Reminder: Starting August 4, the price of a FanGraphs Membership is going up. You can find more information on the reason for the increase, as well as how to lock in our existing pricing, in the post below. As I noted when we announced the pricing change on June 10, Membership makes our work at the site possible, allowing us to add new site features and grow our staff, and it comes with a ton of great benefits. Since that announcement, we’ve launched a pitch-type splits leaderboard and a crowdsourced trade value tool, and we’ve added a full-time staff member. We know there is intense competition for your subscription dollars, but we think the breadth and depth of our coverage makes a Membership well worth it and still represents a considerable value in the sports media subscription landscape. I hope you’ll become a Member, and help us continue to build a better FanGraphs. Thank you for your support. – David Appelman

Over the last five years, as we’ve navigated a changing advertising landscape — not to mention the pandemic and a lockout — I’ve endeavored to be transparent about the state of the site, our business model, and our plans for the future. I’ve taken that approach because FanGraphs is a community, and I think our readers deserve to understand what we are doing and why. It’s been four years since we last increased the price of a FanGraphs Membership, and we’ve delayed this increase for as long as possible. We’ve not only seen considerable increases in our stat licensing fees and infrastructure costs, but this year we’ve also seen a steep decline in our advertising rates as well as our organic search traffic, as Google continues to push relevant websites further and further down the page in favor of new AI search results.

Beginning August 4, a yearly FanGraphs Membership will cost $80; a Monthly Membership will cost $15 a month, while a Three-Year Membership will cost $200. Since we won’t be introducing this change until August 4, you still have the opportunity to purchase a $60 Membership for the year, or upgrade your existing Membership to a $150 Three-Year Membership, allowing you to grandfather yourself into our existing pricing for the next three years. Read the rest of this entry »

Let’s do something completely different and have some fun! Over the course of the past year, I created an arcade game that can be played on a Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) from 1985! The game might looks familiar, but it’s been adapted for baseball.

This is an actual NES game; it is a .nes ROM file that you can play on original hardware. I found a JavaScript emulator, so you can more easily play it online. You can download the ROM here and use it in your emulator, flash cart, or your retro gaming setup of choice.

Below you can click on the photo, which will take you to the online emulator. It works best on desktops running Chrome, Firefox, or the new Edge. Safari is playable but it gives a soft picture without sound. Gameplay suffers on mobile, especially smaller devices. It’s best to use your keyboard to control everything, but there is a virtual controller available, too.

(Click to open FanGraphs Arcade)

Game Play

I don’t want to give too much away about the game, because half of the fun of an arcade game is trying things out, failing, then trying again until you succeed, though I will answer questions in the comments or on Twitter if anyone has any. Read the rest of this entry »

Every July, FanGraphs releases our annual Trade Value Series highlighting the top 50 players in baseball, taking contract status and performance into account. For the past four years, I’ve been in charge of this exercise, with liberal amounts of help from the rest of the FanGraphs staff and some contacts on the team side. This year, I’ve got company. For the first time, FanGraphs readers will be creating their own trade value list. Read the rest of this entry »

Hello, all of you FanGraphs readers! Are you a FanGraphs Member? Are you looking for something fresh to read on Saturday mornings? Do you have any burning baseball questions for us, but don’t quite know where to ask them? Well, then we’ve got great news for you.

FanGraphs is launching a weekly mailbag, curated by me, that will run on the website every Saturday morning. Anyone can submit a question, but the piece answering them will only be available to FanGraphs Members.

So how is this going to work? Send any and all of your questions — about baseball, baseball writing, or whatever else you might be interested in having us answer — to me via email at mailbag@fangraphs.com, and each week, I’ll pick a few that we’ll answer in that Saturday’s mailbag. That’s right, I said we, because my FanGraphs colleagues will be helping me out. If you have a Hall of Fame question, I’ll probably relay it to Jay Jaffe. We’ve got Eric Longenhagen for prospect inquiries, and Dan Szymborski if we need to consult the ol’ ZiPS machine — the list goes on! We’ll do our best to answer as many questions as possible each week, but we won’t be able to get to them all. The ideal mailbag question is something that requires a deeper dive than we can tackle in our various chats, but is not so expansive that it warrants an entire article. Read the rest of this entry »

We now have NPB data available on FanGraphs! It can found on the player pages and the leaderboards.

A few notes on NPB data:

• All NPB data is provided by Sports Info Solutions and is available going back to 2018.
• We update NPB (and KBO) data around 11:30 ET each night with the previous days games.
• wRC+, ERA-, and FIP-, are park adjusted using five-year park factors.

Speaking of park adjustments, MiLB and KBO wRC+, ERA-, and FIP- are now also park adjusted using five-year park factors. You can read more about how our park factors are calculated here. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to the 20th season of FanGraphs Baseball! In what’s becoming an annual tradition, allow me to run through all of the cool new features we’ve added to the site in the past year:

• Customizable player page dashboards and player cards, like heat maps, rolling averages, and more (Member exclusive)
• The fantasy Player Rater
• Division I college data
• NPB data
• Spring training data
• New heat maps
• Pitch modeling game logs
• WAR-based Playoff Odds
• Steamer platoon, context neutral, and percentile projections (Member exclusive)
• Historical Steamer, ZiPS, and ATC projections (Member exclusive)
• OOPSY projections
• FanGraphs Walk-Off (Member exclusive)

Read the rest of this entry »

I’m happy to announce that we’ve added Division I college data to the site. You can access the data via the player pages and leaderboards.

Some things to be aware of:

• Division I data is updated daily and is available going back to 2021.
• wRC+, ERA-, and FIP- are conference adjusted, but not park adjusted.
• College data on the player pages is hidden by default for players who have more than one year of minor league data. It can be viewed by clicking on the “College” toggle right above any data table.
  
• All college data is provided by College Splits.

We’re able to bring new features to the site because of Member support. If you enjoy our new college data, or any of our content, please consider becoming a FanGraphs Member. Membership benefits currently include:

• Unlimited FanGraphs & RotoGraphs articles
• Ad-free browsing
• One-click data exports
• Custom Player Page dashboards and more player cards, like heat maps, rolling averages, and more
• Dark and Classic Site Modes
• FanGraphs Walk-off, your personalized year-end review
• Enhanced Steamer projections
• Historical ZiPS and Steamer projections

Thank you for your support. Please let us now if you run into any issues with the new college data, either in the comments below or through our support page.

The playoff odds and projected standings for the 2025 season are now available!

As a refresher, to generate our playoff odds, we take each team’s projected performance and the schedule, and use those inputs to simulate the remaining season 20,000 times. We aggregate these outcomes to find the probability of a team winning its division or a Wild Card spot, along with its chances of winning the World Series and various playoff rounds. If a team has a 90% chance of making the playoffs, it means that 18,000 out of the 20,000 simulated seasons end with the team playing in October.

To calculate each team’s initial projected performance, we use individual player projections from the FanGraphs Depth Charts, which are a 50/50 blend of ZiPS and Steamer, prorated to our RosterResource Depth Chart playing time. We then aggregate those individual player projections by team and apply the BaseRuns calculation to each team’s batters and pitchers to get projected runs scored and allowed. Those BaseRuns runs scored and allowed calculations are used to calculate a projected winning percentage using the Pythagorean win expectancy. This is the number you’ll see on our projected standings page, which amounts to a team’s projected winning percentage versus neutral opposition. Here I’ll remind everyone that this is calculated before being run through the season simulation 20,000 times, so the projected standings can, and often do, differ from what you’ll see on the playoff odds page. Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s your chance to vote for the 2025 SABR Analytics Conference Research Awards winners.

The SABR Analytics Conference Research Awards will recognize baseball researchers who have completed the best work of original analysis or commentary during the preceding calendar year. Nominations were solicited by representatives from SABR, Baseball Prospectus, FanGraphs, the Internet Baseball Writers Association of America, and Sports Info Solutions.

To read any of the finalists, click on the link below. Scroll down to cast your vote.

Contemporary Baseball Analysis

• Ben Clemens, “What If The Fences Were All The Same Distance Away?” FanGraphs, August 23, 2024
• Zach Crizer, “Does The Search For A Starting Pitcher Now Start in the Bullpen?” Opta Analyst, April 25, 2024
• Mario Delgado Genzor, “Luis Castillo And The Pronator’s Triangle,” Baseball Prospectus, January 5, 2024
• Hannah Keyser, “The DH Is Universal, But Good DHs Are Rare,” The Ringer, March 29, 2024
• Kiri Oler, “The Search For The Most Predictable Pitcher,” FanGraphs, September 3, 2024

Contemporary Baseball Commentary

• R.J. Anderson, “Public Ownership Works For Some Of The World’s Best Sports Teams — Is There A Future For The Idea In America?” CBS Sports, June 12, 2024
• Michael Baumann, “Did Sabermetrics Ruin The MVP Conversation?” FanGraphs, November 13, 2024
• Michael Rosen, “Can Data Sharing Solve The Pitcher Injury Epidemic?” FanGraphs, September 30, 2024
• David Roth, “The More Random The Pitcher, The Better The No-Hitter,” Defector, April 5, 2024
• Richard Staff, “The Minor League Shrink And The Growing Gap Between Triple-A And The Bigs,” Defector, August 27, 2024

Historical Baseball Analysis/Commentary

• Steven Goldman, “Addiction,” Baseball Prospectus, November 7, 2024
• Donna L. Halper, “April 28, 1924: Birmingham Black Barons Make Negro National League Debut With Win Over Cuban Stars,” SABR Games Project, March 27, 2024
• Jay Jaffe, “The Day Negro Leagues Statistics Met The Major League Record Books,” FanGraphs, May 30, 2024
• Justin Klugh, “Every Streak Is A Part Of History,” Baseball Prospectus, July 11, 2024
• Mike Petriello, “Did Ted Williams’ ‘Red Seat’ Home Run Really Go 502 Feet?” MLB.com, April 26, 2024

John Dewan Defensive Analysis Award

• Russell A. Carleton, “Doubling Down,” Baseball Prospectus, June 5, 2024
• Patrick Dubuque, “Does Catcher Framing Bounce Back?” Baseball Prospectus, June 14, 2024
• Mark Simon, “Crown The Royals Pitchers No. 1 In Defensive Runs Saved,” Sports Info Solutions, September 11, 2024

Voting will be open through 11:59 p.m. MST on Friday, February 14, 2025.

Mobile or Safari users, click here to access the survey

Results will be announced and presented at the SABR Analytics Conference, March 14-16, 2025, in Phoenix, Arizona. Learn more or register for the conference at SABR.org/analytics.

We now have a whole bunch of new Steamer projections and historical ZiPS projections available for FanGraphs Members! Read the rest of this entry »