Position: New York Mets Analyst, Baseball Research & Development

Location: New York

Description:
The New York Mets are seeking a Data Analyst to work its Research and Development team. The employee will analyze baseball data in order to build and maintain predictive models that support the decision-making processes within Baseball Operations. The Analyst will report to the Manager, Baseball Research and Development.

Responsibilities:

• Research, develop, and test predictive models to support Baseball Operations (ie, player evaluation, roster construction, player development, in-game decision making).
• Assist development team to create and integrate new analysis and tools into existing Baseball Operations application.
• Collaborate with members of Research and Development team to maintain long term information and systems architecture for Baseball Operations.
• Write scripts which support data collection, automation, and report generation.
• Interface with Baseball Operations leadership on player evaluation, in-game strategy, and transactions by presenting the results of analysis in a clear, understandable fashion using a variety of methods.
• Keep Baseball Operations staff abreast of cutting edge statistical techniques.

Qualifications:

• Advanced degree or equivalent experience in Statistics, Data Science, Operations research, Mathematics, Computer Science, or related quantitative field.
• Demonstrated experience with statistical tools and packages, such as R, STATA, Julia, SPSS, or SAS.
• Familiarity with SQL query design and optimization.
• Strong understanding of baseball specific datasets (ie, Pitch Fx, Trackman, Statcast) & knowledge of current baseball research.
• Ability to effectively communicate complex concepts to a non-technical audience.

To Apply:
Interested applicants should apply here by Sunday, February 7th.

Position: TrackMan Cape Cod Data & Operations Intern

Location: Cape Cod

Description:
At TrackMan Baseball we measure stuff – the speed, spin and movement of pitched and hit baseballs.

We do this using proprietary 3D Doppler radar hardware and software. The majority of Major League teams use our products and services for player development and evaluation. We also work with collegiate, Japanese and Korean teams, premier amateur baseball organizations, broadcasters and equipment manufacturers.

Our business is growing fast. By the start of next season we will have a network of radars installed in more than 100 stadiums on three continents, and dozens of remote systems traveling the US.

We are looking for a TrackMan Data & Operations Intern to be our hands and eyes on the ground at Cape Cod Baseball League games during the 2016 summer. The D&O Intern will be out in the field on a daily basis focused primarily on operating the TrackMan system and ensuring data quality measures are effectively in place at the point of capture. You will be an integral piece of ensuring the added TrackMan value to players, coaches, college teams, and Major League teams. This position runs from June 10th – August 13 and pays $25/game.

Responsibilities:

• For all scheduled CCBL games, operate the TrackMan system and ensure all data is being captured effectively, as well as validate the quality and accuracy of all captured data.
• Support the TrackMan data operations teams in ad-hoc data requests and evaluations.

Qualifications:

• Current college student or recent graduate with education focused on Sports Management, Statistics / Mathematics, Operations Management, or similar.
• Strong computer skills (will be using the TrackMan application regularly and may need to do basic system navigation / follow Help Desk step-by-step in case of issues).
• Strong knowledge of baseball rules (comfort in baseball culture a plus).
• Passion for the game of baseball.
• Experience in Project Management a plus.
• Basic database and/or analytics experience a plus.
• Ability to lift upwards of 50 lbs.

Compensation:
This position is compensated.

To Apply:
To apply, please send a resume to Kirby Young at kmy@trackman.dk. No phone calls please.

After spending most of the off-season telling anyone who would listen that they probably weren’t going to re-sign Yoenis Cespedes, the Mets are reportedly on the verge of doing just that.

Cespedes deal with #Mets expected to be in three-year, $70M range with one-year opt-out.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) January 23, 2016

So full Cespedes deal with #Mets, per sources: Three years, $75M, full no-trade clause, opt-out after one year. Pending physical.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) January 23, 2016

It seems pretty clear that Cespedes is leaving money on the table to stay in New York, as the Nationals were reportedly willing to offer more than $100 million over five years. But Cespedes joins Jason Heyward and Ben Zobrist in spurning the Nationals to sign elsewhere — and with Brandon Phillips unwillingness to waive his no-trade clause, one has to wonder about why so many players keep choosing to not go to Washington this winter — and will instead stay with the Mets, presumably taking over as their regular center fielder.

For the price, it’s tough to not like this for the Mets; they get a quality player to upgrade their line-up without a significant long-term commitment. Most likely, Cespedes will use his opt-out next winter, so this might end up being more of an extended rental for the Mets; next year’s free agent class is terrible, and it’s tough to think that he won’t be able to do better than roughly 2/$50M he’ll have left on his deal. But even with the opt-out, the low total cost makes this too good of a price to pass up for New York.

The question will be how well he can handle center field, however. The Mets did make the World Series with Cespedes playing between Michael Conforto and Curtis Granderson, but that’s going to be one of the least effective defensive outfields in baseball in 2016. The hope for the Mets is that Cespedes hits well enough that you live with the defensive limitations, and with Juan Lagares around, they’ll have the option to put out a better defensive club on days when Conforto or Granderson sit.

Personally, I think the Mets probably would have been just fine with Lagares playing center field most days, but Cespedes is a better player, and this does make the Mets a bit better for 2016. Given the low cost and the high value of additional wins — and depth — to a team with a real shot of making it back to the World Series, this is a move that they probably had to make, even if Cespedes might be a bit of an adventure in center field.

This morning, I provided an overview of the settlement announced yesterday in the Garber v. Office of the Commissioner of Baseball lawsuit challenging Major League Baseball’s broadcasting policies under federal antitrust law. As I noted at the time, details regarding the precise terms of the deal were not yet available, as the official settlement agreement had not yet been released. Instead, this morning’s post relied on a brief announcement from the plaintiffs’ attorneys highlighting some of the key terms of the deal.

Earlier this afternoon, the plaintiffs filed the official proposed settlement in court. So we now know all of the terms of the tentative agreement. And while this morning’s piece covered most of the major details, there were a few more potentially noteworthy items included in the document filed with the court today.

First, the official settlement does place some restrictions on MLB’s ability to raise the price of both its single-team and league-wide MLB.TV packages in the future. Specifically, after setting the price of these service options at $84.99 and $109.99, respectively, for 2016, the agreement specifies that the league may only raise the price of these packages by no more than 3%, or that year’s inflation rate, whichever is greater.

So barring a major spike in inflation, MLB will only be able to raise the price of its MLB.TV packages by a few bucks per year until the settlement agreement expires following the 2020 season.

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It is often said that deadlines spur action. And in the law, there is perhaps no greater deadline than the start of a trial. So it was not particularly surprising to learn that Major League Baseball agreed to settle the Garber lawsuit — the case challenging its television broadcast policies — this morning, just minutes before the trial in the case was scheduled to begin.

Parties have reached an agreement in Garber v MLB broadcast rights antitrust case. No trial. Details not available yet.

— Zach Zagger (@ZachZagger) January 19, 2016

The terms of the settlement still have not been made public, and it may be another day or two before we learn what the agreement entails, as we wait for the attorneys to draft a formal contract. So it’s impossible at present to precisely determine what impact the deal will have on fans.

Realistically, though, one can anticipate that the terms of the settlement will likely be similar to those reached by the same plaintiffs attorneys in an analogous case against the National Hockey League last year. Specifically, in that case the NHL agreed to offer out-of-market fans the ability to purchase single-team packages of the NHL Center Ice service. Notably, however, the NHL’s settlement did not force the league to change its blackout policy, so hockey fans remain unable to view games involving their local teams via the Center Ice service without a cable subscription.

Assuming that MLB settled the Garber case on roughly equivalent grounds, this outcome may be somewhat underwhelming for fans. MLB had already announced last month that it intended to introduce single-team packages on MLB.TV this season, so such a concession in the Garber case would seemingly provide little new benefit to fans. While MLB may have gone a little further to sweeten the pot for a settlement, it is doubtful that the league would have gone so far as to voluntarily modify its blackout policies in any substantial way before trial.

So fans that were hoping that the Garber case would spell an end to blackouts will likely be disappointed once the final settlement terms are announced.

Regardless of the terms of the deal, the settlement will ultimately need to be approved by the presiding judge in the case — Judge Shira Scheindlin — before it becomes official. As part of that process, fans will have the opportunity to provide feedback regarding the sufficiency of the deal. But considering that Judge Scheindlin approved the settlement in the NHL case without lodging any serious objections to it, one can reasonably anticipate that whatever deal MLB reached this morning will eventually be approved as well.

This past Friday, players who both (a) are eligible for arbitration and who (b) hadn’t yet signed a contract for the 2016 season exchanged salary numbers with their clubs for a possible arbitration hearing. If you aren’t familiar with the details of Major League Baseball salary arbitration, here it is very briefly: teams and players file salary figures for one-year contracts, then an arbitration panel awards the player either with the contract offered by the team or the contract for which the player filed. More details of the arbitration process can be found here. Most players will sign a contract before numbers are exchanged or before the hearing, so only a handful of players actually go through the entire arbitration process each year.

Last year, Alex Chamberlain and I worked with data from MLB Trade Rumors to create a data visualization for the players who went through some part of the arbitration process. This year, I’ve updated the visualization and added an interactive element to it. It covers every arbitration-eligible player who has either signed a one-year contract this offseason or has filed for arbitration. Players who signed multi-year extensions are omitted.

Three colored dots represent a different type of signing: yellow represents a mutually-agreed contract signed to avoid arbitration, red represents the award of the team’s offer in arbitration, and blue represents the award of the player’s offer. A gray line represents the difference in player and team filings. Only players with whom teams exchanged numbers on January 15, 2016 will have grey lines. These can be filtered by clicking the “Filed” button. The “Signed” button filters out players who have signed a contract for 2016; this will change as arbitration hearings occur. Finally, “All” includes every player represented in the graph.

The chart is sorted by either contract value or by the midpoint of the arbitration filings. The final contract value takes precedent over the midpoint since this represents the resolved value. Most players have a sizable different between their filing and the team’s filing, but a few players like Josh Donaldson, Kevin Jepsen, Didi Gregorius have much smaller discrepancies, so their filing point and midpoints are all close to one another.

I will be updating this graphic as players sign and hearings occur from now through February.
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The Orioles, in conjunction with the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton, are hosting a Baseball Analytics Hackathon on Friday, February 5th. It will be an all-day affair, and there will be food provided throughout the day, so that you don’t need to burn precious brain space worrying about where to go eat. Which is nice.

Hackathons are generally an excellent way to expose oneself to people in the industry, and this particular event comes with the added bonus of having data scientists from one of the largest consulting firms in the world on hand as well. Not too shabby. As if that wasn’t enough, there will be prizes awarded for the top projects.

If you’re interested, you need to move quickly, as registration closes this Friday, Jan. 22. One neat item is that you don’t have to register individually, you can also register as a group. This would seem to insure that if you and a group of friends want to attend that you don’t have to worry about being split up on arrival.

Below is the poster for the event, and you can follow this link to register. Happy hacking!

All winter, it’s been pretty clear that the Tigers needed another outfielder, and with an apparently soft market for Yoenis Cespedes and Justin Upton, it seemed perfectly logical for the Tigers to jump in and make a play for one of the better remaining players on the market. After all, this is a win-now team that threw $110 million at a good-not-great starter at the start of the off-season, and has a core of quality players who aren’t getting any younger; leaving a gaping hole in the outfield for the sake of cost effectiveness, at this point, was a strange proposition.

Apparently the Tigers now agree, and look like they’re going to be the landing spot for Justin Upton.

Sources: Upton six-year deal with #Tigers expected to be in $125M range. Agreed upon in principal, per @BNightengale.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) January 19, 2016

The crowd projected Upton for 6/$120M before the off-season, while I came in at 7/$140M, so the price seems right in line with what was presumed to be reasonable before the market looked to have softened. Given that Chris Davis and Ian Kennedy — also presumed to be dealing with little leverage — also landed larger than expected contracts in recent days, it may be time to stop assuming that the remaining free agents are going to have to take big discounts to get a long-term deal at this point. There’s clearly still plenty of money hanging around.

For the Tigers, Upton is a significant upgrade, even though he’s also more of a good player than a great one. If he can retain some of his non-offensive value as he ages, this contract should turn out okay for Detroit. It’s not any kind of steal, but it’s a good player at a reasonable price for a team that needed win-now production and probably shouldn’t be too concerned with their long-term future. The inevitable crash is coming to Detroit in a few years, and at this point, the only question is if they can get a title out of this roster before it happens. Adding Justin Upton to the 2016 roster makes that more likely.

Earlier this afternoon, FanGraphs CEO and founder David Appelman announced that the ballots for the 2016 FAN Projections are now available for the tender ministrations of this site’s readership. With a view to ensuring that all notable players are addressed sufficiently — and also towards producing the number of posts he’s required to publish each week — the present author is highlighting certain players whose ballots are of some particular interest.

Before casting a ballot, don’t forget this note from Appelman’s announcement post:

Please note that everything this year is a rate stat. You’re projecting 2B+3B, HR, SB, and Fielding as a measure of 150 games (basically a full season). The player’s previous stats are shown per 150 games in the projection ballot too. This will make changing playing time projections much easier as you’ll only have to change the games played portion.

Now, here are’s a small collection of players for the reader’s consideration — the five players, among those who’ve received fewer than five FAN Projection ballots, to have recorded the top defensive-run totals over the last three years. Note: listed age is for 2016.

Player: Zack Cozart, 30, SS (Profile)
2015 Line: 214 PA, .258/.310/.459, 6.5% BB, 13.6% K, 104 wRC+ at MLB
Notes: Recorded highest walk rate, lowest strikeout rate, and highest isolated-power figure of career in 2015 before suffering season-ending knee injury in June. Is expected to return to 100% fitness for spring training. Might have some competition in form of Eugenio Suarez, who produced 105 wRC+ over roughly 400 plate appearances in Cozart’s absence.

Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday afternoon, FanGraphs CEO and founder David Appelman announced that the ballots for the 2016 FAN Projections are now available for the tender ministrations of this site’s readership. With a view to ensuring that all notable players are addressed sufficiently — and also towards producing the number of posts he’s required to publish each week — the present author is highlighting certain players whose ballots are of some particular interest.

Before casting a ballot, don’t forget this note from Appelman’s announcement post:

Please note that everything this year is a rate stat. You’re projecting 2B+3B, HR, SB, and Fielding as a measure of 150 games (basically a full season). The player’s previous stats are shown per 150 games in the projection ballot too. This will make changing playing time projections much easier as you’ll only have to change the games played portion.

Now, here are five players for the reader’s consideration — all of whom missed all or part of 2015 due to a Tommy John procedure. Note: listed age is for 2016.

Player: Homer Bailey, 30, RHP (Profile)
2015 Line: 11.1 IP, 2.38 K/9, 3.18 BB/9, 2.38 HR/9, 7.10 FIP at MLB
Notes: After producing eight-plus wins in previous three seasons, began 2015 campaign on disabled list. Proceeded to record two April starts in which fastball measured roughly 3 mph lower than 2013-14 average. Underwent Tommy John procedure in early May. Expected to return in May of 2016.

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