On Monday, Kiley McDaniel announced that he was leaving his position as FanGraphs Lead Prospect Analyst, having been offered a job as Assistant Director of Baseball Operations by the Atlanta Braves. When Kiley called me a few weeks ago to give me the news, I wasn’t surprised; this isn’t the first time a team had shown interest in him, and we knew it was inevitable that he was going to get offered a job he couldn’t pass up. The quality and quantity of work he did was simply too strong of a resume to ignore, and it was clear that this point would eventually come.

Kiley leaves a big void in our staff, and we’re certainly aware of the fact that it’s unreasonable to expect anyone to step in and simply pick up where he left off. Between his time working for three previous organizations and almost every media outlet that covers prospects, Kiley was about as connected to people in and around the game as anyone I’ve ever been around. He traveled extensively, seeing as many players in person as he could, and ended up doing things like having lunch with Yoan Moncada.

But beyond just traveling to see players, shooting video, writing up reports, and gathering valuable information from people in the game, he also helped push the creation of some back-end tools that led to things like the scouting grades that now appear on the player pages, as well as sortable pages with four years’ worth of information on the draft and the international players of interest who signed in July. He didn’t just produce content; he overhauled what prospect coverage at FanGraphs looked like.

Read the rest of this entry »

Episode 603
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 examines four scenarios from the postseason this year which, possessing some ambiguity with regard to laws written or otherwise, compel one to exercise his or her judgment.

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 40 min play time.)

Read the rest of this entry »

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

If it’s a preview of Game 5 you want, here’s all that really needs to be said: Zack Greinke is good, and Jacob deGrom is good, and the rest of the Dodgers are good, and the rest of the Mets are good, and some combination of events is going to lead one good team beyond the other. Maybe the combination will be predictable; maybe a catcher will accidentally throw a return toss off of the batter’s hand in a tie game in the ninth. Maybe that counts as predictable now. We’ll keep our eyes out.

Any preview bigger than that is lying to you. If not lying, then implying this’ll be in any way foreseeable. There’s a game, and things will happen in it. What I want to do here isn’t project which team is more likely to win. Rather, I just want to point out a really neat thing about Greinke’s 2015 record. It does say more than a little something about the way that Greinke pitches, so in that way this is immediately relevant, but mostly I wanted to make sure to get this in somewhere before Greinke’s season was officially over. It might be over in a matter of hours. So, now’s the time.

Read the rest of this entry »

It would be an understatement to say that these are pretty heady days to be a Cubs’ fan. In the last two games of the NLDS alone, an age-24-or-under phenom who will be under team control for the next five years or so seemingly drilled a ball into the stands or onto a scoreboard every five minutes or so. The present is extremely bright, and the near-term future potential seems nearly limitless. At this point, it might be prudent to take a step back and pay a little respect to the player who made it all possible, whose incredible second half cemented the Cubs’ wild card spot and then propelled them past the Pirates in the wild card game, ace starter Jake Arrieta.

These Cubs have been built quickly, and have excelled in many talent procurement areas. Hitting on high-end position player draft picks? Check, thanks to the likes of Javier Baez, Kris Bryant and Kyle Schwarber. Attacking the international market? Check, thanks to NLDS wunderkind Jorge Soler. Don’t forget the trade market, either. Anthony Rizzo was stolen from the Padres, but the biggest theft of all was the acquisition of Arrieta, along with key bullpen cog Pedro Strop, from the Orioles for Scott Feldman and Steve Clevenger.

Like our AL Contact Manager of the Year, Marco Estrada, who turned 32 in July, Arrieta wins NL honors in the very first season in which he qualified for an ERA title, at a fairly advanced age (29). Unlike the Blue Jay righty, Arrieta excelled in every way a pitcher can be measured, by missing bats, minimizing free passes — you name it — and is a leading contender for NL Cy Young Award honors.

Read the rest of this entry »

For the first time in more than two months, the Royals again saw the capital-J Johnny Cueto for whom they traded at the deadline, the capital-A Ace they needed to front their rotation following the departure of James Shields on their journey towards a second consecutive World Series appearance – this time with the hopes of capturing that final, elusive victory.

Cueto, when healthy, has been among the most consistently effective pitchers in baseball for the past half-decade. Though you can’t count on what his delivery may look like on any given pitch, you could always count on an ERA that began with a 2, which is precisely what the Royals acquired when they shipped Brandon Finnegan, John Lamb and Cody Reed to Cincinnati for the 29-year-old Dominican hurler in late July.

The guy they wanted was exactly the guy they got, until he wasn’t. After three initial Cueto-like performances in Royal blue, he gave up six earned runs to Boston. Then six to Baltimore, and four to Detroit, and five to the White Sox, and seven more to Baltimore.

Thoughts were, maybe Cueto was hurt. Or he was tipping his pitches. Or his catcher wasn’t setting up low enough in the zone. Or he was just running into some bad luck.

Fact is, no one outside the organization knew quite what was happening to Cueto. But that all feels like a distant memory after he shoved against the Astros on Wednesday night, allowing just two baserunners and striking out eight in eight dominant innings to clinch an ALCS berth.

Cueto’s average fastball, typically, sits around 93 mph. During the height of his struggles in Kansas City, it had dipped to 92. There were others factors to Cueto’s slump, certainly, but there’s usually a correlation between a drop in velocity and a drop in performance, and Cueto suffered both. Three weeks ago, Cueto’s average fastball dropped to 91. Two weeks ago, just in time for the playoffs, it had fallen to 90.

During Wednesday’s start against Houston, facing elimination, Cueto’s fastball sat at 93, touching 96. He came out throwing hard, and held it throughout the game. There wasn’t an obvious move on the rubber. His release point doesn’t appear to have changed. Just like Cueto’s early Kansas City struggles, there didn’t appear to be a clear explanation. So I went back and watched some film from the Twins game, when Cueto sat 90, and I rewatched some film from last night. Before we get into things, I’d like to just show you some first-inning fastballs.
Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

You probably don’t need an introductory paragraph to this post. You read the title, so you already know what this one is about. Last night, with one swing, Jose Bautista untied the deciding game of the Blue Jays/Rangers series, and then Jose Bautista did this.

If you’re a Blue Jays fan, odds are you loved it.

The team hasn’t been to the postseason in 22 years, and have been lousy for most of that stretch. A few days ago, the team dropped the first two games of this series and looked like they were going to have a disappointing end to a promising season, only to go on the road and win a couple of games to force this decisive game five. Cole Hamels had mostly stifled the team’s offense, giving a crowd who came to be as loud as possible few reasons to make noise. And then, in the top half of the inning, the Rangers had taken the lead on a fluke play that hardly anyone even knew could happen. The crowd was tense and angry, and they were looking for a moment to release their frustration. And Joey Bats gave them exactly what they wanted.

Not everyone enjoyed the spectacle, however. Sam Dyson, the Rangers pitcher who gave up Bautista’s home run, said this when talking to the media after the game.

“I told him Jose needs to calm that down, just kind of respect the game a little more,” Dyson said. “He’s a huge role model for the younger generation that’s coming up playing this game, and I mean he’s doing stuff that kids do in Wiffle ball games and backyard baseball. It shouldn’t be done.”

Read the rest of this entry »

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

Below are links to ballots for five of this year’s free agents, including former shortstop Juan Uribe and four current shortstops.

Other Players: Alex Avila / Chris Davis / Stephen Drew / David Freese / Chris Iannetta / Kelly Johnson / Howie Kendrick / Justin Morneau / Daniel Murphy / Mike Napoli / Dioner Navarro / Geovany Soto / Chase Utley / Matt Wieters / Ben Zobrist.

Juan Uribe (Profile)
Some relevant information regarding Uribe:

• Has averaged 409 PA and 3.5 WAR over last three seasons.
• Has averaged 5.1 WAR per 600 PA* over last three seasons.
• Recorded a 1.9 WAR in 397 PA in 2015.
• Is projected to record 2.2 WAR per 600 PA**.
• Is entering his age-37 season.
• Made $6.5M in 2015, as part of deal signed in December 2013.

*That is, a roughly average number of plate appearances for a starting player.
**Prorated version of final updated 2015 Steamer projections available here.

Click here to estimate years and dollars for Uribe.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Kansas City Royals succeeded last season in the face of low expectations — and, among many who appreciate advanced statistics, at least slight derision regarding the way Dayton Moore assembled his team. Contracts to middling pitchers like Jeremy Guthrie and Jason Vargas seemed unlikely to get the Royals from also-ran status. Trading away top prospect Wil Myers, even for a talented pitcher like James Shields, did not look to be enough to take the Royals over the top. So it was with this backdrop that Shields, along with the talented and young Yordano Ventura, stabilized the rotation; Wade Davis and Greg Holland anchored an incredible bullpen; and a slew of former top position prospects whose luster had worn off came together to win the Wild Card and make a run to the World Series.

Fast-forward to spring training — the Royals lost Shields and Billy Butler to free agency, and the improbable run of 2014 seemed even more unlikely to repeat itself this season. Not a single FanGraphs writer picked the Royals to make it back to the postseason. Nobody picked the Houston Astros or Texas Rangers, either, in an American League race that ran counter to predictions everywhere. The Royals had not done a whole lot to make themselves better and expecting their good fortune to continue for another year did not make for a good bet.

Read the rest of this entry »

You’re in a pickle, see. The Devil wants to take your soul, and he’s pretty intent on doing it, but he’ll leave you be on one condition: in the span of one hour, you are to teach him everything there is to understand about the game of baseball. Up to this point the game’s been over his head, and he’d like to know what it’s all about, but he also has only so much patience, especially with you. If you can convey to him that special essence of the sport, you’re free to go, spared an eternal damnation. If not, you lose. You know what’s at stake. Of course you do. Your mind races.

Or, your mind would’ve raced. Before Wednesday, before Game 5 between the Rangers and the Blue Jays. You would’ve thought about explaining the rules. You would’ve thought about reviewing certain eras, and certain Hall-of-Fame players. You would’ve thought about going through the physical motions. But now — now — this is an easy situation to fix. You show the Devil Game 5’s seventh inning. He’s gotta have the Internet somewhere. You show him the entirety of the seventh inning, from start to finish. When it’s done, and the second bench-clearing incident is broken up, you’ve got six minutes to take questions.

Read the rest of this entry »