As much as we’ve all grown accustomed to citing FIP, and trusting FIP, the theory is always kind of staggering at first, no matter who you are or what your background. The principle is that pitchers have little control over the results of their balls in play allowed. The evidence is convincing and exhausting. And it’s so challenging to come to terms with, because it flies in the face of what people are taught playing baseball growing up, and because different pitchers have different abilities to put the pitches where they want. How could location possibly be that unimportant, at least in that one particular regard? Don’t some spots lead to worse contact than others? Can’t some guys throw more pitches to those very spots?

Some people are still working on the investigation, and of course we know that BABIP isn’t completely random. For example, there’s the meaningful difference between groundball pitchers and fly-ball pitchers. But the general conclusion’s still valid. It never stops being a little weird when you stop and think about it, and what’s presented below contributes to the weirdness.

Read the rest of this entry »

Today, the Cincinnati Reds have agreed to sign Brayan Pena to a two year contract. Brayan Pena is a generic replacement level catcher, so you probably don’t care too much about him. You might care about Ryan Hanigan, however, since you’re reading FanGraphs. Because Hanigan is something of a sabermetric darling, and now he’s being cast aside in favor of a player who seems demonstrably worse.

For the Reds, this probably has less to do with Hanigan and more to do with Devin Mesoraco, who looks to be the team’s regular starting catcher in 2014 after today’s news. Pena fits the prototypical backup role, and now the team can attempt to use Hanigan as trade bait. And, given his skills and the amount of teams looking for a catcher this winter, they should have no shortage of suitors.

Read the rest of this entry »

For much the same reason that he has published weekly statistical reports on the Arizona Fall League over the past month (such as this latest one from Wednesday), the author is publishing here a combined statistical report for the various Caribbean winter leagues — again, not necessarily because such reports are of great utility for evaluating players, but because they provide a means by which to participate in those leagues which doesn’t also require a substantial investment in transport and lodging.

In this case, what the author has done is to identify the regressed hitting and pitching leaders in the Dominican Winter, Mexican Pacific, Puerto Rican, and Venezuelan Winter Leagues separately*. What he’s then done is to combine the hitting and pitching leaders of those leagues into a pair of top-10 lists, which one can find below. Note: all ages are as of July 1, 2013; all organizations, as of the end of regular-season play. Last week’s report on the Caribbean leagues is available here.

*The Puerto Rican League having just commenced play this past week.

Read the rest of this entry »

From David DeJesus‘ 2003 debut through his 2010 season, the versatile outfielder hit 90 wRC+ (1175 PA) against left-handed pitchers. Since then, DeJesus has mustered a lulzwut 29 wRC+ (327 PA) against lefties. Despite his one-sided floundering in the past three seasons, DeJesus managed to procure a three-year contract extension from the Rays.

Read the rest of this entry »

We all had a good sense going into things last season that the Tigers would have a pretty lousy team defense. The Tigers themselves understood defense wasn’t the priority, and in the end, they allowed the second-highest BABIP in the American League. Yet Max Scherzer, individually, finished at .259. At the other end of the spectrum, the Royals and Cubs featured pretty good overall team defenses. Edwin Jackson allowed a .322 BABIP. Wade Davis allowed a .361 BABIP. Defensive performance, not unlike run support, varies, and different pitchers can get different levels of support from the same group of gloves. Of course, BABIP isn’t explained by defense 100%, but it is a major component. It’s defense, pitching, and luck.

Along similar lines, just as we understand which teams do and do not have good defenses, we’re developing an understanding of which teams do and do not have good pitch-receivers behind the plate. The Braves, for example, have long had quality receivers. Ryan Doumit’s employers, meanwhile, have been a catastrophe. But pitch-receiving performance also varies, in large part just because of our small sample sizes, meaning two different guys on the same staff can end up pitching to different strike zones. So while we’ve talked about catchers here, I want to spend this post talking about pitchers. Which pitchers in 2013 threw to the biggest zones? Which pitchers threw to the smallest ones?

Read the rest of this entry »

Right around Opening Day, Forbes publishes its annual report on MLB team valuations. There is information on team revenues, debt, net income, and overall franchise value. The 2013 valuations, published in March, relied on 2012 numbers, plus a bit of forecasting about teams likely to land new, lucrative local TV contracts soon.

Now Bloomberg Business is getting into the act. A few weeks ago, Bloomberg published its own MLB team valuations, along with a terrific infographic comparing each team to the 29 others. Bloomberg also dug a bit deeper, and broke down each team’s revenue into gate receipts, concessions, sponsorships, and media rights. Bloomberg also used 2012 numbers, but reflected higher revenue and valuation figures than Forbes’ report from earlier this year.

Read the rest of this entry »

By no means am I a veteran of the press box. But already I’ve tapped into a strange phenomenon that may be universal to all baseball writers — I’m not rooting for a team, I’m rooting for my story.

For example. Going into the American League Division Series, I decided I would do some research on the home field advantage offered by the extensive foul ground in Oakland. After gathering some quotes — easy, considering the optics of Josh Donaldson, running forever for a foul ball — I was ready for a Game-Changing Moment. A foul ball over the bullpen mound in the late innings. A missed foul ball by the Tigers. I was rooting for a foul ball.

Read the rest of this entry »

Ben and Sam answer listener emails about pitcher hitting, the Phillies’ new analyst, Scott Boras’ use of stats, and more.

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

Subscribe: RSS

Episode 397
David Laurila, curator of FanGraphs’ Q&A Series, was present at all six games of the recently concluded World Series. He’s also the guest on this edition of FanGraphs Audio.

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

Baseball Savant is a wonderful online resource, the sort of resource a part of me doesn’t want to talk about in fear of you guys finding out all my secrets. It’s a place where you can run your own PITCHf/x queries, and the site chooses to split its strike zone up into nine equivalent areas. That’s the approximate rulebook strike zone, and presented below — from the catcher’s perspective — please find the 2013 league called-strike rate by sub-zone. This is simply called strikes / (called strikes + called balls).

Read the rest of this entry »