Position: Director, Baseball Data Infrastructure

Summary:
The Detroit Tigers are currently seeking a Director, Baseball Data Infrastructure. This role will be responsible for leading all internal data and infrastructure initiatives within Baseball Operations. This position will report to the Vice President and Assistant General Manager, Baseball Operations. Read the rest of this entry »

Position: Full-Stack Software Engineer

Summary:
The Detroit Tigers are currently seeking a Full Stack Software Engineer. This role will be responsible for development and maintenance of software projects within Baseball Operations. This position will report to the Director of Baseball Systems.

Key Responsibilities:

• Perform development and maintenance on internal software products.
• Utilize modern software techniques and best practices in all parts of the software lifecycle.
• Support the integration of baseball analysis into the Tigers’ proprietary tools and applications.
• Assist with the design and development of new software products.
• Other projects or responsibilities as directed by Baseball Operations leadership.

Minimum Knowledge, Skills and Abilities:

• BS degree in Computer Science, similar technical field of study, or equivalent experience.
• 3+ years of experience developing web applications in a production environment.
• Demonstrated knowledge of modern web development including at least one popular single-page web application framework.
• Experience working with large-scale relational databases using SQL.
• Ability to work in all phases of the product lifecycle, including requirements-gathering, design, testing, and implementation.
• Ability to learn new technologies and techniques as necessary.
• Familiarity with the sport of baseball, baseball-specific data, modern statistical techniques, and sabermetric analysis.

Preferred Knowledge, Skills and Abilities

• Experience in the sports industry or with sports data
• Experience working on cloud-based software systems
• Understanding of User Experience principles and practices
• Experience with JavaScript visualization tools such as D3 or Plotly
• Preference for the declarative programming paradigm

To Apply:
To apply, please use this link.

The content in this posting was created and provided solely by the Detroit Tigers.

Please note, this posting contains two postings.

Position: Analyst, Baseball Operations

Summary:
The Detroit Tigers are currently seeking a full-time Analyst in the Baseball Operations Department. This role will be responsible for performing analyses and conducting research within Baseball Operations. This position will report to the Director, Baseball Analytics. Read the rest of this entry »

Please note, this posting contains two positions.

Position: Biomechanist, Performance Science

Summary:
The Detroit Tigers are currently seeking a full-time Biomechanist in the Performance Science Department. This role will assist with the delivery of performance science solutions within Baseball Operations. The biomechanist will be responsible for translating biomechanical data into applied, actionable outcomes to be used by staffs to optimize performance. This role will work closely Baseball Analytics, Player Development, Strength and Conditioning, and Sports Medicine. Read the rest of this entry »

Any team down 1-0 in a five-game series has problems. That’s where the Boston Red Sox find themselves after losing Game 1 of their American League Division Series tilt against the Tampa Bay Rays 5-0 in St. Petersburg on Thursday night. But before this series began, the Red Sox already had plenty of issues, and while Alex Cora did his best to mitigate them with some unexpected decisions concerning his pitching staff, he was left helpless thanks to a moribund Boston offense.

Problem No. 1: The Red Sox are all but forced to lean on left-handed starters against a team that crushes them

The Red Sox had to use Nathan Eovaldi just to get to this point. Unfortunately, the understandable decision to have their right-handed ace start the AL Wild Card game means that Tampa will likely face a left-handed starter in at least three games should the ALDS go the full five. That’s a problem when squaring off against the Rays, whose offense finished second in the AL only to the Houston Astros in terms of runs scored and features one of the most dangerous lineups in baseball against southpaws. Here’s Tampa’s Game 1 lineup, with their 2021 performance against lefties:

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Coming into the American League Division Series, the Chicago White Sox faced a tough task: controlling the tireless Houston Astros offense, which paced the majors in scoring. They’re a nightmarish matchup; high on-base hitters up top, power in the middle, and enough firepower that Carlos Correa (134 wRC+) bats sixth and Kyle Tucker (147 wRC+) seventh.

Chicago’s plan? Fastballs. That’s less by design and more because Lance Lynn, their Game 1 starter, throws more of them than anyone else in baseball. Is that a smart plan against the Astros? No, it is not — they were the third-best fastball-hitting team in baseball this year by run value. On the other hand, they were also the third-best team against breaking pitches and the second-best against offspeed offerings, so it’s not as though there were easy choices. But fastballs? In this economy? It felt like it might be a long afternoon.

For an inning, Lynn managed it. He mixed four-seamers and cutters, keeping Houston hitters off-balance. His cutter could almost be called a slider, and it’s key to keeping opponents uneasy; it’s the only pitch he throws with glove-side movement. He set the side down in order — but even then, Alex Bregman smashed a line drive directly at Leury García for the third out. The cutters weren’t doing enough to keep Astros hitters from sitting on other fastballs.
Read the rest of this entry »

Bobby Bradley is both a power hitter and a work-in-progress. Swinging from the left side, the 25-year-old Cleveland first baseman swatted 16 home runs this year in 279 plate appearances, but he also fanned 99 times. At 35.5%, his K-rate was fourth-highest among major league batters with at least 250 PAs. But again, Bradley hits for power. Despite an uninspiring .208/.294/.445 slash line, his 99 wRC+ was a mere tick below average. With further maturation and improved contact skills, Bradley could very well emerge as a force in the middle of the soon-to-be-Guardians lineup.

Bradley talked hitting when Cleveland visited Fenway Park in early September.

———

David Laurila: Do you view hitting as more of a science, or as more of an art?

Bobby Bradley: “More of an art. Personally, I don’t look at it from the scientific side; I don’t get into all the data and all that. It’s more something that I take pride in, and I try to take care of my swing. So I’d say that it’s a work of art to me. I obviously haven’t perfected it, but at the same time, it’s like my masterpiece.”

Laurila: Do you have the same swing now that you did as a younger player?

Bradley: “It’s pretty close. For instance, it’s not entirely different from when I got drafted [in 2014]. There are maybe a couple of things, like where I put my hands. I also have a little bit bigger leg-kick now. But overall, it’s pretty close to where I was in high school.”

Laurila: When did the bigger leg-kick come about? Read the rest of this entry »

The Boston Red Sox summarily dispensed with the New York Yankees in their winner-takes-all Wild Card matchup on Tuesday night, with Nathan Eovaldi cruisin’ and Gerrit Cole the subject of a bruisin’. Boston now faces the Tampa Bay Rays in a five-game American League Division Series matchup that represents just the third time the teams have ever squared off in the playoffs.

One of the interesting things about this matchup from a projections standpoint is that it features two of the teams with the largest gap between their FanGraphs Projected Standings and the ZiPS-concocted ones. Indeed, if it weren’t for the St. Louis Cardinals, these two squads would have the biggest separation in the two systems’ respective preseason outlooks, with the FanGraphs Projected Standings preferring the Red Sox and ZiPS leaning toward Tampa Bay:

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Both the Astros and White Sox dominated their respective divisions in 2021. For Houston, this was the team’s fourth division title in five years; for Chicago, its first since 2008. With the Rays having run away with the AL’s best record, these two clubs have been in each other’s sights for a while now. Both teams are filled with offensive stars, hard-throwing pitchers, and deep rosters; on paper, this looks like an even matchup.

The Astros are vying for their fifth consecutive trip to the American League Championship Series, which they’ve won twice, first in 2017 and again in ’19. They backed into the expanded playoffs last year as the only AL team with a record below .500 but came alive in the playoffs and nearly completed an 0–3 series comeback against Tampa before falling in Game 7. As for the White Sox, they’ve now made the playoffs in consecutive seasons for the first time in their franchise history — appearances that are the culmination of a long rebuilding cycle that began more than half a decade ago. And this series will be a rematch of the 2005 World Series, Chicago’s last title and back when Houston was still a National League club.

For the third time in the last five years, the Astros led the majors in wRC+ and also finished first in runs scored, batting average, on-base percentage, and strikeout rate. That last statistic is perhaps most important to their playoff success. As previous research has shown, high-contact teams do well against high-velocity pitchers, which every postseason team has in spades. A team’s regular-season strikeout rate also tends to correlate well with postseason success, as Eno Sarris found over at The Athletic. That tracks with the foundation of the Astros’ success over the last half-decade.

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A few hours before Tuesday’s Red Sox-Yankees Wild Card tilt, the Colorado Rockies announced that they had agreed to two new contracts, getting baseball’s offseason started just a little bit early. First, the club and right-handed starter Antonio Senzatela came to terms on a five-year contract extension, one that guarantees him $50.5 million and includes a $14 million club option for 2027. The team also agreed to bring back first baseman C.J. Cron on a two-year, $14.5 million deal.

Though both contracts were announced on the same day, they accomplish different goals. Senzatela, for one, was not a free agent until after the 2023 season; the new contract buys out his two remaining arbitration years at $7.25 million apiece, while valuing the three free agent seasons that would have come after at $12 million each. Cron’s contract, on the other hand, can be considered an extension in name only (since players are under contract until five days following the World Series), as he was set to hit the open market in just a few weeks. Interestingly — though it’s almost certainly just a coincidence — Cron’s contract will also pay him exactly $7.25 million in each of the next two seasons.

Also notably, the two deals represent the first moves made by the team’s new permanent general manager, Bill Schmidt, who officially shed the interim title on Saturday. He had been serving in the role since May 3, following Jeff Bridich’s late-April resignation. Prior to assuming the interim role, Schmidt had led the Rockies’ scouting department, a position he had held since 1999. Read the rest of this entry »