Photo: Keith Allison

Before the 2017 season, Aroldis Chapman signed a near-record-setting contract to play for the Yankees. The club knew what they were getting, both on and off the field — they had traded Chapman to the Cubs earlier that year, and now they were bringing him back. More broadly, baseball knew what the Yankees were getting — a dominant closer with a dominant fastball. Just how much of an outlier was Chapman’s fastball? Well, when MLB created a fastest pitches leaderboard to show off Statcast, they added a button called the “Chapman filter.” In 2016, Chapman threw the thirty fastest pitches in the majors. It’s not much fun looking at a leaderboard that’s just one guy’s name over and over again.

Fast forward a year, and all the signs were trending downward. Chapman put up a 3.22 ERA and a 2.56 FIP in 2017, both the highest marks since his rookie year. He struck out a career-low 32.9% of the batters he faced (which is still pretty good for a career-low). His average fastball velocity declined by a mile an hour. By early 2018, he’d even been dethroned atop the fastest pitch leaderboard by Jordan Hicks. The human brain is an amazing pattern-matching machine, and we’ve seen this one plenty of times. Closers often break — it’s one of the reasons Chapman’s five-year contract was considered a risk when he signed it. The king has his reign, and then he dies. It’s natural.

Well, a funny thing happened on the way to irrelevance. Aroldis Chapman reinvented himself in 2018, and while he didn’t quite get back to his game-breaking 2014 highs, he recorded a 2.45 ERA and an even more absurd 2.09 FIP. He struck out 43.9% of the batters he faced, the second-highest rate of his career. How did he do it? Did he reach back a little further and take the velocity lead back from Hicks? Not even close, as his average fastball velocity declined another tick in 2018, and he finished a distant third in that category, the first time he wasn’t the hardest thrower in baseball since 2011. Instead, he leaned on his slider — one that may be the best in the game today. Read the rest of this entry »

Pitchers learn and develop different pitches, and they do so at varying stages of their lives. It might be a curveball in high school, a cutter in college, or a changeup in A-ball. Sometimes the addition or refinement is a natural progression — graduating from Pitching 101 to advanced course work — and often it’s a matter of necessity. In order to get hitters out as the quality of competition improves, a pitcher needs to optimize his repertoire.

In this installment of the series, we’ll hear from three pitchers — Jon Gray, Mark Gubicza, and Garrett Richards — on how they learned and developed their sliders.

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Jon Gray, Colorado Rockies

“I started throwing a slider in probably 2012. I first learned how to throw a slurve, and that taught me how to throw a slider. I remember my uncle teaching me to throw one. He was like, ‘Don’t be throwing curves. You need to throw slurves and cutters, so you don’t mess up your arm.’ He didn’t want any action on my wrist.

“I learned how to throw that, a slurve, which is kind of the basics of a slider. In high school, I didn’t really have a grip. I didn’t know how to hold one, I guess. I just kind of made up my own grip and went with it. I didn’t watch baseball growing up — I watched none — so it was kind of hard. Read the rest of this entry »

Some would say that Ahn Woo-Jin of the Kiwoom Heroes is the most high-profile pitching prospect in all of the Korea Baseball Organization (KBO). He has been a highly-touted arm since pitching for the Whimoon High School in the Daechi-dong area of Seoul, topping out at 156 kmph (around 97 mph) and showing solid feel for his secondary pitches. He also has the look of a hurler. He’s got the height (around 6-foot-3), a frame that could fill out as he grows, and long limbs. Ahn was drafted by the Heroes in the first round of the 2017 KBO Draft, and signed with a franchise-record six billion won (around $530,000) bonus.

The 19-year-old rookie’s 2018 regular season numbers weren’t pretty. He went 2-4, 7.19 ERA (5.74 FIP) with 46 strikeouts, 28 walks, and six home runs allowed in 41.1 IP. Besides the strikeouts, the numbers indicated a clear rawness from a kid who was the age equivalent of a college freshman. However, after a series of adjustments, he became a formidable force out of the pen in the 2018 postseason. In 15.2 IP, Ahn struck out 18 and walked only one, while allowing just two earned runs and a home run. A 15.2 IP sample size isn’t as big as 41.1 IP, but it seemed clear that the tweaks made a difference.

One of the masterminds of Ahn’s mechanical changes was his pitching coach, Brandon Knight. Knight is a man of ample pitching experience. The right-hander had a cup of coffee with the Yankees in 2001 and 2002, and with the Mets in 2008. He also pitched in Japan, Venezuela, and South Korea, and had a couple of independent league stints. In the KBO, Knight pitched for the Samsung Lions in 2009 and 2010, and the then-Nexen Heroes from 2011 to 2014. He made a solid impression pitching in Korea for the last few years of his pro career, going 48-38, with a 3.84 ERA in six seasons in the KBO. The Heroes hired Knight in late 2015 to be their pitching coordinator for the Futures League team and promoted him to pitching coach for the big league team in the middle of 2017 season. Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier today, Meg Rowley introduced this year’s positional power rankings. As a quick refresher, all 30 teams are ranked based on the projected WAR from our Depth Charts. Our staff then endeavors to provide you with some illuminating commentary to put those rankings in context. We begin this year’s series with first base.

A year ago, first base looked to be a deep position, with a familiar set of stars occupying the top tier of the rankings, impressive debutantes such as Cody Bellinger and Matt Olson entering their first full major league seasons, and some long-toiling veterans such as Yonder Alonso, Justin Smoak, and Eric Hosmer appearing to have finally figured out how to mash at the level expected for the position. As a group, first basemen had combined for a 117 wRC+ in 2017 (their highest mark since 2011) and 70.2 WAR (their highest mark since 2009).

Things didn’t go as planned for the position’s denizens in 2018. Paul Goldschmidt, Anthony Rizzo, and Joey Votto all got off to slow starts. Bellinger and Olson weren’t quite as impressive as they had been as rookies, with the former spending a lot of time in the outfield to boot. Hosmer, the recipient of the offseason’s biggest free agent contract, was a replacement level dud, and Alonso and Smoak both regressed. Joe Mauer faded after his best season since moving from catcher, Miguel Cabrera got hurt before he could rebound from a subpar 2017, and Chris Davis, who had been mediocre in 2017, turned in a season for the ages — but in the wrong way. And so on and so on. All told, first basemen’s production sank to a collective 108 wRC+ and 46.9 WAR in 2018, their lowest marks by either measure in our splits, which only go back to 2002 for such things. Collectively, their slugging percentage dropped from .487 to .438, and their on-base percentage from .347 to .333. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to the 2019 positional power rankings! As is tradition, over the next week and a half, we’ll be ranking every team by position. This is always something of a funny exercise. You read FanGraphs every day (thank you!) and are well-versed in the goings on of the offseason, glacial though they may have been at times. You probably know that Bryce Harper is on the Phillies, and that Manny Machado is a Padre, and that Brian McCann found his way back to Atlanta. You probably recall that Craig Kimbrel, who was tied with Kenley Jansen for the best individual reliever projection in last year’s iteration of this series, is still unsigned. You almost certainly do not remember every 30-something free agent who ended up on the Texas Rangers, but that’s ok. I’m the managing editor of FanGraphs, and I’ve been surprised by a few of those guys while watching spring training action. All of that is to say, you know what’s going on. And yet the anticipation of the season, the sound of wooden bats, and those clear, sunny days, makes you want to read even more about baseball and what it might look like over the next seven months or so. This is our answer to that impulse.

This post serves as an explainer for our approach to these rankings. If you’re new to our rankings, I hope it helps to clarify how they are compiled and what you might expect from them. If you’re a FanGraphs stalwart, I hope it is a useful reminder of what we’re up to. If you have a bit of time, here is the introduction to last year’s series. You can use the handy nav widget at the top to get a sense of where things stood before Opening Day 2018.

Unlike a lot of season previews, we don’t arrange ours by team or division. That is a perfectly good way to organize an exercise like this, but we see a few advantages to the way we do it. First, the positional rankings allow us to cover a team’s roster top to bottom, with stars and role players alike receiving some amount of scrutiny, while also placing those players (and the teams they play for) in their proper baseball context. By doing it this way, you can easily see how teams stack up against each other, get a sense of the overall strength of a position across the league, and spot places where a well-deployed platoon may end up having a bigger impact than an everyday regular who is just ok. We think all of that context helps to create a richer understanding of the state of things and a clearer picture of the season ahead. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh, Sam Miller, and Effectively Wild listener and Mike Trout Tier Patreon supporter Anthony Scheff banter about the Blue Jays raising salaries for minor leaguers, the team’s motivations for doing so, and whether other teams will follow suit, then answer listener emails about A.J. Hinch getting ejected in a split-squad spring training game, MLB’s demoralizing offseason and whether baseball is in any short-term trouble, and what qualifies as a pitcher’s “stuff,” plus Stat Blasts about the most two-year-old friendly game and the longest careers among players who only ever made the majors in September.

Audio intro: Martin Solveig & GTA, "Intoxicated"
Audio outro: Belle & Sebastian, "Lord Anthony"

Link to recent episode with Emily Waldon on minor-league pay
Link to Emily Waldon on minor leaguers’ lives
Link to Emily and Ken Rosenthal on the Blue Jays raising salaries
Link to John Lott on the Jays raising salaries
Link to Jeff on intentional walks in spring training
Link to Ben Bailey on intentional walks in spring training
Link to Hinch explaining why he was thrown out
Link to Bryan Curtis on baseball’s perceived decline
Link to box score of most two-year-old-friendly game
Link to instructions for finding MLB games on YouTube
Link to John Poff’s SABR bio
Link to live episode with Fernando Perez
Link to Episode 323 with Adrian Cardenas
Link to preorder The MVP Machine

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Chuck Cottier made his MLB debut in a star-studded environment. Playing second base, he was in the Milwaukee Braves lineup alongside the likes of Hank Aaron, Del Crandall and Eddie Mathews. The first ground ball he fielded on that April 1959 afternoon came off the bat of Roberto Clemente, on a pitch thrown by Warren Spahn. Harvey Haddix, who a month later would take a a perfect game into the 13th inning against the Braves, was on the mound for Pittsburgh.

Cottier’s first professional game was also memorable. Just 18 years old at the time — he’d signed at 17 out of a Grand Junction, Colorado high school — Cottier was playing for the Americus-Cordele Orioles in the Georgia-Florida League. It was 1954, and the minor league landscape was different than it is today.

“The lowest league was class D,” explained Cottier, who is now 83 years old and a special assistant to the general manager with the Washington Nationals. “From there it went to C, B, A, Double-A, Triple-A, and many of the organizations had two teams in each classification. We had three Triple-A teams at one time.”

Displaying a sharp-as-a-tack memory, the venerable baseball lifer told me that his first-ever game was played in Fitzgerald, Georgia, in a ballpark with a skinned infield. One play in particular stood out. Cottier remembers a “big left-handed hitter named Thompson” smashing a one-hop line drive that hit him just above the wrist, caromed over his shoulder, and rolled all the way to the fence.

Several hours later, his ride stopped rolling. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Meg witnessing actual baseball being played, her plans for watching the Mariners’ and Athletics’ international Opening Day matchup, Willians Astudillo’s spring training, the long list of 2019 and 2020 rules changes announced by MLB and the MLBPA, Meg’s new hires at FanGraphs, and Jessica Mendoza’s dual role with ESPN and the Mets, then preview the 2019 Indians (44:41) with senior writer for The Athletic Zack Meisel, and the 2019 White Sox (1:15:32) with The Athletic’s White Sox beat writer, James Fegan.

Audio intro: The 88, "The Real Thing"
Audio interstitial 1: The New Pornographers, "Jessica Numbers"
Audio interstitial 2: Eric B. & Rakim, "No Competition"
Audio outro: Pixies, "Into the White"

Link to video of Astudillo dinger
Link to Grant on time of game
Link to Ben’s article on the rules changes
Link to Gerald Schifman on teams exploiting minor-league options
Link to Schifman on the rise of MLB’s minimum earners
Link to Meg’s announcement about new hires
Link to Zack on Mario Kart
Link to March to Friendship website
Link to March to Friendship Facebook post
Link to preorder The MVP Machine

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Episode 857

Lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen joins the program to discuss MLB’s recent rule changes, what they portend for baseball, how they will alter the aesthetics of the game, and how necessary they are for its health. We then turn our attention to the Houston Astros and all the many rumors that surround their approach to scouting and player development, before devoting some time to a consideration of FanGraphs’ recent trip to the greater Phoenix area, and the baseball games we watched while we were there.

Be sure to follow FanGraphs’ dedicated prospect twitter account, FanGraphs Prospects, for prospect-related news and pre-draft and spring training updates to The BOARD.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @megrowler on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximate 1 hour 5 min play time.)

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One of the more contentious issues facing Major League Baseball, the Major League Baseball Players Association, and baseball’s fans is the potential use of a pitch clock at the major league level.

The pitch clock, which has been in use in the minor leagues since 2015, was not among the wealth of changes announced in the latest agreement between MLB and the MLBPA, but it has been present and enforced during all of the 2019 spring training games played. Or so we think.

As it turns out, in MLB’s initial announcement of the spring training pitch clock, the league made one very important point:

Later in Spring Training, and depending on the status of negotiations with the Major League Baseball Players Association, umpires will be instructed to begin assessing ball-strike penalties for violations.

The pitch clock has seemingly been tabled in the mid-CBA rule change discussions, with Jeff Passan reporting in late-February that MLB will “scuttle the implementation of a pitch clock until at least 2022.” At least to me, that did not necessarily mean that the pitch clock would automatically go unenforced during the remainder of spring training, but despite there having been no announcement to this effect, that appears to be exactly what happened. Beat writers haven’t tweeted about its use; no stories have been written about a rattled pitcher who had a ball called against him; league officials haven’t commented on it. The clock has largely faded from the rule change conversation since Passan’s report. But I was still curious whether it was really being used as intended, and what effect that might have on time of game.

From the beginning of spring training through March 10, I recorded the game time of every single game, with the exclusion of exhibition games that weren’t played between two major league clubs. In my 254-game sample, I found that the average spring training game lasted two hours and 57 minutes. Read the rest of this entry »