FanGraphs Baseball

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley provide a brief update on the health of co-host Sam Miller (who’s on hiatus), then preview the 2020 New York Yankees with The Athletic’s Lindsey Adler, and the 2020 Detroit Tigers (46:57) with the Detroit Free Press’s Anthony Fenech.

Audio intro: Bombadil, "Binoculars"
Audio interstitial: The Sadies, "Tiger Tiger"
Audio outro: The Isley Brothers, "Hope You Feel Better Love"

Link to Lindsey on the Yankees’ revamped pitching development
Link to Lindsey’s Q&A with Matt Blake
Link to Lindsey on Happ’s reinvention
Link to article on Yankees’ overhauled training staff
Link to Lindsey’s Q&A with Tanner Swanson
Link to Lindsey on Sánchez’s new catching stance
Link to Lindsey on Sabathia paying homage to the Negro Leagues
Link to Lindsey on Gardner’s evolution
Link to Dan’s 2020 breakdown candidates
Link to photo of Lindsey’s binoculars
Link to Fabian Ardaya’s binoculars photos
Link to Fabian’s photo-taking technique
Link to Anthony on Mize striking out Cabrera
Link to Anthony’s Boras story
Link to Anthony on the Tigers’ analytics investments
Link to more recent story on the Tigers’ analytics upgrades
Link to FanGraphs’ Tigers prospect rankings

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In the third inning of ESPN’s broadcast of a tilt between the KT Wiz and the Kia Tigers on Wednesday, Karl Ravech and Eduardo Perez welcomed on former 10-year major leaguer Mel Rojas. The timing worked out well — the fourth batter of the inning was his son, Mel Rojas Jr. 로하스, who stepped to the plate with runners at second and third and one out in a 1-1 game.

“He’s smart,” Mel Sr. said. “He knows he’s not getting a good pitch to hit. He’s patient.” The son proved the father right, fouling off two strikes while taking three balls. With the count full, Perez asked the elder Mel what he would throw his son in this situation, with first base open and two outs. “Split,” he responded. “… I would not throw it for a strike.”

Indeed, he got the splitter from Tigers pitcher Min-woo Lee 이민우, but the pitch hung, crossing the plate at the knees. The younger Rojas flicked his bat effortlessly through the zone, slapping a base hit to center that plated two runs. On the broadcast, his father hardly budged. Two innings later — with his father now off-screen but presumably still watching — Rojas came through with a runner in scoring position again, hitting another two-out RBI single to help push the Wiz to a 7-4 victory.

No one in the KBO is more dependable than Rojas with men on base right now, because there is simply no one hitting better in general. He’s within striking distance of the standard triple crown (third in batting average, first in RBI, first in homers), as well as the triple slash crown (fourth in OBP, first in slugging). In fact, across the board, there is no one having kind of season at the plate that Rojas is.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Below is my latest in a series discussing each team’s 60-man player pool with a focus on prospects. Previous installments of these rundowns, including potentially relevant context for discussion, can be found here:

AL East and Intro
NL East
AL Central

Chicago Cubs

Prospect List / Depth Chart

It’s likely top prospect Nico Hoerner sees a lot of time at second base and center field. The prospects ranked two through five in the system are all on the 60-man player pool. Of those, right-hander Adbert Alzolay and, to a lesser extent, catcher Miguel Amaya (who is now on the 40-man) are the two most likely to see some big league time this year. Were Willson Contreras to get hurt, I’m not sure if the club would let iffy defender Victor Caratini play every day, add veteran NRI Josh Phegley to the 40-man to share duties, or if they’d simply promote 21-year-old Amaya, who has been lauded for his maturity and advanced defense since he was 18.

I also think there’s a chance the Cubs are in the thick of it come September, consider 21-year-old lefty flamethrower Brailyn Marquez one of the org’s best dozen pitchers, and decide to bring him up as a late-inning relief piece. He’s going to be added to the 40-man this offseason regardless.

The other very young guys in the player pool are Christopher Morel and Brennen Davis, two big-framed, tooled-up developmental projects. It’s interesting that the Cubs added Morel ahead of Cole Roederer or any of their 2019 and 2020 college draftees, but the club is only at about 50 of their 60 allotted players and they clearly need more hitters in the offsite camp, so I expect several notable names to be part of the group in South Bend soon. Read the rest of this entry »

12:02

Dan Szymborski: Greetings all! So begins another Chatxperience!

12:03

Dan Szymborski: I don’t feel comfortable making those kinds of evaluations. I’m very qualified to evaluate players at playing baseball. I have no such qualifications at determing quality of a person.

12:04

Dan Szymborski: When we do the chapter BBWAA awards for the local team (Reds in my case), I always abstain from the Good Guy award.

12:04

Dan Szymborski: Well, there’s a raging epidemic going on, so no matter how great a job MLB does, there’s always significant risk.

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Today’s article is about a form of baseball that doesn’t exist in real life. Let that be a disclaimer upfront — if you’re looking for an interesting middle reliever or 10 reasons why Christian Yelich is great against fastballs (number six will shock you!), this isn’t the article for you. That’s not to say those don’t exist — I wrote about Miguel Castro literally yesterday, for example. But today’s piece simply won’t be one of them.

With that out of the way, let’s set the stage. I’ve been playing a lot of Out Of The Park Baseball 21 lately. Some of that is for an article series, but some of it is because I want baseball in my life, and the game absolutely delivers. One mode in particular has been a great avenue for the analytical rabbit holes I love diving down: tournaments.

Without going into the specifics of the way the game is built, I’ll give a rough outline of the problem that first interested me. The standard tournament format is a 32-team bracket that plays best-of-seven series in each round. There’s no reseeding, no fancy gadgets; just 16 seven-game series, followed by eight, then four, then two, and then the finals.

In almost all other ways, the game approximates baseball. You field a 26-man roster, players need rest, and starters and relievers have realistic stamina. There are all kinds of fun roster choices to make — mid-career Tony Gwynn or young Pete Rose in right field, peak Ichiro or 1997 Bernie Williams in center, to name two — but for the most part, it’s a faithful simulation of baseball.

There is, however, one very specific wrinkle. In these tournaments, there are no off days. The first set of series takes place over seven consecutive days. As soon as the last series is decided, the next round begins the following day. You could, in theory, win the first round in seven games, win the second round in seven games, and end up playing on at least 18 straight days even if you sweep or get swept in the third round. Read the rest of this entry »

This is the seventh in a series of baseball-themed lessons we’re calling FanGraphs Prep. In light of so many parents suddenly having their school-aged kids learning from home, we hope is that these units offer a thoughtfully designed, baseball-themed supplement to the school work your student might already be doing. The first, second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth units can be found here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Overview: A short unit centered on calculating rolling averages. Calculating the mean, median, and mode are fundamental concepts in math. But when we’re dealing with a dataset spread out over weeks, months, or years, simply calculating the average value for the entire dataset hides the data’s peaks and valleys. For a baseball player, those are the hot and cold streaks that everyone goes through during the season.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify and apply a rolling average.
• Explain how changing an interval affects interpretation.
• Consider the potential uses of a rolling average in baseball.

Target Grade-Level: 9-10

Daily Activities:
Day 1
Khris Davis famously hit .247 four seasons in a row from 2015–2018. If we take his total hits and total at-bats over those four seasons, it’s no surprise that his combined batting average is .247.

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With baseball scheduled to return in a couple of weeks, I wanted to give everyone an update on how FanGraphs is doing business-wise. For those of you who are returning to the site for the first time since the season was postponed, a lot has happened since you last visited.

You can read all about what’s been going on here, here, and here, but the quick recap is this: When the season was postponed, our traffic decreased by over 70% and ad rates declined by as much as 45%, causing an 80% decrease in ad revenue, which is far and away our largest source of site revenue.

We asked you for help in sustaining the site and you’ve come through in overwhelming fashion over the past four months, giving us some breathing room to try to weather the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. We were also able to secure funding through the second round of the Paycheck Protection Program, which was another boon to our short-term viability. We are incredibly grateful to everyone who helped keep the site alive. We would not be here today without you.

But that doesn’t mean we don’t still need your support and assistance. We still have a long way to go. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the defining features of late 1990s baseball was the battle between three young, superstar shortstops: Alex Rodriguez of the Seattle Mariners, Derek Jeter of the New York Yankees, and Nomar Garciaparra of the Boston Red Sox. There were the occasional interlopers, such as Barry Larkin in his late-career surge and Jay Bell with the Diamondbacks in the midst of his second wind, but A-Rod, Jeter, and Garciaparra were the big three at the top of the leaderboards. The debate surrounding these three shortstops was very much in the public eye, with the trio at the top of the sport in terms of both name recognition and performance.

We’ve been blessed with a flurry of phenom shortstops since then, but having three multi-talented players at the position who were also elite offensive performers was rather novel at the time. Cal Ripken Jr., Alan Trammell, and Robin Yount came the closest in living memory, but that fight was short-lived as Yount eventually moved to the outfield. To find another three this good, you’d have to jump back 60 years to the days of Lou Boudreau, Luke Appling, and Arky Vaughan. Read the rest of this entry »

Darren O’Day isn’t your typical submariner. While most pitchers with down-under arm angles live down in the zone, O’Day features a lot of four-seamers up, and he’s thrived while doing so. Over his 12 big-league seasons, the 37-year-old right-hander has logged a 2.55 ERA and fanned better than a batter per nine innings. Since the start of the 2015 season, his K/9 is an eye-opening 13.1.

O’Day, whose best seasons have come with the Baltimore Orioles, is currently with the Atlanta Braves. He discussed his pitching M.O., and explained why his “Jenny Finch” is such an effective weapon, in a recent phone conversation.

———

David Laurila: You’re atypical in that you work up in the zone from a low arm angle. How did that come to be?

Darren O’Day: “When I was a rookie — kind of a scared rookie — I did what the team told me to do. My short time with the Mets, as well. I pitched down in the zone, because I’m a sidearmer, a submariner, and they wanted groundballs. They didn’t care about strikeouts as much back then; they just wanted quick outs, which was kind of the philosophy of the game.

“Then I bounced to my third team, the Rangers, about a year after [breaking into the big leagues]. I kind of said, ‘Forget about that. I’m going to pitch the way I want and figure out if I’m good enough to be here.’ That’s when I started pitching up in the zone, in 2009, and you saw the strikeout numbers go up a little bit.

“That’s really been the big paradigm shift in baseball, and it’s kind of ‘the chicken or the egg’ — did the high damage come first, or did the need for the swing-and-miss come first? But that’s what everybody wants, even if it costs you a couple more pitches per inning.” Read the rest of this entry »