Over the last five years, as we’ve navigated a changing advertising landscape — not to mention the pandemic and a lockout — I’ve endeavored to be transparent about the state of the site, our business model, and our plans for the future. I’ve taken that approach because FanGraphs is a community, and I think our readers deserve to understand what we are doing and why. It’s been four years since we last increased the price of a FanGraphs Membership, and we’ve delayed this increase for as long as possible. We’ve not only seen considerable increases in our stat licensing fees and infrastructure costs, but this year we’ve also seen a steep decline in our advertising rates as well as our organic search traffic, as Google continues to push relevant websites further and further down the page in favor of new AI search results.

Beginning August 4, a yearly FanGraphs Membership will cost $80; a Monthly Membership will cost $15 a month, while a Three-Year Membership will cost $200. Since we won’t be introducing this change until August 4, you still have the opportunity to purchase a $60 Membership for the year, or upgrade your existing Membership to a $150 Three-Year Membership, allowing you to grandfather yourself into our existing pricing for the next three years. Read the rest of this entry »

We now have NPB data available on FanGraphs! It can found on the player pages and the leaderboards.

A few notes on NPB data:

• All NPB data is provided by Sports Info Solutions and is available going back to 2018.
• We update NPB (and KBO) data around 11:30 ET each night with the previous days games.
• wRC+, ERA-, and FIP-, are park adjusted using five-year park factors.

Speaking of park adjustments, MiLB and KBO wRC+, ERA-, and FIP- are now also park adjusted using five-year park factors. You can read more about how our park factors are calculated here. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to the 20th season of FanGraphs Baseball! In what’s becoming an annual tradition, allow me to run through all of the cool new features we’ve added to the site in the past year:

• Customizable player page dashboards and player cards, like heat maps, rolling averages, and more (Member exclusive)
• The fantasy Player Rater
• Division I college data
• NPB data
• Spring training data
• New heat maps
• Pitch modeling game logs
• WAR-based Playoff Odds
• Steamer platoon, context neutral, and percentile projections (Member exclusive)
• Historical Steamer, ZiPS, and ATC projections (Member exclusive)
• OOPSY projections
• FanGraphs Walk-Off (Member exclusive)

Read the rest of this entry »

I’m happy to announce that we’ve added Division I college data to the site. You can access the data via the player pages and leaderboards.

Some things to be aware of:

• Division I data is updated daily and is available going back to 2021.
• wRC+, ERA-, and FIP- are conference adjusted, but not park adjusted.
• College data on the player pages is hidden by default for players who have more than one year of minor league data. It can be viewed by clicking on the “College” toggle right above any data table.
  
• All college data is provided by College Splits.

We’re able to bring new features to the site because of Member support. If you enjoy our new college data, or any of our content, please consider becoming a FanGraphs Member. Membership benefits currently include:

• Unlimited FanGraphs & RotoGraphs articles
• Ad-free browsing
• One-click data exports
• Custom Player Page dashboards and more player cards, like heat maps, rolling averages, and more
• Dark and Classic Site Modes
• FanGraphs Walk-off, your personalized year-end review
• Enhanced Steamer projections
• Historical ZiPS and Steamer projections

Thank you for your support. Please let us now if you run into any issues with the new college data, either in the comments below or through our support page.

The playoff odds and projected standings for the 2025 season are now available!

As a refresher, to generate our playoff odds, we take each team’s projected performance and the schedule, and use those inputs to simulate the remaining season 20,000 times. We aggregate these outcomes to find the probability of a team winning its division or a Wild Card spot, along with its chances of winning the World Series and various playoff rounds. If a team has a 90% chance of making the playoffs, it means that 18,000 out of the 20,000 simulated seasons end with the team playing in October.

To calculate each team’s initial projected performance, we use individual player projections from the FanGraphs Depth Charts, which are a 50/50 blend of ZiPS and Steamer, prorated to our RosterResource Depth Chart playing time. We then aggregate those individual player projections by team and apply the BaseRuns calculation to each team’s batters and pitchers to get projected runs scored and allowed. Those BaseRuns runs scored and allowed calculations are used to calculate a projected winning percentage using the Pythagorean win expectancy. This is the number you’ll see on our projected standings page, which amounts to a team’s projected winning percentage versus neutral opposition. Here I’ll remind everyone that this is calculated before being run through the season simulation 20,000 times, so the projected standings can, and often do, differ from what you’ll see on the playoff odds page. Read the rest of this entry »

Beginning today, we’ll be moving our articles on both FanGraphs and RotoGraphs to a metered paywall. Readers will get 10 free articles per rolling 30 days; if you go over that and would like to continue reading, you’ll be required to become a FanGraphs Member.

Our player pages, leaderboards, and other data tools, as well as RosterResource, The Board, and our glossary, will remain available for unlimited use to all of our readers.

FanGraphs Membership now includes:

• Ad-free browsing
• Unlimited FanGraphs and RotoGraphs articles
• One-click data exports
• Customizable player page dashboards
• Dark mode and classic mode page styles
• Leaderboard custom reports
• Optional removal of photos on the homepage

When I think about where FanGraphs sits in today’s media landscape, there are a lot of things that make us an outlier. We are a 100% independent small business that has 14 full-time employees. Everyone who does any work for FanGraphs receives compensation. We don’t focus on chasing clicks. We don’t participate in SEO schemes. We don’t work with sportsbooks or gambling entities. We are a baseball site staffed by baseball experts for baseball fans and experts.

Unfortunately, we’re still very much reliant on programmatic advertising dollars, which you may remember being the focus of a post of mine earlier this year. Whether because of the 2020 pandemic, the 2022 lockout, 2023 search engine changes, or 2024 changes in ad tech, advertising revenue is unpredictable and unreliable. It makes business planning and hiring challenging, and leaves us vulnerable to revenue fluctuations that have nothing to do with the quality of our content or site tools. It isn’t transparent, its presence on the site creates a poor user experience that’s difficult for us to quality control, and it exploits your data to take revenue out of the hands of small publishers and put it in the coffers of the largest, most profitable companies in the world.

FanGraphs turns 20 years old next year. It has taken decades of work from dozens of people who have given their days, nights, weekends, and vacation time to build this site. For an independent single-sport site, the range and depth of content available at FanGraphs is truly special. We hope that these changes will help us further secure the site’s future long-term. Thank you to all of our Members for helping us get this far. Every time we have faced a decline in advertising revenue over the last five years, it has been our Members who have sustained FanGraphs and helped it grow. And if you aren’t yet a Member, there’s no need to wait until you hit your 10 article limit — you can become one now and help us continue to improve the site, just as we have these past 19 years.

Please let us know if you have any questions, either by leaving a comment below or by emailing support@fangraphs.com.

Today, we’ve made some changes to Wins Above Replacement that completes the move from UZR to the full suite of Statcast equivalent metrics in FanGraphs WAR. This process began in 2022, when we replaced UZR’s range component with Statcast’s Fielding Runs Prevented, which is Outs Above Average (OAA) converted to runs above average. UZR will continue to be calculated on FanGraphs through the end of the 2025 season. Today’s changes are retroactive to the 2016 season. Read the rest of this entry »

Hi everyone!

It’s been almost two years since we talked about how FanGraphs is doing, and with Opening Day fast approaching, I thought it would be a good time to give you an update on where the site stands now. Read the rest of this entry »

The application period for this position is now closed. Thank you for your interest.

FanGraphs is now accepting applications to join our staff as a full-time associate editor.

The associate editor will work with the managing editor and the FanGraphs staff to publish daily baseball analysis and help shape the site’s editorial strategy. From free agent signings to statistical analysis, baseball’s top prospects to in-game strategy, we endeavor to present a holistic view of today’s game to our readers. Familiarity and comfort with advanced statistics is a requirement, as is a firm understanding of the current public research landscape. Just as importantly, we’re looking for an editor who displays good editorial judgment, as well as a talent for helping writers sharpen their ideas and hone their authorial voice. The associate editor will also manage FanGraphs’ social media accounts, and will have the opportunity to contribute written work of their own. Read the rest of this entry »

Postseason stats are now available in our leaderboards!

The leaderboards can be accessed in the Leaders navigation bar, or by using the “Season Type” filter in the leaderboards themselves. Read the rest of this entry »