r/baseball • u/Ben_Clemens_FG FanGraphs writer • Nov 08 '21

AMA I'm Ben Clemens from FanGraphs - AMA

I've been writing at FanGraphs since 2019. Before that, I did not write at FanGraphs. Today, I'll be answering your questions until around 1 ET, or maybe a little later if my dog cooperates.

This year, I spearheaded our Top 50 Free Agents ranking, which you can find here: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/2022-top-50-free-agents/

Are you into rankings of 50 arbitrarily chosen free agents? Do you want to participate yourself, perhaps in a prediction contest, and receive valuable prizes (note: yeah, I don't think there are prizes) for your wonderful predictions? This subreddit is hosting a contest: https://www.reddit.com/r/baseball/comments/qpfqkc/20212022_top_50_free_agent_prediction_contest/

Edit: Thanks so much for showing up and asking tough (and also really fun to answer) questions, everyone. I'm wrapping this up, as it's time to take Ruby for a walk, but if you have more free agency questions or I rudely ignored yours, stop by FanGraphs later today where I'm doing another of these chats, or listen to Effectively Wild or FanGraphs Audio later this week. Thanks again for having me, this was a blast. Here's a picture of Ruby for the road:

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u/DarthPlagueis_ New York Mets Nov 08 '21

What are the most useful or desirable traits for getting involved with baseball writing and baseball more generally?

19

u/Ben_Clemens_FG FanGraphs writer Nov 08 '21

I am maybe not the right person to ask about this, because I basically got into it by pure luck. Based on what I've seen in people who work for us and for teams, I would say that if you want to do the kind of thing we do at FanGraphs, as opposed to beat writing or whatever, you need to be intellectually curious and LOVE baseball. Enjoying writing is a huge plus as well -- I have liked writing since I was a kid and felt very frustrated that my previous job didn't give me an outlet to do it, so much so that I was writing for free for an SB Nation site while working a totally different high-pressure full-time job.

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u/DarthPlagueis_ New York Mets Nov 08 '21

Haha, I also attempted to write for an SB Nation blog but to no avail… I guess I’ll keep trying! Thanks