FanGraphs Baseball

Play the player-profile game every day this week at 11:15am ET. We’re giving away a free annual subscription to FanGraphs+ to the first reader who guesses correctly the identity of that day’s mystery player. (Limit one copy per customer).

As Eno Sarris announced Monday, the newest iteration of FanGraphs+ is now available for purchase with money. As in recent years, we’re celebrating the release of FG+ by way of the player-profile game.

Said game is easy: the author offers the text of an actual player profile from the newest iteration of FG+, being careful to omit any proper names that might reveal the identity of the player in question. The reader, in turn, attempts to identify the player using only the details provided in the profile.

First reader to guess correctly (in the comments section below) gets a free annual subscription to FanGraphs+.

Today’s entry was composed by the dumb, dumb author himself.

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Apparently this is the week where I do whatever anyone says. Yesterday I identified some comps for various signature pitches around the league. In the subsequent comments, a request:

Well-Beered Englishman says:
As long as we’re making requests, I say hop in the time machine and compare somebody to Mariano.

So it shall be. Let’s see if we can find a decent comparison for Mariano Rivera’s cutter, which has been the most signature of signature pitches. There’s been no greater example of hitters being unable to do much despite knowing exactly what’s coming. With Rivera, there wasn’t a lot of mystery. Just precise, pinpoint location, in areas that ensured his success.

In terms of style, the best comparison for Rivera is probably Kenley Jansen. Jansen dominates with a cutter and little else, and if that sounds familiar, it’s because that was Rivera’s whole game. But this investigation is a little different: this is looking for cutters most like Rivera’s cutter. Research was performed using the Baseball Prospectus PITCHf/x leaderboards and Brooks Baseball player pages.

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After having typically appeared in the very hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have been released at FanGraphs the past couple years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Toronto Blue Jays. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Other Projections: Arizona / Atlanta / Baltimore / Boston / Chicago AL / Chicago NL / Cincinnati / Cleveland / Colorado / Detroit / Houston / Los Angeles AL / Los Angeles NL / Miami / Milwaukee / Minnesota / New York AL / New York NL / Oakland / Philadelphia / Pittsburgh / San Diego / San Francisco / St. Louis / Seattle / Tampa Bay / Texas / Washington.

Batters
It’s likely promising for the 2015 edition of the Blue Jays — a club that finished second in the AL East last season by Base Runs — it’s likely promising that five of the ten best WAR projections per ZiPS this year belong to players who’ve been acquired over the offseason. Ezequiel Carrera (548 PA, 1.1 WAR), Josh Donaldson (634 PA, 5.1 WAR), Russell Martin (453 PA, 3.6 WAR), Michael Saunders (442 PA, 2.1 WAR), and Devon Travis (505 PA, 0.9 WAR) all profile at least as competent bench players or, in the case of Donaldson, potential MVP candidates*.

*At least, that is, in a world without Mike Trout.

Jose Bautista and Edwin Encarnacion, for their part, remain the club’s best hitters and also curiously similar in terms of approach. Both are projected to produce something better than a .240 ISO. Neither, meanwhile, is forecast to produce a strikeout rate more than three percentage greater than his walk rate. And, finally, neither is expected to record anything greater than a .270 BABIP.

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A few minutes ago, I noticed that “Padres” was trending on Twitter. Imagine knowing that, and only that, several months ago. If I told you last June that “Padres” would be trending in the middle of February, you probably would’ve assumed one of two things. One, perhaps the San Diego Padres had been officially contracted. Or two, perhaps some citizen investigator had discovered that the Padres still exist. But we know the astonishing reality with which we’re growing accustomed: the Padres are a thing, and with all the moves they’ve made, there’s no question the team wants to win as soon as this season. They don’t want to win just this season, but it stands to reason the Padres would like to make this team as good as they can.

OK, perfect, keep that in mind. The Padres want to be good, right? How could they optimize the team? I’m going to blockquote some of you.

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Ben and Sam preview the Rockies’ season with David Roth and Andrew Koo, and Sahadev talks to Denver Post Rockies beat writer Nick Groke (at 25:56).

Yesterday, inspired by a morning chat participant, I drew some parallels between Felix Hernandez‘s changeup and Henderson Alvarez’s changeup. While Felix’s changeup is better than Alvarez’s changeup, in terms of its effectiveness, the actual pitches themselves aren’t too different; the pitchers just have different levels of command of them. I made use of the Baseball Prospectus PITCHf/x leaderboards to calculate good comps for Felix’s changeup, and Alvarez’s change came out in the lead by a wide margin. I considered just average velocity, horizontal movement, and vertical movement, and then I used z-scores to come up with a comparison rating.

I found the exercise fun enough to try again today. Yesterday, I found that Alvarez’s changeup is the best comp for Felix’s changeup, and Felix’s change is a signature pitch. How about some comps for some other signature pitches? That’s what you’re going to find below. Granted, I’ve selected just five signature pitches, and there are a whole lot more of them. That part of this was subjective and kind of random. But, there’s no turning back now. Those pitches examined:

• Clayton Kershaw’s slider
• Adam Wainwright’s cutter
• Sonny Gray’s curveball
• Cole Hamels‘ changeup
• Aroldis Chapman’s fastball

I considered 2014 only, and I compared just righties to righties and lefties to lefties, and starters to starters and relievers to relievers. I set a minimum of 50 pitches thrown, of the given pitch type. Remember that this isn’t necessarily giving you comparisons of pitch quality; just, pitch characteristics. This just looks at averages, so it doesn’t consider variability in velocity or movement, nor does it consider command. In some cases, a good pitch is compared to a good pitch. In other cases, not so much. But the results, at least, are interesting and fun. One last note: for comparison purposes, I combined sliders and cutters, because they’re thrown similarly and sometimes they’re hard to separate. Onward!

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At the end of January, the author published a post here featuring roughly calculated WAR figures for every minor leaguer from 2014. Despite the conspicuously haphazard computation, the results of that effort were ultimately (and strangely) credible. The four players atop the relevant leaderboard from 2014, for example — Kris Bryant, Joey Gallo, Joc Pederson, and Corey Seager — are also the sort who will populate the upper regions of this spring’s top-prospect lists.

Over the course of a subsequent television appearance during which I (notably) cried zero times, I endeavored to explain why — even while batting leaderboards in the high minors, especially, are often crowded with the names of immobile, Quad-A sluggers — why minor-league WAR (or mWAR, for short) might favor actual prospects. One reason, it would appear, is this: while those older sluggers are typically relegated to first base or a corner-outfield spot, organizations will typically deploy their younger and more promising talents at the most challenging positions they can reasonably handle. As a result, those players benefit from a greater positional adjustment and, in turn, better mWAR figures.

Given the relative success of that first post, what I’ve attempted to provide here — made possible largely by my colleagues Jonah Pemstein and Jeff Zimmerman — is a leaderboard featuring the top-35 players by mWAR since 2006. Below that is a link to a spreadsheet containing mWAR figures for over 30-thousand player-seasons, also since 2006.

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Innovation doesn’t always come on the field. Innovation can invade any part of the sport, really. And innovation doesn’t always mean you are first in your field, even if that sounds wrong. If you define innovation as the introduction of something new, the Giants are constantly innovating upon their own processes.

“You always have to assess your best practices,” admitted Giants Vice President Bobby Evans this week. That includes everything from the training room to the rest room, apparently. Over the last three years, the Giants have spent time improving their facilities so that the fans and players had the best experiences possible. You might not see it easily on the field, and it’s hard to quantify how much these things help — but these changes are probably meaningful.

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This article is one of 13 produced for FanGraphs+. We are running it for free today as an example of the quality of work you will have access to by purchasing our $6 project. Two of the additional 12 articles were also written by Dan Farnsworth, who told you about J.D. Martinez’s pending breakout last winter, so for his breakdowns on Jedd Gyorko and Steven Souza, purchase access to FG+ now.

Jung-Ho Kang is coming to a Pirates game near you, and he better be on your radar as a baseball fan or fantasy manager. As with every foreign import, you have heard scouts and analysts weigh in on Kang, and you will continue to hear more reports as the season approaches. You may have heard his power will not translate to our game, that he may not even be a starter at the highest level of American baseball. I’m here to tell you that these reports starkly underrate Kang’s potential, and now you can cash in as a fantasy owner while everyone else follows the status quo. Kang has an elite swing that will allow his numbers to translate very quickly into Major League success.

Let’s jump right into some images. Here Kang is hitting a fastball out to just right of dead center field for a long home run:

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