Welcome back, baseball! After a prolonged offseason rife with drama and surprises, Opening Day is finally upon us. Last year, I introduced these power rankings as a way to think about all 30 teams in baseball and stack them up against each other outside the rigid structures of leagues or divisions. Nearly every major site has some form of power rankings, usually derived from whatever panel of experts each site employs. These rankings, though, are entirely data driven.

First, we take the three most important components of a team — their offense (wRC+), and their starting rotation and bullpen (a 50/50 blend of FIP- and RA9-) — and weight and combine them to create an overall team quality metric. For these Opening Day power rankings, I’ve used each team’s projected stats based on their Depth Charts projections. New for this year, I’ve opted to include defense as a component, though it’s weighted less heavily than offense and pitching. Some element of team defense is captured by RA9-, but now that FanGraphs has OAA/RAA from Statcast available on our leaderboards, I’ve chosen to include that as the defensive component for each team. For just this run of rankings, I’ve used the projected fielding component of WAR that appears on our Depth Charts projections. Read the rest of this entry »

Much of the New York-market media attention that’s followed the announcement that Ron Marinaccio will be on the Yankees’ Opening Day roster has centered on his roots. A boyhood fan of the team that he now plays for, the right-hander was born and raised in Toms River, New Jersey.

There’s much more to his story. A 2017 19th-round pick out of the University of Delaware, Marinaccio has gone from a marginal prospect to the doorstep of a major-league debut in a little more than a year. As Eric Longenhagen put it when he wrote up the 26-year-old reliever for our 2022 Yankees Top Prospects list, “Marinaccio was a 2021 revelation.” In 40 outings comprising 66.1 innings between Double-A Somerset and Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, Marinaccio logged a 2.04 ERA and allowed just 35 hits. Moreover, he fanned 105 batters.

A pitch that he hadn’t previously featured has played a big role in his ascent. Described by Longenhagen as a “trapdoor-action changeup,” the offering grades out at 60 on the 20/80 scouting scale — and it’s not his only effective weapon. Marinaccio has increased the velocity of his fastball, and he’s also revamped his slider, in the process adding a horizontal-in-the-opposite-direction component to his arsenal.

Marinaccio — No. 20 on on the aforementioned Yankees list — discussed the analytics-driven evolution of his repertoire prior to a recent spring training game.

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David Laurila: What is the story behind your changeup?

Ron Marinaccio: “I’ve always had it, and the analytics kind of helped bring it out. With the boost of my velo last year, they moved me up a level, and from there we started diving a little bit deeper into the analytics. I realized that I’d only been throwing the changeup around 5% of the time, whereas last year it was probably closer to 40%, maybe even 50%. The usage went way up.”

Laurila: You said the analytics helped bring it out. Had you not known that it was good?

Marinaccio: “Yes, but in the past things were generally more fastball/slider. That was the way people thought righties should pitch to righties. I would throw it mostly to lefties, but once I started throwing it more to righties, I started to get more confidence in it. That’s when I was like, ‘Wow, I was only throwing this 5% of the time?’ My first outing, I threw over 50% changeups.”

Laurila: When and where did you first learn your changeup? Read the rest of this entry »

After an offseason that saw labor acrimony bookended by two frenetic free agency periods, the 2022 season is almost upon us; we made it. And on this, the morning of Opening Day, we engage in our annual tradition of asking our staff to open themselves up to public ridicule and predict the year in baseball. Some of these predictions will prove to be prescient; others will make their forecaster feel a little silly. Last year’s Braves? Our staff thought they’d win the NL East. Last year’s Angels, Mets, Twins, and Padres? Whoops! Such is the prognostication business.

We asked the staff to predict the expanded playoff field, pennant and World Series winners, and the individual award recipients. Folks from FanGraphs and RotoGraphs weighed in; here are the results. Read the rest of this entry »

Episode 969

FanGraphs Audio is here a day early this week in celebration of Opening Day, and we have a pair of great interviews to ring in the season.

• At the top of the show, David Laurila welcomes Matt Bowman, a former Cardinals and Reds pitcher who is now in the Yankees system. The pair first talked years ago, and the right-hander shares how he has evolved both as a pitcher and as a student of pitching in the time since. Bowman also discusses his first Opening Day on a major league roster, talking to Amir Garrett about his slider, recovering from Tommy John surgery, and how impressed he is by Yankees pitching development. [2:59]
• In the second half, Jay Jaffe welcomes long-time baseball writer and friend Craig Calcaterra, who recently published his book Rethinking Fandom: How to Beat the Sports-Industrial Complex at Its Own Game. He and Jay talk about how the challenges of authoring a book compare to daily writing, as well as how the book came to be. The pair also discuss how our fandom changes as we grow as people, the inherent conflict of criticizing an industry you work in, and the occasional value of embracing being a fair-weather fan. [31:38]

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José Ramírez is subtly bending the fabric of space and time. It’s the only way I can explain it. How else can you square the particular details of his hitting prowess? He’s impossibly quick to the ball, creating consistent loud contact. That should require a wild swing, but it doesn’t. He’s one of the best contact hitters in baseball. He has one of the best approaches in the game; sometimes it seems like he knows what’s coming before the pitcher throws it. He’s one of the best defenders in the game. It all feels vaguely magical.

Until today, he was also the most underpaid star in baseball. A five-year, $26 million extension he signed before the 2017 season (with two team options for another $26 million) immediately preceded his ascent to one of the best players in the game. That’s no longer true; today, he more than tripled his career guaranteed earnings by agreeing to a five-year, $124 million extension with the Guardians.

BREAKING: Star third baseman José Ramirez and the Cleveland Guardians are in agreement on a five-year, $124M contract extension, sources familiar with the deal tell ESPN. Deal includes full no-trade clause. With this year and pickup of a 2023 option, Ramirez is guaranteed $150M.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) April 6, 2022

This deal, which starts after the 2023 season, should keep Ramírez in Cleveland for the rest of his peak, and quite possibly the rest of his career. For fans of a franchise that had seen its home-grown stars leave quite a bit of late, it’s a welcome turn of events. For Ramírez, it’s financial and — thanks to a no-trade clause — workplace stability.

I know this article is about a contract, but I can’t help it: I just want to talk about how great Ramírez is. I wasn’t exaggerating up above; I really do struggle to wrap my head around his talent. Most hitters have identifiable holes, places where they sacrifice one thing to gain greatly in another area. Level, four-seam-punishing swing? You likely struggle with sinkers low in the zone. Patient approach that hunts fastballs and waits out secondary pitches? Breaking balls in the zone will be your Kryptonite. Whip-quick pull hitter? You might struggle with pitches away. Read the rest of this entry »

On Tuesday, ESPN’s Buster Olney reported that Major League Baseball is expected to allow players to use wearable signal devices to call pitches this season. Later in the day, the Associated Press reported that the league did indeed approve the use of such devices and sent a five-page memorandum to teams’ general managers, assistant GMs, managers and equipment managers outlining the rules regarding such devices. Known as the PitchCom system, the devices were tested in the minors last season and have made their way around the majors during this year’s spring training, drawing glowing reviews. Aimed at improving the pace of play and countering sign stealing — by both legal and illegal means — their adoption addresses two issues that have been hot-buttons in recent years and have resurfaced this spring. In that light, the league could be doing more to reassure the public that it’s on top of potential abuses of the system.

Created by a company called ProMystic that provides modular technology to mentalists and magicians (!), the PitchCom system consists of a push-button transmitter that fits into a wristband worn by the catcher, and receivers that fit into the padding of the catcher’s helmet and the sweatbands of the caps worn by the pitcher and other fielders. In the transmitter’s nine-button grid, each button corresponds to a given pitch type as well as a location, the latter akin to the familiar three-by-three strike zone grid. From the AP report: “four seam high inside, curve hi middle, slider hi outside, change mid inside, sinker middle, cutter mid out, splitter low inside, knuckle lo middle, two seam low outside.” The other three buttons to the left of the grid are to cancel the selection and to adjust the volume up or down.

Through an encrypted signal, the choice of pitch and location is conveyed, with an audio output that uses a proprietary variant of bone-conduction technology (bypassing the ear canal) and has preprogrammed English and Spanish options, though players can record their own audio. Olney reported that as many as three teammates besides the battery will be allowed to wear receivers so as to aid defensive positioning; generally those will be the middle infielders and the center fielder. Read the rest of this entry »

The plight of the Los Angeles Angels is well known by now. Despite employing two generational talents in Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani, they’ve made the playoffs just once in the last 12 seasons. Even worse, they’ve had a winning record in just four of those 12 seasons, and haven’t finished above .500 since going 85-77 in 2015. It’s not for lack of trying either. They’ve signed plenty of big name free agents to massive contracts to try and get them over the hump. Those efforts haven’t paid off yet, however, and the latest veteran to get kicked to the curb before hitting free agency is Justin Upton, who was designated for assignment on Sunday with a year left on his contract.

Since 2011, the Angels have signed four free agents to contracts that are five years or longer, with four additional extensions of similar length. The track record for those signings has been pretty ghastly:

C.J. Wilson, Josh Hamilton, Albert Pujols, and Upton didn’t finish out their contract term with the Angels, while the jury is still out on Rendon; Mike Trout’s deals can comfortably be scored wins. Injuries cut Wilson’s career short while a combination of injury and off-field issues led the Angels to trade Hamilton just two years into his huge contract. Pujols’s production in Anaheim was a shadow of his career-defining tenure in St. Louis, though he did manage some late season magic for the Dodgers last year. He’ll finish out his career where it started. By signing all of these players to large, long-term contracts, the Angels were doing exactly what you’d expect them to do in their position: spend to supplement their established stars. Its unfortunate, then, that the majority of these contracts didn’t pan out, particularly when pitching remained such a consistent need. Read the rest of this entry »

It arrived stressfully, chaotically, and slightly late, but the 2022 season is here. And that means it’s time for one last important sabermetric ritual: the final ZiPS projected standings that will surely come back and haunt me multiple times as the season progresses.

The methodology I’m using here isn’t identical to the one we use in our Projected Standings, so there will naturally be some important differences in the results. So how does ZiPS calculate the season? Stored within ZiPS are the first through 99th percentile projections for each player. I start by making a generalized depth chart, using our Depth Charts as an initial starting point. Since these are my curated projections, I make changes based on my personal feelings about who will receive playing time, as filtered by arbitrary whimsy my logic and reasoning. ZiPS then generates a million versions of each team in Monte Carlo fashion — the computational algorithms, that is (no one is dressing up in a tuxedo and playing baccarat like James Bond).

After that is done, ZiPS applies another set of algorithms with a generalized distribution of injury risk, which change the baseline PAs/IPs selected for each player. Of note is that higher-percentile projections already have more playing time than lower-percentile projections before this step. ZiPS then automatically “fills in” playing time from the next players on the list (proportionally) to get to a full slate of plate appearances and innings.

The result is a million different rosters for each team and an associated winning percentage for each of those million teams. After applying the new strength of schedule calculations based on the other 29 teams, I end up with the standings for each of the million seasons. This is actually much less complex than it sounds. Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier this offseason, we released our team expected win totals and playoff odds for the 2022 season. These are based upon the FanGraphs Depth Charts, which use a 50/50 blend of ZiPS and Steamer and our manually maintained playing time estimates. To arrive at the playoff odds, we then simulate the upcoming season 20,000 times, taking strength of schedule into account. (You can learn more about the FanGraphs playoff odds here.)

For the second straight year, we’ve also run the same process using the Average Total Cost (ATC) Projections as our base.

The ATC Projections have been available on the pages of FanGraphs since 2017. ATC is smart aggregation of other projections; its methodology is based on the process that Nate Silver uses with his political forecasting model over at FiveThirtyEight. Read the rest of this entry »

Bailey Falter is unique. As erstwhile FanGraphs scribe Devan Fink explained when he wrote about the 24-year-old Philadelphia Phillies left-hander last summer, Falter features a 92-mph fastball that is, for all intents and purposes, a 95-mph fastball. The effective velocity comes courtesy of extreme extension. A 6-foot-4, 195-pound native of Chino Hills, California, Falter has a delivery that puts him seven-plus feet off the mound when he releases the baseball.

Projected to be a valuable part of the Phillies bullpen this year — some evaluators feel he’ll ultimately secure a spot in the starting rotation — Falter is coming off of a rookie campaign where he logged a 5.61 ERA and a 3.79 FIP over 33.2 innings. He’s been impressive this spring; with the caveat that Grapefruit League performances need to be taken with a large grain of salt, the southpaw has been sharp, allowing just five baserunners in seven innings.

Falter discussed his delivery, and the repertoire that comes with it, following a recent game in Clearwater.

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David Laurila: You’re known primarily for your delivery, particularly the amount of extension you get. Have you always thrown that way?

Bailey Falter: “Yes. I’ve had the same delivery and extension ever since I can remember. Honestly. I had a pitching coach back home, when I was growing up, named Steve Lefebvre. He tried to tweak me up a little bit — kind of shorten me up — because I was a guy that was never going to light up a radar gun, and we thought it could possibly be due to me having such a long stride. I ended up throwing the same speed.” Read the rest of this entry »