Email newsletters are a burgeoning communications tool, and FanGraphs is getting in on the act. This is something we’ve actually had our eye on for quite some time — as far back as 2013, actually — and we’re excited to finally be bringing it to you. Today, actually: the newsletter’s inaugural edition will drop this afternoon. Let’s talk details.
Today, we’re excited to introduce FanGraphs Membership. What is FanGraphs Membership? Quite simply, it is a voluntary way for you to help support all the baseball content we produce each and every day. If you’ve been looking for an opportunity to help contribute to the long-term growth of the site, this is your chance to do just that, and partner with us to help continue to provide data and content that helps us all understand the game of baseball a little bit better.
FanGraphs Membership is not a paywall; we are not creating a separate section of the site that will only be available to members. In fact, we’re actually taking the content that was previously available to FanGraphs+ subscribers and making it available to everyone. We want every person who visits the site to feel that they are getting the most out of their experience, and believe that, with a broad base of support from the fantastic community here, we can continue to provide that information without restricting access to anyone.
With the introduction of FanGraphs Membership, all the content produced on FanGraphs will now be accessible for free, without logging in, or being a FanGraphs Member. If you are not a FanGraphs Member, we will occasionally ask if you’d like to join in supporting the site, but it will always be your decision to make. Think of FanGraphs Membership as something akin to the model used by NPR.
Now you may be asking yourself, why is FanGraphs doing this?
The 2016 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 2016, 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.
Good news everyone! You can now make your picks in FanGraphs: The Game for the 2015 season!
For those of you who played in previous years, you will be able to change the team of any of your players up until you first spend money. So, if you want your players to be on different teams, I advise doing it before you make any picks. You can do this on the settings page.
In addition, your player will keep all of his stats from all previous seasons and continue on to year two of his career.
Lastly, if you had autopick set last year, it has now be unset. If you want to keep playing with autopick on, you will need to make your autopick selections again.
And for those of you who are rookies to FanGraphs: The Game…
I’m pleased to announce that FanGraphs now has an auction calculator!
In terms of methodology, we are using a method that is pretty similar to the Last Player Picked methodology.
Besides all the usual features of an auction calculator, we have a couple of unique features that are worth some addition explanation:
– There is an “experimental” check box, which adds in replacement level value for players with incomplete playing time. If a player was to have a .300 batting average for the season in 450 plate appearances, it would add in an extra 150 plate appearances at a .220 average (numbers for illustration only) for that player and calculate the auction values off his new batting average.
This is something that could be useful if your league allows you to carry a lot of bench spots and you have the ability to supplement potentially high risk injury players with a replacement level player. Chad Young wrote about this a few years ago.
Please feel free to check the box and see how it changes player values if you feel it’s appropriate for your league. And like the option says, this is still an experiment and should be considered a “beta” feature.
– There is also an option to artificially increase or decrease relief pitcher value. Since we don’t project holds, this might be particularly useful for ottoneu leagues or other leagues where holds are considered. By not taking into account holds for a league that might consider them, relief pitcher values will most likely be inflated.
This could also be a useful option if the players in your league generally undervalue (or over value) relievers and you would like to put relief pitcher values more in line with reality as opposed to theoretical value.
Please let us know if you run into any issues!
The 2015 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 2015, 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.
A couple of weeks ago, we announced a renewed commitment to the FanGraphs Library and promised regular updates to glossary entries and blog posts. You’ve probably noticed our weekly FanGraphs Q&A chats at 3 p.m. EST on Wednesdays, but the other changes to the library aren’t necessarily obvious on the site’s main page.
If you haven’t had a chance to check out the changes to the library, the entries on Weighted On-Base Average (wOBA) and Weighted Runs Created Plus (wRC+) have been updated and include more current information, a more thorough explanation of how and why you should know and use these stats, and for the first time at FanGraphs, information on how to actually calculate wRC+.
Additionally, you’ll find the library’s blog populated with a couple of posts discussing the importance of learning wOBA and wRC+.
If you’re looking for information on other statistics we offer, on how to make use of various FanGraphs features, or if you have related questions, check out the weekly chat, comment on this post or posts in the library blog or contact me on Twitter @NeilWeinberg44. We’ll roll out more educational posts and glossary updates each week, so be sure to check often.
Entering play on Thursday night, Kyle Seager owned a .274 batting average. Chris Johnson’s average was a nearly identical .273. The two third basemen have played in a similar number of games and have come to the plate close to the same number of times. If you use batting average to evaluate these players’ seasons, you’d come to the conclusion that Seager and Johnson are essentially equivalent players this year.
They’re not. In fact, it’s very clear Seager is substantially better than Johnson. Let me rephrase that: It’s very clear Seager is better than Johnson — but only if you’re well-versed in the language of baseball statistics. If you know how to properly value walks, extra base power, baserunning and defense, the difference between Seager and Johnson is impossible to miss.
At FanGraphs, our writers use statistics and metrics like wOBA, wRC+, FIP and WAR to evaluate baseball players and teams. We provide those tools, and more, so others might conduct evaluations on their own. Want to know Miguel Cabrera’s wOBA against lefties? You can find that on FanGraphs. But what if you don’t know what wOBA means, how it’s calculated or why you should care about it more than batting average?
You can find some of that information on FanGraphs. A well-motivated, self-starter could show up at the site, notice something called wOBA on the leaderboards, go to the glossary and figure out what it means and why it’s important. But it can be intimidating and challenging for people who are just starting out to make sense of everything we offer.
In an effort to make advanced statistics easier, and to understand and to better use the data and features available at FanGraphs, we’re relaunching and promoting the FanGraphs Library. There’s a lot of great information there already, but this revamped library is even better. There’s a steep learning curve, though, so I’ve been tasked with making things a bit simpler.
With the addition of the new heatmaps, we have a new tool that lets you whip up league average heatmaps.
The tool can be conveniently accessed under the “leaders” section in the site’s main navigation.
I’m pleased to announce that we’ve rolled out new heatmaps to the site!
There are a number of ways to customize each heatmap:
– Options to choose either a traditional 5×5 grid or a more granular 10×10 grid.
– Choose a heatmap from the viewpoint of either the pitcher or the batter.
– For the 10×10 grid, you can choose your own level of smoothing, which will change the weighting of adjacent buckets.
– Filtering on single or multiple years, handedness, and count.
– A variety of different stats to choose from.
The color grading on the heatmaps is always compared to an MLB average player for the selected time period and handedness.