When making any prediction for a young player, dealing with minor league data in an absolute necessity. This still remains a relatively new thing in baseball’s history, with little attention given to minor league stats until Bill James introduced his method of Major League Equivalency in the 1985 Baseball Abstract. Twenty-five years ago, I wrote one of the first things of mine to ever hit the broader internet, a quick primer on how to calculate James’ MLEs. Working with the data was immensely difficult at the time, and even worse when James was developing MLEs. There was no central repository of minor league stats, and just getting the current year was highly difficult; on the young internet of the time, you basically had to copy and paste from Baseball America’s basic data. For past years, there was just about nothing outside of what you could get from STATS. As a youngster, I pretty much spidered the data off of STATS on AOL, which surprisingly had the most data available publicly at the time.

Sabermetrics was a more difficult task back then. Even when Baseball-Reference initially became the first actually usable website, powered by the Lahman database, for the first few years, stats were updated after the season. There was no minor league data there, or anywhere, really. That improved in subsequent seasons, and with more data than James had to work with, people such as Clay Davenport, Voros McCracken, and myself were able to put together our own systems. ZiPS never becomes a thing without minor league data to work on to make the inputs properly. Since James is the one that broke ground, I still call the ZiPS translations zMLEs. These days, I have minor league translations going all the way back to the 1950s.

As we approach midseason, many of the current minor league translations in the upper minors have become highly interesting the farther we get from Small Sample Shenanigans. I wanted to take the opportunity to highlight some of the numbers with relevance to the rest of the major league season. Remember: minor league translations are not actual predictions but should be treated like any other line of play, with the same possible pitfalls, the same need for context, and the same opportunity to be misleading in certain ways, such as freak BABIP totals (though ZiPS tries to adjust for the last one). All these lines are adjusted to the context of the parent club’s home park and 2023’s level of offense in the majors. All translations are through Monday’s games. Read the rest of this entry »

OAKLAND – The Coliseum was rocking for the first pitch of last night’s game. A crowd of 27,759 roared as Yandy Díaz grounded out to first. “Sell the team! Sell the team! Sell the team!” The coordinated chant broke down into roars and cheers as Ryan Noda gathered up the grounder and stepped on first, kicking off the wildest Tuesday night game you could ever imagine.

The fans – 23,000 more than attended Monday night’s fixture – came out to protest owner John Fisher’s attempt to move the A’s to Las Vegas. They came out to protest Fisher’s management of the team in general. More than either of those causes, however, they came out to cheer for the A’s. As much as the team’s recent trajectory makes them hard to root for, as much as ownership and the front office seem to be steering into the skid, Oakland fans remain some of the most passionate in baseball.

If you’ve never heard of a reverse boycott before, that’s not surprising: the fans more or less improvised the idea on the fly. Jeremy Goodrich, a college student and lifelong A’s fan, created a change.org petition calling for Fisher to sell the team instead of relocating. Stu Clary, a longtime fan, saw the petition and floated the idea of selling out a weeknight game as a signal that fan support for the A’s is merely dormant, not extinct. The concept caught on almost immediately. Read the rest of this entry »

We are only a few weeks away from the midpoint of the season, and so far, there have been a fair share of surprises across multiple divisions. One of those comes from the NL East. No, it’s not the Braves, who sit atop the division with the second-best winning percentage in the National League; that was expected. The surprise is the Marlins, who are second in the division with a 37–31 record, 3.5 games ahead of the Phillies and 5.5 games ahead of the Mets. These are not insurmountable gaps, but it’s still impressive given what the projections were for Miami in particular.

With the ninth-worst run differential in the game, it’s not clear if the Marlins will sustain this winning pace. But they have gotten some legitimate performances from hitters that they simply have not had in previous seasons. Luis Arraez hasn’t stopped hitting since he got to Miami, and Jorge Soler is amidst yet another bounce back and clubbing homers all over the park. As a team desperate for offense, it’s been great to have those two hitting so well — and luckily, they aren’t the only two hitting. Bryan De La Cruz and Jesús Sánchez have been key to the Marlins’ success as well.

Both De La Cruz and Sánchez came to the team from fantastic player development organizations in Houston and Tampa Bay, respectively. De La Cruz is in his age-26 season, and Sánchez is in his age-25 season. Both are still under 1,000 career plate appearances and have been rather slow burns developmentally after struggling at different stages in their respective careers. And both have always shown interesting skills that suggested there was still some developmental meat left on the bone, as Eric Longenhagen would say. The flashes of success between 2021 and ’22 were interesting, but now each of them are legit contributors who have cemented their positions in the middle of Miami’s lineup and long-term plans. Read the rest of this entry »

We are currently in the process of updating our leaderboards interface. As part of this update, we have already released a quick leaderboard interface in our app, and we are now focusing on developing a modern, mobile-friendly web version of the complete leaderboards.

Just like when we made changes to our player pages, the upcoming modifications to the leaderboards will involve underlying HTML changes that could impact any data analysis tools you have built. To address this, we have created a legacy version of the page, which will remain accessible via a direct URL until the end of the 2023 season. Please note that normal navigation or parameter changes may not work as expected on the legacy page. Its purpose is to allow users to replace the URL in their tool and continue functioning until they have a chance to make any necessary adjustments. Read the rest of this entry »

As much as I love a partisan crowd in a playoff game, there’s something to be said for a tournament that has a dedicated home. Having experienced firsthand both the Men’s College World Series in Omaha and the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, the cultural ecosystem that springs up around these festival sites is unlike anything else in baseball. College baseball fans know the quirks of Charles Schwab Field, they’ve walked the Bob Kerrey Pedestrian Bridge from Omaha to Council Bluffs, Iowa, they know the jello shot leaderboard at Rocco’s Pizza. (Whatever else happens in baseball this season, nothing will be funnier than LSU fans finding themselves in a drinking competition with Oral Roberts fans.)

I can’t recommend it enough, even to watch on TV. My pitch for a mixed college-pro baseball fandom remains: College teams are playing meaningful games while MLB teams are still in spring training, and they play high-stakes postseason games during the meaningless major league doldrums of May and June.

Yes, high stakes. You want to know what a big deal this is? Here’s University of Tennessee right-hander Chase Burns, stomping out a rally in the seventh inning of his team’s latest win over Southern Mississippi with a trip to the College World Series on the line:

M7 | CHASE BURNS IS AN ELECTRIC FACTORY!!! ????????

102 by 'em and Tennessee wiggles out of the seventh with a 4-0 lead!!#GBO // #OTH // #BeatUSM pic.twitter.com/HrRt24Lfuu

— Tennessee Baseball (@Vol_Baseball) June 13, 2023

This guy pumped in 102-mph gas, then stomped off the mound positively convulsing with adrenaline. I have never been as excited about anything in my entire life as Burns is to spend at least a week of his summer vacation on a work trip to Nebraska. If this doesn’t get you amped up, you might actually be dead. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Shohei Ohtani leading MLB in WAR and the number of times his hitting has leapfrogged his pitching or vice versa, the EW audience’s verdict on who won the pod’s recent 26-under-25 draft, the suddenly-quite-competitive A’s-Royals race for the worst record in baseball, a painful ending to a college playoff game and the evolving conversation about pitch counts for college starters, the pitch clock’s impact on performance and injuries, one potential downside to the pitch clock reaching NPB, the Diamondbacks’ “victory vest,” and The Athletic’s layoffs and the state of sports media, plus a Past Blast from 2019.

Audio intro: Justin Peters, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: Xavier LeBlanc, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to Ohtani’s first homer
Link to Ohtani’s second homer
Link to MLB.com on tired Ohtani
Link to The Athletic on tired Ohtani
Link to FG WAR leaderboard
Link to B-Ref WAR leaderboard
Link to 26-under-25 draft
Link to draft voting results
Link to Carroll/Henderson awards
Link to Royals/A’s post
Link to Rob Mains on mobility
Link to tweet about college game ending
Link to college TOOTBLAN
Link to college dropped ball
Link to Cooper on pitch counts
Link to Jake on Mathews
Link to longer thread on Mathews
Link to Romano’s quote tweet
Link to 2016 study on college workloads
Link to 2018 college workloads study
Link to Dan S. on the pitch clock
Link to Jim Allen on the NPB clock
Link to report on the NPB clock
Link to victory vest story
Link to MLB’s Realmuto tweet
Link to “cyclone” tweet
Link to hockey’s “three stars”
Link to FG’s three players of the game
Link to WaPo’s The Athletic report
Link to FOS The Athletic report
Link to 2017 story about The Athletic
Link to Axios media newsletter
Link to 2019 Past Blast source
Link to 2015 robot-ump game
Link to David Lewis’s Twitter
Link to David Lewis’s Substack
Link to MLBTR on the Nevada vote
Link to Pujols hiring post

 Sponsor Us on Patreon
 Facebook Group
 Twitter Account
 EW Subreddit
 Effectively Wild Wiki
 iTunes Feed (Please rate and review us!)
 Get Our Merch!
 Email Us: podcast@fangraphs.com

Podcast (effectively-wild): Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

2:03

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks and welcome to a special edition of my Tuesday chat. I’m a few days into the annual family trip to Wellfleet  — this is the seventh year in a row that my wife, my daughter, and my mother-in-law have rented this house — and the wi-fi is a bit dodgier than back in Brooklyn, but I always like to do a chat from here if I can.

2:04	Jay Jaffe: As it’s a two-week trip, it’s something of a working vacation, with the work front-loaded. Today I did a piece on Nick Castellanos’ rebound from a dismal 2022 https://blogs.fangraphs.com/nick-castellanos-is-mashing-again

2:04	Jay Jaffe: Yesterday I took a look at the impact of Pete Alonso’s hand injury https://blogs.fangraphs.com/skidding-mets-lose-pete-alonso-when-they-c…

2:05	Jay Jaffe: Yes, we’re planning to get down to at least one Orleans Firebirds games. I think we have four to choose from in terms of their home games. Haven’t looked at rosters or fully sketched out a calendar yet.

Read the rest of this entry »

When I last checked in on Nick Castellanos, he was not in a good place. Though he was playing in a World Series with the Phillies, the team with which he signed a five-year, $100 million contract after the lockout ended in March, his season had been a disappointment, and aside from the occasional big hit here and highlight-reel catch there — the latter class of which had seemed particularly unlikely given his defensive metrics — his postseason had been bleak as well, right down to his making the final out in Games 5 and 6 of the World Series as the Phillies fell to the Astros. Fortunately, after turning the page on 2022, Castellanos has reemerged as one of the Phillies’ most productive hitters.

When the Phillies signed Castellanos, he was coming off the best season of his career, having made his first All-Star team while setting across-the-board career highs with a .309/.362/.576 line, 34 homers, a 139 wRC+, and 3.6 WAR. He had opted out following the second year of a four-year, $64 million deal with the Reds, but despite notable interest from multiple teams including the Padres and Marlins, he didn’t secure a deal before the lockout began in early December. Once he did finally agree to terms with the Phillies, eight days after the lockout ended, he felt as though he had to rush into the season, adjusting to a new team, new city, new fanbase, and new media… and with a new child on the way. Soon, Bryce Harper’s elbow injury forced Castellanos to play right field on a regular basis instead of DHing a significant amount of the time as initially planned.

Things did not go well. Castellanos matched his career-worst 94 wRC+ via a .263/.305/.389 line, set career lows with a 5.2% walk rate and 6.6% barrel rate, and homered just 13 times. He was dreadful afield (-10 RAA, -8 DRS, -7.3 UZR) as well, and while his -0.8 WAR didn’t make him the majors’ least valuable position player, none of the 31 others with WARs that low or lower — including future Hall of Famers Miguel Cabrera and Joey Votto — had just set sail on a $100 million contract. Adding further insult, in the postseason, Castellanos hit .185/.232/.246 in 69 plate appearances. Not even a few memorable diving catches could offset that. Read the rest of this entry »

Did you know that Andy Warhol didn’t actually say “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for fifteen minutes”? I was shocked to learn the truth. Apparently, two museum employees invented the quote when they were working on a Warhol exhibit. That makes the saying more interesting to me, actually: two anonymous people creating the work of someone famous for the democratization of art is enjoyable. But I digress: the point of bringing that quote up is that Nick Anderson is well into his second fifteen minutes of fame, and I’m pretty sure that this, too, is something Warhol would approve of.

It’s hard to imagine a better pitcher getting a worse contract than the one Anderson signed this offseason. He was one of the best relievers in baseball, period, from his 2019 debut until tearing his UCL in 2021. Heck, he was top 15 in reliever WAR from 2019 to ’21, and he basically didn’t play in one of those years. Sub-3 ERA, sub-3 FIP, the fourth-highest strikeout rate in baseball (39.6%) — Anderson was an elite closer, and the Rays used him accordingly. The Braves are paying him only $875,000 this year. That’s some kind of bargain.

As Esteban Rivera detailed last November, there were reasons to doubt that Anderson would come back strong. He looked diminished in his last few appearances before hitting the IL; his biggest weapon, a fastball with excellent carry that left batters flummoxed, lost its usual carry. Vertical approach angle is all the rage in pitch design these days, and that’s the case because it neutralizes the biggest weapon hitters have: power on contact. You can’t hit a home run if you can’t hit the ball, and flat-angled four-seam fastballs are great at doing just that. Read the rest of this entry »

I was contemplating Kyle Schwarber recently, as one does, and was amused by the notion that a player could post a batting average in the .170s and still be a valuable hitter overall. We’ve known that batting average isn’t everything since… well, I was going to say the nascent moments of the sabermetric revolution in the late 20th century, but it’s been way longer than that.

There’s a thread in popular history that casts the latter-day Brooklyn Dodgers as a team of romantic literary figures. Between the righteousness of Jackie Robinson and Pee Wee Reese, the tragic brevity of the careers of Pete Reiser and later Roy Campanella, and the juxtaposition with the shiny, all-conquering Yankees, there’s a sense that the Dodgers succeeded through some combination of moral rectitude and poetic necessity.

In truth, they won because they drew an absolute crapload of walks. In 1947, Reese and Eddie Stanky both drew over 100 walks, and the Dodgers drew 30% more walks than the NL average. The 2002 A’s beat the AL average by 16%, so the team that made walking cool looks like a bunch of hackers next to the 1947 Dodgers.

If Branch Rickey knew the limitations of batting average, what took the rest of us so long? Read the rest of this entry »