Archive for Daily Graphings

FanGraphs Power Rankings: June 6–12

Win streaks and losing streaks across baseball have resulted in some major movement in the power rankings this week.

A reminder for how these rankings are calculated: first, we take the three most important components of a team — their offense (wRC+), and their starting rotation and bullpen (a 50/50 blend of FIP- and RA9-, weighted by IP share) — and combine them to create an overall team quality metric. New for this year, I’ve opted to include defense as a component, though it’s weighted less heavily than offense and pitching. Some element of team defense is captured by RA9-, but now that FanGraphs has Statcast’s OAA/RAA available on our leaderboards, I’ve chosen to include that as the defensive component for each team. I also add in a factor for “luck,” adjusting a team’s win percentage based on expected win-loss record. The result is a power ranking, which is then presented in tiers below.

Tier 1 – The Best of the Best
Team Record “Luck” wRC+ SP- RP- RAA Team Quality Playoff Odds
Yankees 44-16 -1 121 74 75 -1 178 99.9%
Astros 37-23 1 112 93 79 17 174 98.6%
Dodgers 37-23 -5 114 81 87 -2 158 94.9%
Mets 40-22 2 116 97 96 1 151 94.2%

I considered putting the Yankees in their own tier at the top of these rankings this week; that’s how well they’ve been playing recently. They absolutely crushed the Cubs during a three-game weekend series, launching 11 home runs and outscoring Chicago, 28–5. Matt Carpenter has collected eight hits since joining the Yanks in late May, and six of them have been home runs, including two on Sunday. Oh, and their pitching staff has been one of the best in the majors, too. They’re firing on all cylinders at just the right time; their schedule gets tough over the next two weeks, with a pair of series against the Rays, a series in Toronto, and a four-game set against the Astros.

After handling the White Sox earlier in the week, the Dodgers traveled to San Francisco over the weekend and scored just four runs in a three-game sweep at the hands of their division rival. To make matters worse, Walker Buehler left his start on Friday after just four innings with elbow discomfort. The next day, the Dodgers announced that he’ll be shut down for two months with a flexor strain. Clayton Kershaw returned from his own Injured List stint over the weekend, and Andrew Heaney is on the mend and should be activated sometime this week. Still, with the Padres and Giants breathing down their necks in the NL West, the Dodgers’ margin for error just got a lot thinner without Buehler in the rotation for a while.

The Mets wrapped up a long West Coast road trip with a series win against the Angels over the weekend. That gave them a 5–5 record during the trip, a perfectly acceptable outcome based on the tough opponents and travel they faced. Since Max Scherzer went down with his oblique injury in mid-May, New York has gone 15–8 and maintained a strong grip on the NL East. The Braves’ recent hot streak may cause some concern, but the Mets have proven they’re a good enough team even without their two best pitchers. Read the rest of this entry »


Noah Syndergaard’s Comeback Season Is Complicated

Noah Syndergaard
Wendell Cruz-USA TODAY Sports

Faced with a middling rotation on a middling roster, the Angels took a risk this winter when they made Noah Syndergaard their big free-agent pitcher signing over any of the marquee names available. Syndergaard was once one of those dazzling names, but injuries haven taken away three of his most recent seasons (most of 2017, all of 2020, and all but two innings in 2021) and, eventually, the final gear of a fastball and sinker that both tangled with triple digits on the radar gun. It’s difficult for a one-year deal to end too badly, but at $21 million for 2022, the Angels clearly thought of this as more than a pillow contract or a lottery ticket. So has it worked? Sort of.

To get one thing out of the way: Syndergaard is not the pitcher he once was. As Jay Jaffe wrote earlier this month, he’s lost about four miles per hour on his fastball, forcing him to reconfigure his pitch mix. He’s not exactly Jered Weaver or Zack Greinke, let alone Frank Schwindel throwing 35-mph rainbows to the Yankees, but throwing 93 or 94 mph is quite different than throwing 99 or 100. That said, he’s still gotten decent results, at least in bottom-line numbers, and his ERA stands at 3.69, with his FIP barely behind at 3.81. His strikeout rate has plummeted to just 15.4%, or 5.83 K/9, numbers that barely match up to his 26.4% and 9.74 through 2019. But the lack of strikeouts is partially mitigated by the fact that his control remains excellent, and he’s still effective at preventing hitters from making good contact.

Pitchers have been successful with meager strikeout rates, even in today’s game. However, it leaves little margin for error, and when pitchers like Kirk Rueter or Chien-Ming Wang finally hit a bump, they didn’t just get a flat; the wheels fell completely off. Even with more reason to hope for his health than before the season and after some perfectly respectable performances, ZiPS is actually less confident about Syndergaard’s future than before:

ZiPS Projection – Noah Syndergaard
Year W L S ERA G GS IP H ER HR BB SO ERA+ WAR
2023 9 8 0 4.08 24 24 132.3 134 60 16 33 110 106 2.0
2024 8 7 0 4.09 23 23 123.3 125 56 15 30 101 106 1.9
2025 8 7 0 4.18 22 22 118.3 121 55 15 29 97 103 1.7
2026 7 6 0 4.19 20 20 109.7 112 51 14 27 90 103 1.5
2027 7 6 0 4.30 19 19 102.7 106 49 13 26 84 101 1.3

While we can be a little more confident now about playing time, we should also be less bullish about the chances of Syndergaard recapturing his pre-injury form. Even with more innings now projected than at the start of 2022, ZiPS has knocked his rest-of-career mean projection from 19.1 WAR to 13.7. Every game of a decidedly mortal Syndergaard takes us a little farther from the thunder god. Read the rest of this entry »


Walker Buehler’s Three Months Off

© Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports

For as much slack as Tyler Anderson and Tony Gonsolin have been picking up in the Dodgers rotation lately, the news that Walker Buehler will miss a large chunk of the remainder of the season is a gut punch. The 27-year-old righty departed Friday night’s start against the Giants with elbow discomfort — his second early exit in a row — and after undergoing an MRI on Saturday was diagnosed with a flexor tendon strain. He will be shut down completely for six to eight weeks before restarting a throwing program, all but guaranteeing that he won’t see major league activity again until September.

Buehler struck out the side in the third inning on Friday night, but via MLB.com’s Juan Toribio, he “noticed something was bothering him after throwing a breaking ball” during the frame. While he made it through that inning and the fourth, his discomfort increased. Said manager Dave Roberts afterwards, “Certain discomforts you can manage through, where this one tonight, clearly he felt that any more could potentially be damaging.”

Coming off the best season of his career, Buehler had not pitched well lately, though he said on Friday that he didn’t believe the injury was linked to his previous woes. His overall 4.02 ERA (100 ERA-) is the highest of his career excluding his cup-of-coffee 2017 stint, and a full run per nine above his career mark, while his 3.83 FIP (96 FIP-) is only his second time above 3.16; he was at 4.36 in 2020, a season during which he made just eight starts due to recurrent blisters on his right index and middle fingers. Read the rest of this entry »


Sunday Notes: Chris Denorfia and Emma Tiedemann are Bullish on Ezequiel Tovar

Ezequiel Tovar came into the season ranked as the No. 4 prospect in the Colorado Rockies system. Despite being just 20 years old, he might finish it in the big leagues. In 229 plate appearances with the Double-A Hartford Yard Goats, Tovar is slashing .317/.393/.579 with a 165 wRC+. Moreover, he has a dozen home runs and has swiped 16 bases in 17 attempts.

His calling card is his glove. Described by our own Eric Longenhagen as “a no-doubt shortstop with balletic defensive footwork and a well-calibrated internal clock.” Tovar had received similar rave reviews from MLB scouts in the Arizona Fall League. And that was before he blossomed with the bat.

I asked Yard Goats manager Chris Denorfia about the offensive strides that have elevated Tovar’s profile.

“Coming into this year, I was told that there was some chase on down-and-away sliders,” said Denorfia, who played 10 big-league seasons. “But I haven’t seen what everybody was talking about. Somewhere between the Fall League and this spring, he’s made this developmental jump. Something clicked to where he’s recognizing situations where pitchers are going to try to get him to chase. Whether you call it slowing the game down, or just having enough reps, he’s made that adjustment. It was probably the one thing that was holding him back, which is kind of weird to say, because he was only 19 last year.”

The discipline is reflected in the numbers. Despite being one the youngest players in his league, Tovar possesses a 9.6 walk-rate and a 22.3% K-rate. When you add his improved pop to the equation, it’s easy to see why speculation of a call-up — premature that it may be — has begun to grow legs. Read the rest of this entry »


Checking Out 2022 zStats for Pitchers After Two Months of Play

Hunter Greene
The Enquirer

As anyone who does a lot of work with projections could likely tell you, one of the most annoying things about modeling future performance is that results themselves are a small sample size. Individual seasons, even full ones over 162 games, still feature results that are not very predictive, such as a hitter or a pitcher with a BABIP low or high enough to be practically unsustainable. For example, if Luis Arraez finishes the season hitting .350, we don’t actually know that a median projection of .350 was the correct projection going into the season. There’s no divine baseball exchequer to swoop in and let you know if he was “actually” a .350 hitter who did what he was supposed to, a .320 hitter who got lucky, or a .380 hitter who suffered misfortune. If you flip heads on a coin eight times out of 10 and have no reason to believe you have a special coin-flipping ability, you’ll eventually see the split approach 50/50 given a sufficiently large number of coin flips. Convergence in probability is a fairly large academic area that we thankfully do not need to go into here. But for most things in baseball, you never actually get enough coin flips to see this happen. The boundaries of a season are quite strict.

What does this have to do with projections? This volatile data becomes the source of future predictions, and one of the things done in projections is to find things that are not only as predictive as the ordinary stats, but also more predictive based on fewer plate appearances or batters faced. Imagine, for example, if body mass index was a wonderful predictor of isolated power. It would be a highly useful one, as changes to it over the course of a season are bound to be rather small. The underlying reasons for performance tend to be more stable than the results, which is why ERA is more volatile than strikeout rate, and why strikeout rate is more volatile than the plate discipline stats that result in strikeout rate. Read the rest of this entry »


Tony Gonsolin Is the Latest Dodgers’ Starter To Dominate Hitters

© Gary A. Vasquez-USA TODAY Sports

Given their success over the past half-dozen years and the strength of their preseason projections, it’s no surprise to find the Dodgers owning the National League’s top record (37-20, .649) while continuing to hold the league’s highest Playoff Odds (98.4%) and highest odds of winning the World Series (15.5%). What’s unusual is that they’ve done it with Clayton Kershaw missing about half the season thus far and with both Walker Buehler and Julio Urías struggling to regain their front-of-the-rotation form. Instead it’s been Tyler Anderson and Tony Gonsolin — two pitchers we initially projected to throw fewer than 100 innings as starters — leading the way in a rotation that has the majors’ lowest ERA (2.65).

On Thursday, Anderson’s scoreless streak came to an end at 28 innings against the White Sox, thanks in part to a ball that parkour’d its way into becoming a triple, but so far this year, he’s ridden an improved changeup to unexpected success. The night before that, it was Gonsolin holding Chicago to one run over six innings while helping to halt a three-game losing streak, the Dodgers’ second within a nine-day span. In the process, the 28-year-old righty took over the official NL ERA lead, at least for the moment, via a 1.58 mark. He’s pitched 57 innings while the Dodgers have played 57 games, but he’ll slip below the qualifying threshold again before he next gets the ball.

Regardless, Gonsolin is showing signs of a breakout, and at the very least enjoying his longest sustained run of major league success. Though he’s pitched for the Dodgers for four seasons — and largely pitched very well, with a 2.48 ERA and 3.50 FIP in 199.1 innings — it’s been in fits and starts. The ninth-round 2016 pick out of St. Mary’s College of California debuted in the majors three years later but that year was yo-yoed between Los Angeles and Oklahoma City, totaling just six starts, five relief appearances, and 40 innings. In 2020, Gonsolin totaled eight starts, one relief appearance, 46.2 innings, and three times being optioned to the Dodgers’ alternate training site. Last year, he spent two separate stretches on the injured list due to recurring right shoulder inflammation, not debuting until June 9 and then spending all of August and part of September sidelined. He made a career-high 13 starts plus two relief appearances but finished with just 55.2 innings. Read the rest of this entry »


Does Framber Valdez Warrant a Five Man Infield?

Framber Valdez
Peter Aiken-USA TODAY Sports

FanGraphs readers are a smart bunch. Though the comments can sometimes unravel into a series of shouting matches, the usual atmosphere is encouraging and collegial. For example, here’s a thought-provoking question I received a few weeks ago and my reply to it:

This is from an article I wrote about Framber Valdez and how he was on pace to shatter his own historic groundball-to-fly ball ratio. A five-man infield in any other circumstance would be out of the question, but consider just how many grounders Valdez generates. Among starters with a minimum of 200 innings pitched since 2020, he’s first in groundball rate (66.7%) by a wide, wide margin. With so few balls heading towards the outfield, does it make sense to reinforce the infield instead? It’s an intriguing inquiry, one that I promised would receive an answer. So here goes! Read the rest of this entry »


Tony La Russa Is at It Again

© Kamil Krzaczynski-USA TODAY Sports

I thought this week couldn’t get any better. I got to write about bunts, one of my favorite things to do, and about the Giants picking up tiny edges, another personal favorite. I got to write about Yordan Alvarez and how people underrate him; now I can cross that off my yearly to-do list. But Thursday took the cake. Have you seen this nonsense?

I love writing about bad intentional walks. I love writing about bad managerial decisions. But I can’t really wrap my head around this one, hard as I try. Let’s try to do the math, such as it is, while keeping in mind that no amount of math is going to make this make sense.

Let’s start at the top. Trea Turner is an excellent hitter, and Bennett Sousa is a lefty. Turner boasts average platoon splits for his career. Sousa has hardly pitched in the majors, so let’s just consider him an average lefty. With a runner on second and two outs, passing up an excellent righty hitter against your lefty pitcher is standard operating procedure. Read the rest of this entry »


Checking Out 2022 zStats for Hitters After Two Months of Play

Taylor Ward
Darren Yamashita-USA TODAY Sports

As anyone who does a lot of work with projections could likely tell you, one of the most annoying things about modeling future performance is that results themselves are a small sample size. Individual seasons, even full ones over 162 games, still feature results that are not very predictive, such as a hitter or a pitcher with a BABIP low or high enough to be practically unsustainable. For example, if Luis Arraez finishes the season hitting .350, we don’t actually know that a median projection of .350 was, in fact, the correct projection going into the season. There’s no divine baseball exchecquer to swoop in and let you know if he was “actually” a .350 hitter who did what he was supposed to, a .320 hitter who got lucky, or even a .380 hitter who suffered misfortune. If you flip heads on a coin eight times out of ten and have no reason to believe you have a special coin-flipping ability, you’ll eventually see the split approach 50/50 given a sufficiently large number of coin flips. Convergence in probability is a fairly large academic area that we thankfully do not need to go into here. But for most things in baseball, you never actually get enough coin flips to see this happen. The boundaries of a season are quite strict.

What does this have to do with projections? This volatile data becomes the source of future predictions, and one of the things done in projections is to find things that are not only as predictive as the ordinary stats, but also more predictive based on fewer plate appearances or batters faced. Imagine, for example, if body mass index was a wonderful predictor of isolated power. It would be a highly useful one, as changes to that over the course of a season are bound to be rather small. Underlying reasons for performance tend to be more stable than the results, which is why ERA is more volatile than strikeout rate and why strikeout rate is more volatile than plate discipline stats that result in strikeout rate.

MLB’s own method comes with an x before the stat, whereas what ZiPS uses internally has a z. I’ll let you guess what it stands for! I’ve written more about this stuff in various places such as here and here, so let’s get right to the data for the first two months of the MLB season. Read the rest of this entry »


Batters Can’t Stand A.J. Minter’s One Simple Trick

A.J. Minter
Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports

Even if you aren’t a Braves fan, you probably have a general idea of how their season is going so far. Max Fried? He’s still good, and still the ace for the defending world champions. Kyle Wright has taken a step forward and Charlie Morton has taken a step back. The hitters? You pretty much know them all; Dansby Swanson, Austin Riley, Ronald Acuña Jr., and Matt Olson lead the offense this year.

If you’re paying the barest bit of attention, you’d already know all of those names. They either starred in last year’s postseason, made headlines in a big offseason trade, or starred early in this season. When you get to the bullpen, though, you might be lost. Remember that stalwart relief crew from the playoffs? Will Smith has been abysmal, half a win below replacement level. Tyler Matzek has an ERA above 5, a FIP above 5, and an xFIP above 6. Luke Jackson hasn’t even pitched this year; he tore his UCL before the season and will miss the entire year.

Some of that slack has been picked up by new names. Kenley Jansen has been solid. Spencer Strider is electric, though he’s now a starter — nice problem to have. But the fourth member of last year’s bullpen quartet, A.J. Minter, is making up for the rest of his cohort’s absence. He’s off to the best start of his career, and one of the best starts of any reliever in baseball.

In some ways, Minter is like a lot of other relievers you’ve seen. His best pitch is a high-spin, high-velocity fastball. He backs it up with a breaking pitch that’s somewhere between cutter and slider, 90 mph with a touch of horizontal break. To keep righties honest, he also has a hard changeup. There are a lot of relievers who fit that general mold, and until this year, you might have easily lost Minter in the crowd.

Why bring him up, then? Surely, he’s just on a good streak, a few weeks and home runs away from just being another plus reliever instead of an unsolvable hitting riddle with an ERA around 1. Maybe that’s true. Maybe this is as good as Minter will ever be — and to be clear, it’s as good as most pitchers will ever be. But I’m interested in something else:

A.J. Minter, Zone and Walk Rates
Year Zone% BB%
2018 43.5% 8.5%
2019 39.6% 15.6%
2020 42.3% 10.6%
2021 44.9% 9.0%
2022 37.2% 4.4%

Yes, Minter is throwing fewer pitches in the strike zone than ever. He’s also walking batters at a career-low rate (excluding a 15-inning cameo in 2017 that I’m leaving off my charts). That makes about as much sense as clicking on a pop-up ad, but let’s see if we can disentangle what’s going on here.
Read the rest of this entry »