Given the relative novelty of Statcast data, it remains unclear for the moment just how useful the information produced by it can and will be. As with any new metric or collection of metrics, it’s necessary to establish baselines for success. How good is an average exit velocity of 90 mph? What does a 10-degree launch angle mean for a hitter? How does sprint speed translate to stolen bases or defensive ability?

In an effort to begin answering such questions, the Statcast team has rolled out a few different metrics over the past few years that attempt to translate some of the raw material into more familiar terms. Hit probability uses launch angle and exit velocity to determine the likelihood that a batted ball will drop safely. Another metric, xwOBA, takes that idea a step further, using batted-ball data to estimate what a player should be hitting.

Another example is Outs Above Average. In the case of OAA, the Statcast team has accounted for all the balls that are hit into the outfield, determined how often catches are made based on a fielder’s distance from the ball, and then distilled those numbers down to find what an average outfielder would do. The final result: a single number above or below average.

At Reddit, mysterious user 903124 has published research showing that the year-to-year reliability for Outs Above Average has been considerably higher than the Range component for UZR. The user was kind enough (or foolish enough) to create a Twitter account reproduce some graphs of his results, which are shown below. There is a subsequent tweet in the thread that shows left field.

Recalculate correlation of RngR and OAA with per 1000 inning data and for each outfield position (min. 400 innings). OAA still clearly has a lower year to year variance. @mitchellichtman @tangotiger pic.twitter.com/MZ4xB6YICV

— 903124 (@903124S) January 3, 2018

 

 

For those who can’t see the charts and would prefer not to open up a new window, what you’d see here is that, for the group selected, the r-squared is much higher for Outs Above Average than for the Range component for UZR. If Statcast could produce something that is much more reliable and much more accurate than the Range component of UZR, that would be a pretty significant breakthrough and win for Statcast, potentially improving the way WAR is calculated and providing a better measure of a player’s talent and results on the field.

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Gerrit Cole is reportedly on the verge of joining the Astros:

Source: #Astros and #Pirates have reached agreement on Gerrit Cole trade. @MLBNetwork @MLB

— Jon Morosi (@jonmorosi) January 10, 2018

Or… maybe he’s not:

Just spoke with Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow, who acknowledged he’s “talked to several teams about possible trades” but said “at this point, nothing is imminent."

— Jake Kaplan (@jakemkaplan) January 10, 2018

In any case, it sounds like a deal will get done eventually:

While a number of parties figure the Gerrit Cole-to-Astros deal will get done, multiple sources are cautioning that it's not there yet. Cole has not been informed of a trade to Houston. Generally, this sort of thing winds up with a deal being consummated. Just not at this point.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) January 10, 2018

Unless it doesn’t:

Source: "No deal" for Gerrit Cole to Houston. "False rumor."

As is the case with these things, talks could pick back up quickly. For now, though, Gerrit Cole to Houston is not happening.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) January 10, 2018

While something may or may not be imminent, such a trade would not be surprising: the Pirates have decided to retool at some level and Cole’s name has come up all offseason, first connected to the Yankees (though the Yankees were apparently unwilling to part with Gleyber Torres). The Astros are a top AL contender, the sort team looking to consolidate its position.

The possible return is not yet clear, though the Astros possess the sort of high-end prospects which the Pirates currently lack in their system. So, on the surface, this potential trade makes a lot of sense. A club headed for a rebuild sells two years of control of a top-of-the-rotation arm to a contender.

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I wrote my first post for FanGraphs on April 14th, 2008. It was about Gabe Kapler’s return from managing to be a productive big leaguer. It referenced WPA/LI as our version of a modern statistic and talked unironically about how Kapler was keeping up with Casey Kotchman. It wasn’t great.

Since then, I’ve published 3,501 other posts (or chats). Hopefully, most of them were better than that first one. In these last 10 years, the site has changed a lot. In 2010, I went from a freelancer to the company’s first full-time employee, then was joined by a host of absurdly talented coworkers, many of whom now also get to do this for a living. FanGraphs went from a niche site into the mainstream, and along the way, I’ve seen our little corner of the baseball world help change the language of baseball fans.

It’s been a remarkable run. But for me, it comes to an end today. This will be my last post at FanGraphs.

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Late in the 2017 season, I approached Sergio Romo to ask about backup sliders. More specifically, I wanted to know if he’s ever thrown one intentionally. A handful of pitchers to whom I’ve spoken have experimented with doing so. It can be an effective pitch when well located; hitters recognize and react to a slider, only to have it break differently than a slider. As a result, they either jam themselves or are frozen.

Romo, of course, has one of the best sliders in the game. The 34-year-old right-hander has lived and died with the pitch for 10 big-league seasons, throwing his signature offering 52.4% of the time. Among relievers with at least 250 innings, only Carlos Marmol (55.5%) and Luke Gregerson (52.7%) have thrown a slider more frequently over that span.

What I anticipated being a short conversation on a narrow subject turned into wider-ranging, and often entertaining, meditation on his slider (with a look at Zach Britton’s sinker thrown in for good measure). It turns out that Romo’s backups are all accidental — the exact mechanics behind them remain a mystery to him — but he does know how to manipulate the ones that break. He’s also knowledgeable about his spin rate, thanks to his “player-profile thingy.”

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Instead of covering free-agent signings like usual, members of baseball’s media have been forced to address the conspicuous lack of them this offseason. Dave outlined another possible explanation for the dearth of activity, noting that neither the Haves nor Have Nots are incentivized to spend money on a marginal win or two. There simply aren’t enough teams in the middle ground for whom a move might change their fortunes. There’s increasing speculation on and discussion about whether clubs might be colluding, as Zack Moser argues at BP Wrigleyville.

Wrote Moser:

“Free agency is the most important mechanism by which players can actually earn what they are due—after years of minor league, pre-arbitration, and arbitration salary suppression—and to argue for its obsolescence is to argue against the rights of labor in general.”

More than anything, I suspect the quiet offseason is a product of more clubs thinking alike and increasingly acting rationally. Emotion has largely been stripped out of the market (unless you can negotiate directly with an owner).

The other issue is the more potent luxury tax in the new CBA, which has essentially created a more rigid soft cap. There is an argument to be made that the players did this to themselves by focusing on issues like the qualifying offer instead of selecting bigger fights in the most recent round of bargaining.

While next year’s free-agent class — which features a rare wealth of young and talented players likely to be compensated handsomely — might give the impression that the system is operating in the players’ interest, it might just represent a temporary reprieve from the larger downward trajectory of the value of free agency. This is arguably the most important issue facing the MLBPA.

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I don’t watch a lot of hockey, but when I do, my favorite part of the game is when grown men sit in timeout. They have an angry little fracas and then are asked to cool down. In-game punishment is a tricky business: too light a touch, and violating rules risks becomes acceptable, too worth it. But go too strong, and the game becomes about the penalty; it’s not just an ump show but worse, a slog.

That’s part of the genius of the penalty box, the Sin Bin: removing one player from the ice spurs action. Your favorite team might score a goal. Perhaps you’ll be gifted a defensive highlight, made all the more impressive for playing down a man. But the true insight of the penalty box is a more basic one: we only ever stay really mad at things for a few minutes at a time.

There are exceptions, of course. Grudge holders, deviants. Last spring, we learned that Hunter Strickland carried his rage toward Bryce Harper through three years and a World Series parade. Some guys are just grumps. But most aren’t. Think about being a kid and playing in the yard with your cousin. Your cousin throws mud at you. Startled and angry, you throw grass back. You’re separated and sent to your corners to think about what you’ve done, but once you do, you’re ready to play again. How big a deal is mud anyway? You were dirty anyhow. Perhaps you should go eat worms together.

In the aftermath of the Strickland-Harper brawl, Sam Miller speculated on Effectively Wild that perhaps Harper would have better served by taking off his shoe and throwing it rather than chucking his batting helmet. He might have looked like less of a doofus, but the moment Harper bent down to undo his laces, it would have been over. The fight doesn’t happen. Reason returns. “Wait, what am I doing?” Bryce stops being entirely mad and starts being partially embarrassed. He remembers he’s a homeowner. He just needed a little timeout to change the whole afternoon.

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Let’s begin by considering the experience of today’s top amateur pitchers. Each time a coveted prospect at the prep level begins his delivery to the plate, he’s confronted by the same vision: a crowd of radar guns raised in unison by the scouts looming just beyond the chain-link fence behind home plate. For them, the radar gun is the objective, truth-telling scouting tool, one that often decides draft-day fortunes.

One of the most notable features on a player’s Perfect Game profile page is not a pitchability score or makeup grade, but rather his top velocity reading. Riley Pint was a top-five overall pick in 2016 because he could hit triple digits in high school. And while the Rockies aren’t particularly worried, he’s demonstrated little command or feel for pitching thus far in his pro career.

It’s not that velocity does not matter. Velocity matters a great deal. It creates margin for error, reduces batters’ timing, and enhances the effects of breaking pitches and off-speed offerings.

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There has been considerable handwringing this offseason about the way the new Marlins ownership group has gone about dismantling any hopes of a competitive club the near future. The front office inherited a borderline playoff contender — one featuring the reigning NL MVP, as well as multiple young, talented, and cost-controlled players — and made no attempt to build a winner in what should be a wide-open Wild Card race in 2018 as well as a wide-open National League East at the start of the following season.

That the Marlins chose a different path is unfortunate for baseball and unfortunate for long-suffering Marlins fans — not to mention the potential Marlins fans who could have been cultivated with a commitment to winning in the long term.

Now that it’s clear that the Marlins have chosen not to field a competitive team in the near term, it is time to examine their current options with J.T. Realmuto and Christian Yelich and begin to analyze their decisions up to this point. As Dave Cameron noted in the aftermath of the Giancarlo Stanton trade to the Yankees, the Marlins did okay with their market value salary dumps.

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It’s January, and the story of the offseason is that it’s actually lived up to its monicker. Outside of Giancarlo Stanton and Shohei Otani’s respective moves to new teams essentially on the same day, MLB clubs have been in hibernation this winter. And so instead of evaluating trades or free-agent contracts, we’re left instead to ponder what is causing the inaction.

The potential culprits are numerous. If you’re inclined to see owners as evil profiteers, it’s easy to talk yourself into a collusion theory. Or this is the consequence of the Players Association accepting a luxury tax that might be acting as a de facto salary cap. Or maybe it’s just that every team has figured out that prices go down as spring training draws closer, so now everyone is trying the same wait-it-out game plan. Or maybe these particular free agents just aren’t that good. Or maybe it’s that next year’s free agents are too good.

Each of those theories seem to have some validity, and I think there’s probably a bit of most of that going on. But I think there’s also an explanation that makes everyone’s passivity perfectly rational: a lack of sufficient divisional competition to create the sort of pressure that justifies high-risk free-agent signings.

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The Blue Jays traded a couple prospects for a versatile infielder this weekend following a season during which their own infielders had trouble staying on the field. That much about the Yangervis Solarte trade makes sense.

What makes a little less sense? A Toronto team projected to finish almost 10 games worse than the best two teams in their division just improved their 2018 roster at a potential cost down the road. It might be a fine trade in a vacuum, but is it a well-timed one?

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