I know the owners are too cheap to go for Ohtani, but what about big contracts for Yamamoto and one of the Nola/Snell/Montgomery number 2 types?

Ben Clemens

2:23

Yeha, Yamamoto and Monty sounds like a nice pair for me

re: AL 1B

2:23

Don’t forget Justin turner. More homers and just a generally way better season than Vlad Jr.

Ben Clemens

2:24

That's just a miss by me, I didn't realize how many games he'd played at first

In my head he was a DH

2:24

What's your take on the Farhan regime? I don't think I realized how bad the situation was that he took over, but the results have also been middling.