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So! Tonight, there’s going to be a Game 7 of the World Series. Your cheering allegiances aside, that’s a rare and wonderful thing. Appreciate it, because now we’ll have the most possible baseball before the long stretch of no baseball, and this isn’t an occasion that comes around all that often. We had a Game 7 three years ago between Texas and St. Louis, but it had been nine years since it’d happened before that, the longest stretch in big league history. Sometimes, you get classics like Curt Schilling & Randy Johnson against Roger Clemens & Mariano Rivera in 2001; sometimes, you get John Tudor allowing eight runners in 2.1 innings on the way to losing 11-0 in 1985. What’s important is that we’re set up for history, and often the biggest impediment to that is simply the opportunity for it to happen. Not tonight.

Jeremy Guthrie against Tim Hudson doesn’t really sound all that exciting, and maybe it won’t be. It’s difficult to imagine either pitcher going more than five innings, and perhaps it won’t even be close to that. It won’t be the worst-ever matchup of Game 7 starters — 1997’s Jaret Wright against Al Leiter probably still tops that list — but it will be the oldest, thanks to a combined 74 years of age. Or at least it will be for a few innings, since both managers are likely going to dig into their bullpens early, since it doesn’t get more “all hands on deck” than this. On the other hand, maybe that makes it more exciting. This could be baseball unlike baseball.

Obviously, any Game 7 is fascinating, but this one might just be moreso, if only because of the way the postseason has gone so far. You’ve heard in more than a few places that this is “the best postseason ever,” and while that’s probably a bit hyperbolic because of the effects of recency, you certainly understand the sentiment. To merely name a few of the lasting impressions — the AL wild card game madness, the divergent Octobers of Madison Bumgarner & Clayton Kershaw, an 18-inning NLDS game, Lorenzo Cain and the Royals defense, literally every single thing Ned Yost has done — is to unfairly neglect so many others. For a postseason like that to end with a Game 7, well, it seems like a fitting capper. Read the rest of this entry »

Free agency begins five days after the end of the World Series — which competition, barring some unforeseen circumstance, is likely to end today. As in other recent offseasons, FanGraphs once again facilitated this offseason a contract-crowdsourcing project, the idea being to harness the wisdom of the crowds to the end of better understanding the 2014-15 free-agent market.

Below are the results of same. For each player, respondents provided estimates of the years and dollars he’s likely to receive. Also, in such cases as a player is a candidate to receive a qualifying offer from his club, readers predicted whether he would or not — and whether, having received a qualifying offer, that player would accept it. Answers to other questions — regarding options, for example — also appear below.

In terms of how the projected contract values below are likely to relate to reality, a comparison between last year’s crowdsourced estimates and the actual contracts received reveals that the crowd typically missed by 37% on overall contract value and is most likely to underestimate the overall contract figures of the most high-profile free agents. It’s not unreasonable, in other words, to expect that Hanley Ramirez will receive more than the 5 years and $90 million he’s projected to receive. Of note, however, is that most of last year’s top free agents were hitters, while Max Scherzer and Jon Lester are the most formidable names among this year’s free-agent class. Whether this same principle of underestimating the contracts received by top free agents applies to pitchers, as well — for whom length of contract is an issue, given the possibility of injury — is a question that remains.

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Here’s a post that probably doesn’t need to exist, but then, what post about baseball analysis does need to exist? If everything’s pointless, nothing is pointless, so let’s get to the subject! The Royals are shortly going to host the Giants for Game 6 of the World Series, and Kansas City is hoping to play again tomorrow, probably. If you imagine the whole baseball season as a baseball game, then we’re at the very end with an uncertain conclusion, meaning the leverage is enormous. If the purpose of every event is to help win a championship, well, now a championship hangs directly in the balance.

The Giants are up 3-2, but however much baseball remains will be played in Kauffman Stadium. And if you’ve been poking around today, you’ve probably seen some mentions of how that puts the Royals in a pretty decent position, all things considered. Not only do the Royals get to play at home — they get to play super-important games at home, with a super-frenzied atmosphere, and recent history might be on their side. I could cite any number of examples, but I will just cite this one:

And it’s the Jake they’d love to ride to a Game 6 victory, because a Game 7 would give the Royals a distinct home-field edge. (Giants fans can blame All-Star Game MVP Mike Trout for that possibility.) The home team has won each of the last nine World Series Game 7s. The last road team to win a Game 7 was the 1979 Pirates.

The Giants’ best bet, then, is to wrap this up in six.

What’s implied is that home-field advantage might get more significant as the stakes get higher and higher. Think of it as kind of a clutch home-field advantage factor. So can the Royals at least look forward to an extraordinary lift? No. I mean, no, probably.

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If you’ve been consuming baseball analysis for any meaningful length of time, TTO comes as a particularly familiar acronym. It stands for Three True Outcomes — walks, strikeouts, and dingers — and for me, personally, it makes me think of Adam Dunn. And it makes me think of baseball writing eight or ten years ago, when at least I was starting to come into my own. But TTO can and does also stand for something else, something we’ve been talking and reading about a lot over the past several weeks — Times Through the Order. As in, the times-through-the-order penalty, that describes how starting pitchers become less effective over the course of a game. All those things you’ve read about how Starter X was left in too long by his manager? The criticisms are mostly founded upon the idea that pitchers get tired and over-exposed.

Those are tricky things to separate. It stands to reason pitchers get worse because they get more tired. It also stands to reason pitchers get worse because their opponents get more and more familiar with the pitches being thrown. You think about “looks”, and whatnot. We know there’s a TTO penalty during a game. And if any of it has to do with familiarity, then it seems like there ought also be a TTO penalty within a series.

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If you missed the American League edition of this post from Friday, you can check it out right here.

I’m not going to bog this section down with a bunch of new words, I’d rather just get right into it. But first, if you want to gloss over the methodology really quick, I’ll re-publish it from Friday’s post:

First, our player pool. For catchers and infielders, I’m simply going with qualified batters. This is pretty standard. For outfielders, I’ve lowered the innings threshold to 600 innings, because outfielders move around more than infielders, and I don’t think an everyday outfielder should be discounted because he had to split his time between left field and center field.

Now, for the numbers. We’ve got Defensive Runs Saved and we’ve got Ultimate Zone Rating. Neither are perfect, and sometimes they disagree with each other, but when put together, I think we can all agree they do a pretty good job. I’ve prorated each to 1,000 innings and simply used a 50/50 split to determine each player’s total defensive value, per 1000 innings (tDEF/1000). In the tables, I’ve also decided to include each player’s Revised Zone Rating and Fielding Percentage, just because.

Catchers, as we know, are a whole other beast. We’ve got three main components of catcher defense that we can measure: controlling the running game, blocking pitches and receiving pitches. Only two of them are included in the advanced defensive metrics we use, and the one we’re leaving out (receiving) appears to be the most important skill. To make up for that, I simply added up the run values of each of these three components, using StatCorner’s catcher framing report for my framing numbers. Some people don’t agree with how much weight is given to catchers in framing data, and I kind of agree with that, but as the National League results will show, the top spot doesn’t simply go to the best framer.

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Last Wednesday, following his terrific performance in Game 1 of the World Series, I wrote a piece for Just a Bit Outside putting Bumgarner’s 2014 playoff run into some historical perspective. One of the primary takeaways from that piece was just so amazing Curt Schilling’s 2001 performance was, as it clearly stood at the top of the heap as the best postseason a pitcher has ever had.

Here’s the table that ran in last week’s column, listing both the ERA- and FIP- of the starters who had at least five starts of seven or more innings pitched in the same postseason.

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Oscar Taveras died Sunday in a car crash in the Dominican Republic, at the age of 22. His girlfriend, 18-year-old Edilia Arvelo, also died in the crash. News was confirmed by Dionisio Soldevila, and according to the USA Today, Taveras had been driving home to the town of Sosua. The St. Louis Cardinals have released a statement, as have Bud Selig and Tony Clark of the MLBPA.

Two weeks ago, Taveras hit a dramatic pinch-hit home run in the National League Championship Series. As we’re confronted by the senselessness of untimely death, it’s within that fact that one might find the slightest hint of consolation. Taveras had long been linked to the words “great potential,” as a professional and as an individual. There was thought to be no limit to what Taveras might one day achieve. While his is a future that will sadly forever remain unwritten, Taveras lived a life of great achievement. At an extraordinarily young age, he reached and established himself within the highest level of his work, and he was recognized as one of the very best young talents in the world. Taveras achieved what most only dream of, the result of a lifetime of practice and discipline. A short life can still be a life fully lived.

Taveras, like all players, was also more than his job. We know him only as a player, reducing him to something unfairly one-dimensional, but we can’t know the details of his life beyond the field, nor are we entitled to such. We know only that two families are grieving, as Taveras died beside his partner. There is no way for that sentence to sufficiently sink in. It’s not just you; it’s a sentence we aren’t wired to understand. It’s a sentence that’s simply too mournful to fathom.

The news touches everyone differently. Your response is unique to you, and you cope however you see fit. Perhaps you feel shame, thinking more of Taveras than of Arvelo. Perhaps you ponder why these deaths should feel different from the rest of the world’s relentless death. Perhaps you wonder why you’re overthinking this; perhaps you wonder why you’re not. There is no established psychological routine for dealing with the sudden loss of a life that you know or know of. Dwell for however long you choose to dwell. Reflect for however long you choose to reflect. And when you have a moment — and you always have a moment — reach out to a loved one and share a hug or a laugh or a bowl of gelato. The point is to love and to do good things.

Oscar Taveras lived a life and left a mark, which is precisely what he always had the potential to do. May the families find warmth in winter.

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