The 2008 CHONE and Marcel projections are now available in the stats pages and the projections board.
Big thanks to Chone Smith for his 2008 CHONE projections and Tangotiger for this year’s Marcels.
If you are looking for downloadable versions you can find them here: CHONE download ; Marcel download.
As of now, the 2008 Bill James Handbook projections are available on the player pages.
On a side note, all the minor league players have been synced with the major league players, so there will no longer be duplicate entries for minor league players that were called up last season.
In today’s New York Times, Dan Rosenheck uses some of the tools available on FanGraphs to delve into the Arizona Diamondbacks dubious Pythagorean record.
While I’m at it, I figure I’ll mention a few things that are going on at FanGraphs.
– Live Win Probability will continue through the post season. I’m sure there will be a few improbable comebacks, which will certainly be fun to follow.
– I will be traveling to Japan next week and will be attending a Yomiuri Giants game and Seibu Lions game. I’ll be sure to write about my impressions of the games along with posting various baseball related photos from my trip.
I was browsing through the Win Probability leaderboards and noticed that Troy Tulowitzki is in the top 10 in Win Probability Added for the season with 2.32 wins. A quick glance in the Batting Runs Above Average column shows he’s the only player in the top 50 who is below average with -1.75 runs. His Clutch hitting has netted him an additional 2.08 wins over what he should have, considering how well he’s hit. So far this season, Tulowitzki has been the most clutch hitter in baseball.
His latest and greatest hit of the season came just two days ago on June 25th when he hit a three-run-homer against Bob Howry to give the Rockies a 9-8 lead against the Cubs. Unfortunately, Rockies closer, Brian Fuentes, couldn’t nail down the save, making his big hit for naught.
With the exception of last week, it seems that there are more or less the same players in the top 10 week after week. In an attempt to make things more interesting, let’s look at the top 11-20. But first, let’s pay homage to the actual top 10.
Alex Rodriguez, Barry Bonds, Albert Pujols, John Maine, Ichiro Suzuki, Derek Jeter, Josh Beckett, Jose Reyes, David Ortiz, David Bush. These guys round out the top 10. I have not been visiting Bush’s page a whole lot this week either. And I’ll continue to assert that he will turn things around. Onto the top 11-20.
11. Manny Ramirez – A previous fixture in the top 10, he’s fallen all the way down to number 11. Manny has really started to turn things around and is batting just about .350 in the month of May. He’s also wracked up a solid .42 WPA for the American League’s most winning team.
12. David Wright – He’s another player who started off a bit slow. He’s batting just under .300 for May and more importantly is starting to hit with some pop. He also stole 3 bases in last night’s game; a feat which has only been accomplished about 100 times in the past 5 years.
13. B.J. Upton – While he continues to challenge Ryan Howard for the major league lead in strikeout percentage, the main difference between the two is that B.J. Upton has pummeled major league pitching. He’s been a bit less stellar in May, but no one’s going to complain about a .916 OPS.
14. Daisuke Matsuzaka – Yawn. Dice-K is 4th in the AL in K/9; striking out just over a batter an inning. FIP suggests his ERA should be in the mid-3’s as opposed to the high-4’s. Giving up 10 runs to the Yankees has been his only problem.
15. Kelly Johnson – Though his batting average graph looks like a camel’s back, he still leads all second-basemen in OBP (.409). Unfortunately, he hasn’t been walking much this month either and the graph looks eerily similar to his batting average.
16. James Shields – He only threw 9 innings of 3 hit ball the other day. Despite his obscenely high WPA of .766 in that game alone, his team still didn’t get him a win. He’s good.
17. Jonathan Papelbon – The Red Sox closer currently has a 1.35 ERA. Last year he’d only given up 1 run at this point in the season. This year, he’s already given up 2. For shame.
18. Roger Clemens – He’s back with the Yankees, but you probably knew that already.
19. Chien-Ming Wang – His ERA now sits at 5.40 after a disastrous outing against the Rangers. If it weren’t for his 2 hit gem against the Mariners, his ERA would be over 7. He was a hot topic for debate this off-season and so far things are not looking good for Wang.
20. Dustin Pedroia – Alex Cora really tore things up while Pedroia was riding pine. The big difference between him and Cora is that Pedroia can actually take a walk. Despite his troubles, Pedroia should continue to be out there everyday.
You may have noticed there’s a new tab in the player pages called “Play Log”. This will give you every single play for the selected player in any given year. It’s currently sorted by WPA so you can easily tell which plays were the most/least important.
It’s a little slow for my tastes and I’ll see what I can do to speed it up. Sorting is currently disabled because it was extremely slow. If you desperately want to do sorting, you can add “&sort=wpa” query string to the end of the url. The options for the querystring are “li”, “braa”, “wpa”, and “day”. Update: Sorting is now enabled, but you can no longer click on the play to find out the pitch sequence. I’ll get that fixed soon enough.
This is still pretty bare-bones right now, but I’m sure as the season goes on there will be substantial improvements.
I haven’t been blogging much in the past couple weeks, but I’m hoping to turn over a new leaf with this past week’s FanGraphs top 10. There are more than a few surprises:
1. John Maine – The momentary Major League ERA leader (1.35) is also this week’s #1 player on FanGraphs. He’s been getting a lot of hype and some skepticism lately. I think everyone can agree he’s not as good as his 1.35 ERA, but I think there’s still a lot to like.
2. Barry Bonds – He hit 2 home runs this week and is now just 12 shy of breaking Hank Aaron’s record. He’s playing like the past 2 years didn’t happen.
3. Alex Rodriguez – Since hitting 2 home runs on April 23rd, A-Rod has now gone 41 at-bats without a single home run. I wonder if for every record breaking streak, there’s an equal (and opposite) record breaking slump?
4. David Wright – The other New York third-baseman has been in a season long slump. He’s both walking and striking out more, while his Isolated Power (ISO) has been cut in half. What’s the statistical culprit? A failure to get the ball off the ground.
5. Derek Jeter – The other and still “true” Yankee always seems to make the top 10. He’s having a pretty nice season which isn’t all that different from his MVP seas… oh wait… nevermind.
6. B.J. Upton – The rookie is having a phenomenal year and apparently everyone wants to see what all the hoopla’s about. Upon further inspection, he’s striking out only 38% of the time which puts him right there in Ryan Howard and Adam Dunn territory (sans the high walk rate). My magic 8 ball tells me this about his hot start: “Outlook Not So Good”. That’s how I do all my analysis, by the way.
7. David Bush – I’m a big David Bush fan and it could just be me visiting his page ever so frequently that pushed him up to #7 of the list. Despite his ERA over 6, he has the 3rd highest K/BB in baseball. Good things should happen soon.
8. Manny Ramirez – As soon as A-Rod started slumping, Manny started to pick things up. Since A-Rod hit his last home runs, Manny has batted just over .300 with 7 walks and 3 home runs, including a 2 home run game on May 3rd.
9. James Shields – This guy is looking really really good and should be on everyone’s radar. Few pitchers in the history of baseball have struck out over a batter an inning while walking under 2 batters per 9 innings. In fact, there have been just 11 starting pitchers to do it in a single season. Bruce Sutter, Tom Seaver, Sandy Koufax, Jason Schmidt, Johan Santana, Ben Sheets, Roy Oswalt, Pedro Martinez, John Smoltz, Curt Schilling and Randy Johnson make up the 11.
10. Ichiro Suzuki – He’s off to a slow start, which apparently is concern enough for him to make his first top 10 list. He’s still getting infield hits but his BABIP is considerably below his norm. Fortunately for him, there’s still some 5 months of baseball left to right the ship.
If you haven’t noticed, there are a few new team blogs currently on FanGraphs. Garth Sears (Royals), Erik Manning (Cardinals) and our latest addition Tito Crafts (Red Sox) have been doing a fantastic job looking at games from a Win Probability angle, among other things.
If you have an idea for a baseball related blog, whether it be team specific or something entirely different, and you’re looking for a place to get started, feel free to send me a note. From there we can talk in more detail. You can either fill out a contact form, or e-mail me at david@fangraphs.com.
The 2007 Minor League stats are up and available for viewing in both the stats pages and the Leardboards. They will be updated every morning no later than noon Eastern.
Also, I’ve taken down the projections and spring training stats by default in the stats pages. You can still view them by clicking on “Show Projections” or “Show Spring Training”. I figured now that there was almost a full month of the season underway, the projections weren’t being used as much and they were causing some unneeded clutter. I’m open to putting them back up by default, but as long as I don’t hear complaints, they’ll stay hidden by default.
