We’ve made a lot of adjustments to our minor league prospect lists in the last week. We’ve added all top 10 round draft picks, regardless of whether they’ve signed, as only a handful will not and we’ll take them out if and when they fail to. We’ve added confirmed signings beyond the 10th round, and will keep adding those as they roll in. We’ve taken the graduated prospects off; you can see a list of those on the Prospects MLB Playing Time sidebar on the right side of the Prospects homepage. We’ve also moved over 120 prospects who were on the off-season lists around, and moved some onto the list who were eligible and weren’t included this winter.

What all of this means is that there are new team prospect lists, and a new overall top 124, as part of 1185 total prospects who appear on THE BOARD. Rays SS Wander Franco is now a 70 FV and the top prospect in baseball, just ahead of soon-to-graduate Padres SS Fernando Tatis Jr., who was also upgraded to a 70 FV.

Most prospects with new FV’s have only shifted a bit, up or down one tier. The most prominent players to move in this fashion are a throng of teenagers either drafted last year or being seen at length in the U.S. for the first time. This group — Giants SS Marco Luciano, Mariners OFs Jarred Kelenic and Julio Rodriguez, Mets SS Ronny Mauricio, Cardinals 3B Nolan Gorman, Orioles RHP Grayson Rodriguez, and Red Sox 1B Triston Casas — has started to separate from their same-aged peers. Read the rest of this entry »

If you read FanGraphs regularly, you’re probably already familiar with Saberseminar, the annual weekend event that puts you up close with some of baseball’s top coaches, statisticians, scouts, doctors, and scientists. Officially titled Sabermetrics, Scouting, and the Science of Baseball, the event always boasts an incredible lineup; you can view last year’s speakers here.

This year’s seminar will take place August 10 and 11 at Boston University. And while the exact agenda is still being finalized – baseball folks are so busy! – the organizers have shared a few highlights, which include:

• Research symposiums on defensive evaluation, physics, pitching, biomechanics and health, free agency and economics, game strategy, and more!
• Over 25 research presentations.
• The second annual presentation of Saberseminar’s scholarship awards to women and minority students aspiring to front office roles.
• A live recording of Effectively Wild.

Early ticket pricing ends Saturday, June 15, with regular ticket sales starting June 16. Tickets, including discounted student tickets, can be purchased here.

And as if a weekend of nerdy baseball fun isn’t exciting enough, you’ll also be supporting a wonderful cause, as proceeds from the event will be donated to the Angioma Alliance.

We’ll keep you posted as the agenda is finalized and we confirm which FanGraphs writers will be in attendance. We’ll also have details on our annual Saberseminar Eve meetup soon.

In the meantime, take advantage of the early ticket pricing, and start looking forward to a great event!

Position: Data Engineer, Baseball Operations

Location: Detroit, MI

Job Description:
The Data Engineer, Baseball Operations will be responsible for working closely with the Analytics team to maintain the data infrastructure supporting internal baseball systems, reports, and procedures.

Key Responsibilities:

• Design, maintain, and support data warehouses for reporting and analytics within Baseball Operations.
• Automate and optimize data workflows and pipelines.
• Document, troubleshoot, and resolve issues with Baseball Operations data processes.
• Understand and document data structures, format, definitions, and content of internal and external data feeds.
• Develop data quality assurance tools to ensure data integrity and system performance.
• Collaborate with other members of the Baseball Operations team to develop best practices for storing and retrieving baseball data.
• Recommend new tools and techniques for collecting and processing data.
• Complete ad-hoc database queries and analysis as directed.

Minimum Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities:

• 3+ years of related work experience with data management and infrastructure.
• Degree or equivalent experience in Computer Science, Information Systems, or related technical field.
• Strong passion for baseball and robust understanding of current baseball research.
• Expertise with SQL and relational database concepts and design.
• Experience ingesting and transforming data from a variety of sources and formats.
• Experience with at least one programming language such as C#, Java, Python, or similar.
• Experience with R, Shiny, Plotly, or ggplot is a plus.
• Ability to communicate complex concepts to colleagues possessing a wide range of backgrounds and perspectives.
• Willing and able to relocate to Detroit.

To Apply:
To apply, please complete the application found here.

The content in this posting was created and provided solely by the Detroit Tigers.

We have added a custom date range to the main leaderboards. This allows you select any date range of three years or less after the start of 2002. Importantly, this will give you custom defined partial season WAR, which can’t be found elsewhere on the site.

The main controls for the custom date range can be found beneath the multiple seasons drop down menus. It uses the same date selector as the splits leaderboards, except it requires you to hit “Submit Custom Date” to load the leaderboard with the desired date range.

A custom date range is similar to options like “Last 30 Days” and “Past 3 Calendar Years” that are currently available on the leaderboards.

• There is a new option, “Custom Date Range,” in the same “Split” menu.
• A custom date range follows the same filtering restrictions, where you can’t filter by age, split seasons, or filter rookies.
• You also cannot apply additional splits like handedness.

This is the present behavior of our time frame options. They might change in the future, but not in this update.

Important notes:

• The leaderboard will only apply a date range when the split option is set to “Custom Date Range”
• You can only select dates from 2002 to the present.
• Date ranges can’t exceed three years. This restriction is due to data processing time.
• Date ranges only work with the batting and pitching tabs, NOT the fielding tab.
• Defensive value metrics, including the components of WAR, are prorated from the entire season, so you are unable to analyze defense within a specific date range.

If you encounter any issues, please let us know!

Position: Web Application Developer – Baseball Operations

Postion Overview:
The New York Yankees organization is accepting applications for an experienced web developer in their Baseball Operations department. Candidate should have 3+ years of experience developing data-driven web applications using REST services and JavaScript MV frameworks like Angular, Vue.js, or React. Candidates should possess not only the technical skill, but the design sensibilities needed to create a compelling and efficient user experience.

Primary Responsibilities:

• Assist in the design and implementation of web-based tools and applications for senior baseball operations personnel.
• Migrate and adapt existing web applications for mobile devices and various hardware platforms.
• Interface with all departments within Baseball Operations (scouting, player development, coaching, analytics) to build tools and reporting capabilities to meet their needs.
• Work with major and minor league pitch, hit and player tracking datasets, college and other amateur data, international baseball data, and many other baseball data sources.

Qualifications and Experience:

• Bachelor’s degree (B.S.) in Computer Science or related field
• MUST have 3+ years of experience with data-driven web application development using:
• REST services, preferably built on ASP.NET WebAPI
• ORM frameworks (nHibernate/Entity Framework/etc)
• JavaScript MV frameworks (Angular/Vue.js/React/etc)
• Front-End CSS frameworks (Bootstrap/Material/Foundation/etc)
• Proficient in SQL databases and various database design principles (Microsoft SQL Server a plus)
• Familiarity with Microsoft Visual Studio and source code management tools (Git, TFS/VSS)
• Knowledge of the software development lifecycle (requirements definition, design, development, testing, implementation, verification), Agile, and industry best practices.
• Excellent communication and problem-solving skills – must be able to breakdown a complex task and put together an execution strategy with little guidance.
• An understanding of typical baseball data structures, basic and advanced baseball metrics, and knowledge of current baseball research areas a plus.

Please note, full-time telecommuting available under the right circumstances.

Job Questions:

• Describe your experience developing REST APIs and how you’ve used them in development of data-driven web applications.
• Describe your familiarity with JavaScript MV frameworks (Angular/Vue.js/React/etc) and how you have used them in your work.
• Have you ever worked with any baseball datasets? And if so, which ones and how have you used them?
• List any active websites or mobile applications you have developed (and the technologies they use) that might showcase your work.

To Apply:
To apply, please submit an application through this link.

The content in this posting was created and provided solely by the New York Yankees.

Position: Software Engineer, Baseball Operations

Location: Detroit, Michigan

Description: The Detroit Tigers are currently seeking a Software Engineer. This role will be responsible for development and maintenance of software projects within Baseball Operations. This position will report to the Sr. Software Engineer, Baseball Operations.

Key Responsibilities:

• Perform general development and maintenance tasks for the upkeep of internally developed software products.
• Use modern software techniques and best practices in all parts of the software life cycle.
• Support the integration of baseball analysis into our proprietary tools and applications.
• Assist with the design and development of new software products.
• Other projects as directed by the Baseball Operations leadership team.

Minimum Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities:

• BS degree in Computer Science, Computer Information Systems, similar technical field of study or equivalent real-time experience.
• Demonstrated knowledge in developing in a Web-based object-oriented product environment.
• Demonstrated knowledge in working with medium-to-large scale relational databases.
• Ability to work in all phases of the product lifecycle, from requirements gathering to design, testing, and implementation.
• Ability to learn new technologies and techniques as necessary.
• Familiarity with the sport of baseball, baseball-specific data, modern statistical techniques, and sabermetric analysis.

Preferred Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities:

• Experience with data pipelines, data warehousing, or data engineering, especially using SQL Server.
• Experience developing web APIs using Java or C#/.NET.
• Experience with JavaScript visualization tools such as D3.js or Plotly.js.
• Experience with cloud services and/or container technologies.

Working Conditions:

• Office environment.
• Occasional evening, weekend, and holiday hours may be required.

To Apply:
To apply, please complete the application here.

The content in this posting was created and provided solely by the Detroit Tigers.

Please note, this posting contains multiple positions.

Position: Baseball Research & Development Analyst (Multiple Roles)

Location: St. Petersburg, Florida

Description: The Tampa Bay Rays are searching for their next Baseball Research and Development Analysts. Their R&D group helps shape their Baseball Operations decision-making processes through the analysis and interpretation of data. They are seeking those with a passion for baseball and a desire to contribute through mathematics, data analysis, and computation. The next members of their R&D team will be intellectual contributors that can work both individually and collaboratively, come up with interesting research questions to explore, find ways to answer those questions through the available data, develop, test and validate quantitative tools, communicate the results of their research, and work to apply their research outcomes to improve how their organization operates. They want to work with people who care about being a good teammate, want to make a positive impact on their organization, have an innovative spirit, and will explore new ways to make them better. Does this describe you?

Duties & Responsibilities:

• Develop models to answer various questions and problems posed by decision makers
• Generate internal quantitative tools for use by other members of the department
• Administer the processing of quality data from various sources
• Examine the relationship between the data from various sources and player performance
• Create reports at the request of various stakeholders
• Investigate ways to improve current tools

Skills:

• Fluency in R or Python
• Experience with statistical modeling and machine learning
• Candidates with non-traditional schooling backgrounds, as well as candidates with traditional degrees in related areas, are encouraged to apply

To Apply:
To apply, please complete this application.

Position: Product Designer

Location: St. Petersburg, Florida

Description: The Tampa Bay Rays are hiring a Product Designer to improve their existing products and build new features in their products. The goal is to provide their end-users with an intuitive and consistent experience throughout the entire suite of applications. They are searching for someone who is self-motivated and acquires skills quickly. This role will have a direct impact in the software that is used for all aspects of their Baseball Operations department and on the experience of users in different capacities around the world. Their ideal candidate will have experience and demonstrated success in the items listed below.

Duties & Responsibilities:

• Create a design framework of reusable components to standardize the UI across the entire web app
• Develop new user-facing features, and improve the existing UI/UX
• Ensure the technical feasibility of UI/UX designs
• Be responsible for all design choices from inception through launch
• Collaborate with other team members and stakeholders from beginning to end with regards to UI/UX design and usability to ensure that the stakeholders needs are met in coordination with the Baseball Systems Development Team

Skills:

• Be able to implement your designs using HTML & CSS
• Understanding of when it’s best to use different technologies such as Flexbox and CSS Grid
• Understanding of server-side CSS pre-processing platforms, such as Sass
• Familiarity with client-side scripting and JavaScript frameworks such as Vue, React, jQuery, vanilla JavaScript & ES6
• Good understanding of asynchronous request handling, partial page updates, and AJAX and how it will affect your design choices
• Knowledge of image authoring tools, to be able to crop, resize, or perform small adjustments on an image. Familiarity with tools such as Gimp or Photoshop is a plus.
• Understanding of the Git version control system

To Apply:
To apply, please complete this application.

Position: Data Engineer

Location: St. Petersburg, Florida

Description: The Tampa Bay Rays are seeking a Data Engineer to join their Baseball Systems department to help ensure data integrity and that users have acceptable performance when accessing the database. This role is responsible for importing data from external providers, integrating data from different sources, and working with members of the R&D department to operationalize analytical products. This person will interact with multiple departments and staff members, sometimes all at once, to take feedback as well as to make recommendations for improvements. The sole focus of this role is the performance of the database – a critical aspect of the success of the Rays Baseball Operations department – and the necessary interaction with the Research and Development and Baseball Systems groups to achieve that goal. Problem-solving skills and being an excellent teammate are a must in this role.

Duties & Responsibilities:

• Responsible for development and support of integrations with external data providers
• Address data quality issues and implement procedures for error checking and monitoring
• Ensure the database performs up to an acceptable level
• Coordinate R&D models with the daily flow of data to ensure that they are synchronized
• Explore emerging technologies and determine their fit with the Rays’ current platform

Skills:

• Advanced understanding of SQL
• Experience with R, Python, or other scripting language
• Proficiency with evaluating and improving the performance of SQL queries
• Ability to assist in the development of data models optimized for business intelligence and/or analytic workloads
• Knowledge or experience with semi-structured or unstructured data stores
• Comfort with exploring and evaluating new technologies
• Ability to manage multiple tasks and priority levels at once

Technologies:

• RDBMS (SQL Server, MySQL)
• SQL Server Integration Services
• Cloud Technologies (Azure, AWS)
• Apache Project (Hive, Spark, Kafka, NiFi)

Education/Experience:

• Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science, Engineering Degree or commensurate experience

Demonstrated success with:

• Data Ingestion
• Data Processing (Cleaning, Transformation, Integration, etc.)
• Data Warehousing

To Apply:
To apply, please complete this application.

Position: Junior Data Technician

Location: St. Petersburg, Florida

Description: The Rays’ Junior Data Technician will be responsible for assisting with the inspection, validation, calibration, and processing of multiple data sets. Their new hire will partner with the Data Technician to thoroughly vet, critically assess, and curate many data sources used by the Baseball Operations department. They will work collaboratively while ensuring the reproducibility and reliability of the Rays’ data processing by standardizing procedures and generating documentation. This role will interact with multiple departments and staff members to take feedback as well as to make recommendations for improvements.

Duties & Responsibilities:

• Builds statistical models and automated systems to process, evaluate, and calibrate data
• Assures that data received from external sources is of usable quality and standardized
• Reviews discrepancies in data, gathers clarification or advises end users of issues related to data set
• Supports the analysts that use the data set
• Interacts with staff on matters affecting the data and makes recommendations for improvement or process enhancement
• Produces documentation outlining standard processes

Skills & Education:

• Familiarity with R and SQL or proven ability to learn new a programming language quickly
• Knowledge of statistical modeling
• Candidates with non-traditional schooling backgrounds, as well as candidates with traditional degrees in related areas, are encouraged to apply

To Apply:
To apply, please complete this application.

Position: DevOps Engineer

Location: St. Petersburg, Florida

Description: The Tampa Bay Rays are seeking a DevOps Engineer to embed with their Baseball Research & Development department to improve the efficiency and increase the reliability of their products and tools. A primary goal for this position is to reduce the amount of time spent on code and infrastructure maintenance while positively impacting research progress. This person will work in collaboration with current staff and develop best practices for the department. This role will have the expertise to develop a framework to facilitate continuous evaluation of their models to ensure reliability and optimize speed. Their new hire will also have a strong ability to relate to staff and effectively communicate new practices. If you have a passion for improving processes, automation, developing best practices, and being a great teammate, consider the responsibilities below.

Duties & Responsibilities:

• Improve the overall efficiency of the R&D group and reliability of production models and code
• Oversee computational infrastructure, make decisions on the best approach, and configure the infrastructure accordingly
• Improve database performance by reducing the inefficient ways database resources are used
• Facilitate the reliability and quality control of the Rays’ various models
• Develop internal software packages (R, Python) that can be leveraged to make development and deployment more efficient
• Manage a server that houses various analytical tools
• Coordinate with Data Engineering to deploy the Rays’ pipeline in their main data import procedures, when possible
• Develop API’s for their models for live data processing and for exploration of models via interactive apps
• Assist analysts in the development and maintenance of various apps

Skills & Education:

• Continuous Integration and Deployment in a data science environment
• Containerization technologies
• Automated testing tools
• Package development
• Scripting Languages (Python, Powershell, Perl, etc.)
• Candidates with non-traditional schooling backgrounds, as well as candidates with traditional degrees in related areas, are encouraged to apply

To Apply:
To apply, please complete this application.

The Rays are an equal opportunity employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law.

The content in this posting was created and provided solely by the Tampa Bay Rays.

These are notes on prospects from lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments here.

Yohan Ramirez, RHP, Houston Astros
Level: Hi-A   Age: 23   Org Rank: NR   FV: 35
Line: 4.1 IP, 1 H, 1 BB, 0 R, 8 K

Notes
Ramirez has been up to 97 and is sitting 92-95 while making heavy use of an above-average curveball. Spinwise, he averages about 2300 rpm on his heater, and 2500 on the curve, which is relatively tame for Houston prospects. His changeup is a distant, tertiary offering. He’s K’d 30 in 20 innings so far, but looks like a two-pitch relief candidate at most.

Zach Plesac, RHP, Cleveland Indians
Level: Double-A   Age: 24   Org Rank: HM   FV: 35
Line: 6.2 IP, 4 H, 0 BB, 1 R, 9 K

Notes
Plesac’s velocity is up. He sat 90-94 in college and was back in that range following Tommy John, but this season his fastball is averaging about 94 and bumping 97. His changeup is plus, and he is throwing a lot of strikes, something that he didn’t do as an amateur. There’s still not a great breaking ball here and that might limit Plesac’s role, but he’s starting to look like a near-ready bullpen option, at least. Cleveland continues to do quite well developing college changeup artists.

Rico Garcia, RHP, Colorado Rockies
Level: Double-A   Age: 25   Org Rank: tbd   FV: 35
Line: 6.2 IP, 4 H, 0 BB, 0 R, 11 K

Notes
Garcia will sit 93-96 and touch 97 early in outings but lose command and zip later in starts. There are a variety of opinions about Garcia’s delivery, as one source thinks his deliberately paced mechanics are easy for hitters to time, while another thinks Garcia hides the ball really well. He’ll flash an above-average changeup and slider, and shows an ability to manipulate the fastball to sink and cut at various times. He’s more of a middle relief candidate than potential rotation piece, but it appears Colorado has found a big league piece in the 30th round.

One of the tricky things about having so many stats on the site is that it can sometimes make it difficult to figure out whether a particular player is “good” or “bad” in a given statistical category. The other thing that can further complicate matters is the ever changing league rates. Given that the league strikeout percentage has increased over 8% in the past 30 years, what was once considered a well above average strikeout rate might today be merely average.

That’s why we’re introducing the “+ Stats” section to our leaderboards, where we have season and league adjusted a number of stats for your perusal.

Just like wRC+ and ERA-, all of these stats have a baseline of 100, where the number above or below 100 is the percentage above or below average a player is. For instance, Pedro Martinez’s 1999 K%+ is 239, that means he was 139% above the league average.

These baselined stats make it relatively easy to compare things like strikeout rates and walk rates across seasons and careers to see who was truly above (or below) their peers.

We’ll periodically add other stats to this section, so if you have additional “+ Stats” you’d like to see, please let us know in the comments!

Look, we all make mistakes. After all, we’re human. Sometimes our judgment of a situation is flawed from the outset, prone to fallacious reasoning. Often we overestimate the probabilities of events, or the limits of our capabilities. Occasionally, we look foolish doing so, but rarely in so grand a fashion as Marcell Ozuna did on Tuesday night.

With the Cardinals hosting the Dodger in St. Louis, Kiké Hernandez launched a fly ball to left field off pitcher Mike Mayers. It left the bat with an exit velocity of 99.3 mph and had a good arc to it. Ozuna … well, he tried to be a hero:

You can’t hear Ozuna’s voice, but if you could, it would probably be some variant of the classic, “I got it! I got it! I got it! I … ain’t got it.” Ozuna scaled the wall, only to realize that the ball would fall about 10 feet short, and his effort to correct course was ungraceful, to say the least. Between his cleats digging into the padded fence, his bellyflop, and the near-miss of a flying projectile in the general vicinity of his noggin, he’s damn lucky he didn’t get injured.

Statcast guru Daren Willman harnessed all of MLB Advanced Media’s computing power to determine Ozuna’s route efficiency…

…wait, no, that’s not it…

…before memorializing the play in an easy-to-find location.

This isn’t even the first time Ozuna has screwed up in such grand fashion. He did something similar last June 21 on a drive by the Brewers’ Jesus Aguilar.

Like Hernandez’s fly ball, that one turned into a double as well. The real issue is that Ozuna has actually scaled the wall to rob a home run before — from Hernandez no less. From July 16, 2017, when Ozuna was still a Marlin:

Given that, it’s easier to understand what happened on Tuesday night, and to be fair, the defensive metrics don’t suggest Ozuna is particularly incompetent afield, at least since leaving center field after the 2016 season, when he was 5.6 runs below average according to UZR, and 12 below according to DRS. For 2017-18, he was 7.1 runs above average in left field per UZR, and 19 above average via DRS. He even brought home a Gold Glove in 2017!

Yet time and entropy remain undefeated, which is why very few of us — besides Mike Trout, at least — are capable of the same feats we made look effortless just a couple of years ago. It’s good to laugh gracefully at such mistakes:

Some of us can’t resist laughing at, instead of with:

Really, though, we’re all just Kenley Jansen for this one:

We can’t help laughing, but we don’t want to make too big a show of it. After all, there’s a chance that we might be next.