With the spread throughout baseball of wearable technology — that is, devices like the Zephyr Bioharness which are capable of capturing all manner of physiological data — it’s tempting to consider everything that teams and players could possibly extract from the information that’s gathered.

While such technology is currently used to monitor mostly fatigue and workload via calorie consumption — noted foodie Russell Martin employed the Bioharness in Pittsburgh to better understand how much he could eat without gaining weight — there are certainly other possible areas for innovation. Like, what more can we learn from heart rate in the midst of performance? Could we better understand performance under stress? How emotions influence play?

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This is Mike Hattery’s first piece as part of his September residency at FanGraphs. Hattery writes for the Cleveland-based site Waiting for Next Year. He can also be found on Twitter. Read the work of all our residents here.

While there are certainly examples to the contrary, it’s generally the case that outlets such as Baseball Prospectus and this esteemed institution approach their analytical work on an individual player in the context of that player’s value to his team. Since most writers begin as fans, and because fandom in baseball — and, ultimately, most sports — tends to begin with an allegiance to a city or team, this isn’t surprising.

For the actual major-league clubs, this imbalance is naturally even more pronounced. All 30 organizations feature an analytics department of some sort, and all 30 of those departments are constructed ultimately to benefit the team. Even in those instances, for example, where an observation about spin rate aids an individual pitcher, the added value is ultimately passed on to the club.

And here we arrive at a point of concern: while analytical work in baseball offers tremendous insight and can even benefit individual players, it appears that organizations have a significant advantage over players in their access to data and their capacity to use that data in decision making.

Now, if this analytical work were limited merely to assessing player value or estimating the possible range of a player’s outcomes, the informational asymmetry would represent less of a concern. However, as teams and public analysts continue their pursuit in the direction of health-risk modeling, the impact on players is increasingly serious.

In a recent piece illuminating the information gap between teams and agents, R.J. Anderson wrote the following:

The ongoing data revolution has obscured a simple fact. With teams receiving improved information, their greatest competitive advantage is perhaps no longer over one another. Rather, the information gulf now resides between the teams and the players — or, precisely, the players’ agents. With the league investing in new data sources, like Statcast, the gap could continue to grow.

Of most concern, perhaps, is that player agents are guaranteed no greater access to data than the common fan by the terms of the 2017-2021 MLB Collective Bargaining Agreement. Teams, meanwhile, are afforded extensive access to additional data gathered by Statcast technology.

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Each week, we publish north of 100 posts on our various blogs. With this post, we hope to highlight 10 to 15 of them. You can read more on it here. The links below are color coded — green for FanGraphs, brown for RotoGraphs, dark red for The Hardball Times and blue for Community Research.
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This is Ashley MacLennan’s sixth and final piece as part of her August residency at FanGraphs. Ashley is a staff writer for Bless You Boys, the SB Nation blog dedicated to the Detroit Tigers, and runs her own site at 90 Feet From Home. She can also be found on Twitter. Read the work of all our residents here.

“You gotta take care of your teammates sometimes. With me, if hitting a guy in the leg is what I have to do, then that’s what I did… I take care of my teammates and protect them.” Those were the words of Tigers relief pitcher Alex Wilson in the immediate aftermath of one of the most absurd and raucous games of baseball in recent memory.

During the August 24th day game between the Tigers and Yankees, the benches cleared three times and eight people were ejected, including players, managers, and coaches. Multiple players on both teams were – intentionally or not – hit by pitches. An array of fines and suspensions followed.

It was, for lack of a better word, a disaster.

It was also an object lesson in one of baseball’s most notoriously silly and problematic unwritten rules. The unwritten rules — a subset of conventions that dictate baseball etiquette but don’t exist in any official capacity — are intended to mandate how players act on the field and to establish repercussions if those players fail to abide by the code. Grandstanding and bat flips are a no-no, as we saw when Texas Rangers second baseman Rougned Odor sucker-punched Toronto Blue Jays outfielder Jose Bautista as revenge for Bautista’s famous 2015 postseason bat flip. Punishment is usually swift for someone who breaks the rules, but grudges often carry over into subsequent seasons.

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Earlier this season, there was a disagreement between Adrian Beltre and myself about how long I was permitted to remain in the visiting clubhouse at Progressive Field. I was there waiting on one of Beltre’s teammates (now ex-Ranger Jonathan Lucroy). The rest of the modestly sized media contingent had departed and the media-relations representative was nowhere to be found. I was the last reporter remaining. Beltre asked from his locker about 20 feet away why I was still in the clubhouse. He suggested I leave.

I motioned toward the time on the wall-mounted digital clock and explained I had a few minutes remaining. I have rights as a BBWAA card holder! He disagreed. Feeling outnumbered, feeling now as something of a trespasser — and preferring to fight another day and over something more significant — I attempted to depart the clubhouse with my dignity.

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Rich Hill keeps forcing us to rethink everything.

He has us rethinking how to pitch, finding success even while employing just a fastball and curve — and frequently utilizing the latter as his primary pitch.

Has has us rethinking when it’s appropriate to give up on an arm. Perhaps never, in his case. Hill’s return to the majors — and to a three-year, $48-million deal — began in independent ball two years ago.

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Yesterday at the site, managing editor Dave Cameron examined the early major-league success of Philadelphia corner-type Rhys Hoskins. Cameron noted that, while Hoskins’ 50 or so plate appearances were hardly sufficient to proclaim Hoskins a great success, that the process by which Hoskins had produced his strong early returns not only resembled the process with which he’s succeeded in the minors but also the sort utilized by other similarly overlooked players who’d parlayed less-than-scintillating tools into legitimate major-league careers.

Broadly speaking, Hoskins possesses what might be called the Matt Carpenter profile, but it’s also the Ian Kinsler profile and Daniel Murphy profile and Justin Turner profile. In addition to relatively modest pedigrees, this class of player exhibits two other commons traits: both (a) very high contact rates and (b) very low ground-ball rates.

Cameron notes the significance of this combination:

In general, these two metrics move in opposite directions. Guys with flat, level swings usually put the bat on the ball more often, while guys whose swings are designed for loft tend to have to accept some swing-and-miss as part of the deal. The qualified hitter with the lowest ground-ball rate this year? Joey Gallo, whom you might have heard strikes out sometimes. Such is the cost of swinging for elevation.

Players who are able both to elevate frequently and make contact at an elite rate have essentially hacked the system. They’re able to reap the benefits of getting the ball in the air without having to contend with the major cost — i.e. a decline in contact. Carpenter, Kinsler, Murphy? They all do it. Hoskins? He does it, too. Or he did it in the minors, at least. And if he continues to do it in the majors, he should exceed the expectations established by his prospect pedigree.

Hoskins likely isn’t the only prospect who possesses this combination of skills, however. And, if there are others, it might worthwhile to identify them. Which, that’s what I’ve endeavored to do here. The method I’ve utilized is a bit crude, but it nevertheless captures the basic skills for which we’re searching.

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When Danny Duffy first arrived in the big leagues, he was electric. As a guy, he’s naturally laid back — perhaps a product of having grown up in southern California — but he used to throw really hard. Unfortunately, the velocity didn’t necessarily translate to success. Duffy lacked real command of his repertoire. As the left-hander put it to me recently, he “had no idea where the ball was going.” He threw mostly just four-seam fastballs and a curve.

Duffy has evolved pretty considerably since his rookie season in 2011. It’s not that he’s just a command guy now — he still throws hard — but a lot has changed over the last few years. With more than a month left in the season, Duffy has already recorded the highest WAR figure (2.9) of his career.

What happened? What allowed him to refine his command, to establish a more ideal pitch mix? Duffy recently helped answer those questions, relating all the “aha” moments that led to a completely different, and much more successful, arsenal — an arsenal I address pitch by pitch in what follows.

The Fastball
This year is the closest Duffy has ever come to throwing more sinkers than four-seamers. There’s always a ground-ball benefit — “I started getting more ground balls, more weak contact,” said Duffy, who is currently enjoying the highest ground-ball rate of his career — but this change was more about command than outcomes on balls in play.

When Duffy first came up, the refrain was that he’d go as far as his command would take him. “I thought I had to be so fine when I was younger, because I struggled with the strike zone so much,” Duffy remembered. “Then I figured out that it was all about repetition. You can’t expedite it; experience will give it to you.”

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On Monday, I talked a bit about the AL MVP race and how Chris Sale should pretty clearly be the frontrunner at this point. Over in the National League, though, it’s not really possible to write a completely honest piece advocating for just one single candidate, because as of mid-August, there are nearly 10 guys with legitimate cases for the award.

The likely leader in the clubhouse right now is Paul Goldschmidt. The case for him is pretty easy to make: he’s the best player on a team that wouldn’t be in the postseason race without him, and no one is clearly outplaying him. He’s fifth in batting average, third in on-base percentage, and sixth in slugging, and for those who are still into those kinds of things, third in RBIs. He leads the NL in WAR, so he’s not a Juan Gonzalez-type of traditional candidate who gets exposed by looking deeper. The Diamondbacks are pretty likely to make the Wild Card game, so he’ll probably get the playoff-team boost. Overall, he’s got something to offer pretty much every kind of voter and would almost certainly be the favorite to win the award if it were held today.

But while Goldschmidt probably would have the most diverse appeal among voters, and would almost certainly finish in the top two or three on the most ballots, he might not be the top choice for as many voters as you’d think. For one, Giancarlo Stanton is going to hit 50 home runs and might end up at 60, so for those who just want the best slugger, there’s a huge gap between Goldschmidt and the NL’s premier home-run hitter.

For voters who prefer RBI as their go-to offensive metric — and there are still some around — Nolan Arenado is an easy sell, as he leads the league in that category and plays a spectacular third base. His team is also a surprise contender who wouldn’t be one without him, and his batting average and home-run totals are nearly the equal of Goldschmidt’s, so for a voter who wants to stick to how MVPs were picked back in the day, Arenado looks every bit Goldschmidt’s equal on offense and offers more value in the field.

But both of those guys are playing for Wild Card teams, and Stanton’s team is out of the race entirely, so if any voters decided to limit their pool for the top spot to players only guaranteed a playoff spot — since the voting has to be turned in before the Wild Card game is played, perhaps such a voter would decide that a Wild Card-losing team didn’t actually make “the playoffs” — they’d still have a cornucopia of deserving candidates from which to pick.

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In one of the least noticed trades before the July 31st deadline, the Rays and Orioles made a seemingly minor swap, with Tampa sending shortstop Tim Beckham to Baltimore for minor leaguer Tobias Myers. After acquiring Lucas Duda to take over at DH, the Rays had filled their infield and didn’t have regular at-bats for Beckham anymore, so they shipped him off to Baltimore for an 18-year-old in short-season ball.

Only since that seemingly inconsequential swap, Beckham has been the single best player in baseball, and we have to ask if the Orioles somehow stole a quality shortstop from their division rival.

Know how Giancarlo Stanton has been hitting homers every game? Beckham has been better.

Notice how Joey Votto is closing in on the record for consecutive games on base multiple times? Beckham has been better.

Enjoying how Mike Trout is establishing a new level of greatness, even by his own standards? Beckham has been better.

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