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Last week, I contemplated baseball as a carnival game. It gave me great joy because I think there should be more silly games in the world. It also gave me great joy because I got to spend hours watching beautifully located pitches, on a loop, for work. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend trying this yourself – bosses are wild these days – but trust me, it’s really fun.

Another thing I really enjoyed in writing that article was watching batters react to those perfectly placed pitches. One, in particular, stuck with me, so I snuck a piece of it into the piece. Here’s the full clip. In it, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. has either just realized he had a huge cryptocurrency position on FTX or been called out on strikes:

I love it. I love it so much. It makes me even happier that he wasn’t right. That was a strike! Everyone loves to think they’ve been wronged. Everyone has their own perspective. Vlad’s perception of the strike zone is surely that it smaller than the actual zone. In this case, the difference between perception and reality led to a delightful expression of disbelief. Read the rest of this entry »

One of my favorite things about baseball is the sheer number of mind games going on before every pitch. Will the batter sit on a fastball? Will the pitcher give in to the count and throw that fastball the batter is sitting on? The batter is weak against changeups, but the pitcher’s best secondary is a slider – what does that mean for each of their mindsets? First base is open, but the next batter up is strong – what does that mean? The permutations and counters are endless.

It doesn’t stop with the batter-pitcher confrontation. What if there’s a pickoff called? The defense is back and shifted – would a bunt make sense here? Does the count matter for the defense? What about the score? You can spin endlessly around these decisions, and it’s wonderful. I spend plenty of time watching the game and daydreaming about which tactics each team might employ.

That’s all awesome, and a great part of baseball. This article is very much not about those mind games. There’s another part of baseball that I also enjoy – watching phenomenal athletes at the top of their craft. Forget the game theory and levels of counter-play – the physical skill on display in a random baseball game is immense. Read the rest of this entry »

Can I let you in on a secret? I was already halfway through writing about Tyler Anderson when the news of him signing with the Angels broke because Anderson fascinates me. That article is more or less still in here. I also talk about how he fits into the Angels’ plans and how the contract comes into play at the end. It’s two reads for the price of one: one neat trick Anderson added in recent years, plus where he’ll pitch next season.

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Tyler Anderson wanted it all. Normally, you have to pick a lane as a pitcher. You can be an over-the-top fastball type, throwing four-seamers that are equally tough on opposing batters no matter their handedness. Or you might opt to be a sidearmer; that gives you a huge advantage against same-handed hitters, but allows opposite-handed hitters to see the ball cleanly and gain a huge edge. Generally speaking, relievers are more likely to throw sidearm. It’s not a hard-and-fast rule, but it makes sense. Starters have to navigate so many different hitters that they’re bound to face opposite-handed ones more often.

Anderson has always been a starter, and he always sported an over-the-top release point. If you picture a clock face, his four-seamer spins in the direction of 11:00; mostly straight up and down with a tiny bit of leftward tilt, as befitting a lefty with a high release point. As I said above, that means small platoon splits, and that was indeed the case. Anderson allowed the exact same wOBA to lefties and righties in his first five seasons in the majors. Read the rest of this entry »

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I’m not sure if you know this about me, but there are two things that I’ve always loved to do. First, I like to make things about me, even if the connection is tenuous. Second, I like to go over my own past decisions and see if there’s anything I can learn from them, hopefully without being too self-serving. I have great news – well, for me at least. Two free agent signings last week – Robert Suarez to the Padres and Rafael Montero to the Astros – have given me an opportunity to do both.

Of course, I don’t want to give either player short shrift. Both are excellent in their own right, late-inning relievers coming off of effective 2022 seasons and high-leverage postseason work. Egotistical as I am, I can’t completely ignore them and only talk about myself. As a compromise, I’ll start by profiling each player and their new contract. From there, we’ll move on to discussing why neither was on my Top 50 Free Agents ranking, and what I think I did wrong in making the list. Read the rest of this entry »

Rob Thomson is a folk hero in Philadelphia now. He brought the Phillies back from an early-season funk and eked into the playoffs, then charged to a World Series berth behind a barrage of home runs and an underrated bullpen. If the team had won two more games against the Astros, I might be talking about Thomson’s unexpected ascent to King of Philadelphia. Instead, I’m grading his managerial decisions.

As usual, I’m focusing on in-game decisions only. That covers lineup and pinch-hitting decisions on the offensive side, as well as defensive replacements in the rare case where that comes up. It covers pitching usage, both starter length and bullpen deployment. It doesn’t cover keeping your bench players involved in the game, or getting your relievers ready to enter in any given inning, or keeping team morale up when all seems lost. Those are all monumentally important, and also impossible to observe from my position. Let’s get to those in-game decisions, shall we? Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to another installment of postseason managerial report cards. In this one, we’ll look at the Yankees, whose strong start to the season ended in playoff disappointment. From a purely results-oriented standpoint, you’d be hard-pressed to find a Yankees fan giving this year’s team a passing grade.

In these report cards, I’m focusing on process instead of results as much as possible. I considered every pitching move that the team either made or chose not to make, as well as starting lineups and pinch hitting decisions. I suppose I considered batting order as well, but there’s so little value in batting order optimization that I pretty much gave every manager a perfect grade there.

Managers do far more than simply choosing who to put in the game and when to do so. Their role in helping players get prepared and keeping everyone on the same page with regards to team strategy is more important, particularly over the course of a full season, than anything I’m getting into here. I can’t see those decisions, though, and I can see these. What’s more, the postseason amplifies single-game decisions; with so few contests compared to the long haul of a full season, each squandered point of win expectancy feels like a catastrophe. With that lens in mind, let’s take a look at New York’s finest. Read the rest of this entry »

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Welcome to the offseason. As is customary, the end of the playoffs means the release of FanGraphs’ annual top 50 free agent rankings. In recent years, we’ve rotated through the writers principally responsible for the list – first Dave Cameron, then Kiley McDaniel, Craig Edwards, and, more recently, me. I’m back this year and I’ve brought help: the FanGraphs staff contributed mightily to this piece.

Below, I’ve provided contract estimates and rankings of the winter’s top free agents, along with market-focused breakdowns for the top 25 players. That could be a quick discussion of where a player might sign, what a team might look for, or even just statistical analysis masquerading as market analysis – I’m an analyst at heart and never stray far from my roots. Meanwhile, a combination of Michael Baumann, Justin Choi, Jay Jaffe, David Laurila, Eric Longenhagen, Dan Szymborski, and Jon Tayler supplied player-focused breakdowns, which are designed to provide some context for each player at this moment in his career. Special thanks to David Appelman, Sean Dolinar, Jason Martinez, and Meg Rowley for their help behind the scenes.

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. All of the dollar amounts are estimated guarantees. Plenty of contracts will include team options or player incentives, but those aren’t included in these estimates. Player opt outs are similarly not included. All of the projections are Steamer 2023 projections, but use our Depth Chart playing time allocations. The lone exception is Kodai Senga, whose projection comes courtesy of ZiPS. The listed ages indicate the age-season the player is about to play. Read the rest of this entry »