Archive for Daily Graphings

Saberseminar is a leading baseball and sports analytics conference — and it’s all for a good cause. The conference will take place August 29-30 at Illinois Tech in Chicago. Saberseminar brings together academics, data scientists, and MLB front office employees for a two-day showcase of the latest developments in baseball analytics, and it’s a great chance for researchers to show off their work in front of an audience of teams and vendors that are looking to hire. It’s also a place to network and build community across the industry, whether it’s with fans, reporters covering the game, scientists studying it, or front office personnel. FanGraphs has been a supporter of Saberseminar for over 10 years, and several members of our staff will be in attendance. Proceeds from the conference support the Alliance to Cure Cavernous Malformation and the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights.

We hope you’ll consider attending. Tickets are on sale now, with a large discount for students. For more information, please visit the conference website. We hope to see you there!

Conference Details
August 29-30
Hermann Hall Conference Center at Illinois Tech
3241 S Federal St, Chicago, IL 60616
Full Schedule

Saberseminar Meetup (21+)
August 29 at 6 PM
Maria’s Community Bar Back Patio
960 W 31st St, Chicago, IL 60608

Three interviews — two with pitchers, another with a hitter — were published here at FanGraphs over the past week. All were the result of lengthy conversations, and in each case, worthwhile snippets landed on the cutting-room floor. This week’s column will lead with those leftovers, which come courtesy of Drew Rasmussen, Cole Sulser, and Pete Alonso.

We’ll start with Rasmussen, who addressed his ability to command his offerings, particularly his four-seam/two-seam/cutter combination.

“Command is kind of a sliding scale,” said the Tampa Bay Rays right-hander, whose 4.3% walked rate ranks lowest among qualified hurlers. “Some days it’s really good and some days it’s not so good. The job is to figure out what you have as quickly as possible. On days when my command is really good… I would say that is situation-driven. If I need a ball on the ground, I can throw it with a little more tail and a little less carry. If I’m just trying to steal strike one, maybe I don’t want the [movement] profile to be as big; that way it has a better chance of staying in the zone.

“Conversely, on days that I’m not overly confident with my command, I simplify to the absolute max,” he continued. “We’re going to try to just throw the same one over and over again. Then, hopefully at some point over the course of the outing, something clicks and I start to get more and more confident, and comfortable, with the command I have that day.” Read the rest of this entry »

They might still play in a minor league ballpark, but things were looking up for the Sacramento-ish Athletics coming into the 2026 season. The franchise hadn’t had a winning record (and typically hasn’t even been close) since 2021, with their last stretch of playoff relevance ending after the COVID-shortened 2020 season. The 2025 A’s only went 76-86, but an offensive core of Nick Kurtz, Shea Langeliers, Brent Rooker, Tyler Soderstrom, and Jacob Wilson seemed to give the club a good chance to score runs this year. The A’s entered the season with 21.4% playoff odds, their best in some time.

The team’s most plausible breakout scenario involved leaning on a good offense while cobbling together just enough pitching to keep from being on the short end of a bunch of slugfests. The A’s were even confident enough to be on the other side of a salary dump for once, picking up Jeff McNeil over the winter. Unfortunately, things haven’t gone exactly to plan. The A’s are 43-59 entering play on Friday. The offense has been middling, and though they’ve gotten a few promising pitching performances from J.T. Ginn, Hogan Harris, and Gage Jump, the staff has more holes than a wheel of Emmentaler after a run-in with a shotgun. Read the rest of this entry »

Fifty-one weeks ago, the San Diego Padres traded a king’s ransom in prospects to the Athletics in exchange for depth starter JP Sears and hard-throwing relief ace Mason Miller.

Ordinarily, I would’ve abhorred such a move. The top prospect who went the other way, Leo De Vries, came in at no. 6 overall in the Preseason Top 100 Prospects list, and in my mind there’s no more overrated commodity in baseball than team control for a reliever. What the Phillies gave up for two and a half years of Jhoan Duran, immense a haul as it seemed at the time, was a fraction of what four and a half years of Miller cost.

Still, I kind of got it. Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

Pete Alonso is known as a slugger, and for good reason. Now in his eighth major league season — and first with the Baltimore Orioles — the 31-year-old first baseman has 285 home runs and a .511 slugging percentage to go with a 132 wRC+ over 1,111 career games. His right-handed stroke produced 53 round-trippers in 2019, and he also boasts single-season totals of 45, 40, 38, and 37. Only in the truncated COVID campaign has he finished with fewer than 30.

It would be unfair to pigeon-hole the University of Florida product, and erstwhile New York Met, as simply a slugger, though. That’s especially true when it comes to Alonso’s approach at the plate, as well as his overall understanding of the craft. While the term “student of hitting” is arguably overused, it fits Baltimore’s top basher to a T.

In the latest installment of our Talks Hitting series — now 125 deep — Alonso addresses his self identity, the subtle adjustments he’s made over the years, and the studious manner in which he attacks pitchers. Our conversation took place at Fenway Park over the weekend.

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David Laurila: How would you define yourself as a hitter?

Pete Alonso: “I’d like to consider myself a line drive hitter that has strength, puts up really good professional at-bats, and can spoil pitches. I can kind of set traps. Ultimately, I’m a line drive hitter with strength.”

Laurila: You’re generally viewed as a power hitter. Do you like that label?

Alonso: “I love the label. Power is based on results. If you hit a ton of home runs and a ton of doubles, consistently, you’re a power hitter. It doesn’t matter what your physical stature looks like. If you get the power results, then you’re a power hitter.

“Honestly, I’m just trying to hit a hard line drive. That’s really all it is. Hit a hard drive, and not necessarily out in front. I’m better at just meeting the ball where it’s pitched and putting a swing on that. I’m not trying to produce power. I’m just trying to produce pure contact. I think chasing and producing pure contact is the best thing anyone can do. All good things happen on the sweet spot of the bat.”

Laurila: You mentioned setting traps. Can you elaborate on that? Read the rest of this entry »

As is tradition at FanGraphs, we’re using the lead-up to the trade deadline to take stock of the top 50 players in baseball by trade value. For a more detailed introduction to this year’s exercise, as well as a look at the players who fell just short of the top 50, be sure to read the Introduction and Honorable Mentions piece, which can be found in the widget above.

For those of you who have been reading the Trade Value Series the last few seasons, the format should look familiar. For every player, you’ll see a table with the player’s projected five-year WAR from 2027-2031, courtesy of Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections. The table will also include the player’s guaranteed money (exclusive of any signing bonus), if any, the year through which their team has contractual control of them, last year’s rank (if applicable), and then projections, contract status, and age for each individual season through 2031 (assuming the player is under contract or team control for those seasons, or has a player or vesting option). Last year’s rank includes a link to the relevant 2025 post. Thanks are due to Sean Dolinar for his technical wizardry. At the bottom of the page, there is a grid showing all of the players who have been ranked up to this point.

A note on these rankings: At the top of the list, I’ve tried to group like with like, but that’s not always possible when you’re talking about the very best couple of players in baseball. I’ve noted this in the text, but there’s one tier of players today where I think all three have roughly equal value, and another where I feel strongly that the top guy is the best of the bunch. I’ll note the places where I disagreed meaningfully with the people I spoke with in calibrating this list, and I’ll also note the players whose value my contacts disagreed about. As I mentioned in the Introduction and Honorable Mentions piece, I’ll indicate tier breaks between players where appropriate, both in their capsules and bolded in the table at the end of the piece. Read the rest of this entry »

Since the draft concluded last week, the two of us have been working to add the newly-minted pro players to their team lists (you can find them here), move this year’s graduates to their own tab on The Board (which you can find here), and make a sweeping update to our Top 100 Prospects List. Below you’ll find the updated list, followed by notes on who moved and why via a rundown of the clusters of players that formed around similar profiles throughout the rankings. As a reminder, we rank however many players we have graded as 50 FV or better in our Top “100,” and as of this update, that’s 111 guys. Players whose grade have changed have a “↑” or “↑↑” in the trend column of the table, with the latter designation noting cases where the re-evaluation is quite dramatic; players dealing with full-season injuries are indicated with a bandaid.

If you want more information about these players, please head over to The Board, where you can find full scouting reports, tool grades, pitch repertoires and more. We proactively added a few players to the Graduates tab who are quite close to reaching the at-bat or innings pitched graduation threshold, or who have obviously spent enough days on the active big league roster to have exhausted prospect eligibility. Lastly, you can see the real-time farm system rankings here, with the rankings from before the graduates were pulled off and the draftees were added here. Read the rest of this entry »

Four weeks ago, the 2026 Red Sox appeared to be dead and buried. At 32-46, the team not only owned the AL’s worst record, but also the franchise’s worst record through 78 games since 1966 (28-50). Ace Garrett Crochet hadn’t pitched since April 25 due to shoulder problems; that appearance proved to be manager Alex Cora’s final game at the helm, as he and five coaches were fired after a 10-17 start. Roman Anthony had been out since May 4 due to multiple hand injuries as well. Things looked bleak, but since then, the Red Sox have gone on a major league-best 20-3 run that has carried them into the third AL Wild Card spot. On Wednesday, in the opener of a doubleheader against the Orioles at Fenway Park, they won their 15th consecutive game, tying a franchise record set in 1946, though their streak came to an end when they lost the nightcap.

Remarkably, the Red Sox have pulled off this streak despite missing not only Crochet and Anthony, but also Trevor Story and Ranger Suarez; that’s four of their seven highest-paid players in terms of average annual value, and four of their top nine in terms of preseason projected WAR. Among those helping to pick up the slack have been several rookies and a couple of unheralded utilitymen, with interim manager Chad Tracy leading the way. It’s been an unlikely run even for a team projected to have a 60.8% chance of making the playoffs at the outset of the season.

On that subject, here’s a look at Boston’s change in Playoff Odds since the start of its 20-3 stretch:

Read the rest of this entry »

Cole Sulser has a future as a pitching coach — or coordinator — if he chooses to go that route. A graduate of Dartmouth College with a degree in Engineering Sciences, the 36-year-old right-hander has not only toed the rubber for five major league teams, but also his current club is the ever-progressive Tampa Bay Rays. As much as any hurler in the game, Sulser is well-versed in his craft.

His pitching education predates his July 2024 arrival in St. Petersburg. Ditto his providing insights here at FanGraphs. Then a Baltimore Oriole, Sulser shared thoughts on changeup development, and later on pitch design, in pieces that ran in August 2021. In want of further perspectives from the analytically savvy hurler, I caught up with him when the Rays visited Fenway Park this past weekend.

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David Laurila: How much has pitch design grown since we spoke five years ago?”

Cole Sulser: “I think it has grown a ton. Our understanding is a lot more comprehensive than it was five years ago. Certain teams were maybe ahead of it more than others, but it was definitely a little more surface level. We were looking at some of the more generic aspects in terms of overall spin rate, and maybe just a little bit of efficiency. Now it seems like teams have gotten a lot more in depth in terms of the gyro degree, what your body naturally does, and which pitches may complement that. Instead of searching for specific pitches, they are more looking at what you do naturally, and try to complement that with pitches that would come easier to you.”

Laurila: Has that impacted you specifically? Read the rest of this entry »