We all know that the strike zone isn’t always called correctly, and we all know that the mistakes aren’t just randomly distributed. Have you ever stopped to think about how weird that is? The zone is at the core of the entire game, and for as long as baseball has existed, some teams have gotten more generous zones than others. It’s like if some football teams only needed to gain nine and a half yards for a first down. It’s like if a hockey team, or a basketball team, or a soccer team got to shoot at a slightly larger goal. These adjustments wouldn’t make all the difference, but they would make a difference, and they’d be weird, too. Inequality is weird.

On the other hand, it’s not like the other sports don’t have their own areas of subjectivity. Football penalties. Hockey penalties. Basketball fouls. Soccer fouls. Fouls, basically. Those might not be randomly distributed, either. I don’t know enough about that research, but thankfully, I’m about at the end of this introduction, so we can get back to the baseball stuff.

Known fact: not all strike zones are called the same.

Question: so how have teams benefited or been hurt by the strike zones this year?

Analysis: to follow.

Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

It was a strange start to the season, you’ll remember. Even though the Astros, as a whole, were completely disappointing, Jose Altuve came out absolutely on fire. He put up numbers you’d expect from some elite-level slugger, and on May 5, he bashed his ninth home run. That put him on pace for something like 50, and though Altuve was never going to get all the way to 50, he was impossible not to notice. He already had the remarkable bat-to-ball skills. To that, he was adding selective strength. Call it a superstar turn.

It’s overly simplistic, but when you look at Altuve, you don’t see a home-run hitter. I shouldn’t need to explain why. The extent of the power was hard to believe, and now you could say things have calmed down: Last night, Altuve hit his first dinger in a month. I want to talk about that dinger, but more importantly, I want to talk about the process that led to that dinger. It’s not that Altuve’s start was a mirage. It’s that he was getting opportunities they’re not giving him anymore.

Read the rest of this entry »

You put it off, and you put it off, and you put it off, but at some point, you have to just suck it up and write a post about Mark Trumbo. Why a post about Mark Trumbo? He’s major-league-leader-in-home-runs Mark Trumbo. Granted, a guy tied for fourth is Adam Duvall, and he’s even more surprising, but, one thing at a time. Trumbo leads in dingers. He’s eighth overall in wRC+. Trumbo already has his highest WAR since 2013, and he’s a bad defensive outfielder, and it’s June. He can’t not be written about, right? Here, watch a dinger. It was yesterday.

Something that’s always struck me with Trumbo — even though he wouldn’t put up elite numbers, he always looked so natural hitting homers. The swing wouldn’t look exaggerated; it would look quick, somehow both short to the ball and powerful. Trumbo’s always swung and missed, and he’s always gone out of the zone a little too often, and those things were limiting. To be better, he’d either have to change one of those, or he’d have to make more of his batted balls.

Thus far, he’s been making more of his batted balls. So, he’s sitting on career-best results. Why has this been happening? It might actually be really simple.

Read the rest of this entry »

Ben and Sam banter about a Clayton Kershaw mystery and discuss where the depressing Padres should go from here.

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

Subscribe: RSS

Historically, players selected straight out of high school in the Major League Baseball draft, or those drafted following their junior year in college, were forced to walk something of a fine line. Because the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s rules specified that any player who formally signed with an agent would lose his remaining college eligibility, draftees could not be directly represented by an agent when negotiating with an MLB team.

Instead, players could only employ an agent in an “advisory” capacity. Under NCAA rules, so long as a player’s “advisor” did not directly communicate with an MLB team on the player’s behalf, and so long as the player compensated the advisor for his services (at the advisor’s normal hourly rate), a player would maintain his college eligibility should he ultimately elect not to sign a professional contract and instead return to (or enroll in) college.

Of course, in practice this distinction between an “agent” and an “advisor” often turned out to merely be a matter of semantics. Teams routinely expected (and preferred) to communicate directly with a player’s agent, rather than the player himself, while recent draftees usually preferred to have their agent/advisor negotiate directly with an MLB team on their behalf. So despite their official title, advisors often served as players’ agents, directly representing their clients during their interactions with MLB teams, in violation of NCAA rules.

Read the rest of this entry »

In the winter of 2013, the Yankees faced a decision on star second baseman Robinson Cano, and after years of getting burned with big contracts for aging players, the team drew the line in the sand when Cano asked for a 10 year deal. After maxing out their offer to Cano at $175 million over seven years, the Yankees let Cano leave for Seattle, but then promptly reallocated most of the money earmarked for their second baseman to center fielder Jacoby Ellsbury; he signed with New York for $153 million over seven years a week after Cano signed with the Mariners.

Because of the similarities of the offers and the timing of when they occurred, Ellsbury is always going to be linked to Cano, and comparisons between the two have become a frequent source of conversation. That was especially true back in April, when Cano got off to a blistering start to the season while Ellsbury struggled tremendously. A few days into the season, ESPN ran this story from Andrew Marchand.

Jacoby Ellsbury could go down as one of the worst free agent signings in Yankee history https://t.co/2EXsqLKfur

— Andrew Marchand (@AndrewMarchand) April 8, 2016

Similar stories followed over the next month, as Ellsbury limped to a .235/.278/.341 line over the first month of the season. The slow came on the heels of a miserable second half to the 2015 season, and by the time April ended, Ellsbury had hit just .241/.293/.338 (a 71 wRC+) over the past calendar year, spanning a total of 498 plate appearances. It was pretty easy to write Ellsbury off as a washed-up and overpaid mistake.

Read the rest of this entry »

Nos. #30 – #21

Roughly four years ago now, the present author facilitated a crowdsourcing project designed to place a “grade” on each of the league’s television and radio broadcast teams. The results weren’t intended to represent the objective quality or skill of the relevant announcers, but rather to provide a clue as to which broadcast teams are likely to appeal most (or least) to the readers of this site.

The results of that original exercise have been useful as a complement to the dumb NERD scores published by the author in these pages. Four years later, however, they’ve become much less useful. In the meantime, a number of the broadcast teams cited in that original effort have changed personnel. It’s possible that the tastes of this site’s readers have changed, also.

Recently, the author published an updated version of the television rankings according to the site’s readership. This week: the results of that same exercise, but for radio broadcasts.

Below are the 20th- through 11th-ranked radio-broadcast teams, per the FanGraphs readership.

But first, three notes:

• Teams are ranked in ascending order of Overall rating. Overall ratings are not merely averages of Charisma and Analysis.
• The author has attempted to choose reader comments that are either (a) illustrative of the team’s place in the rankings or (b) conspicuously amusing.
• A complete table of ratings will appear in these pages on Thursday, unless they appear later than that.

20. Baltimore Orioles
Main Broadcasters: Joe Angel and Fred Manfra (and Jim Hunter)
Ratings (Charisma/Analysis/Overall): 3.8, 3.3, 3.6

Representative Reader Comment
“Angel… [d]oesn’t really offer any in-depth analysis or anything but he’s witty, natural, always ready to go. Never at a loss for words.”

Notes
There appears to be something like a consensus that Joe Angel is the real draw of the Orioles’ radio broadcast. There’s also something like a consensus that the author ought to be clear about the various broadcasters’ roles — namely, how Angel and Manfra serve as the main radio personnel, handling play-by-play duties in alternating fashion over the course of a game, and that Hunter periodically substitutes for one or the other of them.

Read the rest of this entry »

Ever since we’ve known about Aaron Nola, whom the Phillies selected with the seventh overall pick in the 2014 draft (nearly two years ago to the day), we’ve heard about front-of-the-rotation potential without traditional front-of-the-rotation stuff. Nola’s a righty, and he throws in the low-90s, and so for there to be front-of-the-rotation potential suggests something else. Pitchability, command, deception, feel — whatever non-stuff-related adjectives you want to use, the thought’s been all along that Nola’s possessed it in spades.

Following the draft and half a season of professional ball in 2014, Baseball America’s scouting report declared that “Nola’s hallmark is his stellar command.” Baseball Prospectus noted that Nola “brings a polished three-pitch arsenal, with strong command and solid deception.” Kiley McDaniel’s evaluation included perhaps the strongest description of Nola’s unquantifiable pitching ability, saying he “has an amazing feel to pitch.”

Fast-forward another year and some change, and Nola’s in his second major-league season — first full season — and we’re not only seeing that front-of-the-rotation potential quicker than most expected, but we’re seeing hints of an even higher ceiling than most expected. Through 12 starts, Nola’s averaged 6.5 innings per start with a 2.65 ERA and a 2.73 FIP. He’s been a top-30 starter by RA9-WAR and a top-10 starter by FIP-WAR. He’s been a top-15 starter in strikeout, walk, and ground-ball rate — arguably the three most important traits for any pitcher to possess.

Nola looks like one of baseball’s best young starters and, as expected, he’s doing it without traditional front-of-the-rotation stuff; he’s still right-handed, and the fastball still barely averages 90 mph. That’s not to say he doesn’t have a plus pitch — Jeff Sullivan already called Nola’s curveball the best in baseball — but he’s not dominating hitters in the obvious, easily quantifiable way that many of today’s young flamethrowers do. He’s doing it in a more sneaky kind of way, and that adds an extra layer of intrigue to an already intriguing pitcher.

Read the rest of this entry »