Aaron Harang may or may not have thrown his last pitch. The 37-year-old right-hander is a free agent, and as of last report was unsure of his future. He spent this past season – his 14th in the big leagues – with the Philadelphia Phillies. A hulking 6-foot-7, Harang has 128 career wins and a pitching style similar to that of Chris Young.

Harang’s four-seamer averaged 89 mph this year, and it hasn’t been as high as 90 since 2010. It’s not a normal slow fastball. Like Young’s, it induces a plethora of in-the-air outs when thrown up in the zone. Unlike Young’s, its effectiveness has little to due to spin rate. Per StatCast, Harang’s four-seam spin rate is 2,319 rpm, which ranked him 396th out of 500 pitchers who threw at least 100 four-seamers. Young ranked 53rd.

Harang talked about his approach to pitching when the Phillies visited Fenway Park in September.

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Harang on location and command: “I’ve always been good at locating pitches. As a kid, I’d go outside and duct tape a strike zone on a wall, and learn to hit that box. I’d play catch with it. I’d pitch little games to it. I’ve always been able to throw strikes. Read the rest of this entry »

Episode 606
Dave Cameron is both (a) the managing editor of FanGraphs and (b) the guest on this particular edition of FanGraphs Audio, during which edition he performs an autopsy on the World Series, metaphorically speaking.

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 43 min play time.)

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Alex Gordon is going to be a hot commodity on the free-agent market. Little thought will be given to exercising his current 2016 option, and then he’ll be available to anyone and everyone. The FanGraphs crowd expects him to sign for something in the neighborhood of five years and $90 million, and the crowd can end up low when predicting the higher tier. Relative to other free agents, the crowd puts Gordon’s contract between Chris Davis‘ contract and Jeff Samardzija’s contract in total cost.

Maybe Dayton Moore will be the guy who gives the contract. The Royals love Gordon, as anyone would, and he’s been with the Royals his whole career, and you might’ve noticed those Royals recently winning a championship. On their side, then, there’s new extra revenue, and there’s a natural desire to keep the same core. On Gordon’s side, he could be willing to entertain a bit of a discount, to remain where he’s been. He likes the organization, and now the organization’s successful. Good reason to stay.

There’s a lot of money out there, though. This is business, and perhaps Gordon will elect to leave Kansas City on top. People are driven to pursue new, fresh opportunities. There’s a strong chance Gordon doesn’t return, is the point. Maybe it’s 40%, or maybe it’s 90%. Gordon has been an absolutely phenomenal defensive left fielder. So because this era might be about to change, I’d like to quickly review what’s been a period of team-level defensive dominance.

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Young Tiger Nick Castellanos has two seasons under his belt and hasn’t yet turned 24. He’s shown flashes of the talent he was supposed to have as a top prospect, but he’s on the wrong side of the leaderboards so far. The second half had some good news for him, particularly when it came to his plate discipline, but it’s fair to wonder how important he will be for Detroit.

So far he’s been a net negative. Can he turn that around in a big way this upcoming season?

Only five regulars have been worse over the last two years. And it’s worse than that, since most of the guys ahead of him on the list are no longer regulars. Matt Dominguez (released), Billy Butler (DH), Jay Bruce (future DH?), Ryan Howard (future DH / future release candidate), and Dayan Viciedo (released) aren’t good company to keep.

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Ben and Sam answer listener emails about buying two tickets to games, Derek Jeter jerseys, and the World Series, and Play Index about extra innings.

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I am not ready for November and everything that goes along with it. It’s dark early. I feel confused that there’s no baseball being played. I have been catching myself staring out the window at the fading light like a sad dog waiting for its owner to return. Winter isn’t my favorite time of the year, is what I’m trying to say. The day after the final game of the World Series marks the beginning of a liminal space many of us float through until that void ends, mercifully, on Opening Day.

Judging by the hundreds of comments on FanGraphs articles since the Royals won their championship a few days ago, it doesn’t seem like you, dear studious readers of these pages, are ready for baseball to be over either. And really, baseball isn’t over in any mortal sense; there is still the Arizona Fall League, if we require it. There are still the upcoming winter leagues. And, of course, there are these articles, where we get to relive the very best instances of strong men hitting baseballs meaningful distances.

So that’s what we’re going to do today! Let’s watch the most unlikely, improbable, and impressive home runs of the playoffs. The lowest, the highest, the furthest, the fastest. Let’s act like we don’t have a missing part of us that can only be filled with baseball. Let’s stop talking about it being winter (cough) and watch some homers.

As with the previous iterations of these articles, data has been farmed from Baseball Savant and HitTrackerOnline. Onward!

Hardest-Hit and Lowest-Apex Home Run
Michael Conforto, NLDS Game 2

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In the opening minutes of his great documentary Baseball, Ken Burns characterizes the sport in terms that are both pleasing on their own and also relevant to yesterday’s post regarding Mike Trout‘s peak, and now today’s on Clayton Kershaw‘s:

“It is a haunted game, in which every player is measured against the ghosts of all who have gone before. Most of all, it is about time, and timelessness.”

It’s a much more succinct and effective way of making the point I attempted to make yesterday, in that today’s players don’t yet have the luxury of having a legacy, in turn making it tough to contextualize their potential place in history while that legacy is still being built. Looking at what today’s players accomplished in their primes, relative to the primes of the ghosts (both figurative and literal) who have gone before can help us do that.

Trout’s place in history has been well documented and updated since the completion of his 10-win rookie season. For the better part of three years now, you’ve been hearing all types of Trout stats, included with some sort of “under __” age filter that places him alongside the game’s all-time greats like Ted Williams, Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays for his production, relative to his age. It’s been hard to avoid the company which Trout has kept.

With Kershaw, seems we haven’t heard that as much. Part of it, likely, is just Trout stealing the thunder. Part of it, likely, is that Kershaw didn’t begin truly dominating until his age-23 season, so the fun “under-21” stats weren’t as fun. Part of it, perhaps, is the ridiculous Kershaw postseason narrative. Probably the biggest part of it is just that pitchers are tougher to compare across generations, and it might be easier to “dismiss” the historic nature of what Kershaw has done by recognizing that it’s happened during one of the most depressed run environments the live-ball era has ever seen.

Even with the run environment considered, what Kershaw has done these past five seasons is absolutely historic.

Trout’s “peak” — his first four seasons in the Majors — already ranks as one of the 10 greatest peaks by a position player in baseball history. He’s not alone. Kershaw is currently in the midst of a top-10 all-time peak himself. We’re lucky enough to experience them both.

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With the World Series in the rear view mirror, MLB’s hot stove season is just about to get warmed up. The exclusive negotiating period for teams to negotiate with their own players ends on Friday, opening the doors for 139 free agents to hit the open market. And with names like David Price, Jason Heyward, and Yoenis Cespedes up for grabs, this is a star-laden free agent class, far better than anything seen in recent years. But despite the availability of a host of All-Star caliber players, the man with the most power this winter might very well be Dave Dombrowski.

After being let go by the Tigers on August 4th, it took Dombrowski all of two weeks to land a job as the President of Baseball Operations with the Red Sox. His history of success with the Expos, Marlins, and Tigers made him a coveted free agent in his own right, and the Red Sox wasted no time in giving him the keys to the office in an effort to get the franchise back on the winning path. While the previous regime left a strong core in place, it’s clear that Dombrowski is going to want to remake the roster to better align with his own philosophies, and that means that the Red Sox may very well be the busiest team in baseball this winter.

As his first priority, Dombrowski has made it pretty clear that he’s going to target high-end pitching this winter.

“Our depth in starting pitching is pretty good,” said Dombrowski. “I don’t think the back end of our rotation is going to be the difficult part. When I say ‘back end,’ I mean (Nos.) 3-4-5 — Porcello, Miley, Kelly. We saw Owens, he pitched well. We had Rodriguez and he can take that step forward at any point. So I don’t think it’s the depth, as much as you’re looking for that one guy who can maybe be your horse, if you can get him.”

Read the rest on Just a Bit Outside.

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Free agency begins five days after the end of the World Series. As in other recent offseasons, FanGraphs once again facilitated this offseason a contract-crowdsourcing project, the idea being to harness the wisdom of the crowds to the end of better understanding the 2015-16 free-agent market.

Below are the results of same. For each player, respondents provided estimates of the years and dollars he’s likely to receive. Also, in such cases as a player is a candidate to receive a qualifying offer from his club, readers predicted whether he would or not — and whether, having received a qualifying offer, that player would accept it. Answers to other questions — regarding options, for example — also appear below.

What the reader will note regarding this particular list relative to previous iterations of same is its considerable length. This same exercise last year contained 55 names; the year before that, 47. Below, one finds 82 of them. The greater size is not the product of a concerted effort to provide greater coverage, but rather of mere necessity: the quantity of useful free agents (or potential free agents, at least) appears itself simply to be greater than in recent years.

Note that players with options certain to be exercised were omitted from balloting. Note also that, despite having received ballots, both Jaime Garcia and Torii Hunter have been omitted from the list below, owing to their near futures having been already determined — by the exercise of an option in the former case, retirement in the latter. Note finally that the crowd has demonstrated a distinct tendency to underestimate the overall contract values of free agents — especially among those players expected to receive the greatest compensation.

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