It’s one thing to join a club, but it’s another thing to start your own club entirely. That goes doubly so when the requirements to enter your club are harder to obtain than a liquor license in 1928. Ronald Acuña Jr. had already earned his 40–40 membership last Friday. That was the hot club in town back in 1988 when Jose Canseco started it up, but with five members now, it’s not quite as exclusive as it once was. So Acuña started up his 40–70 club, and he gets the prime parking space. And still not quite 26, there’s more time to start up some new clubs.

I tend to have mixed feelings about these clubs in baseball. They’re undeniably cool, in the way we’re all attracted to round numbers, and the key clubs and milestones give us an underpinning to compare accomplishments across baseball history. There’s something satisfying about experiencing the game in a similar fashion to someone 30 or 50 or 75 years ago as a shared cultural event, and these number-based chases are a big part of that. On the other hand, they also tend to be somewhat arbitrary in their construction and focus on a different direction than the one I’m interested in: what numbers mean rather than what they are.

When I’m not thinking about how fun something like a 40–70 club is or a 50–50 club would be, I can’t help but ask myself, “Hey, wouldn’t the 46–68 club have been a lot more meaningful than 40–70?” And the HR–SB club, unlike hitting 400 homers, has the added baggage of comparing two very different things with very different values. At least the Triple Crown isn’t a bad model of offense if you don’t have OBP and SLG; homers, batting average, and RBI cover most offensive contributions, even if the weighting is rather inaccurate.

The 40–70 club isn’t something I’d give extra credit for in an MVP vote; Acuña’s homers and stolen bases are already part of his statistical record. But thankfully, I’m not an MVP voter this year, so trying to separate Acuña and Mookie Betts is a problem I’m relieved to not have to unwind. My colleague Jay Jaffe made an excellent case for why he might break the tie in Betts’ favor. I’ll give a counterpoint in Acuña’s favor, but it has little to do with club membership and more about defense. While there’s some additional value to Betts’ flexibility, at the same time, there’s simply far more uncertainty around defensive numbers than offensive ones.

But if you’re not tired already of the MVP arguments, I guarantee you’ll be exhausted with it nearly two months from now when the award is announced. So let’s talk about something more fun, like the chance that Acuña can manage to top himself in the future with more than a full healthy season back under his belt. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about whether Ronald Acuña Jr.’s historic strikeout-rate reduction is as impressive as his historic power-speed combination, the Acuña-Mookie Betts NL MVP race, the enduring defensive excellence of the late Brooks Robinson, Josh Hader’s insistence on one-inning outings and the degree to which players should dictate their own usage, the Rockies’ first-ever 100-loss season, Rob Manfred’s comments about broadcasts and betting, and the somewhat-improved probabilities on Apple TV+ telecasts.

Audio intro: Gabriel-Ernest, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: The Shirey Brothers, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to article on power-speed seasons
Link to article on Acuña’s Ks
Link to Acuña’s 70th steal
Link to Tango on Acuña/Betts
Link to xWOBA minus wOBA
Link to Robinson’s fielding stats
Link to Total Zone Runs leaders
Link to 1960 fielding leaders
Link to 1975 fielding leaders
Link to old Gold Glovers
Link to Robinson defensive montage
Link to Goldman on Robinson
Link to Robinson obit
Link to story on Hader
Link to Hader arbitration story
Link to 2021 Hader story
Link to Union-Tribune on Hader
Link to more Union-Tribune on Hader
Link to Cup of Coffee on Hader
Link to BP on Hader
Link to reliever leverage leaderboard
Link to story on first Padres extras W
Link to yearly Rockies wRC+
Link to Manfred interview
Link to sports-gambling explainer
Link to Bloomberg on betting effects
Link to 2022 odds interview
Link to nVenue partnership links
Link to Ben Clemens on the 2022 odds
Link to Ben C. on the 2023 odds
Link to Holy Hand Grenade scene

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I’ll level with you, FanGraphs reader: I can’t imagine that FanGraphs analysis is exactly what you’re most interested in right now, baseball-wise. The exciting things going on are the games on the field as they happen. These playoff races are amazing. The schedule sets up with a wonderful mix of both-teams-in games and rivals playing spoiler. In that context, I can’t imagine that many people are dying to read about Tommy Kahnle’s changeup-heavy arsenal, just to pick on a random article I recently wrote.

That’s never stopped me from writing about whatever random thing caught my eye, but I thought I’d take advantage of a slow week (again, just in my kind of baseball analysis, not in actual baseball) to go over some predictions I made before the season. I like to look back on my own work for a few reasons — not just to bask in successes, but that’s certainly part of it. It’s also useful to talk process and separate bad outcomes from bad ex-ante decisions, though to be honest, that’s really hard, so I’m not certain I’ll get it right today.

I’ve named the column after one of my favorite weird sports things. I always knew this, but I’ve noticed it more since I started playing in a recreational softball league. After you return to the dugout, there’s a pretty good chance someone will slap your butt with their glove. It doesn’t matter what you did, there’s always a reason to. Did you score a run or make a great defensive play? It often comes with an “attaboy” or “way to go.” Did you make an out or embarrass yourself in the field? “Get ‘em next time” is nearly guaranteed. The butt slap? That’s a constant. The words that go with it? They’re versatile. Without further ado, let’s figure out whether my hypothetical dugout should be congratulating or consoling me. Read the rest of this entry »

12:03

Dan Szymborski: Sorry, was busy talking about the Springfield Bear Patrol

12:03

Dan Szymborski: Dangit, why do you guys always ask questions there’s no way I can answer on the fly! lol

12:04

Dan Szymborski: Hold on, let me call up the September update and the preseason and see if I can crunch this super quick

12:06

Dan Szymborski: OK, the minor leaguers whose 2024 projections have gone up the most (hitter)

12:08

Dan Szymborski: Colt Keith, Justyn-Henry Malloy, Tyler Black, Masyn Winn, Luisangel Acuna,

Read the rest of this entry »

On Tuesday night, Johan Rojas knocked a single up the middle off Pirates closer David Bednar. Cristian Pache, who’d just entered the game as a pinch runner to start the 10th inning, came around to score easily. When he crossed home plate, the Phillies were guaranteed a playoff spot for the second straight year, and by night’s end they were locked in as hosts of one of the NL Wild Card series.

Typical scenes ensued. In college baseball, where budgets are smaller and buying alcohol for the freshmen and sophomores can get a little dicey from a legal standpoint, this kind of celebration takes the form of a dogpile. In fact, “dogpile” has become the accepted shorthand for a victory that either secures or advances a team toward a championship. You’ll hear “two dogpiles to Omaha,” and the like.

Big leaguers don’t dogpile, or rather, they don’t only dogpile. And the Phillies, having developed a reputation over the past 18 months as baseball’s lascivious chaos agents, know the post-dogpile rigmarole by heart. Champagne and beer were sprayed around the clubhouse, cigars handed out, and Garrett Stubbs procured a set of overalls. Read the rest of this entry »

After Anthony Rendon revealed that he had indeed suffered a fractured tibia and not a bone bruise, and after Shohei Ohtani cleared out his locker to undergo surgery to repair his torn ulnar collateral ligament, there really was only one more insult to add to the injuries that have defined the Angels’ 2023 season. On Sunday, the team transferred Mike Trout to the 60-day injured list due to continued setbacks in his recovery from wrist surgery, officially ending his season and opening the door to questions about his future with the franchise.

Trout fractured his left hamate while fouling off a pitch on July 3. He had surgery to remove the bone — a treatment that’s supposed to accelerate a return to play — two days later, and was expected to be sidelined for four to eight weeks. He returned on August 22, about seven weeks after surgery, but while going 1-for-4 with an infield single, he felt significant pain in his left hand when hitting and returned to the IL. Though he still hoped to play this season, he ran out of time.

“It’s frustrating,” a visibly emotional Trout told reporters in a media session on Sunday. “It’s been hard on me… It kills me not being out there. I’ve got a lot left in my career, and I can’t just sit around here and mope around. I’ve got to have that positive mindset.” Read the rest of this entry »

In many aspects of the game, Harold Ramírez simply doesn’t look like a big leaguer. His 47.5% chase rate ranks 193rd out of the 194 hitters with at least 400 plate appearances this year. Among that same population, his line drive rate ranks in the 14th percentile. Ramírez hits twice as many groundballs as fly balls and has homered in just 2% of his plate appearances, worse than league average. As a DH, he doesn’t provide value with his glove, and in his first two full seasons with Miami and Cleveland, he was worse than replacement level.

Now let’s talk about how good Ramírez is. He has some of the best raw power in the game, once hitting a ball 114.8 mph, something the likes of Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman, and José Ramírez have never accomplished. He avoids strikeouts at an above-average clip and can make the most of the balls he puts in play as a 64th-percentile runner. Ramírez is one of just three hitters with a batting average above .300 in each of the past two seasons, along with Freeman and Luis Arraez. Read the rest of this entry »

The regular season ends this week, which means we’ve only got a few games left with our local broadcast crews. In the playoffs, every game is a nationally televised game. Regardless of how you feel about Joe Davis and John Smoltz, it’s a bummer that you don’t get to hear your local broadcast team in the game’s biggest moments. Not just because they know the club better than whichever national crew is parachuting in to cover the series, but because their voices shape your baseball experience all year long.

The other reason national crews aren’t the same is that they’re neutral arbiters. Baseball is a zero-sum game. Somebody has to win and somebody has to lose, and one team’s joy is another team’s sadness. For six months, our local broadcasters feel that joy and sadness along with us, and then, when the games matter the most, they’re replaced by people who don’t. A national broadcaster’s job is to call the game right down the middle; the words And there’s a long fly ball just don’t have the same heft when they’re spoken by someone whose emotional wellbeing isn’t dependent on where that long fly ball lands. No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.

So before we say goodbye to our regional sports networks for the season (or forever), let’s take a moment to appreciate the apotheosis of the hometown call: the walk-off home run. A walk-off homer can make you feel many things. It can take you from an anxious mess to being of pure ecstatic light in a matter of seconds. Read the rest of this entry »

Back in February, I took a look at Adolis García, a player who had long vexed me. Here was one of the few remaining survivors of the Rangers’ late-2010s rebuild, coming off back-to-back three-win seasons just as his club was swinging back into contention.

García may have been an above-average all-around right fielder, but he got there creatively: Good defense, aggressive baserunning, and hard contact when he got wood on the ball. But because he swung the bat more or less indiscriminately, he never walked and contact was hard to come by.

I try not to be too much of a sabermetrics 2.0 stick-in-the-mud, but OBP is really important, particularly at a position like right field, which comes with high offensive expectations. The ability to get on base might be the single thing I’d value most in a corner player, and García just wasn’t good at it. Read the rest of this entry »