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 »

José Cruz Sr. had an outstanding career. Playing for three teams — most notably the Houston Astros — from 1970-1988, the Puerto Rico-born outfielder logged 2,251 hits while putting up a 119 wRC+ and 50.8 WAR. As his grandson, Detroit Tigers infield prospect Trei Cruz put it, the family patriarch may not be a Hall of Famer, but he is in “The Hall of Very Good.”

Moreover, the father of 1997-2008 big-leaguer José Cruz Jr. is a 74-year-old in a younger man’s body.

“He has more energy than anybody I’ve ever met in my life,” explained Trei, who calls Houston home and is No. 14 on our 2022 Tigers Top Prospect list. “I actually work with him, every single day. He throws BP for hours, and it’s some of the best left-handed BP you’ll ever see. He’s got a lot of life in his arm — he’ll really chuck it in there — and along with gas he’ll mix in sliders and changeups. Guys actually come to hit with me, because his BP is so good. He’s amazing, man. I don’t know how he does it.”

The smooth left-handed-stroke that produced 650 extra-base hits is still there, as well. The septuagenarian may not be able to catch up to mid-90s heat anymore, but he hasn’t forgotten what to do with a bat in his hands. According to Trei, his abuelo isn’t shy about standing in the box when the situation calls for it. Read the rest of this entry »

2:00	Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks, and welcome to my Friday chat!

2:01

Jay Jaffe: Today I have a FanGraphs Audio podcast spot of a conversation I had with ESPN’s Buster Olney (https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/fangraphs-audio-buster-olney-and-jay-j…) in which we discussed his recent piece about the Hall of Fame Tracker (https://www.espn.com/mlb/insider/insider/story/_/id/32999293/what-lear…) and how expanded coverage of the election cycle has changed the Hall of Fame process. Plus stuff about the character clause, the lockout, and more…

2:03	Jay Jaffe: Earlier this week I had profiles of Tim Lincecum (https://blogs.fangraphs.com/jaws-and-the-2022-hall-of-fame-ballot-tim-…) and Jonathan Papelbon (https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/jaws-and-the-2022-hall-of-fame-ballot-…), the final two profiles of this year’s 30 candidates.

2:06

Jay Jaffe: The big problem with next year’s Today’s Game ballot is is that Bonds, Clemens, Schilling, and Sosa will all be eligible, which could very well take up a significant chunk of real estate and oxygen. You’ve got guys who fell off the writers’ ballot (McGriff, Lofton), and managers (holdover Lou Piniella, plus Bochy and possibly Jim Leyland), and while there still could be other candidates on there, it might be hard to justify putting Joe West at the head of the line.

2:08

Jay Jaffe: and yes, since the Era Committee vote is basically a math problem — there are only 64 ballot slots to go around (16 x 4) and12 votes needed to gain entry, the more good candidates there are on the ballot the tougher it is to get a consensus. A repeat of the recent Golden Days result, with four candidates getting elected and a fifth missing by one vote, is extremely unlikely, and even getting three candidates elected would be as well.

Read the rest of this entry »

After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for a decade. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Milwaukee Brewers.

Batters

I can’t say I’m displeased to see Luis Urías at the top of the batter list — I’ve long been fascinated by him and even featured him on my breakout list last year — but I’d definitely be uneasy about having him as my team’s best player. Urías projects to essentially repeat his 2021 season. Third base (or second) is a better long-term home for him than shortstop, so last year’s Willy Adames acquisition showed the correct instinct on Milwaukee’s part. Read the rest of this entry »

Admit it: you don’t like line scores. If you look at them, it’s only in passing, or to make yourself a little angry (the indignant kind) after a game your team lost. Nine hits, and we only scored two runs?!? The other team scored four runs on four hits?!? There ain’t no justice. They even made an error, and we kept a clean sheet! How could this have happened?

Of course, if you weren’t looking at a line score, you probably wouldn’t make either of those complaints, because it’s unlikely that which team made an error had that much of a bearing on the outcome. And that’s a shame, because the line score should be a great source of information. It’s an ingenious construction – tons of data conveyed in a compressed format. The inning-by-inning scoreline gives you the dramatic beats of the game – who scored when, whether it was a comeback or a wire-to-wire romp, and so on. The smattering of information on the right tells you roughly how the runs scored with great efficiency.

Or at least, it should tell you how the runs scored. The problem is, it really doesn’t. Take this one (courtesy of Baseball Reference), from an April 1 tilt between the Astros and Athletics:

The Astros barely out-hit the A’s. They played atrocious defense. They won by seven runs anyway. That’s because a single and a double (or a triple or a home run) count the same under “hits.” Meanwhile walks don’t count anywhere but errors, which occur far less frequently than walks and produce similar results, take up a third of the available real estate. Home runs matter more than either, and are nowhere to be found. Let’s look at a more complete tale of the tape for this game:

Read the rest of this entry »

Episode 958

On this week’s episode, we sit down with a veteran baseball writer to talk about the Hall of Fame before hearing from a minor league outfielder with plenty under his belt already.

• To begin the show, Jay Jaffe welcomes Buster Olney, senior writer at ESPN and host of the Baseball Tonight podcast. Earlier this month, Buster wrote a piece about the upcoming Hall of Fame election and the effects of ballot-tracking, and he and Jay were eager to dive into the nuances of the issue. The duo discuss why Buster no longer participates in voting, the hypocrisy involved in the creation of the character clause, how important accountability and transparency have been among voters, how the industry covered the steroid era, and the current labor lockout. [3:03]
• In the second half, David Laurila welcomes free-agent outfielder Rhett Wiseman. The pair first talked a decade ago, and since then Wiseman has been drafted twice, won a championship with Vanderbilt in 2014, played in the Nationals system, and recently reached free agency. We hear about that journey and the challenges of the minor league experience, as well as the pros and cons of the CBA, the need for a minor league players union, and how impressive it was to play with Juan Soto. [42:22]

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Audio after the jump. (Approximate 73 minutes play time.)

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This week’s Chin Music features the return of FanGraphs’ very own Ben Clemens, and despite the dearth of baseball news, we still find plenty to talk about. We begin by discussing what’s not happening in regards to the labor situation, then get into the biggest remaining free agent switching agents, the future of Seiya Suzuka and the past of Jon Lester, plus an extended sidetrack conversation on unique box score lines. Then it’s your emails on stadium changes, agents, and baseball stock investing, followed by some high-brow Moments Of Culture from the world of film and literature. As always, we hope you enjoy, and thank you for listening.

Music by Mirror Boxx.

Have a question you’d like answered on the show? Ask us anything at chinmusic@fangraphs.com.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes/Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Warning One: While ostensibly a podcast about baseball, these conversations often veer into other subjects.

Warning Two: There is explicit language.

Run Time: 1:38:28.

Have a question you’d like answered on the show? Ask us anything at chinmusic@fangraphs.com.

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Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the demise of the Rays’ two-city, split-season scheme, Carlos Correa hiring Scott Boras as his agent, and Brandon Gomes of the Dodgers becoming the latest ex-player to ascend to GM, then (31:18) talk about numerous listener nominations of baseball events that predated the podcast that would have made great fodder for Effectively Wild, before closing with a Stat Blast (1:05:20) about the biggest intra-season gaps between Triple-A and MLB performance (plus a postscript about robot umps coming to Triple-A in 2022).

Audio intro: The Smiths, “I Won’t Share You”
Audio outro: Flamin’ Groovies, “Ups and Downs”

Link to news about Rays plan
Link to Sternberg quote
Link to Evan Drellich on Endeavor
Link to Drellich on Endeavor again
Link to Ben Clemens on Endeavor
Link to MLBTR on Correa
Link to Travis Sawchik on Boras
Link to Gomes profile
Link to Facebook suggestions thread
Link to story about two balls in play
Link to story about Raines and collusion
Link to Sonnanstine story
Link to Allan Travers SABR bio
Link to hitter Stat Blast data
Link to pitcher Stat Blast data
Link to Ben on experimental rules
Link to robot umps news

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Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley lean into the lockout by exploring two antecedents to today’s MLB labor stalemate. First, they banter with Emma Baccellieri of Sports Illustrated about whether the Hall of Fame Vote Tracker has helped or hurt Hall of Fame conversations, then talk to Emma about the Players’ League, a short-lived but groundbreaking 19th-century rival to the National League that was founded by and for players, touching on the origins of the reserve clause, the Players’ League’s rapid rise and fall, where it went wrong, and whether a Players’ League equivalent could be created today (plus Joe Torre’s proto-keto diet and catching fly balls with one’s cap). Lastly (52:32), they bring on Dayn Perry of CBS Sports to talk about the 50th anniversary of MLB’s first work stoppage, exploring what caused the 1972 strike, how the circumstances then mirrored today’s, and how the strike was covered (plus a mustache panic, entrance songs, and other notable events from 50 years ago).

Audio intro: Al Stewart, “A League of Notions”
Audio interstitial: Eleventh Dream Day, “The People’s History”
Audio outro: The Inbreds, “Moustache”

Link to Hall of Fame Vote Tracker
Link to Emma on the Tracker
Link to Buster Olney on the Tracker
Link to Emma on the Players’ League
Link to Emma’s previous pod appearance
Link to Torre’s diet
Link to John Montgomery Ward SABR bio
Link to The Great Baseball Revolt
Link to SI Union thread
Link to story about 1940s Mexican League
Link to Federal League wiki
Link to Continental League wiki
Link to antitrust exemption post
Link to Casali facemask video
Link to EW episode on throwing gloves
Link to Drellich update
Link to Dayn’s 1972 retrospective
Link to The Infinite Inning episode
Link to The Athletic’s fan survey
Link to Rosenthal column
Link to Dayn’s website

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