With Ben Lindbergh still in Sweden, FanGraphs’ Michael Baumann takes the co-host chair for a spin. He and Meg Rowley begin (2:10) by delighting in a picture of Lance Lynn and Enrique Hernández from Dodgers photo day, then take advantage of Ben’s absence to discuss (7:30) college baseball and how conference realignment might affect the sport (and the athletes who play it). They then turn their attention (32:13) to Cole Hamels, who recently retired, and Félix Hernández, who was recently inducted into the Mariners Hall of Fame. Meg and Michael discuss what Hernández and Hamels meant to each of them, the similarities (and important differences) that marked their respective Hall of the Very Good careers, and what it’s like to have a pitcher ruin a pitch for you. Meg and Michael also discuss (51:00) the most impressive players and tools they’ve seen in person, including Fernando Tatis Jr., Corbin Carroll, and Aaron Judge, plus center field defense and big power. Finally, they close with a Future Blast from 2047 (1 hr 06 min).

Audio intro: The Gagnés, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: Tom Rhoads, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to Dodgers photo day photos
Link to Michael on Lance Lynn’s first Dodgers start
Link to Michael on conference realignment
Link to Teddy Cahill on conference realignment
Link to Michael on Cole Hamels’ retirement
Link to Meg on Félix Hernández’s final Mariners start
Link to Hamels and Hernández’s career stats
Link to Rick Wilber’s website
Link to Future Blast wiki

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With Ben Lindbergh in Sweden on Ringer business, FanGraphs’ Ben Clemens joins Meg Rowley for a turn in the co-host chair. Ben and Meg begin (1:40) by discussing the disturbing allegations made against Rays shortstop Wander Franco over the weekend. They then banter (5:00) about the experience of watching baseball while on vacation, before turning their attention to Ben’s Five Things series, the sneaky delights of mid-sized Midwestern cities, the Braves scoring big against Danny Mendick, chalk preseason predictions (and Ben’s beef with Other Ben’s prognostication choices), which teams’ World Series odds might be too light (or too heavy), a milestone Juan Soto walk, players being over and underrated, announcers’ refusal to discuss no-hitters, the joy of local commercials on baseball broadcasts, the Cardinals’ and Pirates’ recent runs of relative success and futility, and who might shake up the standings down the stretch. They close with a Future Blast from 2046 (55:20) and an invitation to play Magic: The Gathering, if you’re into that sort of thing.

Audio intro: Alex Ferrin, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: Ted O., “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to Evan Drellich and Brittany Ghiroli on the likely next steps in MLB’s investigation into Franco
Link to Ben’s Five Things I Liked (And Didn’t Like) Archive
Link to 21-3 Braves/Mets Box Score
Link to the FanGraphs Playoff Odds
Link to the FanGraphs 2023 staff predictions
Link to Chris Gilligan on shifting playoff odds
Link to Ben’s piece on Michael Lorenzen’s no-hitter
Link to Ben’s (latest) Lars Nootbaar piece
Link to Rick Wilber’s website
Link to Future Blast wiki

 Sponsor Us on Patreon
 Facebook Group
 Twitter Account
 EW Subreddit
 Effectively Wild Wiki
 iTunes Feed (Please rate and review us!)
 Get Our Merch!
 Email Us: podcast@fangraphs.com

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Shohei Ohtani might not have gone anywhere, but the trade deadline saw plenty of other players find new homes. To help you keep track of all the activity, I’ve rounded up all of our deadline pieces in one place. You’ll find the broader preview and summary pieces listed first, followed by a team-by-team listing of the transaction breakdowns that involve your favorite squad, either as buyers or sellers. In instances where we dissected a transaction across multiple pieces, you’ll see them grouped together. I’ll add any other relevant pieces as they go live.

As always, all of the pieces linked below are free to read, but they took time and resources to produce. If you enjoy our coverage of the trade deadline and are in a position to do so, we hope you’ll sign up for a FanGraphs 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 »

1:00	Dan Szymborski: BASEBALL BASEBALL BASEBALL BASEBALL

1:00	Jay Jaffe: Hi everybody and a very pleasant good afternoon (or morning) to you wherever you may be. Happy 2023 baseball season and welcome to our Opening Day chat!

1:01	Jay Jaffe: Honestly, I don’t think it would take all that much — a couple of key rotation injuries to Houston and a few guys having bigger-than-expected seasons for Seattle while the Angels and Rangers don’t quite get there.

1:00	Dan Szymborski: The Mariners win a number of games in 2023 that is a larger number than the number of games that the Houston Astros and Los Angeles Angels win!

Read the rest of this entry »

After an offseason marked by big free-agent contracts, big bases, and the introduction of the pitch clock, the 2023 season is almost upon us; we made it. And on this, the morning of Opening Day, we engage in our annual tradition of asking our staff to open themselves up to public ridicule and predict the year in baseball. Some of these predictions will prove to be prescient; others will make their forecaster feel a little silly. Last year’s Mariners? Our staff thought they’d finally bring an end to the franchise’s playoff drought, and wouldn’t you know it, they did just that. The division-winning Cleveland Guardians? We fared less well. Such is the prognostication business.

We asked the staff to predict the playoff field, pennant and World Series winners, and the individual award recipients. Folks from FanGraphs and RotoGraphs weighed in; here are the results. 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 and team 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. If you happen to have missed any of those installments, you can use the navigation widget above to catch up.

Today, I’m going to summarize the results. We’ll look at some tables and pick out a few interesting tidbits in a moment, but first, it’s important to remember that this exercise captures a snapshot of how we project teams to perform right now. Teams aren’t static. Since we began publishing our rankings, prospects Anthony Volpe, Jordan Walker, and Brice Turang all made their respective clubs’ Opening Day rosters, and Grayson Rodriguez and Brett Baty learned they will have to wait a little while longer. The Brewers designated Keston Hiura for assignment (he has since cleared waivers and been outrighted to the Brewers’ Triple-A team) and signed non-roster invitee Luke Voit to a one-year big league deal. Rhys Hoskins tore his ACL and will likely miss the season; Triston McKenzie injured his shoulder and could miss up to eight weeks.

This being baseball, players will tweak elbows and hamstrings, lose playing time 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. It’s important to note that the WAR numbers you see on that page may differ from those you’ve seen 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 rankings went live; the Z-Scores I’ll include later also use the WAR figures that power the Team WAR Totals page. Read the rest of this entry »

7:01	Jay Jaffe: Good evening, folks, and welcome to our WBC Finals chat!

7:03	Jay Jaffe: Ohtani started five days ago so guess they didn’t want to mess with his every sixth-day routine, but he could pitch an inning in relief. Darvish… not sure, as the complaint has been that he hasn’t been getting enough buildup here, but I’d expect he’s good for 2-3 innings tonight

Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to the 2023 positional power rankings! As is tradition, over the next week and a half, we’ll be ranking every team by position as we inch closer to Opening Day. This is always something of a funny exercise. You read FanGraphs regularly, after all — a fact for which we are very grateful — and are well-versed in the goings on of the offseason. You know that Carlos Correa was a Giant before becoming a Met before winding up a Twin again, just as you’re aware that Carlos Rodón now pitches for the Yankees and Sean Murphy now catches for the Braves. And yet, you’re still keen to know more about the game and what it might look like between now and October. The positional power rankings are our answer to that impulse.

This post serves as an explainer for our approach to the rankings. If you’re new to the exercise, I hope it helps to clarify how they are compiled and what you might expect from them. If you’re a FanGraphs stalwart, I hope it is a useful reminder of what we’re up to. If you have a bit of time, here is the introduction to last year’s series. You can use the navigation widget at the top of that post to get a sense of where things stood before Opening Day 2022, a spring that saw a burst of trades and signings as the sport emerged from the lockout.

Unlike a lot of sites’ season previews, we don’t arrange ours by team or division. That is a perfectly good way to organize a season preview, but we see a few advantages to the way we do it. First, ranking teams by position allows us to cover a team’s roster from top to bottom. Stars, everyday contributors, and role players alike receive some amount of examination, and those players (and the teams they play for) are placed in their proper league-wide context. By doing it this way, you can more easily see how teams stack up against each other, get a sense of the overall strength of a position across the game, and spot places where a well-constructed platoon may end up having a bigger impact than an everyday regular who is merely good. We think all of that context helps to create a richer understanding of the state of things and a clearer picture of the season ahead. Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s your chance to vote for the 2023 SABR Analytics Conference Research Awards winners.

The SABR Analytics Conference Research Awards will recognize baseball researchers who have completed the best work of original analysis or commentary during the preceding calendar year. Nominations were solicited by representatives from SABR, Baseball Prospectus, FanGraphs, the Internet Baseball Writers Association of America, and Sports Info Solutions.

To read any of the finalists, click on the link below. Scroll down to cast your vote.

Contemporary Baseball Analysis

• Lindsey Adler, “Why the Yankees pitching staff is embracing a new slider and how the ‘whirly’ is different from a traditional slider,” The Athletic, April 4, 2022.
• Michael Ajeto, “We’re Talking About Seam-Shifted Wake Wrong,” Baseball Prospectus, May 17, 2022.
• Davy Andrews, “Steven Kwan, Geraldo Perdomo, and The Victor Robles Problem,” FanGraphs, December 19, 2022.
• Ben Clemens, “How Good Are Those Probabilities on the Apple TV+ Broadcasts?” FanGraphs, May 26, 2022.
• Ethan Rendon, Elijah Emery, Will Sugar and Tieran Alexander, “The Mystic Art of Pitch Tunneling,” Prospects Live, August 23, 2022.

Contemporary Baseball Commentary

• Michael Baumann, “The Playoffs Aren’t Too Big. The League Is Way Too Small,” FanGraphs, October 4, 2022.
• Zach Crizer, “The Phillies are Dave Dombrowski’s 5th World Series Team. Should More Teams Play His Version of Moneyball?” Yahoo! Sports, October 31, 2022.
• Patrick Dubuque, “One Step Behind,” Baseball Prospectus, October 3, 2022.
• Hannah Keyser, “MLB lockout: There’s no way to force team owners to put wins over dollars,” Yahoo! Sports, February 16, 2022.
• Ginny Searle, “So Do Not Become Proud, But Fear,” Baseball Prospectus, June 7, 2022.

Historical Baseball Analysis/Commentary

• Donna L. Halper, “Marvels or Menaces: How the Press Covered ‘The Lady Baseballists,’ 1865-1915,” SABR Baseball Research Journal, Spring 2022.
• Jerry Nechal, “Were Pitchers More Likely to Throw at Black Batters? 1947–66,” SABR Baseball Research Journal, Fall 2022.
• Marc Normandin, “1994 Explains What ‘Labor Peace’ Never Could,” Baseball Prospectus, February 28, 2022.
• Mike Petriello, “How many games would Springfield’s ringers win?” MLB.com, February 19, 2022.
• Leander Schaerlaeckens, “The Forgotten Men Behind The Ideas That Changed Baseball,” Defector, November 14, 2022.

John Dewan Defensive Analytics Award

• Russell A. Carleton, “So You’ve Decided to Ban the Shift,” Baseball Prospectus, March 9, 2022.
• Justin Choi, “The Blue Jays Make A Big Shift In Making Big Shifts,” FanGraphs, May 11, 2022.
• Alex Eisert, “More Than a Putout Puzzle: Revisiting the Problem of Outfield Alignment,” FanGraphs, December 5, 2022.

Voting will be open through 11:59 p.m. MST on Friday, February 10, 2023.

Create your own user feedback survey

Mobile or Safari users, click here to access the survey

Results will be announced and presented at the SABR Analytics Conference, March 10-12, 2023, in Phoenix, Arizona. Learn more or register for the conference at SABR.org/analytics.

Free agency begins five days after the end of the World Series. As in other recent seasons, FanGraphs is once again facilitating a contract crowdsourcing project, with the idea being to harness the wisdom of the crowd to better understand and project the 2022-23 free-agent market.

In recent years, we’ve added a few features to these ballots based on reader feedback. You now have the option to indicate that a player will only receive a minor-league contract, or won’t receive one at all. And new this year, if there is a player option, team option, or opt out in a player’s contract, you’ll be able to indicate whether you think he will remain with his current team or become a free agent. Numbers are prorated to full season where noted. The projected WAR figures are from the first cut of the 2023 Steamer600 projections.

Below are ballots for 10 of this year’s free agents — in this case, another group of starting pitchers. Read the rest of this entry »