JotCast | Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat

Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat - 9/19/22

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Ben Clemens

2:44

Yeah, really agree. I have a ton of memories of Strasburg thanks to going to college in VA and staying in touch with a ton of Nats fans. It's a bittersweet read but I suggest it

Kiermaier's Piercing Green Eyes

2:44

Hold up, Ted Williams in 1941 put up an 11 WAR season and batted .406 while finishing second in MVP voting to Joltin' Joe. I love Ohtani, but I'm taking Ted for the best second-place MVP season.

Ben Clemens

2:44

Hm, fine, real MLB history (post-integration)

2:45

Shots fired, expecting to hear a ton of flak for that, but whatever. I'm much more impressed by baseball records that happened after the best players were all allowed to play

szakyl

2:45

It doesn't seem like we heard from Eric recently. Has he left Fangraphs for another job, or is he just taking a post-deadline break while prospect news is slow?

Ben Clemens

2:46

Check out his great interview with Jeff Passan in this week's FG Audio

(break)

Guest

2:46

Do you think starters will go deeper in these playoffs or will multi inning relievers be more of a factor? I don't think many teams have more than a couple guys they really trust in a close game.

Ben Clemens

2:46

I think it depends heavily on the starter. The days of mediocre starters going into the 8th are over, but I could see Bieber/Fried/Strider/dG/Scherzer/(list truncated) going long

Kyle

2:47

The post-deadline Nationals aren’t much better, but they are a lot of fun. Who do you think their biggest offseason pick up is…?

Ben Clemens

2:48

Oh, interesting! I agree that the Nats have been more fun post-deadline, and Meneses has been fun. How would you feel about either Miguel Sano or Mitch Haniger?

2:48

Freeman’s obviously much better than Olson right now, but wasn’t the trade more about tomorrow than today? In a few years, do you think Freeman at first and Pache in CF is more valuable than Olson at first and Harris in CF?

Ben Clemens

2:48

You know they'd still have Harris, right?

2:49

I just don't think the idea of accepting a lesser player and also trading prospects for it is a smart use of resources. The Braves go to great lengths to secure financially-advantageous contracts by locking up their young stars. It's a smart strategy that benefits both those young stars (ex Albies) and the team

Backing that up by not paying the best Brave of the last decade is just wasting all the good work they've done with the other deals

1947

2:50

Especially considering Judge himself (and Bonds) wouldn't have been allowed to play

Ben Clemens

2:50

Oh, missed the first part of this one, it jumped up the queue somewhere, but yeah, I just don't care about old records that much aside from being like 'man that guy was great at baseball'

Baseball does lend itself to across-era comparisons because relative to other sports the game hasn't changed

2:51

But I think when you're getting that far back, it's just not noteworthy. I'm doing a story about an all-time record that should run Wednesday. It's an all-time record you've never heard of. And it was actually topped in 1908 and I just do. not. care.

1947

2:51

(I said as a Black fan that's where it really starts for me, too)

Ben Clemens

2:51

Thanks!

Broken Bat

2:51

thanks for responding to earlier question. Is there a site where “ release” times for pitchers is listed? I know the difference in just observing Thor vs. Ohtani in stretch to plate by visual, but is this “ time”:listed somewhere?

Ben Clemens

2:52

I've never seen them anywhere publicly. I just ask people if someone looks noteworthily fast or slow. But hm, I'll see if I can find them somewhere

Silly Dan McGraw

2:52

In the 2005 ALCS, White Sox starting pitchers pitched a combined 44 1/3 innings out of a possible 45. That will never be seen again

Ben Clemens

2:52

Whoa. That's...

That wasn't even that long ago. Yeah, never happening again

Guest

2:53

Why do you think arm strength data is not publicly available?

Ben Clemens

2:54

Oh, like throwing arm? I dunno, b/c MLB likes to keep that stuff for themselves so they can have cool things to write about that no one else can. I'm totally cool with that, fwiw; it doesn't really detract from my ability to analyze baseball, there's so much other stuff, and I don't begrudge them having some wowie stats to break out

There's no rule that they have to make everything public, I think they do a good job adding to the public record without just saying here's the raw statcast data file, terabytes per game, go nuts

James

2:54

Can we talk about how Jose Altuve has basically rebranded as a dead-pull power guy and is having a top-5 offensive season? How long will that be sustainable for him given his physical limitations?

Ben Clemens

2:55

Yeah, Altuve going full Marcus Semien and maxing out on lift and pull is not something I expected, but it makes a ton of sense

2:56

He plays in the right park for it, and his raw power is definitely on the decline (no shade there, he's 5'6" and 32)

I think it's a great way to compensate, and he has the phenomenal bat-to-ball skills to make up for the whiffs by making contact with two strikes

2:57

A worse player might try this and explode their strikeout rate. Altuve's increased from a career 12.1% (lol) to a still-sterling 15.1%. Excellent adjustment by a future hall of famer imo

Guest

2:57

But aren't runs prevented by a strong throwing arm missing when using defensive metrics like OAA? Maybe they'll do it once they figure out how to incorporate them?

Ben Clemens

2:57

We just use UZR's arm component for htat

2:58

you don't actually need arm strength. Just coordinates of where the ball was caught (which is already in the Statcast data), and what the runners did afterwards

We could all do that if we were modeling geniuses (I'm not, maybe you are). UZR and DRS do a pretty similar thing without the secret sauce Statcast stuff

MikeD

2:59

Second try on this as I hit send before I finished typing. Shouldn't the Angels, or Ohtani's future team, consider playing him in the OF 30-50 games so as to not lock up the DH spot? Full-time DH's are restrictive in today's game.

Ben Clemens

2:59

Mmm, I think it depends on team composition, but I'm not convinced. The Astros don't seem worse for having a Yordan/Brantley platoon more or less in DH/LF for the year. Ohtani still gets some rest days. I think the idea of over-taxing Ohtani (probably the most taxed player in baseball) to save some rest on other guys is probably not a great one

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