During a year in which they own the right to call themselves champions until someone dethrones them in October, it’s safe to say things aren’t exactly going the way the Boston Red Sox anticipated. At this point last year, the Red Sox had the best record in the American League at 49-34 and were on their way to winning the eighth World Series title in franchise history. This year, they’re 38-44 and currently own just a 17% chance to make the postseason at all, according to the very smart FanGraphs Playoff Odds.

The starting rotation, outside of Jon Lester and John Lackey, has been a disaster. Shane Victorino has barely played due to back and hamstring injuries. Dustin Pedroia has been reduced to a league average hitter as his complete lack of power starts to look more and more real. The A.J. Pierzynski signing hasn’t worked out like it did for the Rangers last year and Pierzynski’s time in the MLB appears to be coming to a close. It took Daniel Nava a month to go from starting major league outfielder to starting minor league outfielder. Xander Bogaerts hasn’t lit the world on fire like some hoped and Jackie Bradley Jr. has done nothing to prove that he can hit major league pitching, at all. Even David Ortiz, despite his gaudy home run total, hasn’t been totally himself at the plate.

When a season is going like this, one must try to find a bright spot, somewhere, lest one risk being a total pessimistic bummer. Even on the worst of teams, you can usually point to at least one guy that’s been exciting, surprising or shown some promise one way or another.

Enter Brock Holt.
Read the rest of this entry »

Void of any analysis, this post is!

Full of fun GIFs, also, this post is!

Because baseball is still just a game. Despite all the number-crunching, data-mining, spreadsheet-making, question-asking, answer-seeking, conclusion-drawing and soul-sucking we do here at FanGraphs, it’s important every once in a while to just sit back and soak up what it is that keeps us coming back and makes baseball so fun and interesting: Weird things happening all the time. And dingers. One must always remember to appreciate the dingers.

We’re about halfway through the 2014 season now (!), so it’s time for everyone to start doing best first-half this’ and worst first-half thats. Or, in this case, the most extreme first-half homers.
Read the rest of this entry »

Close your eyes for a second and try to visualize the best defensive first basemen in baseball. The guy with the most range, diving to snag grounders, falling over dugout walls to snare popups and chasing guys down to make tags.

What did you see?

OK, the title of this post may have tipped you off a bit, but if not for that, you probably would have visualized someone like Adrian Gonzalez. Maybe it would be more along the lines of Joey Votto, Paul Goldschmidt or Anthony Rizzo. If you didn’t put a specific name to the face, it would probably be a younger guy, pretty athletic, maybe 6-2/220, with more speed than the average first basemen who could swipe a few bags over the course of a season.

Probably wouldn’t have visualized this behemoth:

Read the rest of this entry »

If you become one of the very best in the entire world at your profession: keep doing what you’re doing. You’ll likely continue to be among the very best in the entire world. Way to go!

But baseball is a funny thing. Sports in general, really. Difference with professional sports is, you’re constantly competing against those who are also the very best in the entire world. Once you reach elite status, the clock starts ticking for the league to begin figuring you out to some extent. The talent gap among the top 1% of the world’s greatest athletes isn’t very large and baseball players are really smart. Once you’re figured out, you better find a new way to continue being the best in the world, or you’re not going to last at the top for too long. Sometimes, it’s just too late. Sometimes, you have to make that adjustment before you’re figured out, so you can stay ahead of the curve. Or so you can keep yourself healthy. One, or both, of these things appear to be true with regards to Yu Darvish this season.
Read the rest of this entry »

Looking back on it, I think I took LeBron James for granted during his time in Cleveland.

When a player reaches a certain level of greatness, this can be a natural human response. You can only hear or read about one excelling at such a high level for so long before it starts to seem like old news. I wish I had gone to more Cavaliers games before James did a thing on TV that made me stop acknowledging his existence in the NBA, or really the existence of the NBA in general. He is, obviously, an incredibly special athlete who played right in my backyard, and I took him for granted.

You might be tired of hearing or reading about Mike Trout, but you really shouldn’t be. Don’t take this one for granted. Mike Trout is, obviously, an incredibly special athlete and, really, enough can’t be said about him.

Read the rest of this entry »

Oscar Taveras is like a sad birthday gift.

He’s the big one. The first gift you asked your parents for, like, seven months before your birthday. You knew it was coming. You were even pretty sure it was that giant box in the back of your parents closet that you stumbled upon while you totally weren’t snooping around for presents. But you couldn’t open it yet. No, no. It just toiled there, right in front of your eyes. Big and beautiful. But you couldn’t play with it. No, you had to wait, damnit.

Then, finally, your birthday came.
Read the rest of this entry »

Yoenis Cespedes‘ defense currently ranks third in the MLB, according to UZR/150. Here’s how the third-most valuable fielder in baseball sometimes likes to play routine outfield grounders:

How in the world is this guy third-best defensively in anything? Because this is how he makes up for those gaffes:
Read the rest of this entry »

Dave Wallace played several minor league seasons in the Indians organization as a catcher before beginning his coaching career as a staff assistant in Cleveland from 2009-10. He has moved his way through the Indians organization quickly, managing the short-season Mahoning Valley Scrappers in 2011, the Class-A Lake County Captains in 2012 and the High-A Carolina Mudcats in 2013 before joining the Double-A Akron RubberDucks this year.

It’s no secret that, as a small-market ballclub, Cleveland has one of the most sabermetrically-inclined front offices in baseball alongside organizations like Oakland, Tampa Bay and Houston. After reading Alex Kaufman’s great piece on the Indians DiamondView system, I wanted to know how much of that trickled down to the minor leagues and what Wallace’s stance was with regards to analytics. Wallace mentioned he is a regular reader of FanGraphs and that one of his favorite things to do is comb through our glossary and learn about new stats. We talked about advanced numbers, their prevalence and role in the minor leagues and how he uses them as a manager:

Read the rest of this entry »

Last summer, I saw Joey Votto pop out.

I traveled to Chicago, as I do every summer, to enjoy the city and catch a couple Cubs games at Wrigley Field. The Cincinnati Reds were in town and Jeff Samardzija was pitching for the Cubs. In Votto’s first at-bat against Samardzija, he doubled. In his second at-bat, Votto walked. But in the fourth inning, Samardzija got Votto to pop out to third base. I immediately recognized what had happened. Nobody I was with quite understood why I was so excited. I explained to them how Joey Votto doesn’t pop out to the infield. It ended up being his only infield fly of 2013. He did it one time in 2012. He did it one time in 2011. He didn’t do it at all in 2010.

I’ve been to a ton of baseball games. I’ve never seen a pitcher throw a perfect game, or even a no-hitter. I’ve never seen a batter hit for the cycle. But I have seen Joey Votto pop out. And as lame as it may sound, I contend that pop out is one of the greatest things I’ve ever seen at a baseball game in person, alongside Greg Maddux’s 3,000th strikeout, Manny Ramirez hitting three homers and Lou Pineilla kicking his hat all over the infield.

After attending Monday’s game in Cleveland between the Indians and the Boston Red Sox, I can add another statistical quirk to the list of coolest things I’ve seen in person at a baseball game: an Immaculate Inning.
Read the rest of this entry »

To begin:

Wow. That’s a pretty boring GIF, huh? J.A. Happ threw that pitch and Omar Infante fouled it off. Nothing to see here.

Unless, that is, you already know what happened in this at bat. The Omar Infante in this GIF doesn’t know it quite yet, but something terrible is about to happen to him.
Read the rest of this entry »