FanGraphs Baseball

During the height of the furor over the National Football League’s mishandling of the Ray Rice case last fall, both Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Association agreed to work together to formulate a new domestic violence policy for the league. On Friday, the two sides announced that they had finally reached an agreement on a new comprehensive policy covering not only incidents of domestic violence, but cases of sexual assault and child abuse as well:

MLB and the MLBPA have announced an agreement on a Joint Domestic Violence, Sexual Assault and Child Abuse Policy. pic.twitter.com/C1eTGljC6r

— MLB Communications (@MLB_PR) August 21, 2015

In addition to establishing new player treatment and education protocols, the policy gives the Commissioner’s Office the authority to investigate any allegation of domestic violence, sexual assault, or child abuse involving a major-league player. Commissioner Manfred has also been given the power to place a player under investigation on paid Administrative Leave for up to seven days, a placement that the player can immediately appeal to panel of arbitrators.

Following the completion of MLB’s investigation, the new policy gives the commissioner the power to impose whatever punishment “he believes is appropriate in light of the severity of the conduct.” In other words, the agreement does not establish any minimum or maximum penalties for domestic violence, sexual assault, or child abuse cases. In fact, the policy explicitly states that a player does not even need to be criminally convicted of a crime in order to be punished by the commissioner. Once again, however, the player will have the right to appeal his punishment to a panel of arbitrators.

So how does MLB’s new policy compare with the league’s prior treatment of domestic violence? And what types of penalties might players realistically face if the commissioner determines they have violated the new agreement?

Read the rest of this entry »

Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by viscount of the internet Rob Neyer, and expanded at the request of nobody, NERD scores represent an attempt to summarize in one number (and on a scale of 0-10) the likely aesthetic appeal or watchability, for the learned fan, of a player or team or game. Read more about the components of and formulae for NERD scores here.

Most Highly Rated Game
Los Angeles NL at Houston | 14:10 ET
Kershaw (169.0 IP, 56 xFIP-) vs. McCullers (76.2 IP, 89 xFIP-)
As contributor Neil Weinberg noted on Friday in these pages, left-hander Clayton Kershaw has an opportunity to produce baseball’s lowest expected fielding-independent pitching (xFIP) mark this season since 2002 — which is to say, also the earliest year for which the necessary inputs for that metric are available. While immaterial in itself, to set such a record would signify something more material — namely that, with regard to those variables over which a pitcher exacts the most control (and which are easiest measure), Kershaw has exacted terrifying and exceptional control. He is, one might say, a sort of despot, exerting a cruel power not over a tired and oppressed people but rather just the baseball strike zone.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Houston Television.

Read the rest of this entry »

Jason Bere had an interesting observation about Joe Borowski, who saved 45 games for the Indians in 2007. According to Bere – currently Cleveland’s bullpen coach – Borowski threw a lot of backup sliders. Contrary to what you might think, that was a good thing.

“A lot of times when he got a guy to swing and miss, it was with the one that just kind of stayed,” Bere told me. “They would react to what they were seeing out of the hand, the spin, but while it had the tightness of a true slider, it didn’t break like one.

“Hitters will tell you that something that backs up on them is hard to hit. A hanger, they’ll crush. But something that backs up – that last second it’s not going where they thought it was going to go – they”ll have trouble with it. You can see it from the swings they take.”

Intrigued by what Bere told me, I set out in search of further opinions on the effective, yet almost always unintentional, backup slider.

Alan Nathan, the man behind The Physics of Baseball, shared a scientific perspective. Read the rest of this entry »

Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by viscount of the internet Rob Neyer, and expanded at the request of nobody, NERD scores represent an attempt to summarize in one number (and on a scale of 0-10) the likely aesthetic appeal or watchability, for the learned fan, of a player or team or game. Read more about the components of and formulae for NERD scores here.

Most Highly Rated Game
San Francisco at Pittsburgh | 16:05 ET
Leake (143.0 IP, 97 xFIP-) vs. Cole (155.1 IP, 80 xFIP-)
The relative brevity of the passage you’re reading here is correlated inversely to the length of time the author spent last night consuming various spirits with readers of FanGraphs and also the magnitude of the physical discomfort which has been produced inside the author’s body as a result of that activity. In conclusion, faux science suggests once again that the Giants and Pirates ought to offer some combination of thrill and delight.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: San Francisco Radio or Television.

Read the rest of this entry »

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.
Read the rest of this entry »

Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by viscount of the internet Rob Neyer, and expanded at the request of nobody, NERD scores represent an attempt to summarize in one number (and on a scale of 0-10) the likely aesthetic appeal or watchability, for the learned fan, of a player or team or game. Read more about the components of and formulae for NERD scores here.

Most Highly Rated Game
San Francisco at Pittsburgh | 19:05 ET
Bumgarner (163.1 IP, 77 xFIP-) vs. Locke (129.1 IP, 104 xFIP-)
Writing about the implications of this series yesterday, the present author noted that, among all major-league clubs, the two considered here featured divisional-series playoff odds closest to 50% — which is to say, furthest from certainty. Not only does that remain the case today, but what else one finds is that, according to the numbers, this game itself is basically an exercise in uncertainty. Regard, by way of illustration, a lightly edited excerpt from today’s live scoreboard:

Afflicted by randomness, is how the Giants and Pirates currently find themselves. Afflicted by randomness, one notes, is also how any reasonably observant person describes his experience of the world. To suggest, then, that tonight’s contest represents a sort of morality play for existential angst — this would be accurate. Accurate but also overwrought. Overwrought, but not necessarily in an unpleasant way.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: San Francisco Radio or Television.

Read the rest of this entry »

If you frequent these internet pages, you may have seen the announcement last month that we are hosting a Meetup tonight at Mead Hall in Cambridge in advance of this weekend’s Saber Seminar. In case you didn’t, I’m reminding you again so that you’re all out of excuses. Here’s the pertinent paragraph:

We’ll be getting started right at 7 pm, at Mead Hall’s upstairs bar, just in time to watch the first pitch of the Royals v. Red Sox tilt at Fenway Park. Generally, there are all sorts of writers from the FanGraphs family of blogs at the Meetup, and this year should be no different. Dave Cameron, David Laurila, Jeff Zimmerman, Chris Mitchell, Bryan Cole, Peter Bonney and myself will be on the premises for sure, as will Saber Seminar co-organizer Chuck Korb.

There will be plenty of your other favorite baseball analysts there as well. Oh, and beer. Did I mention beer? So much beer. (Reminder: You’re supposed to be 21 to attend.) So come join us tonight, it’s going to be a marvelous time!

Amid the ever-increasing dominance of pitching this season, Chris Archer has been a singular figure among the leaderboard of best pitchers during 2015: he’s not only a newcomer to the best handful of starters that populate baseball, but he’s also gotten to where he currently is in a rather unique way. In late April, I noticed that Archer was now throwing his slider almost 40% of the time and getting incredible results from it; in May, Carson noted that Archer was in a select group that blended an elite ground-ball rate with an elite strikeout rate; and, in early June, Dave wrote that Archer’s slider was now being thrown much harder, at upwards of 90 mph, making it an almost totally unfair pitch.

Archer has truly found himself as an ace this season, and last night, he turned in the best performance of his young career.

Unsurprisingly, the Rays’ right-hander pitched his complete game, one hit, one walk, 11 strikeout, 98-pitch performance in the method he has come to rely on this season: an overpowering fastball coupled almost exclusively with an unfair slider. Archer threw a Maddux, and he did so in historic fashion, compiling a Bill James game score of 95 along the way. The only other pitchers to throw a complete game with under 100 pitches and a game score of at least 95? I’ll let our friend Kazuto answer that:

Maddux with a 95+ game score: Koufax no-no vs Philly Cone perfect Bunning perfect Humber perfect (LOL) Rogers perfect Archer tonight

— Kazuto Yamazaki (@Kazuto_Yamazaki) August 21, 2015

That’s a lot of perfect games and one no-hitter on that very short list, which tells us just how good Archer was last night. He was this close, in fact, to a no-no:

Read the rest of this entry »

Chasing records is fun. Sometimes it’s meaningless and fun, like the famed Ryan Webb, Matt Albers games-finished-without-a-save streak. Some chases have limited meaning, but they’re fun, like Zack Greinke‘s pursuit of Orel Hershiser’s consecutive scoreless innings streak. Other are meaningful, like the 2015 Cardinals pursuit of the best park-adjusted ERA since before World War I.

Record chases exist on a spectrum of notoriety — from “Mark Simon would tweet about this,” to “my mother-in-law has heard of it and wants to discuss it.” That’s a big range. Some records are fun quirks that could happen to anyone. Some are the product of a truly great player performing at a high level. The record up for discussion these days falls into the latter category, but it’s also closer to Mark Simon tweet status than mother-in-law conversation fodder. Clayton Kershaw is trying to post the best single-season, park-adjusted xFIP ever.

Read the rest of this entry »

Two weeks ago, the Detroit Tigers essentially fired long-time General Manager Dave Dombrowski. Despite four consecutive division titles — a streak that will end this year, of course — and a lot of success over the last decade, Dombrowski was unable to bring a championship back to Motown, and with their window closing and the team struggling, ownership decided to make a change. Now, it will be up to new GM Al Avila to improve a roster that is starting to show signs of age and decline.

The first step in retooling is to determine what you have. The 2011-2015 Tigers were known for great offenses, great starting pitching, and terrible bullpens and defenses that let down their star hitters and pitchers at the worst times. During their best years, they scored runs like few others, and their starting pitching was as good as it gets, but aging and departed stars have taken their toll, so the 2016 Tigers will be missing some key components that formed that foundation. Max Scherzer is now in DC participating in the the tire fire that is the Nationals season, David Price is busy attempting to free Blue Jays fans from two decades plus of a playoff-less existence, and Yoenis Cespedes now spends his time demonstrating to Mets fans that when you hit a ball with a bat sometimes it can go far.

Scherzer is signed long term in Washington and Cespedes and Price are going to command hundreds of millions of dollars on the free agent market, making a return to Detroit questionable at best. To offset some of the decline in pitching, the Tigers improved their defense this season mostly by adding a healthy Jose Iglesias. This is no longer a team that betrays it’s pitching staff with poor fielding; these days, they’re just giving up runs because their arms aren’t that good anymore.

As for finances, the Tigers have $111.8 million committed to seven players next season, only five of whom will be on the club (they owe the Rangers $6 million of Prince Fielder’s contract and Joe Nathan will get a $1 million buy-out on his $10 million option). What’s more, the Tigers are going to have to pay J.D. Martinez a big raise in arbitration, and role players like Jose Iglesias will also require above-the-minimum salaries as first-time arbitration qualifiers. Just keeping those players will cost another roughly $15-$20 million, so they could be on the hook for about $130 million to just 10 players. This means spending $25-30 million on a top tier free agent is going to be very difficult unless they are about to dramatically expand their payroll.

So the Tigers need to improve their bullpen, strengthen their rotation, and adding a bat who can also field some wouldn’t be a bad idea either. The question is, can they afford to acquire those assets on the free agent market, or do they need to be more circumspect and move assets around through trade?

Read the rest on Just a Bit Outside.