The 2018 FAN Projection ballots are now open!

Before you can project any players, you’ll have to select the team you follow most closely towards the top of the screen. If you really don’t follow a team, just pick one. You’ll only have to do this once.

After you’ve selected a team, you can begin projecting players. There are nine categories of interest for pitchers and 10 categories for position players. Pick the values in the drop-down boxes closest to what you think the player will do in 2018. Hit the submit button and you’re done! If you made a mistake, you can always go back and change your selection at any time.

Please note that everything is a rate stat. You’re projecting 2B+3B, HR, SB, and Fielding as a measure of 150 games (basically a full season). The player’s previous stats are shown per 150 games in the projection ballot, too. This will make changing playing-time projections much easier, as you’ll only have to change the games played portion.

That’s really all there is to it. You can filter players by team or, if you go to the player pages, you can project players individually. If you want to see all the players you’ve projected, you can click on the “My Rankings” button, which will show you only what you specifically projected a player to do.

FAN Projections will show up on a player’s page after five ballots have been submitted for him.

If you do notice any issues, please let us know.

I wrote my first post for FanGraphs on April 14th, 2008. It was about Gabe Kapler’s return from managing to be a productive big leaguer. It referenced WPA/LI as our version of a modern statistic and talked unironically about how Kapler was keeping up with Casey Kotchman. It wasn’t great.

Since then, I’ve published 3,501 other posts (or chats). Hopefully, most of them were better than that first one. In these last 10 years, the site has changed a lot. In 2010, I went from a freelancer to the company’s first full-time employee, then was joined by a host of absurdly talented coworkers, many of whom now also get to do this for a living. FanGraphs went from a niche site into the mainstream, and along the way, I’ve seen our little corner of the baseball world help change the language of baseball fans.

It’s been a remarkable run. But for me, it comes to an end today. This will be my last post at FanGraphs.

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Meeting new people is always a bit awkward, so it’s best to just jump in. My name is Meg Rowley, and I’m the new managing editor of The Hardball Times and a new writer for FanGraphs. After a stint at Lookout Landing, I’ve spent the last three years as a writer at Baseball Prospectus, where I wrote about topics ranging from diversity in front office hiring, to Adam Lind (maybe) farting, to the problems with replay review, to the faces you see when the Twins cause a long delay at Dodger Stadium.

But before I wrote those pieces, I came to baseball, as so many where I’m from do, through my parents and the late-90s Mariners. That team taught me about joy and winning, but also about thrilling disappointment and the small moments that snuff out a season. Smart, tenacious writers here and elsewhere taught me to look at the game through a sabermetric lens. And now, David Appelman has trusted me to supply and shape some of your baseball words. I am incredibly grateful for the opportunity and will strive to prove myself worthy of that trust.

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For the past seven years, I’ve had the honor and privilege of writing for FanGraphs and its associated blogs, RotoGraphs, NotGraphs, and The Hardball Times. For the seven years prior to that, I had the honor and privilege of working for the Colorado Rockies Baseball Club. That’s a pretty neat coincidence. Looking back at the beginning of my adult life, I also spent seven years prior to joining the Rockies either in college or working a series of short-term jobs in order to build up a career. Triple sevens.

So, it seems like every seven years — or, as I’m approaching that seventh year — I look for a new challenge. This time around has been no different. Leaving the best job you’ve ever had is certainly not an easy thing to do, but for the second time, I’m about to do so. I am bidding FanGraphs and THT (mostly) farewell, as I take on what will most assuredly be my greatest challenge to date — opening up an independent bookstore.

Around this time last year, word began to spread that the bookstore in my town, Acton, Mass., was going to be closing. That was hard to fathom, since it had been in business for over 20 years. As I spoke with friends and neighbors around town, the feeling was the same: “Where do we buy books now?” And so my wheels started turning.

The result, barring last-minute hiccups, will be The Silver Unicorn Bookstore, which I hope to open at some point in March.

The store’s website is but a humble splash page at the moment. Once it’s set up, though, you will be able to purchase books from it online.

While I’m excited for my new (ad)venture, leaving FanGraphs and THT is going to be incredibly bittersweet. Looking at the Blog Roll recently, I realized I’ve worked with nearly every person on it. The relationships I’ve formed with my colleagues past and present, and with you, the readers, are something I will cherish for the rest of my life.

First and foremost, I have to thank David Appelman, not only for approving my initial hire as a writer, but then also agreeing to let me typeset The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2013 and, after that, agreeing to let me help lead THT’s transition to its current iteration and take over as managing editor. In between and after, he has trusted me with jobs like planning company trips, designing/ordering t-shirts, and managing interns. These were jobs that I was not always qualified to perform. I will miss working with him very, very much.

I’ll also desperately miss working with the editing team at THT — Joe Distelheim, Jason Linden, Dustin Nosler, and Greg Simons. Each one of them has stood by the site through thick and thin, and each one has bailed me out of plenty of jams.

Though I haven’t worked with her as long, Michelle Jay has become an invaluable person in my work life. Whatever the task at hand, I know that Michelle will get it done quickly, competently, and with a smile.

Of course, there’s all the people who I work with on the FanGraphs side: Carson Cistulli, Sean Dolinar, David Laurila, Eric Longenhagen, Chris Mitchell, Eno Sarris, Travis Sawchick, Jeff Sullivan, and Jeff Zimmerman chief among them. There’s also the people who I work with to produce stuff behind the scenes: Mary Craig, Mina Dunn, Jen Mac Ramos, Sarah Wexler, and intern Bailey Winston. There are countless others who I do and/or have worked with at FanGraphs and THT. I started building a list of a few particular people, but that list started to snowball, so I’ll simply thank Dave Studeman for trusting me to succeed him at THT. I’ve really had the pleasure and privilege of working with a tremendous amount of tremendously talented people.

Finally, there’s Dave Cameron. That Dave hired me in the first place is a bit breathtaking, knowing my credentials at the time and the credentials that would be subsequently required to write for the site. Objectively speaking, Dave never should have hired me. That he didn’t fire me once he did hire me is just as breathtaking. As he has reminded me, when he hired me, I claimed I would write for the site on a daily basis. I never did that. In fact, I think three original pieces per week (not counting chats) was probably my high-water mark, and for most of my tenure it was two or fewer. I owe Dave a great deal for not only hiring me, but for sticking with me as well.

Before this piece gets too sappy, I should note that my successor is a lot better at all this than me, so FanGraphs and THT are definitely not going to feel a pinch from my departure.

I should also note that I’m not leaving completely, hence the “For Now” in the title. I titled it as such because David Appelman has graciously agreed to let me start the FanGraphs Book Club. We won’t begin right away — I need to get the store open first — but hopefully around the start of the regular season, I will be back, with the goal of hosting a chat once every four-to-six weeks, on a particular baseball book that we’ll choose together. The idea is that we’ll pick a new baseball book ahead of time, and that book will be available for purchase through my store — in person and online — at a discounted rate. Hopefully, we can have a lot of fun with it, the same way we always have had in the FanGraphs After Dark chats.

I could keep writing this post forever. FanGraphs will always feel like home to me. But in the interest of (relative) brevity, I’ll stop here. Thanks as always, for reading and interacting with my work — it means everything to me. See you in a few months.

Update: Please submit your application before Tuesday, January 23rd and 12:00 AM.

FanGraphs has grown tremendously these last few years, and we’re thrilled that you all have helped build this community into one of the best baseball hubs on the internet. And now, we’re growing again, as we’re looking to bring on another full-time writer to join our staff.

We’re looking for someone who is interested in publishing daily, covering the ins and outs of what is happening in Major League Baseball. Familiarity and comfort with the data here on FanGraphs is a requirement, but just as importantly, we’re looking for someone who asks interesting questions and then provides analysis or commentary around those questions.

This is a full-time salaried position with benefits. If you have a passion for writing about baseball and think you’d be a good fit with us, send us an email at wanted@fangraphs.com, and use the subject line “FanGraphs Full-Time Writer Application – 2018”; please ensure that is the subject so that we can keep all of the applications organized, and ensure yours does not slip through the cracks.

In your application, please include samples or links to work you’ve published previously, or some new original content that you feel best emphasizes your writing abilities and interests. You may also include a resume, but it is not required for the initial application.

As FanGraphs is a web-based business, relocation will not be required; this job can be completed from most geographic locations, as long as you have reliable internet access and are willing to work during the hours when people in the United States are awake.

If for some reason your application is unable to go through via the wanted@fangraphs.com e-mail address, please fill out a contact form with the same subject “FanGraphs Full-Time Writer Application – 2018” and you will be provided an alternate e-mail address to submit your application.

Both the Effectively Wild podcast and community are marvelous. And with the help of that community, we have a new t-shirt for sale.

This is the first two-sided t-shirt in FanGraphs history, and it’s a doozy. As has become a FanGraphs custom, the t-shirt was designed by Aaron Gershman of Creative Sentencing, who you should absolutely hire for your next design project. But the cool part about this shirt is that it was made with input from the EW community. Let’s take a look at the broad strokes:

The back, as you can see, is a heat map. But it’s not just any heat map. It’s a heat map of all the things that are (or are not) discussed on the podcast. The items in the red boxes are discussed frequently, those in the white boxes are discussed rarely, and in the blue are things that are never discussed. Let’s take a closer look at the heat map, shall we?

Things like actual baseball games may never be discussed on the pod, but with plenty of Matt Albers and Ned Garver talk, you really can’t go wrong.

These wonderful t-shirts are now available for sale for $30. We have to charge a little more for these since they are two-sided, but we think it’s still a pretty great value. We hope you will too, and will continue to support Effectively Wild, which has been a great addition to the FanGraphs family!

(In other t-shirt news, the “Do You Go To FanGraphs At All?” t-shirts are also back in stock. Get ’em while they’re hot!)

Last month, I wrote about a new t-shirt inspired by Daniel Murphy that we had put up for sale. It looks like this:

Here’s some more info on it, in case you don’t want to click through.

Like our other recent t-shirt creations, this shirt is a Canvas Jersey T-shirt, and as you can see, it comes in black. The black, to me, is notable, as we’ve never made a black t-shirt before. The shirt, also like our other recent t-shirt creations, was designed by Aaron Gershman of Creative Sentencing. You should definitely hire Aaron for your next design project.

In short order, the shirt sold out in several sizes. I am here to tell you that those shirts have been re-stocked, and are available for purchase in sizes from small to 2X. So, go forth and order!

Well, OK, this has been a pretty short post, so let me leave you with this nugget of info. Did you know that of the 139 players who have accumulated at least 500 plate appearances with the Montreal Expos/Washington Nationals franchise, that Murphy is tied for first with Rusty Staub in terms of wRC+? Well, it’s true. They both have a 146 wRC+ in an Expos/Nationals uniform. Now, you know. And knowing is half the battle.

In closing, please buy our t-shirts. Thank you.

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

If you follow the Rays, Reds, Rockies, Marlins, Mets 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, Tigers, Royals, Rangers, Diamondbacks, Astros, Phillies, Pirates and Cardinals, 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!

If you’re a regular reader of the site, you probably heard this phrase, uttered the day after All-Star rosters were announced. In case you’re not, or you simply forgot about it, Daniel Murphy was upset that his teammate, Anthony Rendon, didn’t land a spot on the National League All-Star team. Someone asked him why. This was his response.
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If you’ve been to Saber Seminar in the past, you might have also attended our meetup on the eve of Saber Seminar. The annual conference is fantastic, and we can’t get enough, so we like to extend things out to the night before for everyone who is able to make it into town early. You should join us! This year, the date in question is Friday, Aug. 4. That would be today.
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