Ben Clemens

6 days ago | blogs.fangraphs.com | Ben Clemens

Welcome to another edition of Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week. There must have been something in the water across the league over the past seven days, because while this column always highlights delightful oddities that I caught, they aren’t often so delightful or so odd. This week, rarities abounded. There were runners getting hit by throws, wild acrobatics, no-look passes, and even a pitchout.

1 week ago | blogs.fangraphs.com | Pete Alonso |Ben Clemens

It’s never fun being the subject of a story that people call a saga. So when the Pete Alonso free agency saga transpired over the winter, I wondered whether he’d get off to a sluggish start as a result. Signing for less money than your agent told you you’d make, later than you expected to sign, and with a team offering you a smaller contract than they had the year before? It’s enough to make spring training a bit less of a ramp-up period and a bit more of a time for taking out frustration.

1 week ago | blogs.fangraphs.com | Ben Clemens

Have you seen all the technological advances taking over pitching in recent years? High-speed cameras, pitching labs, weighted ball training, wind tunnels – maybe the reason we haven’t sent anyone to the moon for decades is that we’re using all the technology to strike batters out instead. Clearly, the arms race (get it?) favors technological savvy and complicated, inscrutable mathematical modeling.

1 week ago | blogs.fangraphs.com | Ben Clemens

For the past half decade, Logan Webb has been one of the game’s premier starters. He churns out 30-start seasons with ERAs in the 3s like clockwork; that’s almost exactly his seasonal average since switching to a full-time sinkerballer in 2021. In that span, he’s averaging 4.4 WAR per year, and he’s topped 200 innings in each of the past two seasons. This year, he’s atop the leaderboards again, with a 2.63 ERA and 2.25 FIP through four starts.

1 week ago | blogs.fangraphs.com | Ben Clemens

This spring, the Angels banned the use of cell phones in their clubhouse. I read that news with great interest, since like so many people these days, I have a love/hate relationship with the little screen in my pocket. I really do feel like looking at it less often could help me out. What better laboratory to test the wholesome effects of less screen time than a high stakes sport? Then I thought a bit more about the situation and laughed. Could cell phone usage bring the Angels to the playoffs?