FanGraphs Baseball

Ben and Sam talk about the best Barry Bonds facts with Jake Mintz and Jordan Shusterman of Cespedes Family Barbecue.

You’ve probably read about the role scouting played in Jarrod Dyson’s 12th inning stolen base in Game 5 of the World Series. The Royals knew that New York’s Addison Reed would slow his delivery in certain situations, and “a little shimmy with his hip” was going to be Dyson’s key to run. First base coach Rusty Kuntz shared that bit of info after the game, and I touched on it my recap.

Mark Topping, the team’s video coordinator, had a hand in the theft. As Kuntz explained, “Topper gives me 20 moves to the plate, and 20 pick-offs, for every pitcher.”

The video, Topping told me, allows Kuntz to “See if there’s any kind of tell; a guy moves his front front, or his toe, or whatever.”

The information is supplied via iPad, and it includes pitchers’ times to the plate. More than eyeball scouting is at play. Software is used to calculate the measurements, so they’re “extremely precise.” Read the rest of this entry »

Episode 607
Brian Burke is the founder of Advanced NFL Stats and a current member of ESPN’s Stats and Information department. He discusses the current state of analytics in football and what they reveal about certain teams in the context of the present season.

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 49 min play time.)

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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.

MONDAY
A Tech Controversy Is Hitting the World of Curling by David Temple
“In what ways doesn’t curling resemble a telenovela?” one is compelled to ask.

Let’s Build a Scouting Report on Lucas Duda’s Arm by August Fagerstrom
So far as building is concerned, it’s certainly easier than, like, a deck.

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There are few who doubt that, after finishing up his sixth season in Major League Baseball, Jason Heyward is a good player. Up for debate is precisely how good Jason Heyward has been during his career, and more importantly for whichever teams signs him this winter, how good Heyward will be moving forward. Attempting to measure defense with advanced statistics like UZR and DRS has its critics, and attempting to place a value on it can be difficult. Heyward has been an above average offensive player, incredible on defense, and heading into free agency a few months after turning 26 years old, provides few realistic players for comparison. Heyward will get paid. How much will he be worth?

Heyward’s main drawback, perhaps only drawback, as a player seeking more than $100 million is his lack of power. He hit 27 home runs in 2012, but recorded just 13 of them this year along with an isolated slugging percentage of .146, essentially league average. Combining average power with a low strikeout rate (14.8% in 2015) and a solid walk rate (9.2%), Heyward’s wRC+ of 121 puts him in the upper third in terms of the league’s hitters. Adding in 23 steals on 26 attempts and the rest of his baserunning, Heyward’s 22 runs above average on offense placed him within the top quarter of qualified hitters. Lacking in top shelf power, Heyward still provided solid numbers on offense, and after a disappointing start with he Cardinals, he hit .306/.375/.455 with a wRC+ of 130 from the beginning of May to the end of the season.

The lack of power does prevent easy comparison to most free agent mega-deals. The names brought up most recently with regard to Heyward are Jacoby Ellsbury, who got seven years and $153 million from the New York Yankees two years ago, and Carl Crawford, who received seven years and $142 million from the Boston Red Sox five years ago. While those deals might no look great now, age is a major factor. When Ellsbury was Heyward’s age, he had just completed his second full season. Crawford debuted young, but due to a team-friendly contract, he did not become a free agent until after his age-28 season, three years older than Heyward. Ellsbury, now 32, has been worth 21 wins since turning 26 while Crawford, 34, has been worth 22 wins over the last eight seasons. Solid production, that, despite some disappointing seasons mixed in.

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Ben and Sam discuss free agents, qualifying offers, the Rays-Mariners trade, Alex Anthopoulos’ departure from Toronto, and Mike Trout Twitter.

In the first trade of the offseason, the Mariners shipped Logan Morrison, Danny Farquhar and Brad Miller to Tampa Bay in exchange for Nate Karns, C.J. Riefenhauser and outfield prospect Boog Powell. Dave Cameron covered the trade in depth this morning. I’m here to give you the skinny on Boog Powell according to my fancy computer math.

Powell split 2015 between Double-A and Triple-A, and hit a solid .295/.385/.392. Powell did an excellent job of controlling the strike zone: his 15% strikeout rate wasn’t too far from his 12% walk rate. He paired that plate discipline with a modicum of power and plus speed. He swiped 18 bases last year, and has primarily played center field in the minors.

Based on his 2015 season, KATOH pegs Powell for 4.7 WAR through age 28, which makes him roughly the 80th best prospect in KATOH’s eyes. This was a sizable step up from his 2014 forecast of 1.5 WAR. Below are his statistical comps, which were generated using Mahalanobis distance calculations. Read the rest of this entry »

In a pair of recent posts at this site, Matthew Kory has examined — first before the Royals’ great success and then also after it — has examined what sort of effect the World Series champions might have on the roster-construction philosphies of baseball’s other 29 teams. Both pieces are founded on a reasonable assumption — namely, that it’s common for franchises to imitate the process utilized by the league’s great victor, with a view to also imitating the product. The Copycat Effect, is how one might characterize this. Why felines specifically have been singled out for their mimetic inclinations, I can’t say. That the phenomenon exists seems like a reasonable possibility.

The current post resembles Kory’s own efforts in that the objective is to isolate and explore the most pronounced traits of baseball’s championship club — those traits which, were an organization tempted to emulate the champion, they would themselves identify as most important. Where it differs from Kory’s work, however, is that the intent here is to look towards the future. Instead of examing which current major-league players or teams most embody the Royals’ strengths, what I’d like to ask is which prospects do that. In other words, I’d like to ask this: which rookie-eligible players would a general manager, attempting to best imitate the Royals, set about acquiring (or keeping, as the case may be)?

That’s the guiding inquiry of the current post. How to answer it, though?

First, this way: by identifying those traits endemic to the Royals. Again, Kory’s work is helpful here. In the latter of his two posts, he identifies the traits which most distinguished Kansas City from the rest of the league: a low strikeout rate among the club’s hitters, strong baserunning, elite defensive ability, and a talented bullpen. For the purposes of this post, I’ll be ignoring pitchers. I’ll do it for a number of reasons, but largely because betting on even the near-term success of relievers is a fool’s errand. So the focus will be on hitters.

That’s the first step towards answering the question. The second: to utilize the recently published Steamer 600 projections for 2016. Here’s how I began: for all 4043 players for whom a forecast has been produced, I calculated the z-scores in each of three categories: strikeout rate (where lower is better), baserunning runs relative to average, and defensive runs (which accounts both for fielding runs and positional adjustment). I then averaged together the z-scores for each of those three categories. Reason dictates that the resulting figure should represent to what degree the relevant player might offer the skills possessed by Royals players.

Below are the top-10 rookie-eligible players by that methodology. Note that Age represents 2016 baseball age and all heading titles preceded by -z- represent z-scores.

Royals Prospects Who Aren’t Royals: Attempt No. 1

Name	Team	Pos	Age	PA	K%	BsR	Def	zK%	zBsR	zDef	Total
Willians Astudillo	PHI	C/1B	24	450	7.1%	0.1	7.5	3.1	0.2	1.2	1.5
Jose Peraza	LAN	2B	22	600	11.2%	0.9	1.9	2.3	1.5	0.3	1.4
Rossmel Perez	BAL	C	26	450	10.0%	0.1	7.5	2.5	0.2	1.2	1.3
Tomas Telis	MIA	C	25	450	12.2%	0.2	8.2	2.1	0.4	1.3	1.3
Hanser Alberto	TEX	2B	23	600	11.7%	0.4	4.7	2.2	0.7	0.8	1.2
Tyler Heineman	HOU	C	25	450	12.2%	0.1	7.5	2.1	0.2	1.2	1.2
Raywilly Gomez	LAA	C	26	450	13.3%	0.2	7.5	1.9	0.4	1.2	1.2
Benjamin Turner	SFN	C/1B	26	450	13.3%	0.2	7.5	1.9	0.4	1.2	1.2
Ramon Cabrera	CIN	C	26	450	14.2%	0.0	10.2	1.8	0.1	1.7	1.2
Alex Swim	MIN	C/OF	25	450	12.9%	0.1	7.5	2.0	0.2	1.2	1.2

So, an immediate observation: this is a list full of catchers plus also Jose Peraza and Hanser Alberto. Because catchers receive such a large positional adjustment (+7.5 runs per every 450 plate appearances), they’re inclined to gravitate towards the top of lists like this. Where projections are concerned, positional adjustments aren’t subject to regression and translation like other metrics. Strikeout rate, baserunning, fielding runs: where only minor-league data is available, Steamer is conservative — particularly so regarding the latter two variables. As such, the large catcher’s positional adjustment unduly rewards catchers. Catchers are important, but merely presenting a list of doesn’t seem entirely in keeping with our objective here. We’ll have to refine our methodology.

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Given the assorted other advances in the game, it’s a little weird we’re still talking about divisions. Divisions have been there all along, so it’s not like they’re some unusual concept, but a perfectly balanced version of baseball doesn’t have them. It’s because of the divisional structure that we had the Cubs and the Pirates forced into a wild-card showdown despite finishing second and third in the National League standings. There’s a good argument to be made that divisions should be completely abolished.

But, you know, that’s not on the horizon. Divisions are presumably here for a while. There are practical considerations that get in the way of idealized baseball. Our reality is one with divisions, and with unbalanced schedules. Sometimes that helps a team, and sometimes that hurts a team. The hope is that in the long run it all evens out.

As long as there are divisions, the makeup of the divisions is going to matter. And as long as there are divisions, they’ll be easy enough to analyze. For example, what follows is a plot of 2015 divisional strength. I thought about doing this in a more advanced way, by, say, folding in WAR or something, but I settled on comfortable simplicity. There are six divisions, yes? In the plot, each division’s overall winning percentage, and also each division’s winning percentage in games against opponents from outside the division. Within, the teams always go .500, by necessity, so that reduces the spread.

Read the rest on Just A Bit Outside.

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