Position: Wasserman Media Group Baseball Analytics Intern

Location: Los Angeles

Description:
Wasserman Media Group is a global sports, entertainment, marketing and management company with expertise in media rights, corporate consulting, athlete management and partnerships. We represent the world’s most talented, committed athletes and provide them with the individual attention needed for them to garner success in all areas of their lives. Our Baseball division represents many of the biggest stars in the game today. The baseball analytics intern position begins in October 2015 and has a flexible end date. An in-person interview is preferred.

Responsibilities:

• Prepare statistical analyses and create visual elements to showcase findings.
• Perform modeling and research using internal databases as well as other public data sets.
• Translate unstructured baseball data into valuable analytical information.
• Expand and maintain internal databases.

Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in Statistics, Mathematics, Computer Science, or a related field.
• Strong knowledge of databases, SQL, and R statistical software.
• Experience working with large data sets.
• Advanced proficiency working in Microsoft Office programs, especially Excel and PowerPoint.
• Data visualization experience (i.e. Tableau) is preferred.

Compensation:
This position is compensated.

To Apply:
Please email Michael Mariano.

You may have heard that Yogi Berra passed away. As I often do when I hear about a former player in the news for whatever reason, I tend to look at his player page. Judging by the popular players searched box today, you are doing the same. When I look at Berra’s, the thing that pops out to me right away is just how consistent he was.

Wanting to put this apparent consistency in context, I asked the venerable Jeff Zimmerman for a little data help. Turns out my suspicions were well founded. Let’s take a look at three tables real quick:

Players With 60+ Career WAR But No Seasons > 6.5 WAR

Player	Career WAR	Max Single-Season WAR
Jake Beckley	61.2	4.9
Bid McPhee	62.7	5.4
Max Carey	60.1	5.6
Sam Crawford	71.1	5.9
Paul Molitor	67.6	6.0
Lou Whitaker	68.1	6.1
Yogi Berra	63.7	6.4
Willie Randolph	62.1	6.5
Reggie Smith	64.6	6.5
Fred Clarke	72.8	6.5

Usually, players of this caliber have that one big year that sort of defines their career. Heck, even players not of that caliber end up having one random career year that defines their career. Not Berra, nor the other gentlemen on this list. Six of the others are in the Hall of Fame with Berra, and I could make a pretty decent case for the three (Whitaker, Randolph and Smith) who aren’t.

From 1950-1956, Berra posted between 5.2 WAR and 6.4 WAR every season, with his 6.4 WAR in 1956 ending up as his career high. That was during his age-31 season. It was the last season where Berra was a star, but he posted at least 2.2 WAR for the next five years, finishing up the run with 2.2 WAR in his age-36 season in 1961.

Players With 350+ Career HR But No Seasons > 30 HR

Player	Career HR	Max Single-Season HR
Al Kaline	399	29
Harold Baines	384	29
Yogi Berra	358	30
Chili Davis	350	30

This list is even shorter. Berra knocked 30 homers in both 1952 and 1956, but otherwise never cracked 28. He hit 10 or more homers in 16 straight seasons. I can’t figure out how to search for consecutive season records, but in general, only 49 players have reached double digits in that many seasons. From 1949-1958, Berra racked up at least 20 homers.

Players With 20+ Career Fld But No Seasons > 5 Fld

Player	Career Fld	Max Single-Season Fld
Bill Dickey	20.0	3
Buddy Rosar	24.0	4
Billy Sullivan	24.0	4
Al Lopez	20.0	4
Malachi Kittridge	39.0	5
David Ross	37.6	5
Yogi Berra	27.0	5
Bernie Carbo	24.0	5
Charlie Deal	21.0	5
Muddy Ruel	20.0	5

You’ll notice that all but two of these players — Carbo and Deal — were/are catchers. There is a commentary there on how we measure catcher defense, but even with that said, there have been hundreds of catchers since Berra came into the league, and only a handful meet this criteria.

We could probably look at a few other statistics and end up with similar lists that put Berra in select company along the same lines as above. But we don’t need to. The point was that Berra was simply as steady as you could be for a very long time. That sort of player is an incredibly rare and valuable asset anywhere on the diamond. Having that sort of player behind the plate is remarkably valuable. Berra wasn’t the only reason the Yankees were a powerhouse team in those days, but having that steady influence behind the plate had to make life a hell of a lot easier for the Yankees.

I don’t know the best characteristics to leading a long life, but I’m guessing one of them is being consistent. If Yogi Berra was as consistent in life as he was in a big league uniform, then it’s no wonder he lived to be 90. Rest in peace, Mr. Berra.

While some people take for granted the ability to comprehend and decode signifiers of nonverbal communication, there’s a not insubstantial segment of the population who, for any numbers of reasons, lack those particular skills. The purpose of this post at FanGraphs.com is to provide an example of how a human might exhibit intense pleasure by means only of physical cues.

What one finds here is footage of Toronto right-hander Liam Hendriks from like five minutes ago, striking out Yankees batter Alex Rodriguez in an important moment during tonight’s game between the two relevant clubs. Hendriks, relieved to have escaped a perilous situation, first pumps his fists and then straightens out his left leg as though he were about to embark upon a sort of inspired triumphal march. Whatever the physiognomic antecedents for such a gesture, the meaning is clear: Hendriks is pleased. Specifically, he’s experiencing the sort of pleasure one feels by means of averting a more disagreeable outcome.

For further study, here’s the most relevant portion of the footage slowed down to 1/8th speed:

The Fans Scouting Report is back for 2015 — the 13th edition of this project — and is now open for your consideration. Rather than add too much of my own commentary, I’ll just quote Tom Tango.

Baseball’s fans are very perceptive. Take a large group of them, and they can pick out the final standings with the best of them. They can forecast the performance of players as well as those guys with rather sophisticated forecasting engines. Bill James, in one of his later Abstracts, had the fans vote in for the ranking of the best to worst players by position. And they did a darn good job.

There is an enormous amount of untapped knowledge here. There are 70 million fans at MLB parks every year, and a whole lot more watching the games on television. When I was a teenager, I had no problem picking out Tim Wallach as a great fielding 3B, a few years before MLB coaches did so. And, judging by the quantity of non-stop standing ovations Wallach received, I wasn’t the only one in Montreal whose eyes did not deceive him. Rondell White, Marquis Grissom, Larry Walker, Andre Dawson, Hubie Brooks, Ellis Valentine. We don’t need stats to tell us which of these does not belong.

The Project

What I would like to do now is tap that pool of talent. I want you to tell me what your eyes see. I want you to tell me how good or bad a fielder is. Go down, and start selecting the team(s) that you watch all the time. For any player that you’ve seen play in at least 10 games in 2014, I want you to judge his performance in 7 specific fielding categories.

Try to judge ‘average’ not as an average player at that position, but an average player at any position. If you think that Ben Zobrist has an average arm, then mark him as average, regardless if you’ve seen him play 2B, SS, LF or RF.

Crowdsourcing has proven to be quite useful in many endeavors, and this is one of the best uses of crowdsourcing in a baseball environment. So, go take part; the FanGraphs crowd is particularly important to the success of this project, so let’s help Tango collect some useful data for the rest of us to enjoy and be informed by.

A pivotal series in the National League playoff race got underway today, with the Pittsburgh Pirates hosting the Chicago Cubs in the first of a four-game set. The two clubs play again tonight, with the home team now holding a five-game lead over the visitors for the top wild card spot. The St. Louis Cardinals are currently two up on the Bucs for the Central Division lead.

Theo Epstein fielded questions from the Chicago media prior to this afternoon’s affair. The subjects of chemistry and character came up, and – despite his saber chops – the Cubs president of baseball operations didn’t downplay their value. In his opinion, the youthful club he oversees is ahead of the curve when it comes to both.

“It’s impressive that they’re unfazed by the length of the season and the fact that they’re in a pennant race,” Epstein told the throng. “It’s a testament to their character. The norm is that young players — no matter how talented, no matter how great a start they get off to — tend to wither and just fade away,”

The Cubs haven’t faded away – at least not yet. Despite dropping a 5-4 decision this afternoon, they’re well-positioned for a wild card berth, Not that Epstein wants to hear it. When I brought up their proximity to the teams they’re chasing, Epstein told me and Peter Gammons that he’s more concerned about the team 6.5 games in their rear-view, the San Francisco Giants. As he echoed to the beat writers a few minutes later, “Until you get the little “C” next to your name in the standings, nothing is assured.”

He spoke from experience. In 2011, when he was the general manager in Boston, Epstein saw his team blow a nine-game lead in the final month and miss the playoffs.

As for troubled waters that may lay ahead for his current club, Epstein said that having players of high character pays dividends. In his words,“There’s going to be a time when they face adversity and have to rely on that character.”

Epstein’s concern is justified. The Cubs have lost three straight, and they play the Pirates and Cardinals – the teams with the best records in baseball – 10 more times. The Giants play 12 of their final 18 at home, all but three against teams with losing records.

What does Pittsburgh manager Clint Hurdle think about chemistry and how it applies to the teams in the playoff chase?

“At the end of the day, the chemistry – the men coming together and willing to push everything in with one common goal and not caring who gets the credit – that’s what becomes special,” Hurdle said after the game. “That’s the situation we have here and it’s the situation they have over there (with) the Cardinals. You can’t quantify how important it can be.”

What about the Cubs?

“They’re going to figure it out,” said Hurdle. “That’s the beauty of where we were a few years ago… They’ve got a really good leadership group over there that has a lot of experience in these situations, and provides direction. This is the fun part of the year for everybody. You learn every day.”

We’ll soon learn if Epstein’s Cubs have what it takes to stay the course. As for the role chemistry will play, as Hurdle alluded to, it will be hard to quantify.

The playoff odds graphs that we’ve been tweeting out all season are now available on the site thanks to our resident visualization guru, Sean Dolinar!

Is there a better pitch than a pitch that can get great whiffs per swing inside the zone? If they don’t swing, it’s a strike anyway.

To that end, and also in order to supplement my work in trying to identify pitches that would be better used as strike-stealing pitches (in the mode of Erasmo Ramirez and his slider), I ran a few leaderboards that might be interesting to you, the reader.

Here are league average in-zone and overall whiff rates by pitch type. Obviously, breaking balls have the biggest difference, since many in-zone breaking balls are ‘hung’ pitches that failed to break like they should have.

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In a move that has been widely expected for months, the Phillies announced today that they’re not going to extend Ruben Amaro’s contract, ending his tenure as general manager of the club.

Full release from #Phillies on Amaro: pic.twitter.com/8PZPRC664T

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) September 10, 2015

Amaro has been the Phillies GM since November of 2008. The Phillies won the division each of his first three years in charge, including making it to the World Series in 2009, but have struggled as their core aged and the team was unable to restock the talent pool around their former stars. Amaro was also one of the last holdouts against the move towards analytics, and the Phillies fell behind the rest of the league by resisting the trends toward data-inclusive decision making.

New team president Andy MacPhail will likely look outside the organization for the team’s next GM, and I wouldn’t be too surprised if the team went with a younger assistant GM from a team with an analytical bent. Given the Phillies payroll and market size, this is the kind of position that will appeal to a wide variety of candidates, and the Phillies should be able to interview just about anyone they want for the position.

Although I write about prospects on a regular basis, it’s not often I get to see the players I write about in action. However, this year’s 16th-overall pick, UCLA right-hander James Kaprielian, happened to be pitching for the Yankees’ New York-Penn League affiliate in Staten Island, which is just a short boat ride from my office. So I decided I’d get out from behind my computer screen to actually watch some of the players who fill up my hard drive. Luckily for me, the Yankees’ second-round pick, Indiana State left-hander Jeffrey Degano, pitched in relief, giving me plenty of solid pitching to observe. If I had a penchant for scouting, I’d be able to provide you with grades for each of his pitches and command — much like Kiley McDaniel does on the player pages. Unfortunately, my untrained eyes aren’t capable of grading pitches with that type of precision. So instead, I’ll just describe what I saw as best I can, and supplement it with some low-quality video courtesy of my iPhone.

Kaprielian sat 91-94 mph with his fastball, and dialed it up as high as 96 with two strikes. Observe this 93 mph two-strike offering to Bobby Wernes, who had struck out in just 12% of his plate appearances headed into play.

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According to Statcast, this past Saturday Kris Bryant hit the longest home run in Major League Baseball this year. The home run traveled 495 feet with a batted-ball speed of 111 mph and an angle of 33 degrees. The ball careened off the newly installed scoreboard in left field.

Aside from watching the replay, to put the home run into context, I created a hexbin plot that shows Bryant’s home run as an outlier. This graph includes only home runs for which Statcast has published batted-ball data and also were recorded as featuring a distance of 300 feet or greater. (This data set contains only about 75% of total home runs in 2015.) Each hexagon is a bin consisting of a batted-ball speed range and a batted-ball distance range. The color represents how many home runs fall into that bin; the more blue a bin is, the more home runs fall into it. The lack of the bin indicates no home runs for those data points.

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