Ever since I discovered (for myself, at least) that horizontal direction matters when modeling batted-ball distance, I’ve been fascinated by the concept of ideal spray angle. Every discovery I’ve made along the way has only led to more questions.
For example, it looks like a batter’s ability to pull fly balls ages better than his ability to hit opposite-field fly balls. But that finding is complicated by the fact that the distance of pulled fly balls ages worse than the distance on opposite-field fly balls. Screwed if you pull, screwed if you push: thanks, Father Time.
Now, with the help of Andrew Perpetua, we have a few more graphs to help us better examine the traits of pulled and pushed fly balls. It should provide some answers. And definitely more questions, too.
Last Wednesday, the Nationals solved their center field problem by trading several of their best pitching prospects to the Chicago White Sox in exchange for Adam Eaton. Last Friday, the Cardinals solved their center field problem by giving a bunch of money to free agent Dexter Fowler. Before signing Fowler, the Cardinals tried to trade for Eaton. Had the Nationals not been able to complete a deal for Eaton, they presumably would have been in on Fowler. So, with two teams making different decisions about big investments into how to land a center fielder, let’s compare the two players and the costs it took to acquire them.
About a year and a half ago, Jeff Sullivan wrote an article here in which he imagined the baseball equivalent of LeBron James. It’s a fun piece. Check it out. I’m a sucker for cross-sport comparisons, and I’ve been watching more basketball recently, because basketball is fun. Jeff’s article has stuck with me, because it came out right around when I started reading FanGraphs, and it was such a novel concept. I assume the WAR calculations he makes in it are somewhat accurate, because I’ve found it’s good policy to always assume Jeff is right (or at least entertaining enough to always look like he’s right).
That article popped back into my head this past Thursday for reasons unknown. Then, later that night, DeMar DeRozan did this.
That’s a pretty dunk. As Kevin Harlan so eloquently states, DeRozan basically appeared out of thin air and slammed the ball down over poor Ricky Rubio, who just wanted to collect the rebound.
Now, why are we talking about slam dunks? There are no dunks in baseball, as unfortunate as that is. Everything is better with slam dunks. Dunking is one of the most surefire ways in all of sports to get a crowd to lose its collective mind. It doesn’t inspire the pure pandemonium of a Champions League goal or a walk-off home run, but it creates a damn good highlight.
There’s something awe-inspiring about watching one 6-foot-8 behemoth of athleticism jump over another behemoth and shove a basketball through a hoop. DeRozan’s dunk isn’t even the most conspicuous display of pure one-on-one physical dominance. (For that distinction, I nominate this LeBron highlight.) DeRozan’s is the product a bit more of finesse and court awareness. It’s hard to leap up, grab the ball off the backboard, and slam it down onto Ricky Rubio.
As a baseball writer, I got wondering about how the dunk might translate to my favorite sport. Because the Winter Meetings just ended and there’s been a dearth of blockbuster deals in the meantime (no offense to Dexter Fowler), I decided to write about it.
So, we begin with a question: is there an equivalent of a slam dunk in baseball? To find out, we’d need to boil down what makes a dunk awesome. I just spent a paragraph explaining why they’re cool, but what was I really saying?
Dunks are great because:
They’re an awesome example of one-on-one dominance in a team sport.
They represent extreme displays of athleticism.
They cause both the crowd and the broadcaster to lose their minds when done exceptionally well.
Here it is: the split leaderboards! Now, you can create custom splits using multiple splits, much like you can on the player pages — except now in the form of an entire leaderboard, and accessible directly from the leaderboard menu.
After having typically appeared in the very famous pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have been released at FanGraphs the past few years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Detroit Tigers. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.
Batters
Since 2009, only three different players have led Detroit batters by WAR: Miguel Cabrera (2009-13), Ian Kinsler (2014, -16), and J.D. Martinez (2015). According to Dan Szymborski’s computer, here are the probable top-three Tigers batters by WAR in 2017: Miguel Cabrera (583 PA, 4.0 zWAR), Ian Kinsler (631, 3.9), and J.D. Martinez (590, 3.1). That is, one finds, the precise same collection of players.
What does that say about a club generally? About this club specifically? Nothing definitive. That said, Detroit has developed a reputation in recent years for placing the majority of their eggs into expensive, aging baskets, and then the remainder of the eggs into whatever baskets happen to be lying around. The construction of the current roster — which pairs some well-compensated veterans like Cabrera and Kinsler with a replacement-level center-field platoon of Tyler Collins (463, 0.0) and JaCoby Jones (458, -0.1) — would appear to carry on that tradition.
The Pirates have some big decisions to make this offseason, not the least of which is what to do with Andrew McCutchen. The face of the franchise was a white-hot, trade-rumor topic at the Winter Meetings, and if he does remain in Jolly Roger land, speculation abounds that he could move from center field to right field.
Another outfield question looms as well. The analytics-minded club positioned their fly-catchers shallower than usual in 2016, with less-than-ideal results. I asked GM Neal Huntington about that at the winter meetings.
Huntington told me their internal data showed they “gave up more damage in front of us than we had over our head,” and that they ran “model after model that showed had we played shallower, we would have prevented more runs than if we’d have played deeper.”
That doesn’t mean there won’t be changes. With the season in the rearview, it’s once again time to parse data. Read the rest of this entry »
Ben and Sam banter about Veeck As in Wreck and front offices hiring stat-savvy former players, then answer listener emails about the real Mike Trout, likeable teams, unwatchable players, and more.
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. Read the rest of this entry »
Since the middle of 2009, the Cardinals’ left fielder has been Matt Holliday. Injuries kept Holliday from playing a full season each of the last two years. For that reason and perhaps others, the team decided not to exercise his $17 million option, instead paying a $1 million buyout. Similarly, the team opted not to give a qualifying offer to Brandon Moss, who hit 28 homers but also struck out 30% of the time, somewhat limiting his value offensively. As a result, the Cardinals entered the offseason with two starting outfielders, Randal Grichuk and Stephen Piscotty, and a hole. Following Ian Desmond’s deal for $70 million with Colorado and the White Sox’ trade of Adam Eaton to Washington in return for major package of prospects, the Cardinals elected to fill that hole with Dexter Fowler on five-year contract worth $82.5 million.
Fowler is coming off the best campaign of his career, having slashed .276/.393/.447 and produced a 129 wRC+ for the Cubs while recording average defensive numbers in center field. The result: nearly a five-win season. Fowler’s best attribute on offense has been his ability to get on base. He has a career walk rate at 13%, and of active players with at least 2,000 plate appearances, only Paul Goldschmidt, Bryce Harper, Carlos Santana, Mike Trout, Jose Bautista, and Joey Votto have walked more frequently. He has generally been a high-BABIP player, only once (2015) recording a mark lower than .320. He doesn’t steal a lot, but he does so with an acceptable success rate, has hit double figures in every big-league season, and has posted good baserunning numbers throughout his career.
His success getting on base will make him an ideal fit for St. Louis, who have been itching to move Matt Carpenter down the order since Carpenter’s power surge in 2015. The team tried to shoehorn some players who weren’t good fits occasionally last season, but Fowler’s numbers profile well in the leadoff spot. Fowler should also help the Cardinals’ baserunning, which was awful last season. Also ideal for the Cardinals is Fowler’s aging profile. This deal will take Fowler through his age-35 season. Fortunately for St. Louis, Fowler’ skills at the plate should age pretty well. I looked for Fowler comps when I profiled him earlier in the offseason, and I found that hitters like Fowler have historically recorded a 110 wRC+ from ages 31-34.
Whether this turns out to be a good deal for the Cardinals isn’t likely to depend on Fowler’s bat, but his glove. The Cardinals wanted to find a center fielder capable of moving Randal Grichuk to a corner-outfield spot and improving the team’s defense. Fowler should improve the club’s outfield defense relative to the 2016 season, but there’s considerable debate over how well Fowler’s glove profiles in center field. Fowler’s defensive numbers in Colorado and Houston were pretty terrible; the last two seasons in Chicago, on the other hand, they’ve been close to average. Generally speaking, using three years of defensive numbers will give you the best idea of a player’s defensive talent level, but there has been a strong narrative to Fowler’s improved positioning helping him get to a lot more plays in the outfield.
With Chris Sale now employed by the Boston Red Sox and Adam Eaton preparing for a season with front-row tickets to the Presidents Race, there can be no question about the current objectives of the White Sox. The stars-and-scrubs strategy they’ve employed for the past few years can now be viewed as an abject failure as the team revamps and retools by cashing in those aforementioned stars for players like Lucas Giolito, Reynaldo Lopez, and Yoan Moncada, who figure to be key future contributors.
The term “fire sale” is a bit cliché, but it’s undeniable that there is an “everything must go” sense of urgency to what the White Sox are currently doing. Which means it remains likely that Jose Quintana’s days in the South Side are likely numbered and first baseman Jose Abreu may soon be out there door. If you’re placing odds on White Sox players likely to be traded in the near future, however, none will have higher odds than third baseman Todd Frazier.
The power-hitting Frazier is entering his final year of arbitration and will be 31 years old when Opening Day rolls around. According to the arbitration projections run by Matt Swartz at MLB Trade Rumors, Frazier is likely to command a salary next year in the ballpark of $13.5 million. Over the past three seasons, Frazier has hit 104 homers – a figure that is second only to Josh Donaldson’s 107 among major-league third basemen. His ISO (isolated power) since 2015 is .241, or just a shade above Kris Bryant’s .238 ISO. Securing the services of a player with that kind of pop to man the hot corner on a one-year, $13.5 million contract would be an absolute coup in the free-agent market, but will the White Sox be able to convert that into a decent return in the trade market?
