Back in December, Eno polled a number of front-office executives with questions regarding the changing nature of the game.

It was the perfect time for such a survey, as the game is evolving rapidly in many areas: in swing plane, bullpen usage, and even (maybe) the composition of the ball itself. The depth and volume of data have changed. The game has always undergone transformation, but rarely at this pace — and, really, it’s a universal phenomenon across many industries in this age of rapidly advancing information and technology.

But it was one comment Eno extracted — one unrelated to swings or home runs or fastball velocity or breaking-ball usage — that stuck with me:

One source felt that this mode of analysis was so pervasive that it ended up changing the way we digest baseball, even more than just changing the game itself.

“I do think there’s been a fairly extreme shift in the makeup of front offices and even media coverage,” said the higher-up. “The general framework of a lot of conversations about the game has really changed. Roster-building is a year-round sport, and it does tend to feel at times like we’re all a part of some meta theater that’s somewhat loosely attached to dudes playing on a field. The focus of what it means to be a fan or follow a team has shifted at least somewhat from simply knowing the players and what happened in games toward some bigger picture perspective that accounts for assets in the farm system, where you are on the win curve, and how efficiently resources are being utilized.”

That one reads FanGraphs.

The way we consume the sport has changed. This very website is evidence of that. We typically allocate fewer words to the daily box scores here at FanGraphs than we do, say, a large transaction.

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After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for half a decade. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Houston Astros. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Batters
Houston Astros position players recorded the majors’ top adjusted batting line by a considerable margin in 2017 and the largest collective WAR figure, as well. One, employing logic, would anticipate that the return of the entire starting lineup from last year’s team would render the offense a strength for the 2018 edition of the club. The numbers from Dan Szymborski’s computer support that hypothesis.

Jose Altuve (688 PA, 5.7 zWAR) and Carlos Correa (590, 5.7) belong to that class of American League player who would appear on a preseason shortlist for MVP if Mike Trout didn’t already represent the entirety of the preseason shortlist for MVP. Alex Bregman (612, 3.8) and George Springer (616, 4.4), meanwhile, are probably All-Stars. That foursome composes the core of the offense.

As for a weakness among the starting nine, that’s a relative term in the context of this club. Evan Gattis (448, 1.8 zWAR) has the trademark power of a designated hitter but not the trademark other attributes. His projected 108 wRC+ isn’t ideal at DH. But that forecast is also based on his offensive output from years in which he’s made a number of defensive appearances behind the plate. His production figures to improve if he’s not exposed to the slings and arrows of catching.

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A lot of our experience of baseball centers around being annoyed. Baseball has long, looping narratives, bits of fun, and good old thrills, but it is also full of small paper cuts. We’re annoyed our guy didn’t lay off one or that a call didn’t go our way. Ugh, really, ump!? We give our heads a shake and our shoulders a shrug. We sigh. Left out of October again. A summer day is too hot; the seat in front of us is occupied by a too-tall person. Our favorite team is unlucky, or underwhelming. Maybe they stink, but in the little ways. In the ways that bug you.

Baseball is constantly fretting that its games take too long. Some of that fretting is the result of knowing that most of us have to get to work in the morning, but mostly, the fretting comes from knowing that annoying stuff is just the worst. Annoying stuff makes us angry. Not in big, raging ways. But like when you bang your knee on the edge of your coffee table or spill soda on white denim. In the ways that wear you out and make you just a bit less likely to come back.

Part of baseball’s job is to safeguard us from these paper cuts, especially when we’re most vulnerable to them. January is a time to pine for baseball; our annoyance is directed at the game’s absence. We forget what it’s like to be cold and irked and in a rain delay. We forget Pedro Baez’s interminable delivery. We forget mound visits.

Last week, Jeff Passan reported the details of a memo outlining MLB’s proposed pace-of-play rule changes for the 2018 season. They come with a pitch clock and requirements that catchers and infielders and coaches more or less stay put:

The restrictions on mound visits are particularly acute. Any time a coach, manager or player visits a pitcher on the mound, or a pitcher leaves the mound to confer with a player, it counts as a visit. Upon the second visit to the pitcher in the same inning, he must exit the game. Under the proposal, each team would have received six so-called “no-change” visits that would have prevented the pitcher from leaving the game.

No one likes mound visits, but that’s a pretty drastic change. It strives to eliminate an awful lot of perceived paper cuts. I was moved to think about how many. As mound visits aren’t tracked, I took a small, imprecise sample. I decided to rewatch Game 7 of the World Series. Specifically, I watched the half-innings when the Astros were pitching, because Brian McCann loves a good mound visit.

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Nick Gordon is one of the top prospects in the Twins system. Drafted fifth-overall by Minnesota in 2014, the lefty-swinging shortstop is coming off an age-21 season where he slashed .270/.341/.408 for Double-A Chattanooga. He’s also coming off the release of his first album, “I Do It All,” which dropped earlier this month.

“G-Cinco” started rapping when he was in middle school, but it was only recently that he began sharing his hip-hop stylings beyond his inner circle. Prompted by the urging of a close friend, the son of former all-star closer Tom “Flash” Gordon, and brother of 2015 NL batting champion Dee Gordon, decided the time had come to “let people hear this side of me.”

The multi-talented youngster is well aware that mixing music and sports can make for a tricky balance, particularly in terms of image. But he doesn’t anticipate any issues. Not only does Gordon consider himself “a baseball player first,” he’s “never been one to lead a lifestyle that isn’t appropriate,” nor does he feel a need to “go out there and rap about things I don’t do.”

What he does do — along with rapping base hits — is “sit down and listen to beats, and write.” As for which he considers more important when crafting a song, the beat or the lyrics, that’s largely a matter of inspiration within the creative process. Read the rest of this entry »

Each week, we publish in the neighborhood of 75 articles across our various blogs. With this post, we hope to highlight 10 to 15 of them. You can read more on it here. The links below are color coded — green for FanGraphs, brown for RotoGraphs, dark red for The Hardball Times and blue for Community Research.

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Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan talk about the Brewers’ trade for Christian Yelich and signing of Lorenzo Cain, how the Brewers stack up in the NL Central, whether they’re the new model for a rebuilding team, how Yelich and Cain could perform in their new park, what the Cain contract says about the slow-moving market, and where the Yelich move leaves the Marlins. Then they talk to Patrick Dubuque of Baseball Prospectus about how moving away from a “winning is everything” mindset can make baseball better for fans.

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In the previous installment, we learned that Ryan Kalish — Anderson’s friend and former teammate in the Red Sox and Cubs organizations — would be coming to Australia to play in the ABL. In Part 4, we’re regaled with stories about what happened upon his arrival, including how Anderson’s benevolence impacted where each of them would be playing “The baseball.”

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Lars Anderson: “While I still was on a beach in Cambodia, the Canberra Calvary contacted me with an offer for both myself and Ryan Kalish to play for them for the upcoming ABL season. Ryan had initially planned on playing in the Puerto Rican winter league, but Hurricane Maria put an end to that — the Caribbean league was forced to cancel the first two months of their season, leaving Ryan jobless. Having been sidelined for the past 20 months recovering from a major knee surgery, he was itching to play and realistically needed a job to prove to major-league teams that he is, in fact, healthy.

“We were both stoked. The thought of sharing the field again was something I’d previously thought was as likely as sharing a coffee with a Mormon, and the prospect of it all was quite frankly awesome. But, once again, the ABL’s import rules thwarted my plans. Canberra’s coach informed me via email that there was only one spot left, so Ryan and I would not be sharing the field, at least not on the same team.

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The free agencies and likely departures of Lorenzo Cain, Eric Hosmer, and Mike Moustakas led most to believe that Kansas City was in for some kind of rebuild. It seemed likely than any such attempt at a rebuild would lead to major-league opportunities for upper-level prospects like Hunter Dozier, Samir Duenez, and Ryan O’Hearn and/or post-prospects like Cheslor Cuthbert and Raul Adalberto Mondesi to pass or fail the big-league test and establish themselves as Royals of the future.

For most of those players, such an opportunity is still likely to emerge. With the announcement on Friday, however, that Alcides Escobar would be returning to the Royals, the future for one of them has become less certain. The presence of Escobar and 2017 breakout Whit Merrifield raises immediate questions about Raul Mondesi’s prospects in Kansas City, as it appears his path to regular big-league playing time is once again blocked.

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The Giants have been one of the busier teams this offseason, wheeling and dealing their way to a markedly different roster in just a few months. Since December 15th alone, the club has traded away left-hander Matt Moore, a general disappointment in the 240 innings he had thrown for the Giants. They followed this up by acquiring two faces of their former franchises: Moore’s one-time Tampa Bay teammate Evan Longoria and Andrew McCutchen. The most recent deal has the Giants signing Austin Jackson for two years and $6 million to round out their starting outfield.

Or so it seemed.

Giants president of baseball operations Brian Sabean seemed to suggest otherwise recently, according to reports by Alex Pavlovic and John Shea.

“He’s certainly a viable option,” Sabean said of Jackson. “Did we get him to be our everyday center fielder? Probably not. I don’t know that in his recent history, he’s been able to go out there in that fashion.”

Sabean might not be wrong about Jackson. Even though he was an effective player from 2010 to -15, he turns 31 in a week and hit the disabled list twice last season. Jackson might be best relied on as a part-time player, albeit a very good one.

So were does that leave the Giants? They seem to be keeping an eye on the market for outfielders, probably with a view towards acquiring a cheap option somewhere along the line. This search, combined with their financial position, seems to leave the team focused on a particular goal in mind, one that fails to address one of their most glaring needs.

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