This time last year, I investigated where vertical approach angle (VAA) seems to matter most. The short answer: at the top of the strike zone for four-seam fastballs and at the bottom of the zone for sinkers and two-seam fastballs. This piece, which is adapted from a presentation I did as part of the 2022 PitcherList PitchCon, will provide much-needed additional context, like benchmarking and watermelon-colored heat-map-style graphics.

For the uninitiated — which could be many of you — VAA is the angle at which a pitch approaches home plate… vertically. Despite its usefulness, the concept has experienced slow uptake in the public sphere. I think that’s largely due to a lack of data, which, for nerds like me too entrenched in baseball Twitter, has shrouded the metric in mystery. Why are scouts and college baseball R&D departments valuing VAA so highly, why have I barely heard of it, and how can I find it?

To answer the last question: Statcast is granular enough that, fortunately, we can calculate VAA using physics. So, let’s calculate it! Thanks to Baseball Prospectus‘ Harry Pavlidis (who credits baseball’s renowned physicists), here are the equations: Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s your chance to vote for the 2022 SABR Analytics Conference Research Awards winners.

The SABR Analytics Conference Research Awards will recognize baseball researchers who have completed the best work of original analysis or commentary during the preceding calendar year. Nominations were solicited by representatives from SABR, Baseball Prospectus, FanGraphs, and the Internet Baseball Writers Association of America.

To read any of the finalists, click on the link below. Scroll down to cast your vote.

Contemporary Baseball Analysis

• Rob Arthur, “Better Defense Is Costing MLB Thousands of Hits,” Baseball Prospectus, June 4, 2021.
• Ben Clemens, “Goldilocks and the Three Bunts,” FanGraphs, June 7, 2021.
• Karen Gallagher, Scott N. Brooks, Ra Lofton, Luke Brenneman, Field Studies: MLB Manager Hiring Criteria and Career Pathways from 2010-19. Global Sport Matters, October 5, 2021.
• Cameron Grove, “Some Games are Harder to Umpire Than Others,” Baseball Prospectus, September 17, 2021.
• Eno Sarris, “What is ‘seam-shifted wake’ and which pitchers benefit most from it?,” The Athletic, January 21, 2021.

Contemporary Baseball Commentary

• Michael Ajeto, “Major League Baseball Has an Assimilation Problem,” Baseball Prospectus, October 22, 2021.
• Stephanie Apstein and Alex Prewitt, “This Should Be the Biggest Scandal in Sports,” Sports Illustrated, June 4, 2021.
• Brittany Ghiroli, “Cockroaches, car camping, poverty wages: Why are minor-leaguers living in squalor?,” The Athletic, August 5, 2021.
• Craig Goldstein and Patrick Dubuque, “We Need a Restrictor Plate for Pitching,” Baseball Prospectus, May 25, 2021.
• Robert O’Connell, “Minor League Baseball is Designed to Exploit,” Defector, September 8, 2021.

Historical Baseball Analysis/Commentary

• Bruce Allardice, “Runs, Runs, and More Runs: Pre-Professional Baseball, By the Numbers,” SABR Baseball Research Journal, Fall 2021.
• Emma Baccellieri, “Deadening the Baseball? MLB’s Done It Before,” Sports Illustrated, February 9, 2021.
• RJ McDaniel, “Baseball on the Radio, 100 Years Later,” FanGraphs, March 10, 2021.
• Lou Moore, “Major League Baseball Had a Chance to Stop the Drain of Black Players From Baseball. It Didn’t.” Global Sport Matters, October 6, 2021.
• Andrea Williams, “ ‘We Have No Right to Destroy Them’,” New York Times, April 14, 2021.

Voting will be open through 11:59 p.m. MST on Friday, February 11, 2022.

Create your own user feedback survey

Mobile or Safari users, click here to access the survey

Results will be announced and presented at the SABR Virtual Analytics Conference, March 17-20, 2022. Learn more or register for the conference at SABR.org/analytics.

Hunter Bishop has barely gotten started. Drafted 10th overall by the San Francisco Giants in 2019 out of Arizona State University, the 23-year-old outfielder has logged just 202 professional plate appearances due to a COVID-canceled 2020 minor-league campaign and a shoulder injury that shelved him for much of last season. He’s done his best to make up for lost time. Shaking off some of the rust in the Arizona Fall League, the left-handed hitting Palo Alto, California native put up a .754 OPS in 51 plate appearances with the Scottsdale Scorpions.

Bishop — No. 8 on our newly-released Giants Top Prospects list — talked about his evolution as a hitter, and the challenges of coming back from two lost seasons, toward the tail end of his AFL stint.

———

David Laurila: You were drafted out of ASU in 2019. How much have you changed since that time?

Hunter Bishop: “A lot. There were some things I did in college that were really good, but the college program is so different. How they pitch you is different. For one, you’re going from metal to wood. So, I would say that I’ve changed a lot as a hitter, and more than anything it’s the mental part of the game. It’s understanding what pitchers are trying to do to you, more than the actual mechanics of hitting.”

Laurila: That said, have your mechanics changed at all? If I compared video of you in college to now, would I see the same guy?

Bishop: “I’d say that mechanically it’s the same. The only thing I’ve changed is that in college, my hands were like this — the bat was pointing straight up; it was off my shoulder. Now I start it on my shoulder. But I get to the same exact position.”

Laurila: Why, and when, did you make that change? Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the San Francisco Giants. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as our own observations. This is the second year we’re delineating between two anticipated relief roles, the abbreviations for which you’ll see in the “position” column below: MIRP for multi-inning relief pitchers, and SIRP for single-inning relief pitchers.

A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. A much deeper overview can be found here.

All of the numbered prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details than this article and integrates every team’s list so readers can compare prospects across farm systems. It can be found here. Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2022 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.

After last year’s shutout ended a remarkable run of 22 candidates elected over a seven-year span, this year the BBWAA got back to the business of electing players — or player, singular, given that David Ortiz was the 2022 cycle’s sole honoree. Even with Ortiz’s election, it seems clear that the upcoming years for the writers’ ballot will produce far fewer honorees than this recent stretch, which set all kinds of records even without Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Curt Schilling, and Sammy Sosa gaining entry due to the controversies attached to their respective candidacies.

Even setting the issue of performance-enhancing drugs aside for the moment, the past decade has amply illustrated that the dynamics of a Hall of Fame candidacy have changed. As I noted last year, from 1966 to 2005, only three candidates recovered from debuts below 25% and eventually reached 75%, even with 15 years of eligibility: Duke Snider (17.0% in 1970, elected in 1981), Don Drysdale (21.0% in 1975, elected in ’84) and Billy Williams (23.4% in 1982, elected in ’87). Since then, we’ve seen five players elected despite such slow starts, including three from 2017-20. From the 15-year eligibility period came Bruce Sutter (23.9% in 1994, elected in 2006) and Bert Blyleven (17.5% in ’98, elected in 2011), and then once the Hall unilaterally cut eligibility to 10 years — less to clean up the ballots than to move the intractable debate over PED-related candidates out of the spotlight, and give voters less time to soften their attitudes — Tim Raines (24.3% in 2008, elected in ’17), Mike Mussina (20.3% in 2014, elected in ’19), and Larry Walker (20.3% in 2011, elected in ’20). Read the rest of this entry »

Austin Wells is well-regarded, albeit with a lot to prove on the defensive side of the ball. There’s little doubt that he can mash. No. 15 on our recently-released New York Yankees Top Prospects list, Wells went deep 16 times in 469 plate appearances last year between Low-A Tampa and High-A Hudson Valley. His left-handed stroke produced a solid .264/.390/.476 slash line, while his wRC+ was an every-bit-as-sturdy 135.

Wells is built to bash — he packs 220 pounds on a 6-foot-2 frame — and his size is also befits a backstop. That’s what he wants to be. Asked about his positional future during his stint in the Arizona Fall League, Wells shared that he’s caught since he was six years old, and plans to continue doing so. Since being drafted 28th-overall in 2020 out of the University of Arizona, all 70 of his defensive games have been spent behind behind the dish. Moreover, “there haven’t been any conversations about playing anywhere else.”

Wells was preparing to play in the Fall Stars Game when I caught up to him, and the first thing I wanted to address were the nuances of his craft. I began by asking what role analytics play for a young, minor-league catcher. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about one of Ben’s most laborious baseball-writing experiences, answer listener emails about playing MLB games at minor league affiliates’ parks, how scouting reports affect the times-through-the-order penalty, and what they would do if they discovered that Roberto Clemente had been credited with one hit too many, share a Stat Blast (36:20) about times when the best hitters in each league (and best pitchers in each league) played in the same city, and then (46:24) talk to Aidan Gruber about his website, MLB Trade Trees, which tracks and displays trade/transaction trees for every trade in AL/NL history.

Audio intro: Still Corners, “Into the Trees”
Audio interstitial: David Duchovny, “3000”
Audio outro: Pulp, “The Trees”

Link to FanGraphs redesign
Link to Ben’s trade trees article
Link to Ben Clemens on fastballs
Link to article on old stat changes
Link to article on Wilson’s RBI
Link to Craig on artificial scarcity
Link to video of Clemente’s hit
Link to Stat Blast hitter data
Link to Stat Blast pitcher data
Link to episode on lopsided trades
Link to Ben on Schilling trades
Link to Aidan’s Dybzinski post
Link to Dybzinski trade tree
Link to Stephens trade tree
Link to players traded for themselves
Link to Baseball Trade Values site
Link to Aidan’s code on GitHub
Link to contact Aidan
Link to MLB Trade Trees

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