At a basic level, nearly every piece at FanGraphs represents an attempt to answer a question. What is the value of an opt-out in a contract? Why do the Brewers continue to fare so poorly in the projected standings? How do people behave in the eighth inning of a spring-training game? Those were the questions asked, either explicitly or implicitly, by Jeff Sullivan, Jay Jaffe, and Meg Rowley just yesterday.

This piece also begins with question — probably one that has occurred to a number of readers. It concerns how we evaluate pitchers and how best to evaluate pitchers. I’ll present the question momentarily. First, a bit of background.

Fielding Independent Pitching, or FIP, is a well-known tool for estimating ERA. FIP attempts to isolate a pitcher’s contribution to run-prevention. It also serves as a better predictor of future ERA than ERA itself. The formula for FIP is elegant, including just three variables: strikeouts, walks, and homers. It does not include balls in play. That said, one would be mistaken for assuming that FIP excludes any kind of measurement for what happens when the bat hits the ball. Let this be a gentle reminder that home runs both (a) are a type of batted ball and (b) represent a major component of FIP. There is, in other words, some consideration of contact quality in FIP.

Expected wOBA, or xwOBA, is a newer metric, the product of Statcast data. xwOBA is calculated with run-value estimates derived from exit velocity and launch angle. Basically, xwOBA calculates the average run value of every batted ball for a hitter (or allowed by a pitcher), adds in the defense-independent numbers, and arrives as a wOBA-like figure. The advantage of xwOBA is that it removes the variance of batted-ball results and uses a “Platonic” value instead.

The introduction of Statcast’s batted-ball data is exciting and seems like it might help to better isolate a pitcher’s contributions. But does it? This is where I was compelled to ask my own, relatively simple question — namely, is xwOBA better for assessing pitcher performance than the more traditional FIP? What I found, however, is that the answer isn’t so simple.

The differences between FIP and xwOBA, as well as the similarities, deserve some exploration.

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I’ll get to Lucas Giolito in a moment. But first, James Paxton. Paxton has always had pretty good stuff, but for a while, he didn’t know quite where it was going. Here are two screenshots from before Paxton broke out.

Paxton would reach back, and, with his glove arm, he’d reach up. Like, way up. And that sort of set the tone, because Paxton’s throwing arm would then come over the top. There are good over-the-top pitchers — there are great over-the-top pitchers — but Paxton didn’t become one. Not quite. Early in 2016, Paxton changed his angles. Almost instantly, he gained some gas, and he gained some control. Paxton turned into an ace-level starter, when he’s been healthy enough to start, at least. Two more screenshots, now.

Paxton’s glove arm has calmed down. And while he’s still not a side-armer or anything, Paxton has lowered his arm slot. His release point is down several inches, from where it had been. The way Paxton describes it, this is his natural slot, and it certainly looks more comfortable to the eye. Paxton has settled on better mechanics, and it’s among the reasons why he’s gotten so good.

To Giolito, now. There’s something I was just never able to shake.

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On a Bay Area edition of EW’s season-preview series, Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about the resolution of their free-agent-contracts draft, the Lance Lynn, Neil Walker, and Jake Arrieta signings, the offseason market in review, and a Stephen Hawking baseball connection, then preview the 2018 Giants (32:07) with SB Nation’s Grant Brisbee, and the 2018 Athletics (1:07:20) with the San Francisco Chronicle’s Susan Slusser.

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This should not be a riddle. There are too many riddles in this universe, this country, this state, this zip code. We accept there will always be some unanswerable questions; it’s part of the bargain for living in a boundless, knotty orb. But this is baseball. The day of the apex of human knowledge – or the robot uprising – is one day closer, and a fair number of us spend a large amount of our time thinking about the game. So what’s the right way to catch a fly ball?

Two hands? That’s what I was told. I’m sure you were also told this. You could probably still hear an elder screaming “two hands” so loudly it traversed time and space and occasionally still echoes in your head. Using both of your hands was the “proper” way to handle anything. Only a neanderthal would pass the carrots at the dinner table with one hand, et al.

Juan Lagares uses two hands when he makes a routine catch.

https://gfycat.com/YoungFavorableDoe

But not when he’s chasing down a fly ball trying to run away from him.

https://gfycat.com/CarelessDamagedChuckwalla

Nobody uses two hands when they have to chase a ball in the gap or when they have to dive. There’s no time, even for a guy like Lagares. Yet it’s just as important to secure a baseball and lock it in a vise no matter how little time you have to react. So I ask again, and this is important since ground balls are quickly growing extinct: how am I catching this fly ball?

“I was always taught to use two hands.” That’s what Mets right fielder Ryan Church said in May 2009. “I mean, if you have to reach for it well that’s one thing, but if you’re there waiting for it, then yeah, sure, two hands.”

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Jake Arrieta is now officially a member of the Phillies. For a few weeks, this arrangement was feeling increasingly inevitable, as Scott Boras wasn’t finding longer-term offers, and as the Phillies have had tens of millions of dollars of payroll space. The Phillies are getting closer to relevance, and, among the would-be Arrieta suitors, they have to worry about efficient spending the least. So, here we are, with Arrieta having had his formal press-conference introduction. The Phillies still aren’t anyone’s wild-card favorites, but Arrieta unquestionably makes them stronger. The rotation is now deeper than just Aaron Nola.

The player in question is interesting enough on his own. Entire books could be written about Arrieta’s career, and he still has another few chapters to go. Arrieta has experienced dizzying highs and unthinkable lows, which makes him out to be something inspiring. But let me warn you right now, this is not a post about Arrieta’s professional achievements. It’s not a post about whether I think Arrieta is going to age gracefully. This is a post about the contract. The inanimate paper contract. Specifically, this is a post about a clause in the contract. You should leave now if you don’t care about this. But with the Jake Arrieta deal, the Phillies and Scott Boras have agreed to something new.

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By most measures, the 2017 season was a very good one for the Brewers. On the heels of back-to-back sub-.500 seasons, the first of which saw them shift into rebuilding mode, they spent over two months atop the NL Central, from mid-May to late July, and remained in the Wild Card hunt until the season’s final weekend. Their 86 wins and second-place finish in the NL Central represented the franchise’s best showing since 2011. They made a big splash in late January, signing free-agent center fielder Lorenzo Cain and trading for left fielder Christian Yelich. They made some lower-cost moves as well, most notably adding a solid starter, Jhoulys Chacin, to a rotation that finished in the NL’s top five in ERA and WAR.

It’s not unreasonable to think that those improvements would put a team that missed a playoff spot by a single game in the thick of this year’s race. Yet, as of publication, the Brewers are projected to finish just 78-84. What in the name of Bernie Brewer is going on?

It bears repeating that projections are not destiny and that, at the team level, the error bars on a given year of preseason projections tend to average six to eight wins in either direction. The 2017 Brewers were one of those teams that push such averages higher, because as of Opening Day last year, they were forecast to win just 70 games. In terms of overachievement, they matched the Diamondbacks (77 projected wins, 93 actual wins) for the majors’ largest discrepancy; the Giants, projected for 88 wins but finishing with 64, had the largest discrepancy in the other direction.

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We tire of spring training pretty quickly, but I think it’s because we’re watching it wrong. We burden it with too many expectations, chief among them that it will look and feel like real baseball. Of course, it isn’t really baseball yet — John Andreoli is there — but the contrast of its not-baseballness to the baseballness of the regular season is illuminating. It teaches us things.

The eighth inning is a particularly good time for such lessons. It’s such a funky inning! It’s good for people watching, too, because most of the folks we know have hit the showers. The almost-baseball gets weird, and the faces become unfamiliar. With that in mind, I watched the eighth inning of the available broadcasts for Sunday, March 4. Here are some of the people I met, the baseball I saw, and the things I learned.

Rockies vs. Angels
I’m not especially fond of jerseys with no names on them. I get it: there are lots of dudes running around spring training. Prospects and non-roster invitees, big names and big numbers. The “who” of a guy can get lost in all that shuffling between big-league camp and the back fields.

There is an elegance to the nameless jersey, a sort of brutal honesty. It says, “You can probably look away now. Go grab a hotdog.” You know, how a jersey talks? It signals to the crowd that we can try to beat traffic. But it feels so impersonal, and it would cost so little to give every player the dignity of his name. It’d give moms and grandmas so much more to go on at Thanksgiving. “Here’s my boy.” Nameless jerseys are awful in a medium way most of the time, but occasionally they’re a kindness.

https://gfycat.com/FarComplexKakapo

Brian Mundell won’t talk about this moment at Thanksgiving. Despite all his hard work and years of practice, he fell down. We might be inspired to say, “Aw, buddy,” and gift him a little sympathetic frown, but we aren’t quite sure who we’re looking at. The anonymity of his jersey protects him. Nolan Arenado probably won’t ask him about it. He won’t become a Twitter joke, the fringe prospect who fell down. When he’s getting gas in Scottsdale, a kid buying gum won’t smirk. He’ll get to move on from this small bit of failure until he doesn’t remember it anymore, in part because it was a minor moment in spring, and in part because he’s 77. And who’s 77? Just some nameless guy. Could be anyone, really.

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A few weeks ago, I wrote a piece for this site wherein I noted that the Chicago White Sox rotation was (a) projected to be very bad in 2018 and (b) composed to a great extent of starting pitchers of whom the following could be said: “That guy? Who knows what he’ll do this year.” My editor Carson Cistulli titled the piece “The White Sox’ Rotation Could Be Anything,” and he was right. The White Sox’ rotation could be anything, because it’s full of players whose track records cause most projection systems to raise their digital shoulders, put on their best Robert De Niro face, and shrug magnificently right in your face.

In the comments to that piece, some of you expressed an interest in reading more about variance in player projections. So, here are some words and tables on that subject.

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