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This morning, we considered the catcher position. This afternoon, the positional power rankings take us out to left field.

Has batted ball data and modern defensive positioning altered the defensive spectrum? It likely won’t surprise readers to learn that the average wRC+ by position starts with first base and right field, but it may be revelatory to learn that the gap between right and left field has been pretty wide. The last four years, the average right fielder has produced an average wRC+ 4.75 ticks higher than his counterpart in left. The offensive bar at third base has also been higher on average than in left field during the last four years.

Why? Perhaps improved defensive positioning on the infield has enabled more bat-centric players to play third base when, in years past, they’d be at first. Most hitters are right-handed, and increased focus on pulling the ball in the air could have quickly made defensive range in left field more important than it has been in the past. The average sprint speed among left fielders is now on par with that at shortstop. Is it a long term, tectonic shift that should impact things like prospect evaluation? It’s hard to say definitively at this point because so much about the game is changing and still has the potential to change. But it’s worth discussing — eventually. For now, here are our current left fielders. Read the rest of this entry »

One of my favorite sporting events of the year is just around the corner. And no, I’m not referring to Opening Day, though it indeed fits both conditions. I am, of course, talking about March Madness.

For a stat nut like me, March Madness is the perfect time of year. It combines sports with both probability and unpredictability. It’s also quite fun to see fans from all over the country supporting their local universities and alma maters in the biggest basketball tournament (and workplace distraction) in the United States.

The only thing missing from March Madness is a baseball spin. But for those like me who enjoy both the Madness and Opening Day, I have a solution: the perfect baseball-themed March Madness bracket. When I say “perfect,” I don’t mean literally perfect. Unfortunately, there is just a 1 in 9.2 quintillion chance that this bracket (or any other bracket) will achieve perfection.

It is perfect, though, in another sense. The second qualifier, “baseball-themed,” is important. This bracket can indeed call itself the perfect baseball-themed bracket. Let me show you how.

The process behind this is rather simple. I compiled all 68 teams in the tournament, and using Baseball-Reference’s Draft Index, was able to easily search every major league player to come from one of these schools. I then ranked each school by total WAR produced by those players.

I should note that this is only in the MLB Draft era (1965-present), and that this list only includes players who were drafted from said school. For example, if Devan Fink played baseball at Michigan but then transferred to the University of Florida and was subsequently drafted out of Florida, the Gators would get all of the credit for having harbored Devan Fink.

Without further ado, the rankings: Read the rest of this entry »

Back in 2011, the Yankees had a lot of fun after signing two aging starters to minor league contracts, when they brought on Bartolo Colon and Freddy Garcia. Colon was deemed to be done by many. He went so far as to get a stem cell injection in his shoulder to give it another go. Garcia had a so-so season in 2010 and was working with significantly diminished stuff from his prime, but the two combined for 4.8 WAR, helping the Yankees on the way to a division title. Eight years later, New York has signed Gio Gonzalez to a minor league deal. He will earn $3 million if he reaches the big leagues, with incentives based on games started. He has the ability to opt-out on April 20 should he not receive a major league assignment. The circumstances that led to signing Gonzalez now, and Colon and Garcia then, are different, but the best-case scenario might be the same: big bang for the buck from a veteran arm.

Normally, there are five starting pitchers in a set rotation; two of the Yankees’ are injured this spring. Luis Severino, the staff ace, has an inflamed rotator cuff and is expected to be out until May. CC Sabathia is recovering from angioplasty and right knee surgery, and is projected to return sometime in April. That leaves two spots open beyond the cast of James Paxton, Masahiro Tanaka, and J.A. Happ.

The Yankees already have depth arms with major league starting experience in Domingo German, Jonathan Loaisiga, and Luis Cessa. German and Cessa in particular are having pretty good springs, but we all know that spring training can be a bit of a mirage. Those three combined for 1.8 WAR last year, which isn’t inspiring. But they are young and have shown flashes of promise, so it is possible that they could break out this year. For now, they are talented question marks. And even if the Yankees decide to carry two of the three, they would still face issues when it comes to rotation depth. As we’ve seen from the 2016 Dodgers, anything could happen to human beings who throw baseballs for living. Read the rest of this entry »

After Craig Edwards and Rian Watt surveyed the current state of second and third basemen yesterday, our positional power rankings continue today with catcher.

The catching position hit an 11-year low in wRC+ (84) and also dipped below 50 WAR for the first time in that same span (49.9). Just two guys topped 4.0 WAR, and neither Yasmani Grandal (4.9) nor J.T. Realmuto (4.8) reached a full 5.0 wins. Compare that to just five years ago, when five guys had at least 5.0 WAR and two of them rounded to eight wins: Yan Gomes (5.3), Rene Rivera (5.3), Russell Martin (6.5), Buster Posey (7.8), and Jonathan Lucroy (8.1). Part of the issue is that teams are much more open to splitting the duties among multiple players, which makes it tougher for even the top end to generate big numbers. In 2014, there were 23 catchers with at least 400 plate appearances, but that figure dipped to just 15 a year ago.

The 2019 pool has already lost a stalwart with Salvador Perez needing Tommy John surgery, although he hasn’t topped 1.0 WAR since 2014 and has surpassed an 89 wRC+ just once in that same time frame (103 in 2017). The position is aging and hasn’t backfilled with prospects quickly enough to replace the old guard. Looking at those top performers from 2014, we see that they are all still playing but managed just a combined 6.9 (nice) WAR despite four of the five logging at least 350 plate appearances.

Do not fret, though, the backfill is on the way! Danny Jansen debuted last year but will play out his rookie season in 2019. Francisco Mejia has essentially had sips of coffee each of the last two years and still holds rookie eligibility. Meanwhile, 10 other catchers made it into our Top 100 Prospects list, including three in the Top 50: Keibert Ruiz for the Dodgers (15), Sean Murphy for the Athletics (35), and Joey Bart for the Giants (41). Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter at length about Mike Trout’s extension, why he may have wanted to stay with the Angels, what makes him different from other players, and why he’s underpaid despite his record contract, then preview the 2019 Houston Astros (44:38) with The Athletic’s Astros beat writer Jake Kaplan, and the 2019 Detroit Tigers (1:15:05) with Detroit Free Press Tigers beat writer Anthony Fenech.

Audio intro: Heatmiser, "Why Did I Decide to Stay?"
Audio interstitial 1: Neil Finn, "Astro"
Audio interstitial 2: John Doe and The Sadies, "Country Club"
Audio outro: Flamin’ Groovies, "The First One’s Free"

Link to Ben’s Trout extension article
Link to Sam’s Trout extension article
Link to Sam’s article about Trout on every team
Link to story about MLB considering raising minor-league salaries
Link to Banished To The Pen’s team preview posts
Link to preorder The MVP Machine

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In 2008, when Dan Turkenkopf was the first to quantify the value of pitch framing, he noted that it appeared to be alarmingly important. Bill Letson was similarly astounded when he calculated the size of the effect in 2010. Max Marchi and Mike Fast each took a turn in 2011, finding large and highly correlated catcher values despite using different methods. Other sabermetric luminaries have contributed sophisticated methods and sanity checks, some of which I’ll touch on below. And yet, this terrifically important, seemingly well-established, and impressively repeatable defensive skill has been left out when calculating FanGraphs player WAR and ignored when Steamer forecasts pitchers and catchers. . . until now.

In what follows, I’ll briefly lay out a series of steps for calculating how many framing runs each catcher contributed as well as and how many extra strikes each pitcher was granted (or, in some cases, earned). This much has all been done and clearly described before thanks to Dan Brooks and Harry Pavlidis; that research was updated and expanded upon by Pavlidis and Jonathan Judge. I’ll then compare the values I’ve obtained to the ones created by Baseball Prospectus, StatCorner, and Sports Info Solutions and demonstrate (I hope) that those extra strikes really do result in extra strikeouts and fewer walks. Lastly, I’ll discuss what this means for Steamer forecasts.

Modeling the Strike Zone

It all starts with the strike zone and I started by using generalized additive models to estimate the probability of a strike in any count, to either left-handed or right-handed batters at each location in and around the plate. On the first pass (shown below), I created strike zones averaged across seasons and, on the second pass, looked for changes in the strike zone by season. The blue contour lines in the images below show where strike calls are a coin flip and the red dashed lines show where we’d expect a 25% or 75% chance of a strike. If you’re read Matt Carruth or Jon Roegele, you’ll be unsurprised to see a small 0-2 strike zones (shown in the upper right facets) and large 3-0 strike zones (in the lower left).

Read the rest of this entry »

Update: An earlier bug that impacted updated pitcher WAR has now been resolved. The pitcher tables below have been updated to reflect that. Thanks to everyone who pointed out the issue!

I’m very pleased to announce that FanGraphs has finally added catcher framing data to the site, with full thanks to Jared Cross, who you may know as the co-creator of the Steamer projections. We’ve also incorporated catcher framing into WAR.

Including catcher framing in WAR has been a topic of internal debate at FanGraphs for the past half-decade. The problem has never been with the inclusion of framing numbers on the catcher side of things. That’s a fairly simple addition. The problem has always been what to do with the pitchers. For instance, the 2011 Brewers were some 40 runs above average in catcher framing. When you add those 40 runs to catchers, do you subtract 40 runs from pitchers? As it turns out, you do, but those runs are not attributed equally to each pitcher:

While most of the pitchers on the 2011 Brewers benefited from Jonathan Lucroy’s otherworldly framing, Randy Wolf was stuck with George Kottaras most of the time. In this instance, the entire Brewers pitching staff, with the exception of Randy Wolf, was a little bit worse once catcher framing is taken into account than their previous, non-catcher framing inclusive WAR would indicate.

Exactly how do you add catcher framing to WAR you ask?

For catchers, you take the catcher framing runs above average, divide by the runs to wins converter, and add it to your existing WAR total.

WAR = (Batting + Base Running + Fielding + Catcher Framing + Replacement Level) / Runs to Wins

On the pitcher side, we adjust FIP by the catcher framing runs above average per 9 innings. If Zack Greinke’s 2011 FIP was 3.00, and he was helped to the extent of 0.31 framing runs per 9 innings, we now use 3.31 in the WAR calculation instead of the original 3.00 FIP. We also adjust the pitcher’s dynamic runs to wins converter. In Greinke’s case, this would increase his personal run environment and also increase the runs to wins converter.

WAR = (((League FIP – (FIP + Catcher Framing / 9)) / Dynamic Runs to Wins Converter + Replacement Level) * IP / 9) * Game Start Leverage / 2

The RA9-WAR calculation has been adjusted in the exact same way.

Let’s take a look at how the inclusion of catcher framing has changed things:

And the Pitchers, where the differences are considerably smaller:

Now you know everything there is to know about how we added catcher framing to WAR. Please note the following:

• Catcher Framing (abbreviated as FRM) is available on the leaderboards and player pages in the fielding sections.
• WAR has been updated with catcher framing data everywhere WAR is available on the site.
• Catcher Framing data is available in batter and pitcher sections of the leaderboard as a custom stat.
• Fielding (the WAR component) now includes Catcher Framing runs above average.
• Steamer projections and depth chart projections both include projected catcher framing for catchers and pitchers.

Mike Trout is a better player than Bryce Harper and Manny Machado combined. He’s been more than twice as valuable as each of those players in their young careers. And yet Mike Trout is about to agree to a contract that, per ESPN’s Jeff Passan, will pay him like he’s one of the greatest players of this generation instead of potentially being the greatest player of this century, and one of the greatest baseball talents of all time. As first reported by Passan, Mike Trout and the Angels have agreed to a 12-year deal worth $430 million, with Bill Shaikan reporting the deal will come in at $426.5 million. Because Trout was already owed $66.5 million over the next two seasons, the contract is functionally a 10-year extension worth $360 million. Trout is essentially accepting something similar to the Harper/Machado deals two years in advance. This is not the first time Trout has made this choice, which is very much a personal decision, but it is one that has cost him potentially hundreds of millions of dollars.

In 2014, Trout was coming off an eight-win season, which itself came on the heels of two 10-win campaigns. His 29.2 WAR mark through his age-22 season was the best in baseball history. Before he signed a six-year, $144.5 million contract giving away three free agent seasons, Dave Cameron wrote about the potential for a contract extension, and expected a figure more than $100 million higher. When Trout actually signed, Cameron followed up:

You don’t need another 1,500 word explanation of why this is a hilarious steal for the Angels. Trout would have made something like $50 to $60 million in arbitration had he gone year to year, so the Angels are basically getting three free agent years for $85 to $95 million. This doesn’t come anywhere near Trout’s value, and Trout has left an enormous amount of money on the table. Even if his goal was to reach free agency again and sign a second monstrous contract, he still is worth so far more than the roughly $30 million per year he signed away three free agent years for.

That bargain five years ago made the current one possible. Because Trout had two more years left until free agency (instead of entering the market last offseason), he was limited to the Angels when it came to contract partners. Because the Angels’ risk of losing Trout wasn’t going to present itself for another two seasons, any new contract with him was going to come with a discount. In this case, the discount meant signing a deal like Harper and Machado’s instead of one like Alex Rodriguez’s.

After Harper and Machado signed their contracts, I attempted to compare the two deals because it can be difficult to put a 13-year deal and a 10-year deal for differing amounts into proper context. The present-day values of each contract is below, with the numbers translated into a 10-year deal, and Trout’s contract listed with just the extension (2021-2030), as well as with the two years Trout was already guaranteed (2019-2030). The numbers have been updated now that we know Trout is paid $36 million the next two seasons and $35.45 million each year beginning in 2021.

The Angels appear to have looked at Mike Trout and said, “We know we owe you about $65 million over the next few seasons. Keep that and we will give you the Harper/Machado contract right now.” Trout said yes, and now the Angels have one the best players in baseball history locked in for his age-29 through age-38 seasons. Even when you factor in the two years Trout is already owed, that $400 million is significantly below his value, assuming that Machado and Harper are worth $300 million. Those two years left until free agency meant a massive discount for the Angels.

When we call this deal a bargain, we can look at Mike Trout’s contract relative to Harper and Machado’s, and know that Trout is only receiving a little more money despite being a lot better. We can also look at potential future value. I love to look at comps and try to get a sense of a player’s future, but comps aren’t really fair for Mike Trout because there are barely a handful of players who even come close to his level of play. Consider Trout’s career trajectory by year, and the number of players ahead of him by WAR.

Ty Cobb the only comp for Mike Trout. Ty Cobb! Trout ranks third right now through age-27 even though he hasn’t even played the season yet, and he needs just four wins to pass Cobb and Mickey Mantle. He’s already surpassed the average Hall of Famer. Maybe you think that the early start to Trout’s career inflates the numbers. Even taking away his first two seasons, from age-22 through age-26, the only players with more WAR are Mantle and Cobb. Even just looking at the last three years, which includes an injury-shortened 2017 campaign, only Babe Ruth, Mantle, Rogers Hornsby, Jimmie Foxx, Lou Gehrig, Tris Speaker, Alex Rodriguez, and Cobb are ahead of Trout. If Trout plays like any of those players, he’ll cost something like $4 million to $5 million per win over the last 10 years of the deal. If we wanted to conservatively estimate the current value of a win on the free agent market at $9 million without any inflation, Trout wouldn’t need to age like one of the 10-best players in history — aging like the 50th would still be a good value.

The deal is such a slam dunk for the Angels that it feels a little silly to talk about what it means in baseball terms. The Angels get to keep one of the best players in history. They can now plan for the future knowing they have Trout. It would have been fun to see what an all-in Angels team would’ve looked like in 2020 with Trout a pending free agent, but hopefully this deal means we get to see the fun of a franchise that is secure in its star ensuring that that star gets a ring. After all, Mike Trout in the playoffs is good for baseball.

When it comes to adjusting the biggest contracts in baseball history for inflation, this one is a little tough to assess. We have that $430 million, but we also have that $363.5 million that doesn’t kick in until 2021. To provide some historical context — as I did for Machado and Harper earlier this offseason and later updated — I’ve included two Trout contracts below. The first is the $426.5 million figure representing the total value of the money owed to Trout; the second is Trout’s extension, assuming 5% inflation in the following two seasons.

When stacked up against comparable players and comparable contracts, Mike Trout was a humongous bargain in his last contract and will be one in his the next, but if we can play devil’s advocate a little, it’s tougher to determine how much Trout actually cost himself. Let’s say he had been a free agent last offseason like he would have without a contract extension. What would his contract have been? There’s a reasonable argument for 15 years and $600 million. Look at the Alex Rodriguez contract above. In another two years, might $500 million been on the table? That might have been what Trout was looking at, but what if last year the market didn’t quite develop as he had hoped, and he ended up with just $500 million? What if the top offer had only been $400 million after 2020? Does that seem so far-fetched given the way these past two offseasons have progressed?

Trout is now set to make around $460 million for the remainder of his free agent years. He jumped the gun twice and took a discount. The value he will provide will far exceed the money he is set to earn. It’s possible, however, because of the way spending has progressed, that Trout has actually cost himself little to no money by signing these extensions. Mike Trout was always going to be a bargain; we have a hard time wrapping our heads around the number he’s really worth. He’s the best player in baseball, and simultaneously the most underrated one. That’s a ridiculous feat, but with Mike Trout, we’ve grown accustomed to ridiculous feats.