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 »

Back in July, we launched the RosterResource depth charts, the first of several features moving over to FanGraphs. Today, we have added RosterResource’s payroll pages.

As is the case with the depth charts, these are a near-replica of the RosterResource version. The loading time is faster, however, and player names link to the corresponding FanGraphs player page.  These can currently be accessed by clicking on “Payroll” at the top of the RosterResource pages and then clicking on the team.

Here is most of what you can learn by visiting a RosterResource payroll page.

Player Info

• Contract details (years, total, options, and opt-outs)
• Year-by-year salary breakdown
• Major league Service Time (updated at the conclusion of each season)
• Arbitration eligibility and Free Agency years
• AAV (average annual value of contract)

Team Info

• Estimated Payroll for each year that includes at least one guaranteed contract.
• Estimated Payroll at the end of previous season.
• Estimated Luxury Tax Payroll.
• Dollars due to players no longer with organization.
• Dollars owed by another team.

Players included on each payroll page are separated into three sections:

• Players With Guaranteed Salaries
• Players Eligible For Arbitration
• Notable Players Not Yet Eligible For Arbitration

The Notable Players Not Yet Eligible For Arbitration group has simple criteria: that the player is likely in the major leagues for good, and won’t have their service time interrupted by a demotion to the minor leagues. Players will be added or removed during the season, however, if a situation changes.

For players without a guaranteed contract, we display an estimated salary during the offseason until they have officially agreed to terms. For free agent signings, the annual salary will be broken down evenly across the years of the deal until official numbers are reported. For example, a two-year, $20MM contract will be displayed as $10 million in 2020 and $10 million in 2021. We will update it once the official breakdown is reported. All estimated values will be displayed in italics.

The payroll pages will be updated immediately following the 2019 season to reflect the 2020 through 2026 seasons. If you find anything that’s incorrect, or something that’s not working, please let us know in the comments.

You are now able to add stat (and age!) filters to the Minor League Leaderboards. They work in a similar manner to our splits tools and leaderboards.

The filters are downstream from the main data query, so if your leaderboard stretches across multiple seasons, it will filter out players based on the stat value returned for that time span. For example, with a leaderboard spanning 2018-2019, you can filter for players with 300 or more hits, and it will yield Gavin Lux.

A much-requested feature was the ability to filter by age. Currently, you can filter age on single season leaderboards based on the age-season value, since there’s no single age value for a multi-season span.

Stat Filter Bar Details

• Adding more filters can only narrow the pool of players, because the logical operator between filter is AND.
• The filters operate after the data query; it’s the same as the HAVING statement in SQL.
• This isn’t yet available on the combined Scouting + Stats! board.
• You are able to save your stat filters with your custom reports.
• The playing time query is still handled in the main controls, and not with this filter.
• The player ages used are the age-season values we use on player pages and other leaderboards. These can different from the board and RosterResource, which denote the current age of the player to one decimal place.

At long last, FanGraphs Hoodies are back in stock!

Frequently referred to as the “Mike Trout of Hoodies,” the FanGraphs Hoodie features a 52/48-poly/cotton blend and a drawstring that has never gotten lost in my hood.

Get them while you still can.

In November of last year, Craig Edwards published new research on how to value prospects by Future Value tier. We’ve used that research in conjunction with our prospect evaluations to assess the value of all 30 teams’ farm systems and arrive at our farm system rankings. Starting today, those rankings and valuations are available to view on The BOARD in the Farm Ranking tab. These rankings will automatically update as we move prospects between Future Value tiers, prospects change systems following a trade, or prospects graduate and lose prospect eligibility.

Within that tab, you’ll find:

• A team’s rank
• The value of a team’s system
• A count of how many prospects a team has on THE BOARD
• The average dollar value per player in a given system

We also break down how many pitching and position player prospects each team has within each Future Value tier. You can also sort on each batter and pitcher column within a given tier. Two-way prospects are split (0.5/0.5) between the batter and pitcher tiers for valuation purposes, as you can see below.

To navigate to the players contained within a particular team’s FV tier, just click on the number in the team’s row within that tier.

You’ll be automatically directed to the relevant part of THE BOARD — in this instance, Minnesota’s 13 hitting prospects with a 40 FV.

There’s some wiggle room in this otherwise fairly objective method of rankings farm systems, as two organizations with the same monetary total could end up being separated by which club has the higher per-prospect average. As we’ve discussed in the Trade Value Series and other places, all things being equal, teams would prefer that their WAR accumulate in as tight a time frame — and be concentrated in as few players — as possible. We don’t yet have an empirical way to express this, so for the time being, let’s say the the bonus you can give a system for concentration maxes out at about 10%.

We have a meaty roadmap of features we’d like add to the farm system rankings (more crosstab metadata on the makeup of a farm system, historical values, etc.), along with new columns and features we plan to add to THE BOARD before next season begins. Let us know what’s on your wishlist of new features to added by the wizard Sean Dolinar and the dark overlord David Appelman in the comments.

As you might have already heard, RosterResource will be transitioning its baseball content to FanGraphs over the next few months. Effective today, the 30 depth charts can be found here.

Our first version is close to an exact replica of RosterResource, with a few important improvements. The load time is much faster, and player names link to the corresponding FanGraphs player page. In addition, the minor league power rankings, plate appearances, and innings will be updated daily as opposed to weekly.

In case you’re unfamiliar with RosterResource, here’s the lowdown. I created the site just over 10 years ago. It was initially called MLBDepthCharts but was renamed RosterResource a few years later. The idea was that the site would be an easy-to-read, visual interpretation of a team’s 25-man roster and organizational depth throughout the entire year. It has evolved over time, but at a pace that was never fast enough for me. With the move to FanGraphs, you should expect to see a cross-pollination of data and features from both FanGraphs and RosterResource in the hopes of bringing you a more useful product. Read the rest of this entry »

With Jason Martinez and RosterResource.com joining FanGraphs, we’ve taken all the great information over there and put it to work on the FanGraphs player pages.

That means that up-to-date contract information, service time, various eligibilities, and minor league options are now available on our player pages. Please note that Service Time and MiLB Options are recorded at the start of the season and will be updated in the off-season. Arbitration and free agent eligibility is projected.

If anything seems amiss as you’re looking through your favorite players’ pages, please let us know in the comments.

We have added a custom date range to the main leaderboards. This allows you select any date range of three years or less after the start of 2002. Importantly, this will give you custom defined partial season WAR, which can’t be found elsewhere on the site.

The main controls for the custom date range can be found beneath the multiple seasons drop down menus. It uses the same date selector as the splits leaderboards, except it requires you to hit “Submit Custom Date” to load the leaderboard with the desired date range.

A custom date range is similar to options like “Last 30 Days” and “Past 3 Calendar Years” that are currently available on the leaderboards.

• There is a new option, “Custom Date Range,” in the same “Split” menu.
• A custom date range follows the same filtering restrictions, where you can’t filter by age, split seasons, or filter rookies.
• You also cannot apply additional splits like handedness.

This is the present behavior of our time frame options. They might change in the future, but not in this update.

Important notes:

• The leaderboard will only apply a date range when the split option is set to “Custom Date Range”
• You can only select dates from 2002 to the present.
• Date ranges can’t exceed three years. This restriction is due to data processing time.
• Date ranges only work with the batting and pitching tabs, NOT the fielding tab.
• Defensive value metrics, including the components of WAR, are prorated from the entire season, so you are unable to analyze defense within a specific date range.

If you encounter any issues, please let us know!

One of the tricky things about having so many stats on the site is that it can sometimes make it difficult to figure out whether a particular player is “good” or “bad” in a given statistical category. The other thing that can further complicate matters is the ever changing league rates. Given that the league strikeout percentage has increased over 8% in the past 30 years, what was once considered a well above average strikeout rate might today be merely average.

That’s why we’re introducing the “+ Stats” section to our leaderboards, where we have season and league adjusted a number of stats for your perusal.

Just like wRC+ and ERA-, all of these stats have a baseline of 100, where the number above or below 100 is the percentage above or below average a player is. For instance, Pedro Martinez’s 1999 K%+ is 239, that means he was 139% above the league average.

These baselined stats make it relatively easy to compare things like strikeout rates and walk rates across seasons and careers to see who was truly above (or below) their peers.

We’ll periodically add other stats to this section, so if you have additional “+ Stats” you’d like to see, please let us know in the comments!