The road has been long for Adbert Alzolay. Signed as an international free agent out of San Felix, Venezuela in 2012, the right-hander worked his way diligently through the Cubs’ minor league system as a starter, making homes everywhere from Eugene, Oregon to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina and eventually rising as high as second on the Cubs’ prospect list as a 22-year-old in 2018, Wrigley squarely in sight. Since then, injuries have plagued him: first a lat injury ended his 2018 season that May, then more core complications that delayed the start of his 2019 campaign, and most recently, another lat issue that cost him nearly all of last year, limiting him to only six late-season outings out of the bullpen.

This spring, having played just one full season since his 2019 debut, Alzolay’s health was his “only goal” for 2023. For the first time, he was preparing to work out of the Cubs’ bullpen, an assignment that some former high starting pitching prospects don’t take favorably. But he was firmly on board. “I really wanted to be in the bullpen,” he told reporters. “I feel really comfortable, just bringing the best I have right away.”

His enthusiasm for the role has shown. In 34 relief outings, Alzolay has posted a 2.63 ERA, 2.66 FIP, and 3.17 xFIP with 10.10 K/9 and 1.54 BB/9, racking up 1.0 WAR in just 41.0 innings. His Savant percentile rankings have surged in the bullpen; from 2021 to 2023, he’s gone from the 56th percentile to the 91st in HardHit%, 36th to 88th in xBA, 23rd to 95th in xSLG, 32nd to 98th in xERA, and 15th to 93rd in barrel percentage. His .270 wOBA against is 54th among 370 pitchers qualifying for Statcast’s leaderboards, but that seems to be underselling him; his .245 xwOBA against is ninth. Read the rest of this entry »

If you’ve watched The Brady Bunch, Family Ties, Community, or pretty much any other sitcom, I’m sure you’re familiar with the “two dates to the dance” trope. The premise is exactly what it sounds like, and antics are guaranteed to ensue. It almost always ends in disaster, and the wannabe Lothario learns their lesson. If they had only picked a single date, they might have had a lovely evening. Instead, as Confucius says, “The man who chases two rabbits catches neither.”

It’s not just TV characters who try to pull this off; some of the most prevalent baseball statistics are guilty of double dating, too. In particular, I’m talking about the stats that try to court the analytics crowd and more traditionally-minded fans at the same time. This is an admirable endeavor (unlike two-timing your prom date), but that doesn’t make it any less of a fool’s errand.

OPS+ is the perfect example. It takes a widely understood statistic and revamps it for the modern age, but as a result, it combines all the inaccuracies of OPS with all the complexities of park and league adjustments. It’s too much for most casual fans to wrap their heads around, yet it still undervalues on-base percentage and overvalues extra-base hits — cardinal sins for the hardcore sabermetricians among us. I’ve long thought that isolated power falls in the same category. It’s missing the simplicity and storytelling quality of batting average and total bases, but it also lacks the precision of advanced numbers like wOBA and wRC+. Thus, I’ve never fully understood who the target audience for ISO really is. Read the rest of this entry »

To the extent that the term actually makes sense, Garrett Cooper might best be described as a professional hitter. Consistently solid yet never a star, the 32-year-old first baseman/DH has slashed .272/.341/.444 with a 116 wRC+ since becoming a mainstay in the Miami Marlins lineup in 2019. Establishing himself took time.

Selected in the sixth round of the 2013 draft by the Milwaukee Brewers out of Auburn University, Cooper was subsequently swapped to the Yankees in July 2017 — he made his big league debut a day after being dealt — only to have New York flip him to the Fish that November. Six years later, the Los Angeles-area native is firmly ensconced in Miami as a middle-of-the-order cog on an up-and-coming team.

Cooper discussed his evolution as a hitter when the Marlins visited Fenway Park in late June.

———

David Laurila: Let’s start with your formative years in the game. How did you learn to hit?

Garrett Cooper: “I grew up in a family where I was the baby of seven kids and had four older brothers who played baseball. That certainly helped, and my dad also paid for hitting lessons, probably two or three times a week starting when I was 9-10 years old. Read the rest of this entry »

For the next two weeks, we’re going to spend a lot of time and energy debating Shohei Ohtani’s trade market, just in case the Angels continue to backslide and Arte Moreno can be extricated from his fortress of solitude and cajoled into trading his franchise player. And it should be so; Ohtani is the most interesting player in baseball, and once the trade deadline passes, I’m sure we’ll move on to talking about where he’ll land next year and how many hundreds of millions of dollars he’ll earn over the next decade.

But Ohtani is not the only free-agent-to-be who’s playing out the string on a disappointing team. As much as the Angels are taking on water, they’re not sunk yet. And the Padres are even less sunk than the Angels are. With that said, I’m sure they’re not happy to be in fourth place in their division during the last week of the Tour de France, with open questions about whether Blake Snell will be a part of the team’s future.

Snell obviously can’t do all that 60-homer pace stuff Ohtani does, but he’s going to be one of the most sought-after pitchers in the forthcoming free agent class. Read the rest of this entry »

The full midseason run of the ZiPS projections have been completed, and while the standings updates are always a lot of fun, they tend to move in a similar direction to our FanGraphs standings, so they’re usually not the most shocking. What I find the most interesting are the player projections — not even the numbers for the rest of the season (the in-season model is simpler, but improvements in the full model are naturally going to be incremental), but the ones that look toward 2024 and beyond.

On Tuesday, I took a look at the hitters with the biggest increases in projected 2024 WAR, so naturally, today, we’re focusing on the hitters with the largest decreases since my original projections and dig a little into what changed for each player. Sometimes it’s performance, sometimes it’s health, sometimes it’s a change in position. Let’s jump straight into the names, since I assume everyone reading this knows that ZiPS isn’t a cheeseburger or a hoodie. I’ve also started with the players who were actually projected to be better than replacement level in 2024 at the start of the season. Read the rest of this entry »

As is tradition at FanGraphs, we’re using the lead-up to the trade deadline to take stock of the top 50 players in baseball by trade value. For a more detailed introduction to this year’s exercise, as well as a look at the players who fell just short of the top 50, be sure to read the Introduction and Honorable Mentions piece, which can be found in the widget above.

For those of you who have been reading the Trade Value Series the last few seasons, the format should look familiar. For every player, you’ll see a table with the player’s projected five-year WAR from 2024-2028, courtesy of Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections. The table will also include the player’s guaranteed money, if any, the year through which their team has contractual control of them, last year’s rank (if applicable), and then projections, contract status, and age for each individual season through 2028 (if the player is under contract or team control for those seasons). Last year’s rank includes a link to the relevant 2022 post. Thanks are due to Sean Dolinar for his technical wizardry. At the bottom of the page, there is a grid showing all of the players who have been ranked up to this point.

At this point, we’re into the good stuff. All of these players are hugely valuable, and few are likely to actually get traded. That doesn’t mean this is purely theoretical, but it’s something approaching that. Like most lists, ordinal rankings can be deceiving; there isn’t an equal value gap separating every spot on the list. I’ve tried to mention where there are large gaps, but don’t read too much into someone being 26th instead of 23rd. There just isn’t much difference between those two spots, and both players are a lot more valuable than the guy ranked 40th. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Christian Encarnacion-Strand and whether record compound names deserve an asterisk, the appeal of a Legends Home Run Derby, the origins of (and long-ago backlash to) the trade deadline, the greatness of NPB phenom Roki Sasaki, and the new balance of power among pitch types, then (1:03:41) answer listener emails about Shohei Ohtani trade returns, Ohtani’s 2024 salary if he signed a one-year contract, the Rays’ spending, and a change to All-Star Game player usage, plus a Future Blast (1:38:30) from 2034.

Audio intro: Ian H., “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: Nate Emerson, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to longest-name records
Link to more on long names
Link to Lukas on Woods Richardson
Link to Lukas on Encarnacion-Strand
Link to Encarnacion-Strand call-up info
Link to original uni photo
Link to Stark on the HRD
Link to Weaver on the HRD
Link to story on Appling’s homer
Link to Home Run Derby X wiki
Link to SPBA wiki
Link to Craig Wright on the deadline
Link to Wright’s story series
Link to Ohtani bat flip
Link to Ohtani in trade value series
Link to Delta’s NPB stats
Link to Ben on DeltaGraphs
Link to info on Sasaki’s posting
Link to MLB SP velo leaders
Link to The Athletic on sliders
Link to Tango on sliders
Link to Justin Choi on sliders
Link to seasonal pitch type %
Link to vetoed Paul trade
Link to FG post on $/WAR
Link to Roster Resource payroll page
Link to Sam’s Rays tweet
Link to team wins since 2008
Link to team wins since 2019
Link to EW emails database
Link to Turn Ahead the Clock wiki
Link to Rick Wilber’s website
Link to Ward mix-ups wiki
Link to Mozeliak tweet
Link to article about STL and the shift

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I experience baseball in many different forms. Writing is obviously one of them. Watching (both in person and on television) is another. Playing doesn’t happen as much as I’d like to, but it’s still one of them. The last one, which has become the most accessible to me, is through data: performance, expected stats, projections, etc. Data serves as a conversation starter or a thought provoker for me, and I rely on it heavily in my writing to tell the story of a player’s triumphs or struggles, especially Statcast data.

When working with Statcast information, it’s important to understand the inputs that create the data points. For example, I know that xwOBA is formulated using a combination of exit velocity and launch angle (and sometimes sprint speed). Perhaps it would be helpful if there were more inputs such as batted ball spin or spray angle, or perhaps it would complicate things. But what is important is that I know those are not included in the formulation — knowledge that I can use when assessing players for whom those inputs could be statistically important. I’m specifically thinking of the profiles of Isaac Paredes and Cody Bellinger.

Neither Paredes nor Bellinger have big power in terms of raw exit velocity, and neither is a batting average king (although Bellinger is over .300 at this moment in time). Instead, they rely on consistent contact to the pull side in the air to make up for their lack of raw power. I have an idea in my head of what a good hitter is. One of my most general criteria is the ability to hit the ball consistently hard, but it’s important to leave wiggle room there so you don’t exclude the edge cases, like Bellinger and Paredes. Both are below the 20th percentile in terms of average exit velocity and below the 10th percentile in HardHit%, but both have ISOs over .200 with double-digit home runs and doubles. That’s unusual, but it brings me back to stressing the importance of spray angle for a certain group of hitters. Read the rest of this entry »

2:01	Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks!

2:01	Jay Jaffe: Welcome to my first chat of the second half of the 2023 season

2:02	Jay Jaffe: I’ve got Hall of Fame on the brain after writing a four-part series on the active players making progress towards Cooperstown. Part IV just went live, covering relievers https://blogs.fangraphs.com/cooperstown-notebook-the-2023-progress-rep…

2:02	Jay Jaffe: Yesterday’s Part III addressed Ohtani and starting pitchers https://blogs.fangraphs.com/cooperstown-notebook-the-2023-progress-rep…

2:03	Jay Jaffe: Part II was shortstops and outfielders https://blogs.fangraphs.com/cooperstown-notebook-the-2023-progress-rep… and Part I catchers and the three bases https://blogs.fangraphs.com/cooperstown-notebook-the-2023-progress-rep…

Read the rest of this entry »

We began this series with Craig Kimbrel striking out José Ramírez to close out the All-Star Game, and I’ll admit, my original intent was to cover all of the pitchers in Part II. But as anyone who reads (or edits) my work knows, when it comes to the Hall of Fame and its candidates, I can go on, and on… and on. In part that’s because I like to use this series as an annual clearinghouse, covering the vast majority of the active players whom readers most frequently ask me about during the course of the year. It may not be a one-stop shop, but with the added volume comes some context for comparisons (Has Freddie Freeman caught up to Paul Goldschmidt? Who has a better shot, Carlos Correa or Francisco Lindor? And what about Trea Turner?) In part, it’s also because in the 20 years (!) since I introduced it, my JAWS system has become more complicated and more nuanced, requiring a bit of additional introduction. That’s particularly true when it comes to pitching, where during the 2022 election cycle, I formalized S-JAWS for starting pitchers and R-JAWS for relievers.

I had been messing with the latter since the 2019 cycle, in the context of Billy Wagner’s candidacy. The short version of the story is that while Baseball Reference’s flavor of WAR (which I use in JAWS) features an adjustment for leverage — the quantitatively greater impact on winning and losing that a reliever has at the end of the ballgame than a starter does earlier — to help account for the degree of difficulty, it’s not the only way to measure reliever value. Win Probability Added (WPA) is a context-sensitive measure that accounts for the incremental increase (or decrease) in the chances of winning produced in each plate appearance given the inning, score, and base-out situation. WPA can be additionally adjusted using a pitcher’s average leverage index (aLI) for a stat variably called situational wins or context-neutral wins (referred to as WPA/LI). Both of those are now in the sauce; R-JAWS is the average of a reliever’s WAR (including his time as a starter and a hitter, if any), his WPA, and his WPA/LI. The rankings, which I used to have to create by hand, are now on Baseball Reference, and Wagner, who ranks sixth and is the best reliever outside the Hall, is trending towards election after receiving 68.1% on the 2023 ballot, his eighth year of eligibility. Read the rest of this entry »