As on-field performance data has evolved, baseball enthusiasts have been spoiled with more precise measures of player performance. One area in particular is pitcher velocity. Whether through Baseball Info Solutions (BIS) or PITCHf/x, writers and researchers can now add a critical variable into their analysis that wasn’t readily available a decade ago.

Many readers of FanGraphs and Beyond the Box Score have seen Jeff Zimmerman’s position player aging curves. After reviewing them, I started to pester Jeff to see if he considered similar curves for pitchers — specifically in the area of fastball velocity. I was curious about the general pattern of decline for fastball speed and how it impacts overall pitcher performance. Luckily, Jeff already had been thinking about this.

Today, Jeff and I are launching a multi-part series on pitcher aging curves, which is centered on fastball velocity. This introductory article will lay out the methodology we used and — of course — the initial baseline curves for all pitchers, as well as starters versus relievers.

Read the rest of this entry »

Table of Contents
Here’s the table of contents for today’s edition of Daily Notes.

1. Important Announcement: NERD Is Now Available
2. Featured Game: Arizona at Miami, 12:40 ET
3. All of Today’s Games

Important Announcement: NERD Is Now Available
Important Announcement
There’s an important announcement everyone needs to hear and it’s that NERD, in all its forms, is now available for the 2012 season.

Regarding What Is NERD
NERD is the result of an attempt to represent numerically the likely aesthetic appeal of a pitcher, team, game, etc. to the baseball nerd (i.e. you, reading this). Specifically, NERD is a score (on a 0-10 scale) given to pitchers, teams, games, etc. that’s calculated using metrics available here at the site. When pitcher and team scores are combined in game scores, it’s possible to approximate, with at least some accuracy, which games might be of greatest (or least) interest to the baseball nerd.

Regarding How NERD Is Calculated
The formulae for the various NERD scores for 2012 remain mostly unchanged from the iterations that appeared in the One Night Only game previews at the end of last season. Follow these links for the relevant information: Pitcher NERD (scroll down a little), Team NERD.

Regarding NERD Leaderboards
Readers will be able to view NERD leaderboards and laggardboards — along with some notes on minor changes to the weighting and calculation of NERD — in the season debut, this afternoon, of the Leaderboards of Pleasure.

Read the rest of this entry »

Saturday night’s contest between the Nationals and Dodgers — not coincidentally one of the weekend games previewed in the Friday edition of the perpetually infallible Daily Notes — was an excellent one (box). Uberprospect Bryce Harper made his major-league debut, hitting an impressive line-drive double to the center-field wall (video) and also displaying his strong, accurate throwing arm (video); Stephen Strasburg struck out a third of the 27 batters he faced while walking none, posting a single-game xFIP of 1.82 (video); and Matt Kemp hit his league-leading 11th home run to win the game in extra innings (video). The game’s average leverage index (1.83) was easily the highest of the day.

A quieter, but still notable, feat was performed by Dodger starter Chad Billingsley in the top of the second inning. Facing Danny Espinosa, he threw what amounted to two ideal pitches for called strikes to begin the at-bat.

Generally speaking, a hitter that isn’t Jeff Francoeur will begin a plate appearance looking for a pitch in a particular area, and will increase or decrease his swing zone depending on the count. Accordingly, if a pitcher is able to locate a pitch both (a) inside the strike zone but (b) outside of the hitter’s swing zone — that is, outside of the area where a batter believes he could drive the ball — then he will gain an advantage.

What sort of advantage? Consider: per Baseball Reference, National League batters are hitting .159/.188/.233 (21 OPS+) this season after reaching an 0-2 count. Meanwhile, those same batters have a 92 OPS+ after a 1-1 count and a 161 OPS+ after 2-0. That the difference, basically between the 2011 version of Prince Fielder, on the one hand, and the 2011 version of Ian Stewart, on the other.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been an exciting week for call-ups with the Top 2 prospects within the Top 100 pre-season prospect list getting the call to the Majors. A couple other interesting names have also received a promotion to the Majors this week for the first time, although their names carry much less fanfare than the likes of Mike Trout of the Los Angeles Angels and Bryce Harper of the Washington Nationals.

The demotion of Josh Collmenter from the starting rotation to the bullpen in Arizona is not a surprise. However, the prospect tapped with replacing him in the rotation may be. Southpaw rookie Pat Corbin, 22, was off to a very nice start in double-A, although he doesn’t possess the same ceiling as fellow top prospects Trevor Bauer and Tyler Skaggs. Prior to the season Corbin was ranked sixth on FanGraphs’ Top 15 prospect list for the Diamondbacks, while Bauer was first and Skaggs was third behind the now-traded Jarrod Parker.

Read the rest of this entry »

At 6-14, the Angels enter play today tied with the Royals for the second-worst record in baseball, and at -12 runs, they have the eighth-worst run differential as well. They have lost eight of 10, including five straight, with the last two being of the walk-off variety. As such, the team is in desperate search of a spark, and on Friday night they hope they found it by calling up the one player who should have been with the team all along in Mike Trout. Unfortunately, the Angels roster is now misshapen, thanks to the fact that Anaheim cut the wrong player in order to get Trout to the Majors.

Read the rest of this entry »

It wasn’t the way the Nationals envisioned it, but nevertheless, Bryce Harper has graduated to The Show. With Ryan Zimmerman heading to the disabled list for the second straight season, the team was looking to put an impact bat, as well as perhaps shift the focus away from Zimmerman’s injury, and thus Harper gets the call.

Read the rest of this entry »

Episode 173
RotoGraphs contributor Ben Duronio is the guest on this Fantasy Friday edition of FanGraphs Audio. In this episode: the pod’s weekly Hector Santiago Status Update, and some attention to other closer situation of note; a discussion of injury prone, but talented, starting pitchers (a list starting, but not ending, with the name Jake Peavy); a brief digression in praise of Brandon Beachy’s fastball; and some sell-high, buy-low candidates.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 40 min. play time.)

Read the rest of this entry »

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Heath Bell was just one strike away from getting the second out in the ninth Thursday in New York. Bell was in just another jam, the fourth time in seven outings this season at least three baserunners reached against him. But with Justin Turner at the plate — a lifetime .248/.325/.336 hitter — Bell jumped out to an 0-2 count. There was his way out.

And then Turner fouled off a couple pitches. And then a couple more. And the next thing we knew, it was a full count. And then he fouled off four more pitches. Finally, on the 13th pitch of the at-bat, Turner took ball four on a pitch down and out of the zone. The Mets had the game tied and would eventually win it on Kirk Niewenhuis’s long single to right field as the rain poured on Citi Field.

It’s been about as rough a season as anybody could imagine for the 34-year-old closer. In just 5.2 innings, Bell has allowed eight runs (six earned), walked seven batters, and allowed nine hits. Pretty much every rate imaginable to measure his pitching is unfortunate at this point, but the most distressing? Perhaps a 4.9% swinging strike rate, a big part of the reason Bell couldn’t get out of the ninth Thursday at Citi Field. It used to be Bell could take a hitter like Justin Turner and blow him away. Not so throughout 2012 thus far.

Read the rest of this entry »

Rob Brantly, C, Detroit Tigers
Current Level: AA
2012 Top 15 Prospects Ranking: 6th
Current Value: Monitor Closely

Left-handed hitting catchers carry a ton of value, and Brantly is a good example of this market deficiency. A former third round pick out of the University of California-Riverside, he has been moved quickly through the system and reached double-A in just his second full season. Brantly handles the bat well and doesn’t strike out much – but he also doesn’t walk. He’s currently hitting .375 with 10 extra base hits in 14 games. The extra base power is new for the catcher so if he can keep that up it adds that much more value to him. Scouts are still torn on Brantly’s ability behind the plate as he still needs a lot of polish although he does a nice job with the running game. With big league starting catcher Alex Avila also swinging from the left side, the prospect may end up as trade bait if his value continues to rise.

Read the rest of this entry »

WAR is now available for in-season ZiPS! This goes for both the “rest-of-season” projection (ZiPS R) and the updated full-season projection (ZiPS U).

These are of course made possible by Dan Szymborski and the projections he provided in the 2012 ZiPS Projections, Final Edition.

These are now available in both the projections pages and the player pages.

Please note the following:

– There is no base-running component factored into the in-season ZiPS WAR projections.

– Original ZiPS fielding projections have been regressed by 22%.

– These are park adjusted.

– These are currently only available for position players, we may add pitchers later.