Joey Gallo is a walking archetype. You know the rough outlines: strikeouts like you wouldn’t believe, gobsmacking power, and the walks that accompany those two. When he’s good, he’s blasting his way to success; the park almost doesn’t matter when he gets into one, so titanic is his power.

If you knew only that about Gallo — and to be clear, it’s the most important thing — what would you think about his BABIP? It could be sky-high; he whiffs quite a lot, but that doesn’t matter for BABIP, and when he makes contact, it’s the loudest contact there is. He’s barreled up a fifth of his batted balls, and hit 50% of them 95 mph or harder. That makes it easier to find a hole — or make one.

It could be low, though! Many of those hard hit balls leave the park. What might be doubles in the gap or smoked line drive singles for another player might be home runs for Gallo, and singles and doubles are the bedrock of BABIP. Grounders and pop ups are no good; the real juice is in line drives and low fly balls, and he might simply hit his too hard to keep them in the field of play.

The answer is depressingly pedestrian. Gallo’s career BABIP stood at .270 entering this year, below average but not atrocious. That’s 40th-worst in baseball over that time period, in the same general area as many homer-happy sluggers. Mike Moustakas, Kyle Schwarber, Rhys Hoskins, Chris Davis — basically, hitters who get a disproportionate amount of their value by putting the ball in the air and over the fence. Read the rest of this entry »

Spring games are a blast, a return to baseball after a starved winter of boring transaction rumors. They’re the first chance to see major league players in their natural environment, and the pinnacle of baseball talent facing off against each other (and, inevitably, against some overmatched minor leaguers getting their first taste of the big time). One thing they are most assuredly not, however, are tactical masterpieces. The highest-leverage decision a manager makes is whether to bat their veterans at the top of the lineup so that they can duck out early. In the majors, though, tactical decision-making started when the regular season began. Almost immediately, a neat situation came up, and I’m excited enough to talk tactics that I’m going to give it far more coverage than it deserves.

In the second game of the season, the White Sox were in a pickle. After busting out to a 7–1 lead over the Angels, they’d frittered most of it away. A three-run shot from Albert Pujols here, an Adam Eaton three-base error there, and it was 7–6. A laugher had turned into a struggle for survival.

In the bottom of the eighth, the Angels were again threatening. After Mike Trout led the inning off with a walk, manager Tony LaRussa went to Evan Marshall. Marshall started strong, inducing a pop up from Anthony Rendon and a groundout from Justin Upton. But wait! LaRussa intentionally walked Pujols, putting the go-ahead run on base. What the!?
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In January, we at FanGraphs put out a call for radio broadcast ratings. Over the past few days, we’ve released a compilation of those rankings, as well as selected commentary from each team’s responses. This is the last installment of that compilation.

As a refresher, our survey asked for scores in four areas. If you’d like a thorough explanation of them, you can read the introductory article, but I’ll also recap them briefly here. If you’d like to see the rest of our results, those can be found here and here.

The “Analysis” score covers the frequency and quality of a broadcast team’s discussion of baseball. This isn’t limited to statistical analysis, and many of the booths that scored best excelled at explaining technical details of playing. This score represents how much listeners feel they learn about baseball by listening.

“Charisma” covers the amount of enjoyment voters derive from listening to the broadcasters fill space, which takes on many forms. The booths that scored best on charisma varied wildly, from former players recounting stories of their glory days to unintentional comedy and playful banter between long-term broadcast partners. Read the rest of this entry »

In January, we at FanGraphs put out a call for radio broadcast ratings. The votes are now all in, and this week, we are releasing a compilation of those rankings, as well as selected commentary from each team’s responses.

As a refresher, our survey asked for scores in four areas. If you’d like a thorough explanation of them, you can read the introductory article, but I’ll also recap them briefly here. If you’d like to see the first chunk of ratings, those can be found here.

The “Analysis” score covers the frequency and quality of a broadcast team’s discussion of baseball. This isn’t limited to statistical analysis, and many of the booths that scored best excelled at explaining technical details of playing. This score represents how much listeners feel they learn about baseball by listening.

“Charisma” covers the amount of enjoyment voters derive from listening to the broadcasters fill space, which takes on many forms. The booths that scored best on charisma varied wildly, from former players recounting stories of their glory days to unintentional comedy and playful banter between long-term broadcast partners. Read the rest of this entry »

When the Mets traded for Francisco Lindor earlier this offseason, an extension felt likely, even certain. As the season rolled inexorably closer with no deal in place, however, that likelihood (certitude?) ebbed: The Mets seemed tied to their offer, Lindor had a March 31 negotiation deadline, and no one was budging. Last night, the impasse ended: The two parties agreed to a 10-year, $341 million extension that will make him the highest-paid shortstop in history, as Jon Heyman first reported.

Lindor’s brilliance hardly needs recapitulation, but for giddy Mets fans drinking in every piece of marginalia about this deal, I’ll offer a quick one. If Andrelton Simmons didn’t exist, Lindor would be the best defensive shortstop of the 21st century. He boasts a rare combination of mobility, sure hands, a strong arm, and defensive instincts. If those sound like everything you could ask for in a shortstop, you’re not wrong. There’s really no way of overstating it, because this isn’t a place where eye tests and various wonky metrics disagree. Every advanced defensive metric places him among the top handful of defenders since he entered the league, with only Simmons and Nick Ahmed as peers. The eye test will tell you that his mere presence stabilizes an infield and calms the pitchers in front of him. The talent and panache on display nightly is simply irrefutable.
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In January, we at FanGraphs put out a call for radio broadcast ratings. The votes are now all in, and over the following days, we’ll be releasing a compilation of those rankings, as well as selected commentary from each team’s responses.

As a refresher, our survey asked for scores in four areas. If you’d like a thorough explanation of them, you can read the introductory article, but I’ll also recap them briefly here before starting off with the bottom third of the league.

The “Analysis” score covers the frequency and quality of a broadcast team’s discussion of baseball. This isn’t limited to statistical analysis, and many of the booths that scored best excelled at explaining technical details of playing. This score represents how much listeners feel they learn about baseball by listening.

“Charisma” covers the amount of enjoyment voters derive from listening to the broadcasters fill space, which takes on many forms. The booths that scored best on charisma varied wildly, from former players recounting stories of their glory days to unintentional comedy and playful banter between long-term broadcast partners. Read the rest of this entry »

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Earlier today, Paul Sporer assessed the game’s weaker rotations. Now, Ben Clemens turns his attention to the aces.

The top of the NL West is also the top of our starting pitching rankings. The Padres lost deadline acquisition Mike Clevinger before the postseason even ended, but they recovered by adding three marquee pitchers via trade. The Dodgers countered by adding Trevor Bauer in free agency, and it’s no surprise that those two teams sit atop this list. The New York teams have their aces, the Nationals have their big three, and plenty of other squads mix depth with upside, but none of them could quite match the two California teams’ projections.

That’s not to say that no one else can run out a string of aces. The Yankees have injury issues, but they’ll be able to line up Cy Young winners on consecutive nights. The Mets have Noah Syndergaard waiting in the wings, and the Nationals won a World Series in exactly that manner only two years ago. Pitchers are nastier than ever, and this list is a testament to that fact: there are interesting arms and potential aces on every team in the top 15. That makes it harder than ever to reach the top of our list, but it’s no shade to the teams further down; they’re good, but the Padres and Dodgers are better. Read the rest of this entry »

The week before the regular season begins is usually extension season, as teams and players scramble to complete deals before the day-to-day rigors of playing baseball for six straight months get in the way of discussions. While this year hasn’t seen many extensions so far, it hasn’t seen none; on Wednesday, the Astros signed Lance McCullers Jr. to a five-year, $85 million extension, as FOX 26’s Mark Berman first reported.

McCullers would have reached free agency after this year; all five years of his extension would have been free-agent years, which makes comparisons easier. This deal is essentially a pre-agreement to a free-agent contract, with none of that squirrely nonsense of buying out arbitration years or extra team options on the end. Five years and $85 million, simple as that.

How does that rate look next to comparable free agents? For once, I’m stumped. The pandemic-shortened season, and teams’ subsequent financial retrenching, makes using past years as a guidepost a poor idea. Madison Bumgarner, for example, signed a five-year, $85 million deal — the exact terms! — but did so before the world changed. This offseason, no comparable pitchers hit the market; the only pitcher who signed a multi-year deal with an average annual value above $10 million was Trevor Bauer, and that’s not a useful comp here either.

You could, if you were so inclined, use Dan Szymborski’s research from last week that estimated the cost of one WAR in future years. The estimate has wide error bands, because it’s based only on multi-year contracts signed this offseason, but it looks like so:

With that in hand, we next need to estimate how good McCullers will be in the relevant 2022–26 timeframe. Luckily, ZiPS has us covered there as well:

With the projection in tow and a cost per WAR (I added $250,000 per year after the years in the table), we can just do the math. That’s a 9.3 WAR projection overall, and after applying the relevant yearly multipliers, the projections would suggest a $75 million contract. That implies the Astros overpaid, but take a gander at those innings projections. McCullers’ past injury history leads ZiPS to a pessimistic playing time assumption. An extra 15 innings per year would move the deal up to fair value. So would four seasons of 150-inning production and a single missed season. In other words, it comes in pretty close to what we’d expect after accounting for his skill and risk factors.

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