Manny Margot had a breakout within a breakout last year. After accounting for his offensive and defensive contributions, the Padres’ rookie center fielder was worth roughly two wins in slightly less than a full season’s worth of plate appearances. Even for a player who was highly touted as a prospect, producing league-average work at 22 years old represents, in itself, a kind of breakout.

Hidden within that strong end-of-year line was a drastic change in the second half, though. Margot started hitting the ball in the air. That’s a change that has powered many other breakouts. But before we book the skinny center fielder for all of the homers next year, we have to ask: what’s happened with launch-angle surgers in the past?

Read the rest of this entry »

I wrote my first post for FanGraphs on April 14th, 2008. It was about Gabe Kapler’s return from managing to be a productive big leaguer. It referenced WPA/LI as our version of a modern statistic and talked unironically about how Kapler was keeping up with Casey Kotchman. It wasn’t great.

Since then, I’ve published 3,501 other posts (or chats). Hopefully, most of them were better than that first one. In these last 10 years, the site has changed a lot. In 2010, I went from a freelancer to the company’s first full-time employee, then was joined by a host of absurdly talented coworkers, many of whom now also get to do this for a living. FanGraphs went from a niche site into the mainstream, and along the way, I’ve seen our little corner of the baseball world help change the language of baseball fans.

It’s been a remarkable run. But for me, it comes to an end today. This will be my last post at FanGraphs.

Read the rest of this entry »

On Saturday, the Padres sent INF Yangervis Solarte to Toronto in exchange for 21-year-old Venezuelan OF Edward Olivares and 24-year-old org reliever Jared Carkuff.

Olivares is the prospect centerpiece of the deal. He had a fairly significant breakout in 2017 after he barely played affiliated ball in 2016 due to injury. He was hurt after just 15 games at Bluefield in 2016 and, aside from those organizations that had extended spring-training coverage in Florida, many clubs didn’t see him until last year. In 2017, he went to Low-A and hit .277/.330/.500 with 17 homers and 18 steals in 101 games. He was promoted to Dunedin in mid-August and struggled there for the final three weeks of the season.

Olivares has an exciting, but volatile, skillset. He’s a free swinger with mediocre breaking-ball recognition and a pull-heavy approach to contact. He takes his share of ugly, unbalanced hacks at pitches that aren’t anywhere near the strike zone. So while he struck out in just 17% of his Low-A plate appearances last year, scouts are concerned about how undercooked Olivares’s feel to hit is right no, and worry that it could become an issue against more advanced pro pitching.

Read the rest of this entry »

Eric Hosmer has waited some time for a market to come together for his services. Part of the reason for the delay is that large-market clubs like the Dodgers and Yankees are not in need of a first baseman and are trying to remain below the luxury-tax threshold. Part of it is that teams are learning to better wait out free agents. (By Jan. 3 of last winter, nine of FanGraphs’ top-10 free agents had signed. This year? Three.) Hosmer’s agent Scott Boras famously said that there should be no concern for a free agent if he’s “the steak,” making the analogy to the main course of a fine dinner. There is some debate, however, as to whether Hosmer is a steak or a lesser cut.

Read the rest of this entry »

Dick Enberg died on Thursday, at the age 82, in La Jolla, California. His roots were in Michigan. Born in Mount Clemens, Enberg lived on a farm in Amada and attended college in Mount Pleasant. He went on to cultivate an inimitable broadcast style and become known to sports fans everywhere.

To say that Enberg reached the pinnacle of the profession would be an understatement. He called some of the biggest games in college basketball history, several Super Bowls, and more than two dozen Wimbledons. As the voice of the California Angels, and later the San Diego Padres, he was behind the microphone for nine no-hitters. Two years ago, the Baseball Hall of Fame honored him with the Ford C. Frick Award for broadcasting excellence.

Enberg was reportedly as good of a person as he was a broadcaster and based on my brief interactions with him that’s certainly true. When I first met Enberg, we spoke of our shared Finnish heritage and small town Michigan upbringings. He couldn’t have been more congenial. I recall walking away impressed that a legend could be so humble.

It is by no means hyperbolic to call Enberg a legend. Here is what two of the best broadcasters in the business had to say when I asked them about his passing.

Len Kasper, Chicago Cubs: “I was very saddened to see the news. Dick was one of the first big time national sportscasters I remember hearing as a kid. I took a special interest in his work because he went to Central Michigan University, just a few miles from where I grew up. I was fortunate to get to know him a little bit when he joined the Padres TV booth and we had several great conversations. The word iconic gets thrown around lazily in our business, but if Dick Enberg wasn’t an iconic broadcaster, I don’t know who was. I will throw out one other thing. His tennis work was totally underrated. I watched a ton of it in the ‘80s and ‘90s and he was the #1 voice of THAT sport too! He did everything! Versatile, knowledgeable, understated, he had everything you’d want in a national broadcaster.” Read the rest of this entry »

On Monday, the Red Sox agreed to terms with first baseman Mitch Moreland. It was meaningful news, for two reasons. One, this is the Red Sox we’re talking about, and it seems like everything the Red Sox do is always big news. But then, additionally, Moreland electing to re-sign would appear to take the Red Sox out of the running for free agent Eric Hosmer. And while I’m certainly not Hosmer’s agent, the market for his services apparently isn’t large.

It could get larger. Scott Boras will work hard to make it larger. It’s possible to see a team like, say, the Mets throwing their hat in the ring. Yet the Red Sox move increases the chances that Hosmer will stay in Kansas City. It also increases the chances that Hosmer will go to San Diego. The Padres, so far, have been the most closely-linked suitor. They seem deeply motivated to turn Hosmer into a part of their core. The Padres haven’t won more than 77 games since 2011.

Read the rest of this entry »

Kirsten Karbach grew up listening to Andy Freed and Dave Wills call Tampa Bay Rays games on the radio. Now she’s following in their footsteps. At age 27, Karbach is the voice of Philadelphia’s high-A affiliate, the Clearwater Threshers. She’s been with the Florida State League club since 2013.

According to Ben Gellman, Karbach got her job by “knocking our socks off” in an interview.

“When I was with the Threshers, my boss told me I could hire a No. 2 broadcaster to intern and help me out,” explained Gellman, who now does play-by-play for the Salem Red Sox. “He suggested a guy from the University of South Florida, whose tape was pretty good, but I’d heard a couple of innings of Kirsten on tape and was blown away by the quality of her call. I told my boss, ‘We have got to bring her in for an interview.’

“We brought her on board and she was a terrific partner, consistently pointing out nuances of the game and enhancing the broadcast. When she took over the lead job in 2014, I knew she’d do a fantastic job and I’m so happy to see her continued success in a corner of our industry that badly needs more women and people of color — and other people who aren’t straight, white males — to give us a diverse perspective that better reflects our fans.”

Karbach obviously feels the same way, and while she’s currently the only female play-by-play broadcaster in affiliated baseball she doesn’t expect that to be the case for much longer. Read the rest of this entry »

The competitive-balance tax isn’t a salary cap, not in the hard and fast sense, but sometimes it acts in the exact same way. As a consequence, you can have big-budget teams in the business of cutting payroll, which can lead to situations like Tuesday’s, where the Padres have come to the aid of the Yankees. The Yankees are trying to stay below the threshold, even after acquiring Giancarlo Stanton, and that almost fully explains this morning’s exchange.

Padres get:

• Chase Headley
• Bryan Mitchell

Yankees get:

• Jabari Blash

This is a trade involving three major-league players. And even though I’m not at all convinced Blash lasts the winter on the Yankees’ 40-man roster, there are things about him to like. Ultimately, though, this is really quite simple to understand — the Padres are taking Headley’s $13-million final year, and they’re getting Mitchell for the trouble. The Yankees drop their payroll, and the Padres get a project.

Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve had our first major upset of the offseason: Shohei Ohtani isn’t going to be a Yankee.

Of the seven finalists, three — the Angels, Mariners, and Rangers — reside in the AL West, which this author argued last month represented the ideal landing spot for the interests of Ohtani and MLB.

Many thought that the Yankees were the favorites entering the process and that AL clubs, in general, would have a significant advantage with the DH. Well, Ohtani gave us some surprises, as the Yankees and all large-market East Coast clubs are out. Not only that, but four — the Cubs, Dodgers, Giants, and Padres — of his seven finalists are NL clubs.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Detroit Tigers are shedding veteran contracts and restocking what had become a depleted farm system. That’s good news for the team’s future. It’s bad news for their fans in terms of watching winning baseball. As with any rebuild, near-term pennant contention isn’t part of the plan.

Al Avila is approaching the situation with a stiff upper lip. As unpleasant of a task as it might be — no one likes to lose — Detroit’s GM accepts the fact that in order to get better, his team first has to get worse. That’s why he traded J.D. Martinez, Justin Verlander, Justin Upton, Justin Wilson, and even his own son. And he’s not done dealing.

During the General Managers’ Meetings in Orlando, Avila praised both the prospects he’s been acquiring and the young talent that has already begun contributing at the big league level. He then went on to suggest the latter group might not want to invest too heavily in Detroit-area real estate. Read the rest of this entry »