With the proliferation of both professional and amateur coverage, it’s more difficult than ever for something to happen off of the radar. There are simply too many eyes for much of anything to go unnoticed, and in case you’re unconvinced, think about how much you already know about Rhys Hoskins. Thank about how much you’ve already read about Byron Buxton, or about Giancarlo Stanton’s home-run pace. If something happens in baseball, it’s going to generate content. That content will find its way to your computer or phone. You’re connected, so you know what’s going on.

And yet, there’s this one thing. I swear that I’m not pulling your leg, and I know this is true because I triple-checked the numbers. I was as surprised as you are right now. Today is Monday, August 28. Let’s go back to May 28 — that’s a nice, clean, even three months. Who’s been the best team in baseball over the past three months? That’s easy. The Dodgers. Everyone knows that. Who’s been the second-best team in baseball over the past three months? That’s less easy.

Only the Dodgers have had a better record than the Marlins. Sure, that gap is enormous. The Dodgers are way better than the Marlins are. But the Marlins are right there, numbering among the elite. You can forgive yourself if you hadn’t been aware. It took a while for me, myself, and this is my job. But all those Stanton home runs haven’t been taking place in isolation. There’s a whole baseball team around that guy, and it’s fresh off a weekend three-game sweep.

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You’ve probably noticed that Giancarlo Stanton has been on fire lately. After hitting exactly seven home runs in each of the first three months of the season, he powered up and hit 12 in July, the most home runs anyone had hit in a month this season besides Cody Bellinger’s 13 in June. But that was just him getting warmed up, because after his home run yesterday, he’s already hit 17 in August.

Since July 1st, Stanton has hit 29 home runs. Nelson Cruz, in second place, has hit 17. Nolan Arenado and Charlie Blackmon, who are tied for sixth-most home runs hit since the beginning of July, have combined to hit 28. And they play in Colorado. Stanton is, by himself, hitting bombs at the rate of two power hitters on hot streaks who get to play at altitude.

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PITTSBURGH — FanGraphs alum and MLB.com analyst Mike Petriello authored the following tweet last October. The social-media missive is pinned to his Twitter profile — and rightfully so, because it’s funny, and humor is often rooted in some truth.

The truth, in this case, is that Kenley Jansen has dominated with one pitch like few before him — specifically, with a cutter that he’s thrown 86.0% of the time this year and 88.4% of the time over his carer. Jansen’s usage has invited natural comparisons to Mariano Rivera’s own approach for years. Jansen has become dominant in Rivera-like fashion and now just requires ultimate postseason success to further raise his profile.

I showed Jansen the tweet recently in the visiting clubhouse at PNC Park. To get a better look, he took my iPhone in his massive catcher’s mitt of a left hand and examined it. He could have crushed it like a soda can and returned the fragments to me. I waited in suspense for his reaction.

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Towards the end of last week, Maury Brown published the local television ratings for the league’s non-Canadian teams at Forbes. For the sport, the news is generally positive. Even as those in some quarters continue to perpetuate the narrative that “baseball is dying,” the data suggest otherwise.

This isn’t to say that Major League Baseball is without its flaws, of course. Greater attention ought to be paid to some areas, particularly to the matter of local youth outreach and accessibility to the sport, in general. As a business, however, baseball is booming. In terms of general popularity, attendance and television ratings suggest that MLB is a major force. An examination of the numbers reveals a series of encouraging trends. For example, we find that (a) many viewers prefer baseball to other available options and (b) winning clubs attract larger audiences than losing ones and (c) a successful Yankees club helps ratings.

Let’s take a look at some of these trends using the data from Brown’s piece, both overall and among teams. Before we begin, a note about ratings versus attendance numbers. Historically, the former respond to recent success more quickly than the latter. Team’s get a big boost after a strong season, with raised expectations for the next year. It takes some planning and expense for fans to actually attend games, though. To watch them on television, meanwhile, requires just a cable subscription and some free time. So expect these figures to be more reactive to success than similar numbers for attendance.

The chart below shows the change in winning percentage for MLB teams from 2016 to 2017 as well as the percentage change in local television ratings.

Eight of the 12 teams to have recorded at least a 20-point improvement in win percentage from last season have seen also experienced a more or less corresponding improvement in television ratings from. Of the four teams not to have benefited from a ratings bump, only the Diamondbacks have actually been good — although the Rays and Angels are each contending for a playoff spot.

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Danny Jansen is quietly having one of the best seasons of any player in minor league baseball. In 97 games split between three levels, the 22-year-old Toronto Blue Jays catching prospect is slashing .339/.414/.510 — and he’s not slowing down. In 52 plate appearances since being promoted to Triple-A Buffalo, he’s hit a Ruthian .455/.538/.795.

When Jansen appeared in my July 1 Notes column, Blue Jays farm director Gil Kim was quoted as saying the youngster is “really opening up some eyes,” and that he is “one of the most-improved players in the system.”

Jansen’s eyes are a big reason for that improvement. Four years after being drafted out of an Appleton, Wisconsin high school, in the 16th round, he’s receiving optometrical assistance.

“Last year, I realized that things weren’t as clear anymore, so after the season I went to the eye doctor,” explained Jansen. “He told me I had astigmatism, so I got a prescription and started wearing glasses last fall. I’m seeing everything so clear now, like a normal person with good eyes would.”

The former Appleton West Terror doesn’t wear contacts, which makes him the rare backstop who dons glasses behind his mask. He sees at least one advantage to that. “Dirt doesn’t get in my eyes,” Jansen explained with a knowing nod.

Vision hasn’t been his only above-the-neck improvement. Read the rest of this entry »

Each week, we publish north of 100 posts on 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 discuss the hot start of Phillies rookie Rhys Hoskins, the recent improvement of Byron Buxton, the position-player-pitching of White Sox minor leaguer Grant Massey, the Marlins’ Stanton-driven surge to .500 (and beyond), the Tigers-Yankees brawl, picking on umpires, and Michael Conforto’s injury as the latest symptom of the sad state of the Mets.

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If the postseason started today, five teams in the top half of major-league payrolls at the beginning of the year would qualify for the playoffs: the Boston Red Sox, Chicago Cubs, Los Angeles Dodgers, New York Yankees, and Washington Nationals*. That means that five teams in the bottom half of Opening Day payrolls would make the playoffs as well — in this case, the Arizona Diamondbacks, Cleveland Indians, Colorado Rockies, Houston Astros, and Minnesota Twins.

*Numbers current as of yesterday.

Presenting the standings in this way might give one the impression that we remain in an age of great baseball parity. An age in which the Kansas City Royals can win the World Series, Cleveland can get there, too, and teams like the Pittsburgh Pirates can sustain multiple years of playoff contention.

That isn’t quite the case, however.

Of the clubs that feature top-six payrolls this season, three have playoff chances of at least 96% (Dodgers, Red Sox, Cubs). A fourth, the Yankees, aren’t too far behind. If the Twins can’t hold on to a playoff spot and are overtaken by anyone but the Rays, the only team in the bottom 12 of payrolls this season to make the playoffs will be the Arizona Diamondbacks, and even their spot isn’t a guarantee. Money buys players, and those players rack up wins for their ball clubs. Last season, at around this time, I took a look at the relationship between payroll and wins, and noted that the relationship was one of the strongest we had seen in a while. This is what it looked like at the end of last season.

Last season saw one of the strongest relationships between payroll and wins to exist in several decades. Here’s how the relationship has developed since 1990, with help from data courtesy Brian MacPherson. 

In the early 90s, Major League Baseball was coming off an era of collusion and lack of expansion. That, combined with a new influx of talent from outside the United States, meant that simply paying for major-league talent wasn’t the only solution to winning major-league games. (To track back further, read Dave Studeman’s piece in Hardball Times on the subject.)

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