FanGraphs Baseball

It’s safe to say that the first half of 2015 hasn’t gone the way the Padres would have hoped. After making a number of surprisingly aggressive moves over the winter, the organization expected to contend for a playoff spot, but after another loss last night, the team now stands at just 37-42. Entering July at five games under .500 puts them closer to rebuilding teams like the Braves and Diamondbacks, and they’re only barely ahead of the Reds, who are widely expected to start moving some of their best players as the trade deadline draws near.

Over the next month, General Manager A.J. Preller and his staff will have to make some tough decisions. For instance, Justin Upton is a free agent at the end of the year, and a return to San Diego seems unlikely, so if the Padres don’t trade Upton before August 1st, they risk letting him leave for nothing more than a single draft pick as compensation. In a trade market with few sellers, and even those who are selling lacking impact hitters to sell, Upton could fetch a nice return, perhaps bringing back a decent approximation of what Preller sent to Atlanta to get Upton in the first place.

But despite the fact that we currently estimate their odds of making the playoffs at less than 10%, I don’t think the Padres should sell Upton, or any of their other players who would be attractive chips on the trade market. Even with the odds stacked against them, I think the Padres should keep this group together and hope for the best.

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Kendall Graveman pitches to contact with a sinker and a cutter. He throws the former better than half the time and the latter nearly a quarter of the time. Working down and skirting sweet spots is his thing. Punch-outs aren’t. The rookie righty has a worm-killing 47.4% ground-ball rate, but fans a paltry 5.66 batters per nine innings.

Obtained by the A’s as part of last winter’s Josh Donaldson package, Graveman is inducing plenty of outs. The 24-year-old Mississippi State product has allowed just 12 runs over his last eight starts. The stingy outings were preceded by a month-long stint in Triple-A following five mixed-bag performances to begin the season.

Graveman discussed his repertoire and approach, including how TrackMan data has influenced each, when Oakland visited Fenway Park in early June. Read the rest of this entry »

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Welcome to one of those posts that’s basically just a bunch of words around one table. The function of the words is to try to explain what the table is saying, but if you don’t need that interpretation, you can just look at the numbers and be on your merry way. Look at the time you can save. It’s like you made your day longer!

I wrote this post once already, when the season was roughly a quarter over. Now the season’s roughly two quarters over, so I thought it could be useful to issue an update on the data. The question being answered, to some extent: which teams have most benefited from favorable strike zones? Which teams have been hurt, meanwhile, by unfavorable strike zones? It might seem like a complicated thing to dig into, but it’s really quite easy, and you could do it yourself in a matter of minutes using numbers we have on our leaderboards.

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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
New York AL at Los Angeles AL | 19:05 ET
Eovaldi (82.1 IP, 98 xFIP-) vs. Shoemaker (78.2 IP, 101 xFIP-)
The introduction of the wild-card game to baseball’s postseason format in 2012 has problematized slightly what precisely one means when saying that a club has “reached” or “qualified for” the playoffs. Technically, that wild-card game is denoted as a playoff contest. For the team that loses it, however — and for that team’s supporters — the pleasures typically associated with postseason baseball are incredibly short-lived. For that reason, the component of NERD team scores that accounts for a club’s playoff odds — which component is weighted more heavily in direct proportion to the proximity of those playoffs — is informed not by the relevant club’s overall playoff odds, but rather by the club’s odds of reaching the divisional series. Specifically, the closer to 50% a team’s odds of qualifying for the divisional series, the greater positive influence over that team’s NERD score — the logic being that such a club is playing the highest-leverage games in the league.

One finds, in the Yankees and Angels, two of the three clubs in closest proximity to that 50% mark. Regard, the seven clubs within 20 points or less of same:

New York currently possesses the least certain future with regard to the postseason. Pittsburgh trails them by only a slight amount. And then the Anaheims’ divisional-series odds of 37.8% place them third. While it’s probably fair to say that winning or losing this particular game is not of the greatest urgency to either the Yankees or Angels, it’s also accurate to say that urgency is most present in this encounter of all those present on today’s schedule.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Los Angeles AL Television.

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Baseball has seen many changes in the past 100 years. Some changes are significant enough, retrospectively, to define an era. There was the Deadball Era from roughly 1901 to 1919, characterized by an emphasis on pitching, defense, and a low run-scoring environment. The Liveball Era began in 1920, ushered in by Babe Ruth, cleaner baseballs that were easier for batters to see, and rule changes like banning the spitball. When the offense started to overpower the game, more changes were made to temper that environment, like the introduction of the ground-rule double in 1931. Before that, a ball that bounced on the field and over the fence was considered a home run.

There’s Jackie Robinson’s debut in 1946, and the following years when African-Americans finally were permitted to play in the majors. There’s expansion, the lowering of the pitcher’s mound, the introduction of the designated hitter in the American League, free agency, more expansion, newer ballparks, PEDs, testing for PEDs, and an ever-expanding strike zone — all marking the beginning of other, overlapping eras. And then there’s the sabermetrics revolution — using advanced statistical modeling and analysis to construct rosters, manage bullpens, and deploy extreme defensive shifts.

All of these changes in baseball and yet, for the last 100 years, the offensive hierarchy among defensive positions has remained pretty much the same. First basemen, right fielders, and left fielders produce more offense than the average player; catchers, second basemen, and shortstops produce less. It was that way in 1914, in 2014, and in nearly every season in between. Clean ball, dirty ball, higher mound, lower mound, PEDs, no PEDs — whatever the conditions in the game and on the field, first basemen, left fielders, and right fielders have dominated on offense.

Let’s examine more closely this relationship between offensive skill and defensive position — both the historical averages and outlier seasons.

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We keep learning more about baseball. Every year, we learn things we didn’t know. Every year, we have new data to back up things we might’ve already suspected. The level of knowledge is ever-increasing. You’d think that might make baseball analysis easier. The more you know, the more you should be able to say, right? It’s true, now we can say more — and we can say more with data. But if anything, all this knowledge is making everything more complicated. The more we learn about the game, the more we learn about the gray areas. The more we learn about the gray areas, the more we have to hedge against making strong, conclusive statements.

So it’s more complicated to do player analysis, and it’s more complicated to do transaction analysis. At least, it’s more difficult to assign the winner and the loser of a transaction. There are generally too many different things at play. I think it’s notable, then, when strong conclusions are still reached. It’s notable to me when the analytical community comes down strongly on one side of something, because situations are grayer than ever. It must mean something when a firm consensus is reached despite all the complexities.

With decreasing frequency do writers come out strongly against a given transaction. So it’s worth reflecting on the trade that sent Doug Fister from the Tigers to the Nationals. That one didn’t make any sense. That was a pretty clear steal, on the Nationals’ part. Everybody agreed the Tigers didn’t get enough. I know, because I was one of them. The deal looked terribly lopsided at the time, which is something we don’t get to experience so much anymore.

And you know what? It probably was lopsided. The Tigers probably didn’t get enough. The trade legitimately sent waves through the industry. But you have to look at where we are now. Regardless of whether this could’ve been predicted: Robbie Ray looks like he might be emerging. Ray’s talent is coming to the surface.

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Episode 577
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, among sundry matters, baseball’s looming international-signing period.

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 19 min play time.)

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Monday, against the Twins, Billy Hamilton stole four bases. In so doing, he reached 40 steals on the year before anyone else reached 30. Probably even more impressive: Hamilton now has more steals than exactly half the teams in baseball. He has more than the White Sox and Dodgers combined. Over the course of the past month, Hamilton has stolen 20 bases, and second and third place on the leaderboard combined have stolen 19 bases. Over that same month, Hamilton has more stolen bases than he has hits.

It’s funny now to reflect on some of the things I wrote in 2014. Early on, when Hamilton started to hit, I decided he wasn’t a caricature. When it all ended, I asked why Hamilton hadn’t been a base-stealing dynamo. Now Hamilton is a base-stealing dynamo. And he’s a terrible hitter. He can’t hit, but he does run, and when he’s on the other side of things, he can play a mean center field. Which means, in a way, Billy Hamilton now is something of a caricature. He’s an exaggeration of a player type, which is exactly how he was advertised.

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