FanGraphs Baseball

The youths are everywhere you turn — loitering at the mall, hanging around in parking lots, playing catcher for the Mets. I’m serious: On September 30, Francisco Álvarez became the first person born after 9/11 to appear in an MLB game. The iPod is older than Álvarez. And it gets worse; there’s a pretty good chance that Andrew Painter, who was born in April 2003, will pitch significant innings for the Phillies next year.

This trend of increasingly younger people being allowed to play professional baseball is troubling to say the least. But it is only a trend, and not a universal dictate. There are a select few graybeards left in the game trying to hold back the tide. If a GM wants to hand a few million dollars to a player who’s too old to spend it all on vape pens and ring lights, there is an option on the free-agent market. A man who’s not only old enough to buy cigarettes, but who was also old enough to buy cigarettes back when they cost $3 a pack. A man so old the Grim Reaper followed him around for a while until he told the Grim Reaper to get off his lawn. An active player who, years after the retirement of Eric Young, Jr., played in the majors alongside Eric Young, Sr.

That’s right: Nelson Cruz. A man who straddles the line between Gen-X and Millennial like the Colossus of Rhodes. At 42 years old, he is the oldest position player on the market. And despite nods at retirement — next spring, he’ll be the GM of the Dominican Republic national team at the World Baseball Classic rather than its DH — Cruz wants to play in the big leagues in 2023. Read the rest of this entry »

12:01

Dan Szymborski: And started, the chat has!@

12:02

Dan Szymborski: Remember, it’s the 80th percentile projection overall, not the 80th percentile projection of a specific aspect

12:02

Dan Szymborski: If he hit the 80th percentile for all his measurables then it would be a higher than 80th percentile projection!

12:02

Dan Szymborski: Four or five a week

Read the rest of this entry »

“He made a mistake, and Trout made him pay.” No doubt you’ve heard some version of that sentence countless times. Maybe the announcers called it a hanging slider, or a meatball, or any number of other ways of describing a poor pitch. But what exactly does it mean, and how can you know one when you see one?

I’ve discussed that question with my colleagues frequently, but we’ve never come up with a satisfactory answer because the pitches that get classified as mistakes aren’t always intuitive. Sometimes a pitcher hits the inside edge of the zone, only for a hitter sitting on just such a pitch to unload on it. Sometimes a backup slider ties up the opposing hitter. There’s bias to these observations, too: You’re far more likely to remember a pitch that gets clobbered for a home run than one that merely results in a take or a loud foul.

I still don’t have a definitive answer. I did, however, make an attempt at answering one very specific form of the question. One pitch that really does feel like a mistake, regardless of intent and irrespective of circumstance, is a backup slider over the heart of the plate. Spin a slider wrong, and it morphs into a cement mixer, turning over sideways without movement. Leave one of those middle middle, and the result is a slow and centrally located bat magnet. Read the rest of this entry »

Pitch shape is a sticky trait. And I don’t mean sticky in the spider tack way; rather, sticky in that the trait would hold year over year without volatile fluctuation. When evaluating a small sample, teams and analysts must decide what traits are worth betting on and which are just potential blips in a player’s profile. Depending on the team, there are varying levels of confidence in assessing that predicament and turning it into action. In the case of the Dodgers, there is a demonstrated confidence in their assessments that leads them to take on some risk, but they have no issue in turning that risk into a realized success.

The latest instance of that came on Tuesday, with Los Angeles reportedly agreeing to a contract with veteran pitcher Shelby Miller. The deal is a major league contract, assuring that he’ll be a contributor in the Dodgers’ bullpen from day one. That probably came as a big surprise. Miller hasn’t pitched that much in the last five years after struggling with injuries and sub-par performance. But he isn’t the same pitcher he once was, which we saw in his brief 2022 stint with the Giants, where he posted a 26.1% whiff rate on 57 fastballs thrown and showed off a semi-new slider that made an appearance in 2021 but seems to have been refined. Read the rest of this entry »

For the 18th consecutive season, the ZiPS projection system is unleashing a full set of prognostications. For more information on the ZiPS projections, please consult this year’s introduction and MLB’s glossary entry. The team order is selected by lot, and the next team up is the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Batters

There’s a lot not to like about this organization, much of which concerns ownership and its commitment to investing in the Pirates’ on-field product. Contrary to the opinions of a surprising number of people, I don’t think the Frank Coonelly/Neal Huntington era was a failure, at least in terms of their contributions. In sharp contrast to the prior efforts of Dave Littlefield or Cam Bonifay, Coonelly and Huntington built up the Pirates in the down years and there was even a brief moment when the team was a real contender. Problem is, when it was time to push the team over the top, to spend all those savings from the leanest of the slash-and-rebuild years on a contender, the investment in the roster never actually came. It turns out that in the eyes of ownership, an even better use of the savings was to not spend it at all and simply keep it. Those Pirates were left to die as ownership served up the Requiem aeternam.

But looking at the players the Pirates have currently, there are some things to like. Now, not a lot of things to like, but there are players scattered throughout the roster who are very good at major league baseball, and the guys who aren’t are at least interesting rather than 32-year-old journeymen (with a couple exceptions that I’ll get into). Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Ben’s latest former major leaguer Facebook friend recommendation and an important update (3:49) to the dictionary.com definition of “ghost runner,” then follow up (17:00) on a previous rumination on free-agent tours by touching on a Carlos Correa comment about playing in Minnesota, Eduardo Escobar’s deep-seated affection for Fogo de Chão, and the research the Red Sox did on Carl Crawford, before discussing (41:58) the most notable ways in which baseball is unique among sports (including a comparison of the number of balls used per contest), MLBPA leader Tony Clark’s reputation restoration (57:12), the latest Disney windfall for MLB owners, and Ben’s conditional desire to play more recreational sports (1:11:42), followed by a Stat Blast (1:27:05) on Shelby Miller-like career arcs and a Past Blast (1:41:15) from 1936.

Audio intro: Fleetwood Mac, “Think About Me”
Audio outro: David Schwartz, “Balls in the Air”

Link to Bush’s book
Link to old “ghost runner” page
Link to new “ghost runner” page
Link to “automatic runner” page
Link to “imaginary runner” page
Link to 2018 automatic runner story
Link to other 2018 story
Link to 2008 automatic runner story
Link to Correa clip
Link to 2018 Escobar story
Link to 2019 Fogo study
Link to Fogo video
Link to Milwaukee Fogo story
Link to 2022 Fogo story
Link to DiComo Fogo tweet
Link to Fogo locations
Link to 2011 Crawford story
Link to Crawford on Boston in 2014
Link to Crawford on Boston in 2017
Link to Crawford’s wiki
Link to story about soccer balls
Link to story about baseballs
Link to story about foul balls
Link to Chiarella story
Link to other Chiarella story
Link to story on golf balls
Link to Evan on Clark
Link to Evan on the subcommittee
Link to story about Scherzer
Link to CBA tick-tock
Link to Marc on Clark
Link to story about Latino players
Link to thread on BAMTech deal
Link to story on BAMTech deal
Link to Seinfeld clip
Link to Stat Blast data
Link to Eno’s Stuff+ tweet
Link to Donohue SABR bio
Link to Campbell SABR bio
Link to Kirby SABR bio
Link to Ryan Nelson on Twitter
Link to 1936 story source
Link to SABR on Shaughnessy
Link to 1933 Buffalo article
Link to 1933 Decatur article
Link to 1933 Allentown article
Link to 1933 IL standings
Link to Shaughnessy Playoffs page
Link to Jacob Pomrenke’s website
Link to Jacob Pomrenke on Twitter

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For the 18th consecutive season, the ZiPS projection system is unleashing a full set of prognostications. For more information on the ZiPS projections, please consult this year’s introduction and MLB’s glossary entry. The team order is selected by lot, and today’s teams is the Cincinnati Reds.

Batters

The story of the origin of the name of Cincinnati is an interesting one. Many cultures have stories of semi-mythical legend involving historical rulers attaining great feats of martial valor or living absurdly long lives. But the tale of Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, counsel for Rome in 460 BC and briefly dictator on two occasions, is a rare one in that it’s a tale surrounding the virtue of civic duty. While the reality was far more complicated, Cincinnatus is not famous so much for vanquishing his foes but for, with the strength of the Republic on his back, voluntarily giving up power and returning to his farm, twice, having done his duty to the Republic. The later Roman Republic was not so lucky; contrast the behavior of Cincinnatus with that of Lucius Cornelius Sulla Felix, known in history as Sulla, who, after victory at the Battle of the Colline Gate over the Marians, seized… what? Oh, right. I’m going to have to talk about this offense, aren’t I?

If owners have any civic duty owed to the cities that pay for their stadiums, not much of that has been displayed by Reds ownership over the last 18 months or so. Coming off an 83–79 season in which Cincinnati was in wild-card contention at the deadline and with most of the core of the roster intact, the team folded its hand extremely quickly, trading most players with significant trade value and slashing the budget by around $50 million, despite playing in a weak division without any truly aggressive teams or profligate spenders. The team shed 13 points of wRC+, dropping from fourth in the NL in runs scored to 11th. To find a season more than a couple points worse than that combined wRC+ of 84, you have to go back to the early 1950s.

There aren’t really any bright spots in the offense, just OK ones. Noelvi Marte gets a very promising projection over the long-term (and how about that top comp!), and both Spencer Steer and Matt McLain get surprisingly optimistic projections that see them as real league-average players. Jonathan India gets sort of a comeback-ish season, and Tyler Stephenson can be a three-win player if he stays healthy and the Reds turn his off-days into DH days. Not a single position player gets 4 WAR at their 90th-percentile projection, though there’s still a good chance that someone does hit that mark because, well, that’s how probability works. The starting outfield basically looks a B-squad spring training roster. Read the rest of this entry »

Michael Wacha is, in many ways, the same pitcher who broke into the big leagues with the St. Louis Cardinals in 2013. The changeup is still his best weapon, and his fastball velocity has remained in the 93–95-mph range throughout. The 31-year-old right-hander has changed teams a few times, but he’s largely kept the same identity.

There have been tweaks to his repertoire and pitch usage. That’s inevitable over the course of what has been a 10-year career, one that will continue will a team yet to be determined. Following seven years as a Cardinal and subsequent one-year stints with the New York Mets, Tampa Bay Rays, and Boston Red Sox, Wacha is now a free agent. He’s hitting the open market on a high note; in 23 starts comprising 127.1 innings last season, the Texas A&M product went 11–2 with a 3.32 ERA.

Wacha discussed his evolution as a pitcher on the final day of the 2022 regular season.

———

David Laurila: To varying degrees, all pitchers evolve. How many times would you say you’ve changed over the years?

Michael Wacha: “From my rookie year, I’d probably say… a couple of times? But I don’t know. I mean, each year I’m trying to work on something different to help out my repertoire, to bolster it or make it better. So it’s kind of hard to say, but there have been a couple of changes.”

Laurila: Can you give any examples? Read the rest of this entry »

It’s not hard to muster some cynicism when it comes to the Era Committee voting. Like the various iterations of the Veterans Committees that proceeded it, the small panels of Hall of Famers, executives, and media members tasked with evaluating Era Committee ballots inevitably include voters with strong connections to the candidates, and with that, some potential for cronyism. This isn’t an abstraction confined to the dusky past, not when it was just three years ago that Harold Baines was elected by a Today’s Game panel that included White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf, manager Tony La Russa, and general manager Pat Gillick, all of whom had overseen significant stretches of Baines’ career, creating conflicts of interest that almost certainly aided his election. Thus one couldn’t help raise an eyebrow on Monday after the Hall announced the 16 voters who will serve on the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee. The group will vote on eight candidates on Sunday, December 4, at the Winter Meetings in San Diego.

As ever, it’s not hard to start connecting the dots between the panelists and the eight candidates and think about what that might portend, particularly when the ballot’s most notorious player, Barry Bonds, appears to be the orphan of the bunch. The all-time home run leader and seven-time MVP has the credentials for Cooperstown, obviously, but the allegations concerning his connection to performance-enhancing drugs kept him from reaching 75% of the vote at any time during his 10-year run on the BBWAA ballot. Now he’s within a process that allows the Hall to stack the deck against him.

Each Era Committee is appointed by the Hall of Fame board of directors and chaired by Hall chairman of the board Jane Forbes Clark (as a non-voting member). Usually the configuration is something like eight Hall of Famers, four executives and four media members/historians, but that’s not etched in stone. This one has seven Hall of Famers, six execs, and three media members:

• Hall of Famers: Chipper Jones, Greg Maddux, Jack Morris, Ryne Sandberg, Lee Smith, Frank Thomas, and Alan Trammell
• Executives: Paul Beeston, Theo Epstein, Arte Moreno, Kim Ng, Dave St. Peter, and Ken Williams
• Media members/historians: Steve Hirdt, LaVelle Neal, and Susan Slusser.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Nationals aren’t going to make the playoffs in 2023. They probably won’t even sniff .500; unsurprisingly, the team that traded Juan Soto along with everything that wasn’t nailed down this past season isn’t quite ready to compete for division titles. That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t try to get better, though – when the next generation of Nationals stars reaches the majors, the team would prefer to have some major league pieces already in place, mirroring the vaunted Cubs and Astros rebuilds of the 2010s. To that end, the Nationals made a signing I absolutely love yesterday, snagging Jeimer Candelario on a one-year deal worth $5 million, with $1 million in incentives.

Before the 2022 season, no one would have believed you if you told them Candelario would be a free agent this winter. In 2020 and ’21, he hit a combined .278/.356/.458, good for a 125 wRC+. He backed that up with decent defense at third base; all told, he looked like a comfortably above-average player carried by his bat. Then came 2022, an abject disaster; over 124 injury-interrupted games, he hit .217/.272/.361 and saw pretty much every statistical indicator tick downwards. The Tigers chose to release him rather than go through arbitration, which MLB Trade Rumors estimated at roughly $7 million.

For the 2020 and ’21 versions of Candelario, that would be a bargain. Quite frankly, I still think it would make sense after his poor 2022 season. The Tigers didn’t share my assessment, valuing the combination of money and roster space as more important than retaining his services. I’m not quite sure I understand it – they currently have two open spots on their 40-man roster and no in-house third baseman – but their loss was Washington’s gain. Read the rest of this entry »