As a FanGraphs reader, you’re presumably familiar with the TTO acronym. Just in case you’re not, TTO stands for Three True Outcomes, and said three true outcomes are walks, strikeouts, and homers. They’re the outcomes least likely to lie to you; they’re the outcomes that tell you the most about the individuals involved. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that there are more strikeouts now than ever before. You also know that home-run rates have taken off. So this plot should fit with what you’d figure. Viewing over an entire century of baseball, you see league-wide TTO% taking flight.

This season, a third of all plate appearances have ended with either a walk, a strikeout, or a homer. As recently as 1992, it was more like a quarter of all plate appearances. It was a fifth of all plate appearances in 1946. The image there speaks for itself, so I suppose I don’t need to address it any longer. The trends are up, is the point. There’s no sign of this pattern changing course.

Recently, the Effectively Wild podcast received a listener email, asking how high is too high. That is, how high could TTO% go before the game just feels all weird and broken? I didn’t have a good answer. I’m unconvinced the average fan cares about this as much as analysts do. We’re the ones who need stuff to write about, while the average fan just wants to know if a given team is winning or losing. Here’s one thing I can say: The future might look like the Rays. Nobody else TTOs quite like the Rays do.

Read the rest of this entry »

Theory: Players have gotten better than ever at hitting pitches down in the zone. I don’t think this counts as a controversial theory anymore, and it goes hand in hand with what’s been casually termed the fly-ball revolution. Anecdotally, it seems like there are more and more hitters trying to hit the ball in the air. Generally speaking, this is achieved by swinging with more of an uppercut, and, generally speaking, players with uppercuts are more productive down in the zone, instead of up.

Theory: This is one of the reasons why there’s been an emphasis on higher-spin fastballs. Those are the tougher-to-hit fastballs, fastballs you mostly want to be elevated. This past offseason, I put forth the idea that the cure to the home-run spike could involve more fastballs up. If pitchers just focused somewhere else, then hitters wouldn’t so often be able to elevate the pitches at their knees. To summarize, simply: It seems like there would be a pitcher response to the hitter response. It seems like there should be more high fastballs.

But, are there more high fastballs? Turns out this is really easy to check. And the answer is, well, basically, no.

Read the rest of this entry »

This winter, we saw a number of free agent first baseman hit the market, and then promptly get rejected en masse. Edwin Encarnacion was looking for $100 million, and then took $60 million after his market collapsed. Mark Trumbo apparently wanted $80 million; he signed for $37.5 million. Quality veterans like Brandon Moss and Mike Napoli signed for fractions of what similar players had in prior off-seasons. Pedro Alvarez got a minor league deal to try to play outfield, after no one wanted him as their first baseman.

Overnight, the game seemingly shifted from highly valuing one dimensional sluggers to thinking they were fungible assets. At the end of January, this trend led me to wonder why so many contenders were willing to punt first base, and speculate that maybe teams were willing to put up with less offense from the traditional slugging position because it was so easy to find offense at other positions now.

After all, first baseman as a group were coming off one of their weakest offensive performances of all time. With shifting hurting so many slow left-handed sluggers, perhaps we were just transitioning away from first base as a dominant offensive position.

Yeah, about that.

After running a 110 wRC+ last year, players playing first base — this data is offensive performance while actually playing the position, not just guys who qualify as 1Bs on the leaderboard — 1Bs are up to 122 this year, which would be the highest mark of any year where we have split-by-position data. And not surprisingly, given the home run surge, it’s almost all because of a power spike.

1Bs have a collective .225 ISO this year, up from .194 last year. That number had bottomed out at .170 in 2014, but the power has come storming back this year; 1Bs haven’t had an ISO over .200 since 2009, when it was .206.

And this isn’t a Bonds-lifting-the-LF-baseline situation; almost every 1B in baseball is hitting this year. 30 different players have 70+ PAs while playing first base; 10 of them are running a wRC+ of 140 or higher. 23 of the 30 have a wRC+ over 100. And this is with Miguel Cabrera, Anthony Rizzo, and Carlos Santana struggling in the early part of the season.

In their stead, guys we didn’t think were going to hit that well — Ryan Zimmerman, Yonder Alonso, Mark Reynolds, Justin Smoak, and Logan Morrison — are all crushing the ball. And besides Miggy and Rizzo, the upper-tier guys are hitting the ball like few others in baseball. Freddie Freeman and Paul Goldschmidt remain monsters. Joey Votto has figured out how to stop striking out, apparently. Matt Carpenter has gone fully Jose Bautista. And yeah, Eric Thames is still a thing.

Naturally, some of these guys are going to regress. Maybe a few of the Alonso/Smoak/Zimmerman crowd have figured out some way to sustainably hit at a much higher level than they have previously, but a lot of what is propping up first base offense right now is mediocre hitters performing at a high level. That won’t last forever.

But after a winter in which the first base position essentially had a public funeral, the position has come roaring back to life this year. First base, it turns out, is still a power position.

A couple of weeks ago, I looked at the 10 pitching prospects who had most improved their KATOH+ projections over the season’s first few weeks. Now that we have a more meaningful sample of games to analyze and a new Baseball America top-100 list baked in, I’m repeating that exercise. It’s still early in the season, but not too early to start identifying players who are performing better than they have in the past. A reminder: a player’s KATOH forecast denotes his projected WAR total over the first six seasons of his major-league career. I performed a similar exercise for hitters yesterday.

To ensure I am writing up actual prospects rather than fringey ones, I set a minimum KATOH+ projection of 4.0 WAR this time around. I still listed the five most-improved lesser prospects at the bottom.

Luiz Gohara, LHP, Atlanta (Profile)
Preseason KATOH+ Projection: 2.9
Current KATOH+ Projection: 5.6

Gohara was utterly filthy in High-A this year. He struck out 27%, walked 7%, and didn’t concede a single homer over seven starts, likely due to his 57% ground-ball rate. That performance earned him a promotion to Double-A. Unfortunately, he injured his arm in his first start.

Read the rest of this entry »

Over the course of the last week, the Dodgers placed four players on the disabled list, most in baseball. Andrew Toles, with his torn ACL, would have gone on the DL in any other year, and that might also be true for Adam Liberatore and his strained hamstring. But Kenta Maeda (tightness in hamstring) and Brandon McCarthy (sore left shoulder) are dealing with less debilitating issues. They might not have been placed on the DL if not for the flexibility allowed by the new 10-day option. But has that flexibility really created an explosion in DL usage? What ramifications would that have on the game?

Read the rest of this entry »

I first became acquainted with Charlie Morton while covering the Pittsburgh Pirates as a newspaperman and while conducting research for my non-fiction work Big Data Baseball.

Morton was the first major-league player I encountered who exhibited a real interest in analytics. He developed an appreciation of numbers from his father, Chip, an accountant and former Penn State basketball player. As Morton struggled with inconsistency early in his major-league career — he posted a 6.15 ERA with the Braves as a rookie in 2008 — he turned to PITCHf/x information to better understand his stuff and performance beyond a traditional box score. He found PITCHf/x data and fielding-independent numbers kept him sane. He found advanced statistics and PITCHf/x provided a better baselines of performance to study. His father dove into the data, too, and they often had phone calls discussing the quality of his stuff, the velocity, and horizontal and vertical movement, etc.

Earlier in his career with the Pirates — and with the help of Jim Benedict and Ray Searage — Morton had dropped his arm slot and and adopted the two-seamer as his primary pitch. His new, and present, delivery reminded many of Roy Halladay. The Pirates had Morton watch video of Halladay. And at times, Morton’s stuff — his darting sinker and bending curveball — also resembled former Philadelphia and Toronto ace’s. In Pittsburgh, during the good times, he earned nicknames like “Electric Stuff” and “Ground Chuck.” He posted a 62.9% ground-ball rate in 2013 to go along with a 3.26 ERA and 3.60 FIP. He earned a three-year contract extension after the 2013 season.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Orioles and Red Sox have provided some of the season’s juiciest narrative thus far. Everyone (well, almost everyone) loves a good bit of drama, even when it’s remarkably dumb drama. And even though our postseason odds favor Boston by a considerable margin in the AL East, Baltimore has made a habit in recent years of outperforming their projections. The two teams are going to be going for the jugular against each other for the rest of the season, and it’s going to make for some great baseball.

They may find themselves directly competing off the field, as well. Both teams have dire needs on the left side of the infield. The Red Sox haven’t had a strong third-base presence in some time, and the Orioles are hurting badly at shortstop with J.J. Hardy firmly in his decline phase and contributing just a 38 wRC+ thus far. Boston’s third-base woes are particularly bad this year, given that the cast of characters who have taken the position this year have combined for -0.5 WAR. These two problems don’t initially seem to be all that related. The teams will theoretically be scouring two different trade markets, no?

Maybe, maybe not. The simplest solution for Baltimore would be to just go get a shortstop like Zack Cozart, who’s hitting well and playing for a Reds team that probably isn’t as talented as they’ve looked thus far. However, Cozart is currently the only truly attractive shortstop option on a still-evolving trade market and there are other teams who will likely prefer Cozart over someone like Freddy Galvis. The Orioles also don’t have very much prospect capital with which to work, and could easily be outbid. Therefore a more elegant solution presents itself: moving Manny Machado to short and pursuing someone to play third. Machado is one of the best all-around defenders in the game, and is a natural shortstop. He could do it in a heartbeat.

Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, I published a post comparing and contrasting the virtues of a pair of NL left fielders, Kyle Schwarber and Aaron Altherr. They are pretty different kinds of players, but to this point, their career numbers are very similar, and I thought it was an interesting question to consider which of the two you’d rather have going forward.

At the end of the post, I included a series of three polls, asking you to select a range for your view of the future expected performance for both players, as well as asking you to pick which one you’d rather have going forward. The results of those polls should something very close to a down-the-middle split.

When it came down to pick a side, Schwarber won 54/46, so there’s a slight edge to the bat-first, longer track record guy, but it certainly wasn’t any kind of blowout. And when you look at the expected performance buckets, it seems that Schwarber’s slight edge comes down to perceived upside.

A plurality of voters picked the +2 to +3 WAR bucket for both players, with 49% of Altherr’s votes going in that category, compared to 48% of Schwarber’s. There was a pretty large block of you guys that agreed that these guys are both above-average players, but not quite reaching star levels.

The +3 to +4 WAR bucket was the second most common choice for both players, and here, Schwarber pulled ahead slightly, 34% to 30%. Then it was +1 to +2 WAR, with Altherr getting 14% of his votes in that bin versus 9% for Schwarber. +4 to +5 WAR went 6% to 4% for Schwarber, and then +5 or better went 3% to 2% for Schwarber.

So overall, 43% of voters saw Schwarber as a +3 WAR or better player, the legitimate star that he’s been hyped up to be since being taken #4 overall. Only 37% of voters saw Altherr at that same level, and those who weren’t willing to put him in that category didn’t shift to the +2 to +3 WAR category, but instead, saw him as a role player, a fringe starter, effectively not buying into his 2017 performance as a significant indicator of change.

Essentially, the votes indicate that, while similar, you guys see a slightly higher upside with Schwarber. I’m guessing some of those higher-upside votes came from the idea that a new team could use him at first base, and his defensive limitations in left field would go away if Anthony Rizzo wasn’t standing in his way of the position he’s likely best suited for. If you think Schwarber could play a reasonable 1B and hit at a 130 or 140 wRC+ level, then yeah, that +4 to +5 WAR level is definitely reachable.

Altherr’s path to stardom in left field is easier; he just has to hit at a 120 to 130 wRC+ level, and his athleticism should carry the rest of the skillset. But while it was close, it appears that a few more of you buy into Schwarber hitting at a higher level, or changing positions, than see Altherr hitting at that level.

Last September, Corey Dickerson admitted he’d gotten into his own head during his first season with the Tampa Bay Rays. Things hadn’t gone too well. Trying to impress in a new league after putting up an .879 OPS with the Colorado Rockies, the lefty slugger scuffled early, then proceeded to tinker and obsess. He ultimately swatted 24 long balls, but the blasts were accompanied by a .245/.293/.469 slash line and a 24.5% strikeout rate.

This year has been a different story. No longer overanalyzing every unsuccessful at-bat, Dickerson is slashing a lusty .333/.382/.595, with 12 doubles, two triples, and eight home runs, over his first 39 games. He’s doing so despite having played more than half of those contests as a designated hitter, a position at which batters produce slightly worse numbers than when playing the field.

Dickerson discussed his resurgence — including his “let it go” attitude and his weapon of choice — when the Rays played at Fenway Park over the weekend.

———

Dickerson on rebounding from a subpar 2016 season: “I’ve kind of let it go. I’ve gone back to being me instead of trying to do other things. I’m also finally 100% healthy, which I wasn’t last year. That’s not an excuse — everybody battles through stuff — but now I can do everything I want.

“In 2015, I was hurt — I only had 200 at-bats all season — and coming off that, I kind of acted like I didn’t have any. I started off 2016 in a slump. I’d never really been a slump in my career, so I started to chase my tail. I struggled. Finally, at the end of the year, I started to let it go. I was like, ‘OK, if I get out, what’s the biggest deal? I’m going to hit .242 instead of .245?’

Read the rest of this entry »

The reigning American League champion Cleveland Indians haven’t been quite as dominant so far in 2017 as last year. Lackluster production from their outfielders has been a big culprit. Michael Brantley is seemingly healthy and productive once again, but there’s been a void beyond him. Abraham Almonte, Brandon Guyer, and Austin Jackson have been varying degrees of unremarkable in limited playing time and have all found their way to the 10-day DL. Minor-league journeyman Daniel Robertson has been playing right field this week, while Lonnie Chisenhall has started 18 games in center this season.

The Indians were desperate for outfield help, and luckily they had an impact player waiting in the wings in the form of top prospect Bradley Zimmer. Zimmer has mashed Triple-A pitching this year to the tune of .294/.371/.532 and has stolen nine bases. Zimmer is a 6-foot-5 power hitter who also happens to be a speedy center fielder, which means Chisenhall can return to a corner where he belongs. Zimmer has also posted double-digit walk rates at most levels of the minors, which gives him yet another way to provide value. Very few prospects can get on base, hit for power, and play good defense at a premium position, making Zimmer a rare bird. On the downside, however, Zimmer has some serious contact issues that threaten to eat away at his offensive value. He struck out at a high-but-acceptable 30% clip this year, but was up over 37% in his first crack at Triple-A last year, when he hit .242 without any power.

Read the rest of this entry »