This is Kiri’s first piece as a FanGraphs contributor. She lives in the Pacific Northwest while contributing part-time to FanGraphs and working full-time as a data scientist. She spent five years working as an analyst for multiple MLB organizations.
By this point, you’ve undoubtedly consumed considerable content regarding the rule changes arriving in the majors for the upcoming season. You know all about the pitch clock dictating when hitters must ready themselves in the box and when pitchers must start their deliveries, as well as the wrinkle this introduces to pickoff attempts. You’ve also heard about the bigger bases and the limits on defensive shifting. Analysts have projected which players stand to be impacted most by the changes, while players who feel the changes make their jobs more difficult have voiced their concerns, and early spring training action has showcased the growing pains of adoption. With much of the existing commentary zooming in on the micro effects for particular players and game situations, let’s take some time to zoom out and ponder the macro effect on the game as a whole. More specifically, let’s ruminate on what makes a game or sport objectively appealing and how the rules — and subsequent changes to them — influence the appeal of a game.
At the most basic level, games are defined by rules dictating play. For those of us who struggle with authority, rules often feel restrictive. It’s no wonder, since rules come across as real haters, with all their “Don’t do this,” and “Don’t do that,” and “You can do this, but no, no, not like that.” That said, we needn’t have such an adversarial relationship with rules. In his book exploring the game of basketball, Nick Greene notes, “Games are peculiar. They are the only pursuit in which rules are used to facilitate fun.” To better understand the dynamic between rules and fun, Greene interviews a game design professor, Eric Zimmerman, who explains, “One of the paradoxes of game design is that the creativity of play is made possible by play’s opposite, which are rules. Rules are in essence constraints, but games don’t feel that way. […] When the rules are activated, what follows is fluid, unpredictable magic.” The rules of any game are finite, but the universe is infinite, implying that infinitely many possibilities exist in the space not covered by the defined rules. The fun in any game lies in the creativity used to explore the infinite space outside the boundaries set forth by the rules. Read the rest of this entry »
Every time a young star signs a contract extension, we all breathlessly mention the total guarantee. Did you hear Corbin Carroll is getting one hundred and ten million dollars? You could buy a pretty nice house with that, or several nice houses, or live comfortably for the rest of your life and set your kids up to succeed in the bargain. It’s natural to focus on something like that. It is, after all, the main part of the deal.
In almost every one of these extensions, there’s an additional feature: one or more years of team options tacked on to the end of the contract. Our collective analytical view of those tends to be more or less a shrug. “Oh, yeah, and two team options, so that’s nice,” we say, or “well, that makes sense.” I wouldn’t call our evaluations of these options particularly nuanced.
I don’t think that’s going to change on the whole, but the Carroll extension spurred me to at least delve a little deeper into the dollars and cents side of those team options. I’ve already done some work on opt outs from the player perspective, and conveniently enough, I can lift a lot of the mathematical methods from that treatment and use them to evaluate things from the team side. Read the rest of this entry »
MIAMI – You could hear the airhorns blocks away from LoanDepot Park, and the music, too: salsa, bachata, reggaeton, merengue — all blasting at artillery strike volume, echoing down the nearby residential streets lined with two-story pastel-colored houses and under the soft gray skies of a rainy Wednesday in south Florida. Small throngs of fans — women with their hair colored electric blue and cherry red, men with platinum blond dye jobs to mimic the stars of Team Rubio — became bigger clusters, all pooling around the stadium, taking over adjacent parking lots for impromptu tailgates. Everyone’s back bore the name of an icon of Caribbean baseball: CLEMENTE, GUERRERO, MARTINEZ, MACHADO, BÁEZ, SOTO, LINDOR. Tens of thousands of fans, some of whom had paid up to $400 per ticket on the secondary market just to get in the door, were here for the main event of Pool D in this World Baseball Classic: the win-or-go-home group stage finale between the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico.
A clarification, first: It’s not accurate to call this event the World Baseball Classic — not here, at least, in Miami, where Latin American teams made up 80% of the pool’s members. (Team Israel probably picked up plenty of excellent Spanish slang in its week-long stay.) No, this was el Mundial, because all week, this hasn’t been a baseball tournament; it’s been a beisbol tournament. Every day featured a good-sized chunk of this city’s large Dominican and Puerto Rican populations setting up shop at the park and spending close to a dozen hours partying and dancing and playing panderetas and güiros and tamboras and those ubiquitous horns. Throughout the week, the west plaza of LoanDepot Park has functioned as a fanfest space, complete with a DJ on a giant stage and access to a team store stocked full of PR and DR shirts and a beer vendor seemingly every 10 feet. Long before each game every day and well past the final out each night, this is where Puerto Rican, Dominican, and Venezuelan fans (and a handful of Nicaraguans, supporting their country that had qualified for the WBC for the first time) met, laughed, crushed 20-ounce Heineken and Stella Artois cans, and celebrated together. This was their tournament, and Wednesday night’s heavyweight prize fight between Pool D’s superpowers was as close as they could get to their own Super Bowl. Read the rest of this entry »
Over the weekend, I participated in a panel at the SABR Analytics Conference in Phoenix. It was a ton of fun, and I enjoyed getting a chance to nerd out about baseball with a bunch of like-minded people. The awards show wasn’t bad, either. I look forward to Michael Baumann and I making subtle references to it the rest of the year (or maybe just me; Baumann is less arrogant than I am).
The topic of my panel, where I was joined by Yahoo Sports’ Hannah Keyser and moderator Vince Gennaro, was players we love for the 2023 season. I love Shohei Ohtani and Mike Trout most for the 2023 season, but more specifically, it was about players we love who aren’t widely regarded as superstars. I came prepared; I picked two hitters and two pitchers who fit the bill.
A panel isn’t the same as a presentation, and our discussion ranged widely around these and other players (Hannah loves Wander Franco and Hunter Greene, Vince loves Dylan Cease), but I thought I’d lay out my research here as well. If you’re a frequent reader, you probably already know how much I like these guys, but it never hurts to reiterate a point. Read the rest of this entry »
Trea Turner has transformed himself into one of the best hitters in baseball. Lacking projectable power when he was drafted 13th overall in 2014 — Kiley McDaniel cited his upside as 10-12 home runs with a .420 SLG the following winter — Turner proceeded to become far more than the slash-and-burn type that many envisioned. His past three seasons have been particularly impressive. Playing with the Washington Nationals and the Los Angeles Dodgers, he posted a sparkling .316/.364/.514 line with a 139 wRC+. Moreover, his right-handed stroke has produced 87 home runs over the last four non-COVID campaigns.
Turner — now with the Philadelphia Phillies after being signed to an 11-year, $300 million contract in December, and currently playing for Team USA in the World Baseball Classic — talked hitting prior to a recent spring training game.
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David Laurila: Let’s start with one of my favorite icebreaker questions: Do you view hitting as more of an art or more of a science?
Trea Turner: “I think it’s more of an art, but we’re trying to use science to quantify it. Sometimes guys have good swings, but then you go into a game and you can’t necessarily hit. The game is more of an art than a swing.” Read the rest of this entry »
The Diamondbacks left a huge hole in their outfield when they traded Daulton Varsho to Toronto a few days before Christmas. He was not only Arizona’s leader in position player WAR but also the top defensive outfielder in baseball in 2022, according to UZR and outs above average. He brought back a significant haul— an elite young catcher in Gabriel Moreno and a potent corner bat in Lourdes Gurriel Jr. — but left a significant hole to fill in the outfield. Will Diamondbacks pitchers suddenly suffer endless bloop hits and doubles to the gap in his absence?
“There have been times when I’ve been in center, Alek’s been in left, Corbin’s been in right, kind of mismatching all over,” says Jake McCarthy. “When there’s a ball in the gap or over someone’s head, you never assume it’s a hit.”
There’s plenty of competition for playing time among Diamondbacks outfielders this spring. But in an ideal world, Arizona will line up with McCarthy and the two teammates he mentioned — Corbin Carroll and Alek Thomas — to form the fastest outfield in baseball. Read the rest of this entry »
Monday night was special for Team Rubio. By falling to Venezuela on Sunday night, Puerto Rico had put themselves in a position with little room for error and faced a win-or go home scenario against the Dominican Republic on Wednesday night. Taking on Israel in its third game of Pool D play and with limited pitching depth, the team needed a nails performance from starter José De León. He didn’t disappoint, delivering for his people and providing a historic WBC performance. In a mercy rule win, Puerto Rico combined for eight perfect innings led by De León, who went 17 up and 17 down with 10 strikeouts.
After a top of the first inning that was over before you could blink, Team Rubio immediately got it going offensively. As Yonder Alonso said on the broadcast, “early and often” was the goal for this lineup after Puerto Rico almost rallied back from a big deficit against Venezuela the night before, bringing the tying run to the plate in the eighth inning after trailing 7–0 in the second. To carry that energy over, the top of Puerto Rico’s lineup had to set the table. Francisco Lindor and Enrique Hernández both made quick outs, but then chaos ensued, starting with a four-pitch walk by MJ Melendez. Emmanuel Rivera then scorched a ground ball at 106.1 mph into left field, setting up a run scoring opportunity for Javier Báez.
Báez had struggled mightily in the previous two games. He committed the error on Jose Altuve’s game-opening groundball, kick-starting Venezuela’s three-run first inning, and had spent his at-bats chasing breaking ball after breaking ball way out of the zone. Hitting fifth in the lineup, Báez was going to be relied on as a run creator. After taking a slider outside to start the at-bat, he did just that, sending a blistering line drive down the left field line that just landed fair to drive in Melendez and Rivera and give Puerto Rico a 2–0 lead:
Right after that double, we got a taste of why Báez is called El Mago — The Magician — when he swiped third base on a 1–0 count with Eddie Rosario at the plate. Nobody makes an art form out of the swim slide better than Báez. Sit back and appreciate the near impossible:
Nobody knows how he does it, but that’s why Báez has his nickname. Last WBC, we got him applying a sensational no-look tag on the heels of Yadier Molina’s perfect throw to nail Nelson Cruz attempting to swipe second; this year, we have another beautiful swim slide. Rosario didn’t let this it to waste, knocking in Báez with a 405-foot double off the base of the center field wall to give Puerto Rico a 3–0 lead.
That was more than enough for De León. In the top of the second, he induced four swinging strikes on his sinker, including three against Alex Dickerson. Israel’s hitters couldn’t handle the pitch all night: de León threw 44 sinkers in total and earned 15 called strikes and whiffs on it. As he churned through the lineup the first time through the order, he leaned on that sinker to do everything for him, both setting up and finishing off hitters with it. After the game, he credited Martín Maldonado’s pitch calling, noting that he didn’t shake off the veteran once the entire game. Maldonado had a plan to attack hitters with the sinker the first time through the order if De León could keep executing the pitch. And as the game progressed, he switched to more and more changeups and sliders to keep Israel’s hitters on their toes. All night, De León executed whatever Maldonado threw down for him.
In the bottom of the second, Hernández added to the onslaught with a double to score an additional two runs with no outs. Two batters later, Rivera punched a triple into the right-center gap to make it 6–0. The Diamondbacks third baseman has been solid so far as Puerto Rico’s unexpected cleanup hitter and at the hot corner. In the weeks leading up to the tournament, the expectation was that Jose Miranda and Carlos Correa would fill out Puerto Rico’s infield alongside Lindor and Báez. But with both Twins hitters bowing out of the tournament, Rivera was inserted into the starting lineup with the task of following the team’s three best hitters. So far, he has four hits in 11 at-bats with four RBI and two runs scored to go along with clean defense. Given a challenging opportunity, he has made the very most of it.
De León’s first big challenge came in the fourth, with the top of Israel’s lineup coming up a second time, led by their best hitters in Joc Pederson, Zack Gelof, and Matt Mervis. But he needed only eight pitches to breeze by them. Against Pederson, he switched up his sequencing and threw three consecutive changeups, with the third yielding a routine groundball to Neftali Soto at first. De León then caught Gelof trying to ambush a sinker and fooled him with the only cutter he threw all night. Looking to crush a high pitch, Mervis swung at two sinkers in the top third of the strike zone, then took a third that ran away and off the plate. That set him up perfectly for the changeup, and while Maldonado helped de León with a perfect frame of a pitch that may have been slightly off the low and outside corner, either way, it was perfectly executed and earned De León a called third strike from home plate umpire Ron Kulpa.
The top of fifth was just as easy as the previous inning, with De León needing just seven pitches to complete it. His offense didn’t go down as easily: Baéz led off the bottom half of the frame with a double; Joey Wagman entered the game in relief and intentionally walked Vimael Machín to get the favorable matchup against Maldonado, but he couldn’t find the zone with his curveball and ended up walking the veteran catcher as well, setting up a bases-loaded opportunity for Lindor. The Mets shortstop fell behind 0–2 but got a hanging curveball in his sweet spot and smacked it off the wall in right-center field, just missing a grand slam:
Lindor’s triple cleared the bases, and as he cruised into third base, he rubbed his luxurious blonde hair while his teammates and fans basked in the moment.
Heading into the sixth up 9–0, de León was still under the WBC’s first-round maximum of 65 pitches, allowing him to return to the mound and continue his perfect game bid. He struck out both Spencer Horwitz and Ty Kelly looking before exiting, one pitch shy of the limit and the owner of the longest perfect game bid by a starter in WBC history. He was serenaded by a roaring Puerto Rican crowd as he exited the game:
As a former top prospect who has battled countless injuries, De León is still looking to find his place in MLB; maybe this outing will help him make the Twins, with whom he signed a minor league deal back in December and joined earlier this spring as a non-roster invitee. But even it doesn’t, he will have a life-long memory that not only means the world to him, but also to a tiny little island whose people eat, sleep, and breathe baseball. His quote after the game says it all:
“I’ve been through so many obstacles in my career, so many things. And to have a moment like this in front of my family, my people, wearing Puerto Rico across my chest makes it a hundred times more special. I’m still walking on cloud nine right now, so it’s a moment I’ll remember forever.”
After De León, Molina went with Yacksel Ríos to close the sixth, Edwin Díaz for the seventh, and Duane Underwood Jr. for the eighth and final inning. Those three pitchers were perfect as well and got one last bit of support from the offense, who closed out the 10–0 win with Hernandez’s single in the bottom of the eighth that scored Maldonado and invoked the mercy rule. It was the second no-hitter in WBC history — the first belongs to Shairon Martis, who threw it for the Netherlands in 2006 — and the only one in which zero runners reached base. And to many Puerto Ricans, myself included, this game means more than you can imagine. That performance by De León and the rest of the team will be spoken about in the Puerto Rican community for as long as baseball is played.
The Pool of Death has been as exciting as advertised so far. Venezuela will look to secure their spot at the top of the pool on Tuesday against Nicaragua; if they win and the Dominican Republic defeats Israel later that night, we will have an incredible rivalry matchup set for Wednesday between the DR and PR. The winner will move on, and the loser will go home. Buckle up, folks; we may have just seen a walk-off perfect game, but we’re just getting to the most thrilling part of the tournament.
MIAMI – It’s unlikely that, in the history of Christopher Columbus High School baseball, it’s ever hosted so many superstars. The Catholic all-boys prep school, located amidst the sprawl of southwest Miami not far from the airport and which counts Jon Jay and White Sox manager Pedro Grifol among its notable alumni, has won a pair of state championships and was ranked No. 1 in the country back in 2009. But on Sunday afternoon, its field and gym were the practice space of choice for the Dominican Republic’s World Baseball Classic squad, and its enviable, mind-boggling collection of All-Stars and future Hall of Famers — baseball’s answer to the Dream Team.
At least, that was the narrative coming into the group stage. The mighty Dominican Republic and its titanic lineup, hard-throwing rotation, and deep bullpen was favored even in the Pool of Death with Puerto Rico and Venezuela. But that was before the Dominicans turned in a listless, uneven effort against Venezuela on Saturday night, stranding runners and squandering opportunities and looking nothing like the Home Run Derby Globetrotters you were hoping for.
The afternoon after that loss to Venezuela, the Dominican team assembled at Christopher Columbus High for an off-day practice — an optional one, said manager Rodney Linares, but one that was fully attended nonetheless. There, he spoke to his players, and they spoke to each other. The message? Be calm. Stay cool. Put the nerves and the frustration of Saturday night behind you. As Linares put it, “Try to control the situation, and don’t let the situation control us.” Read the rest of this entry »
We’ve reached the point in the offseason when it’s time for one of my favorite/most hated preseason traditions: my attempt to predict breakouts and busts. Since those are beyond what a projection system suggests are naturally going to be low-probability outcomes, there’s a high probability of me looking pretty silly — something writers generally try to avoid. Let’s start by looking back at how smart I was last year…or how foolish:
Thank goodness I had a weaker year than average overall, as I included a few of my favorite players in the mix! Being right for breakouts is a lot of fun, but being right on the busts is a bit depressing, a definite sign that I’ve mellowed as I enter middle age. Trout’s contact rate didn’t bounce back, and his BABIP crashed by well over 100 points, but his newfound grounder proclivity disappeared, and the power boost more than compensated for an OBP nearly 50 points below his career average. Riley’s BABIP also predictably fell, but he hit the ball harder and became a more well-rounded hitter, crushing most pitches instead of predominantly fastballs. Most of the rest came in at the middle-third of the ZiPS projections, which is a victory for the computer rather than me — all that is except for Schwindel, who didn’t just regress toward the mean; he lapped it.
Now, let’s turn to this year’s picks, as I throw myself upon the tender mercies of fortune. Read the rest of this entry »
There are a handful of things that I consider pillars of my personality and spirit. Baseball, of course, is one of them. That’s likely easy to infer, but there are a few others that you might not know about. Since I was a kid, what I’ve put on my feet has meant a lot to me. No matter where I was going, I wanted to rock fresh kicks. This also meant that players with signature cleats and/or sneakers meant a lot to me, too. I wore Ken Griffey Jr.’s Air Griffey Max 1s the second my feet were big enough to fit into a kid’s pair. Unfortunately, in the last decade or so, baseball players haven’t inspired as prominent a line of footwear as Griffey did. But I think there is a chance for that to change.
In January, baseball’s most iconic star, Shohei Ohtani, signed a multi-year footwear and apparel deal with New Balance. The numbers around the deal still aren’t clear, but it will be a long-term partnership with custom apparel, cleats, and sneakers. What I want to address is the potential impact of this deal and how it can serve as an entry point for growing the culture of baseball by stretching it beyond the diamond and onto people’s feet. Other prominent players, like Aaron Judge and Mike Trout, have footwear and apparel deals of their own, but none has stomped a footprint on sneaker and fashion culture like Griffey did when his first shoe dropped in 1996 at the peak of his stardom.
The drop of the Air Max Griffey 1 was strategic and savvy. In Complex’s account of Griffey’s impact on this era of sneaker and baseball history, they noted that Griffey and Nike’s goal for the shoe was to be multipurpose and fashionable. Specifically, Griffey himself demanded the shoes be wearable with jeans. Why was that? Well, of course that would mean they were more than just an athletic shoe — you can fit them up too. That plan worked out well for Griffey and Nike, who were able to carve out additional space in the sneaker market to go along with the Jordan line and other Nike sponsored basketball players. With the help of the company’s marketing push and its desire to make the most of Griffey’s stardom, an iconic sneaker was created that is still being worn over 20 years after its original release. This helped Griffey cement the leap from being a baseball and sports icon to a cultural one. New Balance and Ohtani could make the most of their partnership if they used this approach to their advantage and applied it to their own plans for Ohtani’s market appeal. Read the rest of this entry »
