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Here, take a look at Clayton Kershaw throwing a 3-0 pitch in 2018:

Pretty straightforward, huh? Okay, now take a look at the same situation in 2019:

Can you spot the difference between the two? I’ll save you some time — I can’t either.

Not very interesting, right? Well, that’s not really what we’re here for. You see, Kershaw’s behavior when he throws a strike on 3-0 doesn’t look very different. In 2019, however, his overall 3-0 strike-throwing changed greatly. Was it real? Was it a fluke? Does it tell us something deeper about Kershaw? Let’s investigate. Read the rest of this entry »

Now that we’re clear of Even Year Magic and rapidly approaching the modern day, you might expect there to be fewer strange decisions to take issue with. You’d be right — we’re no longer inundated by a flood of sacrifice bunts. Bad pitchers aren’t heading through lineups a fourth time. Better hitters bat higher in lineups.

But these two World Series, while light on truly baffling decisions, featured a number of interesting ones. A decision that obviously lowers a team’s chances of winning — well, what can you say about that? It’s bad! But a decision that’s a coin flip, a 50/50 proposition with offsetting costs and benefits? That’s a gold mine for analysis, and both 2015 and 2016 were rich with them — particularly 2016.

2015

You know this one. We’re going to end up talking about Matt Harvey talking his way into pitching the ninth inning of Game 5. But let’s go through the motions of the rest of the series first. The Mets brought a powerful lineup with new-age leadoff hitter Curtis Granderson and newly powerful Daniel Murphy keying the top of the order. The Royals countered by batting their worst batter, Alcides Escobar, first. In fairness to Ned Yost, the rest of the lineup looked fine, but Escobar hit .257/.293/.320, and it’s not like it was a down year; his career line is .258/.293/.343.

Naturally, Escobar led off the game with an inside-the-park home run, courtesy of some of the worst outfield routes you’ll ever see from center fielder Yoenis Céspedes and left fielder Michael Conforto. That amusing diversion aside, the game was straightforward; both teams got six innings out of their starters before relying on a parade of bullpen arms, and the Royals eventually prevailed in 14 innings.

Game 2 was all about the struggles of a good, but not yet transcendent, Jacob deGrom. He struggled through the first four innings with only two strikeouts, and the wheels fell off in the fifth; walk, single, single to lead off the inning, two quick outs on a grounder and a line drive, and then three more consecutive singles. The four-run outburst was hardly preventable; pulling your 5-WAR starter in the fifth inning a day after a 14-inning game is a tough decision to make. Read the rest of this entry »

This is the latest installment of a series in which the FanGraphs staff rounds up the latest developments regarding the COVID-19 virus’ effect on baseball.

Big Leaguers Step Up on Minor League Pay

Late last week, the Nationals announced that they would be lowering their minor league stipend from $400 to $300 per week. The move drew immediate criticism from minor leaguers, and from those on the big league club as well. Within hours, Nats major leaguers had pledged to make up the difference to those affected, as Sean Doolittle announced.

The optics, and indeed the factual basis, of these two countervailing reactions were terrible for the club. A $100 cut is necessarily a far bigger deal for a minor leaguer than the major league team as a whole, and the players’ instant support of their minor league teammates led to a public relations backlash against the team. Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier in this interminable offseason, I set out to find the best bunters of 2019. Why? Partially it’s because with no major league games, digging through old ones is an acceptable substitute. Partially it’s because it highlights some interesting and undervalued skills. And partially it’s because I love a good bunt for a hit.

There was one disappointing problem with the 2019 bunts, however: none of them were that momentous. The best bunt of 2019 was worth .326 WPA; in other words, the batting team’s odds of winning the game went up by 32.6 percentage points. That’s a big play, but it’s only the 12th-most valuable bunt in the last 10 years.

How does a bunt improve one team’s odds of winning by 32.6%? Like this:

So yes, a bunt needs some help from the opposing team to be worth so much. There’s no way around that; a bunt gets the defense involved in the play, so the best ones are going to involve a combination of good bunting and bad fielding. The most valuable bunts swing entire games — in this game, both runners scored and the Phillies won 6-5. Again, that’s not even one of the top 10 biggest bunts. Read the rest of this entry »

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In theory, the Brewers offense was set up to be a stars-and-scrubs operation heading into the season. It’s not that it was particularly low-octane, or even misbuilt; when you have a player like Christian Yelich, it stands to reason that everyone else is going to look pedestrian in comparison.

Of course, theory doesn’t always survive in the real world. There are myriad examples of a team expecting a star performance from one player and receiving one from another. But for our OOTP Brewers, that has emphatically not happened. The offense is off to an excellent start — fourth in the NL in runs scored, fifth in wOBA, and fourth in batter WAR. It’s happened exactly the way that you’d expect — with a transcendent performance from digital Yelich and an adequate job the rest of the way down. Today, let’s celebrate Yelich’s brilliance.

In 2019, the major league WAR leader on May 31 was Cody Bellinger. You might remember 2019 Bellinger started the season off on a torrid pace. Even after an only excellent (instead of mega-excellent) May, he closed the month hitting .379/.465/.749. He was walking more than he struck out, he played excellent center field defense, and he even chipped in seven stolen bases (though he was caught stealing four times). It was a true all-phases effort, and it was worth a massive 4.2 WAR in 241 plate appearances. That pace would make for an 11.5 WAR season.

With that as calibration for how impressed you should be by numbers through the end of May, let’s turn to Yelich. His batting line looks a lot like Bellinger’s: .354/.444/.694, good for a 194 wRC+. Has he accomplished it with an absolutely outlandish BABIP? Honestly, not really. He’s posted a .381 mark so far, which is obviously a high number, but he’s posted a career BABIP of .358, and projection systems pegged him for something in the .340 range going into this year. Read the rest of this entry »

While Even Year Magic was in full swing from 2012-2014, there were plenty of other great World Series storylines. There was Mathenaging, Yostseason, and even Jon Lester fielding bunts. With such an action-packed set of games, let’s get right to it.

2012

The Tigers brought a mostly-sweet lineup to the table: Austin Jackson was a leadoff beast, Miguel Cabrera and Prince Fielder provided thump from the three and four slots — and yes, Omar Infante batted second in a season where he had a .283 OBP, but they can’t all be perfect decisions. Anyway, Infante had a career OBP of .308, which is — wait, no, that’s still bad. That one’s on Jim Leyland.

The Giants featured the fifth-best offense in baseball, a lineup with almost no holes all the way down, depending on how you feel about Brandon Crawford and Grégor Blanco. In Game 1, that deep lineup overpowered Justin Verlander. There were no key points in the game, no weird decisions — sometimes your dominant pitcher just gets hit. Heck, Barry Zito even had an RBI single. Can’t win ‘em all. Read the rest of this entry »

The Brewers just keep winning. The Brewers just keep getting hurt. Something has to give, but on this stream, we’ll do our best to work through the injuries and keep the party going. Read the rest of this entry »

Sometimes the math just works out perfectly. Coming into today, our fictional OOTP Brewers have played exactly one third of their season. At 32-22, we’re atop the NL Central by four games, an outcome I would have happily accepted before the season started. Let’s take a look at how we got here before considering our next steps.

First, let’s talk NL Central. The division isn’t the four-way race that many pundits expected before the year began. In fact, the Cardinals have faded more or less completely out of contention:

The true surprise in the division is the Pirates. Keyed by Chris Archer and Joe Musgrove, they’ve allowed the fourth-fewest runs against in the league. On the offensive side, Josh Bell is having a solid year; his 128 wRC+ and 17 home runs pace the team. But despite the hot start, problem spots remain: the team is 11th in the NL in overall wOBA, as well as 11th in FIP. It isn’t hard to imagine the run-scoring numbers moving down to match the peripherals, which would leave the Pirates on the fringes of the playoff chase. Read the rest of this entry »