The signing of Eric Thames and the projections subsequently produced for him represent two of the more interesting, if lower-profile, developments of the offseason. Since Thames took his quick left-handed swing across the Pacific, he’s become one of the top sluggers in the hitter-friendly Korea Baseball Organization.

If you have 30 free minutes you can watch all 47 of his 2015 home runs thanks to YouTube:

Despite having already played in the majors, Thames is something of a mystery, a curiosity, in transitioning from a foreign professional league. If the projections are accurate, however – and his Davenport translations are pretty close to other, former international unknowns like Jose Abreu, Yoenis Cespedes and Jung Ho Kang – then the Brewers have themselves a steal.

In the cases both of Cespedes and Kang, who played in foreign leagues that draw fewer scouts, analytics played a considerable role in the decision to sign them. Analytics and projections also played a significant part in the Thames signing, as Brewers GM David Stearns told David Laurila in the latter’s Sunday notes this weekend.

Kang was the first KBO hitter to make the jump directly to the majors. There were no direct comparisons. But plenty of South Korean stars had played in the Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball Organization, so the Pirates looked at their production in Japan and then studied the more sizable sample of NPB position players who have played in the majors.

Back in 2013, the A’s were also creative in projecting Cespedes, then a trailblazing Cuban defector, as detailed by Ben Reiter in Sports Illustrated.

“[Farhan] Zaidi built a model that analyzed not just the grades the scouts had given to Cespedes on the usual eight-point scale, but also the scouts themselves. Say three guys have a six power on him, three guys have seven power on him. What kind of minor leaguers or major leaguers do those guys have those grades on?”

The A’s did not miss a chance to scout Cespedes when access was available. The Pirates did send scouts over to evaluate Kang in addition to video analysis (though Kang’s off-the-field issues were apparently not discovered). Still, recent success stories of players signed from foreign pro leagues are analytics-heavy because they’ve had to be. There are few scouting resources committed to South Korea and Japan. Cuba has been difficult to scout due to political reasons.

But what are MLB clubs missing at the professional and amateur levels by not having more of a scouting presence in places like South Korea? And why are such areas not heavily staffed?

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Football — what we Americans call soccer — rules Scotland’s sporting scene. Rugby runs a distant second, while golf, which was invented in St. Andrews, probably ranks third in terms of popularity.

Baseball barely registers a blip in the country’s sporting consciousness. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t played there. An organization called Baseball Scotland is keeping it alive, with hopes of increasing both interest and participation.

I learned more from one of its members while I was in Glasgow over the holidays.

Xander Harrison, a 24-year-old financial services analyst, plays for the Glasgow Comets. Over pints of Tennent’s Lager at a City Centre watering hole, Harrison told me that Baseball Scotland was formed in 2007 by the Edinburgh baseball club, which previously had teams in the British Baseball Federation, but had become disgruntled with the league organization and costs. There had also been a recognized BBF Scotland Division, and before that a Scotland Division in the old British Baseball League.

There is no organized baseball in the Scottish school system. Harrison began playing around the age 11, when he joined a youth league formed by the Glasgow Baseball Association. His team — one of eight in the league at the time— was the White Sox. That led to his becoming a fan of Chicago’s South Side club. Read the rest of this entry »

As the long dormant Hot Stove season shows signs of flickering to life, we continue our position-by-position look at hitter contact quality. Last week, we looked at a rather moribund group of AL left fielders; today, it’s their NL counterparts, whose 2016 production was much more significant. As a reminder, we’re utilizing granular exit-speed and launch-angle data to measure how position players “should have” performed in comparison to their actual stat lines.

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One of the great things about FIP, in my estimation, is the ease with which one can understand its value. If you’re watching a pitcher for your preferred team and ask yourself “What outcome would bother me the most right here?” a home run is the clear answer. A walk is second. A single, double, or triple isn’t ideal, of course. In the case of every ball in play, though, there’s at least some chance for the defense to make a play. The walk and home run don’t allow that. They are, almost uniformly, decisively negative.

Conversely, a strikeout is generally the best outcome for a pitcher*. A batter who strikes out create no opportunity for value.

*Outside of a double play, of course. That requires a runner at first and less than two outs, though, something that happens less than 20% of the time.

What FIP does is to take those three outcomes and transform them into a pitching stat that’s consistent from year to year and better predicts future ERA than ERA itself does. One thing for which FIP doesn’t account, though, is all of those balls that are hit into play.

Or maybe it does.

We know that a pitcher exerts a decent amount of control over the types of batted balls he concedes. He might be a ground-ball pitcher, a fly-ball pitcher or a mix of both. Newer data pushes us closer to the conclusion that a pitcher has some control over how hard a ball is hit, as well — although most of the control does appear to come from the batter.

Statcast has given us the ability to help reach those conclusions. The graph below comes from the work of Sean Dolinar and Jonah Epstein — you can play around with their tool here — and illustrates the degree to which a pitcher’s observed launch angle and exit velocity represents his true-talent launch angle and exit velocity.

As you can see, there’s more hope for arriving at something like “true-talent” launch angle. And this makes sense: as noted above, we talk frequently about “ground-ball” and “fly-ball” pitchers. Grounders and flies are expressions of a pitcher’s control over launch angle. The relationship between a pitcher and his exit velocity is a bit more speculative, though.

Yesterday, I discussed how there was a detectable relationship between those two variables even looking at one year compared to the next. We also have a relationship (as discussed yesterday) between exit velocity and FIP, even if there’s also a decent bit of noise in there.

To see how the relationship with FIP works, it might be helpful to break down the components of FIP. The chart below depicts the correlation coefficient between average exit velocity and HR/9, BB/9, and K/9 for 186 single-seasons from 2015 and 2016 for the 93 pitchers who recorded more than 100 innings in both years.

While it’s possible that there’s some sort of relationship between strikeouts, walks, and exit velocity, that relationship doesn’t easily present itself in the data above. Where there does seem to be some sort of relationship is in home runs. Now let’s take a look at three groups from 2016: those with a high average exit velocity, those with a low average exit velocity, and a large group in the middle.

While the relationship between exit velocity and both strikeout and walk numbers appears to offer some promise, it might be better to consider them more deeply on another day. Not only is the coefficient lower for both those variables than for home runs, but strikeouts and walks exert less of an overall effect over FIP than homers.

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The last time I saw Drew Smyly, it was during one of the lowest points of his career. It was July and he’d just completed a stretch of 20.2 innings over which he’d allowed 21 earned runs. He’d been assured that his job was secure, for the moment, but when a local beat writer asked him how it felt, the pitcher had a hard time looking up, doing his best to provide an honest answer before moving on to the next question — any other question, please. I obliged, and asked him about the home runs, pointing out that his strikeouts and walks were fine. Up came the eyes, and on was the conversation.

Back then, the focus for me was organization-wide: the Rays got hit harder by the home run bug last year than most teams, perhaps because they threw more high fastballs than any other team in the league. And yeah, Smyly, because of the unique nature of his stuff, will always throw high in the zone, and will always give up a few more homers than most.

But we did talk about Smyly’s particular issues last year, and what he was planning on doing about it. And it looks like he capitalized on that conversation somewhat, because things changed a bit from that day forward. The real question, though, is did it change enough?

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Over the 50-plus years since their inception, the Mets organization has established a tradition of drama. When they win, they seem to win big. When they lose, they self-immolate in spectacular fashion. If I were to tell you a team were Metsing themselves, you’d probably know what I mean. There are likely many reasons for this — the local media, the size of the market, the team itself — but it seems true, nevertheless.

Despite their penchant for theatrics, the Mets have made the playoffs in each of the last two seasons. They’ve done it despite an avalanche of injuries and all sorts of extracurricular nonsense. They went all the way to Game Five of the World Series in 2015, and had the bad luck of running into the buzzsaw of Madison Bumgarner’s left arm in the 2016 Wild Card game.

They’re by no means done, of course. The Mets still have a dynamic young rotation, and they still have Yoenis Cespedes. That’s a great place to start when building a contender. They’ve also got good secondary players in guys like Asdrubal Cabrera, Lucas Duda, and Neil Walker, and a young bat with a bright future in Michael Conforto. Grizzled veteran? Have some Curtis Granderson. Local hero who’s also a capable utility bat, and can crush lefty pitching? Everybody loves Wilmer Flores. If you believe in miracles, they may even have David Wright (remember him?) back for a game or two. The Mets can play ball.

And yet, they still have so much work to do. The Mets are still on track to go into 2017 with real uncertainty behind home plate and a bullpen that leaves much to be desired — especially once you consider that they’ll probably be without Jeurys Familia for a month or so due to a likely domestic-violence suspension. Jay Bruce still doesn’t really fit onto the roster, especially since the re-signing of Cespedes and the need for Conforto to get consistent plate appearances, and the fact that the National League has yet to adopt the designated hitter.

There are still weeks to go before spring training gets into swing, and there are still plenty of free agents out there. A large number of them are relievers, and good ones at that. The Mets have time to make themselves better and ready for a true contention run. We’ll see if they do that.

We’ve not yet been blessed with Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections for the kings of Queens, nor for that matter have we asked Kevin James for his feelings on the subject. In lieu of these, we’ll turn to our Depth Charts assessment of the Mets, and to their official depth chart. Because there are so many balls in the air with their position players (the health of Wright, whether or not Jay Bruce will be on the team, etc.), let’s focus on the bullpen for now. It’s pretty good at the top! Familia, Addison Reed and Hansel Robles can hold their own. It gets fuzzy after that.

The official Mets chart lists Josh Edgin, Josh Smoker, Erik Goeddel, and Sean Gilmartin. The Mets can do better.

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In recent times, pitchers generally been rewarded for three performance skills: strikeout rate, walk rate and ground-ball percentage. The influence of the BABIP Gods has largely been ignored or discounted.

Blaine Boyer has pitched in parts of 10 major-league seasons. He’s never earned more than $1 million in a given year for his efforts.

He had the lowest strikeout percentage – 9.2 % – in all of baseball last season. He’s just one of two pitchers to throw at least 50 innings last season and strike out fewer than 10% of batters faced. Zach Neal was the other culprit.

Since 2014, Boyer has the eighth-lowest strikeout percentage in baseball (12.4%). He’s not an elite ground-ball pitcher. And while he limits walks, he’s not an elite command-and-control artist. His fastball velocity, and modest strikeout rates, have declined three straight seasons. He’s 35. It’s not the most glowing free-agent resume.

But since 2014, he owns a 3.31 ERA – and 3.73 FIP – despite striking out just 88 batters in 171 innings.

Boyer is interesting because he’s a pitcher of extremes. When taking into account exit velocity and pitches barreled, no pitcher induced weaker contact last season. And no pitcher missed fewer bats.

If Boyer’s agent were looking for a gift to help shop his client, it arrived Thursday when MLB.com released a list of its top-five Statcast stunners from 2016. Wrote Andrew Simon for MLB.com:

Out of 265 pitchers who had at least 150 balls put in play against them, Boyer allowed the lowest rate of barrels (1.0 percent), on the strength of an average 86.2 mph exit velocity that ranked 11th.

That avoidance of solid contact is how a pitcher with a fastball averaging less than 93 mph and with MLB’s lowest strikeout rate (minimum 40 innings) managed to survive in the big leagues. Boyer posted a 3.95 ERA across 66 innings, with only 26 Ks.

Want to see some weak contact?

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Part of growing up is realizing that some no-hitters aren’t necessarily great pitching performances. Try telling an eight-year-old that the six-walk no-hitter she’s watching is less impressive than a one-hit, no-walk shutout and she’ll look at you like you’re from another planet. If you explain that same thing to an adult, she probably won’t turn off the TV, but will probably concede you have a point. No-hitters have a magic that transcends the actual logic of the achievement. That’s perfectly fine, of course, as one’s enjoyment of an event doesn’t need to correlate precisely with it’s degree of difficulty.

But it’s worth considering why the no-hitter is magical. Most of it is probably the name and the history, but I’ll propose another reason: it’s a razor’s edge accomplishment. In other words, as soon as the pitcher allows a hit, the entire thing is over. When Barry Bonds was chasing Hank Aaron, if he failed to hit a home run, there would always be another chance. If a batter falls below .400, he can always bring his average back up. When you’re dealing with an accomplishment based on a zero, everything is exciting because it could be gone at any moment.

This is why I was so interested in Chase Utley‘s no-double play season. Every single plate appearance mattered. Well, in preparing last week’s post on Derek Dietrich’s elite ability to get hit with the baseball, I noticed another zero-based accomplishment that’s pretty extraordinary: Coco Crisp hasn’t been hit by a pitch in more than five years.

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We know a few things for certain regarding Mallex Smith, who was acquired by Tampa Bay along with two prospects for left-handed starter Drew Smyly on Wednesday.

For starters, he’s fast.

And that speed allows him to cover considerable ground, and overcome less than perfectly efficient routes, in the outfield …

He has 80-grade speed, according a number of evaluators, and stole bases at a 79.2% rate over five minor-league seasons.

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When it comes to batted-ball exit velocity, its a lot easier to write about hitters. It’s become fairly clear that hitting the ball hard is a skill, and that the numbers are mostly consistent from year to year.

When it comes to pitching, however, things are much less clear. Given the outcomes for individual batted balls based on exit velocity — even in the absence of the complementary launch angles — suppressing exit velocity appears to be a benefit for pitchers. Given how much control hitters exert over exit velocity, it stands to reason that pitchers have considerably less control. Whether they have any control at all is something we can begin to determine by looking at Baseball Savant’s full-season data from 2015 and 2016.

First, let’s take a quick look at the relationship between exit velocity and ERA and FIP compared to a few other stats: K/9, BB/9, HR/9, and BABIP. I took a look at the 93 pitchers who recorded at least 100 innings in both 2015 and 2016 for comparison. The chart below shows the r-squared figures between the single-season stats for ERA and FIP with the stats mentioned above. The higher the number, the stronger the relationship.

As we might expect, strikeouts, walks, and homers all have a pretty strong relationship with FIP. Those, of course, are the three variables used to calculate FIP. BABIP has zero relationship with FIP, which isn’t surprising, given that FIP purposefully excludes balls in play. Exit velocity doesn’t have an incredibly strong relationship with FIP, but it does seem like one exists. On the ERA side, exit velocity has the same r-squared as in FIP, but BABIP becomes more of a factor for ERA, bringing homers down some, walks down a little, and strikeouts down to close to the same relationship on ERA as a pitcher’s average exit velocity.

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