Let’s make one thing absolutely clear: The Royals don’t have an ace, not by major-league standards. By whichever measure you pick, the Royals have had one of the worst starting rotations in the game, and the closest thing they have to an ace starter is probably their group of pitchers who aren’t starters at all. Each and every game is almost like a race to the bullpen, and the Royals are aware of it. This is part design, and part bad luck.

It’s also part bad Yordano Ventura. For what we can term a variety of reasons, Ventura has yet to ascend to the performance level his repertoire would suggest. If any Royal were to blossom into a relative ace, you’d think Ventura would be the one. And he might still get there, but he’s not the guy presently on course. No, the guy emerging right now is Danny Duffy, and though Duffy isn’t the only respectable member of the staff, he’s become perhaps the most exciting. That is, if you find good pitching more exciting than brawls.

Read the rest of this entry »

There are a lot of really good Clayton Kershaw fun facts, and he seems to generate countless more every start. He’s the best there is, and the best always produce the best statistics. I think my favorite Kershaw fun fact for now, though, is this: in 2013, he allowed a .521 OPS. In 2014, he allowed a .521 OPS. In 2015, he allowed a .521 OPS. This year, he’s somehow even better, and that doesn’t make any sense, but this year is still going. The fun fact captures the years completed, and it teaches you everything you need to know about Kershaw in a matter of seconds. He’s impossible, and he’s impossibly consistent.

Over the past few weeks, spanning five starts, Matt Shoemaker has allowed a .516 OPS. He’s walked one of 144 batters, while striking out 48. Now, Clayton Kershaw, Matt Shoemaker ain’t. Through the season’s first six starts, Shoemaker had allowed more than a run per inning. He was horrible! Now he’s Kershaw. He’s not really Kershaw, but, it makes you wonder, what’s the significance of looking like Kershaw for such a stretch of time?

Read the rest of this entry »

Ben and Sam do an all-banter episode about the standings through the first 40 percent of the season, Yordano Ventura’s suspension, and the unchanging closer role.

Podcast (effectively-wild): Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

If you woke up this morning, looked at the WAR Leaderboards for position players and saw Mike Trout, Jose Altuve, and Manny Machado near the top, you might have had an inclination that all is right with the world. After all, those three players are some of the very best in major-league baseball, and we would expect to see them at the top of the list. Of course, when you look closely at the leaderboard, it’s important to note that there are 171 qualified players. To regard the WAR marks as some sort of de facto ranking for all players would be foolish. For some players, defensive value has a large impact on their WAR total, and it’s important, when considering WAR values one-third of the way into the season, to consider the context in which those figures.

“Small sample size” is a phrase that’s invoked a lot throughout the season. At FanGraphs, we try to determine what might be a small-sample aberration from what could be a new talent level. Generally speaking, the bigger the sample size, the better — and this is especially true for defensive statistics, where we want to have a very big sample to determine a player’s talent level. Last year, I attempted to provide a warning on the reliability of defensive statistics. Now that the season has reached its third month, it’s appropriate to revisit that work.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Mets won’t get an opportunity to see their former prospect in person until early August, when they travel to Detroit. If Michael Fulmer is still running a scoreless innings streak by then, we’ll really have a story. For now, we have a neat anecdote, and an encouraging start to a career.

Fulmer, the Tigers’ rookie right-hander traded by the Mets in exchange for Yoenis Cespedes last year, hasn’t allowed a run in 28.1 innings. It’s a stretch of starts that’s gotten him compared (fairly or not*) to Jake Arrieta just nine games into his career. It’s a stretch of starts worthy of consideration, especially given Fulmer’s first four were nothing short of a disaster. Is the real Fulmer closer to those first four, closer to these recent five, or somewhere in between? What changed?

*Not.

Read the rest of this entry »

It was the tale of two cities in Pittsburgh this weekend. On Sunday, the local hockey team won the Stanley Cup, reaching the highest heights an NHL team can manage, adding another championship to the cities storied legacy. But at the same time the Penguins were setting in motion plans for a parade, the Pirates were getting swept by their division-rival from St. Louis. At home, no less. And that wasn’t even the worst part of the weekend.

During Friday’s contest with the Cardinals, team-ace Gerrit Cole had to be lifted after two innings on the mound, leaving with what has only been called “triceps tightness” to this point, but is likely to force Cole to miss at least one start, if not land on the disabled list. Catcher Francisco Cervelli then left the game in the fourth inning after suffering a broken hamate bone; he’s out at least a month, and hamate injuries are known to sap power from hitters even after they return to the field. These were blows the team couldn’t really afford to suffer, especially given how the rest of the weekend went.

Read the rest of this entry »

To begin with a gross oversimplification of a maddeningly complex sport, there are two ways to win a baseball game: score runs and prevent runs. Those two acts inform the predictive significance of run differentials and Pythagorean record and represent the reason I enjoy perusing leaderboards to see which teams are currently the best at run generation and prevention. We’re at the point in the season where the tops of the leaderboards aren’t terribly surprising – the Red Sox score frequently, the Mets don’t allow many runs, the Cubs are ridiculously great in both categories – but one team I’m still getting accustomed to finding near the top of the runs-scored leaderboard is the Mariners.

After years of battling mediocrity and a frustrating relegation to relative baseball obscurity, the Mariners have scored more runs than any American League team not named the Red Sox. With 315 runs scored through 63 games played, the Seattle is now averaging five runs scored per game — a rate they haven’t sustained over a full season since averaging 5.02 runs per game in 2002… you know, back when they had a designated hitter named Edgar Martinez, a second baseman named Bret Boone and a catcher named Dan Wilson. As offense has declined around the league during the last decade and a half, the Mariners’ offense has more than followed suit. In all but one season from 2004 to 2015, the Mariners finished anywhere from 11th to 14th in the AL in R/G. (Recall that, for a majority of that stretch, the American League consisted of only 14 teams.)

But now they’re scoring five runs a game – and are on a pace equivalent to 810 runs over a full 162-game schedule. Only five teams in the past five seasons have scored 810 runs and, of those five, all but the 2011 Red Sox made the postseason. And you might remember that the 2011 Red Sox team had to work darn hard to not make the playoffs. What the Mariners are doing right now is an undeniably good thing, and one that’s very much conducive to winning. And a little further digging reveals something endearingly quirky about the way the Mariners are scoring all of their runs.

Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by sabermetric nobleman Rob Neyer, and expanded at the request of nobody, NERD scores represent an attempt to summarize in one number (and on a scale of 0-10) the likely aesthetic appeal or watchability, for the learned fan, of a player or team or game. Read more about the components of and formulae for NERD scores here.

Most Highly Rated Game
Chicago NL at Washington | 19:05 ET
Hendricks (68.1 IP, 84 xFIP-) vs. Scherzer (88.1 IP, 84 xFIP-)
Here’s a thought experiment the reader can conduct with a view towards (a) sharpening his or her understanding of playoff probabilities and/or (b) pushing away the sadness for another moment or two.

Regard, some relevant facts:

• The Cubs and Nationals possess the two best records in the NL.
• The Cubs lead their division by 9.0 games; the Nationals, by 4.5.
• The season is roughly 40% complete.

Given the information presented here, what do you think are the Cubs’ and Nationals’ odds of winning their respective divisions (using the FanGraphs Projections methodology)?

The answer for Washington is here; for Chicago, here. Divisional odds are denoted as DIV.

Readers’ Preferred Television Broadcast: Washington Radio.

Read the rest of this entry »

On Friday, I published a post projecting the players taken on day one of the draft. On Saturday, I did the same for the players taken on day two. Let’s see what my math says about the college players taken on day three of draft, which covered rounds 11-40. The vast majority of these players will flame out in the minor leagues over the next couple of years, and you’ll never hear from them again. But at least a few of them will go on to play in the big leagues.

As a reminder, I only have projections for college players who logged at least 100 plate appearances or batters faced in select major NCAA conferences this year, including the: AAC, ACC, Big 10, Big 12, Big West, Pac 12 and SEC. I do not have projections for high-school players.

Below, you’ll find thoughts on some players of note from rounds 11-40, followed by a giant, sortable table with projections for all drafted players for whom I have projections. The cumulative WAR projections will probably feel a bit low to you. They feel low to me too. For this reason, I recommend you don’t take the projections themselves literally, but instead use them to compare draftees to other draftees.

*****

337. Chad Donato, RHP, Houston

Proj. WAR thru age-27: 2.1

Donato pitched excellently in West Virginia’s rotation. His strikeout- and walk-rate differential was among the best for starters in major conferences. The Astros have several KATOH darlings in this group. Houston’s front office has either hacked my computer or is doing something similar to what I’m doing.

Read the rest of this entry »