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.
Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, I published a post here examining the year-to-year correlations for a number of ball-in-play (BIP) pitching metrics. The results published there have some use on their own. As a practical application of that information, however, I’d like to take a look here at the nine potential free agent starting pitchers (besides Zack Greinke) whose teams faced a qualifying offer decision this offseason, and see how this analysis might impact their valuation.

Below, you’ll find two tables. The first, for reference, is a collection of all the year-to-year correlations from yesterday’s post. After that is a second table, featuring how each of the nine pitchers fared according to each metric. Comments regarding each pitchers in greater depth appear below that.

First, the correlation coefficients from yesterday’s post:

Correlation Coefficients, 2014-15 ERA Qualifiers

Metric	Coefficient
K%	0.81
BB%	0.66
Pop%	0.53
Fly%	0.76
LD%	0.14
GB%	0.86
FL/LD	0.37
GB AUTH	0.25
BIP AUTH	0.37
ERA	0.45
FIP	0.65
TRU ERA	0.72

Remember: a 100% correlation (1.00 in the above table) is obtained when the two sets of data are totally identical. The closer to 1.00, the higher degree of correlation between the two data sets.

Now what follows are the nine pitchers in question. Stats are presented as an index, where 100 is average, above 100 is above average, and below 100 is below average. Questions about the various metrics? A more thorough explanation can be found in yesterday’s post.

2014-15 QO Candidates – Key Stats Scaled to 100

Name	K%	BB%	POP%	FLY%	LD%	GB%	F/L PRD	GB PRD	BIP PRD	ACT ERA	ACT FIP	TRU ERA
Brett Anderson	77	82	12	60	72	145	127	96	98	95	101	102
Wei-Yin Chen	97	71	153	109	96	92	98	102	100	83	104	89
Marco Estrada	91	104	168	148	74	73	70	89	74	78	110	75
Yovani Gallardo	77	118	65	84	105	111	97	108	96	85	100	102
His. Iwakuma	108	56	59	93	88	114	111	110	100	88	93	82
Ian Kennedy	121	98	104	119	108	84	114	103	121	110	116	101
John Lackey	97	79	133	98	97	100	92	111	96	71	92	91
Jeff Samardzija	90	74	111	115	101	88	90	103	102	124	105	94
J. Zimmermann	98	63	154	106	103	92	122	101	105	94	96	95

*****

Brett Anderson (Profile)
Status: Accepted qualifying offer from Dodgers

Anderson’s key strength is his stratospheric grounder rate, the highest in the majors last year, over two standard deviations higher than league average. His walk rate was also a positive, over one half standard deviation lower than league average. Our correlation coefficients tell us that these are likely true talents, and should recur moving forward. Unfortunately, the same doesn’t apply to his low liner rate, which was over two standard deviations below league average. As much of a ground baller as Anderson is, repeating his 66.3% grounder rate would be quite a feat, and any reduction likely will translate point for point in an increase in liner rate.

Read the rest of this entry »

Ben and Sam discuss the latest gossip about the Mariners and Marlins, then do another career comparison of Mike Trout and Bryce Harper.

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

Subscribe: RSS

Three winters ago, we got into a lot of arguments about James Shields. He was at the center of a very polarizing trade and people took sides. You remember it, so I won’t rehash things other than to remark on how funny it is that the James Shields-Wil Myers blockbuster has actually become the Wade Davis trade. Wade Davis! The guy who gave up 5.92 runs per nine in the season following the deal.

Life’s little insanities aside, Shields was very good for the Royals during his two seasons in Kansas City. He was worth 4.0 and 3.3 WAR, respectively, and helped push them over the hump and back into relevance. Would they have gotten there without him? It’s entirely possible, but he was a key player on the team during their renaissance and deserves some recognition for it. You will note, however, that Shields signed elsewhere after the Royals lost the 2014 World Series and then the team won the 2015 title without him.

One of Shields’ hallmarks, and one of the main reasons the Royals acquired him, was his consistency. You were pretty much assured more than 200 innings of good, non-elite run prevention and above-average fielding independent numbers. Shields was as predictable as a person could be in baseball. Then he signed with the Padres.

Read the rest of this entry »

If you were glancing at baseball news around the internet recently, you might have come across some announcements from MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred. A Forbes‘ article features a headline, for example, that reads “Manfred Announces 3-Year Deal With FOX To Have MLB Games Streamed In-Market“. At MLB’s own website one finds “Streaming deal a huge leap forward for MLB, fans“. Viewing the headlines alone, we might conclude, or at least be hopeful, that this is a really big deal — that MLB is finally getting rid of its blackout policy on MLB.tv, allowing fans to watch their local team without subscribing to an expensive cable television package. Unfortunately, that’s not what’s happening. In-market streaming is a small step towards making baseball more accessible to fans, but does not deal with the principal blackout problems that prevent getting MLB games any way you want them.

In-market streaming, in the iteration announced yesterday, is helpful to fans provided they already pay for a cable service broadcasting their team’s local games. As the Forbes article indicates, the deal is with FOX-owned cable affiliates. Half of the league is broadcast on a cable network owned by FOX, with the other half spread out between other owners like Comcast, Time Warner and DirecTV. While the other networks could reach a deal with MLB, Manfred’s announcement relates exclusively to the FOX-owned properties. In the chart below, the column on the left features the teams whose broadcasts are affected as a result of this agreement, while the column on the right shows teams whose rights are not managed by FOX and are therefore not part of this announcement.

15 Teams With In-Market Streaming for 2016

With In-Market Streaming	Without In-Market Streaming
Atlanta Braves	New York Mets
Cincinnati Reds	Philadelphia Phillies
Cleveland Indians	Chicago Cubs
Texas Rangers	Chicago White Sox
Detroit Tigers	Pittsburgh Pirates
Kansas City Royals	Houston Astros
Los Angeles Angels	Los Angeles Dodgers
Miami Marlins	Seattle Mariners
Milwaukee Brewers	San Francisco Giants
Minnesota Twins	Oaland Athletics
New York Yankees	Washington Nationals
Arizona Diamondbacks	Baltimore Orioles
San Diego Padres	Colorado Rockies
St. Louis Cardinals	Boston Red Sox
Tampa Bay Rays	Toronto Blue Jays

SOURCE: MLB.com

Depending on the cable provider, one might be able to stream games through portable devices if also signed into a home wifi that has also been purchased from the same provider, for example. For the fifteen teams part of this agreement, cable subscribers should have significantly more viewing options. Prior to this agreement, a fan, even if he or she were a cable subscriber and even if he or she paid for MLB.tv, would still be unable to watch games on a cell phone or tablet while located in the home market — nor could could one watch games at the doctor’s office, friend’s home, or while commuting on the train or bus. MLB.tv blacked out the games on own its platform, nor was the local cable provider was providing its own options.

Read the rest of this entry »

Bryce Harper was voted the National League’s Most Valuable Player. This is because he was almost certainly the National League’s most valuable player. I don’t want to get into the argument about the definition of “value,” and there are some halfway decent arguments that might conclude Harper got topped, but Harper is a wonderfully deserving winner, and his win comes absent any real controversy. The voting was unanimous, I should probably say. Harper got every single first-place vote. Which meant zero first-place votes for Paul Goldschmidt and Joey Votto, who each had maybe the best seasons for a first baseman since Albert Pujols in his prime. The National League had some awesome players! Harper ran away with things.

This was the year Harper reached a new level. It was a level people long suspected would be achievable for a player with Harper’s skills, but you have to realize how uncommon it actually is for a player to perform around his ceiling. Mike Trout has spoiled us, but now Harper’s up there, too, having broken out. Here’s an easy way to visualize this: Before the year, at FanGraphs, we published player projections. Player projections are everywhere, and we had our own numbers. Then players subsequently posted real numbers. It can be fun to compare the actual numbers and the projected numbers, and here’s a table of the 10 hitters who batted at least 500 times and who beat their projected OPS figures by the most:

Read the rest on Just A Bit Outside.

Read the rest of this entry »

Bryce Harper won the National League Most Valuable Player this season, and the vote was unanimous. Kris Bryant won the NL Rookie of the Year, and the vote was unanimous. Josh Donaldson‘s American League MVP victory wasn’t quite as clear-cut — 23 to seven over Mike Trout — and Dallas Keuchel’s AL Cy Young even less so — 22 to eight over David Price.

Still, most of the major award victories were fairly one-sided, and they all came down to just two parties duking it out for the top spot. And this is how it usually goes. Occasionally, there’s some discrepancy between the last couple candidates, but more often than not it’s pretty clear who will take home the hardware at year end. If there is any controversy, it’s almost always between just two guys. Very rarely do you see three players eligible for the same award, all of which with a legitimate case to win.

And yet, the 2015 NL Cy Young vote looked like this:

Jake Arrieta emerged victorious, in my opinion rightfully so, but it’s clear by the vote that there was no obvious winner. And it probably came as a surprise to some that Clayton Kershaw didn’t receive more top-two votes and make the race even closer than it actually was.

I mean, Jake Arrieta finished with an ERA that started with a one, and had one of the best second halves in baseball history. Zack Greinke finished with an ERA that started with a one, and it was the lowest we’d seen since Greg Maddux in ’95. Clayton Kershaw finished with a FIP that started with a one, and it was the second consecutive year we’d seen him do that. The ERA wasn’t much higher.

Trying to pick an obvious winner from those three is like trying to pick which duffle bag full of $100 bills you want to take home without having the chance to count every last note. Just close your eyes and pick at random. Either way you’re walking out of that room with a big bag full of money.

It’s great that Arrieta won, because he totally deserved it, but it’s an equal bummer that Greinke and Kershaw didn’t win, because they totally deserved it, too. It’s a shame that seasons like the ones Greinke and Kershaw just had will go down in the record books unrecognized, solely because “sweet lord the caliber of the pitching talent in baseball today is unbelievable what a time to be alive whiffs everywhere.”

The consolation prize for Greinke and Kershaw is that they’re not alone, and they don’t have to go unrecognized. We just witnessed one of the greatest trios of single-season pitching performances in baseball history, so let’s give the runners-up of present and past their due.

Read the rest of this entry »

The title of this post is a question I asked in my own head yesterday. As to what precise set of circumstances led to the question, I can’t say — nor does the effort required to conduct a full audit of my memory seem justified. The main virtue of the question is that it’s led to the production of Content, which one finds below and which has allowed the present author to delay briefly his perpetually imminent dismissal from FanGraphs. And perhaps it possesses a second virtue, as well: that those, having wondered idly the same thing, might now observe an attempt at supplying an answer.

And, in fact, the answer probably does have some real-live implications. Yesterday in these pages, for example, Craig Edwards performed an examination of Chris Davis’s free-agent candidacy. Edwards found something that isn’t likely to surprise anyone — namely that, whatever Davis’s virtues, a broad base of skills isn’t one of them. His power is prodigious; his contact abilities and defensive acumen, decidedly less so. To whatever degree Davis is compensated this offseason, he will be compensated for his power on contact. To the degree that Davis is successful in the future, it will be for that same trait.

Meditating on Davis in this way naturally leads to the equal and opposite line of inquiry: which player is least dependent on a single skill or trait?

Read the rest of this entry »