Archive for Featured

A number of people who are actually good at math have asked before why we don’t present measures of uncertainty, like error bars, when talking about WAR or projections. I’m not in charge of those things, myself, so I can’t give you the official answer, but, they’re difficult numbers to calculate, if they’re possible at all, and many people wouldn’t know how to understand them, and it’s unclear how much those measures would add to the picture anyway. Sometimes you’ll see projections presented in percentiles, like PECOTA, but generally speaking the percentiles can include almost any and all outcomes, so that doesn’t help much. There’s interest in seeing uncertainty, quantitated. It’s challenging, to do it in a meaningful way.

But I want to try something, again with your help. Last week, I ran a bunch of polls, and a few days ago I analyzed the information generated. Here I’d like to take a similar approach. Now, the post was inspired by the transcript of Dave’s Wednesday chat:

12:40
Comment From Curtis
Of all the prospects yet to debut in MLB, who has the highest bust probability in your eyes? Best chance to succeed?
12:41
Dave Cameron: Baez seems to have a very high chance of being nothing. Mookie Betts will be a solid player unless he dies.

Let’s think about Javier Baez and Mookie Betts. Let’s see what we can do to effectively crowdsource their uncertainties.

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After having typically appeared in the very hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have been released at FanGraphs the past couple years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Los Angeles Dodgers. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Other Projections: Atlanta / Chicago AL / Colorado / Detroit / Los Angeles AL / Miami / Milwaukee / Oakland / San Francisco / St. Louis / Tampa Bay / Washington.

Batters
This is a strong and curiously diverse Dodgers team. Among even just the starting eight one finds young stars (Yasiel Puig) and older stars (Adrian Gonzalez); stars who’ve aged surprisingly well (Jimmy Rollins) and stars who’ve aged less well (Carl Crawford); veterans who probably merit greater acclaim (Howie Kendrick) and also whatever Juan Uribe is. While diverse, the starters are uniform by one standard — namely, the likelihood that they’ll produce wins at an average rate or better.

Of some interest is the (likely) platoon in left field of Crawford and Scott Van Slyke. The latter, despite a huge body, has produced slightly above-average fielding numbers in the corner outfield and is projected to do so again in 2015. It’s with some combination of great vengeance and furious anger, as well, that he has punished left-handed pitchers, recording a 151 wRC+ over about 200 career plate appearances against them. No player — in particular, no player who lost his rookie eligibility as a 26-year-old — ought really to be expected to continue hitting at a rate 50% better than league average. His success against lefties, however, at least helps to explain how ZiPS forecasts him to produce the second-highest wOBA on the club.

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Among others, baseball’s Hall of Fame will prepare to welcome Pedro Martinez and Randy Johnson. For them, there was zero suspense: Hall of Famers don’t get more automatic, and as easy as it is to focus on the fact that neither player was unanimous, the percentage matters less than the ultimate outcome. The voting process is a little bit broken, but it would have to be in complete and utter shambles to deny Martinez or Johnson entry — and they’ll no longer have to appear on any ballot. Two of the very greatest ever have been successfully and swiftly voted into the place intended to recognize the very greatest ever.

Of course, neither pitcher was a borderline candidate. Every so often the game has players who are just exceptional, and when you go into the data, you stumble upon fun facts proving said exceptional-ness. For example, let’s consider starting pitcher strikeout rates from 1999. The top of the list, with a 100-inning minimum:

1. Pedro Martinez, 37.5% strikeouts
2. Randy Johnson, 33.7%
3. Tim Hudson, 22.8%

That’s stupid. That leaderboard is stupid. It doesn’t make sense that pitchers could be so good. Not as starters, and not for as long as they were.

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Like the draft year, the baseball offseason has a feel to it once you’ve been around the game for awhile. Like some draft years, some offseasons are just different, and we are currently living through one of them. The 2005 draft was different; if you had scouting director or national crosschecker-level responsibilities, you stood a good chance of seeing a future major-league All Star on any given day, and you knew it. This offseason, after what seemed to be a few years of relative winter calm, all hell has seemingly broken loose, especially with regard to position-player movement. Today, let’s take a look at team position-player turnover in the divisional era, to get a sense for the historical norms to which 2015 will someday be compared. Read the rest of this entry »

After having typically appeared in the very hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have been released at FanGraphs the past couple years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Detroit Tigers. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Other Projections: Atlanta / Chicago AL / Colorado / Los Angeles AL / Miami / Milwaukee / Oakland / San Francisco / St. Louis / Tampa Bay / Washington.

Batters
While it might seem as though, at points during his MVP rivalry with Mike Trout, that this site’s authors made it their business to convince all of America about how Miguel Cabrera was a worthless trash heap of a ballplayer, that’s very clearly not the case. What he is, in reality, is one of the most talented hitters in baseball history. Indeed, among all qualified hitters ever, Cabrera has produced the 26th-best park-adjusted batting line (tied with Joe DiMaggio, for example). Even a couple years after Cabrera’s 30th birthday, ZiPS still regards him as an elite batsman.

One thing Cabrera wasn’t, really, was a talented defensive third baseman. Two years ago, for example, ZiPS projected Cabrera to save -6 runs (or concede +6 runs, as it were) at third base. Not excellent, that. By way of comparison, however, consider current third baseman Nick Castellanos’s projection at that same position: -12 runs saved (or +12 runs conceded, as it were). Even more not excellent, that. He’s forecast to produce an above-average batting line, but it would seem as though some manner of change — either moving off of, or steadily improving at, the position — is necessary.

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Times have changed, finally, in Philadelphia. Approximately two years after most of the rest of us thought it was time to blow things up, and six months after GM Ruben Amaro reportedly told closer Jonathan Papelbon that the team was still attempting to win now, the Philles have eventually seen the light and committed to the future. Jimmy Rollins is gone. Marlon Byrd is gone. Antonio Bastardo is gone. Cole Hamels may yet be gone. Cliff Lee, presuming he can show he’s healthy early in 2015, will almost certainly be gone by July. Papelbon probably follows. It’s possible Chase Utley sticks it out to maintain one last link to the past, but it’s clear the Phillies we knew are gone, and the next year or two (or more) are going to be a difficult transition.

I didn’t mention Ryan Howard because when you read a quote like this, as Amaro told a local radio station just before the holidays…

“We’ve talked to Ryan,” Amaro said in an interview with 97.5 The Fanatic’s Mike Missanelli on Friday afternoon. “And I told him that in our situation it would probably bode better for the organization not with him but without him. With that said if he’s with us, then we’ll work around him. We’ll hope he puts up the kind of numbers that we hope he can and we’ll see where it goes from there.”

…then it deserves its own section.

When your general manager says the team is better off without you and that if you’re still in town, then they will “work around [you],” well, it’s clear you’re definitely gone. Or, at least, will be at some point, since he’s not been moved yet. You can live with an aging Utley, because he’s still a solid player with no obvious successor. You can’t keep Howard around because he’s a negative for a National League club and each plate appearance that goes to him takes one away from Maikel Franco or Cody Asche or Darin Ruf. None are going to be the next great Phillies first baseman, but there’s value in simply removing an aging, ineffective Howard from the equation, if only emotionally.

I hardly need to remind you of how difficult it’s going to be for the Phillies to actually make a Howard move, because you know all the reasons why. Instead, let’s play a game. Let’s find Howard a new home. Would any team bother with the roster spot? Is there actually a place where he could be of value? Maybe this will be fun. Unless you’re a Phillies fan, of course. Then it won’t be much fun at all.

* * * Read the rest of this entry »

Evaluating the Prospects: Rangers, Rockies, D’Backs, Twins, Astros, Red Sox, Cubs, White Sox, Reds, Phillies, Rays, Mets, Padres & Marlins

Scouting Explained: Introduction, Hitting Pt 1 Pt 2 Pt 3 Pt 4 Pt 5 Pt 6

Amateur Coverage: 2015 Draft Rankings, 2015 July 2 Top Prospects & Latest on Yoan Moncada

This list was gutted by five deals over an 12-day period earlier this month by new general manager A.J. Preller. He generally turned minor league pieces into big league pieces and these deals included 11 guys that would’ve been on this list: Trea Turner, Max Fried, Zach Eflin, Joe Ross, Joe Wieland, Mallex Smith, Jace Peterson, R.J. Alvarez, Johnny Barbato, Jake Bauers and Dustin Peterson, in that order.

Jesse Hahn would’ve been on the growth assets list and Burch Smith may have snuck on the end of the list but would likely be one of the last cuts, appearing in the others of note section. The lack of depth in the list below is understandable as a slightly above average system became a slightly below average one in the last month or so. Padres sources were quick to point out that only Justin Upton and Shawn Kelley were one-year assets, so this isn’t an all-in sort of move, but more of a reorganizing of the assets.

It’s interesting that the Rangers, where Preller worked until recently, have a reputation of not wanting to part with any prospects in trades. Preller came into a situation in San Diego where he didn’t sign any of the players he had and he immediately shipped one-third of the legitimate prospects out within a couple months, with no list-worthy prospects coming back in these deals. That’s somewhat misleading, as Preller’s job is to win big league games and a farm system exists to improve the big league team, but it’s interesting to note the contrast in styles.

Another big topic that came up on all my calls for this list was the recent history of Padres pitching prospects getting hurt. There have been somewhat recent Tommy John surgeries for Casey Kelly, Max Fried, Joe Wieland and Cory Luebke (twice) among the legitimate prospects, but the team has no explanation for why they’ve been hit harder than others. Padres execs detailed a study to me that was commissioned to answer this question and there were no common factors across the injuries and there didn’t appear to be problems with their throwing programs. It appears to just be rolling snake eyes a few more times than everyone else did, through random bad luck.

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It’s the end of the year. At the end of the year, we like to look back before we look forward to the upcoming year. In that vein, I thought it would be instructive — and perhaps a little bit fun — to pull the most popular posts from our fair site for this calendar year. If you read the Best Of post each week (or even some weeks, or maybe you glanced at it while your significant other was in the dressing room that one time and you were suuuuper bored???), you know that I like to throw a little shine at all of the blogs in our family, so we’ll also have a spot for the most popular piece for each blog as well, if they didn’t reach the actual top 10. Onward!

Wait, before we move onward, a note — just because I’m using the “Best of” post here, doesn’t mean that these were necessarily the best posts. They’re simply the most popular. I am grouping them under the “Best of” banner because it’ll be easier to find them at a later date. You know, if you’re curious to find them again at a later date (I know I will be). OK, onward!!!

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In 2014, I had the pleasure of interviewing hundreds of people within baseball. Many of their words were shared via the FanGraphs Q&A series. Others came courtesy of the Sunday Notes column, which debuted in February. Here is a selection of the best quotes from this year’s conversations.

——

“Later on, when they went to the QuesTec system, the strike zone became more of a north-and-south than an east-and-west. I had to learn how to pitch inside more, which wasn’t an easy thing to do.” – Tom Glavine, Hall of Fame pitcher, January 2014

“In my first at bat, I hit a home run and thought to myself, ‘I’m going to hit 30 home runs in this league.’ I ended up hitting five.” – Clint Frazier, Cleveland Indians prospect, January 2014

“As a pitcher, you’re supposed to feel at home on the mound. You’re supposed to feel comfortable and strong. I didn’t feel that way.” – Jesse Biddle, Philadelphia Phillies prospect, January 2014

“My mind was free, because I was only concentrating on one thing, which was getting hitters out. I was in the big leagues, so I was able to relax and do my job.” – Matt Harvey, New York Mets, February 2014

“Twenty-four hours to vent and rage, break things. I punched my door and put a crack in it. I broke a few boat oars out back of the house. I was mad, because I felt I was being stolen from.” – Luke Scott, former big-league outfielder, February 2014

“When I brawled, I blacked out. I don’t really remember much outside of watching the videos. I do remember telling Dean Palmer, ‘They’re about to start hitting our guys and we’ll need to go out there.’ ” – Doug Brocail, former Detroit Tigers pitcher, February 2014

“When I stood on the mound while on Adderall, everything faded away except for the catcher’s mitt. No crowd noise, no distractions. It was almost like being in the Matrix. Although you were sped up, everything slowed down.” – Player X, March 2014 Read the rest of this entry »

There are many different ways to describe the quality of a pitch. We have movement numbers on this site. There are ground-ball rates. There are whiff rates. There are metrics that use a combination of ground-ball and whiff rates. And metrics that use balls in play. There’s a whole spectrum from process to results, and you can focus on any one part of that spectrum if you like.

But there’s something that’s so appealing about the whiff. It’s a result, but it’s an undeniable one. There is no human being trying to decide if the ball went straight or if it went up in the air or if the ball went down. It’s just: did the batter swing and miss? So, as a result, it seems unassailable.

Of course, there are some decisions you still have to make if you want to judge pitches by whiff rates. How many of the pitch does the pitcher have to have thrown to be considered? Gonzalez Germen had a higher whiff rate on his changeup (30.7%) this year than Cole Hamels (23.7%). Cole Hamels threw seven times as many changeups (708 to 101).

So, in judging this year’s best pitches, let’s declare a top pitch among starters and a top pitch among relievers. That’s only fair, considering the difference in number of pitches thrown between the two. It’s way harder to get people to keep missing a pitch they’ve seen seven times as often. And, in order to avoid avoiding R.A. Dickey the R. A. Dickey Knuckler award, we’ll leave knucklers off the list, and include knuckle curves in among the curves.

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