NEW YORK — They’ve won back to back National League pennants and clinched their seventh straight NL West title on September 10. They have a four-game lead over the Braves for the senior circuit’s best record. And yet, even as they close in on 100 wins and the top NL seed for the playoffs, the 2019 Dodgers are still a squad very much in flux. Lineup, rotation, bullpen — everywhere, key roles up for grabs, as manager Dave Roberts and his staff spend the remainder of September hoping to find a route through October that will end differently than the last two. 

This past weekend’s trip to Citi Field for a three-game series against the Mets, who had won four straight and nine out of their last 13, put all of that on display. Friday night’s 9-2 rout was keyed by a fourth-inning, three-run homer off Noah Syndergaard by rookie Gavin Lux, who despite having just 12 major league games under his belt at this writing is amid a successful audition for the starting second base job. Saturday’s lineup featured an outfield of familiar faces — A.J. Pollock, Cody Bellinger, and Joc Pederson — in a configuration that had been used on just two other occasions in the previous 149 games.

Saturday evening’s pitching matchup, though billed as as one between Cy Young hopefuls Jacob deGrom and Hyun-Jin Ryu, was in many ways a crucial test for the latter, who despite leading all major league starters in ERA had suddenly fallen into a four-start funk. He passed his test with flying colors, delivering seven shutout innings, but the bullpen that followed him did not, surrendering three eighth-inning runs that led to defeat. Sunday brought some familiar moving parts back into the mix, and the bullpen — particularly Kenley Jansen — fared much better in the team’s come-from-behind 3-2 victory.

To be clear, some of this was and will continue to be the usual September shufflings of a playoff-bound team trying to cover for injuries and rest some veterans before the postseason. With Justin Turner nursing a mild left ankle sprain, rookie Matt Beaty started on Friday and Saturday at third base, a position he hadn’t played at the major league level before September, though for as useful as he’s been off the bench, he’s no threat to unseat a healthy Turner. Ryu was starting on nine days of rest, while Walker Buehler, who started on Sunday, was pulled after 71 pitches (his fewest since his season debut on March 31) and five innings, pushing his season total to 171.1, 18 more than last year’s combined total in the minors and majors.

Of course, it helps to have expanded September rosters for such an endeavor, and with the Dodgers, Lux is no window dressing. By the time the team’s 2016 first-round pick made his major league debut on September 2, the Dodgers had already started six other players at second base, including July 31 acquisition Jedd Gyorko, who had debuted there on September 1. Led by Enrique Hernández (84 games, 63 starts) and Max Muncy (67 games, 59 starts) and limited somewhat by injuries to both, as well as to Chris Taylor (20 games, 13 starts), the group — including Lux — hasn’t fared badly, ranking ninth among all 30 teams in both WAR (2.9, led by Muncy’s 1.7 in that capacity) and wRC+ (104). But Lux’s torrid minor league season (.347/.421/.607 with 26 homers), his draft pedigree, and his prospect status (number nine on The Board, up from number 23 in February) earned him this shot, and Roberts has liked what he’s seen. “I see composure,” said the manager of the 21-old rookie prior to Saturday’s game. “There’s a confidence. It’s a really good skill set. I see him starting tomorrow against [Zack] Wheeler. And if he continues to play well, the at-bats will be there.” Read the rest of this entry »

It was never going to be a fun year to be a Detroit Tigers fan. The hundred losses could tell you that, or the fact that the team’s lone All-Star was reliever Shane Greene, who now plays for the Braves. The joy in Tigers fandom was concentrated in the minors this year; in top prospect Casey Mize’s polish, in Matt Manning’s production, in Isaac Paredes showing he was ready for Double-A.

But the major league team wasn’t without its bright spots. Greene performed well enough to net two interesting prospects in a trade, Niko Goodrum scratched out a 2-WAR season, and Matthew Boyd had a first half so nice that the Tigers asked for the world in trade (they didn’t get it). In addition to those major leaguers taking a step forward, there’s one other Tigers performance to get excited about: Spencer Turnbull has quietly been an above-average pitcher in his rookie season.

There were signs that Turnbull could hack it in the major leagues before this year, but nothing decisive. He used his sinker/slider starter kit well in Double-A in 2018, racking up a 25% strikeout rate and 3.16 FIP over 100 innings of work. That sounds excellent, but the hidden downside of performing well in Double-A is that you’re pitching in Double-A rather than the big leagues. Turnbull was 25 then, older than the average age for the league and way past when most top prospects move on.

Still, good pitching is good pitching, and the Tigers were desperate for whatever they could get. After a single dominant outing in Triple-A, where he struck out 7 of the 13 batters he faced, Turnbull was summoned back to the major leagues, where he had had a brief previous cameo as a September call-up. 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 »

Two years ago, 22-year-old Yoán Moncada, the White Sox’s much-heralded return for Chris Sale, put up a 105 wRC+ and 1.1 WAR in his debut season in Chicago. Eloy Jiménez, this year’s 22-year-old Southside rookie, has about a month left on the first year of his six year, $43 million contract. But his first year has looked familiar: His .259/.309/.489 line with 27 home runs translates to a 108 wRC+ and 1.3 WAR. Recurring hip injuries have limited his production, but it’s still been a mostly successful debut. A key part of Chicago’s future, Jiménez has played particularly well over the last month, and he just captured the AL Player of the Week award.

Long-time Jiménez watchers will recall that, as a prospect, he combined tremendous natural strength with unusually high contact rates, particularly during his years in the Cubs system. This year, he’s hit for plenty of power but his contact rate is just 70%, which is in the league’s 10th percentile among players with more than 450 plate appearances. It’s certainly possible to succeed with a low contact rate — Bryce Harper and Nelson Cruz each make less contact and have a wRC+ above 120 — but you either to need to walk a lot or hit for big power to pull it off; Harper walks 15% of the time, while Cruz has an ISO of .323. Jiménez, meanwhile has a .231 ISO and a 6.1% walk rate. He’s still a good hitter, if not yet a great one.

Fortunately, with his size and natural pop, he doesn’t have to sell out for power. Instead, he can focus on keeping his hands behind the ball and try to hit line drives. This more compact approach is an adjustment from his time in the Cubs’ minor-league system, where he used to hold his hands at helmet height and then need to torque his body violently around his upper half in order to reach pitches low away; typically, he’d either miss entirely or foul the ball off. Since coming to the South Side, Jiménez says he’s lowered his hands in an effort to make better contact on inside fastballs, and to get to pitches down and away from lefties. Read the rest of this entry »

Please note, this posting contains multiple positions.

Position: Research & Development Intern, Baseball Operations

Location: Minneapolis, MN

Responsibilities:

• Support the Research and Development Department by delivering tools and research that improve decision-making processes for the breadth of Baseball Operations personnel.
• Evaluate and build statistically rigorous models to aid and inform in a variety of areas of baseball operations, including: amateur scouting, advance scouting, player development, and player acquisition.
• Administrative support also expected.

Requirements:

• Proficiency in Microsoft Word and Excel
• Advance knowledge of sabermetric methods and analytical tools (e.g. SQL, R, Python) is preferred
• Major in Operations Research, Math, Statistics, Economics, Physics or Engineering is preferred
• Must be able to lift 35 pounds as needed

Time commitment: March 2020 through October 2020

Hours: 40 hrs/week

To Apply:
To apply, please complete the application that can be found here.

Position: Intern, Baseball Operations

Location: Minneapolis, MN

Responsibilities:

• Support the Baseball Department in all areas, including Draft meeting preparation and support during Draft days, post-Draft player pick-up, data entry, filing, and other assigned projects.
• Administrative support is expected throughout the internship, however, there is ample opportunity for areas of personal interest/development through self-determined projects and access to Baseball Operations personnel, information, and systems.
• Other administrative projects, as assigned.

Requirements:

• Proficiency in Microsoft Word and Excel
• General baseball knowledge
• Valid Driver’s License and vehicle
• Must be able to lift 50 pounds
• Able to stand or sit for long periods of time
• Some working knowledge of quantitative analysis (preferred)
• Spanish Proficiency (preferred)

Time commitment: March 2020 through October 2020

Hours: 40 hrs/week

To Apply:
To apply, please complete the application that can be found here.

Position: Motion Analysis Intern, Baseball Operations

Location: Minneapolis, MN

Responsibilities:

• Support Motion Performance Coach by providing analysis, insights and recommendations related to player motion data.
• Process, clean and verify integrity of data used for analysis.
• Collaborate with performance staff, coaching staff and baseball operations to improve player health, player performance and proprietary projections.
• Administrative support also expected.

Requirements:

• Advance knowledge of human movement and analytical tools (e.g. SQL, R, Python) is preferred.
• A sense of intellectual curiosity and a penchant for explaining technical solutions to a non-technical audience.
• Majors in Kinesiology or Biomechanics are preferred.
• Must be able to lift 35 pounds.

Time Commitment: January 2020 through October 2020

Hours: 40 hrs/week

To Apply:
To apply, please complete the application that can be found here.

Position: Baseball Systems Developer Intern

Location: Minneapolis, MN

Responsibilities:

• Assist with various programming projects to accomplish the objectives of the baseball department.
• Assist in the daily operations of the department.
• Design and code new features and enhancements.
• Collaborate on finding and fixing bugs.

Requirements

• Must detail relevant coursework within resume.
• Experience with JavaScript/TypeScript, C#, and SQL is preferred.
• Current college Junior or Senior pursuing a 4-year degree in Computer Science is preferred,
• Must be able to lift 35 pounds.

Time Commitment: January 2020 through December 2020

Hours: 20 hrs/week minimum during the school year, 40 hrs/week during the summer months

To Apply:
To apply, please complete the application that can be found here.

The content in this posting was created and provided solely by the Minnesota Twins.

For the first time in a while, the Mariners weren’t playoff-adjacent in 2019. Depending on your point-of-view, over the last decade the Mariners have either been the worst playoff contender or the greatest also-ran in baseball. Rarely a thoroughly dreadful team, the mid to late 2010s Mariners were a fringe playoff threat in most seasons, typically flirting with contender status before staying home to listen to old Morrissey albums. It’s now been 18 years since the last time Seattle played postseason baseball. Team executive VP/GM Jerry Dipoto is banking on the notion that the organization can remedy that state of affairs with a quick retooling, initiated before the team reached the direst of straits.

The Setup

The 2018 Seattle Mariners played baseball quite adequately, winning 89 games, the team’s most since 2003. It wasn’t enough to punch a ticket to October, thanks to the Houston Astros winning 103 games and it taking a 97-win season merely to tie with the second wild card team, the Oakland A’s. The Mariners made it interesting and were able to stay close to the Astros for most of the year. The team’s divisional deficit didn’t permanently stretch to more than five games until late August. They scared Houston for a while, grabbing sole possession of first-place for part of June. Perhaps most impressively, the Mariners did it with bandaids and duct tape; former cornerstone players Félix Hernández and Kyle Seager were no longer stars, and second baseman Robinson Canó missed most of the midseason thanks to an 80-game suspension for a banned substance.

After the season, the Mariners made a rare decision for an 89-win team: they blew it up. The decision to enter a rebuild is a hard one, typically resulting in multiple years of struggle. But one of the advantages of going this route is that the Mariners were better able to control their destiny. Unlike the Orioles or the pre-Luhnow Astros, Seattle wasn’t forced to take a long view by having a system devoid of talent at the major and minor league levels.

For an extremely active executive like Jerry Dipoto, having a lot of options is important. The 2018-2019 Mariners were still able to find someone interested in Canó, and rather than treating a closer as a player you build around *coughRedscough*, they bundled Edwin Diaz with some cash and were able to land Jarred Kelenic and Justin Dunn. In addition to getting two of their top five prospects from the Mets — both ranked 50 or better by THE BOARD — the Mets picked up some spare baubles in Anthony Swarzak and Gerson Bautista. Even Jay Bruce, mostly brought in to make the cash work, has been occasionally useful in recent years. Read the rest of this entry »

The transition from the regular season to the playoffs inevitably leaves us with a stripped-down cast of the game’s best players, but this is getting ridiculous. After a week in which NL MVP candidate Christian Yelich was lost for the year with a fractured kneecap, Javier Báez was ruled out for the remainder of the regular season due to a fractured left thumb, and both Byron Buxton and Shohei Ohtani elected to undergo season-ending surgeries, we’ve now lost Mike Trout as well. The best baseball player on planet Earth will undergo surgery on his right foot later this week, according to the Angels, bringing to a premature end yet another remarkable season.

Trout had not played since making a pinch-hitting appearance on September 7, a day after he took an early exit from a game due to what was termed “right toe discomfort.” Two days later, he underwent a cryoablation procedure (the insertion of hollow needles filled with cooled, thermally conductive fluids) to alleviate a Morton’s neuroma, an inflamed nerve located between the bones at the ball of the foot. The condition is more common among women than men because of the way high heels put pressure on the toes or the ball of the foot, but any kind of repetitive, high-impact activity can cause it, particularly when tight shoes are involved.

Trout had been dealing with pain in the foot for nearly a month, according to the Los Angeles Times’ Maria Torres. Said the 28-year-old center fielder after the cryoablation, “Once it flares up, it doesn’t go away. It calms down at night and when you do baseball activity, it flares up again… This procedure today, they say it helps it.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Two weeks ago, Jay Jaffe ranked Luis Castillo fifth on his list of this season’s most improved pitchers, noting in the process Castillo’s ability to carry high strikeout rates (28.9%; eighth among NL starters) and groundball rates (55.3%; second) at the same time, thereby avoiding to some degree the harshest consequences of the major leagues’ home run boom. In this, Castillo’s third major league season, the 26-year-old Dominican has posted career-best marks in innings pitched (178 2/3), FIP (3.63), HR/9 (1.01) and the aforementioned strikeout rate. Last week, I caught up with him about the pitch he thinks has been key to his success: the changeup.

When Castillo made his debut for Cincinnati back in 2017, he threw his changeup 87-88 mph with modest break down and away to lefties and middle-in to righties. Eric Longenhagen, in ranking Castillo 10th in the Reds’ system coming into the 2017 season, rated the pitch a “below average” 40/45 but noted that it could improve with repetition, given Castillo’s arm speed and underlying talent. Each year since then has seen Castillo use the pitch more often than the season before:

Apparently the repetition has helped. In its present form, Castillo’s changeup — now with an inch more bite on each axis, thanks to mechanical changes between 2017 and 2018, while still sitting at 87-88 mph — ranks behind only Brad Keller’s as the most valuable pitch of its kind in the game (as measured by linear weights). And it’s gone a long way towards correcting one of Castillo’s obvious weaknesses coming into the season: an inability to put away left-handed hitters with anything near the same effectiveness he’s always displayed when dispatching righties (lefties put up a .373 wOBA against him last year, compared to a .256 from righties). Read the rest of this entry »

In the midst of what will go down as a disappointing season for the Phillies, an interesting detail about the front office’s thinking appeared. This morsel snuck into a Ken Rosenthal article: “…once the Phillies began to slump, their front office’s thinking was, ‘We don’t want to go all-out for the chance to play in the wild-card game and then face the Dodgers in the Division Series.’”

There are separate discussions to be had about whether that’s a defeatist attitude, or even whether the Phillies could have done more at the deadline. That’s for someone else to decide, though. What this statement got me, among others, wondering was: wait, would you actually rather play the Dodgers in a seven-game series than a five-game one? No one would argue that the Phillies are as good as the Dodgers — they’d clearly be underdogs no matter what. But does the extra chance of avoiding the juggernaut make up for the fact that you’re more likely to win in a shorter series?

To investigate this problem, I worked out a simplistic playoff win probability model. For each team, I took their projected rest-of-season runs scored. Then I projected a playoff rotation and how many innings each pitcher would pitch per game. Using those starters’ projected runs allowed per inning and adding in the projected runs allowed per inning by the bullpen (an admittedly inexact science that involves stripping out starters’ projections from the team’s total runs allowed projections), I was able to produce a runs allowed forecast for each starter on each team. Let’s take a look at the Phillies, for example:

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.