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Two weeks ago was Prospect Week here at FanGraphs. I didn’t contribute any analysis to it, because a) it was packed with really good analysis already and b) I wasn’t done compiling the thing I wanted to contribute. With some time to finish up my work — and not much else going on in our lockout-plagued sport — I’m ready to provide a bit of bonus analysis.

Last year, I used a variety of statistical techniques to come up with a list of players I thought stood a strong chance of putting together a meaningful major league career. This year, I’m … well, I’m using a variety of statistical techniques to come up with a list of players I think stand a strong chance of putting together a meaningful major league career. But this time, I’ve spent a bit more time refining my methods.

Here’s a quick overview of those methods. I used a variety of simple models based on historical minor and major league data. In each of them, I looked at a variety of key indicators in minor league hitters: statistics, age, position, level — anything I could download, essentially. I linked those minor league seasons to that player’s eventual major league career (or lack thereof).

This methodology carries many limitations, only some of which I have time to detail here. Baseball isn’t the same as it was in the past; while I think I’ve done a decent job of picking performance metrics that are stable over time, player development and the skills that are necessary to stick in the major leagues don’t look the same as they did 10 or 20 years ago.

That particular problem is inherent in everything that uses the past to predict the future, but don’t worry: my methods have way more shortcomings. For one, 2021 was a strange year to look at minor league statistics. With no 2020 season to gauge players’ skill levels, competition seemed far more variable within each league. I’m also basing much of this data on leagues that don’t exist anymore, as minor league realignment changed the makeup of the minor leagues significantly and also messed with my rudimentary park factors. I didn’t use Statcast or Trackman data, both because I don’t have a complete picture of it for 2021 and because it doesn’t exist at all in most of the years I used to train my various models. Finally, I’m using the position that each player played most in 2021 to give them a position, rather than where they’re projected to end up or what our prospect team thinks they’re best suited for.
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The 2028-29 offseason was downright bananas. In a matter of weeks, the Dodgers shelled out $2.3 billion in guarantees, a spending spree that upended the league. What had been a good class for first basemen turned into a single team cornering the market: Yordan Alvarez, Pete Alonso, and Alec Bohm created a veritable pileup at first in Los Angeles, one that pushed the team’s best holdover player, Michael Lindauer, from first to shortstop. It also pushed Bohm to third, which meant fellow free agent signee Carter Kieboom was getting $75 million to be a backup. The rest of the league was caught flat-footed, playing catch-up or giving up on free agency entirely.

That’s just how things go in Magnus Effect Baseball, an online baseball-industry Out Of The Park league that grew out of 2020’s COVID-19 lockdowns but has turned into a freewheeling, frenetic playground that shows no signs of slowing down. Those mighty Dodgers didn’t break the league; in fact, they’re not even the best team in their division. It’s a wildly competitive league, with even the bad teams trying to trade, sign, and develop their way into contention.

Magnus Effect Baseball started the way most online activities did in early 2020: out of sheer boredom. Smith Brickner, the league’s commissioner, wasn’t the originator. At the time, he was working for the Braves as a minor league video trainee, but his job had been put on hold by COVID. “I had just driven 20-plus hours from the Braves’ spring training complex back to Long Island when my buddy Sam Denomme asked if I had an interest in joining an industry-wide OOTP league run by some guys at Driveline,” Brickner told me. “When it became clear that someone needed to step up and actually run the league, I raised my hand.” Read the rest of this entry »

As you’ve probably heard, Major League Baseball canceled the first two series of the 2022 season yesterday, after a self-imposed deadline to finish negotiations with the Major League Baseball Players Association on a new collective bargaining agreement passed with no deal reached. The two sides didn’t appear to be close to an agreement before negotiations ended; indeed, they remained far apart on several key economic issues.

The gulf between them is significant, but it doesn’t seem unbridgeable. Negotiations in three areas – compensation for young players, the competitive balance tax, and postseason expansion – will be key to reaching an agreement when talks resume. Those are far from the only issues that separate the two sides, of course, but they dwarf the rest; presumably a compromise in those three areas would precipitate a deal. Or at least, that was my assumption when I began to look at the differences. Let’s see just how far apart MLB and the MLBPA actually are. Read the rest of this entry »

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As the lockout wears on, team financials have repeatedly been called into question. Are teams making money? What about if you ignore franchise value? Commissioner Rob Manfred recently claimed that owning a baseball team has been a worse investment than investing in the stock market, a claim that was quickly challenged by outside observers. Last week, Liberty Media, the principle owner of the Atlanta Braves, announced their 2021 financial results, shedding some light on the financial state of the league.

The Braves enjoyed a banner year in 2021. Per their filing, they turned a profit of $104 million. That’s full-year OIBDA, or operating income before depreciation and amortization. That brings their four-year operating income, including the pandemic-marred 2020 season, to $193 million.

OIBDA sounds like a great big pile of financial jargon, and it is, so let’s talk about what all of that means. Operating income refers to the money that the team has left over after it takes in all its revenue and pays all of its costs. More specifically, it’s revenue minus the cost of goods sold minus other operating expenses. If a team sells 100 hot dogs for a net $800, that’s $800 in revenue. If they paid $20 to buy those hot dogs in bulk, that’s $20 in cost of goods sold. If they pay the vendor who sells those hot dogs $15, that’s $15 in other operating expenses. Voila – $765 in operating income. Read the rest of this entry »

On a per-plate-appearance basis, you can probably guess the top five second basemen from last season. Trea Turner leads the pack, at least if you count him as a second baseman. Marcus Semien is close behind. Brandon Lowe, Jose Altuve, and Jake Cronenworth round out the group, and it’s not a surprise to see any of them at the top of a list of excellent players. Number six might surprise you: it’s Tony Kemp, who quietly put together a star-level season in his second year in Oakland.

As Jay Jaffe noted last year, Kemp isn’t doing it with barrels. He didn’t end the year in the zero-barrel club, but it was a near thing; he managed all of three. He didn’t quite finish last in barrels per batted ball, but the company he kept on that list — he’s wedged between Nick Madrigal and Adam Frazier, with Tim Locastro and Nicky Lopez in close proximity — isn’t one known for its power. That’s hardly a surprise given Kemp’s short stature (he’s listed at 5’6” and 160 pounds), but the lack of power didn’t stop him from compiling a juicy 127 wRC+, third-best on a solid Oakland offense.

How did Kemp do it? Without putting the ball in play, mainly. His 13.1% walk rate was 20th among batters with 300 or more plate appearances, and no one who walked more than he did struck out less frequently than his 12.8% mark (Juan Soto was close at 14.2%, but he might be a robot sent from the future to break baseball, so that’s good company to keep). Read the rest of this entry »

I have a secret to tell you. Most writers don’t read the comments on their articles. I know, I know, but your well-thought-out rejoinders and witty jokes! It’s mostly a bandwidth issue: there are just so many words. But we pop in from time to time, and boy am I glad that I did this Monday, because I got a softball question to answer (get it?):

Yes! Forget CBA negotiations and lockouts and missed spring training. Forget major league baseball, too. Heck – for this article, forget baseball! Today, like the 1992 Springfield champions, we’re talking rec league softball.

The question is an apt one, and far more useful for the average slow-pitch softball player than an examination of backup sliders or novel sinkers or whatever the heck it is I’m normally writing about. It’s a simple question: how aggressive should you be on the basepaths in a world where almost no one makes outs? For the rest of this article, I’ll be applying the same math that we use for steals in the majors (that golden 75% success rate target) to decide whether to go for an extra base on a single. It could also apply to a steal, if that’s something your league does; I haven’t played in a few years, but the basepaths weren’t exactly lively when I did. For today’s article, though, we’re not going to consider the etiquette or technique, merely how to make your opportunities mathematically advantageous. Read the rest of this entry »

This past Saturday, as part of the ongoing collective bargaining agreement negotiations, Major League Baseball sent its second proposal on core economic issues to the Major League Baseball Players Association. We’ve already covered how the two sides differ on pre-arbitration compensation, and examined how changing the arbitration eligibility rules would alter player salaries based on recent arbitration awards. MLB and the MLBPA have also laid out proposals regarding the competitive balance tax, proposals that would have strikingly different effects on team spending.

To compare the two approaches, I started with the actual tax regime from the previous CBA, which was in effect from 2017 through ’21. I made one modification: the abbreviated 2020 season led the league and the union to bilaterally amend the CBA to drop the competitive balance tax for that season. Payrolls also ended up being quite different than their original projections due to the 60-game slate. For the purposes of this analysis, I’ve turned each payroll into a full-season number and calculated the tax as if 2020 were a regular year (hopefully, how the new CBT handles a pandemic will not be relevant for future seasons). Read the rest of this entry »

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