After winning their respective divisions, the Atlanta Braves will face off against the St. Louis Cardinals starting on Thursday. This series looks evenly matched, with our Depth Charts projections (53%) and ZiPS (55%) both seeing the Braves as slight favorites. Before we get to the meat of the preview, let’s lay out the schedule. All games will be televised by TBS.

When and Where:

• Game 1: Thursday, October 3, 5:02 PM EST in Atlanta
• Game 2: Friday, October 4, 4:37 PM EST in Atlanta
• Game 3: Sunday, October 6, time TBD in St. Louis
• Game 4 (if necessary): Monday, October 7, time TBD in St. Louis
• Game 5 (if necessary): Wednesday, October 9, time TBD in Atlanta

What We’ll Be Watching For:

Injured Players
Ender Inciarte will remain out for this series, at least, after a hamstring injury struck him down in mid-August. Matt Joyce and Adam Duvall have platooned some with Inciarte out, though the Cardinals have no lefty starters, so the 35-year-old Joyce could play a big role in the series. He hasn’t shown a ton of power the last few years, but he’s walked 15% of the time against righties since the beginning of 2016 with a decently low 21% strikeout rate. Inciarte’s replacement in center actually meant an upgrade as Ronald Acuña Jr. took over, but the Braves’ star outfielder has injury concerns of his own; an apparent hip injury was classified as a groin strain and it is unclear how that injury might affect his superb baserunning or his defense in center field.

The health worries don’t end there for the Braves. Freddie Freeman has a bone spur in his right elbow, which he is still favoring, and though he played over the weekend, he struck out four times in 11 plate appearances and didn’t come up with an extra base hit. It was only the third three-game stretch all season during which Freeman struck out that often and didn’t get an extra base hit. All three stretches have come in the last six weeks. Every player is going to have sporadic, three-game down stretches, but given what we know about Freeman’s elbow, look for a lot of inside pitches to test whether the injury will continue to hobble the Braves’ first basemen. Josh Donaldson sat out the last game of the season after being hit on the hip with a pitch, but that injury appears less severe. Donaldson, Acuña, and Freeman have accounted for half of the 27.9 WAR accumulated by Braves’ position players this season (Ozzie Albies is the only other position player with more than 2.1 WAR); Atlanta would be a completely different team without that trio at full strength. Read the rest of this entry »

Over in the American League, there’s a pretty clear top tier of Cy Young contenders in Justin Verlander and Gerrit Cole, followed by a solid group of candidates likely to garner down-ballot support. In the National League, there looks to be a top tier of Max Scherzer and Jacob deGrom followed by a cascading set of secondary candidates, but that first look doesn’t quite tell the entire story.

To provide some idea of the statistical disparities voters must contend with when making their decision, I looked at our FIP-based WAR as well as the RA9-WAR also available here at FanGraphs, Baseball-Reference’s WAR, and Baseball Prospectus’ WARP. I included for consideration any player in the top five of any of those lists. That search returned nine pitchers for the potential five slots on a Cy Young ballot. Those players are listed below, with a mix of traditional and advanced statistics:

We have Scherzer and deGrom in first and second by about a win over the next-best candidate, with deGrom pitching tonight. After those two, we have a lot of innings from Stephen Strasburg and Patrick Corbin, and fewer innings, but better peripherals, from Walker Buehler. After those three, we have four candidates who haven’t thrown a ton of innings, but all have much lower ERA’s than FIPs. As for how these candidates came to be considered, here are their WAR totals:

Read the rest of this entry »

In the final moments of the 2019 trade deadline, the Astros shocked the baseball world with their trade for Zack Greinke. As Dan Szymborski put it at the time, “In a league in which money and prospects are meekly handed out when a team has an opportunity to strike a critical blow, Houston keeps demonstrating why they’re one of the best, most focused organizations in baseball today.”

Since the trade, Greinke has been good. He’s pitched 49.1 innings for Houston thus far, posting a solid 3.10 ERA, 3.50 FIP, and 1.2 WAR. His strikeout numbers have dipped (24.0% to 19.5%) since moving from the Diamondbacks to the Astros, but even with this dropoff in performance, it’s hard to say that he hasn’t been worth the cost so far. With that said, of course, the Astros didn’t acquire Greinke to help them get to the playoffs; they acquired him to get through the playoffs. The evaluation of that trade — along with many others made at the deadline — is far from complete.

While Greinke has been solid since the trade, he hasn’t been the best pitcher of those moved in July. That distinction belongs to Kolby Allard, even if it is by a razor-thin margin:

Read the rest of this entry »

Please note, this posting contains two positions.

Position: Atlanta Braves R&D Developer Trainee

Location: Atlanta, GA

Description:

The R&D Developer Trainee position emphasizes software and web development as it relates to the Baseball Operations department. The trainee’s main responsibilities will be to assist the R&D department with building proprietary applications for displaying baseball information and visualizations, maintaining existing information management systems, and developing additional productivity tools to aid in Baseball Operations decision making. Candidates must have proven experience with application and/or web development, with interest in baseball and sports analytics research as a strong plus. The position will report to Assistant General Manager, Research and Development.

Note: Applicants for full-season R&D Developer Trainee positions (Jan-Nov), and summer R&D Developer Intern positions (May-Aug) will be considered.

Responsibilities:

• Assist in the development and maintenance of all proprietary software used within the Baseball Operations department.
• Work with department stakeholders to develop, deploy and test applications within IT best practice parameters.
• Build relationships, communicate effectively, and gather feedback from Baseball Operations staff to build new platforms and improve existing systems.
• Perform other duties as assigned.

Required Qualifications:

• Past or expected BA or BS in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or related technical field of study or equivalent work experience.
• Demonstrated software development experience in one or more programming languages: Java, .NET, Python, JavaScript, C#, C/C++.
• Familiarity with database technologies and SQL. Microsoft SQL Server experience is a plus.
• Familiarity with using version control such as git.
• Ability to learn new technologies, including new coding languages.
• Strong work ethic, initiative, and the ability to solve technical problems.
• Ability to work flexible hours, including some nights and weekends as dictated by the Major League season.
• Must complete a successful background check.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Knowledge of current baseball statistics and analytics used in player evaluation a plus
• Experience with data visualization a plus.
• Solid fundamentals with HTML/CSS.
• Web development experience, especially with JavaScript (Node.js, Vue.js), or Python (Flask)
• Experience with big data techniques
• Demonstrated software development work product.

To Apply:
If you are interested, please email your resume and any other materials to bravesrdpositions@gmail.com.

Position: Atlanta Braves R&D Analyst Trainee

Location: Atlanta, GA

Description:
The R&D Analyst Trainee will assist Baseball Operations decision-making through the analysis and research of baseball information. The day-to-day responsibilities of this position will revolve around using data analysis to provide insight into player evaluation, performance projection, roster construction, and all other facets of baseball operations decision making, with emphasis on different sub-departments depending on the baseball calendar and needs of the department. The position will report to Assistant General Manager, Research and Development.

Note: Applicants for full-season R&D Analyst Trainee (Jan-Nov), and summer R&D Analyst Intern (May-Aug) positions will be considered.

Responsibilities:

• Perform advanced statistical analysis on large datasets in order to assist in the decision-making of the Baseball Operations department.
• Develop software, databases, models, applications, reports, and other information systems to increase efficiency of the Baseball Operations department.
• Perform ad-hoc research projects as requested and present results in a concise manner.

Required Qualifications:

• Strong foundation in the application of statistical concepts to baseball data, including familiarity with current state of baseball research.
• Experience with SQL and relational databases.
• Experience with statistical modeling software (R or Python preferred).
• Ability to communicate concepts to individuals with diverse baseball backgrounds, including coaches, scouts and executives.
• Ability to work flexible hours, including some nights and weekends as dictated by the Major League season.
• Must complete a successful background check.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Extensive experience with statistical modeling and prediction techniques, including regression, classification, and machine learning.
• Web development experience, especially with JavaScript, Vue JS, or Python Flask.
• Experience with at least one scripting language (e.g. Python, Ruby, Perl).
• Experience with big data techniques a plus
• Demonstrated baseball or other sports analytics research work product.
• Ability and desire to learn other programming languages as needed.

To Apply:
If you are interested, please email your resume and any other materials to bravesrdpositions@gmail.com.

The content in this posting was created and provided solely by the Atlanta Braves.

Dallas Keuchel wasn’t supposed to still be on the market when the Winter Meetings commenced in December. He certainly wasn’t supposed to still be there as the calendar turned to 2019, and it was completely unthinkable that he would still be available at the start of Spring Training. It is only through the dark alchemy of a ghoulish lack of shame and self-awareness on the part of team owners mixing with Keuchel’s demands that he was still available after the conclusion of the Amateur Player Draft, but there he was, still waiting for a phone call from his agent, telling him a professional baseball franchise had made him a reasonable contract offer. That call finally came on June 7, when the Atlanta Braves signed Keuchel to a one-year, $13-million deal, which by that point was more of a three-and-a-half-month deal. At the very start of the free agency period, Kiley McDaniel predicted Keuchel would receive four years and $84 million on the open market. Instead, he couldn’t even secure a multi-year commitment.

Keuchel wasn’t the only player who endured this kind of unexpected wait. Former Red Sox closer Craig Kimbrel signed just one day before Keuchel, inking a three-year deal with the Chicago Cubs. Kimbrel’s season has been a disaster so far, with the 31-year-old holding a 5.68 ERA and 6.63 FIP in 19 innings. Keuchel, on the other hand, hardly missed a beat. In 16 starts after getting a late start in Atlanta, Keuchel owns an ERA of 3.35, with a FIP of 4.39 and an xFIP of 3.87. He leads the majors with a 61.5% groundball rate (min. 90 IP), with second-place Dakota Hudson well behind him at 57.2%. Of those 16 starts, 13 have ended with Keuchel surrendering three earned runs or fewer. He was pretty reliable in his first few games of the season, but after a brief blow-up in Miami of all places, he’s been totally lights-out.

In a 3.2-inning appearance against the Marlins on August 8, Keuchel allowed eight runs on 10 hits, including three homers. His ERA jumped from 3.86 to 4.83 that evening, and at the time, it seemed like it might be a sign of real danger for the 31-year-old southpaw and the rest of the Braves’ pitching staff. While his ERA had been fairly solid coming into that appearance, his 4.74 FIP was still a distressing reminder of the kind of pitcher Keuchel was, and the risk he poses. He wasn’t missing a lot of bats, with his K/9 sitting at just 6.75. Meanwhile, he had a BB/9 above 3.0 for what would have been the first time since 2012, and he was allowing a career-high HR/FB rate of 24%. Keuchel has consistently overcome low strikeout totals throughout his career thanks to excellent command, but suddenly, he was throwing strikes much less often than he used to (32% zone rate in 2019 vs. 38.6% for his career), and he was much easier to leave the yard against, even if the juiced ball has made preventing homers more difficult for everybody. That night in Miami could have altered Keuchel’s entire season, and damaged his future earning potential even further.

But that isn’t what happened. Keuchel has bounced back from getting torched in Miami to post his most dominant six-game run in years. Read the rest of this entry »

Last Thursday, Max Fried turned in six of the best innings of his young career. Sure, it was against the Chicago White Sox, who are decisively not good at hitting baseballs right now, but still, Fried was dominant. He sat down each of the first 13 hitters he faced, striking out eight of them. Then Eloy Jiménez reached on a softly hit infield single down the third-base line and scored two batters later on a double by Adam Engel. But Fried bounced right back with a scoreless sixth, striking out two more to bring his total for the day to 11. He waved four batters with a curveball, four with a slider, and three with a fastball. After one of them, he made this face.

Folks, I have never looked at anyone like that in my life. Mostly because I have never fired a 97 mph fastball past Tim Anderson, or accomplished anything else that would fill me with a similar rush of adrenaline and personal gratification. Maybe if I really think I did a great job writing this post, I’ll feel so good about it that I’ll slam my laptop shut, strut away from the couch, and make this face at my girlfriend. Probably not, but we’ll see how these next few hundred words go. Might be worth a try. Point is, Fried was feeling himself, and I don’t blame him.

Then it all went away. Jiménez singled again on the first pitch of the seventh inning, this time hitting a 105-mph line drive to right. Then Fried let a 1-2 breaker run in and hit James McCann, and then Yolmer Sanchez reached on an error at first base. After that, Fried was out of the game, and two batters later, he watched Braves reliever Luke Jackson surrender a three-run homer to Welington Castillo, scoring all of the runners he inherited. After allowing just one run on three hits and a walk in his first six innings, Fried allowed all three hitters he faced in the seventh reach, and each one subsequently scored, messing up what had been a very strong performance. Read the rest of this entry »

September call-ups, both high-profile and totally innocuous, have been trickling in over the transaction wire for the last several days. As always, there are some that will have real impact on the playoff race, some that are interesting for the purposes of player evaluation, such your usual spare lefty reliever and catcher (by far the most common types of September additions), and some teams with no new names at all. Below I’ve compiled notes on every player brought up by National League teams since the start of the month, no matter how inconsequential, and I slip some rehabbers and August 31st acquisitions in here, too. It’s a primer for you to get (re)acquainted with players who might impact the playoff race or seasons to come.

Contenders’ Reinforcements

Atlanta Braves — INF Johan Camargo, RHP Chad Sobotka, RHP Jeremy Walker, LHP A.J. Minter, RHP Bryse Wilson

Camargo didn’t hit with the big club at all this year, not even in late July or all of August when he was handed pretty regular at-bats filling in for an injured Dansby Swanson. But he hit .483 over the few weeks he was down in Gwinnett after Swanson returned and Camargo was optioned. He’ll be a versatile, switch-hitting bench piece for the stretch run, and he projects as that sort of premium bench player long-term.

Sobotka and Walker were optioned to make room for the multiple relievers Atlanta acquired at the deadline. Sobotka, who sits 94-98 with life and has a plus, 2900-rpm slider, posted a 16-to-2 strikeout to walk ratio at Triple-A since being sent down. You may see him pitching big innings this month. Walker has been throwing 25-pitch, 2-inning outings with three days of rest in between. He may be on mop-up or long relief duty. Read the rest of this entry »

The 2019 Arizona Fall League rosters were (mostly) announced today, and we’ve created a tab on THE BOARD where you can see all the prospects headed for extra reps in the desert. These are not comprehensive Fall League rosters — you can find those on the AFL team pages — but a compilation of names of players who are already on team pages on THE BOARD. The default view of the page has players hard-ranked through the 40+ FV tier. The 40s and below are then ordered by position, with pitchers in each tier listed from most likely to least likely to start. In the 40 FV tier, everyone south of Alex Lange is already a reliever.

Many participating players, especially pitchers, have yet to be announced. As applicable prospects are added to rosters in the coming weeks, I’ll add them to the Fall League tab and tweet an update from the FanGraphs Prospects Twitter account. Additionally, this tab will be live throughout the Fall League and subject to changes (new tool grades, updated scouting reports, new video, etc.) that will be relevant for this offseason’s team prospect lists. We plan on shutting down player/list updates around the time minor league playoffs are complete (which is very soon) until we begin to publish 2020 team-by-team prospect lists, but the Fall League tab will be an exception. If a player currently on the list looks appreciably different to me in the AFL, I’ll update their scouting record on that tab, and I may add players I think we’re light on as I see them. Again, updates will be posted on the FanGraphs Prospects Twitter account, and I’ll also compile those changes in a weekly rundown similar to those we ran on Fridays during the summer.

Anything you’d want to know about individual players in this year’s crop of Fall Leaguers can probably be found over on THE BOARD right now. Below are some roster highlights as well as my thoughts on who might fill out the roster ranks.

Glendale Desert Dogs
The White Sox have an unannounced outfield spot on the roster that I think may eventually be used on OF Micker Adolfo, who played rehab games in Arizona late in the summer. He’s on his way back from multiple elbow surgeries. Rehabbing double Achilles rupturee Jake Burger is age-appropriate for the Fall League, but GM Rick Hahn mentioned in July that Burger might go to instructs instead. Sox instructs runs from September 21 to October 5, so perhaps he’ll be a mid-AFL add if that goes well and they want to get him more at-bats, even just as a DH. Non-BOARD prospects to watch on this roster include Reds righties Diomar Lopez (potential reliever, up to 95) and Jordan Johnson, who briefly looked like a No. 4 or 5 starter type during his tenure with San Francisco, but has been hurt a lot since, as have Brewers lefties Nathan Kirby (Thoracic Outlet Syndrome) and Quintin Torres-Costa (Tommy John). Dodgers righty Marshall Kasowski has long posted strong strikeout rates, but the eyeball scouts think he’s on the 40-man fringe. Read the rest of this entry »

Every year, hapless hitters with premium arm strength get moved to minor league mounds. With the help of Sean Dolinar, who combed the last few years of stats to scrounge up a more comprehensive list of converts than I was otherwise able to remember off the top of my head, I assembled the list below of former position players who are now prospects of note as hurlers. This is not a comprehensive survey of every recent conversion arm in the minors. Instead, these are the pitchers I think are interesting enough to include on an offseason list in some capacity.

Conversion arms who pan out typically put it together quickly. For example, it only took Kenley Jansen about a year after he first toed an affiliate’s rubber to reach Dodger Stadium. He likely threw during 2009 Extended Spring Training, then spent the back half of the summer at Hi-A before making a Fall League appearance. He breezed through Hi- and Double-A the following year, and was in Los Angeles by late July of 2010. Jason Motte started his conversion in 2006 and got his first big league cup of coffee in September of 2008. Joe Nathan’s first pro innings came in 1997; he was first called up to the majors early in 1999. Sean Doolittle threw just 26 minor league innings before the A’s brought him up. (Conversely, Alexi Ogando and Carlos Marmol each took about three years after moving moundward to become big leaguers.)

Who in the minors might be next to have impact, big or small, on a big league pitching staff? Here are some candidates. All of the 35+ FV and above players are now on THE BOARD, if they weren’t already.
Read the rest of this entry »

Billy Hamilton has been a Brave for a little over a week — only since Atlanta picked him up off waivers from Kansas City on August 19 after losing Nick Markakis and Ender Inciarte to injury — and he’s already achieved that highest aspiration for any member of the Braves organization: He humiliated the New York Mets, and on their home turf at that. The play came with the score tied 5-5 in the eighth inning of Saturday’s second game of the weekend series, with Ronald Acuña Jr. at the plate, Rafael Ortega at second, and Hamilton at first. Acuña, who at that point was an uncharacteristic 0-for-4 on the night, wasted no time in taking a Brad Brach hanger on the outer third of the plate softly into left. Then, this happened:

J.D. Davis, the Met unfortunate enough to wind up holding the ball on this particular play, spoke to our own Jay Jaffe after the game:

I was going to make a play to third,” he said, in a clubhouse near-silent after a late loss to a division rival, “and then I saw that the runner [Hamilton] was already like three-quarters of the way … so I just held onto the ball, and I looked at first to see where that runner was. But then as I released it to throw it to ‘Rosie’, he was already rounding third and headed home … I should have just thrown it to ‘Rosie’ and got it in. [You feel kind of] helpless, with Hamilton and his speed … it was just perfect timing. It was a good, high-baseball IQ kind of play.

Read the rest of this entry »