Quinn Priester has gained a lot of helium since ranking seventh on our 2020 Pittsburgh Pirates Top Prospects list. Thanks to stellar showings at the alternate camp and instructs, the 6-foot-3, 215 pound right-hander has climbed into the middle of Baseball America’s and MLB Pipeline’s Top 100s. (Our 2021 Pirates offseason list hasn’t run yet, but according to Eric Longenhagen, Priester will feature prominently and will grace this year’s Top 100.) Just yesterday, Jim Callis wrote that some scouts have told him that Priester — the 18th overall pick in the 2019 draft — could emerge as the best pitching prospect in baseball in 2021.

Priester, who’ll celebrate his 21st birthday this coming September, was featured here at FanGraphs 12 months ago. Last week, he caught us up with the strides he’s made since that time.

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David Laurila: You were at the alternate site last summer. What was that experience like?

Quinn Priester: “It was about two weeks, so it wasn’t a whole lot of time, but it was super big for me. I got to be around older guys, some who have been in the big leagues, that have experienced things I haven’t. I’ve only had half a season with two short-season teams — I haven’t come close to a minor-league season of 144 games — so I’m behind the learning curve in that respect.”

Laurila: What can you learn from being around more experienced players?

Priester: “Just the way they prepare. They have intent with every throw, because they know how valuable those throws are over the course of the season. Wasting throws is going to lead to more soreness, and stuff like that. It was cool to literally see how to play catch again, and not just be the high school kid who throws really hard. It was about getting in the work that I need to get in, like staying behind fastballs and making the most out of the couple of curveballs I’ll throw in catch play. Rather than just throwing, I was having direction and a goal. Read the rest of this entry »

Hi there. How are you? 2020, huh?

2,711 days ago (or at least that’s what Google tells me), I penned my goodbye to the internet. That’s a lot of days. A lot has happened since then, and while I imagine many of you know who I am, eight years is a long time in the world of baseball media. I’m sure for some of you, my name barely registers. And so a quick introduction (or a re-introduction) is in order as I embark on a new chapter here at FanGraphs.

Back in 2012, I’d already been writing about baseball, prospects, scouting, and player development for a long time. I was one of the main contributors at Baseball Prospectus, did a few things for ESPN, had a Sunday show on MLB Network Radio with Mike Ferrin, and did a weekly podcast with my dear friend Jason Parks. It was all a lot of fun, but during that final year in media, teams started calling me. It was weird, but I can’t say I wasn’t interested. I talked to a few. Some led to deeper discussions, some didn’t, and that summer I accepted a position as Coordinator, Pro Scouting with the Houston Astros (commas in titles always bug me, but it was a thing in Houston, as you’ll see…).

I lasted eight years with the club, which probably puts me in the 90th percentile in terms of executive time spent with one team. When I arrived, the Astros were rebuilding and were awful, but the team got better, and ultimately became a powerhouse that went to a pair of World Series, and even won one.

And my career grew as well. After a year, I was promoted to Director, Pro Scouting and finally rose to the role of Special Assistant to the General Manager, Player Personnel. During my time with the Astros, I was exposed to a wide array of baseball operations responsibilities. I did in-person scouting within the pro, amateur and international disciplines, and helped to establish our ability to analyze players using data and video. I was in the war room for both the draft and the trade deadline, in the suite during the winter meetings, attended a handful of GM Meetings and even got to conduct a few trade and free agent negotiations over the past few years. Read the rest of this entry »

As the 2021 season approaches, we’re pleased to announce that FanGraphs and RotoGraphs are now accepting applications to join our staff. We are hiring for a variety of part-time, paid writing positions.

Contributing Writer

FanGraphs
This is a part-time, paid position. Contributors will be asked to write twice a week. Pay will be commensurate with experience, with the opportunity for additional raises. Familiarity and comfort with the data here at FanGraphs is a requirement, but just as importantly, we’re looking for writers who can generate their own ideas and questions while providing interesting analysis or commentary on the game of baseball. From free agent signings to statistical analysis, teams’ top prospects to in-game strategy, we endeavor to cover it all, highlights to lowlights. Sometimes we do that with a bit of silliness; other times, we’re more serious. But what all of our work has in common is a commitment to asking interesting questions and using rigor, creativity, and the latest analytical tools to find the answers for our readers.

RotoGraphs
This is a part-time, paid position. Contributors will be asked to write, at a minimum, once a week. Pay will be commensurate with experience and workload, with the opportunity for additional raises. Familiarity and comfort with the data here at FanGraphs is a requirement, but just as importantly, we approach the fantasy game by looking beyond the surface stats to see what drives a player’s performance and use the tools and analytics at our site and across the baseball community to best predict how they might perform going forward. Contributors can take a broad look at the fantasy game generally, or zero in on a particular subject: league type (roto, points, Ottoneu), hitters or pitchers, prospects and dynasty leagues, waivers and FAAB, injury analysis, etc. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2021 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Eight years ago, on the most top-heavy Hall of Fame ballot in at least half a century, the BBWAA voters pitched a shutout, electing nobody in what was seen by some as a referendum on character, particularly as it pertained to candidates linked to the usage of performance-enhancing drugs. On Tuesday, the writers put up a zero again, capping another election cycle dominated by debates over the significance of the on-and off-field transgressions of candidates, and — for the first time since 2012 — lacking any obviously qualified newcomers to the ballot.

Of the 401 ballots cast, a record 14 were blank. Whether those were done as protests against the notion that anybody from this ballot was worthy of enshrinement, or that in electing a record 22 candidates over the past seven years, standards had gotten too lax — those voters will have to answer that question themselves, if they haven’t already. Their ballots are included in the total, thus making it harder for anybody to reach 75%; had those voters instead made paper airplanes out of their ballots and flown them out the window (does anybody still do that?) the threshold for election would have fallen from 301 votes to 290. Read the rest of this entry »

On Tuesday afternoon, the Phillies answered one of the biggest questions of their offseason in decidedly positive fashion, reportedly coming to terms with J.T. Realmuto on a five-year, $115.5 million contract. A physical is still pending, but the contract will keep Realmuto in Philly until the end of the 2025 season assuming all goes well. The number-one free agent in our offseason top 50, Realmuto’s signing removes the best option for anyone looking to make a race-changing upgrade at catcher.

The Philadelphia Phillies and JT Realmuto are in agreement on a 5 year $115.5 million dollar contract. Pending physical. Per source.

— Craig Mish (@CraigMish) January 26, 2021

It’s hard to overstate Realmuto’s importance to the Phillies. Indeed, his presence is so crucial that if Philadelphia were for some reason only able to retain one of him or Bryce Harper, I’d have to choose Realmuto, a two-time All-Star who has led the team in WAR over the last two seasons. Harper’s a very fine player and will likely still be in baseball years after Realmuto retires, but the short-term alternatives behind the plate looked bleak if the organization had had to scramble for a Plan B. There’s no combination of Andrew Knapp, Rafael Marchan, and non-roster invitee Christian Bethancourt that would have given the Phillies a fighting chance to avoid being near the bottom of the league at the position. Nor would the free agent options have provided a panacea; James McCann, Jason Castro, and Kurt Suzuki are already gone, and Yadier Molina is ancient.

Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2021 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

It would be only somewhat hyperbolic to say that the 2021 Hall of Fame election cycle was as contentious and polarizing as the presidential election that preceded it nearly three months ago, but let’s face it, this time around has not been a whole lot of fun. When Hall president Tim Mead opens the envelope to announce the results shortly after 6 pm ET on MLB Network on Tuesday evening, there’s a very good chance that the BBWAA voters will produce a shutout, the writers’ first since 2013 — a ballot that not-so-coincidentally is headlined by some of the same candidates who have split the electorate.

There’s no shutout from FanGraphs readers, however. In our third annual Hall of Fame crowdsource ballot, three candidates cleared the 75% bar, down from four last year and seven in 2019. Not surprisingly, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens did so, just as they’ve done in each of the past two years. However, both members of the gruesome twosome took a back seat to the top close-but-no-cigar candidate from our 2020 crowdsource ballot, and no, I don’t mean Curt Schilling.

Before I get to the results, a refresher on the process. As with the past two years, registered readers of our site (and participating staff, this scribe included) were allowed to choose up to 10 candidates while adhering to the same December 31, 2020 deadline as the actual voters, but unlike the writers, our voting was conducted electronically instead of on paper. This year, 1,152 users participated, a drop of exactly 20% from last year’s 1,440 voters, but one that’s understandable in light of our pandemic-related traffic dip as well as an apparent lack of enthusiasm towards a ballot that, quite frankly, is headed by heels, in that the top four returning candidates in terms of voting percentage have significant issues that would give any character-minded voter pause. Read the rest of this entry »

If you follow the work of Alex Chamberlain at all, you’ve heard of the value of launch angle consistency. I’m not going to recapitulate his body of work on the subject, but briefly: hitters with tighter launch angle distributions routinely run higher BABIPs, and you can think of launch angle consistency as roughly a proxy for “hit tool.”

Most of this comes down to avoiding terrible batted ball outcomes. The two worst things you can do when you put the ball in play are to hit it straight down or straight up. Given that balls are, on average, hit mostly forward and with a tiny bit of loft — breaking news, I know — launch angle consistency is a great proxy for how often you avoid those, because the more -80s and +80s you put in your sample of mostly 10s and 20s, the higher the standard deviation gets.

One thing I’ve often wondered is whether this idea of consistency holds up for subsets of batted balls. Intuitively, it seems like it might. Take hard-hit balls, for example. If you’re hitting the ball 95 mph or harder, you really don’t want to squander it by hitting the ball on the ground or straight into the air. The distribution peaks at 30 degrees, but anything between 10 and 35 is a solid outcome.

With this in mind, I decided to look for batters who grouped their hard-hit balls most tightly. Having a narrow distribution seems like a great way to maximize good outcomes. Which player, you ask, has the tightest launch angle consistency (I’m just using standard deviation here) on hard-hit balls? I’m glad you asked — it’s Dee Strange-Gordon. Read the rest of this entry »

There are baseball stars, there are heroes and legends, and then there is Henry Aaron. The slugging right fielder is remembered mainly for surpassing Babe Ruth’s all-time home run record on April 8, 1974, but even that crowning achievement obscures the all-around excellence and remarkable consistency he demonstrated during his 23-year major league career.

What’s more, Aaron’s accomplishments can most fully be appreciated only with an understanding of the racism he encountered throughout his life and his career, as a Black man who began his professional career in the Negro Leagues, who became a star before half of the teams in the National League had integrated and a champion before the last teams in the American League did so, who emerged as a force for civil rights while becoming the first Black star on the first major league team in the Deep South, who surpassed the most hallowed record produced by the game’s most famous player while facing a nearly unimaginable barrage of hate mail and death threats, and who broke down further barriers after his retirement, as one of the game’s first Black executives and as a critic of the lack of diversity among managers and executives.

More than a Hall of Famer, Aaron was a true titan, an American icon in his own right. Sadly, he is the latest Hall of Famer in an unrelenting stretch to pass away. News of his death was announced on Friday morning, four days after that of Don Sutton, 15 days after that of Tommy Lasorda, and 27 days after that of former teammate Phil Niekro. He was 86 years old, and had been in the news earlier this month as he received a COVID-19 vaccination.

“Hank Aaron was one of the best baseball players we’ve ever seen and one of the strongest people I’ve ever met,” said former president Barack Obama in a statement released on Friday. Former presidents Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush paid tributes in statements as well, as did President Joe Biden:

President @JoeBiden on #HankAaron’s legacy: “As a nation, we will still chase the better version of ourselves that he set for us.” pic.twitter.com/xL7AESxaek

— Greg Bluestein (@bluestein) January 23, 2021

While Aaron’s story is often cast as that of a man overcoming or ignoring racism and hatred to achieve greatness with quiet dignity, it does the man a disservice to soften his edges and diminish the pain that he felt, and the scars that he bore — particularly given that he did not do so in silence. Surpassing Ruth “was supposed to be the greatest triumph of my life, but I was never allowed to enjoy it. I couldn’t wait for it to be over,” he once said. “The only reason that some people didn’t want me to succeed was because I was a Black man.” Read the rest of this entry »

Sunday, the Pirates traded starter Jameson Taillon to the Yankees for a package of four prospects. Dan Szymborksi will provide in-depth analysis of the deal as it pertains to the Yankees soon, though I’ll note to start that with the return of Luis Severino and Domingo Germán and the additions of Corey Kluber and now Taillon, the Yankees rotation will be reliant on several high-risk, high-reward starters this season.

Of course, nobody likes trading away good big leaguers, especially those who the club and city care about for reasons beyond their on-field performance. Taillon has persevered through a lot, including testicular cancer and an August 2019 Tommy John, the second such surgery of his career. When he next steps on a big league mound, it will have been nearly two years since he last did so. That layoff (he has been throwing live BP to hitters since late last summer and has been throwing bullpens during the offseason) creates volatility that mirrors the added volatility of this particular prospect package. Taillon could be an anchor of the Yankees rotation next year or might be a shell of himself. Regardless of which he would have been in Pittsburgh, the Pirates are not ready to compete and so I think they did well to trade him for four good prospects today, acquiring upside but also mitigating risk by getting several players in return.

On to those prospects. The quartet heading back to Pittsburgh — righties Miguel Yajure (age 22) and Roansy Contreras (21), 21-year-old outfielder Canaan Smith-Njigba, and 18-year-old shortstop Maikol Escotto — is a pretty exciting. Read the rest of this entry »

Mitch Keller has only thrown 69-and-a-third big-league innings, and he’s already had a remarkable career. The baseball gods are a big reason why. In his 2019 rookie season, the now-24-year-old Pittsburgh Pirates right-hander had a 7.13 ERA to go with a 3.19 FIP, and this past season he had a 2.91 ERA to go with a 6.75 FIP.

Hello, BABIP.

In an almost-inexplicable quirk of fate, Keller followed up a .475 BABIP — the highest one-season mark in MLB history — with a .104 BABIP in 2020. No pitcher who threw 20-or-more innings in last year’s pandemic-truncated campaign had a smaller percentage of balls put in play against him fall safely to the turf. This happened with an average exit velocity of 88.5 mph, which was higher than the 87.6 he’d allowed in 2019.

Ben Lindbergh wrote about Keller’s snake-bit season for The Ringer last spring, and the conversation they had prior to publication is what brought the data to the fore.

“I remember getting off that phone call and looking it up myself,” said Keller. “I was like, ‘Oh, my goodness. That’s crazy.’ I knew that I had a high BABIP, but I had no idea it was the highest in history. Once he told me, it wasn’t like I was coming back to the dugout thinking, ‘Man, I think I’m having some bad luck.’ It was actually on paper, as a stat. It was, ‘No, seriously. I was having bad luck.” Read the rest of this entry »