| 7:01 |
 Dan Szymborski: It is a time for baseball.
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| 7:01 |
: Hello baseball world
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| 7:02 |
: Quite a matchup we have tonight
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| 7:02 |
Dan Szymborski: I’m just glad we got *a* Game 5!
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| 7:02 |
: So how do we think the Glasnow start will pan out?
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| 7:02 |
Dan Szymborski: Between two and four runs allowed, margin of error six!
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| 3:31 |
: Hey everyone, welcome to our ALDS chat for the day.
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| 3:31 |
: The A’s and Astros are about to get started, with Oakland’s metaphorical back against the metaphorical wall
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| 3:32 |
: Liam Hendriks threw roughly 8 trillion pitches yesterday (I didn’t count) but will probably be available today
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| 3:32 |
: What’s up, y’all?
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| 3:32 |
: KEEP HOPING AND DREAMING AND YOU…..WILL…..SOOOAAARRRR
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| 3:32 |
: We’ll also talk about the NL games b/c why not
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| 2:06 |
Dan Szymborski: Hello!
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| 2:06 |
: So many Dudebros in that Fox pre-game studio.
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| 2:06 |
: howdy, all
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| 2:06 |
Dan Szymborski: Welcome to our NLDS Game 1 Chat! Which you have likely figured out from the link that was titled as such!
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| 2:07 |
: What noise would be louder in the event of an Astros-Yankees ALCS – collective groans of fans, or cheers of FOX execs?
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| 2:08 |
Dan Szymborski: I imagine a Marlins-A’s World Series would cause Depression-era panic at Fox.
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| 4:01 |
: Hey everyone, welcome to our chat for ALDS Game 1.
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| 4:01 |
: Today it will be Dan and I manning the chat stations (definitely just our computers).
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| 4:01 |
: If you’d like a preview of the series, conveniently enough, Dan wrote it:
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| 4:01 |
Dan Szymborski: And I am here!
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| 4:01 |
: Er, he’s previewing the later ALDS game
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| 1:00 |
 Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks! Welcome to today’s Wild Card Series Day 2 chat. I’ll be joined here by Dan Szymborski, Tony Wolfe and maybe Meg Rowley in due course
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| 1:01 |
Jay Jaffe: we’re all going to have baseball coming out of our ears by the time today is over
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| 1:02 |
Jay Jaffe: Reds-Braves is already going, Astros-Twins about to start, Marlins Cubs at 2 pm ET, White Sox-A’s at 3, Blue Jays-Rays at 4, C, Cardinals-Padres at 5
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| 1:02 |
Jay Jaffe: (pauses to catch breath)
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| 1:02 |
Jay Jaffe: Yankees-Indians at 7 ET, and finally Dodgers-Brewers at 10
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| 1:02 |
: I’ve been a Padre fan for the past 12 years and this is the first time I’ve seen my team in the playoffs. So, I cannot understate how sad I am that both Clevenger and Lamet will not be pitching in this series.
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| 7:00 |
Dan Szymborski: And welcome to the FanGraphs live chat for Yankees vs. Indians!
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| 7:00 |
Dan Szymborski: I am your currently unsupervised host, Dan Szymborski, also of same site.
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| 7:01 |
Dan Szymborski: And there is baseball afoot.
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| 7:01 |
: if you averaged tim lincecum and Alejandro kirk’s build would you just end up with a normal human?
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| 7:01 |
Dan Szymborski: Seems reasonable.
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| 7:02 |
: Why does the nerdcast version have to be on ESPN+, can’t it just be on ESPN2?
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Asking baseball writers to predict the postseason is unkind under the best of circumstances. Throw in a 16-team field and a best-of-three Wild Card Series where the higher seed’s only real advantage is playing at home, and something is bound to go sideways. Still, our readers demand their answer, so I asked my colleagues to predict which team will emerge from the postseason gauntlet with a trophy, and which squads are bound for early exits. Twenty of us answered the call. Below are the results by league and round, as well as each writer’s complete forecast in a sortable table. Happy playoffs!
| Winner | Votes |
|---|---|
| Rays | 19 |
| Blue Jays | 1 |
| Winner | Votes |
|---|---|
| White Sox | 14 |
| Athletics | 6 |
| Winner | Votes |
|---|---|
| Twins | 17 |
| Astros | 3 |
| Winner | Votes |
|---|---|
| Yankees | 10 |
| Indians | 10 |
Well that was busy! Over the past week, the FanGraphs staff has written 35 pieces dedicated to analyzing the 2020 trade deadline, from Jay Jaffe’s Replacement-Level Killers series, which previewed teams’ positions of need, to detailed breakdowns of deadline transactions, to Craig Edwards’ piece today on deadline winners and losers, and Eric Longenhagen’s ranking of the prospects who moved. It’s a lot to sort through, so to assist you in finding anything you may have missed during yesterday’s flurry, I’ve rounded up all of our deadline pieces in one place. You’ll find the broader preview and recap pieces listed first, followed by a team-by-team listing of those transactions pieces that involved your favorite squad, either as buyers or sellers. In instances when we dissected a transaction across multiple pieces — hello, Padres! — you’ll see them grouped together.
As always, all of the pieces linked below are free to read, but they took time, resources, and weekend work hours to produce. If you enjoyed our coverage of the trade deadline and are in a position to do so, we hope you’ll sign up for a FanGraphs ad-free Membership. It’s the best way to both support our work and experience the site. Now, on to the roundup! Read the rest of this entry »
You were supposed to read this yesterday. Yesterday, when the playoffs consisted of just 10 teams and Mookie Betts hadn’t yet registered his first hit in Dodger blue. But as with a great deal else about this season, the 2020 playoffs will be something different than we initially expected. Mere hours before the first pitch of last night’s Yankees-Nationals tilt was scheduled to be thrown, ESPN’s Marly Rivera reported that MLB and the MLBPA had approved a deal to expand the postseason. This new structure will only be in effect for the 2020 season, barring further negotiations between the league and the players. The field will now feature 16 teams; every division winner and runner up will make the playoffs, along with the two teams in each league that have the best records beyond those six. They’ll meet in a three-game Wild Card Series that will be seeded thusly:
Seeds 1-3 will go to the division winners based on record.
Seeds 4-6 will go to the runners-up based on record.
Seeds 7 and 8 will be based on record.
Thus, there is a possibility the third-best division winner actually plays a worse team than the two best division winners.
— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) July 23, 2020
All of the games in the Wild Card Series will be played in the home ballpark of the more highly seeded team. In the event of regular season ties, mathematical tiebreakers will be used — MLB isn’t exactly keen to play games deeper into the Fall.
David Appelman and Sean Dolinar have already updated our playoff odds to account for the new format (they are wizards). You can poke around here, but the unsurprising takeaway is this: a lot of teams are a lot more likely to play October baseball than they were when yesterday began. Read the rest of this entry »
Over the past week and a half, we’ve published our annual season preview, ranking the league’s players by position based on a blend of our projections (a 50/50 split between ZiPS and Steamer) and our manually maintained playing time estimates courtesy of Jason Martinez of RosterResource fame. The result is a document that rivals In Search of Lost Time for length, though we’ve striven to make it a touch more readable. If you happen to have missed any of those installments, you can use the handy navigation widget above to catch up. And remember, if you’re a fan of say, the Dodgers, and don’t want to see any other teams’ rankings but theirs, you can use the “View by Team” feature in any of those pieces, and look at that, all Dodgers. No stinkin’ Astros for you.
Today, I’m going to summarize the results. We’ll look at some tables and pick out a few interesting tidbits, but first, it’s important to remember that this exercise captures a snapshot of how we project teams to perform now. Teams aren’t static, however. Since we’ve published our rankings, for instance, Gavin Lux has been optioned. Colin Poche likely needs Tommy John. Jordan Montgomery didn’t make the Yankees’ Opening Day roster. Hell, Franchy Cordero was traded to the Royals about 12 hours before the right field rankings were set to go live. Guys suffer injuries, lose playing time due to underperformance, and get traded. That’s why we maintain a Team WAR Totals page, which lists projected positional WAR by team and updates regularly throughout the season as we learn more about who is likely to take the field every day and what shape they’ll be in when they do. Now, don’t be alarmed — the WAR numbers you see there may vary slightly from what you see on the positional power rankings, mostly because those figures are aware of the injuries and transactions that have altered our playing time estimates since the power rankings went live. The z-scores I include later uses the WAR from the Team WAR Totals page. It’s a good page. Read the rest of this entry »
