FanGraphs Baseball

Hitting and pitching may seem equally complicated, but consider this: when it comes to hitting, you have to use both of your hands in one place. By necessity, that adds a wrinkle, and can make hitting analysis difficult. In order to focus on something we can bite off and digest, let’s just ask Mike Trout, Bryce Harper, and Joc Pederson what they think about the top hand.

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
Minnesota at Boston | 13:35 ET
Hughes (64.2 IP, 106 xFIP-) vs. Rodriguez (7.2 IP, 75 xFIP-)
A combination of faux science and the author’s own discretion suggest that this afternoon’s Twins-Red Sox game is the most likely, objectively speaking, to facilitate baseball pleasure. Largely that’s because it’s also the most likely — among all today’s various contests — to feature Boston rookie Eduardo Rodriguez, which left-handed pitcher recorded a 7:2 strikeout-to-walk ratio in his debut last week at Texas while also sitting in the mid-90s. Eno Sarris provided some brief comments on Rodriguez’s impressive velocity after the latter’s impressive debut. Chris Mitchell, meanwhile, utilized his KATOH machine to examine some of Rodriguez’s historic comparables. As for the present author, he merely wrote a paragraph of limited utility, which the reader has just now completed.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Boston Radio.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Sortable Draft Board features draft-prospect ranks, tool ratings, and likely selection range — and costs zero dollars.

In my continuing quest to increase transparency and reduce the amount of information that I know and do not communicate, today FanGraphs has rolled out a thing that I think is most appropriately described as the Sortable Draft Board. There is lots of information I wanted to include, so we made three tabs to include all the stuff I think you want to see while also separating the information by type. The general idea behind this is to:

1. Give you the tools to re-rank these players to your preferences, as you now have all the information necessary to have some reasonable amount of confidence about doing such.

Read the rest of this entry »

Episode 567
Dave Cameron is both (a) the managing editor of FanGraphs and (b) the guest on this particular edition of FanGraphs Audio, during which edition he discusses the Twins and the defensive spectrum among other disparate, but not uninteresting, baseball topics.

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 42 min play time.)

Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

Some months ago, we moved our internal communications platform from Yammer to Slack. That part shouldn’t interest you, but I just had to explain where this screenshot of a direct message came from:

August is a good guy. So who am I to deny his request?

I remember I first started thinking about the relationship between velocity and batted-ball angle during Michael Pineda’s rookie season. I was probably trying to explain a low home-run rate or something, and that’s when it came to me — Pineda threw hard, and because of his size, it looked like he threw even harder. Wouldn’t it make sense that hard throwers would be more difficult to pull? And it tends to be those pulled fly balls that do the most damage. As a pitcher, you want air balls going the other way. They frequently suck.

When I thought about this stuff back then, it was mostly theoretical. Didn’t have many numbers. We’ve come a long way. There is a relationship between angle and velocity. It’s not perfect, but it’s real, with the pattern you’d expect.

Read the rest of this entry »

When Adam Dunn posted his 190th strikeout in 2004, he broke a record originally set by Bobby Bonds over 30 years earlier, in 1970. While it took some time for Bonds’ mark to be surpassed, it’s become a common occurrence in the meantime. Indeed, including that one produced by Dunn, there have now been 18 player seasons that have met or exceeded Bonds’ previous high.

While Bonds’ strikeout distinction has been exceeded on a number of occasions, there’s another one that remains untouched. Since Pete Incaviglia’s 1986 season, his mark of 185 strikeouts has endured as the record for rookies. Not a single rookie has come within even 10 strikeouts of Incaviglia’s record. Tampa Bay outfielder Steven Souza looks poised to make a run at the record this season, however.

Souza has followed an interesting track to the majors, spending eight years in the Washington Nationals’ minor-league system before getting a shot as a full-time starter with the Rays this season. Souza, a part of the trade that sent Wil Myers to the San Diego Padres, hit very well in the minor leagues over the last few years. As Carson Cistulli noted after the trade, through no fault of his own, Souza found himself behind Jayson Werth, Bryce Harper, and Denard Span making it difficult to receive a promotion to the big leagues. In Chris Mitchell’s profile of Souza, he reinforced the same point, writing:

Yes, Souza has been old for his level for years now, but the “old for his league” caveat means less and less the closer a hitter gets to the majors. And when a hitter performs like Souza did in Triple-A, you absolutely have to take notice. More often than not, hitters who rake in Triple-A turn into serviceable big leaguers, regardless of how old they are.

The Rays saw this logjam and pounced, providing the team with a player to replace the departed Myers while also securing other players in the deal as well. Despite Souza’s age relative to other prospects, Kiley McDaniel rated him the 52nd best prospect in Major League Baseball heading into the season. For the Rays, the move seems to have worked out in the early going. Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve done the starters, now it’s time for the relievers!

Well, OK, first, let’s tally the starters. As of 8:30 pm ET or so Monday night, this was the top 10 in each league. First, the American League:

1. Felix Hernandez – 2,020 votes, 18%
2. Corey Kluber – 1,605, 14%
3. Dallas Keuchel – 1,526, 14%
4. Sonny Gray – 1,369, 12%
5. Chris Archer – 1,254, 11%
6. Chris Sale – 838, 7%
7. Michael Pineda – 813, 7%
8. David Price – 541, 5%
9. Jake Odorizzi – 262, 2%
10. Garrett Richards – 105, 1%

And the National League:

1. Max Scherzer – 1,676, 16%
2. Clayton Kershaw – 1,117, 10%
3. Matt Harvey – 1,073, 10%
4. Shelby Miller – 1,031, 10%
5. Zack Greinke – 966, 9%
6. Gerrit Cole – 965, 9%
7. Madison Bumgarner – 840, 8%
8. Michael Wacha – 492, 5%
9. Jake Arrieta – 401, 4%
10. A.J. Burnett – 345, 3%

Now that we have that out of the way, let’s do the relievers. As a reminder, just vote for three. Another reminder — I can’t stop you from voting for more than three people, so you’re on the honor system.

Guys left out: Luke Gregerson, Brad Brach, Neftali Feliz, Ryan Madson and Zach Duke. Sorry, I guess? Again, I used only qualified relievers.

And the NL:

Apologies to: Luis Avilan, Michael Blazek, Matt Belisle, Andrew Chafin, Juan Nicasio, Santiago Casilla, Jared Hughes, Mark Melancon and J.J. Hoover. I guess.

Rock the vote!

Eduardo Rodriguez’s big-league debut went about as well as anyone could have expected. The hard-throwing lefty struck out seven in 7.2 scoreless innings, and allowed a mere three hits. Boston’s original plan was for Rodriguez to make just one spot start before returning to the minor leagues. However, following Thursday’s outing, the Red Sox decided they’d go with a six-man rotation for the time being in order to give Rodriguez at least one more start. They apparently saw enough to keep him around.

The thing that stood out most about Rodriguez’s debut was his crazy-hard fastball. As Eno Sarris noted on Friday, Rodriguez threw his fastball harder than almost any active starting pitcher. In fact, his average fastball velocity from last Thursday night was the highest we’ve seen from a lefty starter this year. Read the rest of this entry »

Last year’s first-overall draft pick, left-hander Brady Aiken, didn’t come to terms with the Astros because of a difference regarding what the physical showed about the condition of his elbow, despite being healthy at the time. Aiken went to IMG’s Post-Grad team this spring, but only threw a handful of pitches before he left his first game with an elbow injury, eventually leading to Tommy John surgery weeks later.

Since the failure of Aiken and Houston to reach an agreement, there’s been lots of buzz as to what the latter saw in that physical, since they’re the only team to have seen it. The most common rumors are unusual situations with the size of Aiken’s UCL, the blood flow to that area and the bone structure around the elbow.  His draft stock for next week’s draft ranges anywhere from the middle of the first round to the middle of the second round, depending on how much truth there is to these rumors.

A few days ago, the Aiken camp made his medical information available to teams, but with a very rare set of conditions about who can see it. Sources indicate the information is available only to GM-level personnel or higher (who can then distribute it to other decision-makers within the team) and the GM has to make a specific request with Aiken’s camp to see it, which the Aiken camp then has accept.

Read the rest of this entry »