FanGraphs Baseball

The Royals outperformed their preseason projections here at FanGraphs by a substantial 16 wins. The Royals also assembled one of the best defensive teams in the majors this year — and have done so for much of the recent past. Indeed, from 2011 to 2015, the Royals have produced the league’s highest UZR total (175), averaging 35 runs saved per season above average.

One area I have not seen quantified is the effect a good defense (such as that possessed by the Royals) might have when combined with a low-strikeout pitching staff. Would a good defensive team’s pitchers and defense record more outs and post lower ERAs than FIPs? Probably some, but also how much of difference would it actually make? I decided to perform a quick study to see if there was anything to my little theory.

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For the third time in four years, Mike Trout finished as a runner-up MVP. Trout had a compelling case, but Josh Donaldson was a deserving winner. Even if you think Trout should have won, you’re probably fine with Donaldson winning. More than one guy can deserve it, after all.

Regardless, the outcome of an award vote doesn’t change what Trout’s achieved through his first four seasons. And what Trout’s done through his first four seasons is unprecedented. Already, he’s arguably accomplished more than any player in history through his age-23 season. Already, he’s had a top-10 all-time four-year peak, and those are the only years we’ve seen him have. The next question, naturally, is a biggie. Don’t lie — you’ve thought about it. Even if you’re a skeptic, it’s a thought that’s crossed your mind, if even for a fleeting moment.

“What if this guy is the best that’s ever done it?”

What if? Never hurts to wonder. Could Trout be the greatest? If he ends up as the greatest, what would that even take? What would that career look like? What could that career look like?

The all-time leader in position player Wins Above Replacement, according to our leaderboards, is Babe Ruth, at 168.4 WAR. Let’s have a little fun.
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*EDIT: After a strong showing from internet commenters, I added a couple changes to this piece. You’ll see that Austin Riley and Kolby Allard were both added to the list, as well as some notes under Ryan Weber’s report.

I’m going to leave the overall grades the same here, though AS WITH EVERYBODY overall grades may change by the time I get to the composite prospect list. I originally wanted to put three overall grades in these reports, then thought about leaving them out entirely because of their likelihood to change, before finally settling on putting a likely future value in for some comparisons. The innernets say no. I’m new here.

I’m reserving the right to change grades as I go along, this being the first time I’ve compiled reports on a volume this scale, though I have decided to put three values in for overall grades in the future lists. This should help clear up some of the questions people have about how I can agree that pitcher Mel Clark has a high ceiling, but only makes it on the list in the 45+ section. Enjoy!

The Braves have made some headlines this year with a number of trades to bring in young talent. While the short-term picture suffers with the loss of some popular, productive players, they are setting their future up with a lot of depth in their farm system. With a few players on the verge of contributing to the big league team, the next year or two may not be as bad as it could be trading away so much present value.

The big push of prospects could come from players at A-ball Rome and below. There are a lot of interesting talents who have entered the system in the last year or two that haven’t yet revealed how high their ceilings could be. The lower-level collection of players has a lot of risk involved, but the sheer volume of players with talent should ensure the Braves will reap the benefits of the work they’ve put into the farm.

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Position: Inside Edge Baseball Operations Intern

Location: Minneapolis

About Inside Edge:
Inside Edge Scouting Services specializes in data capture and analytics down to the finest details of every Major League game. Major League clubs, media, and other clients subscribe to our real-time pitch-by-pitch data, custom-tailored reports, and advanced analytic tools to gain an edge on their competition. We provide an exciting, fast-paced work environment and an opportunity to get started on a career in baseball and differentiate yourself from other job seekers. Past interns have gone on to positions with both Major League clubs and media organizations.

Description:
Candidates filling this position will gain valuable experience with technologies and processes increasing their qualifications to work in baseball and the broader sports industry. College and / or professional baseball playing experience is a plus. Hires can expect to begin training March 14, and the position will run until the end of the 2016 season. Interns will need to make a commitment to working most nights, weekends, and holidays over the course of the season.

Responsibilities:

• Participate in a rigorous training program before the season starts.
• Use Inside Edge software to enter and crosscheck live pitch and scoring data.
• Mark actions to be reviewed by supervisors.
• Add, review, and update qualitative player notes.
• Review video replay ensuring integrity of charted data.
• Update internal Inside Edge logs and databases.
• Generate end of game reports.

Qualifications:

• Candidates need a strong understanding of both the basics and subtleties of baseball games.
• Ability to quickly and accurately recognize pitch types and locations.
• Ability to quickly and accurately recognize scoring data.

Compensation:
This position is compensated.

To Apply:
Please email Andrew Pautz.

A few days ago, the Braves traded Cameron Maybin to the Tigers for a pair of promising-but-unproven pitchers. Predictably, the deal elicited mostly angst from Atlanta fans. Not Andrelton-level angst, but enough that yet a few more foam tomahawks hit the bottoms of wastebaskets. Put another way, the camel hasn’t collapsed, but his back is starting to sag something awful.

Youth movement in full swing, veterans are packing up almost as fast as the bandwagon is emptying. NBC Hardball Talk’s Craig Calcaterra worded the exodus as such: “The last major league position player left in Atlanta, please turn out the lights.”

As for my own take on the Braves’ new world, let’s just say I’m highly intrigued. Regardless of how you define their strategy – retooling, tanking, whatever – these moves aren’t being made frivolously. Financial considerations aside, no small number of scouting and data-driven projections are driving the decisions. Read the rest of this entry »

Ladies and gentlemen, The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2016 is now ready and waiting to be devoured. It is the 12th edition of the book.

We’ve got a great book this year, including the longest analysis section in the four years I’ve been working on the book — nearly 150 pages! It is available now for purchase direct from both Amazon, and our independent publishing platform, Createspace. It will soon be available for sale on the Kindle as well.

You can read a full breakdown of the table of contents in my post that went up moments ago at THT Live.

This book is a labor of love for us every year. The book is full of posts from our great team at The Hardball Times and here at FanGraphs — Dave Cameron, Jeff Sullivan, Eno Sarris, Carson Cistulli, August Fagerstrom, Jeff Zimmerman, Neil Weinberg, Owen Watson, Chris Mitchell and Jonah Pemstein, among others — plus special guests like Erik Malinowski, Mitchel Lichtman and Phil Birnbaum.

We hope you enjoy it!!!

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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Position: Kansas City Royals Baseball Analytics Intern

Location: Kansas City

Description:

The Kansas City Royals are looking to add a creative and hard-working Intern to the Baseball Analytics Department. The Intern will work closely with Baseball Analytics to conduct research and develop tools for use by all areas of Baseball Operations (Amateur/Pro Scouting, Advance Scouting, and Player Development). The position will run from February 2016 through the end of the 2016 MLB baseball season.

Responsibilities:

• Work with amateur and professional baseball staff to provide the most relevant statistical support.
• Develop predictive models to assist Baseball Operations in player evaluation.
• Perform advanced statistical analysis on large volumes of baseball data in order to aid in Baseball Operations decision making.
• Monitor latest statistical and baseball research in order to implement the most cutting edge techniques.
• Conduct research on several new types of data to uncover actionable baseball knowledge.
• Work to understand and improve existing information systems.
• Create visualizations to both explore raw data and communicate internal tools throughout Baseball Operations.
• Ad-hoc reports or small studies that come up during the year based on circumstance.

Qualifications:

• Advanced degree or equivalent experience in mathematics, physics, statistics, or related quantitative field. Specialized training, certifications, or published research are a plus.
• Up to date knowledge of statistical analysis techniques, machine learning models, simulation of models and experience with experimental design.
• Experience manipulating (through database systems such as Oracle or SQL Server) and analyzing large data sets.
• Knowledge of baseball and baseball data (Trackman, Statcast, other high frequency data sets) is highly preferred.
• Ability to work evening, weekend, and holiday hours during the baseball season is a must.
• Excellent interpersonal and communications skills and ability to interact and work with staff at all levels.
• Ability to recognize and maintain confidentiality of work materials and issues as appropriate.
• Proficiency with the following tools and/or software are required: R, MATLAB, STATA, Minitab, or similar; SQL or MySQL.
• Proficiency with the following tools and/or software are preferred: Python, C++, or similar.

Compensation:
This position is compensated.

To Apply:
Please apply here.

Yesterday, I published a post here examining the year-to-year correlations for a number of ball-in-play (BIP) pitching metrics. The results published there have some use on their own. As a practical application of that information, however, I’d like to take a look here at the nine potential free agent starting pitchers (besides Zack Greinke) whose teams faced a qualifying offer decision this offseason, and see how this analysis might impact their valuation.

Below, you’ll find two tables. The first, for reference, is a collection of all the year-to-year correlations from yesterday’s post. After that is a second table, featuring how each of the nine pitchers fared according to each metric. Comments regarding each pitchers in greater depth appear below that.

First, the correlation coefficients from yesterday’s post:

Correlation Coefficients, 2014-15 ERA Qualifiers

Metric	Coefficient
K%	0.81
BB%	0.66
Pop%	0.53
Fly%	0.76
LD%	0.14
GB%	0.86
FL/LD	0.37
GB AUTH	0.25
BIP AUTH	0.37
ERA	0.45
FIP	0.65
TRU ERA	0.72

Remember: a 100% correlation (1.00 in the above table) is obtained when the two sets of data are totally identical. The closer to 1.00, the higher degree of correlation between the two data sets.

Now what follows are the nine pitchers in question. Stats are presented as an index, where 100 is average, above 100 is above average, and below 100 is below average. Questions about the various metrics? A more thorough explanation can be found in yesterday’s post.

2014-15 QO Candidates – Key Stats Scaled to 100

Name	K%	BB%	POP%	FLY%	LD%	GB%	F/L PRD	GB PRD	BIP PRD	ACT ERA	ACT FIP	TRU ERA
Brett Anderson	77	82	12	60	72	145	127	96	98	95	101	102
Wei-Yin Chen	97	71	153	109	96	92	98	102	100	83	104	89
Marco Estrada	91	104	168	148	74	73	70	89	74	78	110	75
Yovani Gallardo	77	118	65	84	105	111	97	108	96	85	100	102
His. Iwakuma	108	56	59	93	88	114	111	110	100	88	93	82
Ian Kennedy	121	98	104	119	108	84	114	103	121	110	116	101
John Lackey	97	79	133	98	97	100	92	111	96	71	92	91
Jeff Samardzija	90	74	111	115	101	88	90	103	102	124	105	94
J. Zimmermann	98	63	154	106	103	92	122	101	105	94	96	95

*****

Brett Anderson (Profile)
Status: Accepted qualifying offer from Dodgers

Anderson’s key strength is his stratospheric grounder rate, the highest in the majors last year, over two standard deviations higher than league average. His walk rate was also a positive, over one half standard deviation lower than league average. Our correlation coefficients tell us that these are likely true talents, and should recur moving forward. Unfortunately, the same doesn’t apply to his low liner rate, which was over two standard deviations below league average. As much of a ground baller as Anderson is, repeating his 66.3% grounder rate would be quite a feat, and any reduction likely will translate point for point in an increase in liner rate.

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