One of the strange things about projecting baseball players is that even results themselves are small samples. Full seasons result in specific numbers that have minimal predictive value, such as BABIP for pitchers. The predictive value isn’t literally zero — individual seasons form much of the basis of projections, whether math-y ones like ZiPS or simply our personal opinions on how good a player is — but we have to develop tools that improve our ability to explain some of these stats. It’s not enough to know that the number of home runs allowed by a pitcher is volatile; we need to know how and why pitchers allow homers beyond a general sense of pitching poorly or being Jordan Lyles.

Data like that which StatCast provides gives us the ability to get at what’s more elemental, such as exit velocities and launch angles and the like — things that are in themselves more predictive than their end products (the number of homers). StatCast has its own implementation of this kind of exercise in its various “x” stats. ZiPS uses slightly different models with a similar purpose, which I’ve dubbed zStats. (I’m going to make you guess what the z stands for!) The differences in the models can be significant. For example, when talking about grounders, balls hit directly toward the second base bag became singles 48.7% of the time from 2012 to ’19, with 51.0% outs and 0.2% doubles. But grounders hit 16 degrees to the “left” of the bag only became hits 10.6% of the time over the same stretch, and toward the second base side, it was 9.8%. ZiPS uses data like sprint speed when calculating hitter BABIP, because how fast a player is has an effect on BABIP and extra-base hits.

ZiPS doesn’t discard actual stats; the models all improve from knowing the actual numbers in addition to the zStats. You can read more on how zStats relate to actual stats here. For those curious about the r-squared values between zStats and real stats for the offensive components, it’s 0.59 for zBABIP, 0.86 for strikeouts, 0.83 for walks, and 0.78 for homers. Those relationships are what make these stats useful for predicting the future. If you can explain 78% of the variance in home run rate between hitters with no information about how many homers they actually hit, you’ve answered a lot of the riddle. All of these numbers correlate better than the actual numbers with future numbers, though a model that uses both zStats and actual ones, as the full model of ZiPS does, is superior to either by themselves.

And why is this important and not just number-spinning? Knowing that changes in walk rates, home run rates, and strikeout rates stabilized far quicker than other stats was an important step forward in player valuation. That’s something that’s useful whether you work for a front office, are a hardcore fan, want to make some fantasy league moves, or even just a regular fan who is rooting for your faves. If we improve our knowledge of the basic molecular structure of a walk or a strikeout, then we can find players who are improving or struggling even more quickly, and provide better answers on why a walk rate or a strikeout rate has changed. This is useful data for me in particular because I obviously do a lot of work with projections, but I’m hoping this type of information is interesting to readers beyond that.

As with any model, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and there are always some people that question the value of data such as these. So for this run, I’m pitting zStats against the last two months and all new data that obviously could not have been used in the model without a time machine to see how the zStats did compared to reality. I’m not going to do a whole post for this every time, but this is something that, based on the feedback from the last post in June, people really wanted to see the results for.

Starting with zBABIP, let’s look at how the numbers have shaken out for the leaders and trailers from back in June. I didn’t include players with fewer than 100 plate appearances over the last two months. Read the rest of this entry »

On Monday afternoon, the Astros had an off day before the start of a series in Baltimore, so they did what most defending World Series champions have done under those circumstances, and swung by the White House. There, Dusty Baker and his merry men were fêted by President Joe Biden, who commiserated with the beloved Astros manager over having to wait decades to reach the pinnacle of their respective professions.

What a lovely event, one that raises two questions. First: What the hell, Mr. President, I thought you were a Phillies fan? Between this and the similar ceremony for the Braves a year ago, Biden has used two of his three championship soirees to celebrate a hated division rival and the team that beat the Phillies in the World Series. The Bidens are already on thin ice after the First Lady showed up to watch a white-hot Phillies team in Game 4 of the World Series, only for them to get no-hit and lose three straight to end the season.

That leads into the second question: Encountering a sitting president has to be a provocative experience, even for a professional athlete. What effect does going to the White House have on a defending World Series champion? Read the rest of this entry »

In an attempt to arrest a slide that began in early July, the Diamondbacks were busy in the run-up to the August 1 trade deadline, but so far, their moves haven’t been enough to turn things around. In fact, they have yet to win a game in August, having finished a seven-game road trip by losing six in a row to the Giants and Twins. On Sunday, their highest-profile deadline addition, former Mariners closer Paul Sewald, failed to retire a batter in his first save opportunity since the trade. Instead, he served up a game-tying homer to Max Kepler on his first pitch and then, after a walk, a two-run walk-off homer to Matt Wallner. Ouch.

After spending the majority of the first half leading the NL West, the Diamondbacks have slipped to sixth in the NL Wild Card race, 1.5 games behind the Cubs and Reds, who are tied for the third spot. Their trend is actually worse than that. Since winning on July 1 to lift their record to 50-34 and restore their NL West lead to three games, the Snakes have gone 7-22 (.241). That’s worse than the A’s (9-19, .321) or any other team in the majors. It’s not as though they’ve been particularly jobbed in the process; their Pythagenpat record is the majors’ worst in that span as well:

To be fair, the Diamondbacks weren’t expected to be a powerhouse this year; after going 74-88 last year, they projected for 78.4 wins via our preseason Playoff Odds. In a slow-starting NL West, they took over a share of first place for the first time on April 8, when they were 5-4, and finished the month 16-13, which was good enough to tie for first. Despite going 17-10 in May, they didn’t get a share of first place again until June 1, but they spent that entire month atop the division — most of it with sole possession of first place — while going 16-11.

It was around that time that Corbin Carroll’s season started taking an unfortunate turn. On June 29 — the same day he was named as a starter for the National League in the upcoming All-Star Game — the 22-year-old outfielder left a 6-1 loss to the Rays after four innings, having experienced soreness in his right shoulder during a third-inning plate appearance. It was the same shoulder on which he’d undergone surgery to repair a torn labrum in 2021, which cost him nearly the entire season. In the wake of his removal from the game, he underwent strength testing, which showed that his shoulder was strong and stable, but the Diamondbacks gave him a breather, limiting him to a single pitch-hitting appearance over the next three days. After returning to the lineup, he played just three more games before leaving the team’s July 6 tilt against the Mets in the seventh inning, once again in pain. “I took a swing, and I felt a shift in my shoulder, shocking, tingling sensation go down my arm and then my hand go numb,” he told reporters. “I was just holding it thinking it came out of the socket, pretty much thought that the season was over.”

Despite his initial concerns, Carroll had not experienced a dislocation, and his MRI came back clean. He was back in the lineup the next day, and while he’s certainly had his moments since then — and hasn’t missed a game — his production and quality of contact are down considerably since the first incident:

Note that with two hits and two walks on Sunday, Carroll raised his post-July 1 wRC+ nine points; he was at 96 previously. Along the way, his swinging strike rate has spiked from 8.4% to 12.4%, and his chase rate from 28.8% to 32.6%, though his strikeout rate has barely budged, from 19.8% to 20.1%.

Maybe Carroll’s downturn in production is related to his shoulder woes, maybe it’s just the league adjusting to a player who looked like an MVP candidate early in the season, or maybe it’s just regression, more on which below. One way or another, it’s been poorly timed, in part because he’s not the only Diamondback who has tailed off in recent weeks:

Just four Diamondbacks have a 100 wRC+ or better since the start of July, one of them a catcher (Moreno) who has been limited to 11 of the team’s first 29 games in that span and is now sidelined by left shoulder inflammation. Moreno, Thomas, and McCarthy are the only three players with a higher wRC+ since the start of July than before, and they’re still below average offensively overall. Deadline additions Tommy Pham (from the Mets) and Jace Peterson (from the A’s) have yet to make an impact, going a combined 4-for-30, all singles.

Meanwhile, note that not only has Carroll fallen off steeply but so have Gurriel and Perdomo, both of whom joined him on the NL All-Star squad but might as well be on the side of a milk carton these days. Setting the narrative of Carroll’s shoulder injury to the side for a moment, this is striking:

All three players hit well above their Statcast expected stats through the end of June, particularly Perdomo, a slappy switch-hitter who doesn’t hit the ball hard at all; his season barrel rate is 1.2%, his hard-hit rate 19.9%. Then it’s as though the Regression Monster showed up and took a bite — each of these three players has seen about a 75-point swing in their wOBA-xwOBA differential.

Overall, the Diamondbacks hit .263/.330/.437 through the end of June, ranking fifth in the majors in scoring (5.11 runs per game) and seventh in wRC+ (106). Since then, they’ve hit just .227/.302/.373 while ranking 29th in scoring (3.44 runs per game) and 26th in wRC+ (83). Their performance against every major pitch type except changeups has fallen off by at least 50 points of SLG and 25 points of wOBA:

Yikes. They were punishing four-seam fastballs earlier in the season, but that’s stopped, and they’ve particularly gotten eaten alive by sliders and sweepers lately. What’s especially strange is the general downward trend of their more recent numbers despite the weather getting even warmer, which tends to increase offense. Of course, it’s as hot as the surface of Mercury in Arizona, so maybe the Diamondbacks have just wilted in the heat.

That does seem to be true with the team’s pitching, particularly the bullpen:

Good gravy. In writing about the Sewald trade — which sent Rojas and prospects Dominic Canzone and Ryan Bliss to Seattle — I noted that manager Torey Lovullo had been working with a matchup-based closer-by-committee system involving righties Miguel Castro, Kevin Ginkel and Scott McGough and lefty Andrew Chafin. However, I did not drill down to see just how bad things had gotten for them in the recent past. Using the July 1 cutoff again, with full awareness of the small samples in play, Ginkel has pitched well (0.75 ERA, 2.35 FIP in 12 innings), but the other three had been torched, with Castro (6.00 ERA and 6.60 FIP in 12 IP) the “best” of them, though he had stopped getting ninth-inning save chances, and Chafin (9.95 ERA and 5.63 FIP in 6.1 IP) and McGough (8.76 ERA and 6.91 FIP in 12.1 IP) utterly terrible. Chafin had two blown ninth-inning saves that led to losses in that span; he’s now a Brewer.

As for the rotation, it’s been pretty unstable, with Zac Gallen and rookie Ryne Nelson the only real constants, and both of them experiencing fall-offs since the start of July. Gallen pitched to a 3.02 ERA and 2.73 FIP in 104.1 innings through June, making his first All-Star team, but has yielded a 4.17 ERA and 4.12 FIP in 45.1 innings since, with his home run rate increasing from 0.6 per nine to 1.6. Nelson went from a 4.97 ERA and 4.44 FIP to a 5.59 ERA and 6.19 FIP, not that it should have been too surprising given his double-digit barrel rate even in the “good” times. Merrill Kelly, the team’s second-best starter, missed four weeks (most of July) due to a blood clot in his right calf but has been solid when available. Tommy Henry showed some improvement before being sidelined last week due to elbow inflammation. Brandon Pfaadt has been getting better results since being recalled on July 22 than prior, though his overall ERA of 7.11 in 44.1 innings is pretty damning. Also sporting an unsightly ERA (7.38) is Zach Davies, who has been dreadful on both sides of the divide while missing time with oblique and back injuries. Slade Cecconi, the team’s 2020 first-round pick, just made his major league debut on August 2 in place of Henry and acquitted himself reasonably well in a losing cause against the Giants, though his catcher (Herrera) had a rough time on the rookie’s first strikeout.

Given their current injury situation, the Diamondbacks now find themselves trying to stay afloat with just two starters who have demonstrated the ability to be league average or better, plus three rookies who have combined for a 5.63 ERA and 5.31 FIP. It’s not like the cavalry is on the horizon, either. The team’s playoff odds, which stood at 76.4% through the end of June (24.9% division, 51.5% Wild Card), are down to 21% at this writing, including just a 0.7% chance of overcoming their 8.5-game deficit to win the division. Considering that they lost 110 games just two seasons ago, they’ve certainly made progress to get to this point, but it seems quite apparent given their performance over the past five-plus weeks that they’re not quite ready for prime time.

Read the rest of this entry »

Shohei Ohtani and Ronald Acuña Jr. have been the MVP frontrunners for quite some time. They lead the majors in WAR, and to make things nice and easy, there’s no need to specify which kind; they’re the top dogs here at FanGraphs, as well as Baseball Reference and Baseball Prospectus. MLB.com has conducted three MVP polls throughout the season, asking over 40 writers and analysts to fill out a ballot. Ohtani and Acuña won all three, and in the latest iteration, released on July 13, they were unanimous choices. The NL Rookie of the Year is just as cut and dry, with Corbin Carroll the hands-down favorite. Meanwhile, Gunnar Henderson is pulling ahead in the AL, and Josh Jung’s fractured thumb likely takes him out of the race.

Thankfully, at least one of the major awards will provide a compelling race down the stretch. There is no clear-cut frontrunner for Cy Young in the AL or the NL, and if the season ended today, five or six pitchers could earn first-place votes in either league. Read the rest of this entry »

As we head into the dog days of August, the playoff picture in the National League continues to be pretty murky. Meanwhile, in the American League, the best teams continue to separate themselves from the chaff.

A reminder for how these rankings are calculated: first, we take the three most important components of a team — their offense (wRC+), their pitching (a 50/50 blend of FIP- and RA9-, weighted by starter and reliever IP share), and their defense (RAA) — and combine them to create an overall team quality metric. I also add in a factor for “luck,” adjusting a team’s win percentage based on expected win-loss record. The result is a power ranking, which is then presented in tiers below.

After going all-in on this season last weekend with their acquisitions of Max Scherzer and Jordan Montgomery, the Rangers swept through last week with six straight wins. That’s given them a little bit of breathing room in the AL West. Unfortunately, their All-Star third baseman Josh Jung fractured his thumb on Sunday, potentially ending his season early. He’ll join Jonah Heim on the IL; suddenly, the best offense in the AL has suddenly sprung a few leaks. Read the rest of this entry »

Cole Hamels retired from baseball on Friday, causing significant consternation to people who read that headline and thought they’d been transported back in time to the winter of 2019. (Buy a house now, while you still can, and be sure to stock up on hand sanitizer.)

It’s been four years since Hamels pitched effectively in the major leagues; before the 2020 season, he signed a one-year deal with the Atlanta Braves, and was limited to just 3 1/3 innings by injuries to his triceps and shoulder. Two further comeback attempts, with the Dodgers and his hometown Padres, came to nothing. Hamels never quite recovered from a 2021 surgery to repair a torn rotator cuff, and was still unable to throw without pain when he decided, at age 39, that he’d finally had enough.

Hamels, the 2008 NLCS and World Series MVP, will probably appear on just one Hall of Fame ballot. But few players’ reputations suffered more by comparison to their immediate surroundings than Hamels’ did; he was one or two breaks from giving a speech in Cooperstown someday, even if nobody realized it at the time. Read the rest of this entry »

Jackson Jobe has added a cutter to the power arsenal that helps make him one of the top pitching prospects in the Detroit Tigers system. Every bit as importantly, he’s returned to full health following a back ailment that landed him on the shelf from early April to mid June. The recently-turned 21-year-old right-hander had incurred an L5 (i.e. bottom left vertebra) stress fracture, an injury he attributed to “rotating fast and throwing hard at a young age when I wasn’t really strong enough to support that.”

The pitch now augmenting his fastball/slider/changeup combination was portended in a conversation I had with him last August. As his second full professional season was concluding, Jobe told me that he wanted to develop something new, “probably a cutter,” and he went on to do just that.

“I added it in the offseason, and on paper it’s a really good pitch,” the third-overall pick in the 2021 draft explained prior to his last start, which came on Friday with the High-A West Michigan Whitecaps. “I dive into all the TrackMan stuff — the vertical movement, horizontal movement, the spin efficiency, the tilt — and use the data in pitch-design. The cutter has performed pretty well.”

Asking the analytically-minded hurler about the metrics on his cutter elicited a response that was preceded by a pregnant pause. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Robin Ventura truthers defending Ventura on the 30th anniversary of his brawl with Nolan Ryan, Shohei Ohtani‘s 2023 WAR matching his full-season 2021 WAR and whether this Ohtani season would’ve won him an MVP award in 2022, the Yankees’ handling of Anthony Rizzo’s belatedly diagnosed post-concussion syndrome, whether this year’s shift restrictions are leading to more pitchers being hit by baseballs, and what winning or losing the trade deadline is actually worth, then (52:44) Stat Blast about players with the highest and lowest percentages of pulled homers (and the longest streaks of pulled homers), players who bat righty and throw lefty, the most matching pitch counts and speeds in one game, a record date for MLB birthdays, and the players traded the most times at the trade deadline, followed by (1:11:54) a conversation with former major leaguer J.A. Happ (and FanGraphs’ Eric Longenhagen) about what it’s like to be dealt at the deadline, Happ’s extensive trade history, the retirement of Cole Hamels, and more, plus (1:51:26) a Future Blast from 2042.

Audio intro: Andy Ellison, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: Xavier LeBlanc, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to Ventura/Ryan video
Link to Ventura/Ryan story
Link to Drellich’s Ventura tweet
Link to Langs on Ohtani’s game
Link to FG WAR leaderboard
Link to B-Ref WAR leaderboard
Link to Fletcher’s EW interview
Link to Ben on Ohtani and Judge
Link to The Athletic on Rizzo
Link to Rosenthal on Rizzo
Link to Lindsey on Germán
Link to Jay on Rizzo and Germán
Link to Rizzo fatigue quote
Link to other Rizzo quote
Link to MLB.com story on Rizzo
Link to SIS comebackers tweet
Link to Pudge cheek story 1
Link to Pudge cheek story 2
Link to Down on the Farm post
Link to Dan S. on the 2023 deadline
Link to Dan S. on the 2022 deadline
Link to Dan S. on the 2021 deadline
Link to career pulled HR rates
Link to pulled HR streaks
Link to Russell Carleton’s Twitter
Link to weird-ass starter record
Link to weird-ass starter record (no P)
Link to weird-ass player record
Link to weird-ass player record (no P)
Link to all AL/NL weird-ass hitters
Link to pitch speed/count sheet
Link to Lucas Apostoleris’s Twitter
Link to MLB birthdays bar chart
Link to MLB birthdays heat map
Link to MLB relative age effect
Link to relative age effect wiki
Link to listener emails database
Link to trades on deadline day
Link to trades within 3 days
Link to trades within 1 week
Link to trades within 2 weeks
Link to Ryan Nelson’s Twitter
Link to Happ’s wiki
Link to “J Day” story
Link to Happ’s transactions
Link to Hamels retirement info
Link to IronPigs wiki
Link to Rick Wilber’s website
Link to Future Blast wiki

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It’s been a rough week for the Yankees, full of bad luck and questionable decisions that highlighted a season that had already begun to spin out of control. With the team above .500 but stuck in the basement of a very competitive AL East, general manager Brian Cashman did very little to fortify the roster before the August 1 trade deadline despite its significant holes, including two left by position players who had landed on the 60-day injured list in the past two weeks. Then, in the span of 24 hours, the Yankees lost Domingo Germán and Anthony Rizzo, both for alarming and unsettling reasons.

Prior to Wednesday night’s game, the Yankees announced that Germán would be placed on the restricted list, a move that ended his season. On Thursday, the team placed Rizzo on the 10-day injured list due to post-concussion symptoms traceable to his May 28 collision with the Padres’ Fernando Tatis Jr., a situation that helps to account for the first baseman’s prolonged slump, the impact of which was magnified during Aaron Judge’s eight-week absence for a torn ligament in his right big toe.

Both matters have come to light in the wake of Cashman’s puzzling approach to the trade deadline. With catcher Jose Trevino out for the remainder of the season due to a torn ligament in his right wrist, third baseman Josh Donaldson possibly out for the remainder due to a Grade 2-plus right calf strain, and with the team’s production in left field and within the rotation both ongoing problems, the Yankees emerged having acquired only relievers Keynan Middleton (from the White Sox) and Spencer Howard (from the Rangers), with the latter assigned to Triple-A. While Aaron Boone’s management of the bullpen has sometimes been questionable, the unit owns the majors’ lowest ERA by nearly half a run (3.07) and the fifth-lowest FIP (3.91). Every contender could use more relief help, but for the Yankees an extra middle-innings arm could hardly have been the top priority. Read the rest of this entry »