One major point of contention in this offseason’s collective bargaining impasse is compensation for young players. In the two sides’ competing proposals, the existing Super Two system, which each year awards an additional year of arbitration to some pre-arb players with two-plus years of service time, has come up repeatedly. Whether it’s being replaced with an algorithmic solution, increased pay for some players based on performance, or an expansion of arbitration within the two-plus group, compensating these pre-arb but multi-year players is a key point of debate as the lockout wears on.

If we want to understand this debate, we need to understand how Super Two players have been compensated in the existing system. Without that context, the dispute can feel more theoretical than consequential, and it is obviously very consequential to the players involved. To that end, I decided to look at the last eight years of Super Two awards and come up with a rough heuristic for how their compensation relates to their production in those years. From there, I’ve created some rules of thumb, which I’ll share with you here before we get into the nitty-gritty details of how I did the calculations. Here it is, separated out by player type:

This table displays the amount of money a given player should make above the major league minimum based on how many times they’ve been through the arbitration process, their position, and their previous year’s production. Broadly speaking, the numbers make sense — players receive less per unit of production than they would in free agency, but their compensation gets closer and closer to free agency levels (roughly $6.5 million above minimum salary per WAR) as they go further into arbitration. Now let’s talk about how I got to these numbers, and the merits (and limits) of using this style of calculation to model arbitration awards. Read the rest of this entry »

Doug Latta’s name is well known in the baseball world, and for good reason. The long-time hitting instructor has worked with a plethora of players over the years, including a number of major league notables, at his Ball Yard facility in Northridge, California. Latta has been featured here at FanGraphs previously — most recently by Sung Min Kim in 2019 — and we’ll hear from him again in the latest installment of our Talks Hitting series.

———

David Laurila: I’ve asked a lot of hitters if they view hitting as more of an art or more of a science. A lot of people reading this might assume you’d say science, but is that actually the case?

Doug Latta: “No, and it’s not just both. It’s more than that. It’s a combination of science and art and everything in between. People look at a swing as a mechanical thing, and they’ll look at all of the [physical] elements, like movements, but there is an incredible psychological-and-mental side that plays into hitting in a game. You’ve got to transcend the mechanical side, because hitting is quite a feat at the major-league level.”

Laurila: Does the swing itself get overemphasized by some hitting instructors?

Latta: “I think a lot of instructors look at the swing itself, and part of that is, ‘This was a swing that did X in a game versus the swing you took the other day.’ I’ve always seen it as how we move. The things that may or may not affect us happen long before we initiate the swing. We talk about movement patterns and how that plays a role in what swing is going to come out. If your body isn’t working in an optimal way, the swing that’s going to come out is going to be affected.”

Laurila: You shy away from addressing guys you work with, but I assume Hunter Pence is fair game given that he’s spoken openly about what he learned from you?

Latta: “He would definitely be an outlier example of a body that moves in a different way than most other people. It’s almost an awkward movement pattern. Hunter came to us and make some changes during the 2018 offseason, and his 2019 year was incredible. He was able to integrate the changes, which were so different than everything else his body had been doing for 28 years.

“It’s also not only what his body was patterned to do, but how he would think about hitting — the concepts of hitting and how he would regard his moves. So, when the changes were made, it wasn’t just movements. It was thoughts. I love hearing Hunter talking about hitting now, because late in his career he was able to tap into the movements.”

Laurila: With the caveat that not every hitter is the same, what do all hitters need to do to be successful? What are the core components?

Latta: “I think the biggest core component is they have to move athletically. I’m constantly talking about balance, because balance is the integral element to athletic movement. And in hitting, a lot of moves we make really aren’t based on balance. When we start moving better, from the standpoint of clean moves to a position to hit, this changes a lot of things for the positive. For instance, timing and vision are improved. These are intangible elements that people often don’t consider. They’re looking at a hitter and saying, ‘Let’s change a swing,’ whereas when we move better, we see the ball better. If seeing the ball better isn’t a good thing for a hitter, I’m not sure what it is.

“When people start understanding that small compensation moves will affect how you see the ball — and how you move to do that — it makes sense that you essentially need to make hitters more efficient. Pitching has been getting really far ahead from the standpoint of development over the last 10 years, and not just in the major leagues; it runs all the way down to the minor leagues into the amateur side. The quality of pitching is going up, so hitters need to be more efficient. When the body moves efficiently, hitters are so much more effective, and that goes well beyond ‘executing a swing.’
Read the rest of this entry »

As you might have noticed if you were surfing FanGraphs while relaxing over the weekend — or recovering from shoveling snow in the Northeast — the ZiPS projections have now been populated in the projections section of the site.

There will be multiple updates to those projections this spring because, well, a whole bunch of the offseason remains, far more than is typical when ZiPS makes its appearance in the database. While I’m more cautiously optimistic than most of my colleagues are about the future of the 2022 season, in the present, baseball’s landscape is less about fans huddled around an abstract hot stove and more about the heat death of the universe. With no MLBPA members being signed, traded, or even acknowledged on official MLB channels, baseball has nearly entered a state of thermodynamic equilibrium.

While this is bad for the game and anyone who likes it, it at least makes depth charts less volatile and provides a good opportunity to run some mid-lockout standings. These are quite obviously nowhere near the final preseason projections, but they’re a snapshot of where baseball stands right now. Which teams are in good shape, and which ones still have work to do? Let’s forget about the eternal void that beckons and get to some projections! Read the rest of this entry »

As one of the few remaining free-agent pitchers, there will be a time (hopefully) soon enough when Carlos Rodón is a hot commodity. A pitcher coming off a 4.9 WAR season usually doesn’t have serious contract questions attached to them, but that’s the case for Rodón, who amassed that WAR total in only 132.2 innings and was given significant rest between starts, as his velocity dipped significantly over the course of the year. The end result is that he didn’t receive a qualifying offer from the White Sox and remained unsigned as the lockout began.

Rodón’s injury history combined with the in-season fatigue is alarming on its own, but a pitcher who can put together a 5-win season in under 200 innings deserves a fair assessment. How likely is it that those fatigue issues occur again, and if they do, what team is best suited to handle a mixed starter/reliever workload?

We’ll start with assessing the fatigue issues. As noted, Rodón threw 132.2 innings in 2021 — rather remarkable, considering he had only thrown 42.1 innings in ’19 and ’20 combined. Innings jumps that large are understandably scary, but every pitcher experienced that after the 2020 season; Rodon’s was the 24th largest year-to-year increase from that season to last year. That is something, but there was a significant lack of workload for Rodón in 2019 as well. Where does he rank in terms of innings jumps from 2019 and ’20 combined to 2021?

Many of the pitchers here have suffered significant injuries before and once again ran into injury troubles this past season. Regardless, the jump for Rodón was not unprecedented; what’s maybe more concerning is the velocity drop in-season.

Rodón’s velo saw a more characteristic switch after his last start of seven-plus innings on July 18. Before then, there was a clearer build-up from innings 1–3 to innings 4–6; after, the relationship breaks. That start on the 18th was seemingly max effort the whole time, with the highest early-inning velocity he’d shown all year. There’s nothing that we can reasonably assume about the nature of his shoulder fatigue, whether it’s this one start that caused trouble or having hit a wall in general, but his season decline began there. He had built up to 89.2 innings before that July 18 start; everything after has the caveat of him either throwing through noticeable injury, receiving extended periods of rest, or spending time on the IL.

If we take those 89.2 innings as a benchmark of the healthy Rodón, we can look at other year-to-year workload increases to get a sense of what may be reasonable.

For those that do throw somewhere in the range of 90 innings, jumps in the range of 30–40 innings are within reason, although many of those who fall into that 80–90 range are midseason call-ups. In the 130-inning range, best-case jumps top out at 20 or so innings. Barring injury and without much else information to bake in, we would expect Rodón in 2022 to fall somewhere between 110 and 150 innings.
Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley ask their audience how to handle their team preview podcast series with the resolution of the lockout still in doubt, then banter about Shohei Ohtani becoming the cover model for MLB The Show 22, “Big Boss” Tsuyoshi Shinjo pioneering a new model of major league manager for the Nippon Ham Fighters, and the alternate-timeline MLB career of former Expos draftee Tom Brady. Then (44:19) they discuss what would be covered in an “Eleventh Inning” of Ken Burns’s Baseball if the documentarian made an update to cover the last 12 years.

Audio intro: Grateful Dead, “Big Boss Man”
Audio outro: Pinegrove, “11th hour”

Link to 2021 season preview series
Link to ESPN on labor deadlines
Link to story about Ohtani cover
Link to photo of “Big Boss”
Link to Shinjo’s latest outfit
Link to Shinjo’s ride
Link to Shinjo’s economic impact
Link to Kyodo News on Shinjo
Link to Jim Allen on Shinjo
Link to Allen on Shinjo again
Link to Jason Coskrey on Shinjo
Link to Brady’s retirement post
Link to Sportsnet on Brady and baseball
Link to SI on Brady and baseball
Link to ABC News on Brady and baseball
Link to Kevin Clark on Brady
Link to Burns on a sequel in 2010
Link to Burns on a sequel in 2013
Link to Burns on a sequel in 2021
Link to Ben on the team of the decade
Link to remastered/restored Baseball

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As you might have noticed if you were surfing FanGraphs while relaxing over the weekend — or recovering from shoveling snow in the Northeast — the ZiPS projections have now been populated in the projections section of the site.

There will be multiple updates to those projections this spring because, well, a whole bunch of the offseason remains, far more than is typical when ZiPS makes its appearance in the database. While I’m more cautiously optimistic than most of my colleagues are about the future of the 2022 season, in the present, baseball’s landscape is less about fans huddled around an abstract hot stove and more about the heat death of the universe. With no MLBPA members being signed, traded, or even acknowledged on official MLB channels, baseball has nearly entered a state of thermodynamic equilibrium.

While this is bad for the game and anyone who likes it, it at least makes depth charts less volatile and provides a good opportunity to run some mid-lockout standings. These are quite obviously nowhere near the final preseason projections, but they’re a snapshot of where baseball stands right now. Which teams are in good shape, and which ones still have work to do?
Let’s forget about the eternal void that beckons and get to some projections! Read the rest of this entry »

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 »