Have you seen Odrisamer Despaigne’s strange crossed-finger grip? I noticed a while ago and wrote about it, and then went on television talking about it, and then was quoted by a colleague, all the while saying that this grip was his changeup grip. It had to be the changeup because I thought I heard that it was and what other pitch could be so weird, and since his change was so strange by movement, it all made sense.

Well, I was wrong. And there’s video proof that I was wrong, all embeddable, searchable, and posterized for posterity too.

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We’ve all seen it in various TV shows or movies; the main character is sitting on the floor of some room, surrounded by various pieces of hardware after being challenged to assemble some piece of furniture from vague and unhelpful instructions. And then, usually after a cutaway or some kind of time-lapse, we see the proud main character standing next to the completed product, showing off the fruit of his labor to some secondary character, who then rains on his parade by pointing out that while the product looks nice, there are a few leftover pieces that he somehow managed to exclude from the build.

That’s kind of what this Dodgers team feels like at the moment. On paper, this team could be very good, especially if Joc Pederson takes over as the regular center fielder and hits as well as the projections think he might. At that point, you have Carl Crawford and Yasiel Puig in the corners, with an infield of Yasmani Grandal, Adrian Gonzalez, Howie Kendrick, Jimmy Rollins, and Juan Uribe. That group gives them above average projections at every position, the kind of strong supporting cast that can help one of baseball’s best rotations go after the NL West title. So that group looks pretty good.

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Lead prospect analyst Kiley McDaniel turned some heads when he ranked Ozhaino Albies — a 5-foot-9, 17-year-old shortstop — as the top prospect in the Atlanta Braves minor league system. Albies was on the prospect radar prior to Kiley’s ranking, but slotted much lower on most organizational prospect lists this winter. Keith Law, John Sickels, Baseball America, and Baseball Prospectus ranked him 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th respectively. Here’s what Kiley had to say about Albies and his ranking.

Some scouts are already throwing 60’s on Albies hit tool after a huge pro debut, where he hit .364/.446/.444 in 239 plate appearances over two Rookie ball levels with 22 stolen bases and more walks than strikeouts. He continued his assault by impressing the more heavily-scouted instructional league and every scout that has seen him told me they can’t argue with this ranking.

Power isn’t a big part of game and likely will never be, but he does everything else so well at such a young age, that no one seems to care. He has excellent feel for the stike zone and the bat head, plenty of bat speed, knowledge of when to use his gap power and when to keep the ball on the ground, along with easy plus speed and plus everything on the defensive side, enough to comfortably project to stay at the position.  There has to be universal praise for me to go this high on a guy this young and this small that I’ve never seen before, but I think I’ll have him first on this list next year, so I feel fine getting ahead of the crowd now.

Kiley’s definitely the high guy on Albies right now, but KATOH — my prospect projection system — might be even higher. Setting the minimum to 200 plate appearances, the KATOH leaderboard for hitters based on the 2014 season reads thusly. Read the rest of this entry »

As we anticipate the start of the 2015 Major League Baseball season, we begin to speculate about player performance in the upcoming season. While most players are somewhat consistent year-to-year, there are some who have either breakout years or terrible seasons. These extreme years are a confluence of events throughout the season such as player health, skills peaking, and luck — which can be partially captured by BABIP.

To find the seasons with the greatest offensive output changes, I calculated year-to-year changes for players from 2000-2014 in a handful of offensive statistics: WAR, OPS, BABIP, and HR. Since playing time can fluctuate because of injury or being a rookie, I eliminated comparisons of seasons that a player had a high discrepancy in plate appearances.

To visually compare the seasons, I used slope graphs to show the year-to-year changes in the various statistics. Each graph is limited to players in the sample who had the largest changes in both the positive and negative directions. The left end of the line represents the player’s statistic in one year with the right end of the line representing the following year. A steeper the slope indicates the largest change between two years.
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The FIP statistic was created because of the inherent shortcomings of ERA; so much that was reflected in the traditional pitchers’ statistic was totally out of their control, and the new metric credited and debited hurlers for that which they did. As it turns out, FIP isn’t perfect either, as not all types of batted-ball contract are created equal. Still, FIP is preferable to ERA in just about every way imaginable, and is a much better anchor upon which to base pitcher evaluations. In any given year, however, there are pitchers who are much better (or worse) than both their ERA and FIP, once you adjust for quality of batted ball contact allowed.

A couple weeks back, we looked at Jake Odorizzi and Drew Hutchison, two pitchers who were much better than both their ERA and FIP in 2014. Today, let’s look at the two ERA-qualifying NL starters who were most significantly worse than both their ERA and FIP in 2014: Cole Hamels and Henderson Alvarez. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben and Sam preview the Indians’ season with Bryan Joiner, and Sahadev talks to MLB.com Indians beat writer Jordan Bastian (at 25:36).

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Episode 537
Dave Cameron is both (a) the managing editor of FanGraphs and (b) the guest on this particular edition of FanGraphs Audio — during which edition he discusses certain relevant and sexy exploits from the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference.

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 45 min play time.)

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Earlier today, Kiley McDaniel published his consummately researched and demonstrably authoritative prospect list for the Los Angeles Angels. What follows is a different exercise than that, one much smaller in scope and designed to identify not L.A.’s top overall prospects but rather the rookie-eligible players in the Angels’ system who are most ready to produce wins at the major-league level in 2015 (regardless of whether they’re likely to receive the opportunity to do so). No attempt has been made, in other words, to account for future value.

Below are the top-five prospects in the Los Angeles system by projected WAR. To assemble this brief list, what I’ve done is to locate the Steamer 600 projections for all the prospects to whom McDaniel assessed a Future Value grade of 40 or greater. Hitters’ numbers are normalized to 550 plate appearances; starting pitchers’, to 150 innings — i.e. the playing-time thresholds at which a league-average player would produce a 2.0 WAR. Catcher projections are prorated to 415 plate appearances to account for their reduced playing time.

Note that, in many cases, defensive value has been calculated entirely by positional adjustment based on the relevant player’s minor-league defensive starts — which is to say, there has been no attempt to account for the runs a player is likely to save in the field. As a result, players with an impressive offensive profile relative to their position are sometimes perhaps overvalued — that is, in such cases where their actual defensive skills are sub-par.

t4. Taylor Featherston, 2B/SS (Profile)

All three of the batter-type prospects who appear here were acquired by the Angels over the offseason: Featherston from the Rockies and Cubs by way of the Rule 5 draft and then a trade; Kubitza from a trade with Atlanta; Perez, in a different trade, with Houston. None profiles as even an average major leaguer according to Kiley McDaniel, but all three feature non-negligible present value per Steamer. Featherston, for his part, will compete this spring training with three other players — Johnny Giavotella, Grant Green, and Josh Rutledge — to fill the second-base vacancy created by the departure of Howie Kendrick to the Dodgers. None of that triumvirate is demonstrably better or worse than Featherston according to Steamer.

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Hello, and welcome to something we’ve already done. Two months ago, I asked you what you thought of the American League team projections, then I followed that up by asking you what you thought of the National League team projections. Shortly thereafter, I analyzed all the results, and, what fun we had. What number of things we learned, about ourselves and one another.

I had an idea then I’d be re-doing the same project. Max Scherzer, for example, was still a free agent at that point. Same with James Shields. There have been trades and injuries. There’s been some added roster clarity. There’ve been a couple months of critical thought. And, very importantly, our projections page now includes ZiPS, in a 50/50 blend with Steamer. Previously, everything was based on Steamer and Steamer alone, and I know some of you have very strong opinions about that. Now Steamer’s been balanced, and our numbers reflect the new inputs.

So now I’m curious where you stand — even more curious than I was at the end of December. These are the current projected standings. They’re based on two projection systems and on the depth charts maintained by a group of FanGraphs authors. You can navigate to all the individual depth charts here, and while there will surely be injuries and while there will surely be waiver claims, it’s unlikely the league landscape changes significantly before Opening Day. So how do you feel about your favorite team’s projection? Does it seem right on, a little off, or somehow outlandish? There are polls, so many polls, embedded below, just begging for your participation, but hopefully I have made this post pretty easy to follow. Even though this time around I’ve combined both leagues into one huge polling maelstrom, if you get overwhelmed, I think it’s your own fault.

I’ll analyze the results before very long. There will only be results if you guys help me out! Do that, please. Participation was awesome the last time around. I’m hoping for a repeat.

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