The playoff odds and projected standings for the 2025 season are now available!

As a refresher, to generate our playoff odds, we take each team’s projected performance and the schedule, and use those inputs to simulate the remaining season 20,000 times. We aggregate these outcomes to find the probability of a team winning its division or a Wild Card spot, along with its chances of winning the World Series and various playoff rounds. If a team has a 90% chance of making the playoffs, it means that 18,000 out of the 20,000 simulated seasons end with the team playing in October.

To calculate each team’s initial projected performance, we use individual player projections from the FanGraphs Depth Charts, which are a 50/50 blend of ZiPS and Steamer, prorated to our RosterResource Depth Chart playing time. We then aggregate those individual player projections by team and apply the BaseRuns calculation to each team’s batters and pitchers to get projected runs scored and allowed. Those BaseRuns runs scored and allowed calculations are used to calculate a projected winning percentage using the Pythagorean win expectancy. This is the number you’ll see on our projected standings page, which amounts to a team’s projected winning percentage versus neutral opposition. Here I’ll remind everyone that this is calculated before being run through the season simulation 20,000 times, so the projected standings can, and often do, differ from what you’ll see on the playoff odds page. Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s your chance to vote for the 2025 SABR Analytics Conference Research Awards 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 Internet Baseball Writers Association of America, and Sports Info Solutions.

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

Contemporary Baseball Analysis

• Ben Clemens, “What If The Fences Were All The Same Distance Away?” FanGraphs, August 23, 2024
• Zach Crizer, “Does The Search For A Starting Pitcher Now Start in the Bullpen?” Opta Analyst, April 25, 2024
• Mario Delgado Genzor, “Luis Castillo And The Pronator’s Triangle,” Baseball Prospectus, January 5, 2024
• Hannah Keyser, “The DH Is Universal, But Good DHs Are Rare,” The Ringer, March 29, 2024
• Kiri Oler, “The Search For The Most Predictable Pitcher,” FanGraphs, September 3, 2024

Contemporary Baseball Commentary

• R.J. Anderson, “Public Ownership Works For Some Of The World’s Best Sports Teams — Is There A Future For The Idea In America?” CBS Sports, June 12, 2024
• Michael Baumann, “Did Sabermetrics Ruin The MVP Conversation?” FanGraphs, November 13, 2024
• Michael Rosen, “Can Data Sharing Solve The Pitcher Injury Epidemic?” FanGraphs, September 30, 2024
• David Roth, “The More Random The Pitcher, The Better The No-Hitter,” Defector, April 5, 2024
• Richard Staff, “The Minor League Shrink And The Growing Gap Between Triple-A And The Bigs,” Defector, August 27, 2024

Historical Baseball Analysis/Commentary

• Steven Goldman, “Addiction,” Baseball Prospectus, November 7, 2024
• Donna L. Halper, “April 28, 1924: Birmingham Black Barons Make Negro National League Debut With Win Over Cuban Stars,” SABR Games Project, March 27, 2024
• Jay Jaffe, “The Day Negro Leagues Statistics Met The Major League Record Books,” FanGraphs, May 30, 2024
• Justin Klugh, “Every Streak Is A Part Of History,” Baseball Prospectus, July 11, 2024
• Mike Petriello, “Did Ted Williams’ ‘Red Seat’ Home Run Really Go 502 Feet?” MLB.com, April 26, 2024

John Dewan Defensive Analysis Award

• Russell A. Carleton, “Doubling Down,” Baseball Prospectus, June 5, 2024
• Patrick Dubuque, “Does Catcher Framing Bounce Back?” Baseball Prospectus, June 14, 2024
• Mark Simon, “Crown The Royals Pitchers No. 1 In Defensive Runs Saved,” Sports Info Solutions, September 11, 2024

Voting will be open through 11:59 p.m. MST on Friday, February 14, 2025.

Mobile or Safari users, click here to access the survey

Results will be announced and presented at the SABR Analytics Conference, March 14-16, 2025, in Phoenix, Arizona. Learn more or register for the conference at SABR.org/analytics.

We now have a whole bunch of new Steamer projections and historical ZiPS projections available for FanGraphs Members! Read the rest of this entry »

I have been publishing projections in some form or other since 2019, making painstaking improvements to my process along the way. To borrow an expression from Dan Szymborski, my projections have now reached a level of “non-craptitude” such that I am content — though no projector is ever truly content — to share them with you here at FanGraphs. This article introduces OOPSY, your friendly neighborhood projection system.

OOPSY aims to summarize all of the information you see on a player page — a whole slew of component statistics from different years, leagues, levels, and teams, compiled at different ages — in an attempt to make it easier to evaluate players. I have always found it difficult to account for all of this information in my head without the help of a projection system, and now I have one.

Like many popular projection systems, OOPSY takes MARCEL as a starting point, adding methodological innovations to account for additional complexity (MARCEL projects all rookies to be league average, for example). OOPSY uses its own approach to account for all of the usual factors captured by popular projection systems: league scoring environments, aging effects, major league equivalencies (with inspiration from Clay Davenport) to account for (minor and major) leagues and levels that boast differing quality of competition, park effects (both minor and major league), historical performance weighted by recency and, perhaps most importantly, regression to the mean, with statistics subject to more random variance regressed more heavily. Instead of regressing every player to the same mean as MARCEL does, OOPSY regresses players to different means based on their probability of making the majors, which is assumed to be a function of their age relative to level (based on historical data), with complex-level players regressed to a worse mean than Triple-A players, for example. Read the rest of this entry »

Attention FanGraphs readers and Members: Do you have a piece of original baseball writing or research that you’d like to have published but don’t know where to go? If so, we’re happy to report that we’re relaunching our Community Blog and looking for submissions.

Many of you have probably seen or read the Community Blog, where anyone with a FanGraphs account can submit a piece for review and publication. Some of you may have even written for it previously. But for those of you who aren’t familiar with the process or would like a refresher on how it works, let’s run through how to get your writing onto our site. Read the rest of this entry »

Pitchers and catchers might not start reporting to camp for another five weeks, but as we count down the days until the start of spring training, we can at least look forward to the winter’s remaining free agents finding new homes, as well as the announcement of each team’s list of non-roster invitees (NRIs) to big league camp. And if we’re lucky, a few more big trades might go down.

Whatever happens, our Opening Day Tracker will continue to be updated with every player who will report to a major league camp, as well as their projected roster status.

Here’s a quick primer on who will be in major league camp, what happens as rosters are pared down to 26 players, and how our tracker can help you keep up between now and Opening Day. Read the rest of this entry »

Want to get something nice for the Yankees fan in your life, but can’t afford to spot Hal Steinbrenner a couple hundred million for Juan Soto? Do you have a family member who loves to argue about momentum and wonders what the heck happened to the curveball? Is your friend looking for hope and obsessing over all the prospects in their favorite team’s farm system?

Then we have the perfect gift this holiday season: A FanGraphs Membership!

Our Members support our mission to provide quality baseball analysis by helping to fund thousands of articles per year, as well as our growing collection of tools and stats.

Membership includes:

• Unlimited FanGraphs and RotoGraphs articles
• Ad-free browsing
• One-click data exports
• Access to dark and classic site modes
• Customizable player page dashboards
• Leaderboard custom reports
• Optional removal of photos on the homepage

It also helps to support the development of all the tools, graphs, and stats you see on the site, and pay our 13 full-time staff members and 15 contributing writers, who together produce over 200 articles per month.

Over the last year, we’ve put a lot of effort into improving FanGraphs, redesigning our player pages, adding pitch modeling stats to our game logs, expanding our editorial staff, and adding new voices to the site. All of this and more was made possible by our Members. Membership is the best way to both experience the site and support the continued growth and improvement of FanGraphs. Happy holidays!

RosterResource doesn’t stop for anything, not even great postseason play. We’ve already begun to roll out the team Depth Charts for 2025, with more set to go live in the coming days. Our Free Agent Tracker launched earlier this month. And now, the 2025 Payroll Pages are here!

The Payroll Pages will default to the 2025 view after the World Series, but for now, clicking over from a team page will take you to 2024. To view the 2025 page, simply change the Season toggle:

In case you’re new to the Payroll Pages, let’s go over what you can find on them. Read the rest of this entry »

Our 2025 Free Agent Tracker is now live! There are currently close to 200 players on the list; more will be added following the postseason as decisions are made on 2025 options and teams begin to clear space on their 40-man rosters. The tracker will be regularly updated throughout the offseason as qualifying offers are made and accepted or rejected, and as free agents find their new homes.

You can filter by status (signed/unsigned), previous team, and signing team, and export the data for your own analysis. You can also sort by a player’s handedness, age, and 2024 WAR. Shortly after the postseason ends, projected 2025 WAR will be available, will the results of our annual contract crowdsourcing project, which include median contract total, years, and average annual value estimates. Read the rest of this entry »

Beginning today, we’ll be moving our articles on both FanGraphs and RotoGraphs to a metered paywall. Readers will get 10 free articles per rolling 30 days; if you go over that and would like to continue reading, you’ll be required to become a FanGraphs Member.

Our player pages, leaderboards, and other data tools, as well as RosterResource, The Board, and our glossary, will remain available for unlimited use to all of our readers.

FanGraphs Membership now includes:

• Ad-free browsing
• Unlimited FanGraphs and RotoGraphs articles
• One-click data exports
• Customizable player page dashboards
• Dark mode and classic mode page styles
• Leaderboard custom reports
• Optional removal of photos on the homepage

When I think about where FanGraphs sits in today’s media landscape, there are a lot of things that make us an outlier. We are a 100% independent small business that has 14 full-time employees. Everyone who does any work for FanGraphs receives compensation. We don’t focus on chasing clicks. We don’t participate in SEO schemes. We don’t work with sportsbooks or gambling entities. We are a baseball site staffed by baseball experts for baseball fans and experts.

Unfortunately, we’re still very much reliant on programmatic advertising dollars, which you may remember being the focus of a post of mine earlier this year. Whether because of the 2020 pandemic, the 2022 lockout, 2023 search engine changes, or 2024 changes in ad tech, advertising revenue is unpredictable and unreliable. It makes business planning and hiring challenging, and leaves us vulnerable to revenue fluctuations that have nothing to do with the quality of our content or site tools. It isn’t transparent, its presence on the site creates a poor user experience that’s difficult for us to quality control, and it exploits your data to take revenue out of the hands of small publishers and put it in the coffers of the largest, most profitable companies in the world.

FanGraphs turns 20 years old next year. It has taken decades of work from dozens of people who have given their days, nights, weekends, and vacation time to build this site. For an independent single-sport site, the range and depth of content available at FanGraphs is truly special. We hope that these changes will help us further secure the site’s future long-term. Thank you to all of our Members for helping us get this far. Every time we have faced a decline in advertising revenue over the last five years, it has been our Members who have sustained FanGraphs and helped it grow. And if you aren’t yet a Member, there’s no need to wait until you hit your 10 article limit — you can become one now and help us continue to improve the site, just as we have these past 19 years.

Please let us know if you have any questions, either by leaving a comment below or by emailing support@fangraphs.com.