Archive for Daily Graphings

Last week, I noted how in roughly eight seasons, Mike Trout had already put up one of the best 10-year WAR figures in baseball history. Trout’s remarkable run requires more superlatives than my brain can muster, so let’s just agree that Mike Trout is really, really good. WAR combines the offensive and defensive components of the game, but it should not be shocking that Trout’s offensive numbers alone are fantastic. His career batting line of .305/.419/.581 has produced a 172 wRC+ and over his eight-plus seasons in the majors, Trout has been 511 runs better on offense than the average player. While Trout’s 70-plus WAR thus far puts him in rare company over a 10-year period, putting up more than 500 runs above average is even rarer.

Dating back to the start of 1900 season, 22 players have put up 128 10-year periods that resulted in a WAR at the end of that stretch of 70 or greater. During that same time period, only 16 players have combined to make 99 10-year periods over which the player was at least 500 runs above average on offense. In the last 50 years, only Barry Bonds, Albert Pujols, Jeff Bagwell, and Frank Thomas have reached that mark. With two more solid seasons from Trout, only Bonds will have put up a better offensive decade than the one the Angels center fielder will finish in 2021. With even modest production, Trout is likely to be the major league leader in offensive runs above average for another half-dozen years on top of the two years he’s already produced.

Read the rest of this entry »

When we last left this series, the Marlins were running the Yankees out of the stadium and Craig Counsell was bunting up a storm. Baseball tactics continued to creep inexorably forward: lineups looked more modern, pitchers threw fewer innings, and platoon advantages were seized left and right. It wasn’t all seamless — the entire 2001 series was a study in strange decision-making — but things were looking up. Did that continue?

2004

As a Cardinals fan, this is a painful series for me. But it certainly wasn’t painful due to the Cardinals’ roster construction, which was excellent. Edgar Renteria was perhaps a weak leadoff hitter (88 wRC+ in 2004), but he ran a career .343 OBP and had been downright excellent in 2003 — the Cardinals were betting that 2004 was just a blip. Past that, it was a slew of fearsome hitters: Larry Walker batted second, Albert Pujols third, Scott Rolen fourth, and Jim Edmonds fifth.

On the Red Sox side, things weren’t quite as smooth. Orlando Cabrera was an under-qualified number two hitter. But the rest of the lineup followed sabermetric orthodoxy, and quite frankly, both of these teams were so stacked with good hitters that it’s hard to find much fault with the lineups.

In the second inning of Game 1, Edmonds even busted out a very modern contrivance; the bunt for a hit into a shifted infield. Reggie Sanders followed with a walk, always a potential outcome with a knuckleball pitcher on the mound. Then Tony Womack, of 2001 World Series fame, came to the plate — and bunted. This wasn’t some attempt to sneak a bunt by a still-sleeping Red Sox defense. Womack showed bunt on each of the four pitches of the at-bat, and the corner infielders were at a full charge as the pitch was thrown. Read the rest of this entry »

Like most people who cover Major League Baseball professionally, I am no expert when it comes to the Korea Baseball Organization. However, over the past six weeks — ever since that first flicker of hope glimpsed in the form of a Lotte Giants scrimmage streamed on YouTube, just as the nightmare of the COVID-19 pandemic was getting particularly heavy in New York City — I’ve learned a great deal about the league through conversations with MyKBO’s Dan Kurtz, FanGraphs alumni Josh Herzenberg and Sung Min Kim (both now Lotte Giants employees), and Samsung Lions international scout Aaron Tassano. I’ve read similar lines of inquiry from other baseball-starved scribes as well as English-speaking Korean journalists, dug through Baseball-Reference and Statiz, and delved into the work of my colleagues, particularly Ben Clemens’ two-part rundowns of the league’s foreign-born players, and Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections for the league. Along with a similar crash course in Taiwan’s Chinese Professional Baseball League, it’s been a fun project that has helped take my mind off not only the delays and uncertainty regarding the 2020 MLB season but also the grim backdrop of the pandemic in this country.

Spurred by Monday’s news that ESPN will carry English-language broadcasts of one KBO game per day, all the way through the league’s postseason, what follows here is my attempt to digest my KBO crash course into a usable guide for those who are similarly dipping their toes into the league’s waters for the first time. I can’t claim this to be comprehensive, but whether you’re looking to pick a team to root for or simply trying to find a few players to focus upon as you watch live baseball, I hope that it’s helpful.

A few reminders: this is a 10-team league whose team names carry those of the corporations that own them, not the cities they call home; the season is 144 games long; ties are called after 12 innings (15 in the postseason) and don’t count in determining winning percentage; it’s a contact-centric league with lower strikeout and home run rates than MLB, the latter after a conscious effort to de-juice the ball in 2019; and each team is allowed three foreign players. The playoff system is a “step-ladder” where the regular season winner gets a bye all the way to the Korean Series, the fifth- and fourth-place teams square off in a Wild Card round, with the winner facing the third-place team in the best-of-five Semi-Playoffs, the winner of that series playing the second-place team in the best-of-five KBO Playoffs, and that winner facing the top team in the best-of-seven Korean Series. Read the rest of this entry »

Since late March, we’ve been asking readers for their perspective on whether there will be a 2020 season and what it might look like if there is. Every two weeks, we list the same questions and publish the results the following week. This will be the fourth round of questions. Thank you for taking the time to respond. Read the rest of this entry »

There are many proposals floating around concerning when and how the major league season will begin. Several such plans include divisional alignments that go beyond the standard American and National Leagues that have been present for more than a century. The main point of difference still in play between the leagues is the presence of the designated hitter in the American League and the absence of the same in the National League. I think most fans would be in favor of tweaks to the division rules if those changes prove necessary for baseball to return this summer. While sticking to the interleague rule where the home ballpark dictates whether the designated hitter is in use might be feasible, given that the standard divisions don’t exist, going to a universal designated hitter might be an easier solution. It also might be slightly safer, helping to prevent pitcher injuries in a shortened season. But should a universal DH be adopted, NL teams will be at a significant disadvantage at the plate this season.

Our Depth Charts currently project National league teams for 291.5 WAR on the position player side, while the American League comes in at 314.3 WAR, a difference of 22.8 WAR. The main source of that difference is the designated hitter, where AL teams are projected for 27.1 WAR and 700 PA per team while NL teams are projected for 8.8 WAR and 300 PA per team. While those 300 PA are deemed part of the designated hitter category, in reality, it is mostly pinch hitting opportunities, which come without the positional adjustment associated with the designated hitter. With the positional adjustment, the NL WAR would actually be below replacement level. Of course, if NL teams were actually using the designated hitter, they would apportion playing time differently and also receive the same 700 plate appearances as the American League (for the purposes of this exercise and to ease understanding, we’ll just go with a normal 162-game season). Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, I explored how the NL MVPs of the 1980s were acquired. Two homegrown players, Dale Murphy, and Mike Schmidt won half of the awards. While the AL list primarily consists of homegrown talent, there are still some interesting story lines. A pair of veteran relievers, the 493rd player drafted in 1979, and a former Rule 5 draft pick are among the AL highlights. Here’s a look back at how each was acquired.

As mentioned in last week’s How They Got There: The 1980-1989 NL MVPs, George Brett was taken one pick before Mike Schmidt early in the second round of the 1971 amateur draft. Although Brett was selected out of high school (El Segundo High School in California) at age 17 and Schmidt was a 21-year-old from Ohio University, their careers took similar paths that ended with near unanimous inductions into the Hall of Fame. Both converted shortstops, they would each win MVP awards nine years later as third basemen. While Schmidt’s Phillies defeated the Royals to win the World Series that year, Brett would get his World Series ring five years after. Read the rest of this entry »

With another week in the books, our OOTP Brewers are locked in a holding pattern at 17-18. A three game set against the scuffling Cardinals (11-24 to start the season!) has gotten our run differential back on track, not that that’s particularly meaningful. But not all is well in Brew City. Our pitching situation, already a little sketchy, might be approaching critical status.

Before the season, the plan in Milwaukee seemed straightforward. Brandon Woodruff and Adrian Houser would provide starting prowess, Josh Hader would Hader his way to an ERA that looks like it’s from 1968, and everyone else would be an interchangeable whirring mass of acceptable pitching. To further that plan, and in anticipation of a busy bullpen shuttle, we even acquired two major league ready relievers from Kansas City — Tim Hill and Scott Barlow.

Only two weeks into the season, our decision looked prescient: virtual Josh Lindblom hit the shelf for four months and virtual Brett Anderson, just like real life Brett Anderson, was dinged up. Luckily, the Brewers are awash in pitchers who can either start or relieve. Corbin Burnes and Freddy Peralta can fill in wherever they’re needed, and Eric Lauer fits the bill somewhat as well. We simply plugged Burnes, Lauer, and Peralta into the rotation behind the headliners and backfilled the bullpen. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, Dan Kurtz, the proprietor of MyKBO.net agreed to an email interview and offered more insights into the league than could fit into a single post. In Part 1, we discussed Kurtz’s background and how he became a go-to for all things KBO. Here we discuss the competitive landscape of the league and what to expect in 2020, all the more relevant for a U.S. audience that will now be able to watch KBO action on ESPN.

This is a lightly edited transcript of our conversation. For the purposes of clarity and familiarity, I have used the English naming order, placing Korean surnames last instead of first.

Jay Jaffe: What is it that has made the Doosan Bears so dominant in recent years, with five straight trips to the Korea Series and three championships in that span?

Dan Kurtz: Doosan has been the premier team of the late 2010s. I would credit that to not only the high level of play by some of their foreign players, such as Josh Lindblom, Dustin Nippert, and Jose Miguel Fernandez, but also to how few holes the team has had due to their depth at certain positions.

An example: Doosan lost the league’s best catcher to the NC Dinos prior to the 2019 season (Eui-ji Yang). How did the team respond? They plugged Se-hyuk Park in at catcher and proceeded to win another title. Their starting rotation during this time has also helped carry them to many wins, and while their foreign pitchers played a big role during their championships, their Korean counterparts also more than held their own. Read the rest of this entry »

This is the latest installment of a series in which the FanGraphs staff rounds up the latest developments regarding the COVID-19 virus’ effect on baseball.

Miguel Marte Passes Away

Former A’s minor leaguer Miguel Marte passed away last week due to complications from COVID-19. Marte played in Oakland’s system from 2008 to 2012 and topped out in Low-A Vermont. After leaving baseball, Marte settled in New Jersey and worked as a truck driver. He was only 30.

The A’s have helped to promote a GoFundMe to support Marte’s family — he and his wife had two children. It’s a cruel reminder that when they’re done playing baseball, many minor leaguers go back to living regular lives, and that COVID-19 can touch us all, no matter our age or situation in life.

Summer Leagues Postponed

Two college summer leagues, the Coastal Plain League and Western Canadian Baseball League, have both announced that they will delay the start of their seasons in response to COVID-19. Both leagues showcase college players over the summer, and are targeting a start date around the beginning of July — July 1 for the CPL and a broader late-June/early-July target for the WCBL. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, I took a look at the best 10-year periods in baseball history by position player WAR. As it relates to the modern game, Mike Trout is on one of the greatest 10-year runs in history, and he’s only been at it for eight seasons. Currently, there isn’t a Mike Trout equivalent on the pitching side, but that shouldn’t be surprising – the only player with a more impressive record than Trout over the last 50 years is Barry Bonds. There just isn’t going to be a Trout-like pitcher in every generation because Trout’s talent and production are so rare. But that doesn’t mean that the last decade of Clayton Kershaw isn’t one of the more impressive performances in baseball history.

Over the last 10 seasons, Clayton Kershaw’s 59.1 WAR is the best in baseball among pitchers, four wins clear of Max Scherzer, who is a win ahead of Justin Verlander. Kershaw was actually slightly better from 2009-2018, with 59.8 WAR, which also led baseball. He’s also first in the 10-year periods beginning in 2008 and 2007 despite not playing in the majors in 2007 and not making his debut until late-May of the 2008 season. Kershaw has ended a season as the 10-year WAR leader four times, and is very likely to do so for a fifth time in 2020, but would need to be a couple wins better than Scherzer over the next two seasons to extend that streak to 2021.

Since 1909, only 30 pitchers have ended a season as the game’s 10-year WAR leader. Only eight have more than Kershaw’s four seasons as 10-year WAR leader and only Randy Johnson and Roger Clemens have more than Kershaw over the last 60 years:

Read the rest of this entry »