If you’re reading this post on FanGraphs, it’s probably safe to assume that you enjoy participating in baseball discussions, even the nerdy variety. And if you enjoy nerdy baseball discussions, the Saber Seminar is your dream weekend.

Officially titled Sabermetrics, Scouting, and the Science of Baseball, the conference is the best event of the year for learning about what is happening in baseball research and development right now, as well as interacting with many of the people on the leading edge of baseball analysis. I’ve been attending for each of the last four years, and it’s a can’t-miss part of my annual calendar.

And this year is shaping up to be even better than most years. With the White Sox in town, GM Rick Hahn will be speaking, and while front office personnel can be somewhat boring, Hahn is one of the exceptions; we’ve had him speak at prior FanGraphs events, and he’s generally the funniest person in the room. Additionally, Yankees AGM Jean Afterman will also be speaking, and you know the Red Sox front office will be well represented as always, with pitching coordinator Brian Bannister already on the confirmed list.

Toss in a bunch of folks with advanced degrees in about every field you can imagine, and this conference is loaded with experts in their fields, ranging from the medical side to physics and beyond. Alan Nathan’s talks are always one of the most informative presentations, and given the ongoing discussion about whether the ball is a factor in MLB’s home run surge, I’m pretty sure you’re going to want to hear what he has to say this year as well.

And this year, we’re bringing most of the FanGraphs crew to Boston as well. Eno Sarris, Jeff Sullivan, and Travis Sawchik will all be making their debuts at the conference, and I’ll be presenting this year as well. We’re looking forward to helping make this the best Saber Seminar yet, despite the high bar past conferences have set.

The event takes place at Boston University on August 5th and 6th, and while we’re still seven weeks out, you’ll definitely want to get your tickets sooner than later. Early admission pricing ($140 per ticket) is in effect through June 22nd, after which the price will rise to $185 through July 15th. After July 15th, the price will go up to $225 per ticket, so you’ll save a lot of money by purchasing them now.

If you’re a student, the Saber Seminar is the best deal of your life, as early student admission is just $65 per ticket. That is a spectacular price for a conference of this quality.

And, as always, the entire event is put on to raise money for charity. This year, The Angioma Alliance will receive 100% of the proceeds raised to help in their fight against brain tumors. All the speakers donate their time and we pay our own cost of travel and lodging to help put on this great event. So the cost of admission will go directly to helping The Angioma Alliance support patients and families dealing with these issues.

Come to Boston the first weekend in August and hang out with us as we talk baseball and raise money for a great cause. I hope to see you there.

With Josh Reddick sidelined by a concussion, the Astros summoned 23-year-old center fielder Derek Fisher to the big leagues yesterday. The early returns are good: in his debut, Fisher went 2-for-3 with a homer and two walks.

Fisher had more than earned this opportunity, slashing .335/.401/.608 at Triple-A this year. A power-speed threat, Fisher eclipsed 20 homers and 20 steals in both 2015 and 2016, and Eric Longenhagen gave him raw power and speed grades of 60 and 70, respectively. Fisher had a bit of a strikeout problem in the past, but has managed to slice his strikeout rate from 27% last year to 19% this year without sacrificing any of his power.

KATOH loves Fisher, which shouldn’t come as much of a surprise given his excellent performance this year. I have him projected for 8.1 WAR over his first six seasons by stats-only KATOH and 6.3 WAR by KATOH+, which incorporates Eric Longenhagen’s relatively modest 45 FV grade. Those projections make him the 18th- and 48th-best prospect in baseball, respectively.

To put some faces to Fisher’s statistical profile, let’s generate some statistical comps for the toolsy center fielder. I calculated a Mahalanobis distance between Fisher’s Double-A and Triple-A performance and every season since 1991. In the table below, you’ll find the 10 most similar seasons, ranked from most to least similar. The WAR totals refer to each player’s first six seasons in the major leagues. A lower “Mah Dist” reading indicates a closer comp.

Please note that the Mahalanobis analysis is separate from KATOH. KATOH relies on macro-level trends, rather than comps. The fates of a few statistically similar players shouldn’t be used to draw sweeping conclusions about a prospect’s future. For this reason, I recommend using a player’s KATOH forecast to assess his future potential. The comps give us some interesting names that sometimes feel spot-on, but they’re mostly just there for fun.

It’s not immediately clear how, or how often, Houston will work Fisher into their lineup once Reddick is healthy. But Houston would perhaps benefit from shifting some of Nori Aoki’s at-bats to Fisher, giving them an outfield of Fisher, Reddick and George Springer. Regardless, Fisher’s rare combination of power, speed, and contact ability makes his future look incredibly bright. And he made it clear with his 2017 performance that he has nothing left to prove in the minor leagues.

Over the last couple of years, the massive home-run spike that began in the second half of 2015 has been the biggest story in baseball. Jeff just noted the other day that home runs are once again trending up quickly, even relative to the new recent norms, and the home-run era is showing no signs of leveling off.

In trying to find an explanation for the sudden and massive increase in home runs, the ball has always seemed like the most reasonable explanation. No one has done more work on whether the ball is at the center of the home-run spike than Ben Lindbergh, who did a deep dive on the issue at FiveThirtyEight last summer, then gotaccess to some results of MLB’s internal study on the issue a month ago, putting something of a damper on the ball as the culprit.

Today, though, Ben is back with a new piece, and based on some research commissioned by Mitchel Lichtman, there again appears to be some evidence that the ball has changed the last few years.

The newer balls have higher CORs and lower circumferences and seam heights, which would be estimated to add an average of 7.1 feet to their distance, equivalent to the effect we would expect to stem from a 1.43 mph difference in exit speed. Although those differences don’t sound enormous, Nathan has noted that “a tiny change in exit speed can lead to much larger changes in the number of home runs.” Last July, he calculated that an exit-speed increase of 1.5 mph would be sufficient to explain the rise in home runs to that point, which means that the 1.43 mph effective difference that Lichtman’s analysis uncovered could comport almost exactly with the initial increase in home runs. Lichtman calculates that a COR increase of this size, in this sample, falls 2.6 standard deviations from the mean, which means that it’s extremely unlikely to have happened by chance.

Alan Nathan, the foremost expert on baseball physics out there, did offer a response on Twitter that this is still not an open-and-shut case.

But with nearly every other reasonable cause for the spike in home runs, and the speed at which things changed after 2015, it’s still difficult to reconcile current home-run levels with anything besides some change in the ball. Ben and MGL’s data provides a bit more evidence that the ball is maybe at least part of the explanation. I definitely encourage you to read their entire piece, as it’s some of the best baseball research done in the public sphere.

The Pitch Talks tour is making its Pittsburgh stop Thursday night at Club Cafe at 56 S 12th St., located on Pittsburgh’s south side.

I will be on the 8 p.m. baseball panel along with Pirates broadcast voice Joe Block, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Pirates beat writer Stephen Nesbitt, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review Pirates beat writer Rob Biertempfel, and former Baseball Prospectus editor and present national writer John Perrotto. The club opens its doors at 5 p.m.

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In addition to calling up stud center-field prospect Lewis Brinson, Milwaukee also recently summoned talented lefty and KATOH crush Josh Hader. Although Hader’s worked primarily as starter in the minors, the Brewers plan to use him out of the bullpen for the time being. A 19th-round pick out of high school, Hader’s been exceeding expectations for years. He owns a 3.87 FIP and 27% strikeout rate in 541 minor-league innings. In 25 starts between Double-A and Triple-A last year, he pitched to a sparkling 3.07 FIP with a 31% strikeout rate.

Things didn’t go as swimmingly for Hader in Triple-A this year, however. He maintained a solid 22% strikeout rate, but matched it with a 14% walk rate and coughed up an uncharacteristic 14 homers in 52 innings. The end result was a 5.37 ERA and 4.93 xFIP, which doesn’t exactly scream “big-league ready.”

Still, KATOH remains optimistic. My system projects Hader for 5.0 WAR over his first six seasons by the traditional method and 5.7 WAR by KATOH+, which incorporates scouting rankings. That makes him one of the top 10 pitching prospects in the minors, and a mid-top-100 guy overall.

To put some faces to Hader’s statistical profile, let’s generate some statistical comps for the 6-foot-3 lefty. I calculated a weighted Mahalanobis distance between Hader’s Double-A and Triple-A performance and every season since 1991. In the table below, you’ll find the 10 most similar seasons, ranked from most to least similar. The WAR totals refer to each player’s first six seasons in the major leagues. A lower “Mah Dist” reading indicates a closer comp.

Please note that the Mahalanobis analysis is separate from KATOH. KATOH relies on macro-level trends, rather than comps. The fates of a few statistically similar players shouldn’t be used to draw sweeping conclusions about a prospect’s future. For this reason, I recommend using a player’s KATOH forecast to assess his future potential. The comps give us some interesting names that sometimes feel spot-on, but they’re mostly just there for fun.

Despite his relative lack of prospect pedigree, Hader’s stuff is almost certainly of big-league quality. The lefty’s fastball averaged over 94 mph in his debut, and both his slider and changeup project to plus according to Eric Longenhagen. However, scouts have long contended that Hader profiles best as a reliever. To wit:

• Eric Longenhagen, 2017: “Those who consider him a reliever cite the rarity of a delivery like this in starting rotations across baseball, the potential platoon issues Hader might face as a low-slot lefty, and his fringey control.”
• Baseball America Prospect Handbook, 2016: “His reliance on his outstanding fastball combined with just ordinary control make him a possible bullpen candidate.”
• Baseball America Prospect Handbook, 2015: “Durability will always be a question because of Hader’s size and how he slings the ball across his body… His reliance on his fastball profiles him better as a reliever.”
• Baseball America Prospect Handbook, 2014: “It’s one of the most unconventional deliveries a starter could use… Scouts see him as a future lefty reliever where his low arm angle will make life difficult for lefthanders.”

Despite the persistent “future reliever” label, Hader dominated for years as a starter in the minors. But when he finally sputtered in Triple-A, the Brewers seemingly decided to try him in the pen. Given his stuff and minor-league performance, I have little doubt that he’ll be a dominant force there.

Keith Law will unfortunately not be able to join Eric tonight, as previously announced. Chris Mitchell will be replacing him as Eric’s co-host.

Tonight, the MLB draft begins at 7 pm eastern. Lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen will be covering the first round as it happens, via Google Hangout, and he’ll also be joined by Chris Mitchell. Together, they’ll discuss the first 27 picks, and when possible, take questions from you guys as well.

To help facilitate the conversation, we’re going to have a Jotcast queue open for you guys to submit questions, and they’ll pick from that queue and answer them as they can. As they’ll be answering the questions on video, this isn’t a traditional chat, but they’ll hopefully have time to answer some of your queries in between selections.

Bookmark this post for your live draft coverage with Eric and Keith tonight, and we’ll have the Google Hangout embedded in this post when they go live right before the draft begins.

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At the end of March, the Rangers and Rougned Odor agreed to a six-year commitment, worth just shy of $50 million. Since then, Odor has gone from being a guy coming off a .502 slugging percentage to being a guy actively slugging .359. When you look for reasons why the Rangers are standing a little bit under .500, you should give plenty of consideration to the fact that, for two and a half months or so, Odor has played around the replacement level. His wRC+ is quite literally just about half what it was a season ago.

So, what’s ailing Odor at the plate? Here is a decent and very simple clue:

As a rookie, Odor was good for 19 pop-ups and nine home runs. As a sophomore, he finished with 26 pop-ups and 16 home runs. In what left the impression of being a breakout junior season, Odor wound up with 16 pop-ups and 33 home runs. But now Odor’s a senior, I guess, and his current line includes 19 pop-ups and nine home runs. Fully a quarter of Odor’s fly balls have qualified as pop-ups. That rate is extreme — too extreme — and it’s evident right away that Odor is back to just not squaring up the ball often enough.

In the plot, you see Odor’s rates of infield flies per fly ball, and home runs per fly ball. Here are the former rates, subtracted from the latter rates:

• 2014: -8.8%
• 2015: -7.3%
• 2016: +8.8%
• 2017: -13.2%

That’s just HR/FB% – IFFB%. To further contextualize things, here are Odor’s year-to-year MLB percentile rankings in the same stat:

• 2014: 8th percentile
• 2015: 7th
• 2016: 76th
• 2017: 1st

Odor, by this measure, was very bad, then very bad, then pretty good!, and now very bad. It’s not that he isn’t a half-decent power hitter, but he pops up too often for someone who hits so many balls in the air. Last season made it seem as if Odor had managed to conquer one of his biggest drawbacks, but now it’s back with a vengeance, and Odor is having difficulty keeping his head above water.

This doesn’t actually explain whatever the problem might be. It’s just another indicator that a problem has existed. And it’s also important to point out that, when Odor popped up a bunch in 2015, he still managed to hit all right. But Odor changed his approach over time to become more fly-ball friendly, and the pop-up issue has been worse than ever. Odor is trying to get under the ball, but in a sense he’s been too successful. The mis-hits have dragged down his batting line, to a woeful depth.

Odor will adjust, and the stats will improve. I can’t see him finishing all that close to a wRC+ of 54. But, given how aggressively he swings, he’s given the impression of being awfully volatile. Volatile players go through some miserable slumps. Rangers fans have seen the worst of Rougned Odor again, and this needs to get turned around within a week or three if the team wants to mount a serious charge for the wild card.

I don’t need to tell any of you that home runs are up, right? That’s an analytical conversation that has long since permeated the average baseball-ing household. There are more frequent home runs than there used to be. There were signs of a weird spike beginning around the 2015 All-Star break. It’s not because of the ball! At least, there’s no convincing evidence pointing to it being because of the ball. Home runs are just up, and it’s a thing we’ve gotten used to.

There was a time that identifying the home-run spike might’ve counted as groundbreaking. That time has passed. All I’m here to tell you today is that the home-run spike is still spiking. Rates, I mean, haven’t plateaued. They’re still going up. Home runs continue to take offense by storm. Here are home-run rates going back to 1954, with all plate appearances as the denominator:

This current June is the 379th month in the sample. And although this current June still has a long ways to go, it has what would be the highest home-run rate for a month. May would rank third-highest. So, that’s something. But then, there’s also the matter of this — contact has been going down. Here are the monthly rates of plate appearances ending with a batted ball hit fair:

Nothing you didn’t know about in there, either. But now let’s combine the two, looking at home-run rates, with batted balls as the denominator instead of plate appearances:

Just so you know, I went back to 1954 because that’s the first year of Baseball Reference having record of sacrifice flies. Nothing that happened before 1954 would change the overall picture. In terms of home runs on contact, this June would easily rank first. May is in second. April is in seventh, even though April historically has the lowest home-run rates for any month out of the six. Baseball is on its 15th consecutive regular-season month with a higher home-run rate on contact than the previous season’s equivalent month. Homers this April were up 12% over last April, which were up 18% over the previous April. Homers this May were up 12% over last May. Homers so far in June are up 10% over last June. Where we are now, 5.12% of fair batted balls in June have been homers. It’s the first time baseball’s broken the 5% threshold.

April had the second-highest homer rate for any April, narrowly behind April 2000. May had the highest homer rate for any May. June has what would be, very easily, the highest homer rate for any June. It’s enough to make you wonder about July, August, and September. I don’t know where the trend is going to go, but I could offer a guess, based on the fact that absolutely nothing here has slowed down.

The home-run era is welcoming even more home runs. Many people have their guesses for why this is taking place. Nothing, as far as I know, has been proven, conclusively. All that’s truly been proven is that home runs are everywhere. I’d tell you to get used to it, but then, you probably already have.

Three months ago, few would have predicted the Brewers would be atop the National League Central in June, but here we are. The Cardinals, Cubs, and Pirates have all fallen short of preseason expectations, while Milwaukee has surprisingly kept their record above .500. Regardless of what the standings say, Milwaukee’s roster pales in comparison to the Cubs’ and Cardinals’ on paper, which is why we give the Brewers a mere 3% chance of winning the division.

Milwaukee’s team just got a bit better, however, as they’ve called up top prospect Lewis Brinson to play some outfield. Brinson was having a fine season in Triple-A, slashing .312/.397/.503. He’s hit very well for a center fielder — and exceptionally well for a good defensive center fielder who’s only 23.

Brinson’s come a long way since his early days as a professional, especially in the strikeout department. He struck out an alarming 38% of the time in Low-A back in 2013, but has hacked several percentage points off that mark since. His 22% strikeout rate in Triple-A this year is still a bit high, but not alarmingly so. He’s made this improvement without giving up much in other categories, either. His 20 extra-base hits, seven steals, healthy walk rate, and center-field defense more than outweigh the remaining strikeout risk.

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Because of the basketball game, we’ve moved the Pitch Talks from Monday, June 12th, to September 18th. All previous tickets will carry over and we hope you’ll come see us then!

With the Giants taking a breather and stuck in limbo, it’s a great time to hear General Manager Bobby Evans thoughts on baseball and the future. Therese Vinal, with all of her great clubhouse experience and upbeat energy, and Alex Pavlovic, insider extraordinaire for NBC Sports Bay Area, will be able to tell us about the feeling on the ground. I’ll be there giving my in-between experience, and helping bridge to Grant Brisbee’s unique feel for analysis.

And though there’s a distinctly Giants feel to the whole thing, there should be something for everyone. I practically live in the visitor’s clubhouse anyway.

Tickets are $25, but using Homestand as the coupon code, you can get it down to just $20. The venue states this is a 21 and up show, so unfortunately, adults only at this one. I’ll come early if you want to have a beer by the bar.

Hope to see you guys in September.