Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been a dismal and deflating season in Detroit. The Tigers, who entered the year as favorites to win the AL Central after signing both Framber Valdez and Justin Verlander in February, played middling baseball through the first five weeks of the season before hitting the skids in May, at one point losing 16 out of 18 games. Instead of loading up for the stretch run ahead of the August 3 trade deadline, they dealt away both Tarik Skubal and Casey Mize to other contenders. While the team has actually outscored opponents by 47 runs (610 to 563), the Tigers are currently 11 games below .500 at 64-75, and in danger of making some dubious history by falling short of their Pythagorean-projected win total by the largest margin of any Wild Card-era team.

Misery loves company, and the Tigers are not alone in undershooting their target. The Giants, who at the outset of the season looked to have a reasonable chance of claiming a Wild Card berth, are not only 24 games below .500 (58-82) but in danger of falling short of their BaseRuns-projected win total by the largest margin of any team since 2002.

If you’re not familiar with either of these concepts, a Pythagorean projection is one of the most enduring Bill James creations, introduced in his self-published 1980 Baseball Abstract. James showed that simply by knowing a team’s runs scored and runs allowed, one could estimate its winning percentage with a reasonable degree of accuracy via the formula Winning % = RS^2 /(RS^2 +RA^2). The use of the squares, reminiscent of the Pythagorean formula to calculate the length of a right triangle’s hypotenuse, is what gives the stat its name. Further refinements by James and other sabermetricians showed that using a slightly smaller exponent increased the accuracy of the estimate. The Pythagenpat formula, where the exponent itself is a function of the scoring environment via the formula X = ((RS + RA)/G)^0.287, is the one we use for our Projected Standings pages, which now have all major league seasons dating back to 1871 (damn those underachieving Rockford Forest Citys). Read the rest of this entry »

Jake Burger has grown into a solid big league slugger. Now 30 years old and in his fourth full major league season — and his second with the Texas Rangers — the 6-foot, 230-pound first baseman has logged a 107 wRC+ and gone deep 102 times since earning regular playing time in 2023. Hitting primarily out of the four and five holes in the Rangers’ lineup, Burger currently has 23 home runs and a team-best 78 RBIs to go with a .234/.297/.421 line.

His approach is slugger-ish, yet in many ways nuanced. While he primarily goes up to the plate looking to bash, Burger is more than just a turn-and-burn guy. Placing pitchers in buckets and embracing a calm mindset, the erstwhile Missouri State University Bear has a plan every time he settles into the right-handed batter’s box.

Burger sat down for the 126th installment of our Talks Hitting series when the Rangers visited Chicago to take on the White Sox last week.

———

David Laurila: What have you learned about hitting over the years?

Jake Burger: “More than anything, it’s about your mentality in the box. It’s about who can be almost bored, in a sense. If you’re trying to live up to a name, or a situation, you’re going to be less bored than the pitcher. When you can control your emotions a little bit and be almost bored in the box, you’re going to control situations better. You’re going to calm your mind a little bit.” Read the rest of this entry »

On Opening Day, Paul Skenes had his worst start since at least high school. He threw 37 pitches, allowed five runs (not all of which were his fault) and lasted only two-thirds of an inning. Skenes left that outing with an ERA of 67.50; even for a high-volume starting pitcher, that’s a big hole to climb out of.

From that point on, the NL Cy Young race has been a heads-up contest between Jacob Misiorowski and Cristopher Sánchez; the former, with his big velocity and strikeout totals, seems to be the favorite at the moment. But a third pitcher has entered the race in the past seven weeks: Chris Sale. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley announce an upcoming livestream and then react to the semi-surprising sale of the Angels by Arte Moreno to Stan Kroenke, considering the significance of the sale price, the outlook for the franchise, the legacies of Moreno and Mike Trout, and what the sale might portend for CBA talks. Then (43:14), in the wake of recent reporting and discussion about the volume level at games, they talk to stadium acoustics expert Jack Wrightson of design firm WJHW about how stadium sound systems are simulated and constructed, how they’ve evolved, the sonic environments of baseball and other sports, how team preferences and practices vary, fan noise vs. PA noise, sound on the field vs. sound in the stands, why ballparks are sometimes too loud, and much more, plus (1:37:57) a few postscript follow-ups.

Audio intro: Harold Walker, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio interstitial: Grant Brisbee, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: Xavier LeBlanc, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to Patreon registration
Link to FG on the Angels sale
Link to The Athletic sale article 1
Link to The Athletic sale article 2
Link to Trout quotes
Link to mayor quotes
Link to 2023 attendance
Link to 2026 attendance
Link to Moreno on fan preferences
Link to Kroenke wiki
Link to Moreno wiki
Link to Paine on Moreno
Link to new Angels park item
Link to froyo fraud article
Link to sale-price bubble analysis
Link to WJHW “about” page
Link to WJHW ballparks page
Link to Jack’s WJHW bio
Link to latest loudness article
Link to loudness article 2
Link to loudness article 3
Link to loudness article 4
Link to loudness article 5
Link to sound level meter wiki
Link to loudness wars wiki
Link to SIS on Cowser
Link to Langs post 1
Link to Langs post 2
Link to EW on Yandy and ABS
Link to Tango on Yandy
Link to Tango on the Rays
Link to more Tango on the Rays
Link to Jade on Skubal
Link to new Plot Hole or Not Hole

 Sponsor Us on Patreon
 Give a Gift Subscription
 Email Us: podcast@fangraphs.com
 Effectively Wild Subreddit
 Effectively Wild Wiki
 Apple Podcasts Feed 
 Spotify Feed
 YouTube Playlist
 Facebook Group
 Bluesky Account
 Twitter Account
 Get Our Merch!

Podcast (effectively-wild): Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

On Sunday, Red Sox infielder Andruw Monasterio took the mound against the Yankees with one out in the eighth inning of a 10-1 game — one that had already sent a Red Sox broadcaster over the edge — and proceeded to allow six more runs. On Monday, Twins top prospect Walker Jenkins hit his first major league home run off a 37-mph eephus lob from Tigers utilityman Zach McKinstry, while the Cubs set a team record with nine homers in one game, the last three of them off Brewers first baseman Andrew Vaughn. Amid complaints on social media and sports talk radio calling for a ban to the practice, the reality is that managers are putting position players on mop-and-bucket duty more frequently than ever, enough to suggest it’s time to revise the rules limiting their usage.

Once upon a time, position players pitching was a rarity. The first 21 seasons of the Wild Card era (1995–2005) featured seasons where you could count such appearances on one hand; there was one in 2005 and none in ’06, and by the end of that stretch, it was still something that happened less than once a week throughout the majors. As a beat, it was a fun one to cover because of the novelty, particularly with pitch tracking allowing everyone to gawk at the low-velocity junk thrown under such circumstances. Did you know Todd Frazier had a knuckleball? How about that Willians Astudillo eephus? Eventually, however, the beat became less enjoyable as the practice proliferated to the point that Major League Baseball had to codify when teams could do it; while the occasions themselves remained appropriately light-hearted, the novelty had long worn off. Now, even with more restrictive rules governing their usage, the situation is worth revisiting.

The Monasterio and McKinstry appearances were garden variety affairs, with position players taking the mound in the eighth inning of road games where nobody would need to pitch the bottom of the ninth. Monasterio’s outing was Boston’s first such appearance this season, a sidelight to a game that included a controversial fifth-inning no-catch call of a Jazz Chisholm Jr. bloop by center fielder Ceddanne Rafaela and then an unprofessional tirade in the booth by WEEI broadcaster Will Flemming, who called Chisholm a “bush league player” who “plays the game the wrong way” after Chisholm walked and stole second and third base in the eighth inning of a 7-1 game. The steals, which were ordered by manager Aaron Boone, became moot after reliever Jovani Morán served up back-to-back home runs to Austin Wells and Paul Goldschmidt to run the score to 10-1, leading manager Chad Tracy to crank up the Monasterio. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to your weekly WPBL recap! Week Five marked the league’s second-to-last week of the regular season, and several teams are using their last few games to test out new defensive alignments and lineup configurations with an eye toward optimizing their strategies before the postseason. Certain tactics were more effective than others, and as such, no team’s performance this week was an unqualified success. Rather, the teams that flourished demonstrated an ability to puke and rally when things went sideways.

As a reminder, these weekly roundups are designed to cover each week’s action by highlighting the most notable players, moments, and anything else I deem worthy of further commentary. For each edition of the recap, I re-license the naming rights to this list of highlights to whichever team I feel has won the week. And how does a team win the week? Well, unlike actual wins and losses in baseball, this type of win is purely subjective and will operate under the time-honored tradition of making it up as we go along.

Along with the list of highlights, the Unforced Errors section discusses the more confounding aspects of the prior week because good faith criticism is a necessary component of continuing progress. Rounding things out are the Historic Firsts of Lesser Renown. The league’s momentous firsts will obviously get their shine, but there’s something to be said for the more strange and mundane firsts, the smaller day-to-day occurrences that make a new league feel familiar and complete. Think of these firsts as the knickknacks on a shelf that make a new house feel like a home. Baseball fans won’t really feel settled into a new league until the first time a player on their favorite team commits a TOOTBLAN. Read the rest of this entry »

Four years ago, Arte Moreno explored a sale of the Angels. No firm bids materialized, and he ended that exploration the following year. Three years later, however, the tide has suddenly turned. On Tuesday, Moreno agreed to sell the team to multi-sport owner Stan Kroenke in a deal that values the Angels at $4 billion, a record-setting price for the sale of a majority stake in an MLB team.

They say it never rains in Southern California. They also say that when it rains, it pours. Consider those two adages, and then apply them both to the recent ownership changes in MLB. Earlier this year, Kwanza Jones and José E. Feliciano bought the Padres at a $3.9 billion valuation. Kroenke’s purchase of the Angels sets a new record, the team-sale equivalent of a free agent signing a contract that guarantees them $1 million more than the previous high. It’s a boom time to be selling baseball teams. In fact, these two sales might have set records for transfers of controlling stakes, but the Yankees blew the competition away earlier this year when they sold a minority share to Apollo, a private equity group, at a valuation of roughly $10 billion. It’s a boom time for baseball ownership in general, in other words.

Moreno purchased the Angels in 2003, in the wake of their World Series title. His relationship with both the city of Anaheim and the fans of the team is complicated. At first, his free-spending ways made up for his desire to rebrand the club as a Los Angeles concern. The team was quite successful in the beginning of Moreno’s stewardship, averaging 90 wins in the first 10 years after he purchased the club. That was the best stretch in Angels history by far; they made the playoffs five times, more than the four they’d racked up in the prior 42 years the franchise existed before Moreno bought it. Read the rest of this entry »

In a team sport, everyone involved — players, media, fans — has their own outlook on individual awards. Personally, I think they mean a lot. Yes, the player’s ultimate goal is to serve the team, but when individual effort is only tenuously related to team success, I think it’s worthwhile to recognize outstanding individual performances when they come.

But even I struggle to get too worked up about MLB’s Player of the Week awards. I get the press release in my inbox every week, but I usually check the headline, mark it read, and forget about it forever. As far as I know, there’s no cash prize or physical trophy involved; winning Player of the Week is more like getting all A’s on your report card than winning an Olympic medal. Read the rest of this entry »

Whenever I write a State of FanGraphs post, I see some version of this comment: “I’m already a FanGraphs Member, but I’d like to give FanGraphs more money. How can I do that?”

We deeply appreciate that some of you want to offer us more support than our standard annual Membership, and now there’s a way, with the FanGraphs MVP Membership. The price is $500 a year and you get the following:

• All the usual FanGraphs Membership benefits
• A gift exclusive to FanGraphs MVP Members
• An annual call for MVPs with me and other FanGraphs leadership on the state and direction of the site
• An optional tag on your comments indicating that you’re an MVP Member

Assuming that you’re already a site Member, this Membership will replace your current Membership, with your prorated remaining time credited to the initial $500 price. This way, if your $80 Membership just renewed, you don’t have to pay $580 to become an MVP Member.

Philosophically, we’re positioning FanGraphs MVP Membership as a way to further support our work, and receive some special recognition in the process. FanGraphs will become better with your additional support, but your individual FanGraphs experience won’t be better than any other Member’s. We feel this is an important distinction to make, and also an important distinction to be up-front about.

This year’s exclusive gift is a 14-ounce FanGraphs-branded Yeti mug with a ceramic interior:

When I showed the prototype to folks at a recent FanGraphs staff gathering, it was deemed “quite nice.” It will be laser etched with the FanGraphs logo, the year you became an MVP Member, and your MVP Member number, which is assigned in the order you sign up for an MVP Membership. In future years, we may have different gifts. We’ll think more about that this offseason, solicit feedback from MVP Members, and make an announcement as to what’s next before the first anniversary of FanGraphs MVP Membership.

Regardless, we won’t sell these FanGraphs Yeti mugs outside of MVP Membership. They are exclusive to FanGraphs MVP Members.

That said, we know that many existing Members who want to further support the site would prefer to buy more FanGraphs-branded merchandise to do so. We’re actively working on some new merch that isn’t tied to FanGraphs MVP Membership, as well as restocking some of our existing items, and should have more information soon!

If you have the means and love FanGraphs, an MVP Membership is a great way to support the site you’ve come to rely on while getting a nice mug you can brag about. And whether it’s as an annual or monthly Member or an MVP, we’re extremely grateful for all of our Members. You are the reason we’re able to continue to grow and improve the unique combination of data and editorial content that is FanGraphs.