FanGraphs now has Pitch Info data available throughout the site. For those unfamiliar with Pitch Info data, it is best known as the pitch-type data which powers much of BrooksBaseball.net.

Pitch Info tabs and tables have replaced all PITCHf/x tabs and tables by default. This includes the leaderboards, player pages, game logs, heat maps, and pitch-type splits. All the previous PITCHf/x data is now hidden by default, but you can un-hide it by going to your profile and checking the “Show PITCHf/x Stats?” checkbox. oth PITCHf/x and Pitch Info data will be continue to be updated on a nightly basis. We expect Pitch Info data from the previous night to be loaded by around 10:30 AM ET.

If you have custom dashboards, leaderboards, or links set up to PITCHf/x data, this change will not impact any of that. All PITCHf/x links and PITCHf/x fields in custom leaderboards will continue to work as they always have. You can even combine PITCHf/x and Pitch Info data in the same custom leaderboard.

One navigation change is that the pitch-type split data has been moved under the splits tab.

And here’s some additional information about the adjustments that Pitch Info makes:

“The Pitch Classifications are manually reviewed by Pitch Info using several parameters of each pitch’s trajectory and double-checked against several other sources, such as video evidence (e.g., pitcher grip and catcher signs) and direct communication with on-field personnel (e.g., pitching coaches, catchers, and the pitchers themselves).”

Because the PITCHf/x dataset provides the details of each pitch’s trajectory, we can slightly alter the default values to align better with reality than what is commonly reported. For example, we slightly shift our reported values back to a release distance of 55′ – which more closely reflects the actual release distance of most pitchers – so that release points are more tightly clustered and velocities are slightly increased. We also provide options to visualize pitch movement with gravity added back into the equation or with the effects of air drag removed.

As you may have noticed when you clicked on this post, the FanGraphs homepage has received a makeover. The previous front page worked well enough for a number of years. The way we all use the web has changed, however, so it was time for some adjustments, intended to help you find more of what you want in an easier-to-use manner. The new layout features a number of improvements, and while change is never enjoyable, we hope you’ll find these tweaks will help you get to the content you’re looking for more quickly, as well as highlight content that you might have missed previously.

The biggest change is that the new design is responsive, meaning it will work well on mobile devices, not just desktops and laptops. We’ve also designed the new front page to highlight our daily written content, the outstanding prospect work being put together by Eric Longenhagen and Chris Mitchell, and provide access to the tools that let you utilize all the great data here on the site.

More specifically, we have:

• included the daily Hardball Times article in the featured section, highlighting one of the best-kept secrets on FanGraphs; the daily THT piece isn’t to be missed. We also changed the featured-article area to better highlight popular content, including pieces from RotoGraphs, as well as identify the most recent and most read posts of the day.
• merged InstaGraphs into the FanGraphs article flow. InstaGraphs posts are still shorter, quicker articles, but they won’t be off in the corner any longer. They will be noted by an InstaGraphs tag, so you’ll still know to expect something a bit shorter than the usual FanGraphs post.
• included our standard chat schedule and a chat-alert banner for when they are happening.
• improved the Top Prospects box, so all 30 teams are accessible instead of just the last five articles Eric Longenhagen has written.
• improved our “Essential” section to include evergreen articles and site news, and to highlight some of our data tools.

The new layout will be more dynamic, including more features as the season progresses and as certain content becomes more topical, such as during the draft or the trade deadline. We hope that these improvements will let you navigate the numerous articles we publish each day, as well as better find reference pieces that you’ll want to go back and read multiple times.

Note that not every page on the site has been made mobile-friendly yet. As we become accustomed to the new design, please don’t hesitate to let us know about any questions, comments, or further improvements that you’d like to see integrated into the new homepage.

Thanks for being loyal readers and supporting FanGraphs through the years. We hope this new front page makes your visits even more enjoyable.

For the 2017 season, Mitchel Lichtman has made some improvements to the UZR methodology!

– UZR now uses hit timer data (hang time) rather than hit type designations, which is an improvement on the methodology and thus the results.

– The methodology has changed a little that allows UZR to account for some of the noise associated with imperfect data. The net result of this change is that extreme UZR’s, which were likely caused by, to some extent at least, noise in the data, rather than extreme performance, will be slightly ‘dampened.’ We think that these new values, while very close to the old ones in most cases, more accurately reflect the actual performance of the players in question.

These changes in UZR are currently active for 2017, and will also be rolled out for 2012 – 2016 data in the near future.

We now have landing pages for all 30 Major League Baseball teams. These pages can be accessed through the Teams menu on the navigation bar above, simply by clicking on a team’s name. You can also access the pages directly, like so (no spaces in team names):

Many of the stats and features on the team pages are available in similar forms elsewhere on the site. We’ve now collected them into one place, however, so that readers can more quickly access team-specific information and analysis. As with any new addition to FanGraphs, we plan on expanding and adding features to the team pages as time goes on.

There are five different tabs on each page: Summary, Stats, Schedule, Pitcher Usage, and Depth Chart.

Summary

This is a quick overview of the team’s season. It includes boxes for the next and most recent games, division standings, team stats, depth chart, and roster notes.

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Last year, we joined up with the Pitch Talks crew for a three-city U.S. tour, and had a blast in Boston, San Francisco, and Chicago. The response was clear, so instead of just hitting up a few cities this year, the tour is expanding to 16 dates, and we’re covering a good chunk of the country from April through August. Here’s the current tour schedule.

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The 2017 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, there are 9 categories 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 2017, 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 this year 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 the player pages after there have been 5 ballots submitted.

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

Today we’re introducing a new form of FanGraphs Membership: Ad Free Membership. With Ad Free Membership, you become a full-fledged member of the site and you will not see a single third-party advertisement on the FanGraphs website so long as you maintain your membership. The price of Ad Free Membership is $50 per year.

If you are already a FanGraphs Member, you’ll be able to easily upgrade your membership at a pro-rated rate, depending on how much time you have left before your renewal date. Just select the new “Ad Free Yearly Membership” and hit the Sign Up Now button.

To give everyone a sense for what Ad Free Membership looks like, we’re going to put the site into Ad Free mode for all users through Monday. We hope you’ll like what you see. I know for the few of us who have been beta testing the product, we can attest that it really does make a noticeable difference in both the speed and responsiveness of the site.

Let me give you some details on why we’ve decided to do this. Earlier this year we introduced FanGraphs Membership, and we are incredibly thankful for everyone who has decided to become a member thus far! FanGraphs Membership is a way for you to help fund the site’s current operations and its future growth. If you think we’re doing a good job and you’d like to support our efforts, it’s a great way to show your support.

However, even with FanGraphs Membership, the majority of our revenue comes from advertising. Without advertising, there is no way the site could continue to operate. This has become a bit of a double-edged sword for us. As online advertising technology has advanced, it has also become more resource intensive, taking up both processing power and bandwidth. While there are movements within the online advertising industry to combat advertising bloat, we want to give our users a way to avoid ads completely, without cutting off the revenue stream which is essential for FanGraphs to operate. Ad Free Membership does exactly that.

We rely on various advertising networks to provide ads to us, and we do our best to vet all of these networks to make sure they’re not serving intrusive or malicious ads. But, even the most diligent ad networks have intrusive ads that slip through the cracks. Tracking down intrusive ads has more or less become a game of whack-a-mole for us over the past few years. Intrusive ads annoy us just as much as they annoy you, and we are constantly trying to make sure the advertising experience on FanGraphs is acceptable.

We will remain completely committed to having a non-intrusive advertising experience for those who would prefer not to become Ad Free Members.

It would be disingenuous of me to not mention ad-blocking. Ad-blocking is a real problem for us, but we also understand the many reasons people decide to install ad-blockers. If you are using an ad-blocker and you regularly visit FanGraphs, I urge you to become an Ad Free Member. There is now a real option for you that will help us continue to bring you high quality baseball content, without ads.

As we’ve stated before in our previous membership posts, Ad Free Membership, or any type of FanGraphs Membership is not a paywall. Whether you decide to be a member or not, all the content on FanGraphs remains available to you. We are incredibly thankful to the entire FanGraphs community for supporting us over the years and hope that we can continue to earn your support going forward.

Travis Sawchik has distinguished himself in recent years as one of the sharpest minds in baseball journalism, exhibiting his intelligence not only by way of his work for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review but also with his book Big Data Baseball. He has recently joined FanGraphs. We’re happy to have him.

My wife, two-year-old, and I share the holiday season with our families, alternating Christmas Day between each respective side like a college-football home-and-home series. Christmas was spent with my in-laws in Georgia this year, which meant we visited my parents a week earlier at my childhood home in Concord, Ohio, a suburb east of Cleveland.

There, the unfinished basement remains something of a shrine to the Cleveland Indians, particularly the 1990s-era teams of my youth. There are laminated Cleveland Plain Dealer and Akron Beacon Journal section fronts documenting postseason triumphs adhered to the cinder-block walls. There are autographed items – including signatures from Ruben Amaro and Jerry Dipoto – and a sequence of photos details the rise of Progressive Field from an old market and warehouse district just south of the city center in the early 1990s. The basement is something of an archaeology of fandom. It’s also the only place Mom would allow for such clutter. Though covering the sport as a member of the press diminishes enthusiasm for any one team, I was raised to be a fan of the sport. I still very much am.

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Here it is: the split leaderboards! Now, you can create custom splits using multiple splits, much like you can on the player pages — except now in the form of an entire leaderboard, and accessible directly from the leaderboard menu.

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Earlier this year we introduced FanGraphs Membership, a voluntary way to to help support all the baseball content we produce each and every day. As a reminder, Membership is achieved through a $20 annual donation to the site — or $3 per month for those of you who prefer short-term contracts! — and we are greatly appreciative of all those who became members when we rolled out the program back in February.

Since we haven’t really mentioned Membership much since the rollout, we wanted to give you guys an update on the program. Beginning today, frequent users of FanGraphs who are not Members will occasionally be reminded that that becoming a Member will help support all the great baseball content at FanGraphs. These messages won’t be overly intrusive or too frequent, but will serve as a reminder that the content and data you’re consuming costs us real money to provide, and you can help ensure that FanGraphs remains a leader in both spaces by becoming a Member.

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