When the 2022 season opened to fanfare and excitement, one of the main talking points was the record-setting arrival of top prospects. After countless rebuilds, a global pandemic, and a prolonged lockout, fans deserved to watch budding superstars duke it out in games that matter. Some of them, like Seiya Suzuki and Jeremy Peña, have been thriving right out of the gate; both rank among the top ten in batter WAR as of Thursday’s games. Others like Spencer Torkelson might have fallen a bit off the radar but have still been successful per wRC+ or batted ball metrics.

Much to our annoyance, though, there’s always a flip side we’d like to ignore. Enter Julio Rodríguez, whose triple slash of .136/.208/.159 is terrible not just amongst fellow rookies, but also all of major league baseball. This isn’t to say we should be concerned; Rodríguez remains one of the most talented rookies around, and in the grand scheme of things, 12 games and counting mean next to nothing. Don’t smash that emergency glass just yet!

But in his opportunities to prove himself, Rodríguez hasn’t been offered fair terms. One of the most fundamental and effective traits a hitter can possess is plate discipline, which is partly the ability to ignore unfavorable pitches. It’s something Rodríguez has demonstrated several times in a limited number of plate appearances, with confidence to boot, but that bravado hasn’t quite translated into results:

This is a chart showing all eight (!) called third strikes outside the zone against Rodríguez, a league-leading total. The plotted strike zone is adjusted for his height, by the way, so there’s no ambiguity here. It gets even worse when you actually look at some of these pitches, which the umpires gift-wrapped for pitchers who made objective mistakes. For example, here’s a Sonny Gray sinker that is rarely, if ever, called a strike, especially in a two-strike situation:

Uh-huh. Sure, that’s totally a decision befitting a stadium named Target Field.

You could maybe argue that Rodríguez, whose two-strike swing rate of 40.3% is the third-lowest among all hitters, needs to up his aggression. The cost of taking a third strike is high, so the math tells us that a batter ought to hack away instead. But Suzuki has a similar two-strike swing rate (42.7%), and he’s yet to be punished for his passivity. Whatever flaws Rodríguez might have right now as a hitter don’t excuse the fact that very few calls have went his way. This is a clear problem, one that has Mariners fans understandably angsty. Read the rest of this entry »

4/23 Update: It has come to our attention that in the switch to Statcast Fielding Runs Prevented (RAA), outfield positional adjustments were being improperly applied. This has now been corrected by zeroing out RAA for each individual position, on a seasonal basis, specifically for use in WAR. The tables below have been updated to include this correction.

Since we launched FanGraphs WAR in 2008, we have used various components of Ultimate Zone Rating (UZR) such as Range, Outfield Arm, and Double Play Conversion to evaluate position player fielding. Today, we’re changing one of those components. Retroactive to the 2016 season, we have swapped out the Range component of UZR for the Statcast metric Fielding Runs Prevented, which is Outs Above Average (OAA) converted to runs above average. The UZR Outfield Arm and Double Play Conversion components of WAR remain unchanged.

We believe the additional data points available in Statcast, such as a fielder’s starting location, help to improve the measurement of a player’s range, especially in situations where players are shifted.

The vast majority of players’ new WAR calculations fall within a +/-1 WAR range of their previous WAR figures. Since 2016, there are 49 individual seasons that have changed by more than one win, and 14 players whose WAR has changed by more than three wins for the entire six year span starting in 2016. Read the rest of this entry »

Pitchers are scary. I know this because I recently watched an outing by Matt Brash, who, despite his nonexistent command that day, used a scorching heater and two breaking balls to stymie a formidable Astros lineup. He walked six, but those free passes went along with five strikeouts and just two hits allowed. The Mariners won by a score of 7 to 2. So it goes.

Pitchers are scary, and they’re getting scarier, in large part because they’ve developed the ability to throw harder and harder. It probably doesn’t even bear repeating at this point, but because it’s the subject we’re on, let’s refresh ourselves. Back in 2008, the first year with PITCHf/x data, pitchers averaged 91.8 mph on their four-seam fastballs. Last season, they averaged 93.8. That the league as a whole has gained two miles per hour is indicative of substantial change.

It’s 2022 now. It’s early, but so far, pitchers have been averaging 93.9 mph on their fastballs, for an uptick of 0.1 mph. Such a small difference might not seem like much, or something we should focus on right now. But this is merely a cursory glance. We haven’t even separated the starters from the relievers, and it’s the latter group that most people associate with triple-digit wizardry. Are bullpens hiding the fact that rotations aren’t quite stretched out yet due to an abbreviated spring? Let’s find out:

Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Cleveland Guardians. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my own observations. This is the second year we’re delineating between two anticipated relief roles, the abbreviations for which you’ll see in the “position” column below: MIRP for multi-inning relief pitchers, and SIRP for single-inning relief pitchers.

A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. A much deeper overview can be found here.

All of the numbered prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details than this article and integrates every team’s list so readers can compare prospects across farm systems. It can be found here. Read the rest of this entry »

You had to know this one was coming. The moment needs no introduction; let’s just start with a clip:

The B?a?r?r?y? ?B?o?n?d?s? Corey Seager treatment. pic.twitter.com/Nfs1RHAiR2

— Texas Rangers (@Rangers) April 16, 2022

Intentional walk. Bases loaded. Mike Trout staring homeward in disbelief:

Was this a solid baseball decision by the numbers? No. No, it was not. I don’t really have to do the math to tell you that. But doing the math is what we do here at FanGraphs, so just to be certain, and also just for the sake of doing it, I ran through the details. You don’t have to read this article to learn whether it was a good choice or not. I’m telling you that part right up front – it wasn’t. Read the rest of this entry »

Nick Loftin could get away with covering the entire plate against high school and college hurlers. That’s far harder to do in pro ball, which is why the 23-year-old Kansas City Royals prospect — per the tutelage of the organization’s hitting instructors — is now dialing in on pitches that can he do more damage on. The message he’s been receiving is pretty straightforward: Look for something in a certain zone, and when you get it, don’t miss it.

The dictum is simple; the execution is anything but. Not when you’re facing pitchers who are throwing high-90s heaters and breaking balls that are cutting and diving in either direction.

“It’s easier said than done,” admitted Loftin, whom the Royals drafted 32nd overall in 2020 out of Baylor University. “Hitting a baseball is one of the hardest things to do — besides hitting a golf ball. That’s really hard to do, as well.”

Wait. A golf ball isn’t moving unpredictably at great speed. Rather, it’s just sitting there, motionless, ready to be struck at the swinger’s leisure. For someone with the athleticism to play shortstop and centerfield in professional baseball, squaring up an immobile object should be as easy as pie.

Not necessarily. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to KwanGraphs, your source for everything… wait, no, that’s not right. Welcome to FanKwan, your … no, still not it. This part is definitely true, though: today I’m here to talk about Steven Kwan, the Guardians phenom who swung for our hearts and didn’t miss. He was our No. 57 prospect heading into the season, and ZiPS concurred, calling him its No. 62 prospect. He’s been better than that so far — a top 10 hitter in baseball, more or less. Can he keep it going? Will he bat .330 with more walks than strikeouts? I crunched data and watched film to come up with some educated speculation.

Let’s start with the great news: Kwan’s phenomenal bat control is as real as it gets. He’s swung and missed either one or two times (and hey, good news for pedants everywhere, I’ve even thrown in a special postscript at the end of this post so everyone can whinge about foul tips in the comments) in his major league career so far, which is obviously great. Even better, this isn’t something new. In 2021, he was the best contact hitter in the minors, bar none.

Over 1,388 pitches I captured, Kwan swung 551 times. He swung and missed 39 times, and had another seven foul tips. That’s a swinging strike rate of either 2.8% or 3.3% depending on your definition, both of which are otherworldly. The contact rate is no joke, either: he made contact on more than 90% of his swings, which led the high minors and would have placed him in a dead heat with David Fletcher for best in the big leagues.
Read the rest of this entry »

The Dodgers couldn’t have asked for much more from Clayton Kershaw than what he gave them in his first start of the 2022 season, and so they didn’t. Faced with the unenviable choice of letting the future Hall of Famer push himself into the red in pursuit of a perfect game — under frigid conditions in Minnesota, no less — or take a more prudent course with a 34-year-old hurler whose last regular-season appearance placed his future in doubt, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts went against all sentimentality. He pulled Kershaw after seven spotless innings and 80 pitches, a move that the pitcher later called “the right choice,” and the Dodgers settled for a combined one-hitter and a 7-0 victory at Target Field.

For those seven glorious innings, it felt as though the three-time Cy Young winner had turned back the clock. Kershaw struck out 13 of the 21 batters he faced, generating 20 swings and misses, including 17 (out of 27 swings) with his slider. He added another 13 called strikes, including four with the slider and seven with his four-seam fastball, which averaged a modest 90.6 mph, 0.7 mph below last year’s mark. His 41% CSW% for the day was a mark he surpassed only twice last year, first with a 44% CSW% in his 13-strikeout June 27 outing against the Cubs — his last unfettered start of the season, as he landed on the injured list with inflammation in his left forearm following a four-inning start on July 3 — and then a 42% CSW in his September 19 start against the Diamondbacks, the best outing of his abbreviated September. Read the rest of this entry »

The Colorado Rockies are projected to be gobsmackingly bad in 2022. Look no further than the summary of this season’s positional power rankings: They have three positions that rank 30th and six below 20th, which works out to a cumulative last-place finish. Most of it traces back to a lack of certifiable talent on Colorado’s roster. But some of it, inevitably, is a function of Coors Field. Today, I will mainly focus on the fact that at home, the Rockies allow lots and lots of runs. The common thinking is that this is because Coors is an environment conducive to home runs. While true, there’s another factor that arguably matters more. Check out this graph:

When a fly ball or line drive is hit at Coors, the resulting .459 BABIP has led all of major league baseball by a laughably wide margin for the past few years. The gap between the Rockies in first place and the second-place Red Sox (.421) is equal to that between second place and the 15th-place Orioles (.393). If you’re wondering why, the outfield at Coors is absolutely enormous, so much so that it’s hard to believe just three men patrol it. The thin air helps the ball travel, but crucially, there’s also a lot of space for it to land. It’s a two-part mechanism that captures why offense can get out of control in the Rockies’ home park. Read the rest of this entry »

When the Phillies signed Kyle Schwarber and Nick Castellanos to free agent deals within a three-day span in March, there were more than a few giggles about the moves’ effect on what already figured to be a shaky team defense. Monday night provided ample demonstration of those concerns, though neither of those two new sluggers figured in the mishaps. Instead, the misadventures of third baseman Alec Bohm were in the spotlight, drawing attention to an area that might be of even greater concern.

The 25-year-old Bohm, who has struggled mightily at the hot corner during his brief major league career, was charged with throwing errors on three separate plays in the first three innings of Monday’s game, though the runs that scored in the wake of the first one were earned. He later found a measure of redemption by sparking a five-run rally in the team’s come-from-behind win over the Mets.

In the first inning, after Brandon Nimmo led off with a single, Starling Marte hit a comebacker that deflected off pitcher Ranger Suárez and over to Bohm, who made an awkward, sidearmed throw on a ball that he should have just kept in his pocket. The throw went into foul territory about 15 feet up the right field line as Marte took second and Nimmo third; while Bohm fielded grounders on the next two batters cleanly, Nimmo scored, and Marte soon did as well as part of a three-run inning. Read the rest of this entry »