By now, you’ve no doubt heard the news that current managing editor of FanGraphs, Carson Cistulli, is departing the site for the chilly northern climes of Toronto and the Blue Jays’ pro scouting department. Carson is a great editor and baseball mind, as well as a generous writer, friend, and podcast host, and while we’ll soldier on ably in his absence, I doubt we’ll ever hire anyone with exactly his same delightful perspective again. The Blue Jays will be richer for that, FanGraphs poorer.

You also may have heard that I will be stepping into his shoes as managing editor. What does that mean for you, the reader? Not much, as it turns out.

Since its inception, FanGraphs has delivered sabermetrically driven analysis that asks interesting baseball questions and tells interesting baseball stories, and it will continue to do so in the future. You, the reader, will still get to read the same smart, funny, incisive writing. You’ll enjoy the same rigorous statistical work, the same insightful prospect coverage, and the same thoughtful player and industry analysis as you always have, though I hope you’ll learn to tolerate a less fanatical devotion to hyphens.

My work as a writer here and as the managing editor of The Hardball Times had been animated by a desire to understand the game from the seams out; to bring the rigors of social science and statistical analysis to bear on baseball questions; to color the answers to those questions with philosophy and humor. To pick at, until we are satisfied, the “why” as much as the “what” and the “how.” To challenge what we assume we know about the game, those who run it and those who play it. All of that will inform my work as FanGraphs’ managing editor.

I’ll still be writing, chatting, and (for now) managing The Hardball Times. One thing that will change: I will serve as your new host of FanGraphs Audio. Chatting with folks about baseball is one of my favorite things to do, and I look forward to getting to do just that with members of our staff, as well as a few guests. But don’t you worry: Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass aren’t going anywhere.

Every editor brings with them their own vision and quirks, but each one’s success is largely the result of the writers with whom they work and the readers who consume all those good words. Our staff of full-time writers and contributors is in terrific shape, and you, our readers, are as thoughtful in your comments and generous with your reading hours as ever. We’ll miss Carson dearly, but we’ll press on. This is the new FanGraphs, same as the old FanGraphs. I couldn’t be more excited.

In April of 2009, FanGraphs CEO David Appelman announced that his growing site would be adding two part-time writers effective immediately or something like immediately. Having produced some vaguely analytical work for my own weblog, I sent a collection of story ideas, a CV, and an overwrought cover letter to the email address provided in his announcement. In a turn of events that speaks both to Appelman’s discretion as a leader and his capacity for identifying talent, he made a decision that would benefit FanGraphs for some time — which is to say, he hired someone else.

As if to prove, however, that even the most towering intellects aren’t immune from errors in judgment, Appelman and his future managing editor Dave Cameron would undo their good work just a few months later. Acting on a recommendation from Jonah Keri, who’s culpability in this process can’t be overstated, Appelman and Cameron invited me, at the beginning of August 2009, to begin contributing twice a week to fangraphs dot com.

To suggest that my first posts at the site were met with a “mixed response” would be to make full use of the rhetorical device known as “euphemism.” While I received no actual threats of bodily harm to my person, that didn’t prevent my person from crawling into the fetal position and weeping like a child. And while the vigor with which some readers expressed their dissatisfaction was probably unnecessary, the basic gist of their comments — namely, that I was single-handedly ruining whatever goodwill FanGraphs had cultivated with the public — seemed, at times, to possess merit.

When I asked Appelman if I should stop, lest I topple his fledgling empire, he suggested I not do that. “Keep going,” in fact, was more or less the tenor of his message. And whether that was the soundest advice or not, it seems in retrospect to have worked out. I have kept going for over nine years, enjoying (like other FanGraphs writers) an editorial freedom and collaborative spirit that is rare for any publication. One of Appelman’s great strengths as this site’s guardian has been to trust his writers. It’s an ethic from which I’ve benefited as a contributor and which I’ve attempted to preserve as an editor.

Starting today, however, I will no longer serve as a writer or editor for this site. After a tenure that has lasted far beyond even my most optimistic projections, I’m leaving FanGraphs to become a member of the Toronto Blue Jays.

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As the FanGraphs prospect team starts to roll out team lists this off season, we’ve updated THE BOARD! to include team lists as they are published. You also might notice we did an update on the interface.

Important Notes:

• Team Lists will be added as they are published. Once all 30 lists and the Top 100 prospects are published, the Team Lists will just become the preseason 2019 list.
• The Scouting section for 2019 is split into position players and pitchers. This is to accommodate the addition of columns for Tommy John surgery date and spin rate for pitchers.
• The MLB Organization and Position selection now behaves like our splits tool. If you select one team, say the Padres, it will only show players in the Padres organization. If you were to click on another team, say the Braves, it will show you players in both the Padres’ and the Braves’ organization.
• You can now search for players within a board using the search box. The search function is limited to the current board, so it won’t find a player on the 2018 International board if you have the 2019 Team Lists loaded. It’s effectively a custom filter that filters on the player’s name and signing/college information.
• A .csv data file of the current board with associated filters can be exported from the top right corner of the data grid.

Our 2019 Free Agent Tracker is now live, housing the results from our crowdsourcing effort from the last two weeks. It will update with new contract data as free agents sign.

You might notice a new interface: readers are now able to filter the board choosing multiple teams and multiple positions. Also, in the top-right corner, we’ve put links to leaderboards and projection boards for the free agents.

The crowdsourcing numbers include both the average values and the median values for prospective player deals. The projected WAR uses the Depth Charts projections available on the projection page and player pages. At this point in the offseason, the Depth Charts projections closely reflect Steamer, but the playing time might differ slightly. ZiPS will be added at a later point in the offseason.

In our never-ending quest to put a FanGraphs logo on everything, mugs are the logical next step. So, here they are!

They come in both black and white to match your preferred aesthetic and, at 15 oz., are also on the large size. These have quickly become the go-to mugs in my own household, to the point where certain unnamed spouses have attempted to monopolize them.

They are available now for $25, which includes shipping and handling. Supplies are currently limited. Quite honestly, these may be the first and last mugs we make, so get them while you can!

We’ve rolled out some interface updates to the Splits Leaderboards.

The biggest change is the addition of quick splits and a ribbon control interface. The quick splits represent the most frequently used splits: home/away, handedness, and starting pitcher/relief pitcher. To keep the control area of the board condense, we implemented a ribbon / tabbed interface for the controls. If you would still like to see everything at once, you can click “Show All”.

The data export button has been moved closer to the data grid and will now export only the data and stats on the current board.

We are in the process of designing more data features and stats for this board. And if you notice any bugs or errors, please let us know.

We are currently seeking additional ballots for a handful of teams for the Fans Scouting Report.

If you follow the Royals, Twins, Rangers, Diamondbacks, Marlins, Pirates or Padres it would be a great help if you took a short amount of time to fill out a ballot.

We could also use ballots for the Orioles, Mets, Rockies, Brewers, White Sox and Dodgers, but these are in a little bit less of dire need.

The compiled results of these ballots end up on the player pages and the leaderboards.

In addition, if you have filled out a valid ballot (at any time this year, ballots before today included), we are going to be randomly selecting 20 users for a free year of FanGraphs Ad Free Membership! These 20 members will be selected when the ballot closes. If you are selected and already have an Ad Free Membership, your membership will be extended for 12 months.

Thank you for your help!

In Canto IV of his Inferno, the poet Dante — led by other, more dead poet Virgil — enters a level of hell reserved predominantly for those people who had the misfortune of predating Christ. One can ask reasonable questions about the justice of this arrangement — is it the fault of Socrates, for example, that he was died before the arrival of an unborn prophet? — but neither Virgil nor Dante nor even the occupants of this region appear to be lodging any serious complaints.

While this intermediate state, known as Limbo, is technically situated within the first circle of hell, it doesn’t feature any of the punishments typically associated with the underworld. No fire or rivers of fire or anything involving fire, really. It’s mostly a bunch of guys sitting around.

Today, we find ourselves in a kind of baseball Limbo*, occupying a place on the schedule that’s technically situated within the regular season but possessing all trappings of a postseason game. It is very strange.

*It’s possible that Dante’s Purgatorio actually serves as a more apt metaphor for these Game 163s, but the author hasn’t read it and has no plans to do so for the moment.

Indeed, the purpose of post is less to meditate on the finer points of a long Italian poem and more to announce that a number of FanGraphs writers will be attempting to understand the strangeness of baseball Limbo in real time today during an extended “live chat” that will start around 1pm ET and continue for the duration of this afternoon’s divisional tiebreakers. Chats for the Wild Card games on Tuesday and Wednesday will follow, as well.

Here’s the playoff chat schedule for the next few days. Times in ET and presented in sophisticated 24-hour format. (Note: prospect and fantasy chats not included here.)

Monday
13:00 Game 163s Live Chat Jubilee

Tuesday
20:00 National League Wild Card Game

Wednesday
20:00 American League Wild Card Game

Whatever their flaws as human people — and there are too many to catalog in this brief post — lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen and lead prospect analyst emeritus Kiley McDaniel have nevertheless acquitted themselves well in their attempts to analyze all prospects.

Within the last year, they have evaluated every player with a 40 FV or better, ranked and re-ranked the top rookie-eligible players in the game, examined the next three draft classes in as much depth as is reasonable, provided daily notes on in-season developments for pro prospects, both introduced and updated THE BOARD, and (most recently) launched a weekly podcast dedicated to prospect evaluation and air-horn sound effects.

Given the volume of content produced by Messrs. Longenhagen and McDaniel, it makes sense to create a space where readers can find it. Accordingly, we’re introducing today the FanGraphs Prospects landing page.

From the Prospects page, one can access the site’s most recent prospect-related posts, podcast episodes, and rankings. Accompanying the addition of the Prospects page are also a couple new features — namely, a statistical leaderboard featuring only those players who have appeared on a prospect list, a graduation tracker to monitor which players are about to exhaust (or have recently exhausted) their status as a prospect, and a miniature version of THE BOARD.

In addition to hyperlinks like this one, the FanGraphs prospects page is also accessible via the Blogs drop-down menu on FanGraphs’ main page.

Finally, it would be foolish and also very rude not to mention the contributions of Sean Dolinar to the construction of the Prospects page. Dolinar’s work on the project has been invaluable.

We are debuting a new leaderboard today, the Season Stat Grid. It’s a little different than most of our leaderboards. Instead of having multiple stats in columns for each player, we are showing just one stat on the page and displaying multiple different seasons across the columns. This will allow readers to compare players to other players and themselves across several years.

You are able to select from most batting and pitching stats available on the player pages. There is a “Popular” stat menu which will always contain WAR along with other frequently used or otherwise important stats.

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