FanGraphs Baseball

By the admission of the player himself, John Smoltz had a unique career that doesn’t quite stack up against the traditional standards set by past Hall of Fame inductees. He had two careers, and “each doesn’t qualify a hall of fame type career,” as the pitcher said on a conference call after he was inducted on Tuesday.

By definition, his career is now a Hall of Fame career, but is it possible that he stacks up better against his new colleagues if you consider his career as two halves of two separate induction-worthy careers?

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Sometimes, you read something or find a stat that changes your perception of a player. It probably shouldn’t be just one stat that changes your entire perception, but seeing that one stat may cause you to dig a little deeper into who that player is and what they’ve been doing, and your collective research could lead to a shift in perception.

Hey, Todd Frazier.

I spend enough time on FanGraphs that sometimes I forget about the little, exclusive stats offered by other websites. It’s fun to go dig around in the lesser-known parts of a site like BaseballReference, because it can make you think about things you might not have thought about while digging around on FanGraphs. Some deep BR digging led to a post I wrote a couple months back about David Price and the art of the three-pitch strikeout, and now it’s going to lead to a post about Todd Frazier.

The metric that caught my eye is called PwrSpd. It was developed by Bill James, and it’s a very basic metric. The leaderboard that caught my eye was topped by Carlos Gomez in 2014, who’s probably one of the first few people to come to mind when you think of elite combinations of power and speed. Ian Desmond was second and Jacoby Ellsbury was fourth. Mike Trout is in the top 10, and so is Andrew McCutchen. These names all make sense.

But sitting up there at No. 3, right above Ellsbury, is Todd Frazier. It sticks out like a sore thumb when you look at it. Really, it’s just a fancy way of saying Frazier was one five players who had 20+ homers and 20+ steals last year, alongside Gomez, Desmond, Michael Brantley and Brian Dozier. But either way you put it, that’s surprising. In the top 10, you’ve got five center fielders, two shortstops, a second basemen, a left fielder, and Todd Frazier. It’s not a top 10 meant to be inhabited by third baseman, yet there he is.
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Position: Inside Edge Baseball Operations Pitch Charter/Scout

Locations: Minneapolis, Minn. or Bristol, Conn.

Description:
Inside Edge, a leading scouting service and provider of data and analytics to MLB clubs and media, is looking for ambitious individuals to work in our baseball operations department during the 2015 baseball season. Former pro players and/or high-level college players preferred. Many of our employees move on to jobs with MLB organizations. Training for this position begins in February. The position will last until at least the end of the MLB regular season (October 4), with a possibility of extending through the offseason.

Responsibilities:

• Diligently chart pitches and play-by-play information for MLB games using IE’s proprietary charting application.
• Check the accuracy and validity of data.
• Provide support to team leaders.

Qualifications:

• Display commitment to quality data
• Computer proficiency and the ability to quickly learn new software
• Must be able to work nights and weekends

Compensation:
This position is compensated.

To Apply:

Send a resume to Andrew Pautz at Inside Edge.

11:45

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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 Los Angeles Dodgers. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Other Projections: Atlanta / Chicago AL / Colorado / Detroit / Los Angeles AL / Miami / Milwaukee / Oakland / San Francisco / St. Louis / Tampa Bay / Washington.

Batters
This is a strong and curiously diverse Dodgers team. Among even just the starting eight one finds young stars (Yasiel Puig) and older stars (Adrian Gonzalez); stars who’ve aged surprisingly well (Jimmy Rollins) and stars who’ve aged less well (Carl Crawford); veterans who probably merit greater acclaim (Howie Kendrick) and also whatever Juan Uribe is. While diverse, the starters are uniform by one standard — namely, the likelihood that they’ll produce wins at an average rate or better.

Of some interest is the (likely) platoon in left field of Crawford and Scott Van Slyke. The latter, despite a huge body, has produced slightly above-average fielding numbers in the corner outfield and is projected to do so again in 2015. It’s with some combination of great vengeance and furious anger, as well, that he has punished left-handed pitchers, recording a 151 wRC+ over about 200 career plate appearances against them. No player — in particular, no player who lost his rookie eligibility as a 26-year-old — ought really to be expected to continue hitting at a rate 50% better than league average. His success against lefties, however, at least helps to explain how ZiPS forecasts him to produce the second-highest wOBA on the club.

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Among others, baseball’s Hall of Fame will prepare to welcome Pedro Martinez and Randy Johnson. For them, there was zero suspense: Hall of Famers don’t get more automatic, and as easy as it is to focus on the fact that neither player was unanimous, the percentage matters less than the ultimate outcome. The voting process is a little bit broken, but it would have to be in complete and utter shambles to deny Martinez or Johnson entry — and they’ll no longer have to appear on any ballot. Two of the very greatest ever have been successfully and swiftly voted into the place intended to recognize the very greatest ever.

Of course, neither pitcher was a borderline candidate. Every so often the game has players who are just exceptional, and when you go into the data, you stumble upon fun facts proving said exceptional-ness. For example, let’s consider starting pitcher strikeout rates from 1999. The top of the list, with a 100-inning minimum:

1. Pedro Martinez, 37.5% strikeouts
2. Randy Johnson, 33.7%
3. Tim Hudson, 22.8%

That’s stupid. That leaderboard is stupid. It doesn’t make sense that pitchers could be so good. Not as starters, and not for as long as they were.

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A lot of professional baseball players – especially pitchers – play the guitar. Evan Meek is among the best of them. The 31-year-old right-handed reliever takes music nearly as seriously as he does pitching. He’s been playing for two decades and composes his own songs.

Meek, who has a 3.63 ERA over 179 career outings, broke into the big leagues with the Pirates in 2008 and spent this past season with the Orioles. He will always be known for giving up Derek Jeter’s storybook final hit at Yankee Stadium, and he just might write some guitar hits if he chooses to pursue a second career.

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Meek on his pitch repertoire: “I throw a four-seam fastball, but most all of my fastballs cut, so it’s really a cutter. I also throw a slider and a split change-up.

“My usage kind of varies over the course of a year. It’s pretty rare you have success with all three pitches when you’re relieving in short outings. One day the slider shows up and the split doesn’t, or maybe the split shows up and the slider or fastball doesn’t. Not all days are the same.”

On his guitar repertoire: “A lot of what I play depends on my mood. What’s my vibe that day? I use the word ‘vibe’ a lot because it kind of translates to the music I like to play. If I got a lot of sleep and am energetic, I might play something more upbeat. If I’m tired, I might play something slower.

“I’ve played in bands, mostly rock. There have been acoustic sets, basically getting a group of guys together to play. The stuff I do now is mostly with a travel guitar. I do a lot of hotel-room playing. Sometimes I’ll go down to a lobby, or somewhere quiet, to play.”

On pitching and playing: “There are definitely similarities between the two. When you play in a band, there’s a plan – there’s a set – and a way you go about doing things. On the mound it’s the same thing. Read the rest of this entry »

Episode 518
Jeff Sullivan is a senior editor at FanGraphs. He’s also the reappearing guest on this hollow, empty edition of FanGraphs Audio.

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.)

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Over the last month or so, some diligent folks have tracked the publicly disclosed Hall of Fame ballots. Carson collected that information for us earlier today, and looking at it, one couldn’t help but feel dread at the possibility of some deserving candidates being axed from the ballot for failure to garner five percent of the vote. Larry Walker, Sammy Sosa and Gary Sheffield were among the players who had to be sweating the technique of the assembled electorate. Or, if they weren’t, certainly there were some concerned fans.

As it turns out, those fears went mostly unwarranted. The only player with a legitimate-ish case for inclusion in the Hall who fell under the threshold was Blue Jays great Carlos Delgado. While Delgado certainly has a case, Jay Jaffe didn’t have him making it in via JAWS, and he would have faced an uphill climb whether he had remained on the ballot or not. At 43.5 WAR, he was definitely at the bottom of the pack of players getting legitimate consideration.

This turn of events is, to be perfectly honest, a neat trick. While more than four members of this class were deserving, to see four players elected and only Delgado actually fall off the ballot is a pretty remarkable balancing act by the voters. In years past, that has not been the case (Kenny Lofton and Kevin Brown say hi). Hopefully next year, the logjam will continue to clear, and those deserving candidates who were at the bottom of the ballot this year will begin to gradually accumulate more votes.

Before I leave you, I have a special treat. Thanks to the hard and timely work of FanGraphs intern Morris Greenberg, here are four custom Hall of Fame leaderboards:

• Position players in the Hall of Fame (updated to include Biggio)
• Position players still eligible for the Hall of Fame
• Pitchers in the Hall of Fame (including Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez and John Smoltz)
• Pitchers still eligible for the Hall of Fame