FanGraphs Baseball

Free agency begins five days after the end of the World Series. As in other recent offseasons, FanGraphs is once again facilitating this offseason a contract-crowdsourcing project, the idea being to harness the wisdom of the crowds to the end of better understanding the giant and large 2015-16 free-agent market.

Below are links to ballots for five of this year’s free agents, including all the notable first basemen and some less impressive — but not entirely irrelevant — second basemen, too.

Other Players: Alex Avila / Chris Iannetta / Dioner Navarro / Geovany Soto / Matt Wieters.

Chris Davis (Profile)
Some relevant information regarding Davis:

• Has averaged 623 PA and 4.5 WAR over last three seasons.
• Has averaged 4.3 WAR per 600 PA* over last three seasons.
• Recorded a 5.6 WAR in 670 PA in 2015.
• Is projected to record 2.6 WAR per 600 PA**.
• Is entering his age-30 season.
• Made $12.0M in 2015, as part of deal signed in January 2015.

*That is, a roughly average number of plate appearances for a starting player.
**Prorated version of final updated 2015 Steamer projections available here.

Click here to estimate years and dollars for Davis.

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I announced yesterday my looming exit from FanGraphs to join the Atlanta Braves later this week. It wouldn’t be me unless I went out with a bang, so we’re rolling out sortable boards for the next three draft classes today, all of them months in the making. Here’s the current draft order, though it will change as free agents move around this offseason.

For the 2016 class, I ranked as far as I felt like there was some separation (63 players), then gave you 101 additional players who project for the top 3-4 rounds. For the 2017 class, I gave you a ranked top 30 then 42 additional players who have already emerged as early round prospects. For the 2018 class (that’s high school sophomores and the incoming college freshman who were high schoolers eligible for the draft last summer) I gave you 30 players and, within that 30, included four high schoolers who already have scouts excited. The additional players in the 2016 and 2017 sortable boards who aren’t ranked are grouped by pitcher/hitter and high school/college and then ranked roughly in order of my preference within those listings.

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When exactly was it that you realized baseball’s replay system was broken? I’m very pro-replay, but I had my suspicions regarding implementation when the system was announced. The introduction of replay should, in my opinion, represent an effort to get more calls correct, but baseball saw an opportunity to give another decision to the managers and, in doing so, create more drama, more or less copying football’s own challenge system. Even so, up until yesterday I remained pro-replay because, organizing principles aside, more of the calls were made correctly under replay than would have been without it. Then Terrance Gore stole third base.

The first six innings of yesterday’s Royals/Astros was tight. Then, in the top of the seventh with one out and the Astros holding a 3-2 lead, Sal Perez was hit by a pitch. Royals manager Ned Yost removed Gore and put in pinch-runner extraordinaire Gore. I say extraordinaire because, previously in his career, he had swiped 11 bases without getting caught (including last postseason). He promptly made it 12 of 12 by taking second base rather easily. Then, with two outs and Alex Rios batting, Gore took off for third base. Here he goes!

That’s Gore stealing third. Jason Castro’s throw arrived just ahead of Gore but it was to the foul side of the bag and, as you can see, Gore’s foot clearly got in ahead of the tag. The third base umpire agreed, calling Gore safe.

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Coming into the postseason, the Blue Jays were regarded widely as the favorites to win it all. A historically great offense, a souped-up roster fueled by the trading deadline acquisitions of Troy Tulowitzki and David Price… what could possibly go wrong? Well, the vagaries of postseason randomness quickly paid them a visit, and within 24 hours from the first pitch of Game 1, they had found themselves Hanser Alberto-ed within one game of extinction.

Until Marco Estrada saved them, at least temporarily. A journeyman who turned 32 this summer and who, until this year, had never even pitched enough innings in a season to qualify for an ERA title. The same guy who this season nosed out the likes of Dallas Keuchel, Collin McHugh and Sonny Gray for AL Contact Manager of the Year honors.

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The eight teams playing in the Division Series all built their teams in different fashions. The Astros and Cubs appear to be at the end of rebuilding projects and ready for an extended run at contention. The Rangers have a mix of holdovers from their runs a few years ago, some young players and an infusion in the form of Cole Hamels. The Royals’ combination of process and prospects allowed them to begin a surprising run one season ago. The Blue Jays built a dynamic offense which they supplemented with major moves at the deadline. The Cardinals are in the midst of continuing contention, the Dodgers have spent their way to the top, and the Mets were mired in mediocrity before young pitching and Yoenis Cespedes aided their surge into the playoffs. The teams come with different experience and payrolls.

It’s no secret that the Dodgers have the biggest payroll in the game by close to $100 million over the second-place Yankees. Also fairly well known is that a considerable amount of that money is going to players who are no longer on the team — and many of whom, in fact, were never even on the Dodgers at all this year. Dan Haren, Matt Kemp, Brandon League, and Brian Wilson were responsible for $45 million all on their own. Despite all of the dead money on the Dodgers’ payroll, however, they still have considerably more money on the field compared to the rest of the teams still competing for a World Series.

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What I like about this little InstaGraphs section is that it allows for plays to be highlighted even if they don’t turn out all that important. Given what the Cubs pulled off Monday, it would be weird to dedicate a whole front-page post to a home run hit by Jason Heyward. Not a lot of people even clearly remember a home run being hit by Jason Heyward. The Cubs did well to smother the memory of that dinger with all the dingers of their own. On InstaGraphs, though, I don’t have to care what matters. An InstaGraphs post is almost like a footnote. Let’s you and I watch a footnote.

The Cardinals made it a game again when Heyward went out and clobbered an outside breaking ball. Though the Cubs wouldn’t relinquish the rest of their lead, it did at least make for some nervous moments. And you’ll notice it wasn’t a bad pitch. It wasn’t even a strike. Jake Arrieta threw Heyward a 1-and-1 ball, and Heyward took it the other way for a homer. Arrieta had previously allowed one home run over the span of 412 plate appearances. A run like that is made all the more remarkable when you realize sometimes home runs can just be the result of simple bad luck.

According to PITCHf/x, the home-run pitch was 15 inches away from the middle of home plate, meaning it was more than six inches off the outer edge. That makes it the third-most outside pitch hit for a home run by a lefty in 2015. Heyward is topped only by Chris Davis and Freddie Freeman, and you can see screenshots below:

The thing that stands out here — Davis was pretty far up in the box. Freeman was pretty far up in the box. Heyward was more in the middle, so he had to reach out that much more, accomplishing something close to full extension. While Davis and Freeman hit pitches that were more outside, by a little bit, Heyward’s might’ve been the most outside, relative to his body. I don’t know. It was far away, is the point.

He also hit a line drive, instead of a classic dinger. According to the ESPN Home Run Tracker, under ordinary conditions, Heyward’s home run would’ve left precisely one major-league ballpark. Arrieta has now allowed 11 home runs in 2015 — three of them had just enough juice to leave one stadium. Home runs can come out of nowhere. Even when you, the pitcher, have done nothing to deserve them. Sometimes good pitches get hit out. Sometimes pitches that are just plain well out of the zone get hit out. The most amazing thing about Arrieta is that this hasn’t happened more. Maybe now it’s going to. Baseball is stupid like that. Baseball always wants to prove that it’s smarter than you.

That’s a review of what Jason Heyward did. It mattered for some minutes. No one’ll remember it a week or two from now. Yesterday, it was outnumbered by other extraordinary things. Further extraordinary things will take place in the weeks ahead. So many little things are remarkable, and baseball just ties them all together and advances from one to the next almost without ever stopping. And you thought baseball needed to move faster.

Ben and Sam banter about how this year’s playoffs compare to last year’s, then discuss the postseason performances of Clayton Kershaw and David Price, the crazy Astros-Royals reversal, and more.

When Steven Matz takes the bump against the Dodgers tonight, he’ll probably throw a curve once out of every five pitches. He’ll probably throw it more often than his changeup, even. And that will be remarkable for those of those who have watched Matz on his uneven path through the minor leagues.

It might even be remarkable to Matz, who talked to me about the pitch earlier this year. “I’ve really struggled with the curveball,” he admitted.

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David Price now has a victory to his name in the American League Division Series, but it’s probably not how anyone imagined he would get it. In yesterday’s game, with the Blue Jays up by a score of 7-1 in the bottom of the fifth inning, manager John Gibbons took out R.A. Dickey in favor of his staff ace, installing Price into a game that was, except in the case of a cataclysm, already well in hand. Price threw 50 pitches, giving up six hits and three runs, thereby eliminating him from starting Wednesday’s deciding Game 5 in Toronto.

Yesterday, Dave wrote about how the Jays shouldn’t use Price out of the bullpen during Game 4. That article was predicated on a simple assumption: that the score of the game would be close, and a high leverage situation would push Gibbons to go to the best pitcher he had available. That method of thinking is an understandable one, and a decision many managers would make with little hesitation.

That wasn’t the case in Game 4, however. To illustrate, take a look at the Win Expectancy chart for yesterday’s game, with a highlight on the point at which Price was summoned from the bullpen:

After Robinson Chirinos singled to center with one out and Delino DeShields then flied out to center — the former being the event that sealed Dickey’s fate — the Rangers’ Win Expectancy was just 3.2%. If the argument is that Price was brought in to stifle any perceived danger, there’s isn’t really a good case for it: Chirinos’ single was a blip, a faintest hint of danger, and Dickey had been pitching well in the game up until then.

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The playoffs have been a bit of a roller coaster so far. The postseason started off with dominating pitching performances from aces on the road, but then yesterday, the four games were mostly slugfests, with batters obliterating the “good pitching always beats good hitting” mantra. We’ve seen teams win with speed, power, pitching, defense, and sometimes just good luck; the games have been wildly different and wildly entertaining.

But if there’s been one consistent theme on a nightly basis, it’s been that fans of of the Cubs, Cardinals, Mets, and/or Dodgers have felt like they were getting absolutely screwed by the home plate umpires strike zone. During nearly every game of the two NLDS series, Twitter has lit up with complaints from fans who think the zone is far too wide to both sides of the plate. Now, you might say Twitter is a platform built on getting people to give knee-jerk reactions in real-time without considering the accuracy of their comments, and I’d agree with you, but the differences in number of complaints between the zones in the ALDS and NLDS have been very obvious.

And that’s because the ALDS games have been broadcast on Fox Sports 1 or MLB Network, while the NLDS games have been broadcast by TBS. And, for whatever reason, the visual box that TBS has chosen to represent the strike zone during their broadcasts is ridiculously small.

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