FanGraphs Baseball

It’s difficult to write about the bigger picture when there have been precisely three games played in the regular season. The picture, as it stands now, is microscopically small. So we focus on the little things. We observe, but we try not to draw conclusions. Mostly, we wonder and speculate about the upcoming year, just like we have been throughout the entire offseason, except now, we do so with a tiny bit of knowledge about what that year actually entails.

One of the things I’m interested to watch this year is the development of an eight-year trend of pitchers throwing fewer and fewer pitches in the strike zone while getting batters to chase more and more balls. Most specifically, I’m interested in watching Francisco Liriano, the leader of the “throw strikes never” movement. The last couple years, Liriano has simultaneously thrown the fewest percentage of pitches inside the zone while also generating one of the highest chase rates.

Liriano already walks a ton of batters, and knowing those two facts, the logical question one asks oneself is, “Why do batters keep swinging?” Seems it should be easy to let Liriano beat himself. Spoiler alert: nothing about baseball is easy.

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The Rays system has considerable upside and depth throughout its minor-league levels. Reviewing the organization, I was particularly struck with how many pitchers I liked, including many whom I figured wouldn’t be able to stick as starting pitchers but would be very viable members of the bullpen. Indeed, most of their near-ready starting options are already in the majors or well on their way to becoming relievers. Blake Snell and Brent Honeywell give them a lot of upside while the club waits for some of their lower-level pitchers to develop.

Though I find that I’m less sold on many of the more popular bats, or at least those who are closer to the big leagues, there are a ton of options both as future regulars and as valuable role players who can succeed in situational exposure. Luckily, the Rays have been awesome at maximizing those types of assets, so even if more hitting prospects flame out, they have a strong pipeline to supplement the core at the major-league level.

On that note, I really like Kevin Padlo and Adrian Rondon as prospects who will take at least a few years to make it to the parent club. You’ll see I’m much less optimistic on Richie Shaffer and Casey Gillaspie despite their solid years in 2015. Shaffer’s power probably gets him a shot in the big leagues soon, but his lack of overall value makes him a fringe option in my opinion. Gillaspie could just be a case of hand-eye coordination and raw strength making up for unathletic moves, but I need to see him face better pitching before trusting his results more than what I see him doing with the bat, and he too has limited value elsewhere in his profile.

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12:47

The Dude of NY: Opening day has me exited like this.

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Since it’s been 154 days since the end of the 2015 season, you may have forgotten about all the great live and pre-game and post-game features that we have on FanGraphs. Here’s a quick refersher:

Before the Game

Lineups: On our live scoreboard page, we always have up to date lineups for each and every game of the season. These are typically updated as soon as they become available.

Game Odds: Prior to each game we try to predict the chance of each team winning. These are based on our depth chart projections and take into account the starting lineup and starting pitcher. If there is no starting lineup yet, we try and do our best to predict the chances of each team winning anyway.

Probable Starter / Lineup Leaderboards: Want all the probable pitchers and lineups entered into a custom leaderboard for you? We do it for you!

Daily Fantasy Projections: Each day we have daily fantasy projections from our friends at SaberSim.

During the Game

Live Win Probability Charts: Check out our live win probability charts, detailed box scores, pitch chart, and play-by-play data. These are all updated in real time.

Live Leaderboards: You can see live leaderboards for either today’s stats or updated full season stats in real time.

Live Player Page Stats: If a player is playing today, you’ll see his updated live stats on his player page.

After the Game

Playoff Probabilities: When a game ends, we do our best to quickly update our playoff probabilities.

Javier Baez has been burdened by strikeouts. The promising young Cub has a 38.5% k-rate and an 18.5% swinging strike rate in 309 big-league plate appearances. There were a plethora of whiffs in the minors as well, so his contact issues extend beyond the expected MLB learning curve.

Baez has plus power, especially for a middle infielder. He hit 37 home runs between high-A and Double-A in 2013, and a year later he went deep 23 times in 434 Triple-A at bats.

Reaching the bleachers isn’t his primary goal.

“I’m not trying to hit for power,” Baez told me this spring. “I’m just trying to make contact, and if it goes over the fence, fine. I’m trying to hit the ball hard.”

Hitting it at all has been a challenge, and the 23-year-old former first-round pick is aware of his deficiencies. Ironing them out is the hurdle. In his eyes, mechanics aren’t the problem. Read the rest of this entry »

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.
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We’re 48 hours away from real baseball! On Sunday, the 2016 season kicks off with three games: STL-PIT at 1 pm, TOR-TB at 4 pm, and KC-NYM at 8:30 pm, rather than just having the one Sunday night game like they’ve done the past few years. Traditionally, we’ve done our Opening Day Live Blog on first Monday of the season, but since MLB is giving us a full day of games on Sunday, we’re going to do two Opening Day Live Blogs this year.

August Fagerstrom will here for the early game on Sunday, Paul Swydan will be here for the second game, and I’ll be your host for the night game. Then on Monday, we’ll have a continuous live blog for the 1 pm, 4 pm, and 7 pm games, with Jeff Sullivan, Owen Watson, Craig Edwards, Sean Dolinar, and others hanging out while we have our first full-ish slate of games.

So come celebrate the return of baseball with us this weekend, and then again on Monday, as we watch the 2016 season kick off together. Welcome back, baseball!

On multiple occasions last year, the author published a statistical report designed to serve as a mostly responsible shorthand for people who, like the author, possess more enthusiasm for collegiate baseball than expert knowledge of it. Those reports integrated concepts central to much of the analysis found at FanGraphs — regarding sample size and regression, for example — to provide something not unlike a “true talent” leaderboard for hitters and pitchers in select conferences.

In recent weeks, I’ve revisited for the 2016 college campaign. What follows represents the most current installment of a possibly infinite series.

As in the original edition of this same thing, what I’ve done here is to utilize principles introduced by Chris Mitchell on forecasting future major-league performance with minor-league stats.

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The 2016 season hasn’t started yet, but we already know one thing; everyone loves the Cubs this year. Whether you go by projection systems, gambling odds, expert predictions, or general pre-season hype, it’s pretty clear that the Chicago Cubs are the team to beat in 2016. Our forecasts expect them to win nearly 60% of their games and our playoff odds give them a 94% chance of reaching the postseason. Expectations couldn’t really be much higher.

But if there’s one thing baseball is particularly good at, it’s reminding us all how uncertain we should be about predicting a specific future for one player or even one team. In the aggregate, we can do a decent job of forecasting large groups, but for individuals or single teams, the range of possible outcomes is still really large. Last year, for instance, the Nationals had almost exactly the same projections as the Cubs do now, with a .585 projected winning percentage and a 94% chance of reaching the postseason. But instead, they won 83 games and watched the playoffs at home.

So, before the Cubs start playing games that count and things start threatening to go wrong, let’s take a look at what could cause the Cubs to follow in the Nationals path.

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