2:02

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks! Welcome to the first 2022-23 offseason edition of my chat. I’m not sure if this is the Hot Stove or the smoldering wreckage of Twitter, but here we are. I’ve been covering the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee ballot this week, with entries on Fred McGriff, Rafael Palmeiro, Albert Belle, and Don Mattingly, all of which you can get to via the nav bar here https://blogs.fangraphs.com/2023-contemporary-baseball-era-committee-c…

2:04

Jay Jaffe: Next up is Dale Murphy, which will run Monday because I added some Deep Thoughts that were brought about by the advent calendar of bad behavior by some of the others on this ballot. I also covered Anthony Rizzo’s return to the Yankees https://blogs.fangraphs.com/anthony-rizzo-heads-back-to-the-bronx/

2:06	Jay Jaffe: I was just looking at his page a little while ago, prompted by a similar question from MLB Network Radio pal Mike Ferrin. I wrote about Goldschmidt’s progress in mid-July (https://t.co/IydUWFrx7r) after which he continued to mash even with a September slump, which is why he’s the NL MVP

2:07	Jay Jaffe: Here’s how he looks via JAWS: First Base (18th): 58.5career WAR |45.37yr-peak WAR |51.9JAWS |5.8WAR/162   Average HOF 1B (out of 23):     65.5 career WAR | 42.1 7yr-peak WAR | 53.8 JAWS | 4.9 WAR/162

2:08	Jay Jaffe: That peak score is 13th all time, nestled between Frank Thomas and Miguel Cabrera. I’d say that the heavy lifting for Goldschmidt is over, and that he’s on his way provided he gets the remaining 250 hits he needs to reach 2,000 (which he in all likelihood will)

Read the rest of this entry »

Mini trade alert! Yesterday, the Seattle Mariners sent outfielder Kyle Lewis to the Arizona Diamondbacks in exchange for outfielder/catcher Cooper Hummel. That’s the entire exchange – no other players, no cash, just a one-for-one swap. It’s not terribly exciting, but its simplicity makes it easier to break down. Shall we?

Two years ago isn’t a lot, but considering all the ruckus that has occurred between then and now – and I’ll spare you the loathsome, often non-baseball-related details – it might as well be forever. That’s also when Lewis won American League Rookie of the Year. After a lengthy detour caused by persistent knee injuries, Lewis seemed on a sure path to becoming an integral part of an up-and-coming Mariners core. But the hardship continued into his sophomore season due to another tear to the same knee that had been bothering him for years; he played just 36 games in 2021. And if that wasn’t enough, the already battered Lewis, who began his 2022 on the injured list, was hit by a pitch a mere week after being called up in May. He recovered, but struggled immensely at the plate. Eventually, the Mariners sent him back down to Triple-A Tacoma, where he wrapped up a grueling season.

Laid in front of us are four fragmented seasons, including a cup of coffee in 2019, from which to evaluate Lewis. The truth is, it’s a tricky task. When samples are small and distant from one another, distinguishing the effects of injury from random variance and a possible decline in skill is about as productive as imagining “what could have been.” But from a projection system’s perspective, a short resume actually paints Lewis in a positive light. Steamer, for example, forecasts a .240/.323/.426 slashline and a 110 wRC+ for 2023, likely because of his recent minor league output and the fact that most of his major league experience comes from an award-winning rookie season. The ceiling of an everyday center fielder still exists, and a 116 wRC+ in Triple-A last season that wasn’t BABIP-driven is reason for optimism. Read the rest of this entry »

The ghost of 18th-century statistician Thomas Bayes did not see his shadow, so we are about to launch this year’s 2023 ZiPS projections. As usual, this is a space to talk about some of the basics, answer a few common questions, and wax philosophic about the very nature of predicting baseball futures. A lot of the background can be found by reading MLB’s glossary entry for ZiPS, which gives most of the basics except for the origin story.

ZiPS is a computer projection system I initially developed in 2002–04; it officially went live for the 2004 season. The origin of ZiPS is similar to Tom Tango’s Marcel the Monkey, coming from discussions I had with Chris Dial, one of my best friends (my first interaction with Chris involved me being called an expletive!) and a fellow stat nerd, in the late 1990s. ZiPS moved quickly from its original inception as a reasonably simple projection system, and now does a lot more and uses a lot more data than I ever envisioned it would 20 years ago. At its core, however, it’s still doing two primary tasks: estimating what the baseline expectation for a player is at the moment I hit the button, and then estimating where that player may be going using large cohorts of relatively similar players.

Why is ZiPS named ZiPS? At the time, Voros McCracken’s theories on the interaction of pitching, defense, and balls in play were fairly new, and since I wanted to integrate some of his findings, I wanted my system to rhyme with DIPS (defense-independent pitching statistics), with his blessing. I didn’t like SIPS, so I went with the next letter in my last name, Z. I originally named my work ZiPs as a reference to one of my favorite shows to watch as a kid, CHiPs. I typoed ZiPs as ZiPS when I released the projections publicly, and since my now-colleague Jay Jaffe had already reported on ZiPS for his Futility Infielder blog, I decided to just go with it. I never expected that all of this would be useful to anyone but me; if I had, I would have surely named it in less bizarre fashion. Read the rest of this entry »

Thad Ward should be of interest to several teams come next month’s Rule 5 draft. Currently no. 15 on our Boston Red Sox prospect rankings with a 40+ FV, the 25-year-old right-hander wasn’t added to the club’s 40-man roster — a decision that left Eric Longenhagen “a tad surprised.” Our lead prospect analyst explained that Ward “looked good in the Arizona Fall League, locating 92-94 mph fastballs while mixing in two above-average breaking balls… [and] looks like a possible bulk relief fit right now.”

Three years ago, Ward looked to be well on his way to securing a spot in Boston’s starting rotation. When he was featured at FanGraphs in October 2019, the 2018 fifth-rounder out of the University of South Florida had recently been honored as the organization’s Minor League Pitcher of the Year. According to then-Red Sox pitching analyst Brian Bannister, Ward was in possession of “a Chris Sale slider.”

But fate had its say. The 2020 minor league season was canceled due to the pandemic, and the following year, Ward underwent Tommy John surgery after making just two starts with Double-A Portland. By the time he returned to action this past July, he had essentially missed two-plus seasons. But while taking the mound again didn’t feel akin to jumping back on a bicycle for the righty, he did pitch well. In 51-and-a-third innings spread across four levels, Ward fanned 66 batters and allowed just 40 hits while logging a 2.88 ERA.

Ward discussed his comeback, including how his stuff compares to what it was pre-injury, during his stint in the Arizona Fall League.

———

David Laurila: You came back from Tommy John this year. Are you the same pitcher now that you were before going under the knife?

Thad Ward: “In some ways, yes. In some ways, no. I’ve matured a lot in terms of stuff I can’t control. I don’t get as upset over mistakes. That’s not to say my competitive edge has gone away, it’s more that I feel I’m channeling it in a better direction.” Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, I wrote about the overcrowded NL MVP ballot. Eight different position players finished within 1.0 WAR of the top spot on our leaderboard, more than in any other year since WAR was introduced. The MVP nearly always goes to one of the top position players by FanGraphs WAR. Thus, this past year presented us with one of the most hotly-contested MVP races in recent memory, regardless of how voters ultimately cast their ballots.

To have so many worthy choices for the award is exciting, even if we already know that Paul Goldschmidt emerged as the winner, with Manny Machado and Nolan Arenado placing second and third, respectively. As I wrote last Friday, “such a close race between so many contenders compels us to look beyond the go-to methods we might normally rely on to pick a winner. It allows us to think about how we measure value. It’s a chance to get creative.” I don’t know about you, but that sounds like a fun challenge to me. Now, from the headline and the image at the top of this piece, you can already guess who I would’ve picked. But indulge me for just a moment longer so I can explain how I came to that decision. On a ballot full of deserving choices, how was I to single out one name as the most deserving of all? Read the rest of this entry »

Over the years, plenty of FanGraphs articles have started out with a writer clicking around on the leaderboards looking for something interesting. Only the truly great articles, however, come about when the writer distractedly clicks on the wrong leaderboard because they’re busy baking adorable miniature cakes. With that auspicious beginning, let’s talk about pitchers hitting in the era of the universal designated hitter.

We’ll start with a simple question: Who was the best hitting pitcher in 2022?

Did you think it was Shohei Ohtani? Oh sweet, naïve reader. You make me laugh. It wasn’t Ohtani. That would’ve been the right answer if the question had been, “Who was the best hitting pitcher in 2022 (minimum two plate appearances)?” But that wasn’t the question, and you have fallen right into my trap. (Don’t worry; nothing bad happens if you fall into the trap. In fact, there’s candy down there.) Read the rest of this entry »

The hot stove is set to simmer while teams take stock of their roster situations and the free-agent market. That means it’s the perfect time to see how each team stacks up against each other. Because these rankings are entirely data driven (based on the Depth Charts projections), there will be some wonky placements, particularly for teams that had significant players leave via free agency earlier this month. Think of these as a glimpse at which teams are close to being ready for 2023 and which teams might have a lot of work to do before thinking about next season. We’ll run these power rankings a couple of times during the offseason as a way to check in on how teams are shaping up heading into Opening Day.

A reminder for how these rankings are calculated: first, we take the three most important components of a team — their offense (wRC+), their pitching (a 50/50 blend of FIP- and RA9-, weighted by starter and reliever IP share), and their defense (RAA) — and combine them to create an overall team quality metric. For these offseason power rankings, I’ve used each team’s projected stats based on their Depth Charts projections which are entirely powered by the 2023 Steamer projections at this point. I’ve also used the projected fielding component of WAR that appears on our Depth Charts projections as the defensive component for each team in lieu of RAA.

With a young core locked up for years and very few holes on the roster, the Braves are essentially ready to run everything back in 2023. The biggest departure so far is Dansby Swanson; outside of him, Atlanta’s entire starting lineup and rotation will be returning in 2023.

The Braves’ biggest hindrance to improving their roster this offseason is their payroll, which is already butting up against the competitive balance tax. If they want to bring in a new shortstop or re-sign Swanson, they’ll either have to blow past the luxury tax threshold or find creative ways to cut costs. That appeared to be the reason behind trading away Jake Odorizzi last week. And with Vaughn Grissom’s strong rookie showing, there might already be a Swanson replacement in the organization anyway.

It’s surprising to see the Rays this high in the rankings, but their deep and flexible roster means they have few gaps to fill, and some good projections for their young core puts them already ahead of some of their closest division rivals. More importantly, the players they did lose to free agency all have in-house replacements already established or close to debuting — a big benefit of their robust development pipeline. That depth is a double-edged sword, however. Facing a 40-man roster crunch ahead of this week’s Rule 5 roster deadline, Tampa made four trades just in the last week, though none of them had much impact on the overall projections. Read the rest of this entry »

Episode 1001

Hot Stove season is upon us and we are ready to start picking apart transactions, but not before we talk about the Kansas City Royals.

• To kick things off, David Laurila welcomes Joel Goldberg, broadcaster and reporter for the Royals. David didn’t put Bobby Witt Jr. on his AL Rookie of the Year ballot this year, but he and Joel discuss how the best is certainly yet to come for the young phenom. The pair also talk about the underrated Scott Barlow, top prospect Maikel Garcia, the promise of a new ballpark, and how Kansas City was Salvador Perez’s town before it belonged to Patrick Mahomes. We also get insight into Dayton Moore’s legacy now that he has left the organization and J.J. Picollo has become the new president of baseball ops. [3:53]
• In the second half, Ben Clemens is joined by Eric Longenhagen to talk about the early roster moving and shaking. The duo discuss glove-first center fielders who can’t hit enough for the majors, the Marlins struggling to develop players with a good approach at the plate, and Ben’s recent article about what would happen if pitching were a carnival game. Eric and Ben also banter about backstops, wonder how catchers who are good at framing will be valued going forward, framing vs. blocking, and if pop time is more important than accuracy when throwing to second base. [37:56]

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