AJ Smith-Shawver started on Monday, and it went rather well: 10 batters faced, 48 pitches, 32 strikes, 2 2/3 innings pitched, five strikeouts, one hit, one walk, no runs allowed. The Braves lost, but the damage came after Smith-Shawver left the game, and at any rate, spring training results have less of an impact on regular season success than what sign the GM was born under. Justin Toscano, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s beat writer, tweeted after the start that Smith-Shawver was “in a better place, physically and mentally, for whatever comes this season. You can see the improvement.”

That’s exciting news. The 21-year-old poked his head into the majors for the first time in mid-2023; he threw 25 1/3 regular-season innings with the big club, plus 2 2/3 more of mopup work in the NLDS. Still rookie-eligible, he made our Top 100 list as the top-rated prospect in Atlanta’s system.

But Plan A for the Braves doesn’t necessarily involve Smith-Shawver. Atlanta starts its rotation with Spencer Strider, one of the best pitchers in baseball. After that: Max Fried, Charlie Morton, Chris Sale, and Reynaldo López. Plus, they have quite a bit of prospect and Quad-A depth: Huascar Ynoa, Bryce Elder, Dylan Dodd. Ian Anderson (remember him?) is due back from Tommy John sometime later this year, and 2023 first-round pick Hurston Waldrep, with his unholy splitter, is being fast-tracked to the majors. Read the rest of this entry »

Tarik Skubal is slated to take the mound for the Detroit Tigers on Opening Day when the season begins three weeks from Thursday. Four years into his big league career, the 27-year-old southpaw is emerging as one of the top left-handed starters in baseball. After missing the first three months of last season recovering from flexor tendon surgery, he was one of the best pitchers in baseball upon making his season debut, on July 4. Skubal fashioned a 2.80 ERA, a 2.00 FIP, and a 32.9% strikeout rate — as well as a stingy 4.5% walk rate and a .199 BAA — in 15 starts comprising 80 1/3 innings. His 3.3 WAR from July through the end of the season led all pitchers in that span. And there is reason to believe that he is still getting better, as he adds fastball velocity — he’s hit 99 mph this spring, up from his average of 95.8 mph last season — and fine tunes his five-pitch arsenal.

Skubal sat down to talk pitching at the Tigers’ spring training facility in Lakeland, Florida last week.

———

David Laurila: Looking at your numbers, I saw that your ground ball rate (51.6% last year) keeps getting higher and higher, and your walk rate keeps getting lower and lower. How have you made those things happen?

Tarik Skubal: “I think it all kind of just stems from confidence and the complete arsenal. When you can throw five pitches over the plate, in the zone, and just go right after guys, you tend to get more uncomfortable at-bats. If you can throw different pitches in different counts, hitters have to be a little bit defensive and aren’t getting their A swings off as often. That’s kind of my approach, and I think it impacts the results I’m getting.”

Laurila: That makes sense, as you don’t throw a lot of sinkers… Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve had depth on my mind a lot recently. That’s because a lot of us here at FanGraphs have, and it’s turned into some pretty cool work that I previewed last week. That’s probably the last you’ll hear about that little project for a bit while we keep refining it and trying to figure out how to use the general concept in different ways. But there was one takeaway in the comments section that I found pretty amazing and I’m going to riff on it today because hey, it’s still early March and baseball news is in short supply.

Remove the top 10 players from 28 teams in baseball – all but the Rockies and Nationals – and look at every team’s winning percentage against neutral opposition. The Rockies are projected 29th out of 30 teams, ahead of only the White-Sox-Minus-10s. The Nationals, meanwhile, are 27th, ahead of just the Angels-Minus-10s and then those Rockies and the Pale-Hose-Minus-10s.

That just sounds wrong. Remove the Mets’ best 10 players, to pick a so-so divisional rival for one of our benighted franchises, and their best remaining player would be either Brett Baty or Luis Severino, both projected for 1.6 WAR. Again, that’s their best player in this hypothetical world. And we have them down as a .425 team. We think the Nats are at .408 at full strength! It’s truly hard to wrap your head around how that could be possible. Read the rest of this entry »

A couple of weeks ago, I spent too much time staring at the back of the Target Field pitcher’s mound. Like, way, way too much time. I watched hundreds of video clips. I scoured pictures from image services, social media, and satellites. It could have been boring. It probably should have been boring, but I was looking for the answer to a question that I found interesting, and that was enough. At a certain point, I realized I had another interesting question on a subject that should have been even more boring. I’d been staring at the mound for so long that I started wondering about the spiky little mat that pitchers use to scrape the mud out of their spikes. Where did it come from? How long has it been there? Why haven’t I ever actually seen a pitcher use one? How is it possible that I’ve been watching baseball my entire life and never once thought about this thing before? It might be the only object on a baseball field whose name I don’t know. I must have spent more time looking at that white piece of plastic or rubber or whatever-the-hell-it-is than I’ve spent looking at anyone I love, and yet for the life of me, until two weeks ago I don’t think I’d ever spent one second thinking about it. So I started thinking about it.

That spiky little mat is called a cleat cleaner. Because teams often auction off game-used cleat cleaners, you can find some pretty good pictures of them. The ones that get sold are usually from memorable games, like no-hitters, playoff games, or really any game where the cleat cleaner was touched by Shohei Ohtani:

Read the rest of this entry »

Daulton Varsho’s last two seasons were directionally different than his first two seasons.The left-handed-hitting outfielder put up a pedestrian 37.8% pull rate in 2020-2021, and in 2022-2023 that number climbed to a lofty 52.6%. Apprised of the marked jump by colleague Davy Andrews prior to my recent visit to Toronto Blue Jays camp, I asked Varsho if it was spurred by a purposeful change of approach. He claimed that it wasn’t.

“I think it’s just how teams are pitching me,” said Varsho, whose pull rate in the two-year span was the highest among qualified hitters. “You don’t want to force the ball to any certain field — it has to sort of naturally happen — and I’ve been getting pounded in. You also have to figure out the changeup away and righties throwing sliders in. You don’t really want to force those to left-center or left field, because they end up being fly outs.”

Davy had also informed me that Varsho’s pull-side results have been far better than his opposite-field results, which came as anything but news to the 27-year-old Marshfield, Wisconsin native. My mentioning it elicited a matter-of-fact response.

“That’s where success happens,” said Varsho. “It’s where my swing is the most successful, and where I can do the most damage.”

It’s no secret that catching pitches out front and driving them in the air goes a long way toward producing power numbers, and not only has Varsho gone yard 47 times over the past two campaigns, just one of the blasts was to the opposite field. My asking if he’s made a concerted effort to lift the ball led to the following exchange: Read the rest of this entry »

Among other things, we at FanGraphs are known for our projections, especially at this time of year. We like to think that’s because our projection systems are good! But it’s worth remembering that projections always include uncertainly. ZiPS, for example, reflects a range of projected outcomes based on a million simulations of the coming season, with the first percentile representing the worst projected performance and the 99th percentile, the best. The numbers you see on our player pages reflect the 50th percentile projection — the median projected outcome — for each player.

For me, the fun begins when the projections are live, because I use them as a starting point to begin my own analysis using data points that are not folded into the player projections, such as video and bat tracking information. I like using these tools because they allow me to see whether a player has a foundation in place that could help him exceed his median projection. For this piece, I want to focus on players’ potential ceilings, which I will define as their 90th percentile projection, so that we can stay within the realm of possibility. (Theoretically, a player could hit 80 home runs this season, which would surely be his peak performance, but that is so extremely unlikely to happen that it is not worth considering here.) From the model’s perspective, all players’ 90th percentile outcomes are equally likely; my analysis is more subjective. I will use additional information to reinforce confidence that a player can indeed reach his ceiling.

The goal here was to look at players who have a lot of uncertainty in their projections, due to a volatile profile, an unproven track record, or both. From there, I settled on a group of three inherently risky players who have specific traits that I think should lead to an immediate improvement. With that said, let’s get started:

I’ve presented Adolis García’s 2023 performance to provide a comparison to his 2024 projections. Going into last season, García’s 50th percentile OPS+ and WAR were 103 and 2.0, respectively, meaning that his actual production greatly exceeded his median projection. In response to this, ZiPS is more confident in García entering this season, even as his profile remains volatile.

Is it possible for him to get even more out of his bat this season? I think so. In terms of plate discipline and swing decisions, García made a significant stride forward in 2023. However, his projections expect his BB/K ratio to regress from his .37 mark last season and be closer to his 2022 level of .22. Using Robert Orr’s SEAGER metric, which calculates a combination of selectivity and strategic aggression, García scored a 19.4% last year. That was in the 88th percentile of hitters, an improvement from being slightly above average in 2022.

García slightly improved his Hittable Pitch Take%, while simultaneously increasing his Selectivity% by nearly five percentage points. Yes, that helped him draw more walks than was expected of him, but it also allowed him to crush 39 homers. García is following an intuitive path to plate discipline improvement. After posting bottom decile whiff and chase rates in 2021 and 2022, he significantly cut down on his chasing last year. Now that he has proven to possess a better understanding of the strike zone, the next step is to stop whiffing as much. His mechanics are efficient, his plate coverage is good, and he has already shown a knack for improvement. That’s a darn good recipe for a player looking to get the most out of his skills.

García’s case is a bit simpler than the two players we’ll discuss next. Let’s move onto another talented outfielder:

I’m a Riley Greene believer. My expectations for him last year were higher than where his performance fell, but he also had two unlikely injuries that could explain his underwhelming season. In May, he had a stress fracture in his fibula that caused him to miss just over a month. Then, after looking fantastic in his return, he tore his UCL in his non-throwing arm. It was a bizarre bit of luck for a player looking to prove himself as a cornerstone piece in Detroit. His projections for 2024 reflect a wide net of uncertainty in his offensive profile, but also a high ceiling because he boasts great hitting skills and is only entering his age-23 season.

Greene hits the snot out of the ball. His xwOBACON of .477 was in the top 4% of the league. His ability to manipulate his posture to get to different pitch heights allows him to have great plate coverage. His average 40.4-degree Vertical Bat Angle (VBA) – the angle of the barrel relative to the ground at impact – is among the steepest in the majors, and he combines it with a path that always works up and through the baseball. As a result, he has an ideal launch-angle distribution and consistently flush batted-ball spin. Here are a few videos of him covering pitches all over the strike zone:

Velocity up? Check. Slow and away? Check. Back foot breaker? Check. His swing is so versatile because of how he changes his torso tilt while still maintaining upward angles on his swings. He is capable of getting to just about anything, which is why he was so good against breaking balls on the season, with with a .366 xwOBA against them that ranked 18th among 260 hitters who saw at least 400 such pitches in 2023. His proficient barrel and body variabilities are the exact skills I’m looking for when betting on a player to hit his ceiling, especially if the hitter impacts the ball like Greene does. With health and better controlled aggression, Greene will put himself in a great position to hit his 90th percentile outcome. A 151 OPS+ would be a major step up from the 117 he posted last year, but at times, he has already flashed that level of dominance. The final piece of the puzzle is consistency.

Now, let’s evaluate an exciting young catcher looking to prove his 2023 season was no fluke:

Bo Naylor hit his tail off last year to the tune of a 124 wRC+. In a Guardians lineup that didn’t have much beyond José Ramírez and older brother Josh Naylor, Bo emerged as one of the team’s top offensive contributors from the moment he cemented himself as the primary catcher. His great performance, albeit in limited time, is reflected in his ceiling, while his floor is based on his lack of a track record in the majors.

It’s a good sign whenever a young catcher has such a solid 50th percentile projection, though in Naylor’s case, the expectation is that his power will drop off. That is reasonable when you consider his .232 ISO last year would’ve been third among catchers with at least 300 plate appearances, despite the fact that his 30.8% hard-hit rate would’ve ranked 235th among the 258 qualified hitters, according to Baseball Savant. On top of that, Naylor outpaced his expected statistics by quite a wide margin. His .347 wOBA was considerably higher than his .309 xwOBA and his .379 xSLG was far off from his .470 mark. But wait a minute — we know that there is sometimes more to uncover when we see discrepancies like this. Is Naylor one of those cases?

Of the 406 players last year who had at least 100 batted balls, Naylor ranked 18th in Pulled FB% (sourced from Orr’s leaderboards again). If Naylor is one of the better players in the game at pulling fly balls consistently, then he should be able to outperform his expected statistics again in 2024. Does he have the swing mechanics and path to keep up this pace? Naylor, a left-handed batter, is typically hitting with the platoon advantage, making it easier for him to create the Horizontal Bat Angles (HBA) required to pull these pitches consistently. Matchups with righty pitchers are ideal for lefty hitters with pulled fly ball approaches. Here are a few clips that show him executing that swing on different pitches:

Naylor is going to be challenged to hit pitches away from his body to the pull side, but if he can keep that front side locked like he did in these swings, he may be able to keep up his pull side success despite the lack of raw power. In these swings, he showed that he can turn on 99 mph heat, but also that he can stay disciplined enough to wait on an 88 mph changeup. Given what we know about his patience and plate discipline, Naylor is the type of player who should be able to match his swing decisions with his swing strengths. That’s an important skill that could help him build upon his impressive debut.

Earlier this week, I took a projection-driven two-part look at the trouble spots on National League and American League contenders. The exercise — a sibling of my annual pre-trade deadline Replacement Level Killers series — primarily highlighted clubs in the middle of the table, based on our Playoff Odds, with many of the best teams, such as the Braves and Dodgers, going completely unmentioned.

In that regard, the exercise worked as I had intended, focusing on the teams and spots where a marginal addition from outside the organization or even a modest breakout from within it could have a sizable impact on their chances of making the postseason. To be considered contenders, teams needed Playoff Odds of at least 25%, and roughly speaking, all but one of those mentioned fell in the range of 80-85 wins. Under the 12-team playoff format, that certainly counts as contention once you consider that two of last year’s NL Wild Card teams, the Diamondbacks and Marlins, qualified with just 84 wins, nosing out the 83-win Cubs and the 82-win Padres and Reds. At each position, I highlighted the two lowest-ranked teams from within that subset, so long as they projected to produce less than 2.0 WAR, after an adjustment: I applied a 20% reduction to counter the general tendency to overestimate playing time at this point in the season. In other words instead of having a total of 1,000 WAR projected across the 30 teams, and 57% of that (570 WAR) allocated to position players, our Depth Chart values currently add up to about 682 WAR, an inflation of about 20%.

Because the mid-table teams almost invariably had some glaring weakness, seven teams escaped scrutiny. The Braves (98.5% odds), Dodgers (94.6%), and Cardinals (53.5%) — three of the NL’s top four teams by those odds, each favored to win their respective divisions — were absent from the Senior Circuit roundup, while the Yankees (75.6%), Rays (62.5%), Orioles (50.6%) and Rangers (36.3%) missed out on the fun in the Junior Circuit piece. Only one of the top four NL teams showed up with trouble spots (the Phillies at 58.5%), but the AL distribution was more haphazard, in that the Astros (86.8%), Twins (64.9%), Mariners (58.6%), and Blue Jays (47.4%) each had at least one representative within my roundup.

In response to the feedback I received, I thought it would be worthwhile to do one more roundup in this format, this time limiting it to those otherwise unexamined teams and going only one layer deep at each position. I couldn’t quite call this “The Weakest Spots Among the Powerhouses” or “… Among the Top Contenders,” hence the title. Note that not every position had a team fall below the threshold, though I do mention the lowest-ranked ones in passing for those spots. It’s worth keeping in mind the tendency for even the game’s top prospects to have fairly tepid projections based upon limited minor league data and a higher risk of being farmed out if they start slowly; those players don’t always hit the ground running. For team totals, I’ve cited the adjusted WARs, but where I reference individual player projections I’ve stuck to the published figures.

Catcher

Rays (21st, 1.9 adjusted WAR)

My AL roundup contained only the Red Sox catchers, and while I’m not sure what happened since I composed the list to move the Rays from right at the 2.0 minimum to below it, here we are. Since landing on last summer’s Replacement Level Killers list, they’ve basically turned over their tandem, with René Pinto and Alex Jackson replacing Christian Bethancourt and Francisco Mejía. The 27-year-old Pinto did the bulk of the catching in the second half, hitting .252/.267/.456 (98 wRC+) in 105 PA, with an eye-watering 34-to-2 strikeout-to-walk ratio. It’s true that he hits the ball hard, but the Rays seem to like him more for his defense than his offense — or, more specifically, his framing, which was 1.7 runs above average by our framing metric and two above by that of Statcast. Meanwhile, the latter system rated him at seven runs below average in blocking and one below in caught stealing.

The 28-year-old Jackson didn’t play in the majors last year, and he owns a .141/.243/.227 line and 48.1% strikeout rate in 185 PA in the majors, mostly from 2021. Nonetheless, he tore up Triple-A (.284/.347/.556 with 16 homers in 248 PA) with the Brewers and Rays’ affiliates before being sidelined by a shoulder injury. Defensively, he’s been a bit below average in framing but is otherwise average-ish. The 28-year-old Mejía, back in the organization on a minor league deal after a brief odyssey with the Angels, probably has his work cut out to regain a share of his old job. He hit just .227/.258/.400 (80 wRC+) last year and hasn’t come close to fulfilling the promise he showed at the plate in the minors.

First Base

Yankees (17th, 1.4 WAR)

Anthony Rizzo got off to a hot start in 2023, hitting for a 146 wRC+ through May 28, when he collided with Fernando Tatis Jr. and missed his next three games due to what the Yankees called a neck injury. Upon returning, he hit for just a 43 wRC+ over the next two months before the team shut him down with post-concussion symptoms; he didn’t play again, and finished at .244/.328/.378 (100 wRC+). The 34-year-old Rizzo is said to be healthy now, but he projects for just a .238/.332/.426 line, a 111 wRC+ — right at the major league average for first basemen last year — and 1.3 WAR, which won’t be a huge help to the Yankees lineup. The most likely backup is DJ LeMahieu, who’s slated to be the starting third baseman and who’s coming off his second 101 wRC+ in three years, though he did post a 129 wRC+ after the All-Star break compared to a 77 before, when he was still dealing with the effects of a right big toe injury. Oswaldo Cabrera, a switch-hitting utilityman who was very good in a late-2022 stint and terrible last year, is another alternative for first.

Second Base

Oddly enough — or perhaps fittingly, as we are talking about good clubs — none of these teams has a second base situation that falls below the threshold. Orioles second basemen project to rank 14th in the majors with an adjusted 2.4 WAR, the lowest mark from among this group, but that’s with 20-year-old Jackson Holliday, the no. 1 prospect on our Top 100 list, 25-year-old Jordan Westburg, and 29-year-old Ramón Urías projected to account for most of the playing time, with all projecting to be average or better — which particularly for Holliday would be no small achievement, even with his pedigree. Note that this is Baltimore’s only appearance within this exercise, even though the team has a lower projected value at the first base and DH slots than it does at second base; the O’s just don’t stand out relative to their competition’s weaknesses.

Shortstop

Braves (24th, 1.6 WAR)

The Braves project to be the majors’ top team, but they do have their weaknesses, and this is one. After letting Dansby Swanson depart as a free agent, they turned shortstop duties over to Orlando Arcia, who had spent five and a half seasons with diminishing returns in Milwaukee, plus another season and a half as a utilityman for Atlanta, playing a grand total of 24 innings at shortstop. The team nonetheless signed him to a three-year, $7.3 million extension — practically peanuts — and he handled the position reasonably well, hitting .264/.321/.420 (99 wRC+) with a career-high 2.3 WAR despite a mixed bag of defensive metrics. Given that he netted just 0.2 WAR from 2018–22, the projection systems are understandably skeptical he can sustain such production; if he can’t, who knows what kind of magic pixie dust the Braves can sprinkle on backups Luis Guillorme and David Fletcher to try and turn them into league-average regulars.

Third Base

Here’s another spot where none of these teams falls below the threshold, with the Dodgers (15th at 2.1 WAR) the lowest ranked. Neither Max Muncy’s fielding at third base nor his low batting averages are pretty, but he’s a disciplined hitter who can absolutely crush the ball and justify his spot in the lineup; last year, he matched his career high of 36 homers while netting 2.9 WAR. Chris Taylor and the freshly re-signed Enrique Hernández are around for those times when Muncy’s banged up or the team could use more defensive support.

Left Field

Dodgers (21st, 1.4 WAR)

This is the NL West juggernaut’s weakest spot, even after taking steps to address it. Newcomer Teoscar Hernández, who joined the fold on a one-year, $23.5 million deal, hits the ball very hard… when he makes contact. In 2023 he posted an average exit velocity of 91.3 mph (80th percentile), a 13.8% barrel rate (88th percentile), and a 49.4% hard-hit rate (90th percentile). The problem was that he struck out 31.1% of the time opposite a 5.6% walk rate, so he hit an uninspiring .258/.305/.435 (105 wRC+). To be fair, he did say he had trouble seeing the ball at the Mariners’ T-Mobile Park, where he slugged just .380, so it’s hardly out of the question that a change of scenery could drive a rebound for the 31-year-old slugger. The aforementioned Taylor and Enrique Hernández will see time here as well, but both are a few years removed from their best work. Taylor rebounded from a bad season and a slow first half to hit .237/.326/.420 (104 wRC+) but struck out 32.6% of the time himself, while Hernández perked up after returning to Los Angeles, posting a 59 wRC+ with the Red Sox and a 96 wRC+ with the Dodgers.

Center Field

One more where everybody is above the threshold, with the Rays (19th at 2.1 adjusted WAR) the lowest ranked among those here, based primarily on the projections’ skepticism that Jose Siri can repeat last year’s extreme performance. (See Davy Andrews’ piece on Tromps Per Womp.)

Right Field

Cardinals (14th, 1.8 WAR)

Given his plus-plus raw power, few people doubted Jordan Walker’s offensive ability, hence his no. 12 ranking on last year’s Top 100 Prospects list. At age 21, with no Triple-A experience, he made the Cardinals out of spring training and immediately reeled off a 12-game hitting streak. But when the league quickly adjusted, he struggled briefly and was sent to Memphis to work on his approach, particularly so he could elevate the ball with greater consistency. Even with a 46.9% groundball rate, he finished at a respectable .276/.342/.445 (116 wRC+), but his defense was another matter. Blocked by Nolan Arenado at third base, he moved to the outfield and was absolutely brutal according to the metrics (-16 DRS, -12 RAA, -11.8 UZR), and the visuals weren’t much better, even with the occasional impressive play. Thus he netted just 0.2 WAR. He does project to improve to 1.6 WAR, with Dylan Carlson getting time in right field as well — presumably when the Cardinals mercifully slot Walker at DH — and I’d bet that Walker far outhits the 116 wRC+ for which he’s projected.

Designated Hitter

Rangers (13th, 1.2 WAR)

With all but the Dodgers and Yankees projected to produce less than 2.0 WAR out of the DH spot (that’s after adjustment), this category is shooting fish in a barrel, and with the Cardinals and Rangers virtually tied, I’m focusing on the defending champions. This is hardly a bad situation, not only because Texas ranks among the upper half of the 30 teams, but also because about half the playing time projects to go to 22-year-old Wyatt Langford, who was chosen fourth in last year’s draft and rocketed through four levels to reach Triple-A, hitting .360/.480/.677 (190 wRC+) with 10 homers in 200 PA along the way. He just placed second only to Holliday on our Top 100 list as “perhaps the most complete hitter in the minors.” The problem is that he’s a 30-grade defender, with the speed for center field but a fringe-average arm and a poor feel for outfield play in general, at least at this stage; meanwhile, the outfield of Evan Carter, Leody Taveras, and Adolis García features strong defenders at all three spots. Langford could make the roster out of spring training, but it’s not a guarantee. With the possible exception of Corey Seager, who’s working his way back from January hernia surgery, no other Ranger projects to have much impact at this spot, hence the middling ranking.

Even with an extra day of February, we’re entering the month of March with several key free agents un-signed. Our no. 5, no. 6, and no. 7-ranked free agents — Blake Snell, Jordan Montgomery, and Matt Chapman — are all headed for a gap year. So are various other useful veterans, like Brandon Belt, J.D. Martinez, and Michael Lorenzen.

It’s not ideal. The teams want to have their rosters set, the players don’t want to miss camp if they can avoid it. It’s not great from a content creation/publicity perspective for either the league or the media. Myself included; when we called dibs on writing up the various big free agent signings last fall, I picked Snell and Monty, and I’ve been jumping out of my skin at every Slack notification I’ve gotten since. I haven’t slept in four months!

And the bigwigs at MLB are getting tetchy about it. Two weeks ago, commissioner Rob Manfred told reporters that the league had proposed a free agent signing period to the union in the last round of CBA talks, with the goal of creating “two weeks of flurried activity” that would dominate SportsCenter and settle everyone’s offseason quickly. Manfred’s argument is that concentrating the action would grab baseball much-needed publicity. Publicity leads to attention, and attention to money. Everyone wins. Yesterday, ESPN’s Alden Gonzalez released a reported feature on the idea, including the blindingly obvious reasons why the union left Manfred on read.

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a trial balloon! Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, I laid out a new method of quantifying depth that we’re looking into here at FanGraphs. It’s based on the idea that while our depth charts are a point estimate of how much each player will play, the real-life way things work is different. To mimic reality more closely, we’re experimenting with removing players from the depth charts algorithmically and rebuilding teams on the fly to see how they look without their best players. Yesterday’s article covers our methodology in great detail.

There’s one thing that I wanted to add to that article but couldn’t find the space for: more tables. There was one big giant table in there that showed each team’s winning percentage as we removed more and more players from their squad. But that’s just not a great way to look at anything – 300 numbers in a giant table is more information than our brains can easily process. I don’t have a lot of new information today, but I thought I’d slice that data up into more bite-sized chunks so you can look at it without your eyes glazing over. One quick note: All the tables in this article are sortable, so you can order them by whichever category you so desire. Read the rest of this entry »

In his recent piece about umpire accuracy, Davy Andrews noted that plate umpires correctly called 99.26% of heart zone pitches in 2023. When I first read that number, I didn’t think missed calls in the heart zone warranted any closer investigation. For most of us, ninety-nine point anything is as good as 100; you don’t spend much time worrying about the 0.01% of germs Purell can’t kill. Then again, if you were to consider the sheer amount of bacteria on your hands at any given moment, you might opt for a second squirt of sanitizer. A tiny percentage of a tremendous number is still going to be a pretty big number. The same is true for missed calls in the heart zone. There aren’t quite as many pitches in an MLB season as there are germs on your phone screen, but there are enough that a few tenths of percent of heart zone offerings still represents a pretty hefty figure. In 2023, plate umpires watched 381 pitches sail over the heart of the plate without signaling a strike. When you frame it that way (pun absolutely intended), it actually sounds pretty bad.

I wasn’t nearly as surprised to learn that plate umpires missed 428 calls in the chase zone last season. Offerings in the chase zone are designed to look hittable out of the pitcher’s hand. An especially talented catcher can make them look hittable as they reach his glove, too. Meanwhile, a batter might like to earn a few extra balls inside the zone, but he doesn’t have the same influence over calls as do his opponents. Besides, if a hitter recognizes that a pitch is coming for the heart zone, he’s not going to wriggle and contort his body in hopes of inducing a missed call – he’s going to swing. To that end, batters are much more likely to swing in the heart zone than the chase zone, which means that on a rate basis, umpires miss significantly more calls over the heart of the plate because there are fewer total pitches there that need to be called. While 381 and 428 are similar figures, batters took 2.4 times as many pitches in the chase zone as in the heart zone. Apparently, it’s harder than I thought to call strikes what they are. Read the rest of this entry »