Woe Unto the Cleveland Guardians’ Bats

Ken Blaze-USA TODAY Sports

Intending no disrespect to the Minnesota Twins, a lovely team with plenty of commendable players, but the AL Central is a bit of a joke this year. I guess that’s not too surprising — the Central champion has either had or shared the lowest win total among the American League division winners every year since 2017. But as of this writing, the Twins are just one game over .500, a record that would put them in a battle for fourth place (at best) in four of the five other divisions in baseball; nevertheless Minnesota is securely in first place.

Maybe 30 Rock was right, everything is easier in the Midwest. Read the rest of this entry »


Effectively Wild Episode 2016: We’ve Got Good News and Bad News

EWFI
Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Ben’s voice, the arrival of Elly De La Cruz, the similarities between the up-and-coming Reds and Pirates, whether we need a “super-error,” Aaron Judge’s ball- and wall-smashing abilities, the plights of Alek Manoah and Stephen Strasburg, the wonder of Luis Arraez, whether this year’s trade deadline will be dead, follow-ups on the Angels’ catchers, Ben Joyce’s fastball, and Albert Pujols’s employment, how the pitch clock could affect players’ stamina in the second half, and more, plus a Past Blast from 2016 (1:34:00) and a few updates (1:38:25), including thoughts on Jacob deGrom’s diagnosis.

Audio intro: Harold Walker, “Effectively Wild Theme
Audio outro: Alex Eichler, “Wild Shift

Link to MLBTR on Elly
Link to Rosenthal/Judge interview
Link to Red Sox/Rays play
Link to Sox errors montage
Link to FARTSLAM post
Link to Knoblauch FARTSLAM
Link to Stark on Judge
Link to story on Judge and the wall
Link to McCray catch video
Link to Judge dachshund video
Link to Judge/Rizzo doxie article
Link to Judge/Rizzo doxie shirt tweet
Link to Judge/Rizzo doxie shirt photo
Link to Manoah gamer
Link to MLBTR on Manoah
Link to Dan S. on Manoah
Link to Halladay’s rebuild
Link to Strasburg article
Link to Baumann on Arraez
Link to B-Ref baserunning page
Link to xWOBA overperformers
Link to xBA overperformers
Link to Arraez’s 2019-22 BA-xBA
Link to Arraez fun fact 1
Link to Arraez fun fact 2
Link to Arraez fun fact 3
Link to Arraez fun fact 4
Link to Young on the deadline
Link to MLB.com on the deadline
Link to team catcher offense
Link to highest-FA% pitchers
Link to BP on Joyce
Link to MLBTR on Pujols
Link to Blum on Pujols
Link to 2016 Past Blast source
Link to MLB committee report
Link to early-2016 Ben article
Link to mid-2016 Ben article
Link to baseball drag values
Link to De La Cruz gamer
Link to Clemens on HFA
Link to Judge fence article
Link to MLBTR on deGrom
Link to deGrom interview video

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Home Field Advantage and Extra Innings: Some Continuing Research

Brent Rooker
Darren Yamashita-USA TODAY Sports

Last week at Baseball Prospectus, Rob Mains did some digging into home field advantage and found a very curious effect: home teams did worse in extra inning games than in regular-season games. More specifically, he found that home teams won roughly 54% of games overall but only roughly 52% of extra inning games. There are no two ways about it: that’s strange.

Mains looked into many potential explanations for this discrepancy: team quality, pitcher quality, games that were tied going into the ninth, and various ways of looking at how teams have adapted to the zombie runner era. Today, I thought I’d throw my hat into the ring with a slightly different way of thinking about why home teams are less successful in extras than they are overall.

My immediate thought when I heard this problem was something Ben Lindbergh mentioned on Effectively Wild: home field advantage accrues slowly, and extra innings have fewer innings than regulation. The minimum scoring increment in baseball is one run, naturally. Home field advantage is clearly less than a run per inning; it’s less than a run per game. I like to think of home field advantage as fractionally more plays going the home team’s way. A called strike here, a ball that lands in the gap instead of being caught there, and eventually one of those plays might put an extra run on the board. Read the rest of this entry »


Jay Jaffe FanGraphs Chat – 6/6/23

2:01
Avatar Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks! Welcome to my first chat of June and my last one before embarking upon the annual family trip to Cape Cod

2:02
Avatar Jay Jaffe: I am battling my way through back spasms that began when I was warming up my daughter for her last Little League game (of the season for sure, of her “career” possibly)

2:03
Avatar Jay Jaffe: Yesterday I took a look at Fernando Tatis Jr’s return from his injuries and suspension https://blogs.fangraphs.com/fernando-tatis-jr-s-uneven-return-from-a-l…

2:03
Avatar Jay Jaffe: Tomorrow I’ll have a tribute to Roger Craig, whose greatest contribution to baseball was in teaching the split-fingered fastball to a generation of pitchers, to such an extent that it became “The Pitch of the ’80s”

2:04
Guest: Manoah?

2:05
Avatar Jay Jaffe: he’s got minor league options, time to shuffle off to Buffalo.

Read the rest of this entry »


Joey Votto Talks Hitting

Kareem Elgazzar/The Enquirer / USA TODAY NETWORK

Joey Votto is nearing the end of a career that should land him in the Hall of Fame. Three months shy of his 40th birthday, the Toronto native has played 16 seasons, all with the Cincinnati Reds, and has a career .297/.412/.513 slash line to go with a 146 wRC+. A six-time All-Star and former NL MVP, he has led the senior circuit in OBP seven times, and in walks six times. Moreover — this amid criticism from the segment of the Cincinnati fanbase who feels he is too passive at the plate — his left-handed stroke has produced 2,093 hits, including 453 doubles and 342 home runs.

Currently on a rehab assignment with Triple-A Louisville, Votto is recovering from rotator cuff and biceps surgery and has yet to play in a big league game this year. He sat down to talk hitting when the Reds visited Fenway Park last week.

———

David Laurila: Is hitting easy, or is it hard?

Joey Votto: “Well, it’s the only thing I’ve done, so I don’t have much to compare it to. I failed my math exam. High school math may be more difficult than major league hitting.” Read the rest of this entry »


FanGraphs App Update: We’ve Added Quick Leaderboards!

We are excited to introduce Quick Leaderboards – an intuitive, mobile-friendly interface for accessing our major league leaderboards. With this new addition, you can now easily explore and find leaders for various statistics through a list-based interface. Our goal is to provide a seamless experience that closely reflects the web version’s robust leaderboards within our app. Our future plans are to further develop leaderboards in the app to closely match the functionality of the web version.

To access the app and enjoy these new features, simply download it here:

Read the rest of this entry »


Dane Dunning Can’t Keep Getting Away With This!

Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports

The Texas Rangers, as you might have heard, are in first place. And that doesn’t even tell the whole story; the Rangers are currently on a 106-win pace, and believe it or not, they’re underperforming their Pythagorean record by four games. And they’ve done a lot of it without the best pitcher in the world.

Jacob deGrom, foremost among the numerous high-profile free agent arms Texas has invested in over recent years, has spent the past month on the IL with elbow inflammation. A slow recovery led the Rangers to move the two-time Cy Young winner to the 60-day IL on Monday. That precludes deGrom from returning to action before the end of June — which may or may not have been in the cards anyway.

But the Rangers have coped just fine without deGrom throughout May thanks in no small part to Dane Dunning, who started the year as a reliever but has matched deGrom’s results. Read the rest of this entry »


Washington Nationals Top 31 Prospects

Sam Navarro-USA TODAY Sports

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Washington Nationals. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my own observations. This is the third year we’re delineating between two anticipated relief roles, the abbreviations for which you’ll see in the “position” column below: MIRP for multi-inning relief pitchers, and SIRP for single-inning relief pitchers. The ETAs listed generally correspond to the year a player has to be added to the 40-man roster to avoid being made eligible for the Rule 5 draft. Manual adjustments are made where they seem appropriate, but I use that as a rule of thumb.

A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. A much deeper overview can be found here.

All of the ranked prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details (and updated TrackMan data from various sources) than this article and integrates every team’s list so readers can compare prospects across farm systems. It can be found here. Read the rest of this entry »


Shoulder Soreness Sends Sale, Quantrill to Shelf

Chris Sale
David Butler II-USA TODAY Sports

As far as ballplayers go, Chris Sale and Cal Quantrill don’t have a whole lot in common. Sale is an established star, with the resume and salary to prove it; Quantrill only recently completed his first full season as a starting pitcher. At his peak, Sale was the preeminent strikeout artist in baseball and arguably the best of all time; Quantrill has the lowest K-rate among qualified pitchers this season. Both have gone under the knife for Tommy John surgery, but while Quantrill has been the picture of health ever since, Sale has yet to return to his former glory.

This past Friday, these two dissimilar pitchers found themselves in the same boat when they landed on the injured list with shoulder inflammation, just days before their respective clubs were due to face off in a three-game set. Shoulder inflammation is a vague descriptor, and the prognosis for it can vary widely. Sometimes a pitcher will only miss a couple of starts to let the pain subside, but in a worst-case scenario, shoulder problems can lead to season-ending surgery. There is no reason to believe, as of yet, that either Sale or Quantrill will need to go the surgical route, but it also seems unlikely that either will return as soon as the minimum 15 days are up. Sale will undergo further testing and might not have a proper diagnosis until this weekend. Quantrill, meanwhile, has stopped throwing altogether. Read the rest of this entry »


Projecting Mitch Keller and Oneil Cruz Extensions

Mitch Keller
D. Ross Cameron-USA TODAY Sports

The Pirates are having a relatively successful 2023, as the team has defied expectations and is currently in second place in the NL Central, just a half-game behind the first-place Brewers. The record on the field isn’t the only thing coming up Pirate this year: the team successfully signed Bryan Reynolds to an eight-year, $106.75 million contract extension, ending the eternal and well-founded speculation about which team the Bucs would trade him to and when. With Ke’Bryan Hayes already signed to a $70 million extension — then the largest dollar figure for a contract in franchise history — Pittsburgh has discussed locking up two other foundational talents, Mitch Keller and Oneil Cruz.

Despite the Pirates signing a nine-figure deal with Reynolds, it would be a mistake to assume that it foreshadows a new era in team spending that gets them into the next tier up in the spending ranks. The last time they finished even 20th in baseball in payroll was 20 years ago, in 2003, and they’re usually in the bottom five. There they will stay, but if they spend a good proportion of that self-limited budget on their best young talent, they get their best shots at the NL Central and don’t explicitly look like a stop for young players between Triple-A and the majors. To manage this, Pittsburgh has to sign its young players sooner rather than later, and absorb additional risk.

Of these two players, Keller’s extension is probably the more urgent matter to attend to. The least expensive time to sign him would have been a few years ago, when he was struggling to adjust to the majors and the Pirates could, as noted above, defray some of the cost by taking on that additional risk that he’d never develop. Keller is eligible to hit free agency after the 2025 season, so there’s a real ticking clock here; the longer the Pirates take to come to an agreement, the less financial reason their ace has to take one and the less talent would come to Pittsburgh in the event of a trade. Now that Keller’s breakout appears to be a reality and not a fluke or merely speculation about the future, he has a lot more financial leverage than he did a year ago.

While Keller worked out most of his remaining command issues last season, he still suffered a bit from having strikeout stuff but not being great at actually collecting those Ks. The full version of ZiPS still sees his improved swinging-strike rate not supporting the impressive 50% bump in his overall strikeout rate, but it does agree that his performance in 2023 in this department represents real and significant improvement. As such, Keller has one of the biggest bumps among pitchers from his preseason long-term projection. Even the simpler in-season projection version of ZiPS still has him finishing in the top five in the NL in WAR, behind just Zac Gallen, Zack Wheeler, Spencer Strider, and Logan Webb.

Perhaps the most striking example of Keller’s continued breakout is just how improved his cohort of most similar past pitchers is. Here are the top 50 pitchers in ZiPS similarity (with the specific year at which their baseline is similar) for Keller both before 2023 and now:

ZiPS Top Comps – Mitch Keller (Pre-2023 vs. Now)
Comp After Comp After
Zack Greinke 2010 Mike Witt 1988
Gaylord Perry 1967 Edwin Jackson 2011
Félix Hernández 2012 Nathan Eovaldi 2015
Don Drysdale 1963 John Gilbert 1952
Roy Oswalt 2004 Michael Wacha 2017
Gerrit Cole 2018 Wayne McLeland 1952
Jacob deGrom 2015 Mike Moore 1986
Steve Rogers 1977 Rene Valdes 1956
Justin Verlander 2009 Wily Peralta 2014
Juan Marichal 1964 Iván Nova 노바 2013
Paul Derringer 1935 Marcus Stroman 2018
Mike Witt 1987 Mike Pelfrey 2009
Matt Harvey 2015 Al Javery 1943
Shane Reynolds 1996 John Crocco 1952
Don Sutton 1972 Bob Mabe 1957
Fergie Jenkins 1971 Joseph Micich 1953
Jack McDowell 1993 Jack Taylor 1955
Rick Reuschel 1977 Homer Bailey 2012
Corey Kluber 2014 Frank Lary 1956
John Montefusco 1976 Don Schultz 1955
Mike Mussina 1997 Livan Hernandez 2000
Carlos Carrasco 2015 Wally Burnette 1955
Bob Rush 1952 Shelby Miller 2016
Mark Gubicza 1989 Bob Locker 1964
Pete Vuckovich 1979 Jason Schmidt 1998
Camilo Pascual 1962 Kevin Gausman 2017
Jameson Taillon 2018 Anthony Telford 1992
Stephen Strasburg 2017 Mark Bomback 1979
Curt Schilling 1993 Brian Holman 1990
Mike Garcia 1951 Jacob deGrom 2014
Erik Hanson 1991 Bernard Rossman 1953
Roger Clemens 1991 Harry Byrd 1952
Dwight Gooden 1993 Jack Carmichael 1954
Dennis Leonard 1978 Jimmy Nelson 2015
Noah Syndergaard 2019 Jeff Niemann 2009
Josh Johnson 2010 Ernest Lawrence 1955
Fred Hutchinson 1947 Joey Jay 1962
Jon Gray 2018 Roberto Hernandez 2007
Jose Rijo 1993 Jack Egbert 2008
Ed Halicki 1977 Adrian Houser 2019
Bill Singer 1970 Doug Linton 린튼 1990
Schoolboy Rowe 1936 Erik Hanson 1992
Chris Archer 2017 Hugh Sooter 1952
Bert Blyleven 1979 Garrett Richards 2015
Homer Bailey 2013 Justin Masterson 2011
Andy Benes 1994 Juan Nicasio 2013
Ben Wade 1950 Paul Wagner 1995
Jordan Zimmermann 2014 Chris Carpenter 2001
Matt Morris 2001 Emilio Cueche 1955
Orel Hershiser 1987 Corey Kluber 2013

You will note that I didn’t label which column was which, because I’m just that confident that you’ll know in about a half-second of glancing which list is the better one!

In sum, ZiPS suggests a fair six-year deal right now would be six years, $116 million:

ZiPS Projection – Mitch Keller
Year W L ERA G GS IP H ER HR BB SO ERA+ WAR
2024 10 8 3.39 28 28 167.3 147 63 16 39 187 123 3.7
2025 9 8 3.48 27 27 160.3 142 62 15 37 175 119 3.4
2026 8 9 3.60 26 26 157.3 142 63 15 36 168 115 3.2
2027 8 9 3.73 26 26 152.0 141 63 15 35 157 111 2.9
2028 8 9 3.80 26 26 149.3 142 63 15 35 150 109 2.6
2029 7 9 3.96 24 24 145.3 143 64 16 34 141 105 2.3

This reflects the fact that he has two more years of arbitration; a projected offer as a free agent would be six years, $153 million, or seven years, $171 million.

Despite being a shortstop — for now at least — rather than a pitcher, Cruz is the riskier of the pair. He’s less established in the majors than Keller and is currently on the IL with a fractured ankle, making a projection that much trickier. But when agreeing to a mutually beneficial contract, you basically have to pay either in currency or risk, and if the Pirates don’t want to give up a ton of the former, they’ll have to be willing to pay by taking on a bunch of the latter. Even if the current injury makes the atmosphere a little too much like gambling for either side of the negotiations, a healthy Cruz — which is expected to be a thing sometime around August — should be enough to kickstart talks.

Cruz was one of my breakout picks this year, and while the ankle means that’s one that I’m unlikely to get right, he still has a great deal of upside with his game-changing power. And his contact issues, while concerning, are at least a problem that you can pinpoint; it only take a few percentage points of a bump in contact rate for ZiPS to start projecting him with Javier Báez’s prime. Cruz had already shown an uptick in his nine games this year, walking seven times as his contact rate hit 70%. Nine games is a pitifully small sample size, even for less volatile numbers, but it’s certainly better than those numbers going in the opposite direction!

ZiPS Projection – Oneil Cruz
Year BA OBP SLG AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO SB OPS+ DR WAR
2024 .249 .314 .457 394 66 98 18 5 18 64 36 121 12 109 -4 2.1
2025 .250 .317 .459 412 70 103 19 5 19 68 39 121 13 111 -4 2.3
2026 .253 .321 .463 430 75 109 20 5 20 71 42 122 12 113 -4 2.5
2027 .254 .324 .465 437 77 111 21 4 21 72 44 121 12 114 -4 2.7
2028 .254 .324 .456 441 77 112 21 4 20 72 45 120 11 112 -4 2.5
2029 .251 .322 .442 439 76 110 21 3 19 69 45 118 9 108 -5 2.2
2030 .250 .321 .444 428 74 107 20 3 19 67 44 116 9 108 -5 2.1

Cruz has more upside than Hayes does, but the latter is healthy and closer to his potential than the former is to his higher potential, and the contract projection comes out similarly to the extension that Hayes signed: a seven-year, $67 million extension that delays Cruz’s free agency by two years.

Will contracts like these single-handedly make the Pirates a perennial contender? No, but signing young players to long-term deals at least gives them the path to long-term relevance in the NL Central and gives a fanbase that’s been beaten up for 30 years some hope that it’ll get to see PNC Park be the long-term home for the team’s core rather than a set of turnstiles.