FanGraphs Baseball

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Welcome to Mathemadage, a new series where I investigate time-honored baseball adages using whatever data I can get my hands on and explore whether there’s any validity to them. I’ll apply my normal Ben Clemens mixture of a bit of math, a bit of intuition, and plenty of healthy doubt in declaring strong solutions to complicated problems. I hope to demonstrate that some of these true and others false, but I’m sure that many will end up in a suggestive but unprovable middle ground. And true to the premise of the series, we’re starting off with a fun adage that resists easy conclusions.

If you watch a baseball game from start to finish, you’re pretty much guaranteed to see a hitter get tied up on an inside fastball. “Got jammed,” the announcer might say, or maybe, “He just couldn’t get around on that one.” It’s a visual reminder of one of the pitching truisms that I learned as a kid and haven’t forgotten since: hard in, soft away.

I intuitively look for this pitching pattern when I’m watching a game. Hitters look incredibly uncomfortable when they’re trying to get their bat around a fastball in on their hands. Now that we have a few years of bat tracking data, though, I can do better than just vaguely searching for this effect. So this week, when I saw someone get jammed, I winced in sympathy and then started furiously downloading spreadsheets. Read the rest of this entry »

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, please visit our Patreon.

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about a Chris Sale vs. Jacob Misiorowski matchup and how often anticipated pitching duels live up to the hype, a controversial fair/foul call and ball-tracking tech in baseball compared to other sports, and what stadium decibel levels say about whom baseball belongs to, then (57:26) answer listener emails about the AL MVP race, Brayan Bello’s bullpen turnaround, the highest-scoring game in which each run was driven in by a different batter, the potential downside of a closer entrance spectacle, the oldest player who could go yard in a home run derby, the value of freezing time on the field, a game between players dressed as their teams’ mascots, and what makes players fun.

Audio intro: PJ Harding, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: Nate Emerson, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to Sale vs. Miz article
Link to Miz zone rate by month
Link to Miz velo by month
Link to Miz/Sánchez close call
Link to Miz/Skenes close call
Link to pitching leaders since 4/12
Link to Sale jersey article
Link to Ben on Sale in 2018
Link to LaRoche retrospective
Link to Alonso call article
Link to Yankees booth’s reaction
Link to Petriello tweet
Link to Tango tweet 1
Link to Tango tweet 2
Link to baseball exceptionalism wiki
Link to Kepner on baseball usage
Link to NFL measurement tech
Link to goal-line tech wiki
Link to hockey tech article
Link to FoxTrax wiki
Link to NBA tech article 1
Link to NBA tech article 2
Link to soccer connected ball info
Link to Miller/Grogu video
Link to hippo talk episode
Link to latest loudness article
Link to loudness article 2
Link to loudness article 3
Link to loudness article 4
Link to loudness article 5
Link to loudness prompt
Link to “Nothing Night” origin
Link to FG WAR leaderboard
Link to Bello SP/RP split
Link to biggest SP/RP splits
Link to 1-RBI-guys games
Link to urinalysis info
Link to Mariners derby article
Link to Ichiro derby video
Link to Clair on Appling
Link to Ben on Ichiro homers
Link to list of MLB mascots
Link to McCutchen “furries” lore
Link to listener emails database
Link to MLBTR on Anderson
Link to leaguewide games per year
Link to Small Axe Studios news
Link to Batman/Superman comic
Link to comic heroes roster
Link to Benge article 1
Link to Benge article 2

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In 1981, when a seven-week players’ strike split the season into two “halves,” and in 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic shortened the season to 60 games, teams with sub-.500 records snuck into the postseason via expanded playoff formats created to accommodate the unique and extraordinary circumstances. No team finishing below .500 over the course of a full schedule has received a playoff berth, but the possibility looms large this year. With five and a half weeks and about 35 games per team still to play, the American League has just five teams above .500, including one — the AL West-leading Astros — that entered Wednesday right at that mark before beating the Angels. It’s not out of the question that two sub-.500 teams could make the playoffs, but for all of the owners’ carping about a lack of competitive balance, messy free-for-alls such as this are just what Major League Baseball wants.

If the postseason were to start today, the Rays (76-50) would win the AL East by five games and White Sox (66-60) the AL Central by four games, with both earning first-round byes. The Yankees (71-55) and Red Sox (68-59) would qualify as the top two Wild Card winners; as the fourth and fifth seeds, they would square off in a best-of-three Wild Card Series as they did last season. But from there, things get ugly. The Astros (64-63) are currently clinging to a two-game lead over the Rangers (62-65) atop the AL West, but with a projected win total of 82 wins according to our Playoff Odds, they don’t have much margin for error when it comes to clearing the .500 bar, and could join or surpass the 2005 Padres (82-80) and 1973 Mets (82-79) in terms of mediocre division winners. The 1994 Rangers were a whopping 10 games below .500 at 52-62 but one game ahead of the A’s (51-63) when the players’ strike put them both out of their misery, though MLB does not consider any first-place teams from the shortened season to be official division winners. That’s how the Braves, who trailed the NL East-leading Expos by six games when the strike hit, are still considered to have won 14 consecutive division titles from 1991–2005 (an assertion I take issue with, but that’s an argument for another day). Read the rest of this entry »

Noah Schultz remains a work in progress. Fifteen outings and 65 1/3 innings into his major league career, the recently-turned-23-year-old southpaw has a 3-9 record to go with a 6.06 ERA and a 4.86 FIP since debuting in April. Ranked second in the Chicago White Sox system coming into the season, Schultz is currently doing more fine-tuning in Triple-A, having been sent down to Charlotte earlier this month.

Two days before his August 8 demotion, I caught up to the 6-foot-10, high-ceiling hurler to ask how much he has learned about pitching since being drafted 26th overall in 2022 out of an Oswego, Illinois high school.

“A ton,” Schultz replied. “I didn’t know anything when I signed. I didn’t know anything about metrics. I knew that spin rate was good — I knew that I spun the ball well — but that was about it. Velo and spin rate. So, I’ve definitely picked up a ton over the past few years.”

Enough that he would now consider himself a data nerd? Read the rest of this entry »

11:59

Dan Szymborski: Frivolity may now commence.

12:00

Dan Szymborski: Morandini

12:01

Dan Szymborski: Votto wasn’t born the plate discipline god either

12:03

Dan Szymborski: Jose Bautista too, but it could also be the rushed nature of being rule 5

12:03

Dan Szymborski: I would suspect Sosa too, but we don’t really have out-of-zone data for him

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CJ Abrams’ ambitions as a fielder have fallen short, but the future remains bright for the Nationals star.

Washington over the weekend announced Abrams will move from shortstop to second base. That’s not a surprise. Abrams has been terrible at shortstop for his career, ranking as one of the worst fielders ever recorded by Baseball Savant’s fancy player-tracking technology. What is a surprise, however, is that a minor-career update for Abrams is newsworthy enough to justify an article, a testament to his tremendous breakout at the plate in 2026.

Abrams this year has posted -17 Outs Above Average at shortstop, which is the worst mark in the majors at any position. This isn’t an outlier for him. Since his debut in 2022, Abrams has played almost exclusively shortstop, putting up OAA marks (chronologically) of -8, -9, -18, and -11 before the -17 mark so far in 2026. His career -64 OAA makes him the sixth-worst fielder — at any position — ever recorded by the system, which dates back to 2016. Read the rest of this entry »

As an inveterately unhappy middle-aged man, I don’t like pointing out when things get better. So when I say that the 2023 MLB rule changes massively improved baseball as a spectator experience, you can rest assured that I’m not making that assertion lightly.

You know what I’m talking about: The shift ban, the pitch clock, and the pizza box bases. Back in the olden days, a sufficiently daring and athletic ballplayer could rack up 50, 60, or even 100 steals in a season. But the response to that era has been a gradual tightening up of baserunning tactics.

First, the roided-up giants of the 1990s got too stiff and meaty to run and slide. Even those athletes who maintained their springiness didn’t want to run into an out when the guy at the plate could use his 25-inch forearms to drive them in from anywhere. In the 2000s, an army of Theo Epstein wannabes took over baseball operations en masse. These men, with their locust-like commitment to efficiency, discouraged risky baserunning behavior even further. While their Harvard MBA classmates were killing the American housing market, they killed the stolen base. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the Brewers’ record-tying shutout/blowout of the Mariners (warning: profanity), Bryce Rainer and the continued absence of a post-Ohtani two-way wave, the latest manifestation of Paul Skenes’s protracted struggles, the tater turnaround of Fernando Tatis Jr., the reason(s) for the diminishing viewership of “MLB at Field of Dreams,” and which baseball figure (or feature) could extend the Vin Scully/Connie Mack fun fact.

Audio intro: Ian H., “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: Tom Rhoads, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to Mariners vs. Brewers box score
Link to biggest blowouts
Link to Julio mistake
Link to Mount Rainier wiki
Link to Laurila on Rainer
Link to article on Rainer’s signing
Link to The Board at FG
Link to Sam on Ohtani’s two-way balance
Link to best past two-way prospects
Link to Olerud pitching retrospective
Link to article on Jobe vs. Skenes game
Link to Tigers vs. Pirates game data
Link to Tigers vs. Pirates box score
Link to Stumpf on Skenes
Link to Sawchik on Skenes
Link to Oler on Skenes
Link to Verducci on Skenes 1
Link to Verducci on Skenes 2
Link to Skenes photos
Link to Skenes gamelog
Link to Ashcraft gamelog
Link to P/IP leaders
Link to Tatis before
Link to Tatis after
Link to BP on Tatis
Link to MLB at Field of Dreams wiki
Link to article on Hall of Famers
Link to article on audience size
Link to EW Field of Dreams episode
Link to MLB Speedway Classic wiki
Link to Sam’s Scully/Mack piece
Link to Ben’s comment

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