Here’s your chance to vote for the 2022 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, and the Internet Baseball Writers Association of America.

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

Contemporary Baseball Analysis

• Rob Arthur, “Better Defense Is Costing MLB Thousands of Hits,” Baseball Prospectus, June 4, 2021.
• Ben Clemens, “Goldilocks and the Three Bunts,” FanGraphs, June 7, 2021.
• Karen Gallagher, Scott N. Brooks, Ra Lofton, Luke Brenneman, Field Studies: MLB Manager Hiring Criteria and Career Pathways from 2010-19. Global Sport Matters, October 5, 2021.
• Cameron Grove, “Some Games are Harder to Umpire Than Others,” Baseball Prospectus, September 17, 2021.
• Eno Sarris, “What is ‘seam-shifted wake’ and which pitchers benefit most from it?,” The Athletic, January 21, 2021.

Contemporary Baseball Commentary

• Michael Ajeto, “Major League Baseball Has an Assimilation Problem,” Baseball Prospectus, October 22, 2021.
• Stephanie Apstein and Alex Prewitt, “This Should Be the Biggest Scandal in Sports,” Sports Illustrated, June 4, 2021.
• Brittany Ghiroli, “Cockroaches, car camping, poverty wages: Why are minor-leaguers living in squalor?,” The Athletic, August 5, 2021.
• Craig Goldstein and Patrick Dubuque, “We Need a Restrictor Plate for Pitching,” Baseball Prospectus, May 25, 2021.
• Robert O’Connell, “Minor League Baseball is Designed to Exploit,” Defector, September 8, 2021.

Historical Baseball Analysis/Commentary

• Bruce Allardice, “Runs, Runs, and More Runs: Pre-Professional Baseball, By the Numbers,” SABR Baseball Research Journal, Fall 2021.
• Emma Baccellieri, “Deadening the Baseball? MLB’s Done It Before,” Sports Illustrated, February 9, 2021.
• RJ McDaniel, “Baseball on the Radio, 100 Years Later,” FanGraphs, March 10, 2021.
• Lou Moore, “Major League Baseball Had a Chance to Stop the Drain of Black Players From Baseball. It Didn’t.” Global Sport Matters, October 6, 2021.
• Andrea Williams, “ ‘We Have No Right to Destroy Them’,” New York Times, April 14, 2021.

Voting will be open through 11:59 p.m. MST on Friday, February 11, 2022.

Create your own user feedback survey

Mobile or Safari users, click here to access the survey

Results will be announced and presented at the SABR Virtual Analytics Conference, March 17-20, 2022. Learn more or register for the conference at SABR.org/analytics.

You might have noticed that we updated the main home page to reflect some of the changes we recently made on the RotoGraphs landing page and the new blog roll.

We cleaned up the design, added more photos, and reorganized our content. The left column will primarily contain editorial content, while the right column will have more evergreen site features. Our aim is to make FanGraphs more inviting and discoverable to new users, while simplifying and streamlining the experience for our current users. Almost all of the content from the old home page has been retained with the new home page. We also expanded the most popular article section (which is determined by pageviews) to include more articles and RotoGraphs content.

If you have any questions or comments, or if anything is broken, please let us know in the comments. Please include what device, browser, and operating system you are using in order to help us figure out any issues. Thank you!

With the postseason in full swing and the offseason looming, it’s time for a FanGraphs Membership update.

First, I’d like to thank all of our Members for their support this season. Your Membership dollars go directly to paying our staff and keeping the lights on at the site. When you subscribe, you are supporting our 10 full-time employees and 23 contributors, and I thought I’d take this chance to briefly highlight the work they do every day.

In addition to myself, we have nine full-time staff members. Ben Clemens brings you insightful daily baseball analysis, co-authors the Trade Value series, and is spearheading our upcoming Top 50 Free Agent rankings. Sean Dolinar is our lead web developer and is constantly making updates and additions to the site, creating new tools and improving the user experience. Kevin Goldstein, provides first-hand knowledge of how teams operate as well as insightful prospect analysis, and hosts Chin Music. Jay Jaffe brings you daily baseball analysis, deep dives into the game’s history, and is the foremost expert on all things Hall of Fame related. Eric Longenhagen is our lead prospect analyst and spearheads all of our prospect and draft coverage, as well as maintaining The Board. Jason Martinez is the man behind FanGraphs’ RosterResource and makes sure every roster move and player contract is meticulously tracked. Meg Rowley, our managing editor, makes FanGraphs “go” and co-hosts the Effectively Wild podcast. Paul Sporer is RotoGraphs’ managing editor and the co-host of The Sleeper and The Bust, and provides fantasy rankings and analysis year round. Dan Szymborski is the architect of the ZiPS projection system and provides daily analysis as well. Read the rest of this entry »

Our 2022 Free Agent Tracker is now live! There are currently around 200 players on the list; more will be added during the weeks following the postseason as decisions are made on 2022 options and teams continue to clear space on their 40-man rosters. The tracker will also be regularly updated throughout the offseason as qualifying offers are made, accepted, and rejected, and 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 currently sort by a player’s handedness, age, and 2021 WAR. Shortly after the postseason ends, projected 2022 WAR will be available, as well will the results of our annual contract crowdsourcing project, which include median contract total, years, and average annual value.

Players with options are not included in the list. Typically, options do not have to be exercised or declined until five days after the World Series ends. As players have their options declined, they will be added to the tracker. Some of the more notable players with at least a decent chance of having their options declined are Avisaíl García, Andrew McCutchen, Buster Posey, and Kyle Seager. For a second consecutive offseason, both Nick Castellanos and J.D. Martinez will have the opportunity to become free agents by opting out of their current deals. Castellanos is very likely to return to the free agent market. Read the rest of this entry »

Historically, we have made many data tables available for download in a comma-separated values (CSV) format text file. Most of our data grids are rather straight forward and can be translated easily into a CSV file to be consumed by your data analysis tool of choice. Starting today, we are making RosterResource Excel workbook downloads available for FanGraphs Members. You can find the download button to the right of the page underneath the RosterResource navigation.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Starting Pitcher Probables Grid and Schedule Grid are the latest additions to our RosterResource collection at FanGraphs. They’re also the last of the features that remained on the RosterResource website. Moving all of the content from RosterResource to FanGraphs without losing any functionality, while also making some obvious improvements, is what I’ve called “Phase 1” of this project. Special thanks to Sean Dolinar for working so hard to put all of this into action.

“Phase 2,” which will begin in the near future, will involve us taking all of the feedback and suggestions from readers and making additional upgrades to all of the RosterResource content.

I discussed our newest features on Wednesday’s episode of The RosterResource Show. Read the rest of this entry »

Our Membership prices are increasing tomorrow, making this the very last day to be grandfathered into our existing Membership prices, which as I noted when I announced our spring Membership Drive, will remain the same until at least 2023:

We’re going to raise our prices from $50 to $60 for Ad Free Membership, from $20 to $25 for yearly Membership, and from $3 to $5 for monthly Membership. Please note: If you are an existing Member and maintain your Membership, your pricing will not change until at least 2023. If you subscribe at the current price before tomorrow, you’ll be grandfathered in until at least 2023.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Lineup Tracker is the latest addition to our RosterResource collection at FanGraphs. This newest feature is an extension of our “Projected Go-To Lineups vs RHP” on the RosterResource depth charts, allowing readers to pick up on trends by providing a regularly updated look at where every player has batted in the order and lined up defensively throughout the season. The link to this feature can be found in the RosterResource drop-down menu under “In-Season Tools”.

I’ll be explaining the Lineup Tracker in detail on today’s episode of The RosterResource Show, which will air live at 4:30 PM PT/7:30 PM ET on Twitch and the FanGraphs homepage. It will be the first topic covered.

As has been the case with the last few RosterResource additions, including the Closer Depth Chart, Transaction Tracker, and Injury Report, we have several ideas that would improve this feature once we circle back around for upgrades. We have only one remaining feature to build — the Schedule Grid/Probable Starting Pitchers — that had been part of the RosterResource website prior to joining FanGraphs. Read the rest of this entry »

Our Membership prices are increasing next week, making this is the last week to be grandfathered into our existing Membership prices, which as I noted when I announced our spring Membership Drive, will remain the same until at least 2023:

Starting June 1, we’re going to raise our prices from $50 to $60 for Ad Free Membership, from $20 to $25 for yearly Membership, and from $3 to $5 for monthly Membership. Please note: If you are an existing Member and maintain your Membership, your pricing will not change until at least 2023. Likewise, if you subscribe between now and June 1, you’ll be grandfathered in until at least 2023, just like our existing Members. This change will only go into effect starting on June 1 for new Members.

Read the rest of this entry »

For the past two offseasons, our Offseason Transaction Tracker has been active, allowing readers to easily keep up with each team’s additions and subtractions leading up to Opening Day, as well as the free agent market and arbitration decisions. We’ve now added a Regular Season Transaction Tracker to help you keep up with all of the roster changes that take place on a daily basis, as well as expected future moves.

The link to the tracker can be found in the RosterResource drop-down menu under “In-Season Tools” and in the group of tabs at the top of any RosterResource page.

Read the rest of this entry »