It was in many ways a very normal late-July afternoon: Fan blasting, a 1.5-liter water bottle at my side, idly watching the Yankees from my couch. Gio Urshela hit a weak single into right field, and the crowd, whose noise had been hovering at a comfortable murmur up to that point, cheered. In that moment, if I hadn’t looked at the screen, if I’d just taken in the familiar sonic cues of televised baseball, I could almost have convinced myself that it was a normal baseball game in a normal major league season.

Except the crowd kept cheering. It was just a little unimpressive single, and there were two out. The sound, flat and consistent, stretched far beyond where you would expect a collective breath, that fracturing of excitement that happens when one play has ended and everyone is anticipating the next one. And when it did fade, it didn’t dissolve the way it usually does, back into the thousands of individual conversations, all with their own volumes and paces. It faded back to that comfortable murmur, smooth and fast, like someone pushing down a volume slider. When Urshela was caught in a rundown soon after, there wasn’t the dismayed frenzy of people groaning, yelling “No! No!” in frustrated inevitability, standing up in their seats as though doing so could convince the deviant baserunner of the error of their ways. There was just a rise, and then a fall; gentle and unified, a mechanical sigh. Urshela left, and the inning was over. Cut to commercial. Go get a snack.

But wait, no — the inning wasn’t over, somehow. There were, undeniably, three out, and there was, undeniably, the large form of Aaron Judge standing at the plate. The eyes of Aaron Boone and Joe Girardi, peeking out from over their masks and looking across the diamond, connected. The inning would continue. Vince Velasquez, on the mound, would throw a few more pitches. Why? Because he needed to, maybe. Because he might as well.

And when Judge launched a fastball into the empty seats in right, he rounded the bases tentatively, confused. The ball had left the yard, and the lights were flashing, and the noise had swelled. On the replay, they showed the Statcast data, the exit velocity and the ball’s high arc in the air. All the signs we have come to associate with a home run. But was it? This is baseball we’re watching, right? Read the rest of this entry »

This morning, Jason Martinez took us through the back-end of the bullpen rankings. Now, we conclude the player rankings (a summary will run tomorrow) the same way most great baseball games do: with elite bullpens.

A substantial caveat for readers: There are some positions for which there is a cleaner, wider gap between the top teams and the bottom, where we can more definitively say that some teams are better than others. For instance, it’s clear the best center field situation belongs to the Angels because of Mike Trout, and that Cleveland belongs at or near the top of the shortstop hierarchy because of Francisco Lindor. Relief pitching is not one of these positions. Sure, we have the bullpens ranked, and you can see their statistical projections above and below, but notice the margins here, and that they’re even thinner than usual because of a shortened season, and recall how volatile relievers are generally. Winning a single, close, coin-flip game is more significant this year than ever before, which means bullpen performance will simultaneously be as meaningful and as volatile as ever.

I’m interested in the benefits of stocking bullpens with pitchers who have varied release points, as well as mechanical looks and repertoire shapes that are different from one another, so I’ve included rudimentary overlays of some of each team’s reliever release points to hopefully give visual learners a more concrete idea of what I’m talking about, while also highlighting which teams seem to care more about having varied looks than others. Read the rest of this entry »

While researching his latest article, Ben Lindbergh of Effectively Wild and The Ringer asked me and David Appelman if we had data for the most WAR accrued over any given 60-game stretch for a player since 2002 (Hint: It’s Barry Bonds). One question begets others, like who had the worst WAR over 60-games since 2002 (poor Ryan Doumit). The next thing we knew, we had literally millions rows of data, so we decided to make a leaderboard out of them so you can use the data we found.

Creating a quirky leaderboard for this equally quirky baseball season takes database resources and developer time. Your continued support and Membership allows us to afford those resources and create a leaderboard you won’t find anywhere else. If you haven’t already, please consider becoming a FanGraphs Member or donating to the site, so that we can continue to create awesome tools to answer your (and Ben’s) baseball questions.

The Basics

• We have 60-game rolling stats for batters.
• We have 12-game rolling stats for pitchers. By default we only show 12-game spans that have all been starts.
• The rolling stats are delineated by season, so each span of games occurs within the same season.
• This is an extension of the data engine behind our rolling graphs on the player pages, except pivoted into a leaderboard.
• Unfortunately, the length of the rolling stats are fixed to 60 or 12 games, and can’t be changed to other values.
• Since these are rolling stats, you can have spans that have fewer than 60 or 12 games. This typically happens at the beginning of the season or if a player didn’t play enough games over the course of the entire season.
• We include data from 1974 to 2019.

Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, we covered the good and the bad of the league’s rotations. Today, we turn our attention to the relievers.

Between the piggybacking, the Opener, and whatever other new strategies managers decide to test out, the 2020 version of the bullpen likely won’t be quite the same as in years past. But it will probably still feature a lot of good comeback stories, a fair number of injuries (and disappointments), and pitchers you’ve never heard of who can throw the baseball very, very hard. One of the things that makes baseball so interesting is that new talents and triumphs emerge every year, especially in a place as volatile as the bullpen.

You should take that into account, then, when assessing these rankings. Every bullpen can be good; every bullpen can be bad. And the gaps this year are sometimes rather narrow — the Reds (a contending team) and the Orioles (a… not contending team) are projected for basically the same WAR from their relievers. Things widen out at the extremes, with the Rays and Yankees both forecast to be worth about 2.0 WAR, while the Royals are due for just 0.3, but it isn’t hard to imagine some bad injury luck or a hot run shaking things up before the season’s done. Of course, some teams need a lot more things to go right than others, and those teams tend to reside here. If a squad finds itself wistfully hoping for an oft-injured closer to stay healthy, or a rookie’s surprisingly good season to repeat, or for a few too many guys to take a step forward, or pitch like they did when they were young, then it’s probably a bullpen ranked in the bottom half of the league. Unless, somehow, it proves not to be. Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier today, Paul Sporer took you through baseball’s 16th-to-30th ranked rotations. Now, we get to the good stuff.

What is a starting pitcher? While baseball’s rules have been relatively stable throughout the game’s history, being a starter in 2020 means something very different than it did in 1870, 1920, or even 1970. A starting pitcher in the 1800s was frequently the pitcher in any given game. When Hall of Fame pitcher (and later, Twitter superstar), Old Hoss Radbourn pitched for the 1884 Providence Grays, he started 75 of the team’s 114 games, completing 73 of them.

Being a starter meant something else in the early 20th century. They were still workhorses expected to finish a large percentage of their games, but they were part of a pitching staff, not lone wolves. Jack Chesbro was the last 50-game starter, in 1904. Four-man rotations became the standard and league leaders in games-started ranged from the high 30s to the low 40s. The only exception was one last surge in the early 70s from rubber-armed knuckleballers Wilbur Wood and Phil Niekro. The four-man rotation then became a five-man affair, and it’s now been 33 years since a pitcher started 40 games (Charlie Hough, 1987) and 40 years since one threw 300 innings (Steve Carlton, 1980). Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, we covered the game’s position players as part of our positional power rankings. Now we move to the pitching side, starting with the bottom half (16-30) of the starting rotation rankings.

The latter half of the starter rankings are almost evenly split between the leagues, leaning 8-7 toward the National League. But five of the last seven are from the American League with each division represented at least once, furthering the notion that the AL is a league of haves and have-nots for at least another season. (Of those five, only the Toronto Blue Jays are seen as having an outside chance to compete and that’s due more to their offense than anything else.)

Keep in mind that the short season tightens things up quite a bit, too. Consider last year’s rankings, where the 16th-ranked Reds were projected for 10.6 WAR, three wins clear of the 24th ranked Brewers. This year the Cardinals slot 16th with a 4.7 mark, just 0.7 wins better than the 24th ranked Red Sox. A single over- or underachiever could sway things substantially for their team. Prospects might be the biggest needle-movers if they can secure roles; Mitch Keller (58) and Brady Singer (31) are the only Top 100 arms projected for 30-plus innings, while Matt Manning (28), Spencer Howard (24), Nate Pearson (21), Tarik Skubal (17), Casey Mize (14), and Sixto Sanchez (7) will battle for starts once the season gets underway.

The Cardinals, Cubs, Phillies, and Diamondbacks are seen as playoff dark horses (or frontrunners in some cases) based on their rosters as a whole, but if you had to select a rotation in the 21-30 range that could lead its team into a postseason berth, which one would you pick? Focus solely on the staff, avoid citing Trout & Co. or the Baby Blue Jays overcoming their rotation deficiencies, and let me know your favorite in the comments! Read the rest of this entry »

This morning, we concluded our review of the outfield with Jay Jaffe’s look at right fielders. Now we wrap up the position players with designated hitter.

It’s hardly a secret that the era of the dedicated slugger at designated hitter is over. The hulking, positionless behemoth that so many think of hasn’t been the norm at the position for years. The “new-school” model is a whirring mass of position players getting rest while still playing. A second baseman here, a left fielder there, sprinkle in a dash of good-hitting catcher on an off day, and bam, you’ve got a modern DH.

The top of our list, however, shows the inadequacy of that DH model. That’s something that many AL teams do these days, and it’s something that most every NL team will do this year without the benefit of a roster built around the position. But the teams that get the most value out of designated hitter aren’t doing it in parts. They’re tabbing single players — in many cases players who could play the field if necessary, but not always — and giving them the lion’s share of the at-bats. Yordan Alvarez, J.D. Martinez, Nelson Cruz — give me any of them over the best time-share DH situation in the league, the Cubs and their Kyle Schwarber and Friends model.

There are still many ways to build a DH. You can feed many mouths, or let the big dog eat. And there’s no real need to stand out at the position to be a great team; the Astros have Alvarez, but that’s a happy accident of his development, not a long-term plan on their part. Think of DH as a fancy dessert after a great meal; a standout one sticks in your mind, but it’s certainly not integral to the experience. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday saw us examine left and center field. Today, we bring the outfield review to a close with a look at right field.

“History” is almost certainly too strong a word for something that’s only been tracked for a limited amount of time and that can so easily slip below the radar, but last year, for the first time during the stretch covered by our splits (2002 onward), right fielders provided more offense than any other position. Both they and first basemen collectively finished in a virtual tie for the positional lead in wRC+ at 108, but a closer look shows that right fielders produced 210.6 batting runs, compared to 209.4 for first basemen. That’s a difference that the slightest tweak in park factors might change, but it’s worth noting nonetheless, particularly after right fielders finished just 4.7 runs behind first basemen in 2018; the gap had been over 100 runs — still just a few per team per season — in favor of the first basemen in each of the previous four seasons.

Driving that 2019 performance were the NL’s top two MVP contenders, winner Cody Bellinger and runner-up (and 2018 winner) Christian Yelich, with 2018 AL winner Mookie Betts third, but here’s the thing: those guys are on the move. Bellinger, who started 102 times in right field, 28 at first base, and 21 in center, enters this shortened season as the Dodgers’ regular at the last of those positions, having demonstrated the athleticism to handle the job, at least on a part-time basis. Oh, and there’s also the matter of his having Betts as his new outfield neighbor thanks to that February blockbuster. As for Yelich, who made 121 starts in right field before his season ended on September 10 due to a fractured right kneecap, he’s back in left field, where he spent most of 2014-16 and much of ’18, and where his defensive metrics have generally been the strongest. Newcomer Avisaíl García will play right.

Of course, there’s plenty of talent at the position beyond the MVP winners. Aaron Judge hits the ball harder than anyone in the game; his problem has been injuries, not performance. Ronald Acuña Jr., who’s on the top tier when it comes to the game’s most electrifying players, is slated to play mostly in right field after spending most of his 2018 and ’19 seasons in left and center. Michael Conforto, miscast in center, has taken to right, Max Kepler has come into his own, Joey Gallo showed signs of breaking out before getting hurt, and Bryce Harper is still a force. Further down the list are late bloomers like Hunter Dozier (another relative newcomer to the position), Brian Goodwin, and Michael Yastrzemski; former top prospects hoping to turn things around such as Nomar Mazara and Gregory Polanco (a 2018 breakout set back by injuries last year); and onetime first-rounders looking for that first sustained taste of success in the majors, such as Kyle Lewis, DJ Stewart, and Lewis Brinson. And hopefully, Jo Adell will debut this year. It’s a group as worth watching as any position. Read the rest of this entry »

This morning, Ben Clemens assessed left field. Now Craig Edwards examines the position the best player in baseball calls home.

Mike Trout is the best player in baseball. Mike Trout plays center field. Ergo, Mike Trout is the best center fielder in baseball. After Trout, we have another genuine star in Cody Bellinger, a very good player in George Springer, and then a whole lot of maybes. There’s a lot of youth and athleticism here, as one might expect from a position that requires covering a lot of ground, but there aren’t a lot of guarantees when it comes to production. Byron Buxton, Ramón Laureano, and Luis Robert are all in the top 10. So are Lorenzo Cain and Aaron Hicks, both coming off down years. While we could see some breakouts, the projections are fairly conservative, only anticipating three teams above 1.5 WAR, which would be a four-win campaign in a full season. Read the rest of this entry »

After analyzing the infield positions, our attention shifts to the outfield. First up? Left field.

Ah, left field, the last refuge of scoundrels. Last year, we wondered if teams’ evolving understanding of defensive metrics was changing the kinds of players they stashed in left field. This year, despite Christian Yelich moving over from right, the answer is a resounding “nah.”

That’s not to say there are no Alex Gordon types, plus defenders without the necessary arm to handle right. Even with a universal DH, however, left field is the domain of the Willie Calhouns, Jesse Winkers, and Eloy Jiménezes of the world. Perhaps not coincidentally, it’s the shallowest position in the league; we project only four teams to accrue 1 or more WAR out of left this year, by far the least across all positions.

Is this a fluke of generations and circumstances? Will left field look different when Dylan Carlson establishes himself, or when a future outfield acquisition in Atlanta forces Ronald Acuña Jr. back to left? What if Giancarlo Stanton plays more left and less DH? There are certainly ways for left field to climb the rankings hierarchy. For now, however, it’s a big pile of middlingly athletic misfits who don’t have another clear spot on the diamond. Oh, and then Yelich and Juan Soto, both of whom are playing a completely different game than the rest of the field here. Read the rest of this entry »