Major League Baseball is once again using the Arizona Fall League as a laboratory for potential rule changes at the major league level. In the past, the AFL has been a proving ground for rule alterations that have made their way to the top level of play, from the pitch timer, to limits on infield shifts, to the ABS challenge system; other initiatives, such as check swing challenges and fully automated balls and strikes, have previously been tested in Arizona but not implemented in the majors. This year, FanGraphs can report that the AFL is piloting new rules restricting defender positioning both on the infield (with the bases empty) and, perhaps more notably, in the outfield. Though MLB implemented restrictions on where infielders can play in 2023, this is the first time the league is piloting guard rails around where outfield defenders can be positioned when a pitch is thrown.
These restrictions first came to my attention during Monday’s game at Salt River Field, where Brendan Gawlowski and I noticed two things. First, Brendan noticed that the two teams’ corner outfielders were positioned both very close to the foul lines and much shallower than contemporary outfielders typically play. Of course, there are situations where a team might want to strategically align their outfielders like this, but for both teams to be doing so regardless of the hitter or game situation struck us as strange. Here is what that looked like on Monday:
Welcome to our Open Game Thread for the NLDS Game 3. Chat with fellow readers as we watch the Dodgers at the Braves and the Brewers at the Padres. Only Members can participate, and unlike our usual game chats, your messages will be posted immediately.
Our Member community is made up of thousands of incredibly knowledgable baseball fans, and we think this is a great way to follow a game with like-minded baseball enthusiasts. We might even have some FanGraphs Staff drop in and join the fun. Please be courteous to your fellow Members, or you may find your chat privileges revoked.
Do you ever stop and think about how baseball would be different if the ball smelled delicious? Imagine that Major League Baseball, in its never-ending quest to abase itself for sponsorship dollars, forges an innovative partnership with Willy Wonka. In exchange for the title of Official Chocolate of Major League Baseball and the right to outfit the umpires in his trademark violet velvet coats, the eccentric chocolatier uses his quasi-supernatural confectionary gifts to impart one of several dozen mouthwatering aromas to each and every baseball used in a game. This baseball smells like warm chocolate chip cookies, the next one like toasted marshmallows, and the one after that like snozzberries. You get the idea.
Now imagine you’re pitching in the World Series. The umpire reaches into the pouch that dangles from their belt (but awkwardly, because they first have to flap the side of their knee-length velvet coat out of the way), grabs a new pill, and fires it out to you. Millions of eyes are on you. The game is on the line. The season is on the line. You’d still raise the ball up to your face for a whiff before you got settled on the mound, right? You’d have to. Would you really be able to go without smelling the ball? You know it smells amazing, but you don’t know how. If you didn’t sniff the ball, wouldn’t the curiosity about its scent be so distracting as to have a deleterious effect on your ability to pitch? Could you really say you’re putting your all into each pitch if you’re not acquainting yourself as fully as possible with the one and only tool of your trade?
I imagine that sniffing the ball would be something of a flex for infielders. Those who gloved a grounder with time to spare would earn the right to take a healthy waft before firing it over to first. I further conjecture that throwing the ball around the horn after a strikeout would take longer because the outfielders would insist on being included too. More importantly, I imagine that the error rate might tick down just the slightest bit. I’m not saying that major league fielders lack motivation to hold onto the ball as things stand right now, but I hardly think it would hurt to supply them with an additional reason to give it their all. Letting a ball go right through your legs feels terrible, but it probably feels just a little bit worse when you know that along with hurting your team, you’ve fumbled away a transportive sensorial experience. Maybe that would push you to take that extra round of infield practice, to lock in on every single pitch, to lay out for that ball. Anyway, that’s what I was thinking about in the shower this morning as I reflected on the fact that last night, in the biggest game of the season, the New York Yankees played as if the ball smelled like a butt. Read the rest of this entry »
Last week, we tried a few Member-only gamethreads on the site. They were pretty well received, so we’re going to host them each day of the postseason going forward. Our Member community is made up of thousands of incredibly knowledgable baseball fans, and we think this is a great way to follow a game with like-minded baseball enthusiasts.
The New York Mets are seeking an Applied AI Engineer to build and ship production-grade AI capabilities that improve decision-making and streamline workflows across Baseball Operations. This role sits at the intersection of Baseball Systems (software engineering), Data Engineering, Baseball Analytics, Performance Technology, and modern generative AI. You will develop reliable AI-powered applications such as retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), secure tool/data integrations (MCP-style patterns), and agentic workflows that can support deep work and research, while ensuring strong standards for quality, security, privacy, and operational excellence.
This is a hands-on role for an engineer who can translate ambiguous baseball operations and player development needs into working software, iterate quickly with stakeholders, and harden solutions into durable systems used daily by analysts, coaches, scouts, and baseball operations staff.
Note: This role will require extensive in-person collaboration and innovation alongside stakeholders, analysts, and engineers. Applicants must be local to NYC (or willing to relocate) and be able to travel to Citi Field regularly. Travel to Spring Training and affiliates may also be required.
Essential Duties & Responsibilities
Design, build and maintain AI-powered product experiences that provide intuitive access to baseball information and statistics and workflows across internal systems.
Develop end-to-end RAG pipelines (ingest, chunking, embedding, retrieval, generation) with strong attention to answer quality, baseball relevancy, analytics accuracy, latency, and cost.
Implement secure tool and data connectors for AI assistants and agents using standardized patterns (MCP-style), enabling safe interaction with internal APIs, data warehouses, and services.
Build agentic workflows that can execute multi-step tasks (research, analysis, synthesis, report generation) with clear guardrails, auditability, and human-in-the-loop approvals.
Partner closely with Product, Analytics, Performance Technology, Player Development, and Baseball operations stakeholders to frame problems, define success, and deliver measurable impact.
Contribute to shared engineering standards and reusable components so AI capabilities scale across multiple products and teams.
Ensure strong security and privacy practices (access control, data boundaries, logging and auditing, and safe handling of sensitive information).
Participate in high-availability support expectations as needed during critical operational periods throughout the baseball season, and during feature releases.
Qualifications
Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or equivalent practical experience.
5+ years of professional software engineering experience, including building and operating production services.
Demonstrated experience building LLM-powered applications in production (prompt/program design, structured outputs, tool calling, reliability patterns).
Practical experience with retrieval systems (search, embeddings, vector databases, ranking, chunking/indexing) and applying them to real workflows.
Strong experience with modern backend and data integration fundamentals: APIs, SQL, distributed systems, and cloud infrastructure (GCP/AWS/Azure)
Proficiency in one or more production languages commonly used for AI applications and services (e.g. Python and/or Typescript)
Approach work as highly collaborative and stakeholder-driven, with the ability to operate in ambiguity while iterating quickly.
Strong written and verbal communication skills with the ability to explain tradeoffs to technical and non-technical audiences.
Experience working in sports, health, finance, or other high-stakes analytics-heavy environments, preferred.
Strong interest in baseball and comfort working within the culture of a professional sports organization, preferred
The above information is intended to describe the general nature, type, and level of work to be performed. The information is not intended to be an exhaustive or complete list of all responsibilities, duties, and skills required for this position. Nothing in this job description restricts management’s right to assign or reassign duties and responsibilities to this job at any time. The individual selected may perform other related duties as assigned or requested.
The New York Mets value the unique qualities individuals with various backgrounds and experiences can offer the organization. Our continued success depends heavily on the quality of our workforce. The Organization is committed to providing employees with the opportunity to develop to their fullest potential.
Salary Range: $180,000 – $200,000
For technical reasons, we strongly advise to not use an .edu email address when applying. Thank you very much.
The Pittsburgh Pirates are a storied franchise in Major League Baseball who are reinventing themselves on every level. Boldly and relentlessly pursuing excellence by:
purposefully developing a player and people-centered culture;
deeply connecting with our fans, partners, and colleagues;
passionately creating lifetime memories for generations of families and friends; and
meaningfully impacting our communities and the game of baseball.
At the Pirates, we believe in the power of a diverse workforce and strive to create an inclusive culture centered in Passion, Innovation, Respect, Accountability, Teamwork, Empathy, and Service.
Job Summary
The Strategy team with the Pittsburgh Pirates exists to give the Major League coaching staff the information and tools they need to make elite in-game decisions. The group’s analysts translate information into clear, actionable plans that support both daily competition and long-term player growth.
The Baseball Strategy team will be considering applicants at both the Analyst and Senior Analyst level. In this role, you’ll work alongside Major League coaches and staff, helping turn information into on-field impact. Your work will include elements of game preparation, in-game strategy support, post-game review, skill development, and ongoing tool or process improvement.
Responsibilities:
Partner with Major League coaches to build strong working relationships, understand the decisions they face, and identify where analysis can create a competitive advantage.
Connect research to real baseball questions by turning observations from coaches, players, and data into testable ideas and pursuing the questions most likely to inform decisions or improve performance.
Support the daily competitive process by contributing to game preparation, in-game strategy support, post-game review, and player development while balancing immediate needs with longer-term projects.
Improve tools and processes by building and refining analytical resources that fit staff workflows and make useful information easier to access and apply.
Collaborate across baseball operations by working with analysts, researchers, coaches, and performance staff to combine different perspectives, surface disagreements constructively, and move shared work forward.
Qualifications
Required:
Authorized to work lawfully in the United States.
Demonstrated ability to synthesize complex information into actionable recommendations.
Proven ability to manage multiple projects and meet tight deadlines in a fast-paced setting.
Excellent communication and relationship-building skills.
Strong knowledge of modern baseball research and technologies.
Programming language proficiencies:
General purpose programming (Python or R)
Relational databases (SQL)
Familiarity with industry-relevant AI and automation tools to streamline daily workflows and tasks.
Desired:
Experience working with coaches, analysts, or player development staff in a high-performance environment.
Demonstrated baseball or other sports analytics research work product.
Practical and/or research experience with pitch design and modern pitching development techniques.
Proficiency with version control systems (e.g., Git) and collaborative development platforms like GitHub or GitLab.
Equal Opportunity Employer
The Pittsburgh Pirates are an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status or any other characteristic protected by law.
Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Cal Raleigh and Josh Naylor and whether end-of-season surgeries for disappointing players are encouraging or frustrating, then share their takeaways from the first six Division Series games, including thoughts on Drew Rasmussen, an Austin Wells mistake, Rays crowds, Aaron Judge’s role in Rich Platelet, Poor Platelet, Grant Taylor (and whether postseason teams are pushing high-leverage relievers too far), the Blake Snell spectator experience, the upside and drawback of Chris Sale, two tantalizing fly balls (and a Ty France roof-related “what if”), how to tackle Jacob Misiorowski and Mason Miller, the Padres’ star scrubs, Jackson Chourio, and much more.
The Tampa Bay Rays won the most games in the American League this year while running the AL’s second-lowest payroll. That’s a feat of team-building, first and foremost, but it also speaks to how well their players dodged leaks. On offense, they had the lowest strikeout and whiff rates in the majors; their pitchers had the league’s lowest walk rate and just 18 blown saves. You can’t make mistakes if you’re the Rays.
That’s a well-worn cliché, but here’s a novel spin on it: You can’t make mistakes if you’re the Yankees either. Presumptive AL Cy Young winner Cam Schlittler did some terrific work in his first career playoff road start, and no one’s going to remember it, because the other eight guys in gray pajamas played like the ball was covered in dish soap in Game 2.
The Yankees committed three errors in the bottom of the first inning, and another in the fifth. The Rays scored five runs across those two half-innings, and there’s your final score: Rays 5, Yankees 2. Read the rest of this entry »
Playoff losses can follow several different scripts, from the wire-to-wire blowouts that breed prolonged helplessness to the back-and-forth affairs that provide just enough hope before snatching it away at the end. But somewhere in the middle, there is the type of game that seems like a team can and should win, only for a few things to break the other way in such a fashion that its fans do not rage, do not cry, but instead climb aboard the doomsday hamster wheel of here we go again.
With their 4-3 loss to the Chicago White Sox in Game 2 of the American League Division Series, the Cleveland Guardians are now 2-7 in their last nine home playoff games. Those perilously loyal Cleveland fans, clad in red and blue jerseys bearing several different names — both on the front and the back — have seen their team repeatedly fall flat, dating back to that famous rain delay in 2016. But in this decade, they’ve also seen their team lose an ALDS Game 4 to the Yankees in 2022 that would have clinched the series, another loss to the Yankees in 2024 when Juan Soto simply decided he was too good of a hitter not to break their hearts, and two crushing Wild Card Series losses at home in 2025 to a division rival. In 2026, with no guarantee that they’ll be coming back for another game this year, the Guardians have added two more defeats at the hands of an AL Central foe, this time coming off a bye.
The White Sox won this game by eschewing the home run ball they relied on all summer and opting for Guards Ball. They had just three of the 10 hardest-hit balls of the game. Their opening pitcher did not get out of the first inning. But twice they scored from second on a single, went 3-for-8 with runners in scoring position (as opposed to Cleveland’s fatal 0-for-5), and rode a scorching hot reliever to probably their biggest victory since the 2005 championship march.
Ironically, this game began with a bit of Guards Ball from the home team that seemed a little too on the nose. Steven Kwan kicked things off with a roller through the right side that left the bat at 84.8 mph. José Ramírez then worked a walk, and Chase DeLauter followed with a productive out. That spelled the end of the night for Anthony Kay, who was replaced by Sean Newcomb. When Newcomb promptly missed the zone with his first two pitches to Jo Adell, the White Sox bench opted to put Adell on intentionally, loading the bases and setting up a double play. Newcomb was able to induce a grounder from Nathaniel Lowe next, but the type that bounces way up in the air rather than skimming along the dirt. It was also, apparently, the type of grounder that triggers a horrendous throwing error, giving Cleveland two easy runs.
The buildup to that calamitous moment wasn’t entirely Newcomb’s fault, as Kay was responsible for the lead runners and recorded one solitary out on just 17 pitches, both fewer than the four outs on 22 pitches he gave Chicago as a reliever in Game 1. What the White Sox do with Kay for the rest of the series may come down entirely to game situations; his Game 2 performance inspired negative confidence, and it seems he’s better suited for plug-and-play outings out of the bullpen, particularly with Davis Martin, Hagen Smith and/or Erick Fedde, and Sean Burke now lined up for the bulk roles should this series go all the way to Game 5.
For the first half of this game, Newcomb’s blunder looked like it would be the defining play. But the true inflection points came in the bottom of the fifth and the top of the sixth. Cleveland, clinging to a 2-1 lead, sent its best hitters to the plate in the home half of the fifth. Not only did that trio — Kwan, Ramírez, and DeLauter — go down in order, they did so without getting a ball out of the infield. Up to that point, the game was following a favorable script for the Guardians. They were gifted an early lead, had their starting pitcher, Gavin Williams, in the rocking chair, and were primed to put pressure on Chicago’s pitching staff. The exact pocket of the lineup that Cleveland manager Stephen Vogt would want at the plate for that situation wilted, and it felt like the White Sox were headed back to their dugout knowing their opponent had squandered their chance to properly put them away.
Within minutes, things began unraveling in Cleveland like the night Mike Love gave his Rock and Roll Hall of Fame speech. Miguel Vargas chased Williams by thwacking his 98th pitch of the night into left field for a sharp leadoff single. The Guardians then turned to lefty Erik Sabrowski, a very qualified fireman who came oh so close to extinguishing the flames. Sabrowski retired Munetaka Murakami and walked Randal Grichuk. No harm, no foul. But perhaps the biggest pitch of the night was one that did not get put in play or result in a strikeout. Rather, it was a wild pitch that pushed Vargas and Grichuk to third and second base, respectively. While Sabrowski did well to dig out of a 2-0 hole and pop Tommy Pham up for the second out, the next batter ambushed him.
Braden Montgomery’s first-pitch double was a wondrous display of hitting. It also would not have given Chicago the lead if not for Sabrowski’s wild pitch. One inning after Cleveland’s biggest (and some would say only) offensive threats failed to do anything, a defense-first rookie with an 89 wRC+ delivered the biggest blow of the night for Chicago. Fellow youngster Chase Meidroth then slapped an opposite-field single off Hunter Gaddis to make it 4-2 White Sox, and the here we go again feeling blew through Progressive Field like a vicious Lake Erie wind. Both Montgomery and Meidroth’s RBI knocks came on fastballs, pitch selections that Cleveland might like to have back. In the regular season, Montgomery had a .379 xwOBA against fastballs, and he was facing a pitcher in Sabrowski who hadn’t allowed a hit all year to righties on his slider. Meidroth — who whiffs on fastballs just 15.7% of the time, compared to 23.5% on breaking stuff and 29.3% on offspeed pitches — probably should have seen exclusively sliders and changeups from Gaddis.
The cruelty of this game for the Guardians is found in Williams’ stat line. Their flamethrowing Big Rig sat 99 mph on his fastball, generated 22 whiffs on 40 swings, and finished with 11 strikeouts. Apart from the three walks that drove his pitch count up — one of which helped the White Sox plate their first run in the fourth inning — Williams did everything that could have been asked of him, handing things over to a more than capable bullpen. It not only wasn’t enough, but it will be lost to history because of what Burke did.
Burke is a starting pitcher by trade, one who made 27 starts for the White Sox this year and led the team in innings. Starting pitchers, notorious creatures of habit that they are, typically don’t like following an opener. They especially don’t like entering a game mid-inning with a runner on base. But that’s exactly what Burke did in his spectacular Game 2 showing. When White Sox skipper Will Venable gave his early-inning interview on the television broadcast, he plainly stated that the plan was to have Kay and Newcomb get through DeLauter a second time. DeLauter singled in his second at-bat, immediately shooting Venable out of the dugout to go get Newcomb, as planned. But if you pumped Venable with truth serum, he’d likely tell you he was feeling a bit queasy about that plan now putting Burke in a dirty inning. Burke’s response to this adversity wasn’t as sexy as escaping a bases-loaded jam or coming on for a multi-inning save, but his subsequent strikeouts of both Adell and Lowe is the type of thing that should get a proper segment if this White Sox run turns documentary worthy. He goes to bed knowing he covered 5 1/3 innings while surrendering just one hit, and also that the Pope must be thrilled with him.
The Guardians, meanwhile, do not have papal fandom or many shreds of optimism on their side, both narratively and statistically. They lost two home games with their two best pitchers on the hill. Two of the three runs they’ve scored this series have come from a pitcher fielding his position and suddenly contracting Joel Zumaya Disease. They now have to win two games at Rate Field in Chicago, which will not only be completely bananas, but is a venue where they lost four of their six games this year. Maybe they can cling to the idea that Adell’s ultimately fruitless eighth-inning triple will unlock his swing, or that Grant Taylor has been so overworked that he can’t possibly continue pitching this well.
But once you start playing that mental game, it’s probably not going to happen for you, the same way it hasn’t happened for Cleveland in the postseason all decade.
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