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Earlier today, Paul Sporer assessed the game’s weaker rotations. Now, Ben Clemens turns his attention to the aces.

The top of the NL West is also the top of our starting pitching rankings. The Padres lost deadline acquisition Mike Clevinger before the postseason even ended, but they recovered by adding three marquee pitchers via trade. The Dodgers countered by adding Trevor Bauer in free agency, and it’s no surprise that those two teams sit atop this list. The New York teams have their aces, the Nationals have their big three, and plenty of other squads mix depth with upside, but none of them could quite match the two California teams’ projections.

That’s not to say that no one else can run out a string of aces. The Yankees have injury issues, but they’ll be able to line up Cy Young winners on consecutive nights. The Mets have Noah Syndergaard waiting in the wings, and the Nationals won a World Series in exactly that manner only two years ago. Pitchers are nastier than ever, and this list is a testament to that fact: there are interesting arms and potential aces on every team in the top 15. That makes it harder than ever to reach the top of our list, but it’s no shade to the teams further down; they’re good, but the Padres and Dodgers are better. Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier today, Meg Rowley closed out the position players with an examination of the game’s designated hitters. Now we turn our attention to pitching. First up? Paul Sporer on the bottom half the league’s rotations.

The American League is firmly projected to have worse starting pitching than the National League, with nine of the 15 lowest-ranked teams AL squads and a deficit of 20 projected WAR. This group contains four legitimate playoff contenders in the AL, including the 2020 pennant-winning Rays. In fact, the Rays are one of three 2020 division winners on this list. Two of my favorite breakout rotations are also in the bottom half; I think at least one of them will break into the top half by season’s end. For instance, the Tigers’ trio of mega prospects could push them well beyond their projections if things coalesce quickly for them. Which rotation do you have exceeding expectations from this list? Read the rest of this entry »

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Last week, the FanGraphs staff took you through most of the league’s position players. Now, before we turn our attention to pitching, Meg Rowley examines the state of the designated hitter.

If these rankings prove anything, it’s just how rare it is for teams to have a truly designated designated hitter anymore. Some still look to a single bopper, and many of those clubs are at the top of these rankings. The Astros, Yankees, and Twins still figure prominently; Yordan Alvarez, Giancarlo Stanton, and Nelson Cruz will do that for you. But for about half of the squads here, DH plate appearances are a group project, with the position often serving as a means of giving otherwise-capable fielders a day off.

It’s not totally old hat in 2021. Interesting young guys like Andrew Vaughn and Ty France could outperform their modest projections, and Shohei Ohtani is his own wild card. Still, with three clubs projected in the red and several more clustered around 1 to 1.5 wins, the DH bats have swooned. Perhaps a universal DH will shake things up, but I suspect we’ll see more of the same when the NL finally puts pitcher hitting to bed — a collection of good-hitting catchers, erstwhile first basemen, outfielders who need a breather, aging vets, and a few elite bats carrying the load. Read the rest of this entry »

In January, we put out an open call for contributing writers. The response we received was overwhelming. We are very grateful that so many smart, passionate baseball writers wanted to be a part of what we do here. It made for some really difficult decisions (and a rather long hiring process), but we are very excited to welcome some talented new voices to our ranks.

A quick note to those who applied but weren’t hired: please keep writing. A number of people who have worked for the site weren’t hired on their first go, but kept getting reps elsewhere on their way to making us regret having passed them by initially. Just because there wasn’t a home for you at FanGraphs this time around doesn’t mean that there won’t be one later, and in the meantime, public baseball analysis will be made better by your good words and good work.

And so, without further ado, allow me to introduce the writers whose work will soon be debuting here at the site. Read the rest of this entry »

Positional versatility has become increasingly important now that teams are carrying 13 or 14 pitchers on their rosters. That leaves benches bereft of depth, meaning that an ability to move around the diamond makes a player especially valuable — if not essential. One-dimensional non-regulars are marginal assets unless they excel in a specific area.

In the opinion of A.J. Hinch, the term “utility player” is anything but a pejorative. Moreover, everyday players who display versatility make a manager’s job easier.

“I don’t want “utility” to be explained as a negative thing,” the Tigers’ skipper told reporters recently. “A utility player has traditionally been defined as a guy who can’t play every day. And that’s not true. Some guys it is, some guys it isn’t. I caution everybody that it’s not a slight.

“When you have an everyday guy that is elite at that position, absolutely, you’re going to leave him at that position,” continued Hinch, who circled back to his Astros days and cited Alex Bregman having played short when Carlos Correa was hurt. “That’s a multiple position for an elite player.”

Hinch’s Detroit team clearly lacks the top-end talent that he had at his disposal during his Houston tenure, which suggests mixing-and-matching might be common in Motown this summer. If spring training is any indication, it might even be the M.O. Hinch has done no shortage of shuffling, and come the regular season, the likes of Jeimer Candelario, Niko Goodrum, Jonathan Schoop, and Harold Castro will be utilized as moving pieces in hopes of optimizing the lineup. Ditto Isaac Paredes, once he’s called up from the alternate site. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about how the absence of the injured Eloy Jiménez will affect the White Sox, follow up on their discussions from the preceding episode about distracting on-field animals and baseball terms named after teams or players, then preview the 2021 Padres (19:37) with Dennis Lin of the The Athletic and the 2021 Rockies (1:03:17) with Nick Groke of The Athletic.

Audio intro: Todd Rundgren, "Don’t Hurt Yourself"
Audio interstitial 1: The Shazam, "Turnaround"
Audio interstitial 2: The Delgados, "If This is a Plan"
Audio outro: Landlady, "Western Divide"

Link to Jiménez injury video
Link to James Fegan on Jiménez
Link to 2009 air show story
Link to Harvard pigeon prank story
Link to seagull-assisted walk-off video
Link to rhea birds story
Link to BA story about Padres trades
Link to Dennis on the Tatis contract
Link to Dennis on Cronenworth and Grisham
Link to Zach Kram on the Dodgers-Padres rivalry
Link to Zach on the Dodgers/Padres vs. the NL
Link to Nick and Ken’s Rockies story
Link to David Roth on the Rockies
Link to Monfort’s 94-win projection
Link to Nick’s column about the Arenado trade
Link to Nick’s questions about the Arenado trade
Link to Nick on analytics department departures
Link to Nick on Bard
Link to Bobby Brown SABR bio
Link to NYT Bobby Brown obit
Link to story about Bobby and Eddie Robinson
Link to video of Bobby and Eddie
Link to WSJ story about Eddie

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Rick Porcello’s time with the Mets in 2020 began by allowing seven runs in two innings to the Braves. A normal season would have offered him many more starts to help his numbers recover from that performance, but as it was, he took to the mound just 11 more times. So despite giving up two runs or fewer in five of his remaining appearances, his ERA for the season landed at an unsightly 5.64 — the second straight year in which it finished above 5.50.

With that in mind, it isn’t a huge surprise that Porcello, 32, is still unemployed one week before the regular season begins. Throughout his 12-year career, his value rests more on the quantity of his innings than the quality — over 2,000 in total now, and a pre-2020 average of 185 a year. It makes sense that teams would want to be cautious if his skills seem to be deteriorating. I’m not convinced that’s the case. The Porcello of last season bore a lot of resemblance to the Porcello of years before, including the one when he won a Cy Young award. He’s still deserving of a big league job. Let’s find him one.

It’s hard to assess how good or bad Porcello actually was last year. His ERA was the worst of his career, but his 3.33 FIP was his best. At 1.7 WAR, he was just inside of our top 25 pitchers in baseball, tied with Sonny Gray. Mets fans likely thought of him as a disaster, but he actually would have been the most valuable pitcher on 14 different teams.

Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier this year, we released our team expected win totals and playoff odds for the 2021 season. These projections are based on the FanGraphs Depth Charts, which blend Jared Cross’ Steamer projections with those of Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS, with playing time allocated by our own Jason Martinez of RosterResource fame; the playoff odds then simulate the season 20,000 times, taking strength of schedule into account.

We thought it’d be interesting to duplicate that process, instead using the Average Total Cost (ATC) Projections.

The ATC player projections have been available on the pages of FanGraphs since 2017. Similar to the Depth Charts model, ATC is an aggregation of other projections. While most other accumulation models typically apply equal weight to all their underlying data sources, ATC assigns weights based on historical performance. The method is similar to what Nate Silver does with his political forecasting model at FiveThirtyEight.com. You can read more about how ATC works in the introductory article here.

Over the past few years, ATC has consistently been one of the most accurate baseball forecasting models. Indeed, according to FantasyPros, the ATC projections have been the most accurate baseball projections over the past two seasons. The success of ATC stems from minimizing parameter risk across the player pool. You can read more about inter-projection volatility, how to use the ATC projections on the FanGraphs site, and what is new for ATC in 2021 here. Read the rest of this entry »