Picture this: Bases loaded, two outs, full count in a tie game. It’s the ultimate high-stakes situation, and isolated on the mound is the pitcher, left to fend for himself. He can’t mess up — not here, not in front of everyone. He does what only a pitcher can do, and that’s use the adrenaline pent up inside to his benefit. So on the next pitch, he fires off a 100-mph fastball, up and in. The opposing hitter swings… and misses. The crowd goes berserk. Inning over. Jam: escaped.

This is the stuff of legends. It’s a moment we’ve thought about at least once as a kid; there’s nothing quite like a bases-loaded escapade that captures the imagination. The cool thing, though? It’s that major league pitchers have been more than willing to live out this fantasy. In 2018, Sam Miller wrote about which instances produce a pitcher’s fastest fastball, and his conclusions are intuitive: when the pitcher is ahead, especially with two strikes, and when there’s two outs. Our favorite pitchers aren’t just strike-throwing robots; they’re also swayed by the heat of the moment, making them even more entertaining to watch.

Inspired, I started to look at data from last season. With two strikes, pitchers averaged 94.2 mph on their four-seamers. In all other counts, they averaged 93.5 mph, for a difference of 0.7 miles per hour. Not too dramatic, but across a large sample of pitchers, it’s significant nonetheless. It’s here I began to wonder: which pitchers in 2021 had the largest differences between their average four-seam velocity in two-strike counts and non–two-strike counts? Maybe you thought of Max Scherzer, who’s known for having a second, even third gear. He’s up there for sure, but not high enough. Because this is what the top five looks like:

Hey there, Shohei. Read the rest of this entry »

The Red Sox have upped the quality of their farm system in recent years, and Paul Toboni has played a key role in that ascent. Boston’s director of amateur scouting since September 2019 — he was assistant director for three years prior — the 32-year-old University of Notre Dame MBA has helped facilitate drafting players such as Marcelo Mayer and Nick Yorke. Originally hired by the Red Sox as an intern, Toboni became an area scout in 2015 before climbing up the ranks to his current position.

On the road scouting when this conversation took place, Toboni talked about the process itself, the philosophies that shape an organization’s decision-making, and some of the notable draftees the Red Sox have brought on board.

———

David Laurila: Let’s start with the basics. What exactly does an amateur scout do?

Paul Toboni: “It depends on your responsibility. We have a number of area scouts across the country who are responsible for areas ranging in geographical size, and also in player density. There are a lot of players coming out of Southern California, so maybe we have two scouts there. We also have a scout covering Arkansas, Oklahoma, and all the way through North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas. An area scout’s job, really, is to be at the grassroots level and get to know these players really well. They talk to coaches, turn in reports, and come up with their lists.

“It flows upward from there, to our regional cross checkers. I think teams around the league are organized pretty similarly in that [the cross checkers] cover four or five area scout’s areas. From there it goes to national cross checkers, who are responsible for covering the whole country. Then it’s the front office.”

Laurila: What goes into the reports that scouts turn in? Read the rest of this entry »

In an all-mailbag episode, Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley answer listener emails about baseball with nine DH spots (and separate offensive and defensive units), baseball with eight lineup spots instead of a DH, a visual baseball rulebook, their favorite types of ballpark quirks, adjusting offensive stats for the behavior of the ball, an ethical question about preventing a Shohei Ohtani injury, anointing MLB’s biggest heel, bringing ultimate Frisbee’s self-officiating to baseball, posting the wrong lineup on the scoreboard to confuse an opposing team, a pitcher with one pitch but perfect (albeit limited) command, programming a robomanager, and more.

Audio intro: Roxy Music, “Three and Nine”
Audio outro: Belle and Sebastian, “I Can See Your Future”

Link to Ben on pitcher hitting
Link to BtBS on the universal DH
Link to Star Trek Ringer MLB Show
Link to ballpark homogeneity study
Link to BP on LeMahieu
Link to FanGraphs on LeMahieu
Link to Gonny Jomes EW wiki page
Link to video of Pierzynski play
Link to Michael Baumann on Bregman
Link to Incaviglia rule story
Link to Robinson retirement story

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Welcome to another edition of Prospects Week! It’s like Shark Week except with fewer severed limbs, better editing, and a mandatory mention of Hunter Harvey. It’s been a while since we’ve done a thorough-going procedural refresher before getting into the meat of the week, a rundown of what it is we’re doing, why we’re doing it, and how we came to do it this way. For those of you who have been following prospect coverage at FanGraphs for a while, you’ve likely read and/or listened to versions of this before. There have been no significant changes to our process, so for you, the word pile below should mostly serve as a review. For those new to this process, however, welcome! I’m glad you’re here and sorry this is so meticulous.

Let’s start by talking about distributions, the 20-80 scale, and Future Value. Obviously the point of prospect evaluation is to gauge whether a player has the potential to play major league baseball. If the answer to that query is, “yes,” then it’s important to specify how good of a big leaguer we’re talking about. While it comes with its own margin for error, Wins Above Replacement is the best public-facing metric we have for evaluating big leaguers over a meaningful sample. As such, it’s useful for us to try to map our prospect predictions to that metric since it gives us a pretty granular way of distinguishing players from one another. We all know that both Mike Trout and Bryce Harper are very good, but WAR helps us to more precisely understand just how good, and shows us the daylight that exists between players all over the talent and performance spectrum. Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s a somewhat uncomfortable truth: The majority of rookies kind of stink. Everyone wants their team’s star prospects to take off as soon as they step foot onto a major league diamond, but the reality is that development takes time. Last season, for example, rookie hitters collectively put up a 87 wRC+, and looking at the past ten seasons, that figure has ranged from a low of 83 to a high of just 93. Not everyone hits the ground running.

Enter Brandon Marsh. His first 260 big league plate appearances resulted in a 86 wRC+ — pretty much average for a rookie. That can be interpreted as either a good or bad sign. On one hand, he performed like the typical rookie, and his prospect pedigree suggests room for growth. On the other hand, that isn’t a guarantee, and an 86 wRC+ is an 86 wRC+, no matter the context. This ambiguity could be partially why he hasn’t been at the center of prospect discourse. It’s not as if he shined like Wander Franco, and it’s not as if he bombed like Jarred Kelenic, whom we’re inclined to give the benefit of the doubt. A so-so debut isn’t one people remember.

But I’m here to argue that Marsh is one of the most interesting young hitters around, worthy of your utmost attention. And it all starts with a number one might consider a red flag: a .403 BABIP. Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

Mike Elias had a background in scouting and player development when he came to Baltimore in November 2018. The Orioles general manager and executive vice president broke into pro ball as a scout with the St. Louis Cardinals in 2007. Four years later, he was hired by Houston to serve as the club’s director of amateur scouting; in 2016, the Astros promoted the Yale University graduate to assistant GM and put him in charge of player development.

The challenges he inherited in Baltimore were daunting. Elias took over a team that had just lost 115 games — the most in franchise history. The Orioles’ divisional competition is comprised of the powerhouses of the American League East. The rebuild was going to be anything but easy. Moreover, it would take time, much to the chagrin of a dedicated fanbase.

But light is starting to appear at end of the tunnel. Under Elias’ guidance, the Orioles have built one of baseball’s best farm systems, with Adley Rutschman, Grayson Rodriguez, D.L. Hall, Colton Cowser, Gunnar Henderson and Coby Mayo all featured on our forthcoming Top 100. Most notable are Rutschman and Rodriguez, who rank as the game’s top position player prospect and top pitching prospect, respectively.

As part of our Prospects Week interview series, Elias discussed the organization’s approach to scouting and player development.

———

David Laurila: I’ve asked you about the relationship between scouting and player development in previous interviews, and I’ll do so again now. In what ways has that relationship changed?

Mike Elias: “It continues to meld. As the days and years go by — given how sophisticated player development is becoming — how easy it is for an organization to communicate with itself is an underrated factor. I joined professional baseball in 2007, so I was already in the internet age, but if you talk to people who were working in professional baseball in the ‘80s, ‘90s, and early 2000s, a lot of effort was put into staying in touch with your remote employees. They would use voicemail. So a lot of the practices and divisions between scouting and player development come out of an era when it was hard for everyone to stay in touch. That’s no longer the case. Read the rest of this entry »

The following is our video tutorial for how to use (and get the most out of) The Board, which houses much of our work on amateur and pro prospects, including Future Value, org rankings, reports, tool grades, and video. The tutorial was initially recorded as part of Prospects Week 2021. A transcript, which has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity, is included below.

0:00 Introduction
0:45 How To Access The Board
1:20 Three Ways To View The Board

We have a great many data and research tools on FanGraphs. Some people are well-suited to clicking around the site, exploring on their own, and learning how to navigate FanGraphs that way, but others might benefit from a written, audio, or video tutorial. It is my aim to provide a version of that in this post. This first tutorial covers The Board, and gives an overview of some of the prospect evaluation methodology that has been used at the site. The transcript you’re reading now has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity. Due to the size of the text, this tutorial is best viewed in YouTube’s “Theater Mode,” or in full screen. In the header of each section below, you’ll find a link to the relevant section of the tutorial so that you can easily click around to specific topics.

You can find a link to The Board on the site’s Prospects menu header, or from the Prospects home page. There are three main ways to view The Board. There is a “Scouting Only” section, a “Stats Only” section, and a chocolate/vanilla swirl version (“Scouting + Stats!”) that features a mix of both old school scouting tool grades and a collection of telling statistics (K%, BB%, OBP, SLG, etc.). Read the rest of this entry »

The opening weekend of the NCAA season is in the books. Below, we have compiled a roundup of some of the players who sparked our interest, much like our weekly dispatches from last year. We’ll publish a post like this every week between now and either the draft or the end of the nation-wide amateur season, whichever comes first. We’ll also have a separate, more irregular series where we’ll accumulate our collective in-person scouting notes until we have enough for a post. Both of these series may lead to changes in our draft rankings on The Board, changes we’ll tend to note within the relevant player’s writeup.

Speaking of The Board, you’ll notice an update to the “Rank” column there. It’s a change inspired by a question: What is the right number of players to ultimately have ranked on the amateur section of The Board? Historically, our answer has been however many belong on the pro portion of The Board. This has tended to be about four rounds worth of players, though you could make an argument to go deeper, especially in our current era of player development. Read the rest of this entry »

Per the JAWS leaderboard, Adrián Beltré (4) and Scott Rolen (10) rank highest among third basemen not in the Hall of Fame. Beltré will almost certainly get the nod once he becomes eligible, while the currently-on-the ballot Rolen has been making strong headway toward Cooperstown. If and when both players are enshrined, which non-Hall of Fame third baseman will rank highest in JAWS?

The answer is Graig Nettles, who ranks 12th (11th if you don’t include Edgar Martinez). In terms of WAR, Nettles (65.7) ranks right in front of Martinez (65.5), and close behind Rolen (69.9). Beltré (84.1) is comfortably ahead of all three.

Should Nettles be in the Hall of Fame? His accolades and accomplishments include 390 home runs, six All-Star berths, two Gold Gloves — he’d have won more were it not for Brooks Robinson — and a pair of World Series rings. All told, he played in five Fall Classics. Back when Jay Jaffe was writing for Sports Illustrated, my esteemed colleague tabbed Nettles as the most-overlooked player at his position when it comes to Hall of Fame worthiness.

Meanwhile, was Beltré better than Robinson? A clear majority of the people who voted in a Twitter poll I ran yesterday feel that he was. Of the 337 people who weighed in, 61.7% opted for Beltré, while only 38.3% sided with the legendary Baltimore Orioles Hall of Famer. Read the rest of this entry »