Archive for March, 2017

Dan Szymborski FanGraphs Chat – 3/22/17

2:00
Dan Szymborski: It’s party time!

2:01
Dan Szymborski: And heads up – yes, platoon splits and DMB stuff will be posted. My work baseball preview stuff comes before that.

2:01
Dan Szymborski: And no, I won’t give you an exact date and time, guy who asked variations on this question about 15 times last week.

2:02
Druidiful: Dan, are you going to actually have your regularly scheduled Wednesday chat on a Wednesday?

2:02
Dan Szymborski: It’s weird, isn’t it?

2:02
Jim: Delino Deshields could do what with 600 at bats leading off for the Rangers?

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2017 Positional Power Rankings: Shortstop

The Positional Power Rankings series continues, because it would be weird if it didn’t. In here, we’re going to deal with shortstops on a team-by-team basis, wherein all the teams are ranked by projected WAR. The projected WARs, of course, will often end up different from the actual WARs, but these are basically our best estimates of positional true talent given what we know today, and the rankings are an excuse to write some commentary on everyone. I know it’s already linked up there, but here’s the series introduction, again, if you don’t know exactly what you’re looking at. It’s not that complicated! Except the projected-WAR part. That part is incredibly complicated. Here is a graph of everything:

There exists a belief that we’ve entered something of a golden age of shortstops. Relative to the league overall, shortstops just had their best offensive season on record. They also had their best collective WAR season in modern history. The belief begs for an explanation. One potential explanation would be that, no, there’s nothing here, and it’s all just random noise. That’s always one potential explanation for anything, and it’s never the fun one. Another potential explanation would be that, like so many things in baseball, it’s cyclical, and now we see shortstops on a temporary upswing.

My current preferred explanation is that teams now are more reluctant to move good players off shortstop. So many great players throughout baseball history used to be shortstops at some point. Players have been moved off because they got too big, or didn’t have enough mobility. Perhaps now teams don’t care so much about shortstop size. And it makes you wonder about the role of modern defensive shifting. It’s possible teams feel like new defensive alignments have reduced the need for extreme shortstop range. This is speculation on my part, but it’s where my mind is at the moment. Big players can stick, now more than ever. Let’s now talk about some big shortstops, and some littler shortstops. (There are still some little shortstops.) Off we go!

Name PA AVG OBP SLG wOBA Bat BsR Fld WAR
Carlos Correa 644 .279 .358 .479 .357 20.9 1.7 -1.2 5.1
Marwin Gonzalez 42 .257 .297 .400 .301 -0.6 -0.1 0.1 0.1
Alex Bregman 14 .267 .329 .447 .333 0.2 0.0 0.0 0.1
Total 700 .277 .354 .474 .353 20.5 1.6 -1.0 5.4

The place people care about most is first place, and here we have the Astros, which I’m sure will provoke something of a debate. I’ll note, though, that the only thing separating the Astros from the second-place team is the depth; the starters are projected to be virtually identical. I’ll say again, lots of teams have good shortstops. Lots of teams wouldn’t want to lose their own shortstops. The Astros are among those teams.

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Dave Cameron FanGraphs Chat – 3/22/17

12:02
Dave Cameron: Happy Wednesday, everyone.

12:02
Dave Cameron: We just published the SS positional power rankings, which wraps up the infield, and we’ll move to the outfield tomorrow.

12:02
Dave Cameron: I’ll take any PPR questions you have, or there’s a WBC championship game tonight, or we can just talk about the 2017 season.

12:03
Bork: If Devon Travis can stay healthy.

12:03
Dave Cameron: That would help the Jays an awful lot. But at this point, probably not something they should bet on.

12:03
Not Didi: What is the best solution to replace me for the next month? I think, I am about to show how valuable I am in April.

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Addison Russell and the Perils of Improvement

Getting better at something can open you up to new risks. Or maybe it’s more correct to say that getting better at something can make you realize that you have to get even better at it. Addison Russell has worked hard to become a decent breaking-ball hitter. He’s made strides. Pitchers have responded, though — and used his confidence against him. So he’ll have to take another step forward to keep pace.

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The Present Imperfect

This is Kate Preusser’s third piece as part of her month-long residency. Read her previous posts here. Listen to her appearance on FanGraphs Audio here.

When Benji Gonzalez, a 27-year-old non-roster invitee for the Twins, poked a single into right field to break up a perfect game being thrown by the Rays’ pitching staff one week into spring training, I admit to sighing in relief. No need for asterisks, then. No need for the arguments about whether a perfect game thrown by multiple pitchers counts as much as one thrown by a single pitcher. No reminders that spring training doesn’t count and that this technically wouldn’t go down in the record books as a perfect game.

Of course, spring training doesn’t count, but the white whale of a perfect game, even in spring training, even thrown by multiple pitchers, is such a compelling figure in baseball that discussion of it would have been inevitable — and made more inevitable, perhaps, by the fact that baseball fans haven’t seen a perfect game, spring training or otherwise, in five years.

There has already been one recorded spring-training perfect game — a Red Sox win over the Blue Jays in the year 2000, featuring starting pitcher Pedro Martinez. Pedro would go on to have a complicated relationship with the perfect game and the no-hitter, coming close but never quite getting there. The role he played in the perfect spring-training game is rarely noted. Once more for the folks in the back: spring training doesn’t count. Even Rays pitcher Danny Farquhar thought they were playing shuffleboard:

“It was probably two outs into my first inning when I realized we had a perfect game,” Farquhar said. “I’m like, ‘Wow, we have a lot of points, and they have zero points. I’m going to try and not mess this up.'”

The eloquent Lord Farquhar receives partial credit for this response. The Rays — whose 17-run offensive onslaught managed to so confound all involved parties that even Farquhar himself didn’t realize it was a perfect game until he was two-thirds deep in his own inning — did indeed have a lot of points. The Twins, however, didn’t just have zero points, they had perfectly zero points, and the Rays staff was hurtling toward rarefied air in the baseball sphere, even if this achievement would have to ride in a little sidecar or sit at a table in the back near the kitchen.

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2017 Positional Power Rankings: Second Base

Welcome to Day Three of the 2017 Positional Power Rankings from FanGraphs. For some background on how these posts work, read the introductory post by Dave Cameron. Click on the links above to examine other positions.

The rankings below come from the FanGraphs Depth Chart projections. While the projections spit out specific numbers, these projections are estimates and teams that are within a few tenths of a win of each other have similar forecasts for the season. While I didn’t create the projections, the commentary is my own.

Last season was marked by a surge of offense throughout baseball, and this was very much the case for second basemen, who posted one of the greatest seasons of all time for the position. While it might be tempting to point to some sort of emerging group of players set to change the way we think about the position, the evidence doesn’t support that hypothesis. Of the top-eight players, only Jose Altuve will play this season under the age of 30, with many of the best already in their mid-30s. Jose Altuve is the exception, not the rule, as the young star has a sizable lead over his competitors at second.

This is the first time in half a decade that the team with Robinson Cano isn’t atop this list. Cano didn’t stumble far and other aging vets fall in line behind him. As far as the order in which clubs appear here, there could be a shakeup before the year is out. A couple teams near the top might be shopping their second basemen if they fall out of contention. If you’re looking for a team to rise, look to the south side of Chicago, where the best prospect in baseball could get his first real shot at a starting job later this season.

Name PA AVG OBP SLG wOBA Bat BsR Fld WAR
Jose Altuve 644 .316 .366 .469 .355 19.7 0.6 -2.9 4.3
Marwin Gonzalez 35 .257 .297 .400 .301 -0.5 -0.1 0.1 0.1
Tony Kemp 21 .256 .325 .344 .297 -0.4 0.0 0.0 0.0
Total 700 .311 .361 .462 .350 18.9 0.5 -2.8 4.4

For the last four years, the team that employed Robinson Cano occupied the top spot in these rankings. The reign that moved from New York to Seattle is no more. Jose Altuve, who is not tall, has the best projection for a second baseman by a quite a bit this year. In 2014 and 2015, Altuve had a 130 wRC+ based almost entirely on contact that stayed in the yard. His walk rate was under 5% and his .129 ISO — based on a large collection of doubles rather than homers. Last season, he kept roughly the same rate of doubles (42) and triples (5), but hit 24 homers and increased his walk rate by 70% without striking out more. The result was a 150 wRC+, good for eighth in all of baseball last season.

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FanGraphs Audio: The Strangely Fertile Matter of Steve Pearce

Episode 726
Managing editor Dave Cameron is the guest on this edition of the pod, during which he discusses Toronto’s Steve Pearce, matters relating to Steve Pearce, and also matters that possess no relevance to Steve Pearce at all.

A reminder: FanGraphs’ Ad Free Membership exists. Click here to learn more about it and share some of your disposable income with FanGraphs.

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 38 min play time.)

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FanGraphs After Dark Chat – 3/21/17

3:03
Paul Swydan:

Who will win tonight’s WBC game?

Japan (19.3% | 36 votes)
 
USA (80.6% | 150 votes)
 

Total Votes: 186
3:09
Paul Swydan:

What is your favorite block of Star Trek movies?

Classic (Star Trek I – VI) (23.9% | 44 votes)
 
Next Gen (Generations – Nemesis) (11.9% | 22 votes)
 
New (Star Trek – ST Beyond) (17.3% | 32 votes)
 
I have never seen any of the 13 Star Trek movies somehow. (23.3% | 43 votes)
 
None of these, I hate Star Trek (18.4% | 34 votes)
 
Don’t make me choose! (4.8% | 9 votes)
 

Total Votes: 184
4:07
Paul Swydan:

What has been the best visual of the WBC?

Adam Jones’ catch (45.5% | 91 votes)
 
Giancarlo Stanton’s homer (10.0% | 20 votes)
 
Javier Baez’s no-look tag (26.0% | 52 votes)
 
Jurickson Profar thrown out (9.0% | 18 votes)
 
Fernando Rodney pulls gold plantain out of his pants (8.0% | 16 votes)
 
Other (say in comments) (1.5% | 3 votes)
 

Total Votes: 200
9:01
Paul Swydan: Hi everybody!

9:01
Jeff Zimmerman: Hey

9:01
Matt M: this WBC has been great

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Spring-Training Divisional Outlook: National League Central

Previous editions: AL East / AL Central / NL East.

The World Baseball Classic is in its final stages, meaning that both the end of spring training and the start of the regular season are in sight. We’d better get through the remaining installments in this series quickly.

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Are Early Adopters of the Uppercut Influencing Their Clubhouse Peers?

As a faithful reader, you’re probably aware that a number of authors have written about the fly-ball revolution at FanGraphs this winter, examining the potential for a sea change in batted-ball profiles. If you’ve missed some or all of our posts you can read them, or revisit them here, here, here and here.

As I toured the central region and Gulf coast of Florida for FanGraphs this spring, a couple comments were particularly memorable. One was from this piece on Tampa Bay’s sharing of changeup knowledge, a success that Jim Hickey attributed less to organizational philosophy and more to pitchers with excellent changeups, like James Shields and Alex Cobb, sharing their craft and skills.

“It’s not so much a philosophy as it is a lineage,” Hickey said.

That struck me as quite interesting: the power of peers and word of mouth to have such a profound influence on the fortunes of a club. I also thought it was interesting when J.D. Martinez noted that more players have approached him this spring, curious about his loft-generating swing plane. Martinez is one of the notable early adopters of the uppercut, joining the likes of Justin Turner, Daniel Murphy and Josh Donaldson. They are not only excelling but espousing the philosophy.

So just as the Rays have handed down quality changeup grips from one generation to the next, and have led baseball in the value produced by changeups since 2006 — when Shields debuted with modest overall stuff but an excellent changeup — shouldn’t teams benefit by having early adopters of fly-ball philosophy? While most coaches in the game still seem to be subscribing to conventional hitting techniques, even if more coaches in the game spoke like private instructors like Doug Latta outside of the game, it stands to reason that players’ peers — trusted teammates, that is — might hold more influence when electing to made a radical adjustment.

The Rays have a changeup lineage. Are some teams creating the foundation of an uppercut lineage?

Maybe.

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