Retirement announcements are seldom surprising, because even from the outside it’s pretty simple to tell when a player has outlived his utility. Willie Bloomquist is 38, now, and after spending the offseason making up his mind, he tweeted the following last Friday:

Make your last swing your BEST swing. Farewell @MLB. Thank you for 14 amazing seasons. It’s been an incredible ride. pic.twitter.com/VuImzqOrSl

— Willie Bloomquist (@williebloom) March 11, 2016

Bloomquist is hanging them up, which means Bloomquist articles on analytical websites must also hang them up. In a way it’s amazing Bloomquist achieved such Internet fame in the first place, being a career reserve, but his name meant a little something over the years, and here, for one last time, I want to talk about what Willie Bloomquist was.

Read the rest of this entry »

There are certain statistics that get tallied on scorecards such as hits, walks, runs, and strikeouts.  These aren’t the modern, comprehensive measures of performance we typically use here at FanGraphs, but they are the building blocks of those metrics. Without singles/doubles/triples/etc, there is no way to build wOBA or wRC+. Without strikeouts, walks, home runs, and innings pitched, there is no FIP.

While we’ve generally moved beyond caring about certain counting stats, we use them to build the things about which we care a great deal. But there is at least one standard scorecard event that doesn’t get a lot of attention when we build these metrics because it’s extremely rare and also extremely subjective: the balk.

The layman’s description of a balk is easy enough to understand: it’s a movement made by the pitcher intended to deceive the runner into thinking that same pitcher is about to throw towards home, when in reality he (the pitcher) is not. Any reasonably informed fan knows that the specifics of the balk rule are complicated and enforced at the whims of the umpire. It’s a judgment call, and one that doesn’t seem to be uniformly implemented at any given moment in time. But there are trends in balking:

This graph deserves two explanations. First, let’s discuss 1988. The balk rule was changed in 1988 and if you didn’t know the results of the change, the actual difference in the wording of the rule might not catch your eye. I’ll allow Theron Schultz of Recondite Baseball to explain:

Baseball Official Rule 8.01(b): The pitcher, following his stretch, must (a) hold the ball in both hands in front of his body and (b) come to a complete stop.

1988 Baseball Official Rule 8.01(b): The pitcher, following his stretch, must (a) hold the ball in both hands in front of his body, and (b) come to a single complete and discernible stop, with both feet on the ground.

The difference between the two rules is that the 1988 version replaced “complete stop” with “single complete and discernible stop, with both feet on the ground.” This slight change, intended to make balk calls more uniform throughout major league baseball, instead sparked one of most frustrating summers ever for major league hurlers. Only six weeks after opening day, Rick Mahler of the Atlanta Braves committed the 357th balk of the 1988 season, breaking the MLB record for most balks in a complete season… with three-quarters of the season to play. Before all was said and done, American League pitchers were called for a staggering 558 balks. Their National League brethren had it a little easier, “only” committing 366 balks.

This is a wonderful bit of trivia, but it obscures the broader trend: fewer balks are being called across the league. We have data back to 1974, and since that time, there has been a clear decline in the number of balks called in major-league baseball (shown in the graph as balks per 162 games). Here’s the same graph a before, now with a truncated y-axis for easier viewing:

It’s unclear if umpires are letting pitchers get away with more balking behavior or if pitchers are less guilty than they used to be, but the trend is rather clear. There was also a rule revision before 2013 outlawing the fake-to-third-throw-to-first move, which shaved about a balk per team season from the league.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Houston Astros are, in some ways, an odd team. Their best hitter is their 21 year old shortstop, and then their next best hitters are a toolsy outfielder and a 5’5 second baseman. Pretty much around the field, the team has stockpiled well-rounded players, and they have a lot of good athletes who are also good hitters, giving them significant depth in their line-up. In fact, our depth charts project them to get average or better production from seven of their nine spots, and gives them one of the best up-the-middle groups in all of baseball.

But their line-up also has a couple of notable weak spots: first base and designated hitter. These are ostensibly the two easiest positions on the diamond to fill, given that you can focus primarily on offensive production at those spots, widening the pool of available options, but while the Astros have found quality performers at every other spot, they’ve struggled to find guys who specialize in just hitting. Last year, the team got just a 104 wRC+ from their first baseman, and a 101 wRC+ from their designated hitters, ranking in the bottom tier in the league at both positions.

Incumbent first baseman Chris Carter was non-tendered for his lack of production, but interestingly, the team didn’t really make any moves to replace him, and will instead rely on an in-house mix of candidates while looking to get better production than they did a year ago. While there weren’t a lot of quality first baseman moving around this winter, they could have theoretically gotten involved in the Todd Frazier bidding, or gone for a lower-upside play like Yonder Alonso or Adam Lind. But the team was apparently comfortable with what they had internally, and are now using spring training to sort out who is going to grab the jobs at the two bat-first positions. Let’s take a look at those options.

Read the rest of this entry »

If it weren’t for Bryce Harper, fans of the Washington Nationals might be hard-pressed to admit 2015 ever happened. The team began last season with expectations as high as this year’s Cubs (sorry, Cubs fans) and ended it with a symbolic choke. Nobody could stay off the disabled list — Anthony Rendon, Jayson Werth, Denard Span and Ryan Zimmerman were all hindered by injuries — and the ones who could — Ian Desmond and Wilson Ramos — became liabilities at the plate, seemingly overnight.

But it was the pitching that truly got the hype train a-rollin’ in the preseason — an already star-studded staff with Max Scherzer as the sweetest cherry on top — and the pitching didn’t disappoint. Stephen Strasburg had a rough go of things in the first month and and Doug Fister had his fair share of struggles, but when it was all said and done, the rotation finished with a top-three WAR, a top-five FIP and a top-10 ERA. The expectation was that Washington’s starting pitching would be elite — it ran five deep with proven, quality arms — and Washington’s starting pitching was elite. But even proven arms need to adapt, lest they lose their title of proven. And while, on the surface, Washington’s hurlers for the most part looked like themselves, every member of the starting rotation made an adjustment, all similar in nature but unique to each individual. Unlike a tweak to one’s mechanics or pitch mix, it’s the type of adjustment that alters the very foundation of a pitcher’s DNA — every member of the Nationals starting rotation changed the way they throw their fastball.

Generally speaking, pitchers can be classified as high-fastball guys, or low-fastball guys. Unless you’re Bartolo Colon, you probably don’t want to try your hand at being a down-the-middle-fastball guy, and even a both-sides-of-the-plate-fastball guy like Johnny Cueto shows up as an extreme high-fastballer. High-fastball guys can always throw higher, and low-fastball guys can always throw lower, and last year, the Nationals made an effort toward the extremes.

Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

Pay scales using merit and tenure seem to be opposites of one another. Under the tenure system, pay rises as more service time accrues; under the merit system, pay is correlated with performance. While two the models might seem at odds, the Major League Baseball Players Association, along with Major League Baseball, have created a bit of a hybrid between the two systems.

Those players without much service time, like Gerrit Cole and Jacob deGrom, have their salaries set for them without regard for their performance, while veteran players like David Price and Jason Heyward are free to receive pay based on their track record and expectation of future performance. While we can debate how fair this system is, particularly for young players, what is more certain is the disparity in pay between players — it is massive.

There will be 750 players on MLB Opening Day rosters, and while we do not yet know the identity of all those players, given the contracts that have been given out, we can get a fairly good idea of the breakdown of salaries and service time of the group as a whole. Looking at all the players with guaranteed contracts and providing minimum salaries to fill out the roster in the same manner I did when projecting 2016 payrolls for all MLB teams, we can get a decent idea of how money is spread out among players.

Taking a broad look at salaries with respect to service time, here is a scatter plot of 2016 salaries and service time.

Read the rest of this entry »

Once Major League Baseball announced last month that New York Mets relief pitcher Jenrry Mejia had been permanently suspended from the sport after testing positive for performance enhancing drugs for the third time, it was probably only a matter of time until Mejia threatened to pursue legal action against the league. Even though Mejia can petition commissioner Rob Manfred for reinstatement next year, the earliest that he would be allowed to return to the playing field would be 2018. Considering that Mejia only appeared in seven games last season for the Mets — between serving his initial, 80-game suspension and subsequent, 162-game suspension for PED use — by the time Mejia is potentially eligible to return to action he would have effectively missed the better part of a minimum of three seasons, a difficult absence for anyone to overcome.

So given that, it’s not particularly surprising that Mejia announced last week that he intends to challenge his lifetime suspension. In particular, Mejia claims that officials from MLB threatened him in 2015 following his second positive PED test — results that he insists were inaccurate — allegedly telling him that the league would “find a way to find a third positive” if Mejia appealed his 162-game suspension. Even though Mejia did not appeal that second suspension, he is nevertheless now accusing MLB of conspiring to drive him from the game.

Moreover, Mejia’s attorney, Vincent White, went one step further on Friday, announcing that he’d spoken to a witness who claims that MLB has previously hired third party contractors to hack into players’ social-media accounts in order to look for evidence linking the players to PEDs. (MLB has, not surprisingly, officially denied all of these accusations.)

Unfortunately for Mejia, despite the attention-grabbing nature of these allegations, his odds of successfully overturning his permanent suspension appear to be pretty slim.

Read the rest of this entry »

Episode 638
Michael Baumann wrote formerly for Grantland and writes currently for Baseball Prospectus, Today’s Knuckleball, and D1 Baseball. In this edition of the program, he patiently answers simpleminded questions concerning the collegiate game — and, more specifically, examines Louisville’s Corey Ray, Vanderbilt’s Jeren Kendall, and South Carolina freshman pitcher Adam Hill.

This edition of the program is sponsored by Draft, the first truly mobile fantasy sports app. Compete directly against idiot host Carson Cistulli by clicking here.

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 46 min play time.)

Read the rest of this entry »

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Ben and Sam preview the Mariners’ season with BP/Lookout Landing writer Meg Rowley, and George talks to Tacoma Rainiers broadcaster Mike Curto (at 25:23).

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

Subscribe: RSS

In my January 31 column, I noted that Rick Porcello has one of the highest four-seam spin rates in the game. Given his increased usage over the past two years, I theorized that he began throwing the pitch more often for that very reason.

It turns out I was wrong.

“When I started using my four-seam more in Detroit (in 2014), it was just a different fastball to give them a different look,” Porcello said in Fort Myers. “I didn’t know anything about spin rate until I was told about it last year.”

Regardless of the reason, the pitch wasn’t a panacea. A plethora of mis-located fours helped contribute to a tumultuous 2015. In his first season with the Red Sox, Porcello allowed 196 hits in 172 innings, and his ERA was an unsightly 4.92.

His signature pitch was equally to blame.

Read the rest of this entry »