Josh Jung is the top position player prospect in the Texas Rangers system. He’s also a bona fide hitting nerd. A 23-year-old third baseman who was drafted eighth overall in 2019 out of Texas Tech University, Jung not only embraces analytics, he’s reconfigured his swing and his approach since inking a contract. The results speak for themselves. Splitting his first full professional season between Double-A Round Rock and Triple-A Frisco, Jung slashed .326/.398/.592 with 19 home runs in just 342 plate appearances. His best-in-the-organization wRC+ was a lusty 152.

Jung discussed his data-driven development, which comes with a “train dirty to play clean” mindset, last week over the phone.

———

David Laurila: Let’s start with one of my favorite openers: Do you view hitting as more of an art, or as more of a science?

Josh Jung: “It’s both. Trying to be consistent is the art part. When you break it down and go analytical is the science part of it.”

Laurila: Which way would you lean if forced to choose one or the other?

Jung: [Long pause] “Maybe more of an art. Hitting is one of the hardest things to do in the world of sports. If you’re successful three out of 10 times you’re viewed as good, and that doesn’t happen in any other sport, or with any other metric. So I’d have to say it’s pretty much an art.”

Laurila: How would you describe your art? Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the election of David Ortiz, the ballot banishments of Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and Curt Schilling, and the rest of the Hall of Fame voting results (including Scott Rolen’s auspicious surge), react to reports about the latest labor talks (with an emphasis on the problems with using public WAR metrics to determine pre-arbitration bonuses), wonder why the Giants avoided the Kevin Gausman market, marvel at the virtues of throwing fastballs right down the middle, and discuss two sudden-death scenarios: the Frontier League’s new extra-innings solution, and an NFL-inspired one-game-playoffs plan.

Audio intro: Another Michael, “Big Pop”
Audio outro: John Cale, “Sudden Death”

Link to 2022 HoF voting results
Link to 2021 HoF voting results
Link to Jay Jaffe on the results
Link to Jason Sardell’s projections
Link to projections comparison
Link to BBHOF Tracker
Link to Emma on the Tracker
Link to Passan on Bonds
Link to Michael Baumann on PED players
Link to data on new votes for Bonds/Clemens
Link to Ben on abstaining from voting
Link to January 24 MLBTR labor update
Link to January 25 MLBTR labor update
Link to later January 25 MLBTR update
Link to MLBTR on canceling games
Link to Sean Forman WAR thread
Link to Jonathan Judge article
Link to Russell Carleton on WAR use
Link to Ben on ever-evolving WAR
Link to Gausman report
Link to Forbes franchise valuations
Link to Justin Choi on fastballs
Link to Frontier League announcement
Link to J.J. Cooper on the Frontier League
Link to Tango’s Frontier League tweet
Link to FiveThirtyEight on the NFL weekend
Link to Neil Paine on true talent
Link to Michael Lopez on playoff randomness
Link to Joe Sheehan’s playoff proposal
Link to Ben on Schilling

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There’s no shutout this year — instead, there’s joy in Cooperstown. On Tuesday, the Baseball Hall of Fame announced the voting results for this year’s BBWAA ballot, and after a year in which no candidate was elected and featured a contentious election cycle in which it quickly became apparent that the four prominent 10th-year candidates wouldn’t gain entry in their final year of eligibility, David Ortiz broke through on his first try. The centerpiece of the Red Sox’s three championships from 2004-13 — the first of which broke an 86-year drought — and the record-holder among designated hitters in several key categories, Ortiz received 77.9% from among the 394 writers who cast a ballot.

Over a two-month span during which discussions of character-related issues — mainly pertaining to performance-enhancing drugs and domestic violence — at times loomed larger than those pertaining to traditional and advanced statistics and other credentials, Ortiz gained entry while Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and Curt Schilling did not. That trio, all in the final year on the writers’ ballot, had the highest shares of the vote last year, but between Bonds’ and Clemens’ links to PEDs and Schilling’s long history of toxicity via his social media accounts, none was able to change the minds of enough voters this year. Schilling, in fact, requested to be removed from this year’s ballot after falling short last year, and while the Hall denied that request, so many voters obliged that his share of the vote dropped 12.5% from last year’s ballot-leading share of 71.1%. He ranked fifth from among the 30 candidates, while Bonds (66.0%) and Clemens (65.2%) ranked second and third respectively, with Scott Rolen (63.2%) fourth. Read the rest of this entry »

Last Friday, I suggested a change to line scores that I think would go a long way towards updating them for the modern era. I’ve spent quite a bit of time thinking about the broad strokes of the change – how errors and hits are no longer the most useful two data points, and how extra-base hits can tell you a lot about how a game felt.

One thing I couldn’t do before last Friday: get thousands of passionate baseball fans to read my idea and suggest changes. I still like my idea – one-base hits and extra-base hits instead of hits and errors – but I liked tons of the suggestions that I received in the comments as well. Rather than rule by fiat, I thought it would be interesting to poll the same people who came up with all these great ideas on which one they like best.

To demonstrate each of the possible scoring solutions, I’m going to use the contest between the Astros and A’s that led off last Friday’s column. As a reminder, here’s the line score rendered in the current style (courtesy of Baseball Reference):
Read the rest of this entry »

I have a problem. I can’t stop writing about how good Luke Weaver can be, even as he continues to be just okay. Don’t believe me? The first article I ever wrote was titled “Why is Luke Weaver so Effective?” When he started strong in the 2019 season, I was back on the same nonsense again, this time with “Luke Weaver, Retooled and Reimagined.”

As soon as I wrote that, he strained his forearm and barely pitched again that year. He came back in 2020 and 2021 and scuffled – he managed a 4.53 FIP (4.61 xFIP) in 117.2 innings, but a low strand rate as part of a brutal 2020 led to an aggregate 5.28 ERA. And here I am again, writing about how Weaver can excel in 2022.

Why do I keep doing it? Because I keep believing it! I can tell you truthfully that I think he has the tools to be a second or third starter, even though he’s been more like a fourth or fifth option so far in his career. You might wonder how that’s the case – after all, he’s basically a two-pitch pitcher, he doesn’t throw particularly hard, and his changeup, easily his best pitch, got tattooed in ‘21. I’m here to tell you: you just have to believe.
Read the rest of this entry »

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The finish line of one of the longest Hall of Fame election cycles in memory is in sight. On Tuesday, the results of this year’s BBWAA balloting will be announced by new Hall president Josh Rawich at 6 pm ET on MLB Network. With so many polarizing and at times off-putting candidates — by my count, eight have been credibly linked to performance-enhancing drugs and six to incidents of domestic violence — it’s been another particularly contentious cycle; beyond the usual back-and-forth between voters and bystanders on social media, we’ve even seen a top candidate fire back at a voter over a snub. It remains entirely possible that for the second year in a row, the writers won’t elect a single candidate, something that hasn’t happened since 1958 and ’60, a point at which the BBWAA was voting on a biennial basis.

If it were up to FanGraphs readers, however, three candidates would be headed to Cooperstown this summer, based on the results of our fourth annual Hall of Fame crowdsource ballot. As has been the case since the 2019 ballot, registered FanGraphs users were invited to select as many as 10 candidates from this year’s slate, just as actual voters do, using the same December 31 deadline. A total of 1,018 users participated, which is down 11.6% from last year, a drop that probably owes something to a couple of lapses on my part. First, I forgot to send out a last call for votes, having last tweeted about the crowdsource ballot on December 23, and second, I plumb forgot to submit my own ballot into the system after filling out my paper one and dropping it in the mail on December 30. Though I called up the page and checked the boxes at some point that week, I was hazy on whether I’d actually completed the task until noticing that none of the individual returns matched my particular 10. None of those 1,018 ballots has Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and Joe Nathan but not Alex Rodriguez or Manny Ramirez, just as none of the 178 ballots in the Ballot Tracker as of 12:01 AM ET on January 24 does. Oops. Read the rest of this entry »

On last week’s episode of FanGraphs Audio, Jay Jaffe welcomed ESPN senior writer and host of the Baseball Tonight podcast, Buster Olney, for a conversation about the upcoming Hall of Fame election and the effects of modern ballot-tracking. This transcribed conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

…

Jay Jaffe [3:03]: For FanGraphs audio, this is Jay Jaffe. It’s Hall of Fame election season, with the results set to be announced on January 25. Against the backdrop of the current lockout, it’s been a contentious election cycle, particularly with a quartet of controversial candidates — Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Sammy Sosa, and Curt Schilling — in their final year of eligibility, and Alex Rodriguez and David Ortiz in their first. The topics of performance enhancing drugs and the character clause have loomed large, and at times the din of the debate has been overwhelming. Earlier this month at ESPN, Buster Olney penned a piece asking about whether this prolonged discussion and the daily drip of ballot reveals is good for the Hall and the electoral process. I took issue with a couple of Buster’s points, and after a friendly exchange on Twitter, it seemed natural for the two of us to continue our conversation on a podcast.

With me today is ESPN senior writer and host of the Baseball Tonight podcast, Buster Olney, whom I’ve been reading for longer than I’ve been writing about baseball, which is to say a long time. Buster came to my attention back when he was covering the Yankees for the New York Times, and he’s been at ESPN now for a long time. We’ve crossed paths in conversation once at a Pitch Talks in Toronto in 2016. So it’s really great to have him on the show. Welcome, Buster. Read the rest of this entry »

Is throwing a four-seam fastball down the middle a good idea? Regardless of whom you ask, the answer is probably no, and for good reason – the heart of the zone is where the majority of hard contact occurs, and fastballs are the most contact-prone of any pitch type. This disdain is rooted in our baseball lexicon, too. You’ll notice that after a ball is hit out of the park, broadcasters tend to remark that the pitcher “left one over the middle” or “hung his fastball.” The location is often to blame.

That doesn’t stop pitchers from trying, though. That’s not always because they want to – command comes and goes, after all – but it’s also because hitting a baseball is extremely difficult. Swings and misses happen! Bad contact happens! In each season since 2015, when Statcast data became public, hitters have accumulated a negative run value against down-the-middle fastballs. They’re still in the red despite seeing easier pitches. Though no pitcher would want to live solely in the middle, it makes sense why one might venture there.

But 2021 brought changes to the majors, and this is one of them: Hitters did worse against so-called meatballs than ever before. Here’s a graph that shows the league’s run value per 100 against fastballs in Baseball Savant’s “Heart” zone. Again, 2015 is the starting point:

Read the rest of this entry »