2016 Opening Night Live Blog

8:30
Dave Cameron: Happy Opening Night everyone.

8:30
Dave Cameron: And welcome back, baseball.

8:32
CamdenWarehouse: Player/Team is on pace for impossible amount of stat for the year!!!

8:32
Dave Cameron: Chris Archer’s ~400 strikeouts seems perfectly attainable.

8:32
Andrew: Something I haven’t seem mentioned is that I don’t really see any impact SPs being available at the deadline a la Price/Cueto/Hamels. Am I missing anyone or will it be more difficult for a team to upgrade their pitching during the season than it’s been in recent years?

8:33
Dave Cameron: Tyson Ross is pretty good.

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2016 Opening Day Live Blog

12:46
august fagerstrom: why do we have to boo people on Opening Day

12:46
august fagerstrom: hi everyone

12:47
The Dude of NY: Opening day has me exited like this.

12:47
Wily Mo Money Mo Problems: Could you please explain the Pirates’ lineup construction to me? I realize that the analytics support moving Cutch to the 2 hole, but it seems to be coming at the expense of moving Freese to 3. A top 4 of Jaso, Harrison, McCutchen, and Marte just seems like it *has* to be more productive, but am I looking at this wrong?

12:48
august fagerstrom: Freese batting 3rd is a bit odd.

12:49
august fagerstrom: McCutchen hitting second definitely seems like the right move. Surprised 3-5 isn’t some combo of Marte, Polanco, Cervelli, Harrison

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FanGraphs Live Features: Everything You Need to Know Before, During, and After the Game

Since it’s been 154 days since the end of the 2015 season, you may have forgotten about all the great live and pre-game and post-game features that we have on FanGraphs. Here’s a quick refersher:

Before the Game

Lineups: On our live scoreboard page, we always have up to date lineups for each and every game of the season. These are typically updated as soon as they become available.

Game Odds: Prior to each game we try to predict the chance of each team winning. These are based on our depth chart projections and take into account the starting lineup and starting pitcher. If there is no starting lineup yet, we try and do our best to predict the chances of each team winning anyway.

Probable Starter / Lineup Leaderboards: Want all the probable pitchers and lineups entered into a custom leaderboard for you? We do it for you!

Daily Fantasy Projections: Each day we have daily fantasy projections from our friends at SaberSim.

During the Game

Live Win Probability Charts: Check out our live win probability charts, detailed box scores, pitch chart, and play-by-play data. These are all updated in real time.

Live Leaderboards: You can see live leaderboards for either today’s stats or updated full season stats in real time.

Live Player Page Stats: If a player is playing today, you’ll see his updated live stats on his player page.

After the Game

Playoff Probabilities: When a game ends, we do our best to quickly update our playoff probabilities.


Sunday Notes: Baez, Jankowski, Hughes, Opening Day, more

Javier Baez has been burdened by strikeouts. The promising young Cub has a 38.5% k-rate and an 18.5% swinging strike rate in 309 big-league plate appearances. There were a plethora of whiffs in the minors as well, so his contact issues extend beyond the expected MLB learning curve.

Baez has plus power, especially for a middle infielder. He hit 37 home runs between high-A and Double-A in 2013, and a year later he went deep 23 times in 434 Triple-A at bats.

Reaching the bleachers isn’t his primary goal.

“I’m not trying to hit for power,” Baez told me this spring. “I’m just trying to make contact, and if it goes over the fence, fine. I’m trying to hit the ball hard.”

Hitting it at all has been a challenge, and the 23-year-old former first-round pick is aware of his deficiencies. Ironing them out is the hurdle. In his eyes, mechanics aren’t the problem. Read the rest of this entry »


The Best of FanGraphs: March 28-April 1, 2016

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, orange for TechGraphs and blue for Community Research.
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Opening Day(s) Live Blogs!

We’re 48 hours away from real baseball! On Sunday, the 2016 season kicks off with three games: STL-PIT at 1 pm, TOR-TB at 4 pm, and KC-NYM at 8:30 pm, rather than just having the one Sunday night game like they’ve done the past few years. Traditionally, we’ve done our Opening Day Live Blog on first Monday of the season, but since MLB is giving us a full day of games on Sunday, we’re going to do two Opening Day Live Blogs this year.

August Fagerstrom will here for the early game on Sunday, Paul Swydan will be here for the second game, and I’ll be your host for the night game. Then on Monday, we’ll have a continuous live blog for the 1 pm, 4 pm, and 7 pm games, with Jeff Sullivan, Owen Watson, Craig Edwards, Sean Dolinar, and others hanging out while we have our first full-ish slate of games.

So come celebrate the return of baseball with us this weekend, and then again on Monday, as we watch the 2016 season kick off together. Welcome back, baseball!


The Top College Players by (Maybe) Predictive Stats

On multiple occasions last year, the author published a statistical report designed to serve as a mostly responsible shorthand for people who, like the author, possess more enthusiasm for collegiate baseball than expert knowledge of it. Those reports integrated concepts central to much of the analysis found at FanGraphs — regarding sample size and regression, for example — to provide something not unlike a “true talent” leaderboard for hitters and pitchers in select conferences.

In recent weeks, I’ve revisited for the 2016 college campaign. What follows represents the most current installment of a possibly infinite series.

As in the original edition of this same thing, what I’ve done here is to utilize principles introduced by Chris Mitchell on forecasting future major-league performance with minor-league stats.

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How It Could All Go Wrong for the Cubs

The 2016 season hasn’t started yet, but we already know one thing; everyone loves the Cubs this year. Whether you go by projection systems, gambling odds, expert predictions, or general pre-season hype, it’s pretty clear that the Chicago Cubs are the team to beat in 2016. Our forecasts expect them to win nearly 60% of their games and our playoff odds give them a 94% chance of reaching the postseason. Expectations couldn’t really be much higher.

But if there’s one thing baseball is particularly good at, it’s reminding us all how uncertain we should be about predicting a specific future for one player or even one team. In the aggregate, we can do a decent job of forecasting large groups, but for individuals or single teams, the range of possible outcomes is still really large. Last year, for instance, the Nationals had almost exactly the same projections as the Cubs do now, with a .585 projected winning percentage and a 94% chance of reaching the postseason. But instead, they won 83 games and watched the playoffs at home.

So, before the Cubs start playing games that count and things start threatening to go wrong, let’s take a look at what could cause the Cubs to follow in the Nationals path.

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Jeff Sullivan FanGraphs Chat — 4/1/16

9:08
Jeff Sullivan: Hello friends

9:08
Jeff Sullivan: Welcome to Friday baseball chat

9:08
Eminor3rd: Do you like April Fool’s jokes?

9:09
Jeff Sullivan: Today’s April fool’s joke was the idea that I would be here on time

9:09
Nicholas: Which RF puts up more WAR over the next 3 years: Betts or Stanton?

9:09
Jeff Sullivan: I’ll take Stanton by a win or two

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FanGraphs 2016 Staff Predictions

Oh my, it’s prediction time. Can you feel it? Another season is upon us. Another chance for us to look like huge idiots. Like last season, when none of us pegged Kansas City to make the playoffs, and just five of us pegged the Mets as a playoff team. Being wrong on the internet can be an annual thing, but rarely do we crystallize just how wrong we are in one single location. Yes, it’s good to be back.

This year, there are a couple of no-doubt teams, according to everyone who voted. Chicago and Houston enter the season as our two locks to make the postseason. Considering that, as recently as 2013, these teams won 66 and 51 games, respectively, this seems pretty remarkable. We can save the tanking discussion for another day, but no matter your name for it, these franchises have really built themselves up into something. Houston has had an especially sharp transformation. Last season, they got zero votes for the postseason, and this year they got every single vote.

The Astros and Cubs aren’t the only teams in which we’re big believers, of course, but let’s get right to looking at the actual predictions.

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