Position: Tampa Bay Rays Baseball Sports Science Internship

Location: St. Petersburg, Fla.

Description:
We are seeking candidates with a passion for winning through improving player development and performance, injury prevention, nutrition, and enhancing player well-being through sports science. These unique positions offer interns the opportunity to integrate sports science, athletic training, and nutrition aimed at improving the performance and well-being of players across the entire Rays organization. Both full season (Feb – Oct) and summer positions (May – Sept) will be considered. Please note that these internship positions often have the potential to lead to full-time employment offers with the Rays organizations, but such an offer is not guaranteed.
Read the rest of this entry »

Position: Cincinnati Reds Baseball Operations Data Scientist

Location: Cincinnati

Description:
Work with the Manager of Baseball Analytics to implement the department’s research and development efforts within new and existing applications. We envision the person in this position to play a major role in the creation of new baseball analytics concepts with the ultimate goal of enhancing on-field performance.
Read the rest of this entry »

Position: Tampa Bay Rays Baseball Research and Development Analyst, Junior Analyst and Intern

Location: St. Petersburg, Fla.

Description:
We are seeking Research and Development analysts and interns with a passion for winning through mathematics, data analysis and computation. Our R&D group helps shape our Baseball Operations decision making processes through the analysis and interpretation of data. Our analysts and interns work both individually and collaboratively, coming up with interesting research questions to tackle, finding ways to answer those questions with the data at our disposal, communicating the results of their research to decision makers and other staff, and working to apply the results of their research to improve how our organization operates. We desire candidates who want to make an impact on how our organization makes decisions, will challenge the status quo and explore new ways to make us better.

Responsibilities:

• Statistical modeling and quantitative analysis of a variety of data sources, for the purpose of player
  evaluation, player development and strategic decision making.
• Communicating with front office, coaching, player development, scouting and medical staffs to design
  and interpret research and to apply actionable findings.
• Designing tools to help support decision making processes throughout our organization.
• Working collaboratively with and assisting other members of our department with your areas of
  expertise.
• Collecting private and public data for additional analysis.
• Ad hoc research and quantitative analysis in support of general Baseball Operations tasks.

Qualifications:

• For intern and junior analyst: A strong foundation in mathematics, statistics, computer science and/or
  engineering. For analyst: Advanced degree in a related field or 2+ years related work experience.
• Some experience with computer programming. Experience with R, Python, and/or Stan preferred.
• Experience solving complex problems in a rigorous way.
• Creativity to discover new avenues of research with the potential to help us win.

To Apply:
To apply, please send an email to researchresume@raysbaseball.com with the subject “R&D Positions” and include a resume, an unofficial transcript (if you were enrolled in a college degree program within the last three years) and answers to the following questions:

1. When would you be available to start?
2. Where did you discover this position?
3. What is a project you believe would add substantial value to a baseball team? Please describe the project and provide an overview of how you would complete it.

To be clear, there are three positions here.

Position: Toronto Blue Jays Baseball Operations Affiliate Internships

Location: Various
Read the rest of this entry »

Last night, the Yankees and Indians combined to strike out 31 times, the most strikeouts ever recorded in a playoff game that didn’t go extra innings. And during our live blog, complaining about the size of Jeff Nelson’s strike zone was a common occurrence. Accusing the home plate umpire of malfeasance is a regular thing fans do, especially in the postseason when the stakes are the highest, but in looking at the data today, there is some validity to the arguments. Last night, Jeff Nelson called a pretty huge strike zone.

Read the rest of this entry »

Leading 2-1 in the series, and 2-1 in game four, A.J. Hinch just summoned Justin Verlander from the bullpen to try and protect the lead and allow the Astros to finish the ALDS without having to go back to Houston for a winner-take-all finale. Given how good Chris Sale has looked for the Red Sox, and how dominant David Price was for Boston yesterday, it’s easy to see the appeal of putting your best arm on the mound and just riding him to victory.

But this decision just felt like an overreaction given the alternatives. Warming up next to Verlander was Will Harris. Will Harris isn’t a big name, but for the last few years, he’s been one of the best relievers in baseball.

Harris was his usual dominant self this year, allowing a .262 wOBA. He posted the lowest BB% and the highest K% of his career. He doesn’t have Verlander’s velocity, but his cutter/curveball combination has led to consistently dominant results.

But despite being warm, Hinch went with Verlander. I’m not going to pretend that Andrew Benintendi’s home run — hit just 90 mph, and a ball that Statcast gave just a 5% hit probability to — was the obvious outcome here, or that the decision was clearly a mistake because the outcome went badly.

But as much as it is refreshing to question whether managers are too aggressive in using their best pitchers this year, as opposed to watching Zach Britton sit in the bullpen as his team’s season ended a year ago, it feels like this was an example of the tide turning too far in the other direction. It’s great to have a guy like Verlander that you really believe in, but you can’t win a World Series with just a few pitchers. You have to trust your depth guys too.

If we’ve gotten to the point where we’re choosing to put a starter who has never pitched in relief in before a guy like Harris, a legitimately elite reliever, then I think the pendulum has swung too far the other direction. Especially when the Astros didn’t have to win Game 4. The worst case scenario for them in this game was that they head home with a fresh Verlander to take the mound, and Dallas Keuchel to bridge the gap between him and Ken Giles.

Now, they’re down 3-2 in this game, and might still head back to Houston for Game 5, only Keuchel will likely be the starter, and Verlander might be the guy pitching a few innings of relief instead. The Astros may have just unnecessarily reduced their worst-case outcome in Game 4 to an even worse position, because they didn’t trust a really good reliever.

Last night, Greg Bird played the hero, launching a home run off Andrew Miller for the only run of the game. For a lefty, just getting on base against Miller is a success, but going deep is pretty remarkable; it was only the second home run a left-hander hit off Miller this year.

But perhaps we shouldn’t be too surprised, because since coming back off the disabled list, Bird has been hitting bombs with regularity. His overall season line of .190/.288/.422 isn’t much to write home about, but his early-season numbers came when he probably shouldn’t have been playing, given his foot issues. If we combine his post-DL with his postseason performance to date, this is the line that Healthy Greg Bird has put up in 2017.

The underlying numbers show significant improvement as well. In his pre-DL performance, Bird averaged 87.7 mph exit velocity on his batted balls, but since returning, that mark has jumped to 91.1 mph. For reference, only 13 hitters with at least 100 batted balls averaged 91 mph in exit velocity this year.

And in the postseason, against one of the best pitching staffs we’ve ever seen, Bird’s been crushing the ball at a level not unlike his most monstrous teammate. Here are Bird’s batted balls in this series against Cleveland so far.

Bird’s six batted balls in this series have averaged 94.4 mph, while facing the best left-handed reliever in baseball twice, a top-5 starter twice, and two above average right-handers.

As a pull-heavy left-hander who also strikes out and hits his share of infield flies, Bird is probably never going to be a high average hitter, but the power he’s shown since coming off the DL is a carrying tool, and Bird is showing why the Yankees line-up is scarier right now than their overall season numbers might make it appear.

To be clear, there are two positions here.

Position: St. Louis Cardinals Baseball Development Application Developer

Location: St. Louis
Read the rest of this entry »

I don’t know if this is ultimately going to matter much. As I write this, the Yankees are still leading the Indians by a run, and they only need to get six more outs. The odds are in the Yankees’ favor. But, not long ago, the odds were even more in the Yankees’ favor. Then we had controversy. Controversy! Our first controversy of the 2017 postseason, as far as I can tell. The scene: the bottom of the sixth, with two on and two out in an 8-3 game. It’s Chad Green, and it’s Lonnie Chisenhall, and the count is 0-and-2.

That’s not where that pitch was supposed to go. The result: the dreaded 0-and-2 HBP. You’d expect better of Green, and he certainly knew right away he didn’t execute like he wanted to, but if you watch that clip over and over, you might notice something. As the umpire signals for Chisenhall to take his base, Chisenhall appears to be surprised. Not that he was going to turn down the opportunity, but he didn’t respond like someone who’d been hit by a pitch in the body. Gary Sanchez immediately thought that something was wrong. Sanchez thought the ball hit the knob of the bat. Upon super-slow-motion instant replay, it looks like the ball did hit the knob of the bat.

And then the ball went into Sanchez’s glove! Which would make it, technically, a foul tip, which would lead to a strikeout. If the ball hit the bat, then Chisenhall should’ve been out, and that would’ve been the end of it. I’m not saying the instant replay makes it 100% incontestable, but it looks a lot more like bat than hand. And as you probably know, these plays are reviewable. Seems like that should’ve come in handy for the Yankees. They could get the umpires to take a look. They…didn’t. I have no idea why. Something tells me it’s going to come up later on. Sanchez thought Chisenhall was hit in the bat, not the hand, and he gestured toward his own dugout. No review was requested. Within seconds, this would loom awfully large.

Instead of 8-3 in the seventh, it became 8-7 in the sixth. Instead of the Indians’ win expectancy being about 3%, it was about 33%. Now, that’s not all on the call. Even after Chisenhall went to first, the Indians’ odds of winning stood at about 8%, and then Francisco Lindor had to do what he did to Chad Green’s delivery. Green, for his part, should’ve made better pitches. But in our sixth playoff game, we have our first real issue related to a call on the field — and instant replay — and now that I check back in, oh, look at that, the Indians have tied the game up. I’m sure Joe Girardi is looking forward to his presser. I can’t imagine what he’s going to be asked.

Yesterday, I wrote about how Jon Gray’s curveball didn’t work in the NL Wild Card game. Gray hung a bunch of poorly-located curves that the Diamondbacks crushed, and he was chased from the game in the second inning. Last night, though, Trevor Bauer showed what a good curveball in the postseason looks like.

With only four whiffs, you might not think the pitch was particularly dominant, but Bauer’s curveball was his best pitch of the night. Because, unlike Gray, he was able to keep it down.

Instead of just relying on whiffs, Bauer also managed to freeze hitters with curves in the zone, like he did to Aaron Judge here.

Eight times, Bauer froze a Yankee hitter with a curveball in the zone, including Aaron Judge twice for strike three. And when the Yankees did swing, it didn’t go much better for them.

15 times, a New York hitter went after Bauer’s curveball. Only seven of those 15 swings resulted in a ball in play. Here is what they did with those seven balls in play.

Hicks rocked a poorly located curve, but besides that, this is as weak as contact gets. With Sanchez’s double play, he still managed to rack up seven outs on the seven balls in play. Combined with the four strikeouts, Bauer got a total of 11 outs out of his 35 curveballs. Not bad indeed.

Bauer’s curve has always been his best pitch, and it’s probably not a coincidence that he’s had his best season while throwing his pitch more frequently than ever before. Bauer threw his curve 30% of the time in the regular season, and upped that to 36% last night. He’s not quite Rich Hill yet, but given what Bauer did to the Yankees with his breaking ball last night, they probably should expect a healthy dose of them if he gets into another game this series.

Of course, with Corey Kluber going today and Carlos Carrasco in Game Three, the Yankees might not see Bauer again this season.