Location: Miami · FL Status: Player Operations: Team Administration/Operations
Description:
We seek a Lead Data Engineer with a passion for baseball and technology to lead the development of timely and reliable data pipelines. Your work will deliver the data that informs the decisions that build a sustainable winning team in Miami.
Key Responsibilities:
Serve as the tech lead for the Marlins’ Data Engineering team.
Lead the design, development, documentation, and maintenance of schemas and ETL pipelines for internal databases and data warehouses that scale and adapt to future use cases.
Break down complex data engineering projects into actionable work plans including proposed task assignments with clear design specifications.
Implement and test collection, mapping, and storage procedures for secure access to internal and external data sources.
Assess, provision, monitor, and maintain the appropriate infrastructure and tooling to automate and execute data engineering workflows.
Develop algorithms for quality assurance and imputation to prepare data for exploratory analysis and quantitative modeling.
Coordinate with data providers around planned changes to data feeds.
Research, design, test, and implement generalizable software architectures for data ingestion, processing, and integration and guide organizational adoption and strategies for infrastructure maintenance and data-related cost savings.
Define and encourage team-wide adoption of data engineering standards.
Effectively communicate complex technical concepts to both internal and external audiences.
Assist with recruiting and outreach for the engineering team, including building a diverse network of future candidates, and provide guidance and technical mentorship for junior engineers.
Fulfill other related duties and responsibilities, including rotating platform support.
Qualifications:
Significant experience in back-end software design and development.
Experience with ETL architecture and development in a cloud-based environment.
Fluency in SQL and an understanding of database and data warehousing technologies.
Proficiency with Python (preferred), Scala, and/or other data-oriented programming languages.
Experience with automated data quality validation across large data sets.
Familiarity working with virtual machines in a cloud environment.
Strong software engineering and problem-solving skills.
Expertise developing complex databases and data warehouses (e.g. BigQuery, RedShift, Snowflake) for large-scale, cloud-based analytics systems
Experience with task orchestration and workflow automation tools such as Airflow.
Proficient in designing, deploying, and managing containerized applications with tools such as Docker and Kubernetes.
Ability to successfully coach junior engineers to grow in their own careers.
Location: Miami · FL Status: Player Operations: Team Administration/Operations
Description:
We seek a Machine Learning Engineer with a passion for baseball and technology to implement, automate, and optimize our data scientists’ quantitative models. Your work will deliver the models that inform the decisions that build a sustainable winning team in Miami.
Key Responsibilities:
Optimize, automate, and validate quantitative models built using statistics, machine learning, optimization, and simulation.
Develop, schedule, monitor, and maintain model training and prediction workflows.
Develop and maintain abstractions for model deployment that allow our workflows to run efficiently and be easily adapted to future use cases.
Assess, provision, monitor, and maintain the appropriate infrastructure and tooling to execute model training and prediction workflows.
Create visualizations with dashboard or application development frameworks to deliver data insights to Baseball Ops users.
Deploy REST APIs on top of fitted models using distributed computation to support real-time, client-facing integration.
Coordinate with the broader engineering team to plan and implement changes to core infrastructure.
Collaborate with data scientists to define and manage model productionalization and platform release plans.
Fulfill other related duties and responsibilities, including rotating platform support.
Qualifications:
Academic and/or industry experience in software design and development.
Academic, industry, and/or research experience with applied mathematical and predictive modeling (statistics, machine learning, optimization, and/or simulation).
Experience with cloud infrastructure and distributed computing.
Experience with back-end development, including fluency with Python (preferred), R, or other data-oriented and statistical programming languages.
Experience with relational databases and SQL development.
Familiarity working with Linux servers in a virtualized/distributed environment.
Strong software-engineering and problem-solving skills.
Job Questions:
What is one baseball data or modelling challenge that an MLB Research group faces? What would be your first step in tackling that problem?
Describe the most impactful work of your career. What made it so valuable?
Location: Miami · FL Status: Player Operations: Team Administration/Operations
Description:
We seek a Lead Software Engineer with a passion for baseball and technology to lead the development of timely and reliable Baseball Ops applications. You will deliver the applications used throughout the Baseball Ops department to build a sustainable winning team in Miami.
Key Responsibilities:
Lead the design, development, documentation, and maintenance of software to support all Baseball Operations workflows.
Cultivate a high performing environment where individual contributions are well connected to broader organizational goals.
Actively develop members of the engineering team, providing technical perspectives, coaching, support, and development opportunities.
Facilitate communication and collaboration across the organization, including with non-technical staff, during software development and support processes.
Define standards and practices to support the engineering needs of the organization, including the discovery, vetting, and implementation of new technologies and tooling as the industry evolves.
Break down complex engineering projects into actionable work plans including proposed task assignments with clear design specifications.
Architect and lead implementation of generalized application tooling to improve product outcomes and developer experience.
Collaborate with organizational leadership to establish medium to long term planning strategies for software delivery.
Assist with recruiting and outreach for the engineering team, including building a diverse network of future candidates.
Fulfill other related duties and responsibilities, including rotating platform support.
Qualifications:
Expertise in architecting and implementing modern application systems, including significant experience in one or more of the following domains:
Front-end development: Working in modern, component-based frameworks like React, Vue, or Svelte, ideally having experience with meta-frameworks like NextJS.
API development: Working in RESTful monolithic and microservice architectures, ideally across multiple languages.
Strong experience working in cross-functional product teams, including with non-technical teammates, to design, develop, and deliver software products that meet user needs.
Familiarity working with different methods of application delivery, including cloud providers (GCP, AWS, Azure), on-prem resources, and/or front-end cloud providers like Vercel.
Proficiency with several of the following: TypeScript (preferred), JavaScript, HTML, CSS, Python.
Fluency in SQL development and an understanding of relational database technologies.
Strong software-engineering and problem-solving skills.
A history of close collaboration with product designers, ideally including experience with design tools and practices.
Experience adapting, retraining, and retooling in a rapidly changing technology environment.
A history of successfully coaching junior engineers to growth in their own careers.
Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the stretch run, the “championship season,” the surprising solidity of the playoff picture, and how the playoff field could change before the end of the season. They also discuss the turnarounds of Jeff McNeil and Corbin Carroll, the return on the Rangers’ pitching blueprint, and whether A’s fans should consider supporting other MLB teams. Then (1:02:30) they Stat Blast about hitters who hogged pitches in an inning, Kris Bryant’s Colorado decline, and a claim about catchers and infield hits, with diversions into whether HR-reliant lineups are inconsistent scorers, whether Bryant or Anthony Rendon has been the bigger disappointment, and why broadcasters say the darndest things.
NEW YORK — On June 2, the Mets’ season was looking grim. At Citi Field, Jake Diekman served up a two-run ninth inning home run to the Diamondbacks’ Ketel Marte, turning a 4-3 lead into a 5-4 deficit. Within a matter of minutes, the Mets fell to 24-35, a season-worst 11 games below .500. After last summer’s deadline sell-off, 2024 wasn’t supposed to be their year, and two months into the season, it seemed clear that was the case. In the two and a half months since, the Mets have reeled off the majors’ fourth-best record (41-26), climbing back into the NL Wild Card race, though an 8-10 record in August has kept them on the outside looking in.
This week has already been full of ups and downs. On Monday night against the Orioles, Francisco Alvarez hit an epic no-look walk-off home run to pull the Mets to within a game and a half of the third NL Wild Card spot. The homer opened what has suddenly become a crucial stretch of the Mets’ season — 10 games in a row against contenders, the last seven of them on the road — with a bang. But the momentum did not carry over to Tuesday, when starter Jose Quintana turned in his fourth sour outing in a row. The 35-year-old lefty served up two big homers while plodding through five innings, while the offense was held to just two hits over six innings by starter Dean Kremer. A late-inning comeback not only fell short but produced a groan-worthy LOLMets moment.
Still, the Mets’ season has featured more good days than bad in recent months, and regardless of what happens going forward, Monday’s win was one for the books. The Mets had squandered a 3-1 lead when starter David Peterson overstayed his welcome in what had otherwise been an excellent outing. With two outs in the seventh, he balked in a run, then served up a game-tying homer to Ramón Urías on his 98th pitch of the night. Meanwhile, from the fifth inning on, 11 out of 14 Mets struck out against starter Trevor Rogers and relievers Colin Selby, Keegan Akin, and Seranthony Domínguez before Alvarez stepped in. Read the rest of this entry »
Tayler Scott is having a career-best season, and the primary reason is equal parts straightforward and confounding. Thirteen years after being drafted by the Chicago Cubs out of a Scottsdale, Arizona high school, and five years after making his major league debut with the Seattle Mariners, the 32-year-old native of Johannesburg, South Africa is finally featuring his best pitch. Now with the Houston Astros — his 10th big league organization — Scott has put his two-seamer in his back pocket and is throwing a heavy dose of four-seamers.
The numbers speak for themselves. Coming into the current campaign, the right-hander had made 39 big league appearances and logged a 9.00 ERA over 46 innings. This year, Scott has come out of the Astros bullpen 53 times and boasts a 1.86 ERA over 58 innings. Moreover, he has allowed just 32 hits and has a 26% strikeout rate. His seven relief wins are a team high.
Again, the four-seamer — a pitch he’d thrown sparingly in the past — has played a huge role in his success. Per Statcast, he’s throwing the pitch 47.4% of the time to the tune of a .120 BAA and a .265 SLG. Augmenting the offering is a new-ish splitter that has yielded a .122 BAA and a 184 SLG, as well as a slider (.220 BA,.339 SLG) he views as his third option.
Scott shared the story behind his fastball changeover, including why his four-seamer is so effective despite ranking in the 29th percentile for velocity, when the Astros visited Fenway Park earlier this month.
———
David Laurila: You began featuring a four-seamer this year and are having by far the best season of your career. Given that your 92.6 mph velocity is well below the big league average, what makes it so effective?
Tayler Scott: “I learned about vertical approach angle, which is guys with lower slots throwing four-seams up in the zone and creating a flatter angle for the four-seams coming to the plate. They’ve discovered that gets a lot of swings and misses. That’s when I started to throw four-seams. Over the last couple years, it was a pitch that I kind of only used late in counts to strike guys out; I would never really throw it at other times. One reason is that I tended to have a hard time locating it in the strike zone. Read the rest of this entry »
About two weeks ago, Kyle Kishimoto wrote about a shift in the AL West race as the Astros, who had been trailing the Mariners all year, pulled level in the division. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t revisit a topic so soon, especially because Kyle was himself issuing an update to his own previous appraisal of Seattle’s success. But between Kyle’s two posts, the Mariners blew a 10-game division lead to Houston. And in the two weeks since then, well at the risk of steering directly into stereotype, let’s take a look at a graph.
On the morning of August 5, when Kyle’s second piece ran, the Mariners were still actually slight favorites to win the AL West. In the ensuing 15 days, their division title odds dropped by 43.4 percentage points, to just 10.8%. Seattle’s odds of making the playoffs in any fashion are now just 16.4%, which is down 41.6 points. Only three other teams have seen their playoff odds move even 20 points in either direction in that time. One is the Padres. The other two are the Astros and Royals, two of the major beneficiaries of the Mariners’ ongoing slide. Read the rest of this entry »
Remember the halcyon days of April? The season had just kicked off. Aaron Judge was bad. Alec Bohm was one of the hottest hitters in baseball; Colt Keith was the worst. Blake Snell couldn’t buy an out. The Cubs led the NL Central. The White Sox… okay, the White Sox have been bad all year, but my point is that we ascribe outsize importance to the first month of the season as it’s happening.
Bohm was hitting so well that it felt like he was a completely different hitter. Since May 1, he’s been almost exactly the same as his prior career self. Snell figured things out. Judge obviously did too. But there was also signal in that first month. Bobby Witt Jr.’s breakout was center stage. Juan Soto and Gunnar Henderson set the tone for their impressive campaigns. The key to interpreting early-season results is to let a bunch of ideas in, ideas suggested by that first month, but to be willing to discard them quickly if they turn out to be flashes in the pan.
In that spirit, I’m about to get breathlessly excited about some post-All-Star break statistics. Some of what’s gone on in the last month won’t surprise you – Witt, Soto, and Judge are absolutely incandescent. Chris Sale is on his way to a Cy Young. The Brewers are cruising to an NL Central title. All of those things have mostly been true all year, so seeing them in the first month of the second half doesn’t feel strange. But there’s other stuff happening too, and the bits that feel shocking now but would have seemed normal if they’d taken place in April are what I’m focusing on today. Read the rest of this entry »
Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about whether the custom-painted bats featured during Players’ Weekend should be usable all season, Alex Verdugo’s batting-glove allergy, Rich Hill’s predictable-yet-curious choice of team, where the Rookie of the Year races stand, how the Pirates should handle Paul Skenes down the stretch, the magnitude of the Skenes Day attendance boost, the active player who possibly best embodies replacement level, a (slightly) better proposal to promote pitcher’s duels, the unsung skills of Carlos Santana and José Soriano, the pros and cons of this season’s post-superteam standings, and more, plus a postscript.
You can add two more stars to the game’s unfortunate tally of injured players, as Braves third baseman Austin Riley and Diamondbacks second baseman Ketel Marte were both added to the 10-day injured list on Monday. Riley, who has been one of Atlanta’s hottest hitters after an ice-cold start to the 2024 season, was removed from Sunday’s game against the Angels after a 97-mph Jack Kochanowicz sinker went very high and very inside, connecting with his wrist. Marte’s injury appears less serious than Riley’s, but a re-aggravated sprained ankle has put him on the shelf at a key moment in Arizona’s playoff run.
When I ran the numbers on baseball’s most injured teams last week, Atlanta came out second in terms of the most lost potential value, “beaten” by only the Dodgers. Riley, who has gotten MVP votes in each of the last three seasons, has had a bit of a down year, posting a .256/.322/.461 slash line and 2.4 WAR, which represents his weakest performance since before his 2021 breakout. But even if he hasn’t had a particularly sterling season overall, he’s become very important lately, especially as the injuries have piled up and the rest of the team’s offense has swooned. Riley’s seasonal line was as low as .220/.288/.330 back in mid-June; he’d gone more than a month without a homer and had only hit three on the season. Since June 13, however, Riley has led Atlanta’s lineup in WAR and hit 16 round-trippers:
Monday’s MRI, which revealed a broken wrist, puts Riley out of action for 6-8 weeks, meaning that unless the Braves go deep into the playoffs, his 2024 season is probably over. While there’s never a good time to lose a middle-of-the-order hitter, Riley’s loss comes at a particularly awkward point for the Braves, as their seven games against the division-leading Phillies over the next week-and-a-half likely represent their last, best chance to seize the NL East, long-shot though it may be. The Braves seem to have arrested their fall in the standings, winning five of their last seven, but they’re still barely clinging to the last Wild Card spot, as they’re only 1 1/2 games ahead of the Mets and 3 1/2 in front of the Giants.
The silver lining — or arguably a dull gray one — is that Gio Urshela was suddenly available in free agency after being released by the Detroit Tigers on Sunday; the Braves signed him to a major league deal earlier today. The problem, of course, is that the only reason Urshela was available is that he’s having such a poor season that nobody wanted to risk picking up the pro-rated dollars remaining on his one-year, $1.5 million contract. Urshela had a solid little peak, putting up a 118 wRC+ and 8.1 WAR for the Yankees and Twins from 2019 to 2022, but after a fractured pelvis in 2023 and a miserable .243/.286/.333 line this year, he appears to be on the downslope of his career.
While I still think Nacho Alvarez Jr. would have been the best replacement despite his weak debut stint, Atlanta appears to want to play it safer, opting for the veteran Urshela over Luke Williams and maybe a bit of Whit Merrifield if Ozzie Albies returns in September. Without the Riley injury, ZiPS projected a 73% chance of the Braves holding off the Mets and Giants and making the playoffs; replacing Riley with Urshela drops that probability to 68%, while playing mostly Williams at third would cause it to dip a little further to 67%. Despite Urshela only being projected at replacement level or a hair above, paying $400,000 for 1% of a playoff spot is actually a reasonable value. To make room for Urshela on the 40-man roster, A.J. Minter, who is out with hip surgery, was moved to the 60-day IL. However, that doesn’t change the team’s projection, as I had already baked in the assumption that, at best, Minter was very likely to only get a few outings in the season’s final days.
As I mentioned above, Ketel Marte’s injury is far less serious than Riley’s. Marte originally sprained his ankle on August 10 after a Garrett Stubbs slide into second base. The Diamondbacks didn’t place him on the IL, opting to use him carefully in the last week, with a couple late-inning appearances and a game at DH. They’re taking no chances this time, though, and the hope is that he’ll be able to make a quick return after taking some time to recuperate.
As with Riley’s injury, Marte’s comes at a key point in the season for his team. After treading water earlier this season, the Diamondbacks have been one of baseball’s hottest teams, and along with the Padres, they’ve actually made the Dodgers feel at least mildly uncomfortable at the top of the NL West. Before the injury, Marte had been on the hottest run of his career, hitting .333/.422/.652 with 20 homers since the start of June. His 3.9 WAR over that timeframe ranked behind only Francisco Lindor’s 4.2 WAR among NL hitters. Combined with Arizona’s surge, Marte was putting together a reasonable MVP case. Assuming he only requires a minimum stay on the IL, the significant downgrade to Kevin Newman doesn’t represent a serious hit to the Snakes’ playoff hopes; ZiPS has them at 90% odds to make the playoffs, only a 0.5% drop from their projection without the injury. In the best-case scenario, the Diamondbacks would get Marte back just in time for a key four-game series against the Dodgers next week, their last opportunity to directly inflict punishment on their division rival in the standings.
The injuries to Riley and Marte don’t doom their teams to 2024 oblivion, but they do make their respective team’s challenges this year a bit more daunting. But hey, nobody said it would be easy.
I will always have an affinity for hitters with a knack for vertical bat variability. To effectively cover pitches at different heights in the strike zone, a hitter has to vary the angle of their bat relative to the ground to create lift. To hit a pitch at the top of the zone for a line drive, the bat should be flatter, and to lift a pitch at the bottom of the zone for a line drive, the bat should be steeper. It’s a simple concept that some hitters can execute with more consistency than others. Jackson Merrill is one of those guys.
When I first really started getting into the mechanics of hitting, Mike Trout was the dude who made it easy to understand vertical bat variability. Vintage Trout’s lower half looked almost identical across all swings, but depending on the height of the pitch, his entire torso angle would adjust. Through the years, players like Michael Brantley, Freddie Freeman, and Trea Turner have all executed impressive levels of vertical bat variability, too. And unsurprisingly, they all maintained (or still do) strikeout rates well below the league average with great gap-to-gap line drive skills. When Eric Longenhagen first compared Merrill’s swing to that of Brantley, I became very impatient anticipating what the Padres outfielder would do in the big leagues. So far, he’s exceeded expectations.
Through his first 121 career games, Merrill has hit for a 125 wRC+ with a .290/.321/.484 slash line. Over the past month, he’s found his power stroke to go along with his superb line drive swing, and during that span, he’s been one of the best hitters in baseball, with a 182 wRC+ across 104 plate appearances. It’s come at a good time for the Padres, who have picked it up and are only three games behind the NL West-leading Dodgers.
Merrill’s sound mechanics and production at the plate are all the more impressive considering that he is still just a 21-year-old rookie who is also learning a new position. Although his outfield experience in the minors was limited to 45 innings in left field last year at Double-A, he’s already turned into one of the top defensive center fielders in the game (6 OAA).
His ability to go down and get it with the best of them while still covering the top of the strike zone is the key to his success so early in his career. Below is a table highlighting his performances in both the upper and lower thirds of the zone:
Merrill Performance by Vertical Zone
Zone
xwOBA
League Rank*
Upper Third
.381
27
Middle Third
.432
29
Lower Third
.386
25
SOURCE: Baseball Savant
*Out of 194 batters to see at least 1,250 pitches as of Aug. 20
Elite hitters have all different shapes of production. Juan Soto mashes everything at the top of the zone, Aaron Judge crushes everything in the heart, and Yordan Alvarez demolishes everything down low. But it’s uncommon for hitters to be this productive on both high and low pitches. In fact, among the 194 hitters who’ve seen 1,250 pitches this season, only two other players have xwOBAs that rank in the top 30 on pitches in both the upper and lower thirds of the zone, Ketel Marte and Marcell Ozuna, who are two of the best 11 hitters in the game by wRC+. Merrill and Ozuna are the only two hitters with top-30 xwOBAs in all three vertical thirds.
As I said before, a hitter needs to employ a flatter swing path at the top of the zone and a steeper one at the bottom. Sounds easy enough, but the tricky part is generating enough bat speed across a range of bat angles to make it work from a damage perspective while maintaining the body control to make contact. What’s notable here is how Merrill does this: Unlike most hitters, Merrill keeps his bat vertically oriented against low and high pitches, which allows him create enough lift to shoot the gaps no matter the height of the pitch. It’s a balance of strength and finesse that Merrill seems to have mastered.
I could throw a bunch of numbers at you to explain this particular skill, but the best way to understand this is by watching what he does with his body and bat. Let’s take a look:
Upper Third
Before watching the lower third swings, here are a few quick notes. He maintains his posture and shoulder plane during all three of these swings. Because of that, he keeps his bat on the same vertical plane as these pitches so he can square up the bottom part of the baseball to create backspin but not get so far under it that he pops them up. Also, his torso backbend on the second swing is fantastic. This move is most noticeable from a hitter like Shohei Ohtani, who right before contact bends his upper body backward to give his barrel space to get behind the ball. Few hitters have the necessary upper body or t-spine flexibility to do this; Merrill is one of them. Okay, now onto some swings in the lower third:
Lower Third
Pay attention to his back shoulder on each of these swings. Merrill’s body and bat are moving together as he swings, and he uses his back shoulder as a guide to get his barrel on plane with pitches in the lower third. Whether it’s a back-foot breaking ball or a dotted heater away, his back shoulder angle lines up his swing.
The important thing to take away from all of this is Merrill has a great understanding of how to use his upper body to get his bat on plane with pitches at different heights. That’s the elite skill carrying his game right now. He has the talent to develop additional tools and sharpen the ones he currently owns as he gains more experience. He’s already started tapping into his power more over the last month or so. He still chases too many pitches and struggles against lefties, albeit in a small sample of plate appearances (70 wRC+, 127 PA), but again, he is 21 and figuring things out in his first big league season. What we’re seeing from him right now is essentially his starting point as a hitter, and that’s really exciting.
Hey there, and welcome to a segment that I’m hoping to turn into a recurring feature. Last week, I started delving into the individual event-level predictions built into our pitch grading model, PitchingBot. I made some broad generalizations about the kinds of pitches most likely to be hit for home runs and then looked at which pitchers threw them most often. I gathered some information about those pitches (fastballs, poorly located, in hitter-friendly counts but not 3-0), and tried to figure out what that meant for home run rate.
More specifically, it’s fun to look at these bad pitches, and it’s fun for me to see how few of them actually result in homers. The 50 pitches most likely to be hit for a home run surrendered one homer combined. The top 100 resulted in only three homers, while the next 100 resulted in six homers. There’s a ton of variability, but at its core, baseball is still a game of failure – even when a pitcher does the worst thing they possibly can, hitters mostly don’t punish them.
To that end, I’m going to try a new weekly roundup: various meatball-related items that show who’s been exceptional in one direction or another over the past week. Given that it’s mostly a list of things without a ton of analysis necessary, I’m going to start out by trying to add it on top of my normal schedule, and I’ll also use this to update some of my favorite junk stats (whomps per whiff, Kimbrels, etc.). If it’s popular, great! If not, hey, it’s a long baseball season and you have to keep trying things. Anyway, let’s get going. Read the rest of this entry »
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