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2:00 Ben Clemens: Hey everybody, welcome to the chat
2:01 Ben Clemens: Let’s talk baseball!
Randy: A testament to just how good he is that the sky was falling for Aaron Judge and his 125 wRC+. How good is the NYY team if they get 2022-2023 Judge?
Ben Clemens: It’s so true. When you have the kind of two-year run that Judge just put up, merely good offense feels like a huge letdown
Ben Clemens: His power production this year has been shockingly low for Aaron Freaking Judge
Ben Clemens: Nothing has really changed, in my opinion, though. He still looks like one of the best hitters in the game to me
Ben Clemens: This offense is impressive, it’s doing very well even with Judge and Torres struggling on a relative basis
scrrrrrr: The next time you chat we can commemorate Imagaga’s rookie of the month award
Ben Clemens: What a marvelous start to the season
RAGBRAI: A month in, are SBs about where they were last year at this time? More? Less? Will we continue to see an increase by season’s end?
Ben Clemens: Stolen base attempt rate has accelerated in the past two weeks, now basically in line with 2023, but success rate is still down
Ben Clemens: I think that we’ll see things stabilize with slightly fewer steals than we’re seeing now. Pitchers and catchers have been very good at defending the running game this year
#1MetsFan: Whats for lunch Ever since Francisco Alvarez went down, Mets pitching has reverted back to where it was before he was in the bigs. Its a small sample size, but am I right when I tell everybody that Alvarez is a catching superstar in the making?
The person who asks the lunch question: What’s for lunch?
Ben Clemens: I haven’t decided what’s for lunch today. I was supposed to cook some mapo tofu last night and have leftovers today but I got lazy and ordered in. Maybe a kitchen sink style sandwich instead
Ben Clemens: I think that Alvarez is a catching superstar in the making, but I didn’t come to that opinion b/c of the pitching, more b/c I think he’s a pretty good defender and a great hitter
Ben Clemens: It’s just too small of a sample to say much about his effect on the staff. a year is too small of a sample, eve
Anon21: Balls are dead, right? 92 fewer homers than 2023 through the same number of games. Can’t just be the weather.
Ben Clemens: Yeah carry seems down markedly. Not just the weather, agree
Stan Javier: Looking back at the Padres trade for Soto, do you consider the trade to be fair? Lopsided?
Ben Clemens: Boy, I definitely need to read what I wrote to be sure of what I thought at the time
Ben Clemens: I said that I didn’t like the trade but that if they had to trade Soto, I liked getting a grab bag of pitchers
Ben Clemens: Uh, I have an article coming out tomorrow that will touch on Michael King but woof
Ben Clemens: He’s down a tick and a half, his sweeper lost three inches of run, and he’s locating worse
Ben Clemens: A lot of that is because he just can’t throw the same way as a starter, a lot of his best performances are in relief
Ben Clemens: but if that breaking ball isn’t there for him, everything doesn’t work quite as well
Ben Clemens: I think that given that the Padres were forced sellers, they were always gonna take some risks, and King not working out is a pretty bad run out
BallFourFan: When (if ) Cole makes it back, who do you see as the weakest link in the current Yankee rotation?
Ben Clemens: This is not a bad problem to have, but I’d say either Schmidt or Gil
Ben Clemens: Gil seems to me like he’d be an incredible reliever, so maybe him
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