Using the FanGraph’s Depth Charts tool, I created a data visualization for batters’ offensive output using on-base plus slugging percentage (OPS) as the primary statistic. Pitchers have been excluded. The Depth Chart tool takes projections from both ZIPS and Steamer and accounts for playing time creating projections for counting stats (PA, WAR, etc.) and team performance. The Positional Power Rankings being released this week use the Depth Charts as well.

The histogram below creates an overview of the entire league showing the OPS distribution, which is normal with a skew to the right reflecting the infrequency of elite offensive players.

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We’ve made some slight changes to the way WAR is calculated. The changes will impact players at most, about 0.5 wins, but the vast majority of individual player WAR will remain pretty unchanged.

1. Position player WAR now includes ground into double play avoidance (or lack thereof) with the stat wGDP. This will impact the very best players about +/- 0.5 wins. All but a few will fall in the +/- 0.2 win range. wGDP is also available as a separate stat in both the leaderboards and the player pages.

2. UBR has been updated to include advances and outs on WP and PB, as well as a few minor changes. Big thanks to Mitchel Lichtman for this and the wGDP inclusion.

3. Pitcher WAR park factors have been changed to FIP specific park factors. You can see all the new park factors under FIP in the FanGraphs Guts! Section. FIP park factors in general are considerably more compressed than runs park factors, so pitchers in extreme parks will be less impacted. Thanks goes out to Noah Baron for the suggestion.

4. We’ve adjusted the pitcher WAR league baseline to better even out the leagues.

Louisiana State plays Arkansas tonight in the second of a three-game series at the latter school’s home field. As the author has suggested elsewhere, the series is notable insofar as it features a number of players who currently rank among the SEC’s top hitters by (maybe) predictive stats — including, for example, LSU shortstop Alex Bregman and Arkansas center fielder Andrew Benintendi.

Who else tonight’s game, specifically, features is LSU freshman right-hander Alex Lange. In his most recent start for the Tigers, Lange recorded a 13:0 strikeout-to-walk ratio against 28 batters over 8.0 innings against Ole Miss (box). How he did it was largely by means of a hard curveball, footage of which the reader can find below with a view to whetting his or her appetite ahead of tonight’s 9pm (ET) first pitch.

An example of the curve from the second inning of that game against Mississippi:

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Yesterday, the author published a post claiming to include the top players by (maybe) predictive stats from college baseball’s most competitive conferences.

What follows are the three weekend series likely to feature the greatest number of players whose names appeared within that post. KATOH+ and KATOH- are index metrics based on those (maybe) predictive stats and designed for batters and pitchers, respectively. In each case, 100 is average, while above 100 is better for batters and below 100 is better for pitchers. Read more about the author’s questionable methodology here.

Miami at Wake Forest
Who It Features
Three of the ACC’s top-10 hitters. From Miami: junior third-baseman David Thompson (97 PA, 128 KATOH+). From Wake Forest: sophomore first baseman Will Craig (93 PA, 142 KATOH+) and sophomore second baseman Nate Mondou (100 PA, 124 KATOH+). Among pitchers, Wake Forest sophomore right-hander Parker Dunshee (28.0 IP, 81 KATOH-) has produced one of the conference’s top-10 lines this season. Typically the school’s Saturday starter, he most recently worked in relief of Friday night starter and senior Matt Pirro (28.2 IP, 94 KATOH-).

When It’s On
Friday at 6:00pm
Saturday at 4:00pm
Sunday at 1:00pm

How to Watch It
Watch ESPN (link).

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Adam Ottavino seems like a pretty awesome dude. Not only has he been excellent in relief for the Rockies the past two seasons, but he’s been an outspoken proponent of sabermetrics (and FanGraphs! Hi Adam!), and that’s refreshing to hear from a player.

He gave an incredible interview with Brian Kenny on MLB Now, where he admitted this Mike Petriello post from June caused him to change his approach. Then, this morning, David Laurila published a scintillating Q&A with Ottavino, in which he namedrops BrooksBaseball and PITCHf/x while talking about his three-in-one slider:

On his slider variations: “I throw sliders multiple ways. They all read the same – they read as sliders on PITCHf/x — but they are three different pitches. There’s more of an up-and-down, more of a slurve, and one with more of a straight lateral break. I do that with two different grips. As a pitcher who throws such a high percentage of breaking balls (47.3% in 2014), I don’t want to make them all exactly the same, Even if the hitter reads slider out of my hand, he can’t be totally sure where it will end up.”

The way Ottavino described the three sliders was fascinating, and I wanted to get a look at them for myself. I jumped into Ottavino’s PITCHf/x data, roughly identified the three different sliders based on horizontal and vertical movement and location, and split them into three buckets. (Update: I should note, that the usage numbers are super, super rough since I don’t know Ottavino’s intent behind each pitch and simply classified them by movement.)

In the numbers, you gain a sense of there being three different sliders within Ottavino’s one slider, but what good is getting a sense when you can actually see them for yourself?

Vertical

Slurve

Horizontal

Make sure you read the Q&A. It’s fascinating.

Zack Wheeler, last week, in explaining why his current elbow soreness was no big deal.

The second issue — recurring soreness in his right elbow — raises red flags.

“It’s something that I’ve had before and have had to deal with,” said Wheeler, who is expected to take his next turn in the rotation, which falls on Thursday.

…

“Every pitcher in here pitches through pain at some point, so it’s just a matter of dealing with it and going out there,” Wheeler said. “It wasn’t affecting me all that much so I could go out there and compete like I wanted to. So I was going to do it.”

Today, though, the MRI results have revealed a torn UCL, the injury that leads to Tommy John surgery. Assuming Wheeler doesn’t try to continue to pitch through the pain, he’ll be out until roughly mid-summer of 2016.

This is obviously a significant blow to the Mets, as Wheeler had emerged as a quality starting pitcher. This is where they depth comes in handy, however, as the drop-off from Wheeler to one of Rafael Montero, Steven Matz, or Noah Syndergaard isn’t that large. Here are the Mets current depth chart projections for their rotation candidates:

#14 Mets

Name	IP	K/9	BB/9	HR/9	BABIP	LOB%	ERA	FIP	WAR
Matt Harvey	173.0	9.1	2.6	0.7	.297	74.2 %	3.07	3.08	2.9
Bartolo Colon	176.0	6.2	1.5	1.0	.308	70.3 %	4.00	3.80	1.3
Jon Niese	178.0	6.7	2.4	0.9	.307	71.2 %	3.91	3.83	1.1
Jacob deGrom	165.0	8.2	2.7	0.8	.306	72.5 %	3.53	3.40	1.9
Dillon Gee	98.0	6.7	2.5	1.1	.300	70.5 %	4.23	4.24	0.2
Noah Syndergaard	75.0	9.2	2.7	0.9	.310	72.8 %	3.54	3.37	1.0
Rafael Montero	28.0	8.8	3.0	0.9	.302	74.1 %	3.56	3.62	0.3
Steven Matz	37.0	8.4	2.8	0.8	.306	73.4 %	3.42	3.43	0.5
Zack Wheeler	56.0	8.8	3.5	0.8	.307	72.8 %	3.65	3.61	0.5
Total	984.0	7.7	2.5	0.9	.305	72.1 %	3.68	3.60	9.8

ZIPS and Steamer see Montero as Wheeler’s equal for 2015, while actually liking Matz and Syndergaard a little bit more. Of course, losing Wheeler means that one of these guys can’t replace another pitcher when a future injury occurs, so losing Wheeler is far from a good thing, but the Mets are at least positioned to absorb this kind of injury.

The problem will come if too many of Wheeler’s innings are allocated to Dillon Gee. He’ll likely step in and fill the void in the short term, but if he pitches like the projections expect him to pitch, he shouldn’t hold that spot for too long.

Earlier this week, the author published a post claiming to feature the top performances by (maybe) predictive stats from college baseball’s most competitive conferences.

What follows are the three weekend series — one from each relevant conference — likely to facilitate the greatest number of players whose names appeared within that post. KATOH+ and KATOH- are index metrics based on those (maybe) predictive stats and designed for batters and pitchers, respectively. In each case, 100 is average, while above 100 is better for batters and below 100 is better for pitchers. Read more about the author’s questionable methodology here.

North Carolina at Pittsburgh
Who It Features
A lot of pitchers who’ve been successful so far this season, including North Carolina sophomore right-hander Zac Gallen (16.0 IP, 77 KATOH-) and Pitt freshman right-hander T.J. Zeuch (27.1 IP, 78 KATOH-) in the Friday game. Probably right-handed Pitt sophomore Matt Pidich (12.2 IP, 77 KATOH-) in relief. And maybe also UNC senior right-hander Benton Moss (15.2 IP, 74 KATOH-), who’s exhibited a velocity spike but missed last week’s start with an injury.

When It’s On
Friday at 1:45pm ET
Saturday at 3:00pm ET
Sunday at 12:00pm ET

How to Watch It
College Sports Live (link).

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If Dan Farnsworth could set up a website where you might pay to sit next to him during a game, I would recommend that website. If you like any of the hitting interviews I’ve done recently, you’ll understand what it can mean to a person just to pick his brain.

Tthere are times when he just says something small after an at-bat, and off go three FanGraphers with their databases and their queries and their coding languages. Seriously, it took me, Jeff Zimmerman, Jonah Pemstein, and a few attempts to even get a first answer to this sort-of question from Mr. Farnsworth.

“I wish teams wouldn’t teach their batters to swing to protect the runner. They don’t do that anymore I hope, it has to be easy to disprove as a good strategy” is roughly what he said. “DO THEY?” is what I wondered. “IS IT?”

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Click to enlarge.

It might come as a surprise to learn that the present author is the sort of person who has persuaded a real human woman to enter with him into matrimony of any sort, be it holy or otherwise. It’s an improbable thing, I admit, but as the character Psmith from certain of Wodehouse’s novels advises, one ought never to confuse the improbable with the impossible.

The aforementioned wife is relevant to this brief post insofar as, on a day trip yesterday to Manchester, New Hampshire — a city famous largely for its contributions to child labor (facilitating more of it, that is) — on a day trip to that city, she visited a place called Collectors Heaven and purchased there a pack of ProCards-brand Triple-A baseball cards from 1989.

The image above features all 10 cards from that pack arranged in something vaguely approximating alphabetical order and including, in red font, the career WAR figures of each player. N/A denotes those players who made zero major-league appearances. An asterisk (*) denotes Rich Morales, who wasn’t actually a player at the time, but rather the manager of Seattle Triple-A affiliate Calgary.

A brief examination of cards here reveals that:

• Seven of the nine Triple-A players featured here recorded at least one major-league appearance; and
• The most successful of the players here was Darryl Hamilton, who produced nearly 15 wins over 13 seasons; and
• Vancouver shortstop Carlos Martinez has glimpsed into the future and isn’t satisfied by what it holds for him.

“How many individuals are in the top 1% of anything? If you’re a Stanford graduate and you made it to the major leagues, who’s complaining about that?” Michael Taylor told me in 2013. He retired yesterday.

Taylor was once the darling of prospect hounds. He ranked as high as 29th overall on Baseball America’s top 100, and was the third-best prospect on the Phillies before he was traded to Oakland. He was only given 114 plate appearances in the big leagues and is only 29 years old. We might not really know what Michael Taylor’s true talents look like.

The player agreed, even when we talked two years ago. “It’s a tough thing to quantify — how many of my at-bats came pinch-hitting against the closer or an ace after not getting many at-bats or not being in the big leagues period. I don’t think I’ve ever played two games in a row, maybe in 2011 once,” he said. “16 plate appearances in three years.”

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