FanGraphs Baseball

Yes, it’s true that this is the year of the second baseman. As a group, second basemen are putting up better offensive numbers than they have in nearly a century, and are outhitting their defensively challenged counterparts in left field for the first time in the history of the live-ball era, dating back to 1920. And yes, it’s true that power across the sport is nearly at an all-time high. The league’s power output has returned to peak steroid-era levels, with this year’s isolated slugging percentage and home runs per plate appearance trailing only the year 2000 as the most power-laden season in the game’s history.

Those trends are real, and they should help shape the way we evaluate hitter’s performances in 2016. But don’t let those trends fool you: Brian Dozier is truly having a season for the ages.

The Minnesota Twins’ second baseman clubbed three home runs against Kansas City on Monday afternoon, bringing his season total to 38. Only Mark Trumbo has hit more homers than Dozier for the season; only David Ortiz has a higher ISO. Dozier’s homered eight times in the last week and has been baseball’s most valuable player in the second half according to WAR. His .298 ISO is the highest unadjusted figure in the expansion era (1961-present) for a second baseman and the highest by any second baseman not named Rogers Hornsby in baseball history.

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This week, we’re going to run a series of posts laying out the case for the most compelling candidates for the American League’s Most Valuable Player Award. These posts are designed to make an affirmative argument for their subject and are not intended to serve as comprehensive looks at every candidate on their own. The authors tasked with writing these posts may not even believe their subject actually deserves to win, but they were brave enough to make the case anyway. The goal of these posts is to lay out the potential reasons for voters to consider a variety of candidates and to allow the readers to decide which argument is most persuasive.

Two-and-a-half months from now, after the World Series is over and clubs are in full offseason mode, the BBWAA will announce its end-of-season awards winners live on MLB Network. Given the way the public conversation is going and the way voters have traditionally cast their ballots, it appears likely that someone other than Mike Trout will win the American League’s Most Valuable Player honors.

The MVP award traditionally goes to the best hitter on a playoff team. It’s not a hard-and-fast rule, but it’s been 13 years since a player won the AL MVP award without making the playoffs, and only one pitcher has won since the strike. Not every BBWAA writer believes in this particular definition of MVP, but enough of the population does to ensure its continued observance. National League voters have been a little more forgiving about making the playoffs, but Trout doesn’t play in the NL.

The Angels are not going to make the playoffs even if they win all of their remaining games, so Trout’s odds of actually winning the award are minimal. Unless the group of writers chosen to vote for AL MVP this year is particularly unrepresentative of the BBWAA as a whole, someone like Josh Donaldson or Mookie Betts will win. Donaldson and Betts have had excellent seasons and should be recognized for their performance, but if you apply any reasonable criteria beyond team performance, Mike Trout should be the AL MVP.

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Last week, Ben Lindbergh wrote a piece titled “Baseball Has a ‘RedZone’ Channel” over at The Ringer. It was all about a script that Dan Hirsch wrote at The Baseball Gauge called MLB.TV Game Changer. Basically, if you’re watching MLB.TV in a web browser, this script will allow you to program your MLB.TV experience to skip to the action that you most want to see, and you can customize it in many different ways. Put succinctly, this blew my mind. So I spent the better part of a night playing with the script’s priority list.

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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
Toronto at New York AL | 20:10 ET
Dickey (160.1 IP, 112 xFIP-) vs. Tanaka (173.0 IP, 82 xFIP-)
By whatever method one uses to determine such a thing, the result seems largely the same: the Toronto Blue Jays possess roughly a 50% probability of winning the AL East and something slightly less than that of qualifying for an AL wild-card spot and something less than either of those first two figures of failing to reach the postseason in any form, at all. But even that last figure is probably greater than 10% — which, events that are 10% likely to occur, they occur with some frequency. Like that someone would write these banal words, for example. And like that someone would consent to read them.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Toronto Radio.

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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
San Diego at Los Angeles NL | 16:10 ET
Friedrich (100.1 IP, 120 xFIP-) vs. De Leon (MLB Debut)
The author has abused his role as the custodian of this daily post to assign — at his awful discretion — a NERD score of 15 to Dodgers pitcher Jose De Leon, thus rendering the game score one of the day’s highest. The reason: today’s start represents De Leon’s first as a major leaguer. And also the reason: basically no minor-league pitcher has matched De Leon’s success over the past few years. Consider, by way of example: at no point since Rookie ball in 2013 has De Leon recorded a strikeout rate below 30%, even while working almost exclusively as a starter. Nor does the success appear to be a product of mere deception or polish. Basically all public accounts report that the right-hander’s fastball sits at 92-94 mph. By comparison, the average four-seam fastball velocity among major-league starters this year has been 92.0 mph.

Here is not De Leon’s fastball, but rather his changeup, earning a swing and miss from Jake Lamb during spring training:

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Los Angeles NL Television.

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Richie Martin grew up in Tampa and plays in the Oakland A’s organization, but he has a lot of Detroit in him. The 21-year-old shortstop prospect was born in the Motor City and still has family there. There are baseball connections. Martin’s 74-year-old father was a high school teammate of Tigers legend Willie Horton — the two remain friends — and the youngster considers Chet Lemon a huge influence and “almost a second dad.”

Martin — the 20th-overall pick in the 2015 draft —played youth baseball for Lemon beginning when he was 12 years old. Not surprisingly, he’s friendly with the former centerfielder’s son, Marcus Lemon, who plays in the White Sox system. The two share more in common that athletic talent. Both are creative. 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
San Francisco at Chicago NL | 14:20 ET
Bumgarner (187.2 IP, 86 xFIP-) vs. Arrieta (168.0 IP, 89 xFIP-)
The present author repeats this sentiment below in a tortuous explanation of NERD’s playoff adjustment, but it merits some brief consideration here, as well: per FanGraphs’ playoff odds, the Cubs have now recorded more wins than the Central division’s next-best club, St. Louis, is projected to record by the end of the season.

Regard that same sentiment, in lightly photoshopped form:

What this means is that, as of now, it would be possible for the Cubs to lose all the rest of their games and still likely win the Central division.

As for their opponent today, San Francisco, they currently occupy a very different place: where the Cubs’ near future is more or less settled, the Giants’ is opaque. Whatever methodology one references, the Giants feature roughly an equal chance of winning the division as merely qualifying for a wild-card spot as doing neither.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: San Francisco Radio or Television.

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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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Episode 679
Dave Cameron is the managing editor of FanGraphs. During this edition of FanGraphs Audio, he discusses how the club with the league’s highest payroll has found itself relying on a player who was out of affiliated baseball in 2015, recapitulates some of this experiences at Pitch Talks, and reflects briefly — and forlornly — on FanGraphs’ attempt to publish organizational rankings half a decade ago.

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 42 min play time.)

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The Milwaukee Brewers are close to etching a spot in the record books. In a year where the average team attempts 0.72 steals per game, they’re running 1.42 times per game. The closest the league’s ever come to that rate is 1987. That year, a combination of Vince Coleman, Harold Reynolds, and Willie Wilson tested the peripheral vision of pitchers and catchers league-wide.

Relative to league average in 2016, this year’s Brew Crew is way out in front:

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