FanGraphs Baseball

We’re coming off a season in which the American League Cy Young winner had a meh fastball. It’s true. Corey Kluber‘s sinker didn’t meet the above-average benchmark for swinging strikes (5.6%, his was 5.3%) or grounders (50.5%, his was 48.6%). Look at National League breakout Tanner Roark’s two-seamer, and you’ll see the same thing. Is it possible that we’ve overrated the importance of the fastball with respect to overall outcomes?

Fastball velocity is usually the first thing on the scouting report, and with good reason. We know that every mile per hour is worth a fraction of a run allowed per nine innings. So it seems important.

I asked Steven Staudemeyer to run a correlation between the swinging strike rates on the four major pitch types and a pitcher’s overall swinging strike rate. Here is that table (all p values are less than .0001).

Obviously the fastball is important. It’s thrown nearly three-fifths of the time! The fastball’s swinging strike rate explains almost half the variance in the pitcher’s overall swinging strike rate.

But look at the slider and the change. They each explain nearly double the variance in swinging strike rate than you’d expect if you just went by volume alone. It makes intuitive sense — you use the fastball to get ahead, and you use the other pitches to finish them off — but it has all sorts of practical applications.

Take, for example, a pitcher like Dan Straily. His fastball was down below 90 mph before he was traded to the Cubs, so he had below-average velocity for a right-hander. He still managed above-average whiffs (7%), but few would say that his best asset is his four-seamer. But if you look at his change (18% whiffs) and slider (21.7% whiffs), you see that he has two pitches that break in different directions and get good results. You might take a chance on him if you thought that he could use the fastball mostly to get ahead, and if you thought the fastball was a little bit less important than it seemed by volume.

There are other names on this list, too. Ivan Nova has a nice curve (13%) and slider (23%) and an iffy four-seamer. He could switch to the sinker and have more success, even if it’s mediocre. Teammate Wade Miley doesn’t get 50% grounders with his sinker or 6% whiffs with his four-seam, but he does have a nice change (14.4%), slider (18.4%), and curve (10.5%) combo. Jerome Williams keeps getting shots despite his fastball because his change (16.5%), slider (16.7%), and cutter (10.8%) all rate as above-average by whiffs.

On the other hand, this is clearly just the first step. Each pitch is interrelated, and so there are issues with comparing these correlations. And there are probably diminishing returns on throwing off-speed pitches more, so volume is still really important. But there has to be a way to study this further. Ideas are welcome.

Every summer during the All-Star break, I run our annual Trade Value series. It’s a lot of fun, and a nice distraction from not having actual baseball for four days, and it makes some sense to publish it in the lead-up to the July 31st trade deadline, since that’s a time when we’re comparing the trade value of a lot of different players. However, there’s also a downside to running the trade value list in the middle of the season, as the list can look a little outdated pretty quickly based on things that happen in the second half of the year.

I’ve long tinkered with the idea of running something like an offseason update, looking at guys whose stock has changed dramatically in the last few months, and inspired by Jonah Keri’s take on the same subject, I’ve decided to do just that this year. If you haven’t checked out Jonah’s list, you should definitely do so, and for reference, I’ve noted his ranking for each of the guys who made my updated Top 50. I am not including contract data this time around, because you can find it all in the posts from this summer.

First, let’s look at the guys who appeared on the summer version of the list but have seen their stock fall enough that they’re out of my Top 50 at this point.

Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

A few weeks ago, Eno tried to make sense of Oakland’s Billy Butler signing by wondering about the holistic impact that Butler will have in the A’s lineup. Eno mentions the designated hitter penalty before examining how Butler could very well help the A’s by adding variation to their ratios of ground balls and fly balls. Batted-ball types could very well be the A’s primary motivation in signing Butler.

But I want to stop at just the designated hitter penalty: what if the A’s signed Butler primarily because Billy Beane both believed in the existence of this penalty, and also very much wanted his team to avoid it?

I’m personally inclined to believe in the existence of the penalty because it feels, to me, like a really elegant combination of intelligence gleaned from both statistics and on-the-field gameplay. On one hand it makes intuitive sense that playing as a designated hitter would be a sweet gig: your full day’s work is just four or five plate appearances! Sweet! So much less risk of injury! So much more ability to maintain endurance over the brutally long season!

There does exist a common-sense argument, though, in the favor of the DH penalty. Baseball is a game of rhythms, we know — even the additional off days in the playoffs, which would theoretically help a team rest, can jolt a team’s daily rhythms of play. It’s not hard to imagine being pencilled in as DH being disruptive just like those unwanted October off-days. These players have been constantly playing games their whole lives, and have only ever known the rhythm of going on the field, off the field, on the field, off the field, inning by inning. If you played left field on Tuesday, it could be pretty weird to suddenly have hours of in-game free time on Wednesday. What do you do with that time? How to you stay fresh and ready? Is it simply too much time to get bogged down with thinking?

For the last few years, the A’s have gone with a DH by committee, so Bob Melvin has had the daily task of pulling a new player off the field. This season, the A’s leader in plate appearances as a DH was Alberto Callaspo, with only 151. Just about everybody in their lineup spent at least a combined week at DH, and there were plenty of other A’s DH’s I won’t get to because of small sample sizes. (Yoenis Cespedes had 69 PA’s as a DH before his trade to Boston; Stephen Vogt had 23; Jonny Gomes had 17; Kyle Blanks had 8; Nate Freiman had 3, and shoot there are probably some others too.)

We know that the A’s constantly switched DH’s because they constantly switched the rest of their lineup in an attempt to play platoon advantages. Only, looking back at the 2014 A’s, it’s easy to see how this lack of lineup continuity backfired. Oakland DH’s who had preseason projections at DH (compiled by Matt Klaassen here) seriously underperformed those projections in their DH-PA’s. And also: they seriously underperformed compared to their own performances on the days when they played defense.

Callaspo had a down year in just about every way you could imagine, and you can see how his offense took an even lower dip when he was called on as a DH (statistics via Baseball Reference’s Splits pages):

John Jaso was second on the team in DH-PA’s, presumably to save him from the injury-inducing dangers of playing catcher. The transition to DH really threw Jaso for a loop, as he dropped at least 100 points in every category the days he was off the field:

Transitioning to DH also rocked Coco Crisp, who struggled as a below-replacement hitter during his turns in the dugout:

Even the team’s All-Stars, Derek Norris and Josh Donaldson, looked profoundly mortal during the rare days when they hit as DH:

Just about the only player who didn’t struggle during his handful of DH-PA’s was Brandon Moss:

Moss as DH is hardly the answer, though. Between his defensive versatility between first base and the outfield, plus his offensive versatility at hitting pitchers of both hands, Moss is one of the most important cogs in Oakland’s platoon-dominating machine. Slotting Moss in at DH makes it extremely difficult to have advantageous handedness match-ups at both first base and corner outfield.

Whether epiphany struck Billy Beane mid-season, or whether the opportunity only presented itself at the end of August, we do know that Beane values a full-time DH: Beane traded for one. He traded for Adam Dunn, who was in the midst of a season playing better as a DH than he did as a fielder:

Dunn has hit considerably worse as a DH than as a fielder for the whole of his career. This, however, can be explained by Dunn entering the American League only in 2011, with his prime slugging years well behind him: he hit better when he was younger, which was when he played the field. What’s important is that Dunn’s AL production when a DH compares favorably to his AL production when a fielder. For the month of September, Beane and Melvin had a guy they could pencil in at DH every day — which they did — and actually know that they would get the player’s best offensive self.

More importantly, you can envision how Dunn’s constant presence in the lineup would serve as a rising tide that could lift all ships: now Jaso and Norris and Donaldson and Crisp and (I guess) Callaspo can all put forth their best offensive performances too, once they went back to the familiar rhythms of playing defense.

Both the A’s and Dunn knew that he was the shortest of short-term options, given his subsequent retirement. Seeing as a full-time DH was a priority for the A’s in September, it’s safe to assume that it was a priority for them going into the winter as well.

So, what were their options? Signing Nelson Cruz means the A’s would have had to top the Mariners’ 4-year/$57M offer, and also Cruz hit better as a fielder last year, the first of his career with extensive DH experience. Even if his 2014 weren’t so scary, Kendrys Morales has also comparatively struggled as a DH for the entirely of his career. Although he definitely seems like a late-career DH, Adam LaRoche has only had 22 DH-PA’s in his whole career, meaning his abilities at the DH-skill are still entirely unknown. Victor Martinez actually totally fits the bill of what the A’s are looking for, having hit well as a DH both last year and for his whole career. Oakland’s winning bid would also have to top Detroit’s 4-year/$68M offer, which would be ill-advised if not also financially implausible for the A’s.

Perhaps the A’s scouting and/or analytics staffs could have found reasons to start up reclamation projects in Paul Konerko, Raul Ibanez, or Jason Giambi. Otherwise, we’re pretty much already down to one dude on the free agent market with the established DH skill: Butler. It’s not like there are a lot of established DH-skill guys in the league, period, for possible trades. David Ortiz or Edwin Encarnacion would cost an unattainable fortune. Adam Lind and Chris Carter seem like intriguing possibilities, although Lind has made it to 100 games played in only one of the last three seasons, and the A’s traded Carter away when they had him.

So, Billy Butler. He had a very poor 2014, and also played worse when he was a DH compared to when he was in the field:

This is Butler at his very, very worst. And still he outperformed the 2014 DH production of talented offensive players like Jaso and Norris.

Steamer assumes that Butler’s below-replacement 2014 is the exception, rather than the new rule, putting him down for 1.3 WAR next year. Butler posted 1.5 WAR in 2013, meaning that the A’s can expect Butler’s 2015 to look a lot like that season, which the projections nailed almost exactly:

Heck, let’s go back to 2012, to the very first FanGraphs Positional Power Rankings:

So Butler performed very, very slightly better when on the field in 2012. Still: the drop when he played DH is barely perceptible, which was not the case for the A’s in 2014.

Even if Butler produces three straight one-WAR seasons for the A’s, he’ll also essentially be giving the team the gift of 600 or so PA’s for his teammates to play the field and, consequently, hit at their best. Whatever in-game routine Butler has in order to come to the plate fresh and focused, it’s still a rare skill across the game of baseball, and it’s a skill that has and will pay dividends for both Butler and his team.

With Derek Jeter riding off into the sunset, the Yankees needed a shortstop. The Diamondbacks were always somewhat natural trade partners, given the presence of both Didi Gregorius and Chris Owings. With a little assistance from the Detroit Tigers, it sounds like the teams have finally struck a deal.

The reported trade looks something like this:

Yankees trade RHP Shane Greene to Detroit
Tigers trade LHP Robbie Ray and an infielder to Arizona
Diamondbacks trade SS Didi Gregorius to New York

We don’t know the identify of the infielder that the Tigers are sending along, but it appears that the principles are Greene, Ray, and Gregorius. A quick look at those three.

Gregorius is 24 and has racked up +1.7 WAR in 724 career plate appearances, thanks to an 84 wRC+ and roughly average defense at shortstop per UZR. However, his defensive reputation is significantly better than that, as he was considered a plus defender as a minor leaguer, and could very well turn out to be a real asset in the field. Steamer sees him posting an 86 wRC+ in 2015, so he’s roughly an average hitter for the position, and if he fields up to his reputation, it’s not too hard to see him as a +2 to +3 WAR shortstop going forward.

As a player, he looks a lot like Elvis Andrus, though with a bit less speed and probably a little less glove. Still, nothing wrong with having Andrus Light as your shortstop, especially at the league minimum and with five years of team control. It is worth noting that Gregorius has enough service time that he’ll qualify as a Super Two player next winter, so he’ll get a little more expensive than a traditional 1+ service time player.

With Chris Owings around, the D’Backs judged Gregorius to be superfluous, and will acquire the player who fronted the Doug Fister package last winter. Ray was a bit of a flop in Detroit, pitching poorly both in the big leagues and in Triple-A, and the projections aren’t a big fan; he’s forecast to be a below replacement level arm in 2015. Maybe there’s something there that the numbers don’t see, but that’s what we said last year when Ray was traded for real value, and it hasn’t shown up yet.

For the Tigers, this seems like a pretty clear move towards the future. Greene has never been a sexy prospect, but he pitched well in the big leagues last year, and he projects to be a perfectly reasonable #5 starter in 2015. As a fastball/slider guy, he’s probably always going to have problems with lefties, but his performance against righties should be strong enough to let him soak up innings at a reasonable level.

The Yankees get a solid young starting shortstop who can probably project around league average and has some upside beyond that. The Tigers add a perfectly acceptable back-end starter to fill out their rotation and improve their club for 2015. And the D’Backs trade from a surplus, though unless the second player is something of real value, I’m not sure they come out ahead here.

We’ll do a full write-up once all the parts are known, but this looks like a fine little deal for New York and a smart enough upgrade for Detroit.

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 Miami Marlins. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Other Projections: Atlanta / Tampa Bay.

Batters
At five-plus wins Giancarlo Stanton receives the top projection among Marlins players — a figure that will likely represent one of the highest WAR projections among all players to appear in this series. Unsurprising, that, for a player who just produced a six-win season as a 24-year-old.

Perhaps surprising for a player who just produced a six-win season as a 24-year-old is that Stanton’s projection isn’t more optimistic. To that sentiment, Dan Szymborski would likely reply — indeed, has replied before — that star-level players have a “pretty much one-sided risk curve.”

Notable elswhere among Marlins hitters is Christian Yelich’s very encouraging projection of nearly four wins — this, despite possessing slightly below-average (present) power and playing a corner-outfield spot. Complementing those drawbacks with strong plate discipline and considerably above-average defense in that corner, however, Yelich is a candidate to become the National League’s version of Alex Gordon.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s not uncommon to hear the word “leverage” in a baseball conversation these days. While it used to be reserved for the analytical corners of the community, the term has gained mainstream popularity as a representation of how important a particular situation is during a game. We debate the use of relievers in high leverage situations and talk about how certain hitters have performed well in certain contexts. Leverage is all the rage.

At FanGraphs, we host a metric that quantifies the concept of leverage, called Leverage Index (LI). Simply put, it measures the possible change in win expectancy for that plate appearance relative to the average change in win expectancy for all plate appearances. When the bases are loaded in a 2-1 game in the 9th inning, the LI is very high. If they’re loaded in a 14-2 game in the 6th inning, the LI is very low. You can read a more technical breakdown of the metric and its uses at the newly updated Library page concerning Leverage Index.

As always, feel free to inquire about the metric in the comments section, to find me on Twitter @NeilWeinberg44, or to stop by our weekly FanGraphs Q&A, Wednesdays at 3pm, if you want to learn more.

This offseason, it seems like everyone is coming at a premium price. Pablo Sandoval, Russell Martin, Victor Martinez, Nelson Cruz, Nick Markakis and Billy Butler all smashed their crowdsourcing projections. Zach Duke got $15 million and we didn’t even bother crowdsourcing him! And we haven’t even reached the Winter Meetings. Yet not every free agent has been uber-expensive — relievers in particular. Sure, Andrew Miller is poised to break the bank, but there have been a number of budget reliever signings. Let’s take a tour through some of them, shall we?

Read the rest of this entry »

Ben and Sam banter about rumors and Ryan Webb’s wedding, then discuss the pre-Winter Meetings trajectories of the Braves, Red Sox, and Dodgers.

As you understand and have presumably criticized, Nick Markakis has signed with the Braves, for four guaranteed years and a reported $44 million in guaranteed money. While the Braves know things we don’t, and while every team deserves some kind of benefit of the doubt, the signing seems puzzling, especially for a team that appears to be focusing more on contention down the road. We’ve written about trying to figure out why Markakis got so expensive. The numbers we have don’t exactly support the full commitment.

Later today, or maybe tomorrow, Andrew Miller is likely to sign with a team. Though he’s a free-agent reliever, he’s a virtual lock to get four guaranteed years, and if he doesn’t get $44 million, he’ll get almost that much. This is the state of the market, where Zach Duke gets three guaranteed years following a surprising one-year sample. However, while ordinarily you’d think you’d rather have an expensive right fielder than an expensive reliever, in this case the numbers are more supportive of Miller. Miller’s going to get Markakis money, and Miller is arguably more deserving.

Read the rest of this entry »