Matt Hicks has been Eric Nadel’s partner in the Texas Rangers radio booth since 2012. Prior to that, the Maryland native called games for the Frederick Keys (1989-1994), the El Paso Diablos (1995-2004), and the Corpus Christi Hooks (2005-2011). One month into his professional baseball broadcasting career, he learned an important lesson, courtesy of an incredulous Fat Jack.

“That first year in Frederick, we played in a Babe Ruth League park because the stadium was still being built,” Hicks told me recently. “Center field was 355 feet from home plate. As you can imagine, the stands were rudimentary; we had metal bleachers, we had a small roof. Anyway, it was April, freezing cold, and we were playing a doubleheader. There was hardly anybody there for the night portion — 100 people, if that.”

In the aftermath of a clumsy call of a boneheaded play, a voice punctured the chilly, nighttime air. Clear as a bell, it was directed at the rookie broadcaster.

“We had a runner on second base, and one of our guys laid down a bunt,” explained Hicks. “The play was made — the batter was thrown out — and when I looked up, I was expecting to see a runner at third base. He was still at second. I didn’t know what to say. When I got to that part of calling the play — the guy’s name was Scott Meadows — I said, ‘Meadows is still at second base; he didn’t go to third because…’ Then I paused and said something lame. I said, ’He didn’t have any choice.’

Cue up the choice words. Read the rest of this entry »

The Tampa Bay Rays are having a tremendous year so far, better than anyone could have expected. They’re a half game out of first in the perennially difficult AL East, and that might be underselling how good they’ve been this year — their BaseRuns record is the best in baseball. How have they done it? Their pitching staff has been the best in baseball by a huge margin, posting a 3.02 ERA and a 3.34 FIP, both of which are miles better than second place. The hitting has been good, but pitching has the Rays playing like a championship contender.

That pitching staff has been a many-headed monster this year, and Yonny Chirinos has been a key part of it. He’s bounced back and forth between starting and following an opener (headlining?) over 75 innings of work, compiling a 2.88 ERA and 4.05 FIP in his second major league season. He was above average last year as well — a matching 3.51 ERA and FIP over nearly 90 innings. He sports a 21.5% strikeout rate and a sterling 4.9% walk rate. In short, Chirinos looks like a mid-rotation major league starter for the foreseeable future. What’s truly amazing about him, however, is that he’s doing that while being the most predictable pitcher in all of baseball.

If you’re behind in the count against Yonny Chirinos, it’s going to be a long day for you. His splitter, which he only learned in 2017, is lights-out. It’s been the third-most-valuable splitter in baseball this year, behind relievers Hector Neris and Kirby Yates. It generates truly video game numbers: a 45% whiff rate, 2.5 ground balls for every fly ball, and a .155 wOBA on plate appearances that end with a splitter. When Chirinos has the advantage, he’s not shy about going to the split: he throws it 43% of the time, more than twice as often as his overall rate of splitters.

No, if you want to beat Chirinos, you need to avoid the splitter. If you end up in a two-strike count, you’ll probably wave at air before heading back to the bench. Get ahead in the count, however, and things change. Chirinos has an effective fastball, a 94-mph sinker with huge horizontal break that runs in on the hands of righties. Still, it’s a fastball, not a world-destroying offspeed pitch. There’s no question which offering you’d rather face. Read the rest of this entry »

Pitchers learn and develop different pitches, and they do so at varying stages of their lives. It might be a curveball in high school, a cutter in college, or a changeup in A-ball. Sometimes the addition or refinement is a natural progression — graduating from Pitching 101 to advanced course work — and often it’s a matter of necessity. In order to get hitters out as the quality of competition improves, a pitcher needs to optimize his repertoire.

In this installment of the series, we’ll hear from three pitchers —Colten Brewer, David Hernandez, and Ryan Yarbrough — on how they learned and developed their cutters.

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Colten Brewer, Boston Red Sox

“It started happening in the [2016] offseason that I got Rule-5’ed to the Yankees. When I got to spring training, they said, ‘Hey, the reason we got you is that we noticed some cut on your fastball; we like that.’ I was like, ‘Oh, really?’ I’d been five years with the Pirates, and they didn’t really use that analytical side to baseball. As a result, I didn’t really know much about myself until I got with the Yankees.

“That offseason I’d worked out at a place called APEC, in Tyler, Texas. They were using a Driveline system. Going to a new team, I wanted to show up in spring training in the best shape possible, so I spent a month and half there. That’s where the wheels started turning.

“In the spring, I started throwing more balls in to lefties, and was watching the ball work. From then on I started having natural cut on my fastball. I said, ‘I’m going to use this.’ With the Pirates I’d been more of a sinker guy — I thought arm-side run was better — but after I got to the Yankees I started ripping fastballs as hard as I could, and they were cutting. Read the rest of this entry »

At 2018’s trade deadline, the Pittsburgh Pirates made a surprising move, picking up underperforming Chris Archer from the Tampa Bay Rays in return for Tyler Glasnow, Austin Meadows, and the ever-popular Player To Be Named. Once that latter nom de guerre was revealed to be Shane Baz, it meant that all three players heading to Florida were names of serious prospectage. In Eric Longenhagen’s top prospect list for the Pirates going into 2018, Meadows and Baz ranked No. 2 and No. 3, respectively. Glasnow, who didn’t qualify for the list due to service time, ranked second the year before.

How did I feel about this trade last year? At the time, I thought it was eminently reasonable for both sides. My argument was that the Rays would have been hard-pressed, even in sorta-contention, to turn down this kind of return given that the team’s long-term win condition is an assembly line of impact prospects.

For the Pirates, I argued that if this was part of a change in approach to more of a short-term, win-now approach in the offseason, this move could be justified, even with the team having a similar path to winning as the Rays do. This kind of bold, win-now or win-soon attempt (along with picking up Keone Kela from the Rangers) was something that was missing from the Pirates in recent years when the strength of their roster was at its peak.

The Pirates did not end up pushing their chips this offseason, though their signing of Jordan Lyles looks way better so far than I ever expected. But the winter moves were largely the kind of low-impact, solid-value moves the team has excelled at. They’ve even done well in several of these so far, with Francisco Liriano currently sitting at a 2.73 FIP and Melky Cabrera at .339/.375/.471 (though admittedly BABIP-aided).

These are the types of moves that win at chess, trading your movement-hampered bishop for your opponent’s strongly placed knight or giving up having both bishops to weaken their pawn structure. The problem is, that’s frequently not enough in baseball. Looking up at the league with fewer financial advantages and a division in which every single other team was in win-now mode, the Pirates didn’t need value trades, they needed to put an opponent’s rook in their pocket when the latter went to the bathroom. Read the rest of this entry »

Pitchers learn and develop different pitches, and they do so at varying stages of their lives. It might be a curveball in high school, a cutter in college, or a changeup in A-ball. Sometimes the addition or refinement is a natural progression — graduating from Pitching 101 to advanced course work — and often it’s a matter of necessity. In order to get hitters out as the quality of competition improves, a pitcher needs to optimize his repertoire.

In this installment of the series, we’ll hear from three pitchers — Jalen Beeks, Dallas Braden, and John Means— on how they learned and developed their changeups.

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Jalen Beeks, Tampa Bay Rays

“I had a changeup in high school, but it wasn’t very good. When I got to college, I changed the grip; I moved my pinky finger down. It’s pretty much a circle change. I grip it hard and think about it almost like a fastball. I don’t pronate. No one taught it to me. I just threw it one day and it worked. You have to tinker. You have to figure out what works for you.

“It’s gotten better over the last year. I think that’s mainly from my mechanics having changed a little bit. I use my legs more, and have shortened my arm action. I’m not so tall on the mound now. I’m activating my legs more, by getting into more of a squat position. And like I said, I think fastball. I throw it as hard as I can. My average fastball is around 92 [mph] and my changeup is around 88. Read the rest of this entry »

Rowdy Tellez’s weapon of choice is 34 inches long, weighs 32 ounces, and is made out of maple. Trey Mancini’s is 33-and-a-half inches long, weighs 31 ounces, and is made out of birch. Both do damage. The Blue Jays first baseman is known for his light-tower power, while the Orioles outfielder is coming off of consecutive 24-home-runs seasons.

How they went about choosing, and then settling on, their bat models differs.

“When I first got into pro ball, I signed a bat contract with Victus,” explained Tellez, who was drafted by Toronto out of an Elk Grove, California in 2013. “I told them what I wanted, and they sent me bats. I didn’t really like it at first, so I tweaked it a little more. I got to what they called an AC24, which is kind of a combination of models. It’s kind of like a 271 knob and handle, maybe a little bit thicker heading towards the barrel, and then almost like an I13 barrel, but circumference-wise a little bit thinner, and a tick longer. I’ve kind of stuck with that. It’s a comfort thing.”

Mancini was drafted by Baltimore out of Notre Dame in 2013. Three years later, a C243 model Louisville Slugger became his bat of choice. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s amazing to write about baseball through the lens of a singular player like Mike Trout. The sheer totality of his excellence is fun in a way that just wouldn’t be true if you looked at all of his skills individually. Trout is an above-average outfielder, sure, but that isn’t all that fun by itself. He has great plate discipline — so too, though, does 2019 Jason Heyward, and he doesn’t spark the same kind of joy as Trout. No, the fun is that there’s basically no category you can come up with where Mike Trout isn’t good.

This got me to thinking: would it be fun to have a player who was like Trout, except not to quite the same degree? I don’t mean in the broad player value sense — in a way, every player in baseball is just a worse version of Trout. No, I mean someone who’s good at everything across the board in the same way that Trout is — just, a little less.

Trout hits for power, so our mystery player will need to hit for good (but sub-Troutian) power. Scratch both Joey Gallo and Jose Altuve from the list. They have to have an excellent eye at the plate and be judicious with their swings; sorry, Javier Baez, but the ride ends for you here. They need to be an above average baserunner, but not the best of the best — J.D. Martinez and Trea Turner both fall at this hurdle.

To work out this highly unscientific study, I started with stats from 2017-present for everyone who qualified for the batting title in at least one of the three years. This lets me cast a wide net without picking up someone whose prime isn’t happening now. First, I looked for players who were worse than Trout in a few categories: ISO, OBP, SLG, BsR/PA, BB%, and K%. (At this point in the search, I learned that Trout has a higher ISO than Aaron Judge, and I mean, wow.) Read the rest of this entry »

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.

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 »

Tyler Glasnow has a plus fastball — a somewhat-unique plus fastball — and he relies on it heavily. The Tampa Bay Rays righty is throwing it 66% of the time, the fourth-highest rate among qualified pitchers. A four-seamer delivered from Glasnow’s towering 6-foot-8 frame, the offering has an average velocity of 96.6 mph. It’s the pitch you’re going to read about here.

When I approached him on Saturday, I’d actually been thinking about his changeup. While it’s a pitch Glasnow throws infrequently, the always-insightful Daniel Russell wrote about it recently at Drays Bay, and I was intrigued. When I’d spoken to Glasnow last August, we talked primary breaking balls; his seldom-used change-of-pace wasn’t even mentioned.

Glasnow threw me a changeup on Saturday. When I suggested it as a topic, he said we should talk about his fastball instead, for the aforementioned reason: he rarely throws his changeup.

The following day, Glasnow threw nine of them in a dominating performance against the Red Sox at Fenway Park. That’s as many changeups as he’d thrown in his first five starts combined; hence his subterfuge. It was part of the plan going in.

Is it also his plan going forward? I asked that question following the game. Read the rest of this entry »