Major League Baseball’s sticky stuff crackdown is working. Since the June 3 warning that increased enforcement of the foreign substance rule was coming, spin rates have fallen league-wide. The league-average spin-to-velocity ratio on four-seam fastballs, which sat comfortably above 24.5 rpm/mph for the entirety of the 2020 season and the beginning of the ’21 season, has fallen to under 24 rpm/mph for the first time since the beginning of ’19. This is what that enormous drop looks like visually:

The crackdown has had plenty of consequences, all of which have theoretically had a significant impact on the game. I touched a little bit on one of these outcomes — whether it was fair to ask pitchers to alter their stuff dramatically in the middle of a season — in a July 2 article on Garrett Richards, who claimed that he needed to try “to figure out how to pitch again” post-enforcement. But there has been one outstanding question all along: How will this impact offense? In a year that started with some of the lowest batting averages in baseball history and with run scoring heavily concentrated in home runs, that was of the utmost importance in the minds of baseball-followers, including those who work for the league and for teams. Cubs president Jed Hoyer, for example, called the impact of the sticky substance enforcement “a huge variable” in determining which players Chicago could target at the July 30 trade deadline.

In an article leading up to the changes in enforcement, I covered the potential impact the crackdown would have on offense with a focus on the effect of spin rates on batter performance. The trend was clear: Batters hit much better on four-seam fastballs with less velocity-adjusted spin, and in a world in which fewer pitches are thrown with elite spin, they should have an easier time at the plate. One executive even told Stephanie Apstein and Alex Prewitt of Sports Illustrated that he thought better enforcement of Rule 6.02(c) could actually have an outsized impact on reviving offense around the league, potentially lessening the pressure on baseball to institute rule changes to create more balls in play, higher batting averages, and more non-homer scoring overall. “I think people would be absolutely shocked if they actually enforced this, how much you’ll start to normalize things without rule changes,” they said. Read the rest of this entry »

For the past few days, I’d been searching for a baseball topic to write about. It usually takes less time, but we’re in that calm (if not monotonous) period between the All-Star break and the trade deadline. Ideas are scarcer. Maybe I’d settle on an article with a simple premise?

So I committed myself to tackling pitcher BABIP. (Good going, Justin!)

The notion that pitchers have no control over what happens to a ball in play ushered in a golden age of baseball research, and findings from back then still influence how we view the game today. But over time, we realized that exceptions do exist; for example, Clayton Kershaw consistently allows a below-average BABIP, most likely because he’s a phenomenal pitcher. In addition, certain pitchers have a knack for inducing weak contact in the form of pop-ups or grounders. Exactly how those batted balls impacted BABIP remained a mystery, but you could no longer brush off the metric as total noise.

Years later, Statcast data became available for public use. Even so, research on pitcher BABIP remained far and few between; it’s a daunting subject! I did use two articles as inspiration, however. The first is from FanGraphs user rplunkett97 on our community research page. Dating back to 2017, it mainly discusses a linear model with several variables (BB/9, GB%, Team UZR, and more) used to produce an expected BABIP for each pitcher. The second is courtesy of Alex Chamberlain, also from the same year, who used a mixture of Hard-hit and Barrel rate to create his own version of xBABIP.

Read the rest of this entry »

As is the annual tradition at FanGraphs, we’re using the week after the All-Star Game to take stock of the top 50 players in baseball by trade value in anticipation of next week’s trade deadline. For a more detailed introduction to this year’s exercise, as well as a look at those players who fell just short of the top 50, be sure to read the Introduction and Honorable Mentions piece, which can be found in the widget above.

For those who have been reading the Trade Value Series the last few seasons, the format should look familiar. For every player, you’ll see a table with the player’s projected five-year WAR from 2022-2026, courtesy of Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections. The table will also include the player’s guaranteed money, if any, the year through which their team has contractual control of them, last year’s rank (if applicable), and then projections, contract status, and age for each individual season through 2026, if the player is under contract or team control for those seasons. Last year’s rank includes a link to the relevant 2020 post. One note on the rankings: particularly at the bottom of the list, there’s not a lot of room between players. The ordinal rankings clearly matter, and we put players where they are for a reason, but there’s not much room between, say, 35 and 60. The magnitude of the differences in this part of the list is quite small. Several talent evaluators we talked to might prefer a player in the Honorable Mentions section to one on the back end of the list, or vice versa. We think the broad strokes are correct — but with so many players carrying roughly equivalent value, disagreements abounded. Thanks are due to Sean Dolinar for his help in creating the tables in these posts. At the bottom of the page, there is a grid showing all the players who have been ranked up to this point.

And now, to the next group of players. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the length of the baseball season (and postseason) compared to other sports’, whether Shohei Ohtani ever grows frustrated with his mere-mortal teammates, the prolific predictions of the Rockies’ Mike Redmond, a possible modification to the zombie-runner rule, an update on the Marlins’ run differential, a story about a broadcaster bet gone wrong, a listener report on Tony La Russa, Willie Stargell’s stars, an Ohtani playing-time fun fact, the AL MVP race, the Blue Jays returning to Toronto (and a hat tip to John McDonald), a few potential variations on the cycle, and when MLB will welcome its first active, openly gay player, then close with a discussion of MLB’s first month sans sticky stuff, focusing on the offensive effects and whether cheating is overrated.

Audio intro: Vetiver, "Been So Long"
Audio outro: The Posies, "Flavor of the Month"

Link to study on postseason randomness
Link to Neil Paine on MLB vs. the NBA
Link to Ohtani’s postgame comments
Link to The Onion on Ohtani
Link to Ohtani Week intro
Link to Redmond predictions story
Link to Nightengale on the zombie-runner rule
Link to The Athletic on the zombie-runner rule
Link to Jim Rooker story
Link to Jake Mintz’s ride
Link to Buster Olney on Stargell’s stars
Link to Engadget on Stargell’s stars
Link to cycle tweet
Link to story on Ron Wright
Link to story on the “Saint Cycle”
Link to Ben on sticky-stuff effects

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For the full introduction to the Replacement-Level Killers series, follow the link above. While still focusing upon teams that meet the loose definition of contenders (a .500 record or Playoff Odds of at least 10%), and that have gotten about 0.6 WAR or less thus far — which prorates to 1.0 WAR over a full season — this year I have incorporated our Depth Charts’ rest-of-season WAR projections into the equation for an additional perspective. Sometimes that may suggest that the team will clear the bar by a significant margin, but even so, I’ve included them here because the team’s performance at that spot is worth a look.

As noted previously, some of these situations are more dire than others, particularly when taken in the context of the rest of their roster. I don’t expect every team to go out and track down an upgrade before the July 30 deadline, and in this two-position batch in particular, I don’t get the sense that any of these teams have these positions atop their shopping lists. With catchers in particular, framing and the less-quantifiable aspects of knowing a pitching staff make it easier for teams to talk themselves out of changing things up unless an injury situation has compromised their depth.

Note that all individual stats in this article are through July 18, but the won-loss records and Playoff Odds include games of July 19. Read the rest of this entry »

The Learning and Developing a Pitch series returned last month after being on hiatus due to the pandemic. Each week, we’ll hear from three pitchers on a notable weapon in their arsenal. Today’s installment features a southpaw, Damon Jones, and a pair of right-handers, Zach McCambley and Josh Staumont, on their curveballs and sliders.

———

Damon Jones, Philadelphia Phillies prospect

“My slider is kind of seam-shifted. I get a lot of horizontal — something like 23 inches, which is pretty crazy — and I kind of picked it up off a Pitching Ninja video. It was Trevor Bauer’s grip, but I changed it up a little bit. It was more my thumb. I left the fingers how he had them, but he touches his thumb and I kind of hook it on the bottom part of the horseshoe. I think that helps the ball come out of my hand a little bit later. Watching the video, he wanted to get it out early and let it spin. I want it to be more of a late, back-foot pitch. The more I can make it look like a fastball the better, and it’s been pretty similar for me in terms of release point, release height, and all that.

“This was in 2019 — I made the jump from High-A to Triple-A that year — and it was shortly after spring training. After my first or second start in High-A, I was toying with stuff, saw the grip, and started throwing it. The guy on the Rapsodo was like, ‘Can you repeat that pitch? Can you do it again?’

“Then, when I got to Double-A, Tommy Hunter was rehabbing with us. He told me, ‘It’s like an Andrew Miller type of slider, it’s just wipeout.’ I was like, ‘Well, he’s got a lot of showtime and has seen a lot of guys with good sliders, and he’s comparing me to the guy Andrew Miller was when he was in his prime.’ I was like, ‘I’ll take that.’ Read the rest of this entry »

As is the annual tradition at FanGraphs, we’re using the week after the All-Star Game to take stock of the top 50 players in baseball by trade value in anticipation of next week’s trade deadline. For a more detailed introduction to this year’s exercise, as well as a look at those players who fell just short of the top 50, be sure to read the Introduction and Honorable Mentions piece, which can be found in the widget above.

For those who have been reading the Trade Value Series the last few seasons, the format should look familiar. For every player, you’ll see a table with the player’s projected five-year WAR from 2022-2026, courtesy of Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections. The table will also include the player’s guaranteed money, if any, the year through which their team has contractual control of them, last year’s rank (if applicable), and then projections, contract status, and age for each individual season through 2026, if the player is under contract or team control for those seasons. Last year’s rank includes a link to the relevant 2020 post. One note on the rankings: particularly at the bottom of the list, there’s not a lot of room between players. The ordinal rankings clearly matter, and we put players where they are for a reason, but there’s not much room between, say, 35 and 60. The magnitude of the differences in this part of the list is quite small. Several talent evaluators we talked to might prefer a player in the Honorable Mentions section to one on the back end of the list, or vice versa. We think the broad strokes are correct — but with so many players carrying roughly equivalent value, disagreements abounded. Thanks are due to Sean Dolinar for his help in creating the tables in these posts. At the bottom of the page, there is a grid showing all the players who have been ranked up to this point.

And now, to the next group of players. Read the rest of this entry »

What is the first thing that comes to mind when you think about Aaron Bummer? It’s an odd question I know. For many, the answer might not be a whole lot besides the fact that he has an amusing name. He is a reliever, after all; given his role, he’s not the most recognizable player. For the initiated, however, the first quality that comes to mind at the mere mention of Bummer is likely his supreme ability to generate groundballs. Bummer’s has been in the majors since 2017; in five seasons, he has posted groundball rates of 54.4%, 61.2%, 72.1%, 68.4% (I will note he only threw 9.1 innings in 2020), and 73.7%. Over that time frame, he ranks fourth in groundball rate among all pitchers who have tossed at least 50 innings.

The leading culprit behind his prolific groundball rates is his sinker. Sinkers have sharp downward movement that fade away from a pitcher’s glove-side. The downward movement, coupled with the pitch generally being lower in the zone, prevents hitters from squaring up the ball, instead impacting the upper-half, driving the ball into the dirt. This season, the average groundball rate for a sinker sits at 56.4% compared to 41.7% for all other pitch types. And Bummer has a great sinker, one that inspired a post from Devan Fink on these very pages last February. Devan demonstrated with a tidy model that Bummer’s sinker is an elite blend of velocity and arm-side and vertical movement, the perfect recipe for inducing piles of groundballs from the opposition. And Bummer’s sinker has remained excellent; in 2021, the pitch has a laughable 82.4% groundball rate. The pitch is so effective that it inspired its own profile from The Athletic’s James Fegan, which included an amusing story of Bummer picking up the pitch after watching Zack Britton pitch while the former dined at an Applebee’s.

Overall, Bummer has been an excellent reliever throughout his major league career. The White Sox signed him to a five-year contract prior to the 2020 season, with two club options tacked on to the end that can keep him on the South Side until 2026. Given the volatility of relievers, that’s quite the endorsement of Bummer’s skills and I find it difficult to fault Chicago for doing so. He has a career 3.23 ERA, a figure 26% better than league average when you consider the difficult confines of his home park. The park-adjusted FIP is just as impressive, sitting at 23% better than league average over 161.2 career innings. Read the rest of this entry »