FanGraphs Baseball

Read the rest of this entry »

There’s something about the calendar flipping from April to May that makes it seem like the baseball season is somehow better realized, with the small samples and fluctuations of the opening frame left behind in favor of more stability. The cold days in the Midwest are less numerous; we now know the teams with a capacity to surprise, and the ones that never really had a shot. That sense of May stability is an artifact of our human desire to demarcate, to divide, and to end and begin things: the real truth is that every day is merely a day before and after another, moving relentlessly toward a finality — a month, a season, a career.

Our monthly divisions are a veil draped over the game to provide meaning where there may be none. Still, knowing the futility of our plight, we’re going to press on with that propensity for order and use the end of April to look back at changes between last month and last season in relation to one subset of data: movement of pitches. I’ll be looking at who had the biggest change in movement for their offerings between last year and this year, and perhaps we can glean some data related to whiff rate, batted ball breakdown, or other peripheral statistics that suit our fancy.

Finally, a reminder: more movement doesn’t always mean better results. It does make for entertaining data and visualizations, however. Today, we’ll go over fastballs, so we won’t have the gaudy swing and miss stuff that we’ll have tomorrow, when we’ll look at breaking balls and offspeed pitches. All stats are farmed from Baseball Prospectus’ PITCHf/x leaderboards. Today we’ll divide fastballs by four-seam and two-seam, as well as starters and relievers. As a baseline, I used a 500 pitch minimum for starters in 2014, and a 100 pitch minimum for relievers.

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
Tampa Bay at Boston | 19:10 ET
Smyly (10.2 IP, 53 xFIP-) vs. Porcello (32.0 IP, 101 xFIP-)
In his first start of his season, on April 24th, Tampa Bay left-hander Drew Smyly struck out roughly 28% of the opposing batters he faced — or about eight points more than league average. In his second and also only other start, he struck out roughly 46% of the batters he faced — which is to say, many more points greater than league average. One might be inclined to say that “at this rate” Smyly should be expected to strike out 64% of Boston’s hitters today (Tuesday). One might be inclined to say that, but one is inclined to make any number of poor decisions. Like playing bridge with anyone over seventy. Or like wearing brown shoes with black pants.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Boston Radio or Detroit Radio.

Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve quietly added a few new stats to our batted ball section.

First we have percentage of balls a batter pulls, hits to center field, and hits to the opposite field. This will make it much easier to figure out the general direction a player hits the ball without going to the splits pages and pulling out a calculator.

Pull% – Percentage of balls in play that were pulled by the batter
Cent% – Percentage of balls in play that were hit to center field by the batter
Oppo% – Percentage of balls in play that were hit to opposite field by the batter

Then we have how hard each ball is hit as provided by Baseball Info Solutions. It’s important to know that these are all relative to the batted ball type. For instance, a fly ball might be classified as hard, but if that ball were a line drive, it could potentially be classified as medium. If you are interested in seeing how line drives/fly balls/groundballs are classified into soft/medium/hard, we have that information available on the splits pages.

It’s also important to know that prior to 2010, these were all graded visually. From 2010 onward, the batted ball type, hangtime, and distance hit are all used to calculate the soft/medium/hard classifications.

Soft% – Percentage of balls in play that were classified as hit with soft speed.
Med% – Percentage of balls in play that were classified as hit with medium speed.
Hard% – Percentage of balls in play that were classified as hit with hard speed.

The modern baseball statistical analysis revolution has largely been about one thing; weeding out the noise, and getting to the root of a player’s true talent. DIPS theory, which posited that the only things that pitchers truly should be held accountable for were strikeouts, walks and homers allowed, represented a major step forward, and brought terms like BABIP and FIP into the game’s lexicon. What those new metrics assumed, however, was that all other batted balls were more or less created equal. Now, with the advent of StatCast, we all know, publicly, that is not the case. Read the rest of this entry »

Lineup protection may or may not exist. Studies suggest it doesn’t, at least not statistically, but many within the game insist it does. In their view, the pitches a batter sees are influenced by the batter on deck. Almost all agree that situations play a role, but beyond that, just how much effect is there? The question was posed to six pitchers, four hitters, and two managers (both of whom are former catchers). Here are their responses:

Madison Bumgarner, Giants pitcher: “I should look over at the on-deck circle a lot of time, but my pride gets the better of me. I can’t remember a time that I looked over there and was actually smart about the situation. It should be that way. It’s a hard thing to do. You don’t want to give in, I don’t want to give in.”

Kevin Cash, Rays manager: “A lot of those questions have been asked about Longo (Evan Longoria). You have the guy who protects, you have the guy who gets the benefit of having protection, and then you have the really good hitter who does both. We factor in protection, but it’s not just having that one guy in front of him, or behind him. That’s not the driving force when making a lineup.” Read the rest of this entry »

Ben and Sam talk to Ben Carsley about Boston’s talented 22-year-olds, Xander Bogaerts and Mookie Betts.

Episode 559
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 answers questions about the future of fired managers like Ron Roenicke, about quality-of-contact classifications, and about what looms for the Chicago White Sox.

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 46 min play time.)

Read the rest of this entry »

Let’s watch a little MLB Gameday, you and I. I’ll select Saturday’s matchup between the Rays and the Orioles. Below, you’re going to see all four of Manny Machado’s plate appearances. Note that I could’ve selected Sunday’s game instead and demonstrated the same thing, but on Saturday, Machado faced more pitches. Four simple .gifs:

Read the rest of this entry »

First, Pedro Martinez pointed out something really fun about hitters at the plate, and how they basically tell the pitcher where they want the ball as they step into the box. Watch the waggle.

So I asked Tim Hudson and Madison Bumgarner if they’d ever heard this before. Neither had, but they did shed some light on why this Bat Waggle Finding may not be super useful to all pitchers.

Bumgarner said he wouldn’t use it much, but that’s because he doesn’t really plan for hitters that way. Scouting reports? “We can get em, I don’t really,” he said. “I got everything in my memory bank.” He’d tried planning for each hitter before, but then he said he got too rigid and had a hard time adjusting. “I don’t have a gameplan when I go out there — I mean I have my gameplan going out there, but my game plan is to get outs and adjust as I need to, and try to read the situation. I’m not dead set on what I’m going to do before the game starts.”

Hudson laughed when he heard the youngster’s prep work. “Don’t ask any young stud about their prep work,” the veteran Giants starter said. “They haven’t had to figure it out. They just throw the glove out there and get shutouts.”

But when Hudson goes to prepare for the game, he gets fairly granular. “I look at the scouting reports and tendencies, what they can hit, what they can’t hit,” Hudson said. “Pitches in certain counts and certain zones. Breaking balls, where in the zone. If there are some red flags with a hitter, you want to know those.”

This isn’t all pitchers all the time, but Hudson and Bumgarner prepare for the game with drastically different styles. And, in both cases, as cool as this Bat Waggle thing is, it’s not super useful. Either the pitcher isn’t looking to scout the hitter that way, or the pitcher has already seen the heat maps that tell you that Albert Pujols likes high pitches.