We just updated our player pages! The pages might not look that different, but we’ve redone everything under the hood. We did this to achieve responsive player pages, and it also comes with improvements in speed and a better platform to develop new features in the future.

Quick Look

If you are on a desktop computer, the most noticeable difference on the new pages is the Quick Look section we’ve added to the very top of the page. These will have some popular stats for the player’s major league career and the current or most recent season. Retired players will only have their career stats.

For position players, we’ve also provided a summary of how many major league games the player played at each position, while a pitcher’s Quick Look will show their pitch repertoire. The position breakdown will double count games a player played at two or more positions, and does not include pinch-hitters or pinch-runners, so those values might not add up to games played. We display the Pitch Info classifications for the pitches where usage is 5% or greater for the season. Once again, these will only show for the current or most recent season.

Prospects and players who were recently prospects have their most recent scouting grades and team rankings from the prospect team shown. The report year those grades and rankings come from is shown and also serves as a link to The Board, allowing you to see that report’s entire class. Any in-season rankings are denoted with a (U) for Updated.

Table View Options and Minor League Stats

Minor league stats are no longer shown by default for every player. We do, however, show them for players who:

• Do not have any major league stats.
• Current players who have less than two years of service time.
• Retired players who have minor league stats in our database, but played fewer than three seasons in the majors.

You can toggle the minor league stats into view as always, with the table options between the table header and the data grid.

On mobile, those table view options are hidden but are accessible via the settings gear on the top-right of the table.

Game Logs

The game log calendar has been updated as well. Days when the player played a game are shown in black and have a dot underneath the date. Clicking update will load the new date range. You are also able to select an entire season or all games that we have available. If you select a very long range, it might take a while to load.

We also now have game logs and play logs available for players who played from 1974 to 2002. These behave just like the game logs and play logs of current players. 1974 is as far back as our play-by-play data currently goes.

Mobile

We made the data grid pages responsive. Much like The Board or the minor league leaderboards, you are able to scroll across the table while the season for the row is fixed in the left column.

For the moment, the visualization-based pages still require the full desktop view to use. We hope to move everything over to a responsive view soon.

Other Notes

Fantasy Player Profiles are still in the process of being written and will be available soon. The placement of the profiles on the player pages haven’t changed.

Back in January, we announced the creation of legacy pages for all players pages. The HTML structure on those has not changed. However, they are not meant as a fully-featured alternative, so navigation might not work and new features we develop in the future will not be added to them. This is meant as a stop-gap for any research tools you might have that rely on the HTML structure.

As always if you find any issues or bugs, please let us know in the comments!

After an eventful offseason, actual baseball games are happening on a daily basis again. While there’s nothing like the real thing, at least it’s a sign that we are very close — 26 days, to be precise — to Opening Day.

In the meantime, each team currently has somewhere between 59 (Houston Astros) and 73 (St. Louis Cardinals) players in major league camp. How do I know? Well, I learned this, along with many other interesting tidbits, by using FanGraphs’ newest feature: the Opening Day Roster Tracker. Since it could also be quite useful to you over the next several weeks, let me tell you all about it.

First, here’s a quick primer on who is in major league camp and what happens as rosters are pared down to 26 players.

Who is in major league camp?

The full squad is comprised of each team’s full 40-man roster and a group of non-roster invitees (NRI). A non-roster invitee must be added to the 40-man roster if they break camp with the major league club.

What happens when a player is officially out of the running for an Opening Day roster spot?

If a player on the 40-man roster does not make the team, they are optioned to the minors; non-roster invitees are reassigned. They will continue to prepare for the upcoming season in minor league camp. This does not, however, completely rule them out from making the Opening Day roster. Circumstances can change, usually because of injuries, and a player can be brought back after being sent down. Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re at all familiar with my career, you know that it’s been a series of years-long periods of waiting, punctuated by changes and opportunities that have popped up more quickly than I could’ve imagined. I won’t bore you with examples, but I’ve found myself in another of those times of change. Some of the twists and turns have been great to share with the people here at FanGraphs. I got engaged last weekend; the book that Eric and I wrote is now at the printer, set to come out in April. But others have been harder. This one is hard. I have accepted a job at ESPN, which I start this week. The move completes a circle of sorts that began when I worked there under Keith Law during the 2012 season. I’ve said goodbye once before, but that doesn’t make it any easier now. FanGraphs is a special place, filled with special people who have been there for me when I needed them the most.

There are a lot of people I’d like to recognize who helped me get to this point. David Appelman and Dave Cameron come to mind first, since they brought me to FanGraphs. The first time, it was a chance to prove myself on the big stage; the second time, it was after I’d chosen to leave a bad situation with the Braves. They were excited to welcome me back when I wasn’t sure what my career would look like or where it would go next. It is impossible to overstate how much that meant to me. I’ve never had a bad thing to say about this job, this place, or the management here. It’s the perfect place to work in a lot of ways.

Eric Longenhagen has been my co-pilot this second time through and is one of those forever friends who I found later in life; I’ll always be thankful that I did. I’m sure he’ll do a great job in his role without me, but we’ll also see each other plenty, too. Meg Rowley has done an amazing job running the site, gracefully editing my words, being a great forever friend in her own regard, and, perhaps most importantly, advising me through my kitchen remodel and the workshopping of my worst tweet drafts. The list could go on forever, but there’s one other person who must be mentioned here. Keith Law has been a great friend and mentor and gave me my first chance to write words that people, both inside and outside the industry, actually read. I have huge shoes to fill at the Worldwide Leader.

I’ll leave the terms of my exact role and focus at ESPN for their press release. I’ll have more to share in the coming weeks as I get on-boarded, like what I’ll do to take the place of my weekly chats here. I’m in Bristol right now and am excited for this new challenge and to work with a new, talented team.

I think it’s appropriate to close with what I first told the people mentioned above about my decision: I am two-thirds excited about the new role, and one-third bummed that I am leaving such a great place that had done so much for me. Long live this amazing baseball blog.

Here’s your chance to vote for the 2020 SABR Analytics Conference Research Award 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 Hardball Times, and Beyond the Box Score.

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

Contemporary Baseball Analysis

• Robert Arthur, “The Baseball is Juiced (Again),” Baseball Prospectus, April 5, 2019.
• Craig Edwards, “Baseball’s Competitive Balance Problem,” FanGraphs, November 18, 2019.
• Sam Miller, “How is WAR Calculated, Really? Breaking Down a Single Play to Find Out,” ESPN.com, December 5, 2019.
• Jason Themanson, “Psychology of Walks and Singles,” The Hardball Times, June 19, 2019.
• Meredith Wills, “Yes, the Baseball is Different — Again. An Astrophysicist Examines This Year’s Baseballs and Breaks Down the Changes,” The Athletic, June 25, 2019.

Contemporary Baseball Commentary

• Daniel R. Epstein, “Don’t Let MLB Insult You,” Beyond the Box Score, December 23, 2019.
• Craig Goldstein, “Deep, But Playable: The Moral Hazard of Playing it Safe,” Baseball Prospectus, August 6, 2019.
• David Roth, “The Smartest Guys in the Clubhouse,” The New Republic, December 3, 2019.
• Shakeia Taylor, “Loss, For Words,” Baseball Prospectus, April 24, 2019.
• Emily Waldon, “I Can’t Afford to Play This Game: Minor Leaguers Open Up About the Realities of Their Pay and the Impact on Their Lives,” The Athletic, March 15, 2019.

Historical Baseball Analysis/Commentary

• R.J. Anderson, “The Business Behind MLB Expansion: Portland, Montreal and Raleigh Taking Different Approaches to Landing a Team,” CBS Sports, July 17, 2019.
• Jay Jaffe, “Pitcher, Author, Everyman, Hero: Jim Bouton (1939-2019),” FanGraphs, July 11, 2019.
• Herm Krabbenhoft, “How Many Hits Did Ty Cobb Make in His Major League Career? What Is His Lifetime Batting Average?” SABR Baseball Research Journal, Spring 2019.
• Rachael McDaniel, “The Meaning of Ichiro,” FanGraphs, March 21, 2019.
• Marc Normandin, “MLB’s Luxury Tax Became A Salary Cap Because Of Decades Of Failures,” Deadspin, January 31, 2019.

Voting will be open through 11:59 p.m. MST on Monday, February 10, 2020. Details and criteria for each category can be found here. Only one work per author was considered as a finalist.

Create your own user feedback survey

Mobile or Safari users, click here to access the survey

Results will be announced and presented at the ninth annual SABR Analytics Conference, March 13-15, 2020, at the Renaissance Phoenix Downtown in Phoenix, Arizona. Learn more or register for the conference at SABR.org/analytics.

You might have noticed the URL structure for our player pages changed during the Winter Meetings. We are in the process of updating these pages, and that was our first step. We are planning on making more changes as the winter continues.

Some of these upcoming changes will alter the underlying HTML structure of the page, which could affect data analysis tools you might have built or use. We are creating a legacy version of the pages, so the player pages can be accessed from a direct URL (but not through normal navigation) in their current form for the near future.

To access the legacy version of the pages you will have to add -legacy to the old URL structure. So the statss.aspx becomes statss-legacy.aspx. This will circumvent the redirects to any updates we make to the pages. Below are a list of legacy player page URLs.

Notes

• This is different but related to the URL redirects we did during the Winter Meetings. Using the -legacy URL will circumvent the redirects.
• This isn’t designed to allow for normal browsing on these pages, so no site links will ever point to them. You can only access the legacy pages through the direct URL with the proper query string.
• Some of the controls on these pages might not work. The URL parameters will still work, though.
• We won’t add new features to the legacy pages.
• After we launch the new player pages, the legacy pages might not last forever, but they will give you time to transition to the new pages.

In our ongoing quest to make it easier for our readers to keep up with all of the activity around the league, FanGraphs has launched a new Offseason Transaction Tracker.

While our long-term vision includes a greater integration of stats and historical data, this initial rollout gives readers the ability to answer the simple questions, such as: What roster moves did I miss? Which players has each team added? Which players has each team lost?

The link to the tracker can be found at the top of any RosterResource page, where you can quickly toggle between the Depth Charts, Payroll, Offseason Tracker, and Free Agent Tracker pages for each team. To view a full transaction list for the entire league, click on “Show All MLB Teams” on the left underneath the team abbreviations:

Read the rest of this entry »

Our 2020 Free Agent Tracker is now live! There are currently over 200 players on the list, and several more will be added over the next few weeks as teams continue to clear space on their 40-man rosters. The tracker will be regularly updated throughout the offseason as qualifying offers are made, accepted, and rejected, and free agents find their new homes.

You can sort by a player’s handedness, either batting or throwing, age, 2019 WAR, and projected WAR for the upcoming season, as well as our crowdsourcing results, which include median contract total, years, and average annual value. You can also filter by status (signed/unsigned), previous team, position, and signing team, and export the data for your own analysis.

The Tracker can always be found in the RosterResource section of the site drop-down menu or within the RosterResource Depth Charts and Payroll pages, as seen at the top of the image below.

As always, we appreciate your feedback. If there are features you’d like to suggest for future versions of the tracker, feel free to drop them in the comments here.

The another season has come and gone, but our readers’ appetite for baseball and its attendant prognostication remains.

To that end, and to give us all something to get us through the lean months ahead, today FanGraphs released for your enjoyment the 2020 Steamer projections.
The work of Jared Cross, Steamer represents the first opportunity of the offseason to peer into the gauzy mists of the future. The prorated version of the forecasts (known as Steamer 600) is useful, too, as a sort of quick estimate of true talent.

What does one find in the numbers? Mike Trout is once again projected to be the best player in baseball, putting a comfortable distance between himself and the next-closest position player, Mookie Betts. Anthony Rendon, who ranks second on our Top 50 Free Agent list, forecasts to be the sixth best position player in the game, bested only by Trout, Betts, Alex Bregman, Francisco Lindor, and Christian Yelich, and by those last two only barely. Meanwhile, Gerrit Cole, the No. 1 free agent available per our list, looks to be the best pitcher going into 2020.

What other revelations wait? Dive in and find out.

After 11 offseasons of organizing and updating the depth charts at Roster Resource (formerly known as MLBDepthCharts), this will be my first at FanGraphs. In case you’re not familiar with how I cover the offseason, here’s a rundown of how the depth charts and payroll pages work.

These features are now in offseason mode, meaning that all free agents have been removed from their 2019 teams and a projected Opening Day 26-man roster is displayed. As roster moves occur and news is reported, these projections will be updated almost immediately and announced on my Twitter account.

If you find yourself scratching your head about a particular projection — the World Champion Nationals, for example, begin with Jake Noll and Wilmer Difo as their starting first and second baseman, respectively — it’s very likely because you’ve discovered a team need. If you disagree with a projection, we might just have differing opinions. It’s also possible that I’m overlooking something and would greatly appreciate hearing your opinion on the matter. Twitter is the easiest way to make a suggestion or report an error.

It’s important to note that these are Opening Day roster projections. Once we incorporate 2020 stats projections in the depth charts, you will notice that certain players listed in the Minor League section are expected to play an integral role for the upcoming season.

Since offseason moves do not become official right away, I use my best judgement to decide when a free agent signing or trade will be reflected on the site. There have been a few occasions over the years when I have had to “undo” a reported move (i.e. Dexter Fowler agreed to a contract with the Orioles on February 23, 2016 before re-signing with Cubs on February 25, 2016 ). For the most part, a roster move will be reflected on a depth chart once enough credible reporters have confirmed it to consider it a done deal.

Options remaining, major league service time, and Rule 5 eligibility have all been updated through the 2019 season. These are unofficial and based on my own count. Certain players can be granted a fourth option, which is usually not widely reported.

If a player has “R5” in the “Options or R5 status” column, they are eligible for next month’s Rule 5 draft. Players not on the 40-man roster who show that they have options remaining because of previous major league experience are also eligible for the Rule 5 draft. Teams have until November 20 to add players to their 40-man roster, which would protect those players who are eligible from the Rule 5 draft.

Below the 26-man roster projection is the “Minor Leaguers You Should Know” section, sorted by primary position. The purpose of this section is to identify players who are moving up the ladder toward the major leagues. Once I determine that a player is no longer making progress, I remove them from the list. Here is an overview of the criteria I use to determine whether a players is notable enough to be included.

Players are automatically included if they meet any of the following criteria:

• On the 40-man roster
• Non-Roster Invitee (not on 40-man roster; invited to major league camp during 2020 Spring Training)
• Invited to the 2019 Arizona Fall League (while AFL participants are not always top prospects, players chosen by their organization are typically in the upper minors and expected to reach the majors within a year or two).
• Top 30 prospect in the organization, per the most recent rankings from FanGraphs
• Drafted in the first 10 rounds of 2019 Amateur Draft

Players are also included if they’ve met some combination of the following criteria:

• Productive 2019 season:
• Typically a .700+ OPS or better for position players; could be slightly lower for catchers, second basemen, shortstops and center fielders if speed, on-base ability, and/or defense are strong attributes.
• Typically a sub-4.00 ERA with average BB/9 rate (4.0 and under) and above-average K/9 rate (8.0 and over), with the caveat that relievers in the low minors must do significantly better to be recognized.
• If a player did not meet the criteria based on statistical production, other factors such as ceiling, position, age, and level are taken into account.

Payroll pages are explained in depth here. During the offseason, the salary breakdown for a new contract is spread evenly as an “estimated salary” until official numbers are reported. Estimated salaries are displayed in italics. Projected salaries for arbitration-eligible players, courtesy of MLB Trade Rumors, are displayed in italics with a light green background.

We’ll be adding 2020 projections to the depth charts in the near future. Feel free to let us know what other information you’d like see while viewing the depth charts in the comments below.

For your prognosticating convenience, we’ve created a new, live section of the playoff odds page to house the ZiPS projections for each game of the postseason. These projections are a supplement to the normal FanGraphs Playoff Odds. They are not a replacement for the existing ones, which combine ZiPS and Steamer. These projections are arrived at similarly to how ZiPS does the roster strength projections during the regular season, only with roster constructions that reflect the very different way players are used during the playoffs. Unlike the regular season model, ZiPS uses projected starters in order to make a more accurate, game-by-game projection; during the regular season, ZiPS uses the actual schedule, but without knowledge of which player will start each game.

To aid in modeling these probabilities, the full model of ZiPS is used, which includes updated split projections in order to (hopefully!) enhance the projections’ accuracy. There’s obviously a great deal of speculation as to who will start these games; these odds will be updated continually as we get closer to first pitch. Projections for the Division Series that will be played against the respective Wild Card winners will populate after the Wild Card games have concluded. For the moment, you’ll see their tabs grayed out. Read the rest of this entry »