FanGraphs Baseball

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
New York NL at Pittsburgh | 19:05 ET
Syndergaard (70.2 IP, 50 xFIP-) vs. Taillon (MLB Debut)
The author is quoting his own grotesque self when he declares that Mets right-hander Noah Syndergaard has produced the lowest adjusted xFIP among qualified pitchers since the entire time during which that metric has been available. The author is quoting other people when he notes that Pirates right-hander Jameson Taillon, who’s scheduled to record his major-league debut tonight, is one of baseball’s top prospects. Or, is quoting other people from 2013, at least — i.e., the most recent season before this one during which Taillon accumulated even one professional inning. Taillon, now 24 years old, has been excellent this season after a two-year hiatus, producing the top strikeout- and walk-rate differential among all Triple-A qualifiers while also sitting at 94-96 mph.

Readers’ Preferred Television Broadcast: New York NL.

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Episode 658
Dave Cameron is the managing editor of FanGraphs. During this edition of FanGraphs Audio he discusses what cognitive biases might be at play in the assessment of aging players, generally, and Jacoby Ellsbury, specifically; evaluates the organizational health of the Padres relative to recent Astros and Phillies clubs; and, as part of the Practical Analytics series, examines the proper variables to consider before purchasing months’ and months’ worth of deodorant.

This episode of the program is 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 47 min play time.)

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Recently, we massively revamped our Player Graphs and are continuing to add more features to them. Today, we added several batted-ball and plate-discipline stats both for pitchers and batters in a new drop-down menu. In addition, it’s now possible to combine certain stats on the same graph.

Here are a few release notes for the update:

• We have added GB%, LD%, FB%, HH%, MH%, SH%, Pull%, Cent%, Oppo%, O-Swing%, Z-Swing%, Swing%, O-Contact%, Z-Contact% and Contact% to all batters and pitchers.
• We’ve added K% and BB% for pitchers.
• By using the drop-down menus, readers are able to mix and match up to five stats on a graph as long as the stats are on the same scale.
• Stats are on the same scale if they are formatted in the same manner. For example, K% and GB% are both percentages. A stat like wOBA, meanwhile, uses the traditional three-decimal format. K% and GB% can be plotted on the same graph while wOBA can’t be paired with either K% or GB%.
• Readers are able to reset and clear the chart by hitting the “Reset” button on the right side of the drop-down menu.
• If a stat is greyed-out in the menu, it can’t be added to the graph. Either the player doesn’t have data for that particular stat or the stat cannot be matched with other stats currently on the graph. You can click “Reset” to start over and clear the current graph.

With this new interface we’ll continue adding more stats and features.

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

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.

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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.

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