Archive for Essential

We’ve created an interactive splits tool that allows you to create your own custom reports by combining splits of various metrics. All the splits that FanGraphs hosts are featured here, along with some new ones — including times through the order, outs and day/night.

The controls have three different sections: stats, splits and group by.

The “Stats” bar allows you to toggle between the three different groups of stats we currently host on a player’s split page. This isn’t too different from the standard, advanced and batted-ball tabs we feature elsewhere on the site.

The “Splits” bar is the most important control within the splits tool; this is where you can select which splits are applied. When no splits are applied, you’ll get the full season stats. When a split is applied like “vs. LHP,” you’ll get only the plate appearances against a left-handed pitcher. If you add another split like “Groundballs,” you’ll get all ground balls against left-handed pitchers. As you add splits from different categories, you’ll narrow the number of plate appearances.

The splits which are applied appear as blue blocks above the table. If you wish to remove a split, either click the “X” on the split or unselect it within its menu.

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Please welcome Michelle Jay to FanGraphs. You’ll generally find Michelle behind any type of camera lens or social media app. No matter which hat she is wearing at a particular time, we are excited to have her on board.

Dear readers, allow me to introduce you to the latest ways to find content from across FanGraphs’s family of blogs. You may already follow us on Twitter (@fangraphs) or Facebook (/fangraphs). Through those channels, we’ve been providing you a stream of nearly every single article published as they are published to the site. We’ll still continue to do that. But, now you’ll see some extra content, things you’ll get only by following us on social media.
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Recently, we started running out of t-shirts. As such, we thought it was high time to design some new ones. And design them we did. But we didn’t just stop at t-shirts. Oh no, constant reader, we went the extra mile this time. In addition to t-shirts, which now are available in both men’s and women’s sizes, we now have raglan t-shirts (again, both men’s and woman’s kinds), zip hoodie sweatshirts, baby onesies and hats. You might think of this as the holiday season come many months earlier than normal. And you’d be right.

The person we have to thank for all of this shiny new garb is Aaron Gershman of Creative Sentencing, who you should absolutely hire for your next design project.

Let’s take a look at the designs, which are available for purchase at this very moment.

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Back in January, I made some tweaks to my KATOH projection system, and have been using that updated model for the past several months. That model was unquestionably better than the previous versions, but it left me unsatisfied. While it addressed many of the flaws from previous iterations, there was still a lot of information it wasn’t taking into account.

I’ve been plugging away behind the scenes, and finally have a new version KATOH to share with the world. In what follows, you’ll find some detail on the new model, including its notable updates. I’ll be using this model in all of my prospect analysis from this point forward. Below, you’ll find a quick run-through of the notable tweaks, followed by an updated top-100 list.

*****

Added Features

Choosing projection window based on level, rather than age

In my previous model, I projected out based on a player’s age. If a player were 22, I projected him through age 28; If he were 24, I projected through age 30. This resulted in KATOH undervaluing players who were old for their level. The goal of KATOH is to predict the value a player will generate during his six-plus years of team control. By projecting a 22-year-old through age 28, KATOH failed to capture some of that value in cases where the 22-year-old was still in A-ball.

This time around, I chose my windows based on level, rather than age. I projected the next six seasons for players in Triple-A. I did the next seven for players in Double-A, eight for A-ballers, and nine for Rookie ballers.

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And now here we are. After ticking through 40 of the most valuable players in baseball, we’ve come to the top 10, and what a remarkable list of players it is. The wave of young talent that has poured into baseball makes this group the best crop of talent I think I’ve ever seen in doing this exercise, and for the first time in a long time, there was actually a real question about who would rank #1. The top four, in fact, shifted around numerous times, and I didn’t settle on their final order until yesterday. And even at #5 and #6, you could make a legitimate argument that they belong in the conversation. This is a deep, strong, elite group of young players. With these kinds of stars already dominating at an early age, baseball looks to be in very good hands for the foreseeable future.

As a reminder for those who didn’t read the first four parts of the series, we’ve significantly upgraded the way we’re presenting the information this year. On the individual player tables, the Guaranteed Dollars and Team Control WAR — which are provided by Dan Szymborski’s ZIPS projections — rows give you an idea of what kind of production and costs a team could expect going forward, though to be clear, we’re not counting the rest of 2016 in those numbers; they’re just included for reference of what a player’s future status looks like. And as a reminder, we’re not ranking players based on those projections, as teams aren’t going to just make trades based on the ZIPS forecasts. That said, they’re a useful tool to provide some context about what a player might do for the next few years.

With those items covered, let’s get to it. Here is my take on the 10 most valuable assets in baseball.

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We’re cutting the ribbon on the 2016 July 2 Sortable Board. For background on the J2 process or the scouting grades and future value grades on the board, please refer to our July 2 Primer and this piece on the 20-80 scale. I’ll have full scouting reports up on the prospects ranked 11-25 tomorrow and the top ten on Friday and links to the reports will be added.

Some Notes on the Board

Included in the group are all the players currently eligible to sign during this J2 period, as well as those who I anticipate will be eligible at some point in the next eleven and a half months. This includes Cuban players like Randy Arozarena and Vlad Gutierrez, who are both a half-decade older than the others in the class. While I agree that the age gap creates a bit of conundrum, those players are subject to bonus pools and teams are forced to reconcile it in their own evaluations/valuations, so I think it’s important that we do the same here.

The board has 25 ranked players and then a group of others whom I consider to be 35 FVs listed below that in no particular order. The class has more players, and many of them will also be covered in the reports we roll out the rest of this week, but they profile either as org players or are too raw to consider as 35 FV players (or better) based on the sources to whom I’ve spoken.

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Recently, within this site’s electronic pages, the author facilitated a crowdsourcing effort with a view towards reproducing the broadcaster rankings which appeared here roughly four years ago. More recently, that same author published the updated results for television broadcasts here and for radio here.

The service which the author has failed to render, however, is to present all the results from that endeavor in one easily digestible form. The purpose of this post is to right that vile wrong.

Below, the reader will find two tables. The first contains the complete rankings for the league’s 62 distinct television and radio broadcast teams. The second features only the highest-ranked broadcast for each major-league club.

As in every other case, it’s important to stress here that the results of this exercise aren’t intended to represent the objective quality or skill of the relevant announcers, but rather to provide a clue as to which broadcast teams are likely to appeal most (or least) to the readers of this site. Note, furthermore, that the overall ratings which appear below are not mere averages of the charisma and analysis scores which accompany them, but a distinct category for which respondents submitted scores independently.

Those dozen caveats having been stated explicitly — and many more implied — here are the results of the 2016 broadcaster rankings.

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Today at FanGraphs, we’re introducing an interactive run-expectancy tool that incorporates the batter’s skill into the run-expectancy value. The tool, developed by the rather incredible Sean Dolinar, allows the user to input a few factors, including one to account for the batter, and in turn spits out a number estimating how many runs will be scored for the rest of the inning.

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We have updated the graphs on our player pages that have been a part of the site since FanGraphs was founded in 2005. The player graphs are now much more interactive and have been updated to feature some of the most popular and commonly used advanced stats on FanGraphs, such as WAR, wRC+, wOBA, OPS and FIP. We are also retaining the left/right and home/away splits options. These new graphs are interactive and have tool tips available on some data points.

There are four modes that represent different ways to delineate time: By Year, By Age, By Day and By Game. By Year and By Age are similar to each other; they replicate what has previously been available on the player pages showing season stats on a line graph with a league-average line. The league-average line is the most noticeable difference between Year and Age. Since the league average for a season is different than the average production for a given age.

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We all know by now about velocity being up league-wide and strikeouts having been on the rise for more than a decade. If you didn’t: welcome to baseball in 2016! Everyone throws 95 and there’s darn near 20 strikeouts a game now.

The inverse of that, naturally, is that walks are harder to come by. Pitchers are working outside the zone more than ever and hitters aren’t adjusting, and they’re having a harder time catching up to the heat even when it’s inside the zone. Hitters are finding themselves behind in the count far more often than we’ve seen in the past, and in the last two years, we’ve seen the two lowest league-wide walk rates in almost 50 years.

Which brings us to this year’s Chicago Cubs, who aren’t playing by those rules. They’re off to a ridiculous start, with a 6-1 record and a league-best +29 run differential. Their pitchers have struck out 56 batters and walked just nine. Thus far, they’ve looked every bit the powerhouse folks envisioned in the offseason. And there’s another part of this Cubs team that’s staying true to preseason expectations, an important part of the team’s DNA that hasn’t been given much publicity. It’s not a sexy characteristic, which would explain the lack of fanfare surrounding this trait, but it’s an important one. The 2016 Cubs have a very real chance to be the most disciplined lineup we’ve ever seen.

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