Before the start of Saturday’s game between Louisiana State and Auburn, the SEC Network revisited several decisive plays from the previous night’s contest (won 3-2 by LSU) between those same clubs. Present in a disproportionately high number of those clips was LSU junior shortstop — and possible top-10 draft selection this June — Alex Bregman.

On the one hand, this isn’t surprising: as the (maybe) predictive stats reveal, Bregman is among the SEC’s top-10 hitters. Notably, though, none of the footage depicted Bregman’s hitting — but rather only his fielding — exploits from that same game.

The purpose of this post is (first) to steal the aforementioned footage from the SEC Network and then (second) to disseminate it to the FanGraphs readership so that they might experience undue optimism regarding the future of the Pastime.

Here, first of all, is Bregman making a play from the hole:

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Position: Arizona Diamondbacks TrackMan Operator

Location: Geneva, Ill.

Description:
Operator will be responsible for running TrackMan system at the Single-A Kane County Cougars affiliate during each home game. This position is available from April until mid-September.
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Matt Williams wasn’t a happy camper after yesterday’s loss at Fenway Park. It wasn’t so much the final score – Boston won 9-4 – it was the manner in which it transpired. The Nationals played defense like they were allergic to horsehide. A pair of sky-high fly balls were allowed to fall untouched. Ground balls resembled hot potatoes. Bag coverage was shoddy. Only one error was charged, but the ineptitude was undeniable.

The prohibitive favorites in the National League East have lost five of seven games, and while it’s way too early to panic, it’s never too soon for pointed questions. The Washington skipper received several of them after the defensive debacle. Here are a handful of his responses, which were delivered with exasperation and a hint of snippiness:

* “Balls that are up there for four, five seconds need to be caught. Ground balls (that) are hit need to be caught and thrown across the diamond. It’s got to get better.”

* “These are big league baseball players. They’re here because they can catch a baseball. Any time you go out there against a club like this and you don’t catch fly balls, and you don’t catch ground balls, they’re going to kick your fanny.”

* “A wake up call? We’re fully awake, man. Believe me. With all that’s been said about our club, we’re fully aware of it. We’re fully awake.”

* “Last year’s over, man. Last year’s way over. We have to catch the ball tomorrow.”

* “Nobody is playing tight. It’s a function of catching it, making pitches, and getting base hits. Nobody’s tight. Those expectations were there long before today.”

Chances are, this game, and the 2-5 start, will become forgotten footnotes in a pennant-winning season. But for now, Matt Williams’ team is playing poorly, and defense is one of the culprits.

activate the andrelton simmons ridiculous play batsignal

— pete beatty (@petebeatty) April 11, 2015

Like all of us, Pete Beatty is a writer/editor formerly born — and now currently living — in Cleveland who’s also had an entire career (whilst living in New York City) in the publishing industry. What else Pete Beatty is, is someone who has the People’s Interests at heart — and one of those manifest Interests is consuming as many of Andrelton Simmons‘ feats of athleticism as possible before both Simmons and all the rest of us are dead together.

To that end, Beatty has sounded tonight — after witnessing the Atlanta shortstop getting intimate with the Impossible — Beatty has sounded the Andrelton Simmons Ridiculous Play Batsignal. Further to that end, the current author has rendered Simmons’ exploits into animated GIF form, which GIFs one can find below.

Here, for example, in something not unlike “real time”:

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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:

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

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.

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.

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