Archive for Daily Graphings

Hollywood awards season may have come to an end, but that doesn’t mean the rest of us have to stop handing out hardware. So, excuse me while I change into a tuxedo and pin my Conan O’Brien wig in place, and then we can get on with the show. What show, you ask? Well, as we embark upon a brand new season of baseball, MLB teams have announced their promotional schedules, and a selection of the giveaways and theme nights on offer are worthy of recognition. Not because they’re good. No, no, no. Sure, objectively good promotional events exist on the calendar, but I wouldn’t dream of gathering you all together in your best formalwear to discuss bobbleheads that actually resemble the player in question or this legitimately stunning jersey the Dodgers are giving away as part of their Japanese Heritage Night. No, we’re here to shed light on the truly weird stuff teams are getting up to this season.

The nominees for the most bonkers ballpark promotion are split into seven categories: Items Honoring a Specific Player or Coach, Unconventional Items, Cats, Pop Culture, Food, Miscellaneous, and Sport Crossovers. Where available, visuals associated with each promotion are included in a collage at the top of each category.

Thus concludes my monologue. On with the show! Read the rest of this entry »

Miami Marlins bullpen coach Brandon Mann was featured here at FanGraphs last September, the subject at hand being changeups thrown by the team’s hurlers. Mentioned at the end of the piece was a southpaw whose changeup Mann called “really, really good.” I was remiss in not asking for specifics. Ryan Weathers has one that is well worth knowing about.

I’ve since had an opportunity to hear about it straight from the horse’s mouth. Weathers is now wearing pinstripes — New York acquired him via trade back in January — and with Mann’s mention in mind, I broached the topic on my visit to Yankees camp in mid-March. Not only was the 26-year-old left-hander amenable to discussing his signature offering, he did so in nuanced detail.

Here is my conversation with Weathers, who is scheduled to make his first start with his new team tonight against the Mariners in Seattle.

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David Laurila: Brandon Mann told me you have a good changeup. What is the story behind it?

Ryan Weathers: “When I got traded to the Marlins [from the San Diego Padres] in 2023, I didn’t really have a good changeup. Scott Aldred, who was the pitching coordinator at the time, showed me a grip. I kept playing with it, but it didn’t have the downward vertical break that I wanted, nor the separation from my fastball. But then, during the offseason going into the 2024 season, I had one bullpen on Trackman where — same grip — it just started bottoming out. I was like, ‘That looks like a splitter.’ Ever since that bullpen, my changeup has been around one vertical, one horizontal, more like a split-changeup than a traditional changeup. If I click one, it will go down into the negative. It kind of has a mind of its own.”

Laurila: What is the grip? Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, we got a mailbag question from James, whose glimpses of Luis Arraez during the World Baseball Classic left him looking for one weird trick to vault the three-time batting champion back up to his previous heights. I had so much fun answering the question that its word count moved it out of mailbag territory (non-Jay Jaffe division, anyway) and into regular article territory. The question was on the longer side, but here’s an abridged version:

If [Arraez] could wear a ribbon on his wrist to deter a bad hitting habit, would he be able to avoid something that drags him down?

My first idea was swinging on 3-1 counts… If he spit on 3-1 pitches habitually, until opposing pitchers caught on, what percentage of them would have landed him on first? What impact would that have on his OPS & WAR, and how would that impact his value and employability?

Could there be other commonplace opportunities that may be similarly exploited?

I realize James is asking for a more specific answer here, but I want to start with the overview, because at this point, I think people may have forgotten that once upon a time, Arraez actually had great plate discipline. From 2019 to 2022 he ran a 24% chase rate and a 9% walk rate. That walk rate was 5% higher than the league average. From 2023 to 2025, he had a 34% chase rate and a 4% walk rate. That walk rate is now a staggering 45% below the league average! Over the same period, Arraez’s swing rate on pitches inside the zone fell from 65% to 62%. He wasn’t just chasing more; he was making worse swing decisions all around. That’s a lot of shifts in the wrong direction, and even though Arraez also cut his strikeout rate nearly in half, his wRC+ dropped from 123 to 109. Read the rest of this entry »

A week ago, the Cubs roster was light on long-term commitments. Only Alex Bregman and Dansby Swanson held guaranteed contracts that extended past 2027, and only two others – Phil Maton and Shelby Miller – even had guaranteed years in 2027. But as it turns out, Chicago payroll commitments abhor a vacuum. On Tuesday, Pete Crow-Armstrong signed a six-year extension. On Thursday, Nico Hoerner followed suit with a six-year pact of his own, as Michael Cerami first reported. The deal starts in 2027 and is worth $141 million, with minor deferrals that drop the total present value to the mid-130s.

If you don’t catch many Cubs games, it’s easy to overlook Hoerner. His offensive game is most notable for its lack of extremes. He doesn’t walk much. He doesn’t strike out much. He doesn’t hit for a ton of power. He’s not excessively swing happy like so many contact hitters. He doesn’t pound the ball into the ground, but he equally doesn’t sell out to lift and pull. He’s produced low-power, solid-OBP seasons for four years running, and they’ve been almost metronomically consistent: his seasonal wRC+ marks of 108, 103, 102, and 109 work out to a 105 average.

That’s the 105th-best batting line among hitters over that span. That doesn’t sound particularly impressive. Hoerner is wedged between Jake Cronenworth and Mike Yastrzemski, solidly in nice-but-forgettable territory. He’s 57th in OBP over that span, which is a little bit more exciting, but truthfully, he is not a star at the plate.

The fun starts when you get into the rest of his game. Over that same time frame, from 2022-2025, Hoerner is the sixth-best baserunner in the majors. The guys in front of him – Corbin Carroll, Bobby Witt Jr., Trea Turner, Jarren Duran, and Elly De La Cruz – are famed for their exploits on the bases. Hoerner is the slowest of that group by a fair margin, but he makes up for it with excellent instincts and great reads. He’s fifth in the bigs in steals during that span, and his 85% success rate is better than everyone in front of him on the list. When he gets on base, he’s a threat to steal, and yet he almost never gets thrown out. Read the rest of this entry »

Tarik Skubal commanded the zone while dominating the San Diego Padres on Thursday. Making his third straight Opening Day start for the Detroit Tigers, the reigning back-to-back Cy Young Award winner threw 49 of 74 pitches for strikes, including 17 of 22 to start an at-bat. Moreover, he mixed with aplomb. Skubal garnered 14 called strikes, 10 of them on either his four-seamer or sinker, as well as 11 whiffs, nine coming on changeups. He departed after six innings having surrendered just three hits, with six strikeouts and nary a free pass.

His M.O. for attacking the strike zone? I asked the 29-year-old southpaw about that following one of his spring training outings earlier this month. As it has become increasingly common for pitchers — particularly power pitchers — to aim middle and let their stuff play from there, I wanted to know how precise he is with intended location.

“My changeup, I throw down the middle, but that’s because when I throw it down the middle, the result is down and away,” replied Skubal. “And when I throw my slider down the middle, the result is glove-side and down. So, there are pitches I throw down the middle, but that’s just visually, as opposed to what I’m actually doing.

“I feel like I do a good job of throwing strikes,” continued Skubal. “As far as really executing every pitch that I throw… I don’t know. There is probably a metric on it. I’d like to think I’m a little bit above average, but I don’t know what the numbers say.“

Measuring command is an imperfect science, so where Skubal ranks depends on your metric of choice. According to our PitchingBot model, he was among the best of the best. Last season, Skubal graded out at 64 (on a 20-80 scale) tying him with Seattle’s Bryan Woo at the top of our botCmd leaderboard. Read the rest of this entry »

There’s paint on the field, bunting on the steel, and hoopla in our feels. It’s Opening Day no doubt. Well, the third one, at least.

The most iconic trapping of Opening Day is the fleet of excellent starting pitchers who take the mound. Each team sends their best, or at least, their healthiest. For some, it’s the reigning Cy Young winner. For others, it’s a precocious prospect. These starters, true to their name, carry the burden of the new season in their shoulder.

Few carry a burden greater than Luis Severino’s. Read the rest of this entry »

Nine days after the end of the World Baseball Classic, more than three weeks since he was hit by a pitch, and just hours before his team’s Opening Day game, another WBC participant landed on the injured list. Jackson Chourio, who served as the regular center fielder for Venezuela’s championship-winning squad and who is slated to be the starting left fielder for the Brewers, was placed on the IL on Thursday morning due to a fracture in his left hand.

Chourio, who turned 22 on March 11, was hit on the hand by a heater from Clayton Beeter in Venezuela’s exhibition game against the Nationals on March 4. Initial X-rays were negative, and he was diagnosed with a contusion. He sat out Venezuela’s first two games of pool play while the Marlins’ Javier Sanoja started in center field, but Chourio returned to the lineup on March 9, playing the final two pool games and the three knockout round games. For the tournament, he hit just .200/.278/.200 in 19 plate appearances, though he did barrel a few balls.

When Chourio returned to the Brewers, according to manager Pat Murphy, he underwent a scan of some sort — I’d guess a CT scan, which is much quicker than an MRI — but it did not show a fracture. He continued to play regularly, and even homered off the Padres’ Randy Vásquez on March 21, but after he felt pain in his hand during a check swing in an exhibition against the Reds on Tuesday, the Brewers sent him for an MRI, which reportedly revealed a small hairline fracture at the base of his third metacarpal. While the fracture has begun to heal, Murphy said the team is understandably “worried that there could be further injury if he doesn’t take care of it now.” Thus the IL move, which is retroactive to March 25. He’s expected to miss two to four weeks. Read the rest of this entry »

NEW YORK — It started out so well.

In their Opening Day game against the Mets at Citi Field, the Pirates jumped out to a two-run lead two batters into the game. Their next three batters struck out, but they had National League Cy Young winner Paul Skenes starting for them. It was the first time in his career that Skenes, who entered the game with a 1.96 ERA, took the mound in the first inning with a lead of two or more runs. Heck, it was just the fourth time in his 56 career starts (29 on the road) that he’d thrown his first pitch with any lead at all. Maybe this year would be different after all.

It’s too early to say anything about this year, but this sure was a different game. Just not in the way the Pirates had hoped. For the first time in his career, Skenes did not make it through the first inning. When manager Don Kelly went to the bullpen with two outs in the inning, his ace had thrown 37 pitches, recorded just two outs and allowed five runs. He struck out just one batter, walked two, and hit one with a pitch. The impromptu bullpen game ended about two and a half hours later in an 11-7 Mets win. Read the rest of this entry »

1:10	Dan Szymborski: It’s a chat!

1:11	Jay Jaffe: Hey hey, Happy Opening Day!

1:11	Dan Szymborski: And I’ll be here for more than expected as I my brother-in-law is already home from his procedure, so I don’t have to spend part of Opening Day wrangling a six-year-old and a four-year-old

Read the rest of this entry »

After an offseason marked by some funky free agent contract structures, a few big trades, and a bunch more handwringing over the Los Angeles Dodgers, the 2026 season is upon us; we made it. And on this, the morning of Opening Day (sorry, Netflix), we engage in our annual tradition of asking our staff to open themselves up to public ridicule by trying to predict the year ahead in baseball. Some of these predictions will prove to be prescient; others will make their forecaster feel a little silly. Such is the prognostication business.

I asked our staff to predict the playoff field, as well as the pennant and World Series winners, and the individual award recipients. Twenty-five of our writers from FanGraphs and RotoGraphs weighed in. Here are the results. Please note that the tables at the end showing the full writer ballots are sortable. Read the rest of this entry »