First up, Jay Jaffe welcomes Ryan Thibodaux, who leads the team at the Hall of Fame Ballot Tracker, to discuss Scott Rolen’s enshrinement and the wilddayleading up to it. Ryan has worked on the Tracker for a decade now, but this is somehow the first time he and Jay have had a non-text conversation. The duo look back on the influence the Tracker has had over the years, what compelled Ryan to work on it, and if he ever hears from any of the candidates. Jay and Ryan also take a look at the many exciting names on next year’s ballot. [3:05]
After that, David Laurila welcomes Pirates prospect Quinn Priester to the show. The pair first chatted after Priester was drafted (then again in 2021), and they discuss how he has developed as a pitcher in that time. We hear about training in Arizona this offseason, changing his approach to stay in games longer, comparing curveballs with teammate Mike Burrows, and playing with Henry Davis, who was the first overall pick in the 2021 draft. Finally, Priester tells us who were the best hitters he faced this year and who he is most looking forward to taking on in the majors one day. [31:40]
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A few weeks ago, I regressed as a writer. I regressed a lot, actually: twenty years worth of slash line data regressed against twenty years of run scoring data in various ways. But — and this is a dangerous sentence, and usually a bad one — someone asked me a question on Twitter and I want to answer it. Namely: was batting average always the weakest correlation to run scoring among the slash line statistics, or has it only become so recently?
This is going to be a quick hitter. I broke the game down somewhat arbitrarily, using eras defined by OOTP Perfect Team. I started in 1947 and went up until 2000 (the results of the 2000s were in my previous article). Here’s what those 2000s results look like, which should both give you an idea of the correlations today and preview the format for the rest of the article:
R-Squared to Runs Scored, Various Stat Pairs
Statistic
AVG
OBP
SLG
AVG
.355
.673
.841
OBP
.673
.668
.885
SLG
.841
.885
.840
Without further ado, let’s get started.
Golden Years, 1947–1960
Now, these weren’t the golden years for me, because I wasn’t alive, but I guess that’s what some people call this era of baseball. Jackie Robinson! Ted Williams! Stan Musial! Willie Mays! Batting average mattered more, but it still didn’t matter:
R-Squared to Runs Scored, Golden Years
Statistic
AVG
OBP
SLG
AVG
.655
.762
.771
OBP
.762
.707
.908
SLG
.771
.908
.688
What do I mean by that? Well, if you predict run scoring with OBP and SLG, you get a 0.908 adjusted r-squared to actual runs scored. Predict run scoring with the entire triple slash line, and you get an adjusted r-squred of 0.91. Batting average did better, on its own, as a run scoring predictor, but using OBP and SLG was the gold standard in the golden years.
Baseball Boom, 1961–1979
This is a broad era that folds in some pitching-dominant years that led to rules changes, the early part of the speed era, and some early-60s home run mania. It’s also an era where, if you know OBP and SLG, you don’t need to know batting average to predict run scoring:
R-Squared to Runs Scored, Boom Years
Statistic
AVG
OBP
SLG
AVG
.672
.810
.856
OBP
.810
.795
.922
SLG
.856
.922
.833
Like the 1947–60 span, using OBP and SLG as predictors does just as well as using all three statistics. More specifically, OBP/SLG had a 0.922 adjusted r-squared to runs scored. The full AVG/OBP/SLG regression checks in at 0.923. Average… if you’re already 99.89% of the there, it’ll get you that last tiny bit of explanatory power. That’s not exactly a ringing endorsement.
Defensive Era, 1980–1992
Even though I wasn’t alive for a big chunk of this era and wasn’t following baseball for the vast majority of it, it’s one of my favorite eras, thanks to Ozzie Smith, my single favorite baseball player and, per my mom, the person I’ve most emulated in my life. I spent countless hours mimicking the defensive plays I saw on my “Ozzie, That’s a Winner” VHS tape, which my uncle had recorded on local access TV in St. Louis. I’m a lefty, so I was doing them backwards and they never led to me becoming a defensive wunderkind, but none of that mattered to me; I just wanted to be like Ozzie. Uh, where were we? Oh, right. Average didn’t matter:
R-Squared to Runs Scored, Defensive Era
Statistic
AVG
OBP
SLG
AVG
.542
.713
.800
OBP
.713
.705
.863
SLG
.800
.863
.784
Using the criteria from above, OBP/SLG checks in at 0.863, and an all-three-slash-stats regression checks in at 0.864. It’s interesting to note that OBP and SLG explain the lowest percentage of variation in run scoring in this era, which I attribute to the huge range in team baserunning strategy and effectiveness, but that’s not the point of this study. The point is that if you already know a team’s OBP and SLG, you don’t need to know their batting average to predict how many runs they scored.
The Power Years, 1993–2000
I cut this one off at 2000, since my previous article already covered the 21st century, but OOTP extends it to 2004. Regardless, you guessed it:
R-Squared to Runs Scored, Power Years
Statistic
AVG
OBP
SLG
AVG
.655
.830
.839
OBP
.830
.821
.912
SLG
.839
.912
.811
This time, the adjusted r-squared is the same whether you look at OBP/SLG or AVG/OBP/SLG. So there you have it: throughout the eras, the correlations have remained the same. If you’re trying to predict a team’s run scoring and already have their on-base percentage and slugging percentage, you can stop there. Batting average won’t add anything to the equation.
If I asked you to visualize the prototypical stolen base, you’d probably picture a runner taking off for second. Conversely, if I asked you to conjure up the most thrilling stolen base you could imagine, you’d pick a play at the plate. Stolen bases at third, then, are the neglected middle child — too infrequent to warrant much conversation or analysis, but not unusual enough to drum up excitement. But third is more than just the base between second and home, and stealing third regularly and efficiently is a distinct skill.
For one thing, steals of third base make for a faster showdown between catcher and runner. The average pop time on a throw to second last season was 1.97 seconds; on a throw to third, it was 1.55 seconds — nearly half a second quicker. The distance between bases, however, is the same all around the diamond, which means a runner needs a much better jump when he’s going for third. Thus, stealing third is less of a race and more of a mind game. Pure speed is less important, but the perfect lead and a well-timed jump are invaluable. Read the rest of this entry »
The Rays front office has more than earned the benefit of the doubt in terms of talent evaluation, particularly when it comes to pitching. At this point, they have a long history of player development and evaluation success, from homegrown prospects to reclamation projects to the trade market. With that reputation preceding them, Wednesday’s agreement with reliever-turned-starter Jeffrey Springs to a four-year, $31 million contract extension feels more like an assertion of his future than a bet on it.
Still, to negotiate an extension with a 30-year-old player who had yet to reach 50 innings in a major league season entering 2022, the Rays have to feel pretty good that his season was a sign of more good things to come. The agreement has some uncertainty built in; while the Rays guaranteed him $31 million over four years, it includes a $15 million club option for a fifth year and a series of incentives tied to innings and Cy Young Award voting placement that could more than double the deal’s total value by the end of its course. For the Rays, it’s a relatively modest investment on the low end; on the other end, having to dole out the full $65.75 million would in all likelihood be a good problem to have. For Springs, it’s nothing short of hard to believe. Read the rest of this entry »
The one constant this offseason is that Bryan Reynolds is probably going to get traded. We all knew this, because he’s a good player on a bad team that doesn’t look like it’s going anywhere anytime soon. Players like that get traded, or at least they get talked about as trade candidates. In December, Reynolds turned circumstantial evidence into an actual news story by requesting a trade.
A month and a half later, there’s still no movement, which isn’t really a surprise. Reynolds is under team control through 2025, and the Pirates — if they decide to move on from Reynolds at all — shouldn’t be in any rush to get rid of their best player. A couple weeks ago, Jon Heyman cited a rival executive who compared Pittsburgh’s ask for Reynolds to what the Padres gave up for Juan Soto last August.
If you’ve been around baseball, followed it, watched it, or even become generally aware that there’s a sport behind cultural idioms like “ballpark figure” and “getting to second base,” you know how this dance goes. Player requests a trade, team negotiates with rivals both privately and through leaks to reporters, a price is eventually agreed upon, and the trade is executed.
But I find this process particularly intriguing for Reynolds, because it involves determining a public consensus over how good he actually is. Read the rest of this entry »
The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2023 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.
Until the moment Hall of Fame president Josh Rawitch beamed at the cameras on Tuesday evening and said, “Tonight we are pleased to announce the addition…” most of us expected to hear that the BBWAA voters had pitched their second shutout in three years. Happily we were wrong, and Scott Rolenbeat the odds. While many of us certainly would have preferred him to have company in reaching the 75% threshold instead of becoming the second one-man class in as many years, the election of one candidate is far better than none. Particularly given the shortage of third basemen in the Hall, the institution will be a better place with one of the hot corner’s best enshrined.
As for the other 27 men on this year’s ballot, the voting results have left us plenty to digest, so as promised, here’s my candidate-by-candidate breakdown of the entire slate. Read the rest of this entry »
Earlier this week, I wrote up a side project I’ve been working on recently: looking through exit velocity distributions to find interesting hitters. You can read that if you’d like (obviously, that’s how the internet works), but as a refresher, I looked through 2022 batted ball data for hitters whose 95th-percentile exit velocity was high but whose average exit velocity was low, as well as hitters who hit the ball hard consistently but didn’t have the results to show for it.
With a little more time to monkey around with the data, I’ve come to a few conclusions about this line of analysis. If you just want to read the article for those conclusions, no sweat: just search for the words “phenomenal cosmic power.” It’s been too long since I’ve used an Aladdin reference in an article, so I promise to shoehorn that one in somehow just before I explain my conclusions.
Okay, great, now that we’ve dispensed with the casuals, let’s talk through a bunch of procedure. You nerds (I say this with affection) love the procedure, I know. First things first: I took Baseball Savant data for all batted balls and grouped them by player and season. I skipped 2020 due to sample size issues and last season because we don’t have subsequent-year data. That left me with approximately 3,000 player-seasons of at least 50 batted balls. Read the rest of this entry »
Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Scott Rolen’s election to the Hall of Fame, Billy Wagner, Andy Pettitte, and relievers vs. starters as Cooperstown candidates, the Adalberto Mondesi trade (and a wager about Mondesi and Shohei Ohtani), and (32:40) more ways in which baseball stands out from other sports. Then (45:00) they talk to FanGraphs senior writer (and The Cooperstown Casebook author) Jay Jaffe about Rolen’s trajectory, the rest of the voting results, the typical ballot in 2023, the election outlook for 2024, frustrating Hall of Fame arguments, and more. After that (1:21:36), they end with a follow-up about extra players on the field and an in-person Past Blast from 1960 (and Jacob Pomrenke).
The Red Sox have spent most of the offseason with a big hole up the middle of their infield. With Xander Bogaertsdeparting in free agency, Boston had no true shortstop on the roster. While Enrique Hernández and Christian Arroyo each made a handful of starts at the six on Bogaerts’ off days, neither is a true shortstop and both are needed to man the other up-the-middle positions, where the team still lacks depth. Yesterday, the Red Sox at least partially filled that hole, trading left-handed reliever Josh Taylor to the Royals for switch-hitting infielder Adalberto Mondesi and a player to be named later.
A healthy Mondesi is one of baseball’s most exciting position players to watch. Most fans likely know him for his top-of-the-charts speed, which he shows off in all facets of his game. Let’s start with the most visible one: baserunning. Mondesi has multiple seasons under his belt with an average sprint speed above 30 feet per second, making him one of the most electric runners in the game. Since his debut in 2016, 44% of his competitive runs have been defined as bolts, a mark bested by just four others during that time. Of course, Mondesi has also used his speed to steal bases, and his combination of aggressiveness and efficiency has allowed him to put up ludicrous stolen base numbers despite never getting a full season’s worth of plate appearances:
Plate Appearances Per Stolen Base Leaders, 2018-22
Zack Gelof doesn’t profile as a boom-or-bust prospect. Coming off of a season that saw him reach Triple-A at age 22, the University of Virginia product is a near lock to perform on the big stage — not as a headliner, but rather as a solid contributor to a lineup that is currently patched together with Band-Aids. The low-budget Oakland Athletics need all the help they can get, so getting Gelof — ditto the higher-ceilinged Tyler Soderstrom — to the big leagues is an organizational priority.
Drafted 60th overall in 2021, Gelof slashed .270/.352/.463 with 18 home runs this past season, with the bulk of his action coming with Double-A Midland. The right-handed-hitting infielder added three more homers in the Arizona Fall League, and it is his power potential that most stands out for our lead prospect analyst. When I asked Eric Longenhagen for a snapshot scouting report on Gelof, he told me that “it is definitely a power-over-hit profile at this point,” adding that while his 70% contact rate wasn’t great, his “peak power and barrel rates were very encouraging.”
When I asked Gelof for a self-scouting report, he chose not to cite specific strengths, but rather his all-around skillset and desire to get better.
“I’d say I’m a really athletic infielder who likes to compete,” the Delaware native told me during his stint in the AFL. “But I try not to think about who I am and what people scout me to be. I just worry about working on basically every area that I can. I want to perform on the field and be the best player that I can be.” Read the rest of this entry »
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