FanGraphs Baseball

Last September, a starting pitcher emerged who would go on to be one of the more popular under-the-radar “breakout” picks of the winter. Acquired from Miami in the Mat Latos trade, Anthony DeSclafani was a 24-year-old with middling results across his 31 starts last year, including a 4.05 ERA and a 12.2-point strikeout- and walk-rate differential (K-BB%). The results on their own were more than serviceable for an innings-eater type pitcher, but they weren’t exactly exciting. Until you looked at September, that is.

In September, his ERA clocked in at an unappealing 4.93, but the underlying peripherals were fantastic. He struck out 24.8% of batters while walking just 3.4% and maintained a solid 47.1% ground-ball rate — all of which left him with a 2.27 FIP for the month. A bit of bad luck in batted balls and sequencing made it possible for numbers-friendly fans to uncover what really happened with DeSclafani that month and feel like you were unearthing a great secret, because not only was DeSclafani putting on a hidden great performance, it was accompanied by the always enticing logical explanation.

Take a look at DeSclafani’s pitch-usage chart from 2015 and you’ll find that, at the end of the season, he largely scrapped his changeup and dramatically increased his curveball usage. Additionally, he decreased his reliance on the four-seamer. Great run-prevention numbers may not have initially accompanied the adjustment, but the peripherals indicated that DeSclafani had taken a step forward and could be in store for a strong 2016 campaign. And, as it turns out, that’s exactly what’s happened.

Read the rest of this entry »

Episode 681
Lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen is the guest on this edition of the pod, during which he discusses Matt Bowman, park effects, and assessing a prospect’s ability to benefit (or not) from information; attempts to identify those skills which might allow a pitcher, like Mike Leake or (nearly) Rick Porcello, to bypass the minor leagues entirely; and explores an anxious moment from his own sporting youth.

This episode of the program either is or isn’t sponsored by SeatGeek, which site removes both the work and also the hassle from the process of shopping for tickets.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 1 hr 08 min play time.)

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
Baltimore at Boston | 19:10 ET
Bundy (94.1 IP, 106 xFIP-) vs. Pomeranz (158.2 IP, 89 xFIP-)
Over the past week or so, this space has been reserved almost exclusively for Baltimore games or Boston games or Toronto games or Baltimore-Toronto games or Boston-Toronto games or, as is the case today, Baltimore-Boston games. Because the AL East is currently home to a giant competitive rumpus, is why. By the coin-flip methodology of calculating postseason odds — which seems to best represent how the human mind conceives of these things — all three of the aforementioned teams possess better than a 10% probability of winning the division. Even the dumb Yankees, by that same methodolgy, possess greater odds than the second-place club in three other divisions. So this Orioles-Red Sox contest is most highly rated it. This is the end of the explanation for why.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Baltimore Television.

Read the rest of this entry »

“This is a great time to be a baseball player and have all this info,” Reds starting pitcher Dan Straily told me last month when his team came to town. Minutes later, I was talking with a member of his front office who lauded the pitcher as “maybe the most dependable” of his squad. These things are related. It’s taken all that info for the pitcher to mold himself into the useful arm that he is today.

That info has helped Straily refine not only his approach, but also the movement on his pitches and the mechanics that created them. And it helped him when things were dire. His velocity dipped into the low 80s at one point, and he was released by two teams in a one-season span. “When I lost my velo, I had to learn how to pitch,” the righty remembered. “Now that I got my velo back, I’m still pitching the same way, but with better stuff.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Adam Jones created a bit of a stir when he told Bob Nightengale of USA Today that “baseball is a white man’s sport.” That’s understandable. Race can be a hot-button issue at the best of times, and given the current climate — Colin Kaepernick, Black Lives Matter, the presidential race — these are volatile times.

Jones addressed his controversial comment with a group of reporters prior to tonight’s game at Fenway Park. The Baltimore Orioles outfielder spoke at length, and he did so thoughtfully and honestly. Here are a few excerpts:

“At the end of the day, I’m one of the most known black players in baseball. There are 58 or 59 of us…Baseball is numbers. It’s eight percent black. I didn’t make that up. In football and basketball the numbers are in the 60s and 70s. These aren’t made up numbers. It just is what it is. I’m part of the eight percent.

“If you can’t handle the truth… I backed it up with stats. We’re a numbers game right now… Everybody wants to talk analytical. I gave numbers. I gave facts. I’m still getting the anguish and hate and disgust, but at the end of the day I know I have the respect of my peers.

“Here is my biggest thing with it. Society doesn’t mind us helping out the hood and the inner cities, but they have a problem when we speak about the hood and the inner cities. I don’t understand that part.”

We’re at that time of the regular season during which most teams are making a final push to clinch a spot in the postseason. Some teams (such as the Cubs) have basically already clinched a spot and some others (such as the Twins) are already mathematically eliminated. Most teams fall somewhere in between.

Many baseball fans will look at the standings every day in September. If they see their favorite team is leading its respective division, they’ll hope that, for the rest of the regular season, that team win will more games than anyone else in the division, thus allowing that team to become the division champion. This is guaranteed.

If they see, on the other hand, that their favorite team is not leading its respective division, they will check the number of games remaining and the number of games by which their team is behind the division leader. If the number of games remaining is greater than the number of games behind, then they can hold out hope that their team can win the division by winning all its remaining games, while the division leader loses all their remaining games. Unfortunately, this is not always guaranteed.

The type of error is made not only by Average Joe sports fans, but also professional sportswriters.  This article will describe these tricky scenarios in which teams are eliminated from postseason contention.

Read the rest of this entry »

A few weeks ago we added a custom splits tool to our player pages. This weekend, we added the ability to select a specific date range. To do this, we added the “Time Frame” control bar, which now contains all date-related splits and controls.

The “Filter” menu is the old “Time Frame” splits menu. This gives you the option to view plate appearances occurring in a month or season half, and the day or night time-of-day split. These are different from a custom date range. Choosing the “May” split in the filter menu will display plate appearances from every May. This would be used for getting career stats in May.

To look at splits from a specific date, there’s a drop-down calendar with which you can select the start date and end date. This will limit the splits to those specific days. This can be useful if you want to look at splits after a player returns from an injury, a trade or an adjustment. We’ve also included preset ranges like the last 30 days or the past calendar year.

Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

Certain people on a baseball field possess the type of abilities that lend themselves to being noticed. It’s very easy to notice Giancarlo Stanton when he hits a massive home run. It’s tough to miss Noah Syndergaard pumping 101-mph fastballs in the first inning. Others possess the type of abilities that only become noticed when things go wrong. We don’t really notice the first-base umpire until he blows the call that ruins a perfect game. Nobody knows the third-base coach’s name until he holds the runner that could’ve changed the World Series. And then there’s a third group who possess extraordinary abilities, one way or another, that go completely unnoticed. Someone is the best in the world at playing ricochets off the wall in the outfield, but we’ve got no real way of knowing. There’s a king of the “second-base-glove-flip-to-first,” but we haven’t crowned him.

For some time, Javier Baez existed in that third group, of having an elite skill that’s not as obvious as hitting a home run or throwing 100. Lately, he’s been moving into group one. It’s getting hard not to notice Javy Baez’s tag game.

Read the rest of this entry »