Washington Nationals Sued for Religious Discrimination

The Washington Nationals were hit with a $300,000 federal religious discrimination lawsuit on Tuesday. The complaint – available here – alleges that the team illegally discriminated against three former ushers – all Seventh-day Adventists – due to their religious beliefs. Although the team allowed the men to miss games during the 2013 season in order to observe their sabbath (sundown Friday through sundown Saturday), the Nationals allegedly fired the three in 2014 when their religious beliefs prevented them from working at least 80% of the team’s games.

Under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, employers are generally prohibited from discriminating against workers on the basis of their religious beliefs.  In applying the law to cases like the one filed against the Nationals, courts typically require that an employer reasonably accommodate its employee’s religious beliefs whenever possible. This means, for instance, that an employer should generally allow an employee to take a particular day off work for religious observation, so long as this preferential scheduling does not impose an “undue hardship” on the business (such as by significantly increasing the company’s costs, or requiring other employees to work more than their fair share of the hours in a week).

The plaintiffs’ suit alleges that the Nationals were willing to reasonably accommodate their religious beliefs in 2013, setting aside the requirement that ushers work 80% of the team’s games in order to allow the men to observe their sabbath. The men contend that the team changed its policy in 2014, however, and terminated their employment due to their failure to have worked a sufficient number of games the previous season. The suit also asserts that the team could easily allow the plaintiffs to observe their sabbath, as Friday evening and Saturday games are particularly desirable work shifts for ushers, many of whom also maintain other day jobs.

So the new suit would appear to assert a credible case of religious discrimination against the Nationals. That having been said, the team will undoubtedly present another side to the story when it responds to the suit in court. For instance, the team could allege that the three plaintiffs were not retained for the 2014 season for reasons other than their scheduling limitations (such as for poor performance). The team might also argue that allowing the men to miss every Friday evening or Saturday afternoon home game would in fact impose an undue hardship on its business, despite the plaintiffs’ claims that there are plenty of readily available replacements for those shifts.

Although the team could have legitimate defenses to assert on its behalf, it still would not be surprising if the Nationals ultimately decide to settle the case. Being charged with religious discrimination is never a good thing from a public relations perspective. Moreover, despite the plaintiffs’ request for $300,000 in damages, other parts of the suit suggest that they may really just be hoping to be reinstated to their positions for the 2015 season. Time will tell, then, if the team ultimately decides that it’s easier to rehire the men in this case than it is to contest their discrimination claims on their merits.


Staffing Notes From the Prospect Side

When I started at FanGraphs eight months ago, I announced our team of prospect writers, with some holdover writers and some new writers I had hired, then I asked for people interested in joining the team to email me. Some of those writers didn’t work out, some have moved on and a lot of you emailed me about coming on board. For those writers from group two that have moved on, I’m 100% happy to see them go on to bigger and better things in the game, because I was also forced to jump form job to job to continue chasing my dream in baseball, so it’s fun to see people I believe in continue their journey.

In that spirit, I wanted to announce some of our prospect writers have moved on to greener pastures. Ron Shah has joined the Houston Astros in a scouting and development role, Zeke Fine has joined the Atlanta Braves as a scout, Eric Longenhagen has joined ESPN to work with Keith Law on the prospect side for Insider and Andrew Krause has joined Perfect Game as their newest full-time employee doing a number of things on the scouting end. These guys have been here for varying tenures: Ron has been with FanGraphs since my first day, Zeke only wrote a handful of articles before Atlanta scooped him up and Andrew was hired away shortly after joining the staff. Andrew’s first article ran today and we have another post that was in process when he left that will appear soon.

The length of their tenure isn’t the important part of this story, as opportunities in baseball come and go at different rates. The takeaway here is the caliber of baseball mind that we’ve been able to have on the scouting end of the things at FanGraphs in the short time I’ve been on board. These four guys were the only four guys I’ve hired while at FanGraphs (at least until I hired Jesse Burkhart two weeks ago) and all came with long track records of writing online and/or multiple recommendations from scouts and executives. For now, I see this role as a platform to prove your talent to a huge audience in the industry, with these four guys proving it can get you a job with a team pretty quickly if things line up just right.

While I’m sad to see this talent walk out the door, I’m also confident that we will expand what we’re doing on the prospect end and that’s one reason why I’ve been soliciting more applications to write for us on twitter. If you missed those, email me (kiley dot mcdaniel at gmail dot com), give me a little background about yourself and some sort of sample of your writing. I’ve already received dozens of submissions that I’m steadily working my way through and I should respond to all of you within the next week (now that I’ve finally finished the team prospect lists). I don’t have a number of people in mind, so it could be one new writer to join Jesse and Nathaniel Stoltz, or a whole bunch of them. We won’t replace these departed writers per se, but we can find people that are just as talented in their own way, play to their strengths and hopefully see you succeed as much as this first group has.


Job Posting: STATS LLC Data Collection Analyst

Position: STATS LLC Data Collection Analyst

Location: Northbrook, Ill.

Description:
STATS LLC is the leader in providing sports information, stories, photos, and audio content to industry-leading media companies, professional teams, game companies, and many more. Our customers include, among others, Fox Sports, ESPN, CBS Sports, Yahoo!, NBCSports.com, The Associated Press, Sirius XM Radio, and numerous professional teams and leagues. STATS was recently named the 29th most innovative company in the world by Fast Company, and placed number one for sports companies.

Responsibilities:
STATS is looking to add to its baseball Data Collection group. We are seeking creative-thinking Data Collection Analysts who thrive in a fast-paced environment and possess an exceptionally high level of attention to detail. Duties include logging data in our baseball pitch type charting software, assessing pitcher game logs, editing scouting reports, and helping with the everyday duties of our Data Collection team.

Qualifications:
Candidates should possess extensive baseball knowledge and excellent oral and written communication skills. College or professional playing experience is a big plus. This position requires between 25-30 hours per week.

Compensation:
This position is compensated, at $13/hour, increasing to $15/hour after a year of excellent work. Night and weekend shifts are required. It has the potential to continue past the baseball season, with duties transitioning to other sports. Work may be enhanced with à la carte Reporter opportunities at the discretion of both the employee and STATS – employees often add an additional 20 hours+ of optional game scoring assignments per week, depending on the time of year. STATS frequently promotes from within – over the last 12 months, 12 employees have been promoted from part-time Data Collection positions into full-time jobs throughout the company.

To Apply:

Apply online directly or view their jobs page for other potential positions.


Job Posting: Milwaukee Brewers TrackMan Operator

Position: Milwaukee Brewers TrackMan Operator

Location: Viera, Fla.

Description:
A game-day position in Milwaukee Brewers Baseball Operations for the 2015 season. This position will report to the Assistant Director-Video Scouting.

Responsibilities:

  • Work each home game; arriving one hour before game time.
  • Responsible for setting up rosters and tagging information.
  • Will log information for the entire game – monitoring the system and making any changes throughout the game (i.e. roster changes, defensive substitutions, etc.).
  • Responsible for fixing any errors, uploading the game to the TrackMan site and running data and reports for coaches/front office staff at conclusion of game.
  • Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions. Other duties may be assigned.

Qualifications:

  • Qualified candidate must be motivated, well organized, and detail orientated.
  • Previous experience using TrackMan software is preferred but not required.
  • Preferred candidate lives in proximity to Brevard County/Viera area.
  • One year certificate from college or technical school; or three to six months related experience and/or training; or equivalent combination of education and experience.
  • Knowledge of Microsoft office software including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, Outlook, and Internet Explorer.
  • Must be able to provide their own personal laptop and be able to work all home games.

Compensation:
This position is compensated.

To Apply:

Apply online by April 17th, 2015.


Pitcher Pace in a Very Tiny Sample

Over the winter, new commissioner Rob Manfred made pace of play one of his primary agendas, talking openly about removing some of the standing around time in between plays, and even experimenting with a pitch clock to convince everyone to move things along a little faster. It was a point of emphasis for the league, and is likely going to be one of the primary storylines of the early part of the 2015 season. So, while we only have 15 games in the books so far, did the threat of fines speed things up at all on day one?

Take this with as many grains of salt as you can find, because again, 15 games, but on the first day of the season, things did move along a at a slightly brisker pace than in previous years.

Here’s starting pitcher pace during the PITCHF/x era:

Season Pace
2007 21.0
2008 21.0
2009 20.8
2010 20.8
2011 21.0
2012 21.4
2013 21.9
2014 22.3
2015 21.8

And here’s reliever pace from the same time frame.

Season Pace
2007 22.6
2008 22.7
2009 22.5
2010 22.8
2011 22.9
2012 23.5
2013 23.7
2014 24.3
2015 22.9

Starting pitchers were down about half a second from last year’s average time between pitches; relievers were down nearly a second and a half. When you add those changes up over the 4,000 pitches thrown yesterday, you find a reduction of about 48 minutes, or a little over three minutes per game.

That’s not a life-changing figure, and the time between pitches yesterday was still higher than it was from 2007-2011, but I wouldn’t think that walking back years of slowing pace is going to happen overnight. Even just beginning to reverse the trend would be a good first step, and the league could make small incremental steps back towards 20 seconds between pitches. And that’s essentially what we saw yesterday; good small steps.

Again, 15 games. It’s going to take a lot more than one day before we can draw any conclusions, and it’s possible that everyone is just abiding by the rules early on and then hoping to go back to their old way of doing things once people stop paying as close of attention. But for the first day of 2015, at least, things were a little quicker. Here’s to hoping this continues.


A Twitter Snapshot of Opening Day

Baseball is back, and fans came out of months of hibernation to watch their favorite team play their first game of the year. Social media, particularly Twitter, allowed fans to share their experiences, reactions and news in real time.

I was able to sample over a half-million tweets predominately from fans containing any of the 30 Major League Baseball teams’ mascot names or Twitter handles. From this I was able to construct time-series graphs reflecting the Twitter volume at any given time over the course of the two days of Opening Night and Opening Day games.

Below is a composite chart of Sunday through Monday night delineated by team. Typically, each team’s heaviest traffic comes during their first game. However, San Diego and Atlanta bucked this trend when the Craig Kimbrel and Melvin Upton trade was announced. In fact, this news created the highest tweet volume of the entire time frame.

2015 MLB Twitter Volume

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Video: Sam Fuld Talks Preparation with Eno Sarris

Armed with a mono-pod / advanced selfie stick, and the lack of ability to be embarrassed, I asked Sam Fuld if he would do a video interview with me about preparation before the A’s first game of the year. After all, the players have been preparing for games every day for a month now, but this one’s different. And how has his pre-game and offseason routine changed?

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The Evolution of the 2-Hole

If you’re here on FanGraphs, you’re probably familiar with the concept of lineup optimization. If you’re familiar with the concept of lineup optimization, you probably know that the No. 2 hole has been criminally misused, according to the numbers, by managers throughout baseball history.

Throughout time, the No. 2 hole typically has been occupied either by a.) light-hitting up-the-middle players because they’re fast, or b.) light-hitting up-the-middle players, because they can bunt.

The Book says that’s a flawed way of thinking:

The Books says the #2 hitter comes to bat in situations about as important as the #3 hitter, but more often. That means the #2 hitter should be better than the #3 guy, and one of the best three hitters overall. And since he bats with the bases empty more often than the hitters behind him, he should be a high-OBP player. Doesn’t sound like someone who should be sacrificing, does it?

It seems like managers have been getting better with this in recent years. The Reds finally gave in and (correctly) started batting Joey Votto second last season. Same with Joe Mauer. You saw Evan Longoria there sometimes, and even Jose Bautista made a few appearances in the 2-hole. Progress was being made.

And if this year’s Opening Day lineups are any indication, we’re witnessing a breakthrough. Here’s the names of some guys who hit second for their ballclubs on Opening Day:

Sure, there’s still some Odubel Herrera’s, and… uh… hey, Mike Moustakas, but there’s three catchers in that list, zero middle infielders, and it’s a group of guys who likely wouldn’t even have been considered to hit second just a handful of years ago.

I wanted to see if this might be an actual league-wide trend worth noting, so I did some number-crunching. I used the excellent BaseballPress to find all 30 of last year’s Opening Day lineups, and I plugged in the 2014 projected OBP — according to ZiPS and Steamer — all the players to find league averages for each spot in the lineup. Then, I did the same thing with this year’s Opening Day lineups and projections, and then I compared the two. Of course, there’s more to optimizing a lineup than just on-base percentage — power and speed play a lesser role, too — but nothing trumps OBP, and this took longer to do than I thought it would, so OBP will serve us just fine.

The results are encouraging:

OBP, by batting order
1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th 7th 8th 9th
2014 0.329 0.326 0.356 0.337 0.326 0.317 0.312 0.308 0.298
2015 0.323 0.334 0.349 0.334 0.318 0.314 0.305 0.305 0.301
Difference -0.006 0.008 -0.007 -0.003 -0.008 -0.003 -0.007 -0.003 0.003

Offense is down across baseball and so, naturally, we find lower OBPs across the board. That is, except for in the 2-hole. I didn’t include pitchers, so the 9-hole only has half the sample size and could be subject to some noisy fluctuation. But there’s no mistaking that the No. 2 spot in the order, at least for Game 1 of 162, is finally being better utilized by managers across baseball.


Urgent News Footage: Edwin Encarnacion Still Baseball T-Rex

At some level, Opening Day represents the birth of a new season and facilitates all the optimism associated with new beginnings. At the same time, however, that new season is also embedded within a perpetual cycle of recurring baseball seasons and their attendant narratives and symbols.

Pursuant to that latter point, one finds that while certain things are changing, at least one thing is also staying the same — namely, Edwin Encarnacion’s weird T-Rex arm that emerges any time he records a home run. This phenomenon has been documented before. Below, it’s documented again.

First, Encarnacion hits a home run in the third inning against Yankees starter Masahiro Tanaka:

Encar

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Is Craig Kimbrel One of a Kind?

We know that Craig Kimbrel stands atop any reliever leaderboard you can gussy up. Does he stand so far away from second place that he’s a one of a kind guy right now? That’s easy enough to answer.

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