Friday afternoon at Wrigley Field, a week after lasting just five innings (and giving up seven runs) against the Diamondbacks in Arizona, Kyle Hendricks threw perhaps the finest game of his six-year career. Nine innings. No runs. Four hits. Eighty-one pitches, not one of them flying faster than 90 miles per hour and only 18 of them landing, unchallenged, outside of the strike zone. If Noah Syndergaard’s complete-game, 10-K, no-run performance against the Reds on Thursday — during which he hit the home run that won the game 1-0 — was the logical end of 2019’s high-strikeout, high-velocity environment, then Hendricks’ was its precise opposite: the least 2019 game of the year. That these two starts could come on consecutive days is why we love baseball; it’s a beautiful game.

If you are willing to accept a contextual definition of “struggled,” then Hendricks probably struggled most in the first inning (the other candidate is the fourth, about which I’ll say more later). He went 2-1 on the always-dangerous Matt Carpenter to lead off the game, then retired the Cardinal star on the fifth pitch of the sequence with a sinking fastball right down the middle. Nobody knew it at the time, but Hendricks had already thrown more than six percent of the pitches he’d throw in the entire game. It took him just five more pitches to close out the first inning — four to Paul Goldschmidt and one to Paul DeJong — and Hendricks was on his way.

The DeJong plate appearance was perhaps the most critical of the entire game for what it told Hendricks and catcher Willson Contreras about how the Cardinals would approach him on Friday. When Hendricks has struggled this year, it’s been when he’s forced into the strike zone late in counts when hitters know he’s got to be there. Eight-eight miles an hour, in that situation, is often just too easy for big-league hitters to hit. Against DeJong, though, Hendricks saw what would become a trend for the Cardinals throughout the game: A willingness to be aggressive early in the count. Hendricks was perfectly willing to play into it. After starting the first two hitters with at least two balls before first getting into the zone, Hendricks started 21 of the next 27 with a pitch in the zone. Read the rest of this entry »

I thank God every day. It’s still a dream. Being here, it’s a dream. It’s surreal and I’m trying to hold onto it.

– Matt Shoemaker, 2013

***

The Blue Jays are playing the A’s. Two out, an 0-2 count in the bottom of the third, a runner on first. Matt Shoemaker is facing Stephen Piscotty.

You can probably guess what’s coming next. It’s Shoemaker’s specialty, his put away pitch, the pitch he has thrown 71% of the time this season when facing a right-handed hitter in a two-strike count: a splitter, diving out of the bottom of the zone. Matt Chapman guesses, and he takes his chances, straying a few steps away from first. Stephen Piscotty guesses, and when the pitch leaves Shoemaker’s hand, he doesn’t swing.

They guess right — it’s a splitter, low, and it hits the dirt in front of Danny Jansen. Ball one. But Jansen recovers it faster than Chapman can recover his steps. He throws to first, where Rowdy Tellez is waiting, ready. They have Chapman caught. And as Tellez chases after him, ball in hand, Shoemaker does what he’s supposed to do. He runs from the mound to cover first, and when the ball comes his way, he, too, is ready. He sprints alongside Chapman, both of them unstable, the unwieldy dance of the rundown clearly in its dying stages. Shoemaker reaches out his glove, turns to avoid a collision, and suddenly —

Something is wrong. Read the rest of this entry »

Position: Software Engineer, Baseball Operations

Location: Detroit, Michigan

Description: The Detroit Tigers are currently seeking a Software Engineer. This role will be responsible for development and maintenance of software projects within Baseball Operations. This position will report to the Sr. Software Engineer, Baseball Operations.

Key Responsibilities:

• Perform general development and maintenance tasks for the upkeep of internally developed software products.
• Use modern software techniques and best practices in all parts of the software life cycle.
• Support the integration of baseball analysis into our proprietary tools and applications.
• Assist with the design and development of new software products.
• Other projects as directed by the Baseball Operations leadership team.

Minimum Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities:

• BS degree in Computer Science, Computer Information Systems, similar technical field of study or equivalent real-time experience.
• Demonstrated knowledge in developing in a Web-based object-oriented product environment.
• Demonstrated knowledge in working with medium-to-large scale relational databases.
• Ability to work in all phases of the product lifecycle, from requirements gathering to 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 with data pipelines, data warehousing, or data engineering, especially using SQL Server.
• Experience developing web APIs using Java or C#/.NET.
• Experience with JavaScript visualization tools such as D3.js or Plotly.js.
• Experience with cloud services and/or container technologies.

Working Conditions:

• Office environment.
• Occasional evening, weekend, and holiday hours may be required.

To Apply:
To apply, please complete the application here.

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

Please note, this posting contains multiple positions.

Position: Baseball Research & Development Analyst (Multiple Roles)

Location: St. Petersburg, Florida

Description: The Tampa Bay Rays are searching for their next Baseball Research and Development Analysts. Their R&D group helps shape their Baseball Operations decision-making processes through the analysis and interpretation of data. They are seeking those with a passion for baseball and a desire to contribute through mathematics, data analysis, and computation. The next members of their R&D team will be intellectual contributors that can work both individually and collaboratively, come up with interesting research questions to explore, find ways to answer those questions through the available data, develop, test and validate quantitative tools, communicate the results of their research, and work to apply their research outcomes to improve how their organization operates. They want to work with people who care about being a good teammate, want to make a positive impact on their organization, have an innovative spirit, and will explore new ways to make them better. Does this describe you?

Duties & Responsibilities:

• Develop models to answer various questions and problems posed by decision makers
• Generate internal quantitative tools for use by other members of the department
• Administer the processing of quality data from various sources
• Examine the relationship between the data from various sources and player performance
• Create reports at the request of various stakeholders
• Investigate ways to improve current tools

Skills:

• Fluency in R or Python
• Experience with statistical modeling and machine learning
• Candidates with non-traditional schooling backgrounds, as well as candidates with traditional degrees in related areas, are encouraged to apply

To Apply:
To apply, please complete this application.

Position: Product Designer

Location: St. Petersburg, Florida

Description: The Tampa Bay Rays are hiring a Product Designer to improve their existing products and build new features in their products. The goal is to provide their end-users with an intuitive and consistent experience throughout the entire suite of applications. They are searching for someone who is self-motivated and acquires skills quickly. This role will have a direct impact in the software that is used for all aspects of their Baseball Operations department and on the experience of users in different capacities around the world. Their ideal candidate will have experience and demonstrated success in the items listed below.

Duties & Responsibilities:

• Create a design framework of reusable components to standardize the UI across the entire web app
• Develop new user-facing features, and improve the existing UI/UX
• Ensure the technical feasibility of UI/UX designs
• Be responsible for all design choices from inception through launch
• Collaborate with other team members and stakeholders from beginning to end with regards to UI/UX design and usability to ensure that the stakeholders needs are met in coordination with the Baseball Systems Development Team

Skills:

• Be able to implement your designs using HTML & CSS
• Understanding of when it’s best to use different technologies such as Flexbox and CSS Grid
• Understanding of server-side CSS pre-processing platforms, such as Sass
• Familiarity with client-side scripting and JavaScript frameworks such as Vue, React, jQuery, vanilla JavaScript & ES6
• Good understanding of asynchronous request handling, partial page updates, and AJAX and how it will affect your design choices
• Knowledge of image authoring tools, to be able to crop, resize, or perform small adjustments on an image. Familiarity with tools such as Gimp or Photoshop is a plus.
• Understanding of the Git version control system

To Apply:
To apply, please complete this application.

Position: Data Engineer

Location: St. Petersburg, Florida

Description: The Tampa Bay Rays are seeking a Data Engineer to join their Baseball Systems department to help ensure data integrity and that users have acceptable performance when accessing the database. This role is responsible for importing data from external providers, integrating data from different sources, and working with members of the R&D department to operationalize analytical products. This person will interact with multiple departments and staff members, sometimes all at once, to take feedback as well as to make recommendations for improvements. The sole focus of this role is the performance of the database – a critical aspect of the success of the Rays Baseball Operations department – and the necessary interaction with the Research and Development and Baseball Systems groups to achieve that goal. Problem-solving skills and being an excellent teammate are a must in this role.

Duties & Responsibilities:

• Responsible for development and support of integrations with external data providers
• Address data quality issues and implement procedures for error checking and monitoring
• Ensure the database performs up to an acceptable level
• Coordinate R&D models with the daily flow of data to ensure that they are synchronized
• Explore emerging technologies and determine their fit with the Rays’ current platform

Skills:

• Advanced understanding of SQL
• Experience with R, Python, or other scripting language
• Proficiency with evaluating and improving the performance of SQL queries
• Ability to assist in the development of data models optimized for business intelligence and/or analytic workloads
• Knowledge or experience with semi-structured or unstructured data stores
• Comfort with exploring and evaluating new technologies
• Ability to manage multiple tasks and priority levels at once

Technologies:

• RDBMS (SQL Server, MySQL)
• SQL Server Integration Services
• Cloud Technologies (Azure, AWS)
• Apache Project (Hive, Spark, Kafka, NiFi)

Education/Experience:

• Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science, Engineering Degree or commensurate experience

Demonstrated success with:

• Data Ingestion
• Data Processing (Cleaning, Transformation, Integration, etc.)
• Data Warehousing

To Apply:
To apply, please complete this application.

Position: Junior Data Technician

Location: St. Petersburg, Florida

Description: The Rays’ Junior Data Technician will be responsible for assisting with the inspection, validation, calibration, and processing of multiple data sets. Their new hire will partner with the Data Technician to thoroughly vet, critically assess, and curate many data sources used by the Baseball Operations department. They will work collaboratively while ensuring the reproducibility and reliability of the Rays’ data processing by standardizing procedures and generating documentation. This role will interact with multiple departments and staff members to take feedback as well as to make recommendations for improvements.

Duties & Responsibilities:

• Builds statistical models and automated systems to process, evaluate, and calibrate data
• Assures that data received from external sources is of usable quality and standardized
• Reviews discrepancies in data, gathers clarification or advises end users of issues related to data set
• Supports the analysts that use the data set
• Interacts with staff on matters affecting the data and makes recommendations for improvement or process enhancement
• Produces documentation outlining standard processes

Skills & Education:

• Familiarity with R and SQL or proven ability to learn new a programming language quickly
• Knowledge of statistical modeling
• Candidates with non-traditional schooling backgrounds, as well as candidates with traditional degrees in related areas, are encouraged to apply

To Apply:
To apply, please complete this application.

Position: DevOps Engineer

Location: St. Petersburg, Florida

Description: The Tampa Bay Rays are seeking a DevOps Engineer to embed with their Baseball Research & Development department to improve the efficiency and increase the reliability of their products and tools. A primary goal for this position is to reduce the amount of time spent on code and infrastructure maintenance while positively impacting research progress. This person will work in collaboration with current staff and develop best practices for the department. This role will have the expertise to develop a framework to facilitate continuous evaluation of their models to ensure reliability and optimize speed. Their new hire will also have a strong ability to relate to staff and effectively communicate new practices. If you have a passion for improving processes, automation, developing best practices, and being a great teammate, consider the responsibilities below.

Duties & Responsibilities:

• Improve the overall efficiency of the R&D group and reliability of production models and code
• Oversee computational infrastructure, make decisions on the best approach, and configure the infrastructure accordingly
• Improve database performance by reducing the inefficient ways database resources are used
• Facilitate the reliability and quality control of the Rays’ various models
• Develop internal software packages (R, Python) that can be leveraged to make development and deployment more efficient
• Manage a server that houses various analytical tools
• Coordinate with Data Engineering to deploy the Rays’ pipeline in their main data import procedures, when possible
• Develop API’s for their models for live data processing and for exploration of models via interactive apps
• Assist analysts in the development and maintenance of various apps

Skills & Education:

• Continuous Integration and Deployment in a data science environment
• Containerization technologies
• Automated testing tools
• Package development
• Scripting Languages (Python, Powershell, Perl, etc.)
• Candidates with non-traditional schooling backgrounds, as well as candidates with traditional degrees in related areas, are encouraged to apply

To Apply:
To apply, please complete this application.

The Rays are an equal opportunity employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law.

The content in this posting was created and provided solely by the Tampa Bay Rays.

Grayson Greiner hit the first home run of his brief big-league career two weeks ago Friday. He then banged out number-two the following Tuesday. What did the blasts have in common? I asked the Detroit Tigers catcher that very question a day after the second dinger.

“They were similar pitches,” Greiner told me. “They were kind of down in the zone, and middle-in-ish. Both fastballs. One was off Ryan Burr, a right-hander for the White Sox, and yesterday’s was off Chris Sale. The one off the righty was on a 2-2 count, and the one off Sale was 1-1 count. I think the counts being even is a reason they were both home runs. I wasn’t sure what was coming, and that made me stay back a little bit longer, instead of getting out front. I was in a good, strong hitting position.”

Greiner and Burr know each other, having played summer ball together when they were collegians. Baseball friendships being what they are, Greiner received a text after the April 19 game saying, ‘Congrats on the first homer. I wish it wasn’t off of me.’ He didn’t hear from Sale after taking him deep. “He probably doesn’t know who I am,” was Greiner’s guess as to why that didn’t happen.

The fact that Sale is Sale, and Fenway is Fenway, made Greiner’s second-ever home run even more meaningful than his first. Read the rest of this entry »

To be frank, there aren’t a whole lot of reasons to watch the Marlins this season. As of this writing, they’re just 9-21 and already eight games out of first place. Unfortunately, the FanGraphs’ playoff projections had the Marlins’ odds at a measly 0.0% prior to the season. As you might have expected based on their record, these odds have not changed after a month of play.

The Marlins, as a team, have produced just 1.2 WAR this season. Of that, left-handed starter Caleb Smith has accounted for 1.0. Yes, you read that correctly. A single player on the Marlins’ 25-man roster has produced 83% of the team’s entire WAR. I don’t know if that is good or if that is bad. Well, I know that Smith is good, and the Marlins are bad. So, I guess that answers that.

Smith has had a stellar beginning to his season. In six starts, spanning 36 innings pitched, Smith has posted a 2.00 ERA, 2.81 FIP, and a 26.9 K-BB%. His aforementioned 1.0 WAR ranks 13th among qualified starters, and his 33.6 K% is tied with Blake Snell for fourth. The only pitchers with a higher strikeout rate than Smith this season are Gerrit Cole (37.6%), James Paxton (36.2%), and Jacob deGrom (34.8%). I’ll let those names stand for themselves. Read the rest of this entry »

Nick Senzel burst onto the national scouting scene with an MVP campaign in the Cape Cod League in 2015, hitting .364 with 21 extra base hits in 40 games. He steadily rose up boards throughout the spring when it became clear his raw tools were better than many had thought at first blush, with above average raw power, speed, fielding, and throwing tools, and a 1.051 OPS, 40/21 BB/K, and 34 extra base hits in 57 games. Senzel’s baseball skills (specifically a 60-or-better hit tool with at least above average plate discipline) along with being young for his class (he didn’t turn 21 until after the draft) came together to make him a complete package as the top hitting prospect in the 2016 draft for most clubs.

The Reds took him second overall and we ranked him as the top prospect in the Reds’ system and 30th best prospect in baseball that winter after a loud pro debut, mostly in Low-A:

Senzel has above-average bat speed and bat control. His swing can get long at times and, despite simple hitting feet, his front foot sometimes gets down late which causes the rest of his swing to be tardy, as well. He was getting that foot down earlier during instructional league. He has above-average raw power, which should grow to plus as Senzel reaches physical maturity (he was only 20 on draft day and is well built), though it doesn’t play to that level in games because Senzel doesn’t incorporate his lower half into his swing especially well. If Senzel reaches a point when it would be useful to alter some aspects of his swing to generate more game power I think he’s athletic enough to make the adjustments.

Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve written a lot about James Paxton here at FanGraphs, and deservingly so. The obvious reasoning is that Paxton is a very good pitcher. The intrigue builds once you consider that he throws hard, is a lefty, has thrown a no-hitter, and flaunts a lot of tools that just have the look of being very electric. In 2019, he also plays for the Yankees, which, whether you like it or not, means that he will be in the general media spotlight more.

In the past, Jeff Sullivan wrote several articles on Paxton’s explosive fastball and how he gets swinging strikes with it in the top of the zone. In terms of fastball usage, not a lot has changed. Paxton still throws pretty hard, and he uses his heat pretty frequently and gets whiffs with it. However, there’s always a room for improvement, even for pitcher who’s as good as Paxton is.

Paxton has struck batters out a lot this season. That is not a news. He’s always been a strikeout pitcher in his big league career. But after striking out 32.3% of the hitters he faced last year, his 2019 numbers are up to 36.2%. There was a concern over how Paxton, a fly ball pitcher, would adjust to the home run-friendly confines of Yankee Stadium, but we haven’t seen any problem yet; he’s posted a 0.78 HR/9 IP and 9.1% HR/FB rate so far. And he’s been one of the most valuable pitchers in all of the majors. As of May 2, his 1.5 WAR ranks third among all starters behind Max Scherzer and Matthew Boyd. All in all, he’s having a pretty good season. So what has led to the improvement?

Looking at his pitch usage, we don’t see a huge overhaul, but there is a notable change. Read the rest of this entry »

NEW YORK — “It’s probably more rare than a perfect game, I’d guess,” said Mets manager Mickey Callaway on Thursday afternoon. “To hit a homer and win 1-0 with a shutout, that’s got to be one of the rarest things in baseball.”

Callaway was speaking of Noah Syndergaard’s two-way tour de force against the Reds at Citi Field, and he was correct. Dating back to the 19th century, major league pitchers have thrown 23 perfect games, the most recent on August 15, 2012, by the Mariners’ Felix Hernandez against the Rays. By the most generous count, just nine other pitchers have accomplished what Syndergaard did, the last of them the Dodgers’ Bob Welch on June 17, 1983, also against the Reds.

You don’t see that every day.

“Awesome,” said the 26-year-old Syndergaard when informed that he’d accomplished something that hadn’t been done in 36 years.

Read the rest of this entry »

When a meteoroid strikes the top of the Earth’s atmosphere, it’s traveling at an unthinkable speed — something like 30 miles per second. Though it’s initially as cold as the void of space, the friction of striking the atmosphere creates intense heat. The thermal energy is sufficient to vaporize it, layer by layer. If the meteoroid survives long enough to strike the Earth’s surface as a meteorite, its outer layer will be blackened beyond recognition. I learned all this on Wikipedia today, because I wanted to understand what it must be like to face Tyler Glasnow.

Tyler Glasnow is a singular pitcher. He stands 6-foot-8, one of only three current major league pitchers that tall. He throws a 97.4 mph fastball. Among starters, only Noah Syndergaard throws harder. It’s not so much that Glasnow releases the ball tremendously high in the air; he’s a long strider, which lowers his release point. It’s more that there’s no one in baseball who throws quite like Glasnow throws — at extreme velocity, with extremely long levers, from a unique release point. Glasnow’s perceived velocity is second only to Jordan Hicks — his fastball explodes towards batters.

As if that weren’t enough, Glasnow’s curve has long been above-average. Want to know how long this has been the scouting report on Glasnow? Take a look at what Eric Longenhagen had to say about him before the 2017 season: “Glasnow’s scouting report has read the same way for the last four years. He throws hard, has touched 100 in the past (I have him maxing out at 97 this year) and spins one hell of a curveball — a potential plus-plus curve, in fact.”

The knock against Glasnow has always been control. In the minor leagues, he often ran double-digit walk rates, and when he got his first extended playing time in the majors in 2017 he walked 14.4% of the batters he faced. Glasnow was a project — and there was hope that his command would come. Here’s Longenhagen again: “That said, there are reasons for patience with the command. Glasnow’s velocity exploded in pro ball, and it’s not easy for someone to quickly learn how how to harness and command that kind of newfound arm speed — and even more difficult when the prospect in question is built like a giant whooping crane.” Read the rest of this entry »