During the 2022 Hall of Fame election cycle, I introduced S-JAWS, an experimental version of my starting pitcher metric, in the service of evaluating candidates on the Golden Days and BBWAA ballots. I promised to return to the topic for a broader look at pitchers from other periods, but before doing so took a little detour related to the representation rates and demographics of the players elected to the Hall. This larger exploration helps to illustrate the importance of looking at the situation in a new light.

Like JAWS, S-JAWS is a Hall of Fame fitness metric based upon Baseball Reference’s version of WAR, though those shouldn’t be the only factors under consideration in a Hall of Fame case, whether we’re discussing pitchers or position players. They’re nonetheless critical to my analysis, a useful first-cut mechanism to tell me, “Is this a candidate worthy of consideration for a spot on a ballot?” but as I’ve stressed through my annual series and elsewhere, other factors such as awards, postseason play, and historical importance are germane as well. Whether we’re using JAWS or S-JAWS — both of which you can see on the Starting Pitchers page at Baseball Reference — that doesn’t change. In fact, that page now defaults to sorting by S-JAWS, though you can see rankings by JAWS or any other category you choose, whether it’s WAR or innings pitched or ERA+ or some other stat.

Like JAWS, S-JAWS uses an average of a pitcher’s career and peak WAR (best seven seasons at large) for comparisons to the averages of all Hall of Fame pitchers. The idea behind S-JAWS is to reduce the skewing caused by the impact of 19th century and dead-ball era pitchers, some of whom topped 400, 500, or even 600 innings in a season on multiple occasions. The way I’ve chosen to do this is by prorating the peak-component credit for any heavy-workload season to a maximum of 250 innings. I chose 250 because it’s a level that the current and recent BBWAA candidates rarely reached, and only one active pitcher (Justin Verlander) has, albeit by a single inning a decade ago. Over the past 22 162-game seasons — in other words, every one since 1999, save for the pandemic-shortened 2020 campaign — only eight out of 44 league leaders topped 250 innings, with Hall of Famers Roy Halladay, Randy Johnson, and Mike Mussina accounting for five of those eight seasons. Only two of the past 32 league leaders topped 250 inning, Halladay in 2010 and Verlander the following year, and between them they were a grand total of five outs over the threshold. The various emphases on pitch counts, innings limits, and times through the order make it unlikely we’ll see such levels again, at least on a consistent basis, and while we can debate, lament, and discuss whether it’s worth trying to reverse that trend, that’s not my focus here. Given the current trends in the game regarding starting pitcher usage, five or 10 years from now, looking at candidates on a 200- or 225-inning basis might make more sense, but I think this is a reasonable place to start the adjustments (I’ll have a look at a 200-inning basis at some point). Read the rest of this entry »

Before the lockout froze the offseason, the Rangers were in the middle of an incredibly active winter. They signed Corey Seager and Marcus Semien to massive contracts, and added Jon Gray and Kole Calhoun as well. That was a good start to addressing the needs of a team that lost 102 games in 2021, but per Dan Szymborski’s mid-lockout ZiPS projections, those moves only got Texas to around 73 wins. If the Rangers have designs on competing for a playoff spot in 2022, they’ll need to continue adding to their roster once the owner’s lockout is lifted.

One of those potential additions could come via trade. Back in September, the Rangers were one of the many teams that checked in with the Oakland A’s about a potential deal involving Matt Olson. The Athletics seem likely to tear down their current roster at some point in the near future, possibly as soon as teams are able to trade with each other again. Just last week, Evan Grant of the Dallas Morning News wrote that the Rangers were “absolutely” planning on revisiting their earlier talks with Oakland.

Olson would be a massive addition to Texas’s roster, as he’s coming off a year in which he set career bests in strikeout rate, home runs, wRC+, WAR, and a number of other offensive categories. Of course, the Rangers already have an incumbent first baseman whom they traded for just a year ago. If it came down to it, though, Nathaniel Lowe shouldn’t be much of a barrier to adding Olson to their lineup; Olson is one of the premiere first basemen in the game and only has a year and change on Lowe age-wise. But the Rangers shouldn’t write off Lowe just yet either. He had his ups and downs during his first full season in the majors, but he showed some promise as a potential middle-of-the-order bat in 2021. Read the rest of this entry »

This time last year, I investigated where vertical approach angle (VAA) seems to matter most. The short answer: at the top of the strike zone for four-seam fastballs and at the bottom of the zone for sinkers and two-seam fastballs. This piece, which is adapted from a presentation I did as part of the 2022 PitcherList PitchCon, will provide much-needed additional context, like benchmarking and watermelon-colored heat-map-style graphics.

For the uninitiated — which could be many of you — VAA is the angle at which a pitch approaches home plate… vertically. Despite its usefulness, the concept has experienced slow uptake in the public sphere. I think that’s largely due to a lack of data, which, for nerds like me too entrenched in baseball Twitter, has shrouded the metric in mystery. Why are scouts and college baseball R&D departments valuing VAA so highly, why have I barely heard of it, and how can I find it?

To answer the last question: Statcast is granular enough that, fortunately, we can calculate VAA using physics. So, let’s calculate it! Thanks to Baseball Prospectus‘ Harry Pavlidis (who credits baseball’s renowned physicists), here are the equations: Read the rest of this entry »

“I have trouble sleeping,” is how the Chicago-based media producer who goes by Mr. King starts to explain his latest venture.

It’s a radio broadcast of a baseball game. It’s completely fictional. And it’s designed to put you to sleep. “I make dumb YouTube videos and now the world’s best fake baseball podcast,” Mr. King joked.

Northwoods Baseball Sleep Radio: Big Rapids Timbers vs. The Cadillac Cars

“I experimented with listening to podcasts and white noise, and I found I liked to fall asleep by listening to a west coast game that I didn’t really care about,” Mr. King continued. “But I would always get jarred by the commercials suddenly yelling at you about a Ford F-150 or something.” And thus, he struck upon an idea: “What if there was a baseball game you could listen to, and there was no yelling, commercials at the same audio level, and you could actually fall asleep to it?”

“It’s a terribly weird idea, and I just went for it,” he said.

That’s how Northwoods Baseball Sleep Radio was born. The domain of sleepbaseball.com was registered, and the first game was produced. As for using the name of an existing league, that was unintentional … maybe. “I did know that there was a real Northwoods League at one time, but then I forgot about it, and then realized it again when I went to register a domain,” Mr. King explained. “I’m hoping not to get sued, or maybe I am, as I can then own the real Northwoods League and that will be part of my empire.” Read the rest of this entry »

Back in December, I wrote about Cedric Mullins’ breakout 2021 season, the catalyst for which was a decision to stop switch-hitting and begin batting exclusively from the left side of the plate. By dropping his right-handed swing, Mullins, a natural lefty, could focus on honing one swing instead of struggling to maintain two separate swings.

Switch-hitting has always been a rare skill throughout baseball history, but the number of batters who can swing both ways has dwindled in recent years. From that previous piece:

In 2021, just 17 qualified batters (13.1%) were switch-hitters, right in line with the league-wide average over the last decade. Compare that to the decade between 1986 and ’95 (excluding the strike-shortened 1994 season), when more than one in five qualified batters (21.1%) hit from both sides, with a peak of 24.8% in ’89. With modern baseball strategy so heavily emphasizing the platoon advantage, it’s surprising to see so few switch-hitters these days. Giving up that advantage in every at-bat is a radical decision, and there’s barely any precedent for it.

The number of players who have dropped switch-hitting after making their major league debuts is tiny. J.T. Snow did it in 1999, halfway through his career. So did Orlando Merced in 1996. Shane Victorino flip-flopped between switch-hitting and batting right-handed after injuries forced him to give up left-handed batting at various points during his career. More recently, Tucker Barnhart gave up switch-hitting in 2019.

After seeing the success Mullins had after giving up swinging from the right side, the obvious follow-up question is whether we can identify any other switch-hitters who might benefit from focusing on swinging from one side or the other.

The extremely small number of players who have actually made the decision to stop switch-hitting at the major league level should tell us that this isn’t a silver bullet solution to a player with a wide platoon split. Anecdotally, more players stop switch-hitting in the minors because they have a lot more to gain if the adjustment pays off. For those players who have already made it to the majors but haven’t truly established themselves, like Mullins, it’s a risky decision. They’d be making the change against the best the sport has to offer, likely resulting in a significant adjustment period. Still, with teams focused on finding every miniscule advantage to wring out of their rosters, it’s a worthwhile question to pursue.
Read the rest of this entry »