Archive for Daily Graphings

The first inning of a debut is a sweaty time. Just look at Henry Owens as he stepped to the mound for the first time in the big leagues this past week. Your heart strains for him — not only in sympathy, but also because it’s just so obvious that his blood is racing through his veins and his vision is blurry. You can almost feel it just watching him.

You can see plainly that that the major league debut was full of butterflies for Owens. And so it was for Luis Severino. Just in a different way than most.

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Every so often, someone asks where I got my start. My first online conversations about baseball took place on the ESPN message boards, and I’m a Mariners fan, and that was back when the Mariners mattered. Around the turn of the millennium, the Mariners were entering the best era in franchise history. Between 2000 – 2003, the Mariners racked up more regular-season wins than anybody else. They ultimately crashed, and crashed hard, but four strong teams were built. Four competitive teams were built. It was terrific, except for the thing that was missing. In 2003, the Marlins of all teams won that thing. There was much debate over what a fan really wants. Say what you will about the Marlins, but they’ve brought home a couple trophies.

Here, I ask you what some might consider a fundamental question. There’s a poll at the end of this, and I want you to try to answer honestly, as a fan who’s presumably something more than just a casual observer. I’m going to go ahead and update my Mariners and Marlins examples. There are current(ish) teams who can fill the same roles. We’re all more familiar with what’s current!

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Why yes: performance. If you want to argue that Carlos Correa is already baseball’s best shortstop, you can simply point to his performance, and to the performances of the other shortstops. What could be easier? Correa, of course, hasn’t played a full 2015 season, but he has batted a couple hundred times, so let’s look at the numbers and keep them all above a common, 600-plate-appearance denominator. Do that and Correa comes out as a top-10 position player. The closest shortstop, by WAR, is Brandon Crawford, who trails by just about two wins. Whatever you think of the error bars in WAR, two wins per 600 plate appearances is a big margin. The argument, in other words, has decent support.

Why no: projections. Statistics reflect talent, but they can also mislead. It can be better to refer to the projections, as they can be a decent proxy for current estimated true talent. Projections don’t suffer from recency bias. They don’t suffer from hype, and they don’t suffer from any sort of overreactions. Looking at the shortstop depth-chart projections, and putting WAR over 600 plate appearances, Correa is basically tied with Crawford and Jhonny Peralta, a win behind Troy Tulowitzki. Some months ago, Tulowitzki was the unquestioned best shortstop in baseball. How much should we really reconsider, after part of one season?

If you choose to believe Tulowitzki remains the best shortstop, that’s fine. It’s totally justifiable, and Correa still doesn’t have an extended track record. Could have a slump just ahead of him. Could be a bad one. But as absurd as it might sound, Correa really does have an argument of his own. He’s been that good to date, and if you don’t believe he’s better than Tulowitzki yet, it seems only a matter of time until the trend lines intersect. One of them turns 31 in two months. One of them can finally buy his own drink in a month and a half.

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Whenever a pitcher rises to a month’s worth of greatness, there’s always luck involved. And so, Chris Tillman — like most of the other nine in his class — spent July with a batting average on balls in play closer to .250 than .300. But when Tillman spent July dealing, he did so in a way he hadn’t done before in the big leagues. Underneath that luck were some adjustments that might be a big deal for the pitcher going forward.

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With two-thirds of the 2015 season in the books, an innumerable number of indelible on-field moments have been permanently imprinted upon us. An almost unprecedented influx of young talent has taken hold, a second straight trading deadline swap meet has taken place, and the races for playoff berths are heating up. Off the field, however, 2015 will be remembered, at least in part by those who read these pages, as the year of the arrival of StatCast. The utilization of granular data has been infiltrating the mainstream for a few years now with the milestone arrivals of Hit Tracker and Pitch and Hit f(x), but StatCast takes it to another level, with public availability of batted-ball information, implementation of fielder-specific data on national telecasts, and from the clubs’ perspective, the introduction of detailed spin data on batted balls.

All of that said, there are some clear limitations to the usefulness of the publicly available Year I data. Before taking that information as gospel, it is vital that users place such information into the proper context, and be aware of some primary areas of concern. Read the rest of this entry »

With the announcement of its partnership with the National Hockey League, and rumors that a potential spinoff of it’s streaming technology arm might be worth $5 billion, Major League Baseball Advanced Media (MLBAM) has moved past being the The Biggest Media Company You’ve Never Heard Of. The base of the deal with the NHL, though relatively small compared to many television rights deals at $100 million per year for six years for control of the NHL’s digital media rights, comes after a whirlwind of activity as well as speculation about MLBAM’s present and its future. MLBAM’s increasing diverse clientele and the partnership with NHL signifies MLB’s digital media arm is prepared to be a player outside of baseball. The move represents part of the slowly changing landscape of consumer consumption, although the potential spin-off could have ramifications the new companies devotion to MLB as well on the next collective bargaining agreement as owners attempt to separate baseball revenue from potentially significant non-baseball revenue.

Close to 15 years ago, MLB owners agreed to invest $1 million each per year for four years to create a digital arm to stay on top of technological advances as the internet. In the years since, the business has created incredible growth for MLB. From mlb.com, online ticketing, MLB AtBat mobile app, and mlb.tv to Pitch f/x and the recent unveiling of Statcast, MLBAM has changed the way fans watch, interact, and appreciate the game. Read the rest of this entry »

Another day another tire fire. The Red Sox were beat by the Yankees 13-3 last night, dropping their record to 47-60. The team is in last place in the AL East again and looks destined for their third last place finish in four seasons, though there is a World Series win sandwiched in there (is a World Series a sandwich?) so it’s not like things are really that bad. Still, for a team of Boston’s means and expectations, a run of futility like this usually presages changes at the top, and low and behold, that’s exactly what has happened.

Two days ago it leaked out that Larry Lucchino, in the post of team president and CEO since 2002, would step down at the end of the season. He’ll be replaced by Sam Kennedy. Not exactly a bloodletting, but it should be noted that Kennedy will take only the CEO title (officially Executive Vice President/Chief Operating Officer) and focus solely on the business side of things. This leaves a hole in Boston’s baseball operations department. The Red Sox could let things sit as they are, with General Manager Ben Cherington in charge and right-hand-men Allard Baird, Brian O’Halloran, and Mike Hazen directly below him in the organizational structure, but there’s that impending three last place finishes in four seasons thing, so that seems unlikely. And when you consider the smoke from the media around a new addition to baseball operations combined with the removal of Lucchino, who is supposedly stepping down due to age but who rumors persist is poised to join another team rather than retire, then you’re entering the realm of ‘especially likely’.

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All right, here’s the deal. At the start of the season, everybody cares about schedule strength, but they care only a little bit. At this point in the season, far fewer people care about schedule strength, but they tend to care much much more, since the games are higher leverage than ever for those still in the race. So if you’re someone who cares about schedule strength, boy, do I have the post for you. At least, I have a post for you.

Two graphs follow, one for the American League, and one for the National League. This was actually really easy to put together. If you click on “Standings” above, you end up at this page, and that one has team projections on it. If you go to the Playoff Odds page, though, you see similar but different team projections. That second set adjusts for schedule, so to find a measure of schedule strength, one need only compare the projections on the two pages. It’s so easy you could do it yourself! You can do more than you think yourself.

There’s a key difference between this and what you might read elsewhere about schedule strength. People typically look at the number of games against, say, .500+ opponents. Or they’ll evaluate schedules based on team records so far. This is 100% about projections, so if there are projections you disagree with, that’ll have an effect. So this is kind of a FanGraphs measure, but then this is FanGraphs, so take it with however much salt you like. On the graphs, a positive number means an easier schedule. The bar shows the number of extra wins once you schedule-adjust. Of course, negative means the opposite. We’ll start with the American League, because here, the American League looks boring.

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Madison Bumgarner starts for the Giants today, in Atlanta. That’s good for them, for two reasons. One, it means the Giants get to have Bumgarner pitch. Two, it means the Giants get to have Bumgarner hit. Bumgarner regularly dazzles in batting practice, and that isn’t where his ability is confined — in his most recent start in an NL ballpark, he went deep. Bumgarner was outspoken in his disagreement with Max Scherzer earlier in the year, when Scherzer lobbied for the NL to adopt the designated hitter. Bumgarner, see, takes pride in his slugging, and he wouldn’t want to lose that advantage.

Not that Bumgarner was always much at the plate. As recently as 2013, he was a mess, like pretty much every other pitcher. But then he devoted more attention to the offensive side of things, and his successes have been numerous and remarkable. In honor of Bumgarner’s hitting, then, I’ve put together this poll-post, comparing Bumgarner and Josh Hamilton. Hamilton has obviously been a disappointment since signing his nine-figure contract, but he remains a threat, batting fifth or sixth in a Rangers lineup with a lot of name value. Below, there will be six polls, for six statistics. I’ll show you the high value, and ask you to pick which guy is responsible. Answers are revealed at the end. Good luck!

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On July 24, in what amounted to my FanGraphs debut, I wrote in so many words that Matt Harrison is – and I quote – “back.” Well, he’s back, all right – back on the disabled list, not only with stiffness in the surgically repaired back that kept him sidelined for the better – or, really, worse – part of two years but also with a diagnosis of hypothyroidism.

As I wrote in so many words: mercy.
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