We’re in a tiny lull in the baseball season, and honestly, I’m happy about it. July is jam packed with draft and trade talk, September and October are for the stretch run and the postseason, but the middle of August is when everyone catches their breath. There’s no divisional race poised on a razor’s edge, no nightly drama that everyone in baseball tunes in for; it’s just a good few weeks to get your energy back and relax.
For me, that means getting a head start on some things I won’t have time to do in September, and there’s one article in particular that I always want to write but never get around to. I’m not a BBWAA member, and I’ll probably never vote for MVP awards, but I spend a lot of time thinking about them every year nonetheless. When I’m looking at who would get my vote, I take Win Probability Added into account. Every time I mention it, however, there’s an issue to tackle. Plenty of readers and analysts think of WPA as “just a storytelling statistic” and don’t like using it as a measure of player value. So today, I’m going to explain why I think it has merit.
First, a quick refresher: Win Probability Added is a straightforward statistic. After every plate appearance, WPA looks at the change in a team’s chances of winning the game. We use our win expectancy measure, which takes historical data to see how often teams win from a given position, to assign each team a chance of winning after every discrete event. Then the pitcher and hitter involved in that plate appearance get credited (or debited, depending) for the change in their team’s chances of winning the game. Since every game starts with each team 50% likely to win and ends with one team winning, the credit for each win (and blame for each loss) gets apportioned out as the game unfolds. The winning team will always produce an aggregate of 0.5 WPA, and the losing team will always produce -0.5, spread out among all of their players. Read the rest of this entry »
Two months ago, if you asked me to name the most disappointing member of the phenom class, I’d have said Bobby Witt Jr. With barely a month of professional games past high school under his belt, he was invited to spring training in 2021 and hit three homers and put up an .851 OPS, creating chatter around baseball that he might start the season with the parent club. That was a bit premature, though he did spend the next six months terrorizing minor league pitchers into thinking long and hard about their choice of occupation. But in 2022 and early on in ’23, brevity was no longer the soul of Witt, as his whirlwind professional progress slowed to become one of those inevitably anemic breezes on an unpleasantly muggy July day.
Things appeared to reach their nadir in late June, when his OPS almost dipped under .700 once again. Since then, however, Witt has been on a tear, hitting .350/.385/.662, not only bringing his OPS safely over the .700 line but also getting it over .800. Since the morning of June 30, he’s been one of the absolute best players in baseball, providing a rare highlight for the 2023 Royals:
I’ve included BABIP here for a very good reason: when players are having hot streaks, BABIP is usually a big reason why. After all, players playing at their peak are more likely to be playing above their abilities than below. Witt is no exception here, with his numbers fueled in part by a .370 BABIP over that period. But I include that figure not to defuse my thesis, but to reinforce it. While a BABIP that high is hard to sustain over the long haul, ZiPS’ zBABIP thinks that .370 mark only barely outperforms what he’s actually done in the last month and a half. Read the rest of this entry »
Look, Juan Soto is going to be fine. In fact, he’s probably fine already. At some point during every season, we start worrying that Juan Soto isn’t performing like Juan Soto anymore, and then he starts performing like Juan Soto again. You know why? Because he was Juan Soto the whole time, and as we all know, Juan Soto was built by robo-umpires from the future and sent back in time to teach us the exact parameters of the strike zone. The robo-umps also gave him the ability to hit dingers and do a little dance in the batter’s box to help him blend in with us humans. Point is, Juan Soto will be fine.
I pitched this article on Monday afternoon, when Juan Soto was definitely not fine. He was in a bit of a slump, batting .121 with a -14 wRC+ over his last eight games. We’re talking about a very small sample here, but once there’s a minus sign in front of your wRC+, it’s not just bad for a time-traveling strike zone robot. It’s bad for a regular human, too. Still, that’s not what made me want to write about Juan Soto. This is what made me want to write about him:
Jeff Montgomery faced some formidable Cleveland teams while pitching for the Kansas City Royals from 1988 to ’99. Thanks largely to a robust offense, Cleveland averaged 94.2 wins annually from ’95 to ’99, making the playoffs all five years and twice playing in the World Series. No team in either league scored more runs over that span.
Montgomery, whose 304 saves are the most in Royals franchise history, now serves as one of the team’s broadcast analysts. He sat down to discuss the erstwhile Cleveland powerhouse prior to a recent game at Fenway Park.
———
David Laurila:Mark Gubicza told me earlier this summer that the 1984 Detroit Tigers were the best team he played against. Which was the best team you faced?
Jeff Montgomery: “I look back at teams by how they stacked up against me personally, which is maybe a little different perspective. But those mid-to-late ‘90s Cleveland teams were really deep. They had so many different weapons. It seemed like every time you played against them, if you had a lead, there was a pretty good chance they were going to find a way to cut into it or even overtake that lead. I think their fanbase played a part in that. They created an environment that was almost hostile when you went to Cleveland to play them.
“One game in particular stands out. Our manager told me that I had the night off, so I was sitting out in bullpen that day. We had a left-handed reliever named Billy Brewer, and he goes in and gets what I think was his first major league save. After the game, he came up to me in the clubhouse and said, ‘Man, you can have that job. That’s not a lot of fun.’ [Closing] is different. Personally, it made me better in regard to focus, concentration, and eventually execution, because I knew how great it felt to be shaking teammates’ hands after a game was over. I also knew how bad it felt not to get that last out and feel like you’ve let your teammates down, that you’ve let the fanbase down.
“But again, going back to those days in Cleveland, they had the Alomar brothers, Carlos Baerga, Kenny Lofton, Travis Fryman, Omar Vizquel, Jim Thome, Paul Sorrento, Manny Ramirez… I mean, you could go on with the players they had during that stretch. That was right around the time the divisions were reorganized and there was now a Central Division. They became the team in the Central that was going to be a force, year in and year out. I’m not sure how many years they made it to postseason, but I know they were always contenders. For me personally, going into a game against Cleveland, especially on the road, was a real challenge.”
Laurila: Which player on those teams did you most respect when he came to the plate?
Montgomery: “Well, Albert Belle was such professional hitter. He could hit for power, he could hit for average, and he was also one of those players that loved to be in that big situation. I feel like he kind of got… I don’t want to say a bad rap, but from a personality standpoint… I mean, he was a really bright individual. I got to know him a little bit over the years, us having spring training close to where [Cleveland did], and playing some All-Star games with him. Again, a very bright guy. But he was a beast. He was a guy that was going to do everything he possibly could to try to beat you and help his team win a baseball game. So, he stands out quite a bit for the impact he had, how good he made their lineup.
“Another one, obviously, was Manny Ramirez. The way he was able to handle a bat from the right side… I mean, he was one of the best right-handed batters in baseball for a long time.”
Laurila: Can you share any Albert Belle stories?
Montgomery: “Again, he was a beast. I remember one time, I’m going to guess around 1989 or 1990, I forget the exact year, we had a benches-clearing brawl in Cleveland. Albert Belle put a hurt on one of our pitchers. Well, in spring training the next year, our pitching coach indicated that it was a good time to take care of business with Belle. I threw a pitch that was probably going to hit him in the neck if he didn’t swing. He swung and hit a line drive home run out of our spring training facility in Haines City, Florida. It almost tore out three rows of bleachers. It was an embarrassing moment for me, because here’s a guy that turns on my best fastball, one that’s supposed to knock him down, and he hits it for a home run.”
Laurila: Knocking Belle down and having him charge the mound wouldn’t be an enviable scenario for a pitcher.
Montgomery: “Neal Heaton did that once. We’d had a benches-clearing brawl the day before, and Neal was trying to retaliate. I don’t think he actually hit him, I think he threw three balls behind him. After the third one, Belle took off after Neal. I remember Mike Macfarlane grabbed him, and he pretty much just drug Mac out to the pitcher’s mound. It was one of those crazy, crazy brawls. There was some blood shed in that one.”
Laurila: It sound like McFarlane saved Heaton from some serious damage.
Montgomery: “Well, Neal still got a pretty good beating out there. And I actually did hit him once. It wasn’t Albert Belle’s fault, but I had to hit him. I hit him right in the cheeks. They had a guy named Mark Whiten. Do you remember him?”
Laurila: I do. Hard hittin’ Mark Whiten.
Montgomery: “Yes. Well, Whiten hits a ball to the first baseman, and I’m covering the bag. Whiten veers off to fair territory to give me the bag, I’m a half step ahead of him, and he pushes me, flips me into right field. My rule of thumb was that if you were trying to hurt or embarrass me or one of my teammates, I was going to take care of business. The next batter was Albert Belle. I think everybody in the ballpark knew what was going to happen. I drilled him. But I did it the right way; I hit him right in the wallet. He dropped that bat and stared out at me, I thought he was coming after me, but luckily he didn’t. Thankfully he just jogged to first base.”
You can picture it in your mind. A runner on first, a single into the gap — it’s first and third with one out, and it’s time to fret. Having a runner on third base with less than two outs is secretly one of the most stressful moments in an average baseball game. Success feels like it should be automatic, but of course it isn’t. Failing to get that runner home always feels like a moral failing, some elemental lack on the part of the batting team. It’s so easy! No hits necessary. Just put your mind to it and do it.
Depending on who you watch baseball with, you might hear this cast as old school versus new school, but I don’t think that’s fair. It’s been a part of baseball since time immemorial. You don’t have to remember baseball from the 1970s to get annoyed by a strikeout or pop up that leads to your team trudging dejectedly back to the dugout. And even if you’re young enough that you got your first cell phone before your 10th birthday, the sweet relief of a clean single with two outs to rescue that poor, potentially stranded soul on third base feels great.
For such a central part of the baseball viewing experience, I’m woefully underinformed about the statistics of that particular pivot point. Do teams score that runner a lot of the time? Rarely? How much has it changed over time? Which team is the worst at it in baseball this year? The best? I couldn’t tell you the answer to any of those questions, so I set out to find them. Read the rest of this entry »
We just updated the interface for our Major League Leaderboards, enhancing the user experience while retaining the core functionalities.
This updates includes the following refinements:
Streamlined Control Panel: We’ve reorganized and consolidated common items within the control panel, creating a more intuitive and efficient user interface.
Leagues Menu Enhancement: Our leagues menu now allows simultaneous filtering across multiple leagues.
Primary Position Filtering: We’ve taken special care to clarify our position filtering options. The “Primary Position,” exclusively for batters, is determined based on playing time. If a player spends 25% or more of their time at a specific position, they qualify for that position. This encompasses all plate appearances, regardless of the player’s position during the game.
Positional Splits: Our positional split feature, available for both batters and pitchers, has been refined for seamless usability. This plate appearance-level split function has been repositioned into a more accessible location, improving overall navigation and understandability.
Modal-Based Custom Reports: We’ve moved the custom reports functionality into user-friendly popup modals. This enhancement ensures a smoother experience when generating custom reports, eliminating the need to navigate to the bottom of the data grid.
Enhanced Performance: Our commitment to delivering an optimal experience extends to performance enhancements. Page loading times have been optimized for swifter access to data, contributing to a more efficient user journey.
More Consistent Control Options: We’ve made a decision not to hide unavailable options for different eras and categories. This ensures a more user-friendly interface by minimizing confusion stemming from disappearing choices.
Additionally, we’ve made some quality-of-life features exclusive to FanGraphs Membership:
CSV Report Downloads: The ability to download reports in CSV format, facilitating seamless data integration with external tools, will continue to be available only to members.
Custom Stat Headers: For enhanced report customization, members can create a data grid with as many stat headers they want. Non-members are now limited to 10 stat headers.
Custom Player List: This member-exclusive feature permits access to data for more than 10 players. Non-members are now limited to 10 stat headers.
Custom Report Saving: Saving the custom reports created from custom stat headers and custom player lists is now a member-exclusive feature.
Regardless of membership status, your older reports made on the previous leaderboards will remain accessible and compatible with the revamped interface. Additionally, for users with specific needs or dependencies on the legacy version, we’ve retained an older version of our leaderboards. You can find more information here. The legacy version of the leadersboards will be maintained until at least the conclusion of the 2023 season.
Thank you for being a part of this exciting evolution in our leaderboards experience. If you encounter any issues or bugs, please contact us at support@fangraphs.com. Your valued feedback and continued support drive us to deliver the best possible tools for your analytical needs.
If I have one criticism of Shohei Ohtani, it’s that he has singlehandedly ruined baseball’s great parlor discussions. Admittedly, this is the only valid criticism of Ohtani that I can think of. But questions like “Which player would you want to start a franchise with?” or “Who’s the most talented ballplayer you’ve ever seen?” are so much less fun now than they were a decade ago. First person to answer just says, “Ohtani,” and there’s a brief but grave silence until someone pipes up and asks if anyone is watching the new season of Billions.
Setting Ohtani aside, Fernando Tatis Jr. would be on my short list of most talented or dynamic baseball players I’ve had the good fortune to witness. In the past, I’d compared his physicality to that of a 3–4 outside linebacker, but watching him scramble around the diamond is like watching an alien who’s holding something in reserve so he doesn’t get outed by the humans. If that is his goal, Tatis is not doing a great job of blending in.
With Ben Lindbergh in Sweden on Ringer business, FanGraphs’ Ben Clemens joins Meg Rowley for a turn in the co-host chair. Ben and Meg begin (1:40) by discussing the disturbing allegations made against Rays shortstop Wander Franco over the weekend. They then banter (5:00) about the experience of watching baseball while on vacation, before turning their attention to Ben’s Five Things series, the sneaky delights of mid-sized Midwestern cities, the Braves scoring big against Danny Mendick, chalk preseason predictions (and Ben’s beef with Other Ben’s prognostication choices), which teams’ World Series odds might be too light (or too heavy), a milestone Juan Soto walk, players being over and underrated, announcers’ refusal to discuss no-hitters, the joy of local commercials on baseball broadcasts, the Cardinals’ and Pirates’ recent runs of relative success and futility, and who might shake up the standings down the stretch. They close with a Future Blast from 2046 (55:20) and an invitation to play Magic: The Gathering, if you’re into that sort of thing.
Last week over at Pinstripe Alley, I investigatedDJ LeMahieu’s recent hot streak. Naturally, he got injured as soon as I finished writing, but I went through with the piece nonetheless because I felt like I was onto something. Specifically, I noticed that LeMahieu’s struggles this year came when pitchers were challenging him more; as a result, he was swinging more, but proportionally, more of those swings happened to come on balls than when pitchers were being stingy with their strikes.
When attempting to contextualize LeMahieu’s hot stretch, I noticed another hitter who’s been on fire lately thanks to some improved discipline: Ha-Seong Kim. Over the past 30 days, he’s tied for the major league lead in WAR with Freddie Freeman at 2.1. Some of that production has come from his typically excellent defense, but Kim has been no slouch with the bat either; in that span, he’s posted a 189 wRC+, eighth-highest among 167 qualifiers. Perhaps most notably, he’s also tied (with Lars Nootbaar and Alex Bregman) for the second-best BB-K rate, behind only Marcus Semien.
Prior to that 30-day stretch, Kim’s swing rate was already a career-low, and his BB-K rate near a career-best. But his swing rate has dropped even further in the last 30 days, ranking second-lowest at 34.2% to Nootbaar’s 34.1%, and his BB-K rate has gone from negative to positive; now it’s definitely a career-best. Nootbaar has followed a similar trajectory: his swing rate was already a career-low and has sunk even further, and his BB-K rate is now approaching a career-best thanks to his own torrid month. Read the rest of this entry »
June 23, 2023, was a rough day for the Braves. They scored 10 runs but gave up 11 in a hard-fought battle with the Reds. It was the first time they’d given up more than ten runs all season, and the first time they’d scored double-digit runs and still lost in over a year. They blew two leads and couldn’t quite pull off the comeback at the end of the night.
Yet in the grand scheme of things, June 23, 2023, was an insignificant day for the Braves. By that point in the season, their playoff odds were 99.5%. Sure, they lost the game, but it was one of only four losses they would suffer all month. They went on to win the series and sweep their next two, increasing their playoff odds to 100% within the week. The Braves have about as much reason to worry about losses as I have to worry about werewolf attacks. It’s not worth agonizing over something that only happens once in a blue moon.
But for one particular Brave, June 23, 2023, was an excellent day. Ronald Acuña Jr. went 3-for-5 with a home run and a stolen base. He made a great catch, too, covering 78 feet in 4.6 seconds to rob Tyler Stephenson of a hit. The following morning, he rose to first place in the National League in WAR, a position he has held ever since.
First place on the WAR leaderboard isn’t necessarily meaningfully different from second, third, or even fourth. At times, Acuña’s lead was so slight that you had to add another decimal place just to see it. Still, leading the league for 53 days (and counting) is an impressive accomplishment. Plenty of guys can get hot and amass a high WAR in a short stretch, but maintaining such a high degree of excellence over eight weeks is something else. Four others occupied second place in that time, and nine shuffled through spots three to five. But Acuña has yet to give up his lead. Read the rest of this entry »
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