The Dutch historian and children’s author Hendrik Willem van Loon had an enjoyable definition of eternity. Every thousand years, he said, a bird comes to sharpen its beak on a hundred-mile-high, hundred-mile-wide rock. When the rock has been worn away by the bird’s beak, one day of eternity will have passed.

Personally, I think he could have just used the pitches in tonight’s Astros-Red Sox game to count eternity. Two of the best, grindiest offenses in baseball faced off against two starters who scuffled with control, and the result was a ponderous affair that lasted more than four hours and tested the nerves and patience of fans on both sides.

The Red Sox set the tone with a disciplined, persistent attack. After a leadoff single was erased by a double play, they wore Framber Valdez down, beak-sharpening peck by peck. A walk put a runner back on first. A flare over the shift added another runner before a walk loaded the bases. Hunter Renfroe flew out to end the threat, but the Red Sox had Valdez’s number. They hardly swung at bad pitches and rarely missed when they did swing. Read the rest of this entry »

When the postseason began, a rematch of the 2020 National League Championship Series only had about a 21% chance of happening, according to our Playoff Odds. But after some particularly unlikely occurrences — not just the lower seeds advancing in the Division Series — here we are. Freddie Freeman became the first lefty to hit a homer off Josh Hader in nearly 13 months, and the first to do so on a slider in more than two years, while lifting the Braves past the Brewers in Game 4. The Dodgers won the Wild Card game via a walkoff home run by a slumping Chris Taylor and then eked out a narrow victory over the 107-win Giants in similarly heart-stopping fashion, with the winning hit in Thursday night’s Game 5 delivered by Cody Bellinger on the heels of a nightmare season. That’s baseball, Suzyn.

Unlike last year, this time around the Braves will have home-field advantage despite winning 18 fewer regular season games than the Dodgers, because the current playoff format deals a stiff penalty to teams sneaking into the postseason via the Wild Card door. Atlanta’s advantage could be significant at some point in the series, particularly if it goes past five games, but it’s worth noting the Braves went just 42-38 at home, tying the Marlins for the NL’s 10th-highest win total in that split; meanwhile, their 46-35 road record ranked fourth in the NL. The Dodgers had the best home record (58-23) and third-best road record (48-33), and just won an elimination game (and two of their three Division Series games) in enemy territory. The talent gap between the two teams probably matters more than the venue in which they meet, though in a short series… you know the rest. Read the rest of this entry »

Please note, this posting contains three positions.

The Milwaukee Brewers are looking to add talented people to their Baseball Research and Development department. The R&D team is involved in every aspect of the organization, including acquisition, player development and scouting and works closely with those departments to build processes and tools for decision making.

The Brewers are looking for people who ask important questions and have the ability to start to answer them. They primarily use R and SQL, with some Python mixed in, but they’ll help you learn their tools if you’re more comfortable with a different set. Having existing knowledge of baseball and sabermetrics is helpful, but not required.

R&D team members generally work 40 to 45 hour weeks, although many choose to stay and attend home games during the season. There can be some weekend support and there are certain times of year (draft, trade deadline) where there may be additional needs. Some travel to spring training or minor league affiliates may be required for full-time positions. All positions will start in Milwaukee, but may have the potential for remote down the road. Read the rest of this entry »

Position: Intern – International Scouting

Summary:
The Intern – International Scouting will assist the Milwaukee Brewers player acquisition in the foreign amateur and professional spaces in an office-based role. This position will include both talent evaluation of players and support of the day-to-day functions of the International Scouting department.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities include the following:
Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions. Other duties may be assigned:

• Learn about and support evaluative methods and efforts within the International Scouting department
• Assist decision-making systems and processes
• Support operational, compliance, and administrative tasks to ensure high-functioning departmental workflow
• Manage video library as compiled by the International Scouting staff
• Fulfill any additional needs of Milwaukee Brewers Baseball Operations as requested

Read the rest of this entry »

A pizza stain on the new Armani. A chocolate chip cookie, fresh out of the oven, adorned with nine chips and one cat droplet. The middle five wishes of Elliot Richards. Game 5 of the 2021 NLDS.

The Dodgers won 2-1 in as tense and dramatic a contest as we’ve seen all year, one that ended with an inexplicable call from first base umpire Gabe Morales on Wilmer Flores’ check swing. For Los Angeles, it’s a fifth trip to the NLCS in six seasons, a triumph only made sweeter by the circumstances. In vanquishing their rivals, the Dodgers get the last laugh in a brilliantly played season series. Tonight’s game is vindication for Dave Roberts and his lineup choices, redemption for Cody Bellinger, and another line on Hall of Famer Max Scherzer’s remarkable resume. Fans of all stripes were treated to an exquisite contest in nearly every respect.

But like most neutrals, that last pitch is stuck in my craw. With two outs, Kris Bryant on first, and Flores at the plate, Scherzer fired a 1-2 slider. Flores started his swing but appeared to check it well in advance of the imaginary and arbitrary breaking point at which a take (usually!) becomes a swinging strike:

Read the rest of this entry »

Tonight, there’s only one game in town, as the Giants face the Dodgers in a winner-take-all, NLDS Game 5 slugfest in San Francisco. It’s been billed as a matchup between two borderline Cy Young candidates: Logan Webb, who humbled the Los Angeles lineup in the first game of the series, and Julio Urías, who started Game 2 for the Dodgers after a superlative 2021 season. Only, nope:

Corey Knebel will start Game 5 tonight.

— Los Angeles Dodgers (@Dodgers) October 14, 2021

This isn’t going to be a lengthy discussion of whether openers make sense. Teams clearly like the tactic as a way to fill innings, but almost never in front of a pitcher as good as Urías. I’m interested in what the Giants will do to counter it, and how that counter will determine Urías’s matchups.

When he took the mound last Saturday, the Giants set up like so:

Read the rest of this entry »

This postseason, I’m trying out a new feature: managerial report cards. After each postseason round, I’ll look at the losing managers and assess their performance when it comes to in-game management. Pinch hit for your MVP candidate with a pitcher? Not that it would ever happen, but you’d get an F for that. Bring in your best pitcher in a big spot, only to have him give up a three-run homer? That’s still an A, results notwithstanding.

These grades don’t cover everything that a manager does. Deploying your best players in the biggest spots and hiding their weaknesses where possible is a big part of a manager’s role, but it’s definitely not the only part. As an example, Kevin Cash and the entire Rays staff deserve a permanent A for their work in getting their pitchers and hitters ready for flexible roles all season long. Likewise, Dave Roberts and the Dodgers coaching staff benched a former MVP and seem to have kept the clubhouse roughly in order, always a tough task. None of that will be reflected in these rankings, but it’s absolutely important managerial work — it’s simply work I don’t have much insight into.

Kevin Cash, Tampa Bay Rays

Lineups/Pinch Hitting: C
Cash mostly used his lineups creatively, matching his players’ strengths with the opposing pitcher’s. The Red Sox went heavily to lefties in this series — Eduardo Rodriguez started two games and Chris Sale one. That meant a heaping helping of Jordan Luplow, Manuel Margot, and Yandy Díaz, three players on the team for their ability to hit left-handed pitching. When Nathan Eovaldi started Game 3, all three of those hitters were out of the lineup, replaced by Austin Meadows, Ji-Man Choi, and Joey Wendle. Read the rest of this entry »

Dillon Tate’s fastballs were primarily sinkers this season. Per Statcast, the 27-year-old Baltimore Orioles reliever threw 615 of them in total, versus just 16 four-seamers. Delivered with a one-seam grip at an average velocity of 95.5 mph, and with a spin rate that ranked in the third percentile, the offering has evolved into Tate’s signature pitch. Buoyed by its increased effectiveness, the right-hander appeared in a career-high 62 games, logging a 4.39 ERA and an almost-identical 4.40 FIP.

Tate discussed the evolution of his fastball(s) when the Orioles played at Fenway Park in mid-September.

———

Dillon Tate: “I’d always thrown a four-seam, but the evolution of my fastball changed throughout the years. When I was in high school, I would grip a standard four-seam, like so. But the way I was grabbing it… when you grab it with the horseshoe facing in — it’s making a “C” — and you throw it, the Magnus effect takes over; it will start to bring the ball down, and more so in to a right-handed hitter. When you flip it over — make it a backwards “C” — it fights gravity a little bit more, so will stay truer. I learned that in 2017 from one of my rehab coaches with the Yankees, Greg Pavlick.

“So, I’d been grabbing it [with the horseshoe facing in], and then with the Yankees switched over. I had a little bit of success, but then towards the middle-end of 2018, my fastball was getting hit pretty hard. That’s when I started switching over to a sinker, to a one-seam fastball. On a traditional two-seam fastball, a lot of guys will split the seams. I found comfort in going across the seam, and throwing my fastball with [the pointer finger] on one seam. I started to see my groundball rate go up. It’s turned out to be pretty good movement profile-wise — it dances more than my four-seam fastball did — so it’s been a better option for me. Read the rest of this entry »

Of all the major sports, I would argue that none rely on their history and its place in the cultural milieu more than baseball. Every big moment in baseball seems to be steeped in comparable historical feats accomplished by some of the game’s most famous protagonists, from Ruth to Mantle to Maddux. In one sense, that’s a positive; even if there are more strikeouts and home runs than there were 100 years ago, someone from 1921 could arrive by time machine and still follow what is fundamentally a very similar game. But on the flip side, someone like Mike Trout can’t simply be recognized as being the first Mike Trout but as the next version of Mays or Mantle or Speaker. We joke about broadcasters waxing nostalgic about the aura and mystique of the New York Yankees, but a player on the Yankees can’t help but be endlessly compared to the heroes of yore, and mortals are usually found wanting in those comparisons.

Every team in the playoffs has something to prove, but Boston Red Sox and Houston Astros would both like to be victors who write the history books.

The Red Sox spent most of the 20th century as the Goofus to New York’s Gallant. The Yankees were expected to win World Series after World Series while the less-fortunate son was the habitual loser, constantly pulling defeat from the jaws of victory because of a curse caused by a team owner who wanted to produce a play, My Lady Friends in 1919. But the 2000s have swung things the Sox way, with Boston not just breaking its long championship-less streak but winning four championship trophies this century, the most in baseball. Yet to a large extent, the Yankees still retain the position of the big dog. It even felt a bit like that at the trade deadline, when the Yankees got the headlines for acquiring Joey Gallo and Anthony Rizzo while Kyle Schwarber was seen as a Boston consolation prize. But Schwarber played better than either Gallo or Rizzo, and unlike them is still playing in 2021. Read the rest of this entry »

Position: Senior Researcher, Baseball Research & Development

Job Summary:
The Kansas City Royals Baseball Club is seeking a highly motivated and creative Senior Researcher to develop models and methodologies for use in decision-making by members of baseball operations. The ideal applicant will possess knowledge of data-driven techniques for use in leveraging baseball data to provide a competitive edge and innovative solutions to the Kansas City Royals.

Reports to the Assistant General Manager, Research and Development

Accountabilities:

• Leverage statistical learning techniques to improve player evaluation and forecasting
• Develop novel research ideas and work with other members of baseball operations to cultivate curiosity regarding baseball data
• Implement project management best practices and mentor other analysts throughout the research and modeling phases of projects
• Evaluate existing infrastructure for continual improvements and codebase maintenance
• Communicate R&D products to non-technical stakeholders and utilize their feedback to improve and iterate on tools

Qualifications:
Required

• Graduate degree or two years’ work experience in statistics, computer science, machine learning, mathematics or a related field
• Ability to work evening, weekend, and holiday hours during the baseball season is a must
• Excellent interpersonal/communication skills and ability to interact and work with staff at all levels
• Ability to recognize and maintain confidentiality of work materials and issues as appropriate
• Knowledge and understanding of baseball and/or baseball data
• Proficiency with some of the following tools and/or software:
• Python, R, or similar
• SQL

Preferred

• Comfort with machine learning frameworks such as Tensorflow or PyTorch
• Experience modeling and visualizing large sets of time series data
• Knowledge of Bayesian frameworks such as Stan or Tensorflow Probability
• Proficiency in Django, HTML, JavaScript, CSS and other web development frameworks

To Apply:
To apply, please use this link.

The content in this posting was created and provided solely by the Kansas City Royals.