FanGraphs Baseball

Major League Baseball’s arcane – and many would say horribly outdated – television blackout policy has long been a source of frustration for baseball fans. As most readers are by now well aware, under MLB’s existing rules, fans residing within each team’s designated “local” broadcasting territory are currently unable to view that team’s games over the Internet via the MLB.tv streaming service. Instead, fans must subscribe to whichever regional sports network (RSN) owns the rights to the team’s games in order to watch their local team play.

These restrictions impact fans in a variety of ways. For starters, the existing rules prevent fans from watching their local team play on mobile devices, instead only allowing fans to view their local team’s games on a traditional television set. So anyone hoping to watch their local team’s broadcast via cell phone, for instance, is out of luck under the league’s existing rules.

Perhaps more frustrating, though, is the impact that MLB’s blackout policy has on fans who are either currently unable – or simply unwilling – to subscribe to whichever RSN owns the rights to their designated local team’s games. Under MLB’s policy, even if these fans shell out $110-130 per year to subscribe to MLB.tv, they will still be blacked out from watching any game involving their local team, even if they cannot watch the game on their local cable system.

So when news broke on Monday that MLB and Fox are nearing a deal to allow in-market streaming for 15 teams’ games, some fans were undoubtedly excited to learn that baseball was apparently, at long last, fully embracing the new digital age.

Unfortunately, in reality, the MLB-Fox agreement will do little to solve the most frequent criticisms of MLB’s blackout policy, as the scope of the new deal appears to be much more modest than some initial headlines suggested.

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Episode 587
Kiley McDaniel is both (a) the lead prospect analyst for FanGraphs and also (b) the guest on this particular edition of FanGraphs Audio — during which edition he discusses some recently promoted prospects (Gregory Bird, John Lamb, Luis Severino), a curiously successful one (Zachary Godley), and the implications of prep-showcase season on the 2016 draft.

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 1 hr 17 min play time.)

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Milwaukee Brewers prospect David Denson made history yesterday when he revealed he is gay. With his announcement, Denson became the first active, openly gay player in the history of affiliated baseball.

Given his significance to the game, there’s unlikely to be any shortage of coverage regarding Denson in either the near- or long-term. As some of the authors of that coverage have already noted, attempting to become a major leaguer is difficult enough without having to contend with questions of personal identity and concerns about acceptance at the same time. Denson himself has stated that he’s relieved that he can divert more of his energy now to baseball itself.

What I’d like to do here is set aside for a moment the implications of David Denson, gay ballplayer, and to utilize my KATOH projection system to consider briefly Denson’s prospects for reaching the majors.

Just 19 now, Denson was drafted by the Brewers in the 15th round in 2013, and has split the 2015 season between Low-A Wisconsin and Rookie League Helena, where he currently plays. In 268 trips to the plate this year, the first baseman has hit just .229/.313/.360, due in no small part to his elevated 26% strikeout rate. Denson opened the year in Low-A, where he also spent the second half of the 2014 season. But the Brewers reassigned him to extended spring training in May when he was hitting .195/.264/.305. He’s put up a more respectable .247/.339/.390 line since joining the Brewers Rookie League affiliate in June. Based on his 2015 numbers,  forecasts Denson for just 0.2 WAR through age 28, with a meager 6% chance of cracking the big leagues.

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Ben, Sam, and Erik Malinowski banter about Madison Bumgarner the batter, then discuss Astros rookie Carlos Correa’s early achievements.

It’s difficult to figure out where to start with Jackie Bradley Jr. You could start with his incredible defense, and actually that’s probably the right place to begin. You could look at this play, or this play, or this play, or if you have four minutes and 31 seconds you can watch some defensive highlights from 2014. Or just use Google. I’m sure you’ll come up with something good. That’s because Bradley is an exceptional outfielder. Someone with his defensive skills shouldn’t have to hit much to play regularly. “Not much” is still more than “none,” though, and it’s the difference between these two that has held Bradley back.

Bradley was called up four times in 2013, including at the beginning of the season to serve as the club’s starting left fielder. He hit .097/.263/.129 and was sent down as soon as the team got healthy enough to do so. He was called up three other times with varying degrees of failure, but the end result was a .617 OPS on the season. Even so, Bradley had hit at every level of the minors, including posting an .842 OPS for Triple-A Pawtucket in 2013 in between trips to Boston. The team decided he would be their starting center fielder in 2014. And he was. And his defense was close to perfect. His hitting was also perfect — though only on opposite day. Now, though, he’s hitting on all the regular kinds of days, too.

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A month ago, as baseball was just finishing up the All-Star break, the Nationals looked to be in a pretty good position. They were 48-39, sitting atop the NL East, and were expecting a host of quality reinforcements from the disabled list. The team hadn’t quite lived up to pre-season expectations, but a lot of that could be chalked up to health issues, and even their somewhat disappointing first half had them in first place; with some of their best players rejoining the club, the second half looked promising.

At that point, our projections gave the Nationals an 85% chance of winning the division. In the first 30 games of the second half, however, well, just take a look for yourself.

Since the break, they’re just 10-20, and they now find themselves 4 1/2 games behind the Mets in the NL East; their chances of making the postseason are down to 31%. They’ve lost six straight on their current west coast road trip, and now sitting at a game under .500, questions are starting to get raised about whether Matt Williams even makes it to the end of the season as the team’s manager.

So, how has this second half, and potentially the entire season, gone so wrong?

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With their offense sputtering, the Yankees called up first baseman Greg Bird from Triple-A last week in an attempt to potentially help matters. Bird is strictly a first baseman, meaning he’s unlikely to see regular playing time with Mark Teixeira and Alex Rodriguez holding down first base and DH, respectively. However, with 16 games without an off-day on their schedule, the Yankees will surely want to spell both Teixeria and A-Rod, especially since both have been slumping of late.

If his 2015 numbers are any indication, Bird has little left to prove in the minor leagues. He hit .277/.356/.469 between Double-A and Triple-A this season, including a .319/.372/.534 performance over his last month in the minors. Bird’s combination of power, walks and manageable strikeout numbers have made him a potent hitter in the high minors this year, as evidenced by his 139 wRC+.

Those manageable strikeout numbers are a new feature for Bird. Prior to this season, the 6-foot-3 slugger had some trouble putting the ball in play on a regular basis. His strikeout rates were consistently higher than his league’s average (roughly 20%) since the Yankees drafted him in the fifth round back in 2011, but he’s managed to hack a few percentage points off of his strikeout rate this year.

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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 St. Louis | 20:09 ET
Heston (141.0 IP, 98 xFIP-) vs. Wacha (138.1 IP, 94 xFIP-)
Of buying a pet, George Carlin said that what one is actually doing is “purchasing a small tragedy” — owing, that is, to the inevitable future death of that same animal. With regard to the San Francisco Giants, one finds a different sort of scenario, composed not of one inevitable — but two equally possible — outcomes. No other team currently possesses odds of reaching the divisional series closer to 50% than San Francisco*. What one finds, then, when observing the Giants is a group of men equally likely to experience the sort of ecstatic pleasure which attends that moment in which all of one’s efforts have been justified — either that, or the hollow misery which accompanies that other type of moment, in which one is compelled to realize that this great investment of time and energy has occurred to no greater end.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: San Francisco Radio or Television.

*By the season-to-date-stats methodology.

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Dating back to at least 1999, Major League Baseball has made it a stated goal to increase the level of diversity in the highest levels of its teams’ front office operations. Under the so-called “Selig Rule,” MLB teams are required to consider female or minority candidates “for all general manager, assistant general manager, field manager, director of player development and director of scouting positions.”

Notably, the Selig Rule does not require that teams actually interview any female or minority candidates for these positions. Instead, teams must merely consider candidates belonging to an underrepresented group before hiring someone else to fill one of the five aforementioned positions. Along these lines, teams are required to provide the Commissioner’s office with a list of everyone that they internally considered for an applicable job.

Sixteen years later, the extent to which the Selig Rule has succeeded in increasing the level of diversity within MLB teams’ front office operations depends on one’s point of view. On the one hand, the number of female and minority employees in MLB teams’ front offices reportedly increased from around three percent in 1999 to 20 percent in 2013. On the other hand, today only two MLB teams employ a manager belonging to an underrepresented minority group – Seattle’s Lloyd McClendon and Atlanta’s Fredi Gonzalez – while 26 of the 30 MLB general managers are white males (the only exceptions being the Diamondbacks’ Dave Stewart, the Dodgers’ Farhan Zaidi, the Phillies’ Ruben Amaro Jr., and the Tigers’ recently hired Al Avila).

Despite this mixed success, the league is committed to continuing to increase the levels of diversity in its teams’ front office ranks. In a new initiative announced last week, MLB has hired the Korn Ferry consulting firm to help prepare minority and female candidates to interview this off-season for any of the five categories of jobs covered by the Selig Rule.

While this new initiative will undoubtedly help those candidates who are eligible to work with the consulting firm, it nevertheless seems unlikely to have a significant impact on the representation of female and minority candidates within MLB.

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