Ben and Sam talk to Tadeo Varela, sabermetric analyst for the Toros de Tijuana of the Mexican League, about the team’s pursuit of a statistical advantage.
Podcast (effectively-wild): Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
You know who’s figuring it out? Christian Yelich! Not that Yelich ever didn’t have it figured out — his big-league career began with three consecutive 117 wRC+ seasons. He was as steady as anyone you could find, but he kept on occasionally hinting at more, and now he’s showing more more often. He’s 24, and he’s being coached by Barry Bonds. People everywhere kind of saw this coming. Yet it was never going to be automatic. Yelich has put in the work to get to where he is.
This is where he is:
Yelich hasn’t been constantly hitting home runs or anything. You would’ve heard about that. He has five, which isn’t that many, but then his career high is nine. His slugging is way up, and his walks are way up, and his strikeouts are down. Christian Yelich seems to be moving into a higher tier, and he’s among the reasons why the Marlins are hanging around the early playoff race.
Over at ESPN, Jayson Stark talked to Rob Manfred about the fact that, a year after chopping six minutes off the length of the average Major League game, those gains have been almost entirely lost in the first six weeks of 2016. Included in that piece was this chart, which shows the trend over the last 11 years.
| SEASON | TIME OF GAME |
| 2006 | 2:48:11 |
| 2007 | 2:51:13 |
| 2008 | 2:50:38 |
| 2009 | 2:51:47 |
| 2010 | 2:50:46 |
| 2011 | 2:51:57 |
| 2012 | 2:55:58 |
| 2013 | 2:58:51 |
| 2014 | 3:02:21 |
| 2015 | 2:56:14 |
| 2016 | 3:00:26 |
The four minute and 12 second gain from last year to this year is actually larger than any of the per-season gains made during the 2011-2014 stretch when MLB games lengthened quickly; that kind of rise in game length is clearly frustrating to Manfred, especially after the gains they made last year. As the commissioner notes to Stark in the piece, MLB believes there are a variety of factors contributing to the longer games, with players not taking the pace-of-play initiatives as seriously this year, cold weather, and simply the structural change in results all contributing. Stark points out that walks and strikeouts are both up again, so overall pitches are up, and more pitches equals more time. But let’s try to go beyond that and look and see if we can quantify the differences in game length this year.
The early part of the Major League Baseball season presents an interesting paradox when it comes to interest and attendance. Fans have waited all winter for real live baseball, and Opening Day comes with big crowds and pageantry. After Opening Day, crowds tend to thin out a bit as people come to terms with the long season, and in many places, weather that is still less than hospitable to baseball. Comparing attendance this season to attendance at this time last season shows a still-healthy game with a few teams having made major jumps after successful seasons a year ago.
When looking at per-game attendance so far this season, it should come as no surprise that the usual names remain atop the board, per Baseball Reference.
The Los Angeles Dodgers, St. Louis Cardinals, San Francisco Giants, and New York Yankees were the top four in attendance last season — in that order — and those same four teams continue their grip on the attendance lead this year. The Chicago Cubs have swapped spots with the Los Angeles Angels while the Toronto Blue Jays have taken an edge over the Boston Red Sox. The bottom five teams are the same as the end-of-the-season numbers last year, although in a different order, as Tampa Bay Rays finished the end of the season last while Oakland A’s were ahead of the Chicago White Sox and the Miami Marlins.
Cuban righty Yadier Alvarez was the $16 million crown jewel of the Dodgers’ 2015/2016 international free-agent class. It was the second-highest bonus ever given to an international amateur and reports on Alvarez prior to last July were so good that I ranked him #1 on my J2 board at the time. Alvarez ventured stateside this spring and has consistently pitched every fifth day, only missing one start to attend the birth of his child. Reports coming out of Camelback Ranch have been superlative. On Monday, I got to see it for myself along with a number of other interesting prospects.
Yadier Alvarez, RHP, Los Angeles Dodgers
Current Level: Extended Spring Training, Age: 20.2, Height/Weight: 6’3/180
Signed: IFA at age 19 on July 2, 2015 out of Cuba by LA for $16.0 million bonus
Alvarez was electric. After opening his start with a few fringe fastballs, he began to loosen up and was sitting 92-97 before long. He has been up to 100 this spring, which is especially notable given that there were rumors over the offseason that his velocity had been down. Mixed in along with the fastball was an 82-86 mph slider with late, two-plane bite. It flashed plus, but the line between that pitch and his 76-82 mph curveball was sometimes blurry. The curveball is a bit more vertically oriented than the slider and Alvarez decelerates his arm a bit to throw it, but it flashed average and it should solidify there once he becomes more comfortable with its release.
One problem you’ll hear with last year’s underachieving Chicago White Sox roster is that it was too heavy on the stars-and-scrubs model. Plenty of production came from guys like Chris Sale, Jose Quintana, and Jose Abreu. Very little production came from the rest of the infield, the back end of the rotation, and both corner-outfield spots.
But this year’s White Sox have improved — they’re currently tied for the best record in the American League. They improved during the offseason by adding guys like Todd Frazier, Brett Lawrie and Mat Latos to ensure that they’d have fewer black holes on the roster. Melky Cabrera and Avisail Garcia are each having bounceback seasons thus far, erasing two more holes from last year. Overall, there’s a more even talent of distribution around Chicago’s stars, and it’s a big part of this year’s success. Less scrubs is good. But so is more stars! And alongside the big guns, they’ve added another player who doesn’t yet have this type of reputation, but is making the case to be tossed into the “star” category. I’m talking about Adam Eaton, who, going back a whole year now, has quietly been one of baseball’s very best players.
We talk a lot about sample sizes, particularly this early in the season. What can we take away from small samples? When is a sample large enough to draw meaningful conclusions? Certainly not yet this year, but we’ve got a nice little feature here on the leaderboards in the “Past Calendar Year” split that helps with that. People are comfortable using full-season stats to evaluate players, and the Past Calendar Year split is just like an improved version of a full season’s stats, where the arbitrary endpoints are less arbitrary. It’s just “what have you done for me lately?” where “lately” is a full year, and everyone is on a similar playing-time scale.
I’ll often use this feature throughout the season to sort of help mentally readjust my perception of who the best players in baseball are “right now,” for whatever that’s worth. I went for a mental readjustment the other day, and something at the top of the leaderboard immediately caught my eye:
Position-player WAR, last calendar year
| 12:00 |
: Happy Wednesday. Let’s see if we can do better than Steve Delabar did last night.
|
| 12:01 |
: Hi Dave! When are you going to unleash the new prospect writer on a chat?
|
| 12:02 |
: Eric Longenhagen will be chatting here on Friday this week, giving you all a chance to pepper him with questions and get to know him a bit better. We’ll find a permanent spot in the chat schedule for him in the not-too-distant future, and he’ll do weekly chats (and podcasts) in addition to his writing on the site.
|
| 12:03 |
: The Pirates are in contention, and rolling Jon Niese and Jeff Locke out there. Meanwhile, Glasnow and Taillon continue to mow down AAA batters. Why are the Pirates waiting to bring them up? Are they waiting on the Super-TWo deadline?
|
| 12:04 |
: Taillon hasn’t pitched much the last few years, and Glasnow still has significant command issues. Keep in mind the lesson of Jose Berrios; the jump to the big leagues isn’t always as easy as it appears, and it does more harm than good to put a kid on the yo-yo between the big leagues and the minors.
|
| 12:04 |
: They’ll be up this summer, but rushing it isn’t a great idea.
|
Introduction and #31-32
#30 – #21
Roughly four years ago now, the present author facilitated a crowdsourcing project designed to place a “grade” on each of the league’s television and radio broadcast teams. The results weren’t intended to represent the objective quality or skill of the relevant announcers, but rather to provide a clue as to which broadcast teams are likely to appeal most (or least) to the readers of this site.
The results of that original exercise have been useful as a complement to the dumb NERD scores published by the author in these pages. Four years later, however, they’ve become much less useful. In the meantime, a number of the broadcast teams cited in that original effort have changed personnel. It’s possible that the tastes of this site’s readers have changed, also.
About a month ago, the present author began the process of reproducing that original crowdsourcing effort, facilitating a ballots for this site’s readers. This post represents the third installment of the corresponding results.
Below are the 20th- through 11th-ranked television broadcast teams, per the FanGraphs readership.
But first, three notes:
20. Texas Rangers
Main Broadcasters: Steve Busby and Tom Grieve
Ratings (Charisma/Analysis/Overall): 2.9, 2.6, 2.9
Three Reader Comments
• “Busby’s main entertainment value comes from his apparent lack of awareness of obvious double entendre. He has provided many superb sound bites since taking over in the booth, such as the time he described David Murphy’s run of success in the second spot of the lineup as ‘eating that number two hole up.’ A favorite of his is the term ‘fisted;’ when L.J. Hoes fouled a ball off the handle of the bat one day, he said, incredibly, ‘And Hoes got fisted.'”
• “[Grieve] is usually quite likable, and his broadcasting feels a bit like you’re talking to a grandfather about baseball (in the good way). At the same time, though, his analysis and traditional views in regard to numbers feel a bit like you’re talking to your grandfather (in the bad way).”
• “I was spoiled with Josh Lewin for all those years.”
Notes
A number of the broacast teams in this middle range seem to share a certainly quality — namely, that they neither add nor subtract much from the experience of the game. For certain broadcasters, this might actually be regarded as an ideal outcome. Others likely would prefer to curate the viewer’s experience a bit. Whatever the case, the general sentiment among respondents regarding Busby and Grieve is that they do no harm.
Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by sabermetric nobleman Rob Neyer, and expanded at the request of nobody, NERD scores represent an attempt to summarize in one number (and on a scale of 0-10) the likely aesthetic appeal or watchability, for the learned fan, of a player or team or game. Read more about the components of and formulae for NERD scores here.
Most Highly Rated Game
Tampa Bay at Toronto | 19:07 ET
Odorizzi (44.2 IP, 99 xFIP-) vs. Dickey (48.0 IP, 104 xFIP-)
Apart from whatever merits he possesses as a ballplayer, Jake Odorizzi has this other virtue, too — namely, that his name facilitates a brief, phonetics-based Italian lesson. In the States, Odorizzi is the name of a right-handed pitcher. This is self-evident. In Italy, however, “Odorizzi” is something different. Regard: odiare is the verb “to hate.” Riso, meanwhile, is the singular form of the noun signifying either “laughter” or “rice.” Put together, odio risi (OH-dee-oh REETS-ee) means “I hate rices” or “I hate laughters.” The two sentiments are more useful than one might suppose: the average American tourist finds that communicating his or her distaste for rice and laughter composes about 40% of all conversations.
A few days ago, in the FanGraphs chat room, there was a little discussion about whether Statcast more favored run production or run prevention. I’m of the mind that having so much information works to the advantage of the pitchers and defenders, myself. I wrote about that a couple Hardball Times Annuals ago. But it’s by no means a settled matter. Someone during our conversation pointed out that, while Statcast is new to us, teams have had access to HITf/x for years, so they probably already had their ideas. Yet, perhaps Statcast makes everything easier. Perhaps more teams are just on board now than before. I don’t know. Many angles are interesting!
There’s something about Statcast that I think might be underappreciated. And it would be true about HITf/x, too, but Statcast is the thing that we get to see, so let’s roll with it. As a demonstration, I’m going to use Jose Abreu, of the White Sox. Abreu hasn’t been terrible, but he hasn’t quite been himself, not yet. Why is that? Could be any number of things, but it could have to do with how he’s been pitched. This is where Statcast can serve a purpose.
