I never pitched in Little League, but I remember many of the lessons our coach imparted to this day. Most specifically, I remember him harping on “hard in and soft away.” This was silly. Nobody on my team could throw a curveball, and even from my youthful perspective, no one could throw anything hard either. We all mostly struck out or walked; pitchers with command were pretty much untouchable in my small-town East Tennessee league. But we’re losing the plot here – as it turns out, that advice is omnipresent in baseball, from little leagues to the majors.

I’ve always been enamored with this simple and yet fascinating rule of thumb. Why does it work? Does it work, even? What’s so special about “in” and “away” relative to pitch speed? I’ve never quite found a satisfactory way to classify it. But while I was taking a look at contact point data last week, I came up with an idea for how to measure this. When you look at the data, the evidence has been there all along.

I focused on the “hard in” aspect of the adage, because major leaguers throw so many different secondaries that honing in on what “soft” meant seemed impossible. To that end, I devised a quick test to see how conventional wisdom behaves in practice. I defined “inside” and “outside” pitches by removing the middle third of the plate, then extending out nine inches past the edge of the strike zone in both directions. I looked at sinkers and four-seamers thrown in these areas to define “hard in” and “hard away.” Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve long been interested in measuring the value of making an out. Different outs count differently, and yet pretty much every baseball statistic you can imagine ignores that fact. I’m not just talking about advanced ones like wRC+ or wOBA, though those do indeed treat all outs as equal. I’m talking about basic things like batting average, on-base percentage, and slugging percentage. No one says, “Well, he batted .320, but some of those outs were in bad situations, so it was more like batting .313.” That’s not how we think about offensive statistics.

But just because we don’t count outs differently doesn’t mean that they all have the same value. This is obviously true. Striking out with a runner on third and fewer than two outs is a tragedy. Hitting a run-scoring groundout in the same situation gets the batter a long series of fist bumps back in the dugout. But when it comes to wRC+ or batting average, that distinction doesn’t show up.

There are good reasons for existing statistics to work the way that they do. Batters don’t control who’s on base and how many outs there are when they come to the plate. They don’t control whether there are fast runners on base, or whether the outfield has arms so weak that anyone could score from third base on a fly ball. In the same way that a home run is a home run is a home run, statistics that try to measure batter skill treat all outs the same. But still… I wanted to know more. Read the rest of this entry »

Friday was a key deadline in the offseason calendar: the last day that teams could non-tender players instead of offering them a contract in arbitration. It’s something of an annual tradition. Once a year, a bunch of guys whose names inspire you to think “oh, he’s not bad” nonetheless get non-tendered because their performance doesn’t measure up to their projected salary. This year, the non-tender group was larger than I’m used to, so I think it merits a recap.

One classic archetype of the players who get non-tendered is the older breakout who then regresses toward the mean in subsequent years. An example: Adolis García, probably the most famous player in this group, burst onto the scene as a 28-year-old rookie in 2021, piling up 10.6 WAR in his first three full seasons. He starred on the 2023 World Series champion Rangers, blasting eight home runs and a record 22 RBI, and taking home ALCS MVP honors.

The next two years weren’t so halcyon, with García posting an aggregate 89 wRC+ and 0.6 WAR. Heading into his age-33 season, it’s hard to expect a return to his peak form; our projection systems think he’s more of a fourth outfielder than an everyday starter these days. The problem, from Texas’ standpoint, is that García earned $9.25 million this season in his second year of arbitration. He stood to make at least that much in his last pass through arb. The Rangers quite reasonably looked around for alternatives. Several free agent corner outfielders with similar projections were available, and probably for less. And Texas likely went into the Friday deadline with some idea that the Marcus Semien/Brandon Nimmo salary swap was on horizon, which meant fewer outfield openings; given that backdrop, García’s non-tender isn’t a big surprise. Read the rest of this entry »

I was in Hawaii this past weekend, taking a nice vacation to wind down from the end of the baseball season, when I found myself thinking about intercept points. Weird? Overly baseball obsessed? Maybe. But in my defense, a kid at the pool kept swinging at a Wiffle ball almost hilariously late, spraying it “foul” every time. “Oh look, the next Luis Arraez,” I thought, before going back to my umbrella-adorned drink. But that stuck with me, and when I got home, a database query leapt out of my head fully formed, like Athena after Zeus’ headache.

Where is the optimal place to make contact with the ball? It depends on who’s swinging. Statcast measures every single swing’s contact point relative to a hitter’s center of mass, and that data clearly shows that there are many ways to succeed. That’s always stymied me as I’ve looked into swing path data. But that small child gave me an idea when he got off the best swing I’d seen all day, a Wiffle ball line drive that would have been a screamer down the left field foul line (he was batting lefty). Because his normal swing was so late, his best contact was ever so slightly less late. What if I bucketed hitters based on their own swings to look for swing timing clues?

I took every batter who produced 300 or more batted balls (foul balls or balls in play) in 2025. For each of those hitters, I took aggregate statistics for all of their results, then also split their batted balls into three groups: deepest contact point, middle contact point, and farthest forward contact point. You can think of it as late, on time, and early, adjusted for that player’s swing. The later you start your swing, the more you “let it travel,” the deeper your contact point relative to your center of mass. The earlier you start, the more you “get out in front,” the farther forward you make contact. Read the rest of this entry »

November is supposed to be a sleepy time of the offseason, with qualifying offers and 40-man roster shenanigans the main points of interest. This year has had a few fun surprises, though. First, Josh Naylor returned to the Mariners on a five-year deal, a surprise less in terms of destination than timing – these sorts of contracts normally wait until December. Now, we have a bona fide challenge trade: The Orioles are sending Grayson Rodriguez to the Angels in exchange for Taylor Ward.

Rodriguez, one of the top pitching prospects in baseball a few years ago, is also one of the toughest players in the majors to evaluate. The potential is there. He has multiple putaway secondaries, a lively fastball he can command to multiple parts of the zone, and he’s athletic enough that his command has trended upwards from fringe to average, with the kind of trajectory that makes you expect more to come. If you’re looking for an ace, you’re probably looking for someone whose skills roughly look like this.

On the other hand, unavailability is the worst ability, to twist the tired old saying ever so slightly. Rodriguez has struggled to stay on the field in his time in the majors, and that’s putting it lightly. He missed a good chunk of 2022, his last minor league season, with a lat strain. He then missed half of 2024 with two different shoulder injuries, while another lat strain and bone spurs in his elbow cost him the entirety of the 2025 season. At this point, three of his last four seasons have been severely curtailed by major injuries, including recurring shoulder problems. Read the rest of this entry »

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Welcome to the start of another offseason. As is customary, now that the World Series has concluded, FanGraphs is releasing our ranking of the top 50 free agents available on the market this winter. A number of writers have helmed this list over the years: first Dave Cameron, then Kiley McDaniel, Craig Edwards, and most recently me. This is now my fifth year curating these rankings, and as always, my real superpower is collaboration. The FanGraphs staff contributed mightily at every step along the way.

Below, I’ve provided contract estimates and rankings of the offseason’s top free agents, along with market-focused commentary for the top 25 players. That could be a sketch of likely suitors, a discussion of how qualifying offers might affect a player’s thinking, or even just statistical analysis dressed up as market analysis for Halloween – I’m a baseball nerd at heart, what can I say? A collection of FanGraphs writers – Davy Andrews (DA), Michael Baumann (MB), James Fegan (JF), Jay Jaffe (JJ), David Laurila (DL), Eric Longenhagen (EL), Kiri Oler (KO), Esteban Rivera (ER), and Dan Szymborski (DS) – have supplied player-focused breakdowns for the entire top 50, designed to provide some context for each player at this particular point in their career. Huge thanks go to Meg Rowley for acting as a sounding board throughout the process, Eric Longenhagen for his extensive contributions to my evaluation of the international players, Jason Martinez and Jon Becker for their market knowledge, and Sean Dolinar and David Appelman for technical assistance.

The players are ranked in the order in which I prefer them. That’s often the same as ranking them in contract order, but not always. In some cases, I prefer a player I expect will get less money over one who stands to make more. I’ll generally make note of that in the accompanying comment, but just to reiterate, this list isn’t exclusively sorted by descending average annual value or anything like that. Read the rest of this entry »

This postseason, FanGraphs is continuing its tradition of writing report cards for the on-field decisions made by playoff managers. Excluding the managers who lost in the best-of-three Wild Card Series, we cover every round of the playoffs for all eight managers. It’s detailed enough that I’ve begun enlisting some help. So far this year, I have graded the efforts of A.J. Hinch, Aaron Boone, Craig Counsell, Rob Thomson, and Dan Wilson. Dan Szymborski scrutinized Pat Murphy’s performance. Yesterday and today, I’m taking a look at John Schneider. The Blue Jays played enough games that we decided to split his report into two. Michael Baumann will follow with a review of Dave Roberts. It takes a village to get the kind of in-depth coverage we aspire to provide you.

Our goal is to evaluate each manager in terms of process, not results. If you bring in your best pitcher to face their best hitter in a huge spot, that’s a good decision regardless of the outcome. Try a triple steal with the bases loaded only to have the other team make four throwing errors to score three runs? I’m probably going to call that a blunder even though it worked out. Managers do plenty of other things — getting team buy-in for new strategies or unconventional bullpen usage behind closed doors is a skill I find particularly valuable — but as I have no insight into how that’s accomplished or how each manager differs, I can’t exactly assign grades for it.

I’m also purposefully avoiding vague qualitative concerns like “trusting your veterans because they’ve been there before.” Playoff coverage lovingly focuses on clutch plays by proven performers, but guys like Trey Yesavage and Addison Barger were also excellent this October. Forget trusting your veterans; the playoffs are about trusting your best players. George Springer is important because he’s great, not because of the number of playoff series he’s appeared in. There’s nothing inherently good about having been around a long time; when I’m evaluating decisions, “but he’s a veteran” just doesn’t enter my thought process.

I’m always looking for new analytical wrinkles in critiquing managerial decisions. For instance, I’ve increasingly come to view pitching decisions as a trade-off between protecting your best relievers from overexposure and minimizing your starters’ weakest matchups, which means that I’m grading managers on multiple axes in every game. I think there’s almost no pitching decision that’s a true no-brainer these days; there are just too many competing priorities to make anything totally obvious. That means I’m going to be less certain in my evaluation of pitching than of hitting, but I’ll try to make my confidence level clear in each case. I tackled the offensive portion of Schneider’s managing yesterday, so now it’s time for the pitching part of his report card. Let’s get to it, shall we? Read the rest of this entry »

This postseason, FanGraphs is continuing its tradition of writing report cards for the on-field decisions made by playoff managers. Excluding the managers who lost in the best-of-three Wild Card Series, we cover every round of the playoffs for all eight managers. It’s detailed enough that I’ve begun enlisting some help. So far this year, I have graded the efforts of A.J. Hinch, Aaron Boone, Craig Counsell, Rob Thomson, and Dan Wilson. Dan Szymborski scrutinized Pat Murphy’s performance. Today and tomorrow, I’m taking a look at John Schneider. The Blue Jays played enough games that we decided to split his report into two. Michael Baumann will follow with a review of Dave Roberts. It takes a village to get the kind of in-depth coverage we aspire to provide you.

Our goal is to evaluate each manager in terms of process, not results. If you bring in your best pitcher to face their best hitter in a huge spot, that’s a good decision regardless of the outcome. Try a triple steal with the bases loaded only to have the other team make four throwing errors to score three runs? I’m probably going to call that a blunder even though it worked out. Managers do plenty of other things — getting team buy-in for new strategies or unconventional bullpen usage behind closed doors is a skill I find particularly valuable — but as I have no insight into how that’s accomplished or how each manager differs, I can’t exactly assign grades for it.

I’m also purposefully avoiding vague qualitative concerns like “trusting your veterans because they’ve been there before.” Playoff coverage lovingly focuses on clutch plays by proven performers, but guys like Trey Yesavage and Addison Barger were also excellent this October. Forget trusting your veterans; the playoffs are about trusting your best players. George Springer is important because he’s great, not because of the number of playoff series he’s appeared in. There’s nothing inherently good about having been around a long time; when I’m evaluating decisions, “but he’s a veteran” just doesn’t enter my thought process.

I’m always looking for new analytical wrinkles in critiquing managerial decisions. For instance, I’ve increasingly come to view pitching decisions as a trade-off between protecting your best relievers from overexposure and minimizing your starters’ weakest matchups, which means that I’m grading managers on multiple axes in every game. I think there’s almost no pitching decision that’s a true no-brainer these days; there are just too many competing priorities to make anything totally obvious. That means I’m going to be less certain in my evaluation of pitching than of hitting, but I’ll try to make my confidence level clear in each case. Let’s get to it – well, at least, the hitting half of it. Read the rest of this entry »

Game 5 of the World Series was a rematch between two pitchers, Blake Snell and Trey Yesavage, who each left Game 1 of the series unhappy with their form. That game devolved into a bullpen battle, and surely neither starter wanted a repeat of that. With the series tied at two, whichever pitcher bounced back better was likely to send their team to Toronto with a 3-2 lead and the inside track on the title. Both starters went deep into the game, but in the end, the Blue Jays got the best of Snell. They snuck in a few runs early, broke through late, and held the Dodgers at bay en route to a 6-1 victory that put them a win away from their third championship in franchise history.

For the first three rounds of the playoffs, Snell went directly at hitters, overwhelming them in the strike zone and pitching deep into games as a result. He tried a new strategy to begin the World Series, though. The Blue Jays present a maddening problem to opposing pitchers. They look for pitches to drive early in the count, and they take big, extra-base-seeking swings when they can. They’re also frustratingly patient outside of the strike zone. In Game 1, Snell tried to work the edges of the zone early, only to pay the price in baserunners and pitches. He limited the damage for a while, but wore himself out and gave Toronto far too many free baserunners in the process.

On Wednesday, he had a new plan. A direct approach had served Snell well all month. Going away from it did him no favors. He’d been so afraid of Toronto’s power that he dinked and dunked himself out of the game. No more of that. Snell’s first pitch of the game was a fastball, belt high to Davis Schneider. It was a statement pitch. Schneider turned it into an exclamation point, tucking it 373 feet over the wall in left. Read the rest of this entry »