FanGraphs Baseball

Tyler Duffey will soon learn if he’ll begin the season in Minnesota or with Triple-A Rochester. The 25-year-old right-hander has been competing with Ricky Nolasco for the final spot in the Twins starting rotation, and that decision is expected to be announced today.

Duffey hasn’t pitched especially well this spring — his ERA is 7.30 — but he was excellent last year in his first taste of big-league action. In 10 starts, the former Rice Owl won five of six decisions and posted a 3.10 ERA and a 3.24 FIP. He did so throwing almost exclusively fastballs (58.1%) and curveballs (39.8%).

He doesn’t view himself as a two-pitch pitcher. Duffey throws both a two- and a four-seam fastball, and his curveball isn’t always the same shape and velocity. He’ll also show hitters a changeup, although the pitch spends more time in his back pocket than anywhere else. Turning it into a more-usable weapon could be the key to his future success.

Duffey talked about his repertoire, and his approach to pitching, earlier this spring.

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Duffey on his arm slot: “In high school, I was almost parallel to the ground, or maybe a little higher than that. I was very low three-quarters. I had a sinking fastball and I threw my same curveball from there, too. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben and Sam preview the Indians’ season with Pete Beatty, and George talks to MLB.com Indians beat writer Jordan Bastian (at 23:44).

The start of the baseball season is less than a week away, and at FanGraphs we are finishing the Positional Power Rankings and had two interactive visualizations for offensive and pitching projections. All the data we use in these posts comes from our Depth Chart projections. We haven’t shown what teams’ defensives might look like, yet. The Depth Charts have projections for defense, and it’s measured in fielding runs, which are how many runs the player is expected to save his team relative to the average player at his position; every 10 runs roughly equates to a win.

The projection value is dependent on the position, because of this I’ve consolidated the individual projections into team-wide projections for each position.

Improving upon a similar field diagram chart from last year’s Hardball Times season preview piece, I created field diagrams which are mapped to our real time projection data, so it will update over the course of the final week of Spring Training as rosters finalize. The color coding of the fielding runs is now a continuous gradient instead a limited number of colors providing a better visualization of projected fielding runs. Blue represents good defensive positions with positive fielding runs, while red represents negative fielding runs. The gradient is centered around white, so the darker the color the more extreme the impact of that position’s defense is on the team.

Clicking on a team’s field diagram will enlarge it, then you can click on a specific position to see Depth Charts data the data visualization is built on. The diagrams are separated by leagues, which can be changed by click the tab, and then further organized by division.

Previous editions: Arizona / Baltimore / Boston / Chicago AL / Chicago NL / Cincinnati  / Cleveland / Colorado / Detroit / Houston / Kansas City / Los Angeles (AL) / Los Angeles (NL) / Miami / Minnesota / Milwaukee / New York (NL) / New York (AL) / Philadelphia / Pittsburgh / San Diego.

Last week, lead prospect analyst Dan Farnsworth published his excellently in-depth prospect list for the San Francisco Giants. In this companion piece, I look at that same San Francisco farm system through the lens of my recently refined KATOH projection system. The Giants have the 26th-best farm system in baseball according to KATOH.

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Position: Sports Info Solutions Research and Development Associate

Location: Coplay, Pa.

Description:

Sports Info Solutions (SIS) is looking for candidates to fill a full-time position in our R&D Department. The R&D Associate will work out of our office near Allentown, PA and will contribute as a member of our R&D team, supporting research for publications and future products.

Responsibilities:

• Perform modeling and research using SIS’s internal database as well as other notable data sets such as StatCast, Trackman, and PITCHf/x.
• Write articles and research pieces to be featured in publications such as The Fielding Bible, The Bill James Handbook, ESPN Insider, and Stat of the Week, among other prominent sports outlets.
• Prepare cutting-edge research for presentation in a professional setting, including sales presentations and conferences.
• Collaborate with BIS colleagues to help illuminate the value of SIS’s analytical products to prospective clients.

The position requires a variety of skills including (but not limited to) an analytical mind, computer expertise, writing ability, and a passion for sports, particularly baseball and football. Ideal candidates will possess the following qualifications.

Qualifications:

• Familiarity with contemporary baseball/football/sports analytics, including first-hand research experience.
• Analytical/Mathematical ability.
• Experience with MySQL, SQL Server, or similar databases.
• Proficiency working in Microsoft Office programs (or equivalents), especially Excel.
• Aptitude for data visualization using programs like Tableau and/or R.
• An ability to write and communicate effectively with a variety of audiences.
• An ability to work both collaboratively and independently.
• Experience with other statistical packages (i.e. R) and programming languages (i.e. Python, .NET) is a plus.

Compensation:
This position is compensated.

To Apply:
For more information or to apply, please submit your résumé and cover letter to careers@baseballinfosolutions.com.

EVALUATING THE PROSPECTS 2016 Angels Astros Athletics Blue Jays Braves Brewers Cardinals Cubs Diamondbacks Dodgers Giants Indians Mariners Marlins Mets Nationals Orioles Padres Phillies Pirates Rangers Rays Red Sox Reds Rockies Royals Tigers Twins White Sox Yankees

The Mariners organization won’t be confused for having one of the top farm systems in baseball, but the developments of the past year help bring some legitimate optimism for its future contributions to the big-league product. A number of low- and medium-level trades have bolstered the middle of the pack, with guys like Boog Powell and Nick Wells providing some high-floor, moderate-upside additions to a prospect pool that has seen better years.

On top of that, and maybe most excitingly, the 2015 draft class is already proving to be a kickstart for the organization. Though it’s way too early to anoint a lot of their fresh faces as sure big leaguers, it’s hard to have a better start than what they have put together so far. Drew Jackson and Braden Bishop were both known as excellent defenders, but it was their hitting performances that were the story of the post-draft months. Nick Neidert and Andrew Moore lead a list of 2015 draftees who are quality contenders for at least upper-minors success as pitchers, and both have a reasonable chance of eventually being starters for a major-league team.

The very recent success of the prospect class couldn’t come at a better time, when less recent high draft picks like Alex Jackson and Austin Wilson have seen their stocks plummet in a very short time. Jackson is particularly troubling for me: although you can still see similarities to the hitter he was before being in conversation for a first-overall pick, nearly everything has gone south for him statistically and physically. Though the player development and scouting staffs still have their work cut out for them, new management under Jerry Dipoto promises to at least add some fresh voices to the fold. If you buy into momentum, they have plenty of it heading into the 2016 season and this June’s draft.

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While the Mariners won’t officially confirm the news until later today, Jesus Montero is currently on waivers, free to any team who wants to pay the $20,000 waiver fee and is willing to put Montero on their roster. This is quite the downfall for a guy who, not that long ago, was drawing comparisons to some of the best hitters in baseball.

“In terms of hitting ability, Montero can be a Manny Ramirez or a Miguel Cabrera,” [New York Yankees general manager Brian] Cashman told ESPN New York’s Ian O’Connor. “As a catcher, he’s got a cannon for an arm. As far as everything and what I want him to be, I want him to be Jorge Posada.”

Cashman added, “He has a chance to bat third or fourth. He has the potential to be a beast in the middle of our lineup.”

And before you start thinking that Cashman was simply participating in the Yankee-prospect hype machine, this is what he said about him after he traded him to Seattle for Michael Pineda.

In a tweet Friday night, Bergen Record columnist Bob Klapisch quoted Yankees general manager Brian Cashman saying, “To me, Montero is Mike Piazza. He’s Miguel Cabrera.”

To this point in his career, Montero has 865 plate appearances and a 92 wRC+, which puts him in the Orlando-to-Asdrubal tier of Cabreras, rather than the Miguel tier for which Cashman hoped. A guy who hits like a shortstop but can’t run or play the field isn’t much of a big leaguer, which is why the Mariners are willing to give Montero away to anyone who wants him. And why Montero serves as a reminder about how little certainty we should have when it comes to forecasting the future performance of hitters.

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August has already walked you through the rest. Now let us together take a walk through the best! The best, according to our preseason projections. It sounds better to leave out that last part, though. Always gotta remember to think about marketing. By the way, here’s a reminder of what we’re doing. It should be easy enough to figure out even without that link, but I just wanted to cover all my bases, which is a baseball expression. Here are the starting rotations, ranked:

Below, the Mets get the coveted #1. Not that they don’t deserve it, but as you’ll see, or as you can see in that plot, the Mets and the Dodgers are tied. So maybe that’s kind of a bummer, because it’s more fun to have ties broken, but this does leave the door open to arguments. Nothing quite as healthy for a person as Internet arguments. Especially about statistical projections of the unknowable future.

Mainly, the right thing to do here is think about tiers, and less about specific ranks. The Mets and Dodgers are separated from third place by more than a full win. There’s more than a win between fifth and sixth, and there’s a win between sixth and seventh. Then there’s one win between eighth and 14th. There’s a half-win between ninth and 14th. Many of these teams are close to one another, so don’t fret too much about how this is organized. Really, don’t fret too much at all, about anything. I know I just encouraged you to argue earlier in this introduction, but I’ve had a change of heart. Don’t: do that. Do: read what follows! Let’s talk about the 15 best rotations, as we see them.

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For two seasons, Time Warner Cable, owners of SportsNet LA, the exclusive local television home of the Los Angeles Dodgers, have failed to get their network into more than half of the cable homes in Los Angeles. With losses mounting (a reported $100 million of them last season), Time Warner has offered a significant cut in prices in hopes of luring DirecTV, Verizon, and Cox into carrying the network for the 2016 season. The Dodgers and the mayor have gotten involved, invoking Vin Scully’s last season in what appears to be a desperate public-relations move to broadcast Dodgers games throughout all of Los Angeles. A closer look at the offer shows that Time Warner is not yet in desperation mode.

Using Dodgers like A.J. Ellis and Joc Pederson in order to curry favor with the fans in this dispute — and attempting to leverage legendary icon Vin Scully’s last season into greater public interest — certainly looks like a plea for help, a final Hail Mary to get the Dodgers on television. Publicizing a 30% price drop, from $4.90 to around $3.50 per subscriber per month, reinforces the perception of desperation that Time Warner has lost and that they are finally ready to give in. That is not the case.

Upon further examination, one finds that the aforementioned discount currently being offered by Time Warner applies only to the 2016 season. DirecTv (and Verizon) would pay $3.50 per month per subscriber in 2016 (around $75 million based on 1.8 million subscribers), but next year would be faced either with paying a higher price for the channel or once again removing it from their lineups. From DirecTv’s perspective, it would be far easier, in terms of customer relations, never to have the channel in the first place as people are more likely to complain, or perhaps even switch carriers, if a channel is taken away.

Jeff Passan called the Time Warner-Dodgers deal an “unmitigated disaster,” and for the most part, he is correct. Time Warner’s loss of $100 million last year on the channel is a big misstep for them, and the company has made big mistakes since launching two years ago. But the channel is also not so far away from being a success.

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Over the last few weeks in this space, we took a position-by-position look at the ball-in-play (BIP) profiles of 2015 regulars and semi-regulars to gain some insight into their potential performance moving forward. As I wrote the following, snow fell outside my window in blatant disregard for the dawn of baseball season. Regardless, we continue our similar BIP-centric analysis of qualifying 2015 starting pitchers, division by division. We began with NL East starters. Today’s second installment focuses on the NL Central.

First, some ground rules. To come up with an overall player population roughly equal to one starting rotation per team, the minimum number of batted balls allowed with Statcast readings was set at 243. Pitchers are listed with their 2015 division mates; those who were traded during the season will appear in the division in which they compiled the most innings. Pitchers are listed in “tru” ERA order. For those who have not read my previous articles on the topic, “tru” ERA is the ERA pitchers “should” have compiled based on the actual BIP frequency and authority they allowed relative to the league. Here we go:

Most of the column headers are self-explanatory, including average BIP speed (overall and by BIP type), BIP type frequency, K and BB rates, and traditional ERA-, FIP-, and “tru” ERA-. Each pitchers’ Adjusted Contact Score (ADJ C) is also listed. Again, for those of you who have not read my articles on the topic, Unadjusted Contact Score is derived by removing Ks and BBs from opposing hitters’ batting lines, assigning run values to all other events, and comparing them to a league average of 100. Adjusted Contact Score applies league-average production to each pitchers’ individual actual BIP type and velocity mix, and compares it to league average of 100.

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