Free agency begins five days after the end of the World Series. As in other recent offseasons, FanGraphs is once again facilitating a contract-crowdsourcing project, the idea being to harness the wisdom of the crowd to better understand and project the 2020-21 free-agent market.

This year, we’ve added a few new features to the ballots based on reader feedback. You now have the option to indicate that a player will only receive a minor-league contract, or won’t receive one at all. We’ve elected to show averages from the 2017-2019 seasons so that this year’s shortened slate doesn’t skew the numbers, but we’ve also included 2020 stats as a point of recent reference. 2020 salary figures represent players’ pre-pandemic contract amounts. Statistics are prorated to full season where noted; the projected WAR figures are from the first cut of the 2021 Steamer600 projections.

Below are ballots for 10 of this year’s free agents — in this case, a collection of outfielders. A quick note on Marcell Ozuna – Steamer600 references our existing depth charts for positional playing time (and adjustments). If his WAR projection strikes you as a bit low, it could be because it assumes that he’ll be used mostly at DH, as he was by the Braves. Read the rest of this entry »

Tonight as the Los Angeles Dodgers and Tampa Bay Rays face off in Game 2 of the World Series, the FanGraphs crew will be watching along on our Twitch channel, and you’re invited.

Ben Clemens and Eric Longenhagen will be joined by Meg Rowley and Paul Sporer as they chat with readers and each other throughout the game. As usual, there are no tickets, fees, or asterisks, just us watching the baseball game together via the World Wide Web and welcoming you, our readers, to join us. So tune in to the game tonight and then find us here, on the FanGraphs main page, or over on our Twitch page, and bring snacks. We hope to see you then! Read the rest of this entry »

On the opening night of the 2020 World Series, a puzzled nation watched a flagging starter get lit up as he passed the 100-pitch mark and asked, “Why are they leaving that guy in there? He’s cooked!” To the relief of Dodgers fans, the subject in question wasn’t Clayton Kershaw. The three-time Cy Young winner with the rocky postseason record pitched at the top of his game on Tuesday night, dominating the Rays while the Dodgers lineup waited out opposite number Tyler Glasnow and erupted for eight runs in the middle innings. The Dodgers cruised to an 8-3 victory.

Kershaw’s three previous starts of this postseason had offered a classic case of diminishing returns. After spinning eight innings of three-hit shutout ball while striking out a career postseason-high 13 Brewers in Game 2 of the Wild Card Series, he allowed three runs in six innings in Game 2 of the Division Series against the Padres, the last two via back-to-back solo homers by Manny Machado and Eric Hosmer as they faced Kershaw for the third time. In his NLCS Game 4 start against the Braves, which had been pushed back two days due to back spasms, Kershaw allowed just one run and four hits over the first five innings and 61 pitches, but when the lineup turned over, the dangerous Ronald Acuña Jr., Freddie Freeman, and Marcell Ozuna all reached base — the last two via balls hit at 105 mph or higher — opening the floodgates to a seven-run inning in what became a 10-2 rout.

From the Dodgers’ side, this outing was hardly as fraught. While Kershaw allowed two of the first three Rays he faced to reach base via a Yandy Díaz single and a Randy Arozarena walk, he struck out Hunter Renfroe on a curveball in the dirt — his only swing and miss from among his 20 first-inning pitches — and made a good defensive play on a Manuel Margot dribbler to escape. That began a run of 13 straight Rays retired; he didn’t need more than 14 pitches in any of his other five innings, and three times needed 11 or fewer. His 92.5 mph first-inning fastball velocity boded well; it was just 0.1 off his season high, set in that Wild Card Series start, and matched his Division Series start. By comparison, he was at a season-low 90.7 mph in the first inning of his NLCS start. Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

One thing that most baseball fans have in common is an uncanny ability to recall a massive quantity of trades, whether in admiration or with derision, and one of my favorite deals to look back on is the Bartolo Colon trade. In many ways, it was the traditional “star now for prospects later” type of transaction, but this trade also broke a lot of the common tropes of these types of swaps.

First, the backdrop of our story.

By this point in the history of the Montreal Expos, trades that involved the team adding rather than subtracting a star had become unusual. In the days before Jeff Loria strip-mined the Miami Marlins, the art dealer cut his teeth doing such as the managing partner of the Expos. For the first quarter-century of the team’s existence, they were owned by Charles Bronfman, whose money came from from the family’s liquor empire, Seagram’s. Loria had been trying to purchase a team for some time and had been bested in previous attempts to buy the Expos and the Baltimore Orioles. A group of investors led by team president Claude Brochu purchased the team instead in order to keep it in Montreal.

One of the unintentional results of baseball’s labor-owner strife in 1994 was that it sabotaged Brochu’s master plan. The team missed out on their best chance for a World Series, and the lost revenue left Brochu in a position to have to seek additional funding from the rest of the investors, resulting in the team’s shift to a strategy of selling off its stars. This was accelerated further when Loria purchased enough of the Expos to become the new managing partner in 1999. Loria stopped pursuing the new ballpark and turned down broadcast fees for 2000. A few years later, the rest of the partners initiated a RICO lawsuit against Loria. Read the rest of this entry »

I probably don’t need to write this article. If you’re reading it, you’ve navigated to FanGraphs, which already implies a certain willingness to “trust the stats” and “look at the evidence,” those kinds of things. It’s playoff time, though, which means that on TV broadcasts across the land, a motley crew of players are being described as Proven Postseason Performers. George Springer, Jose Altuve, Joc Pederson; it seems to simply be common knowledge that they have some secret baseball skill they only activate come playoff time.

One thing that you could do, should you be so inclined, is to simply take people at their word. The world could use a little more magic in it, after all, and there being players who somehow see the ball better when it counts most is a really fun concept.

Sadly, I think they’re just a concept. To wit: take a look at the best hitters from the combined 2017-2018 postseason (among batters who have played in at least one postseason game since, for reasons that will become clear), minimum 25 plate appearances:

There are a lot of Astros and Dodgers here, which makes sense given the composition of those particular playoffs. Extend the list a bit more, and you’d get Christian Yelich, Max Muncy, and Francisco Lindor, three very good hitters. The list of good hitters in the playoffs looks suspiciously like a list of good hitters plus Orlando Arcia. Read the rest of this entry »

October hasn’t been the kindest month to Cody Bellinger. Though he’s established himself as one of the game’s top sluggers while helping the Dodgers reach the World Series in three of his four major league seasons, and collected some big postseason hits here and there, his overall postseason numbers have generally fallen far short of what he’s done during the regular season. Even after a disappointing, abbreviated 2020 campaign, he’s had his ups and downs this fall, though he finished the NLCS on just about the highest possible note, clubbing a no-doubt solo home run that capped the Dodgers’ Game 7 comeback and sent them to a pennant:

My goodness. Bellinger walked towards first base so slowly and indirectly while admiring the blast that it seemed like he might make a stop to feed the parking meter or grab a hot dog — no extra mustard needed. Statcast measured the exit velocity on that one at 107.4 mph but estimated its distance at “only” 400 feet, the byproduct of its steep 33-degree launch angle.

Bellinger is now hitting .250/.365/.545 in 52 plate appearances during this postseason, good for a 141 wRC+ and a reasonable approximation for his regular season career line (.273/.364/.547, 137 wRC+). It’s a far cry better than the totality of his 2017-20 postseason numbers (.196/.269/.380, 73 wRC+), that’s for sure. Read the rest of this entry »

Free agency begins five days after the end of the World Series. As in other recent offseasons, FanGraphs is once again facilitating a contract-crowdsourcing project, the idea being to harness the wisdom of the crowd to better understand and project the 2020-21 free-agent market.

This year, we’ve added a few new features to the ballots based on reader feedback. You now have the option to indicate that a player will only receive a minor-league contract, or won’t receive one at all. We’ve elected to show averages from the 2017-2019 seasons so that this year’s shortened slate doesn’t skew the numbers, but we’ve also included 2020 stats as a point of recent reference. 2020 salary figures represent players’ pre-pandemic contract amounts. Statistics are prorated to full season where noted; the projected WAR figures are from the first cut of the 2021 Steamer600 projections.

Below are ballots for 11 of this year’s free agents — in this case, a collection of position players, several of whom are known for their versatility in the field. It also features Ha-seong Kim, a notable KBO infielder who is likely to be posted this offseason. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley discuss the exciting seventh games that decided the ALCS and NLCS, the exits of the Astros and Braves, the Braves’ future, how the Dodgers defeated Atlanta, the joy of home run robberies, the Mookie trade revisited, and more, then preview the World Series, focusing on the return of off days, the similarities and differences between the Dodgers and Rays, how we got a matchup between the two top seeds, the dangers of shifting against right-handed hitters, the best way to frame the payroll disparity between Andrew Friedman’s former and current clubs, the Dodgers’ legacy, and the factors that could decide the series.

Audio intro: Billy Joel, "Got to Begin Again"
Audio outro: Vetiver, "More of This"

Link to Ben on NLCS Game 7
Link to Wood’s comments on the Dodgers’ mindset
Link to Eno on the aesthetics of the Rays
Link to postseason home run robberies montage
Link to Ben on the golden age of home run robberies
Link to Smith’s shift-beating grounder
Link to Tango on shifting against righties
Link to Meg on Gonsolin’s look
Link to Tom Ley on trading Mookie
Link to Ben on the Braves’ rebuild in 2019
Link to Baumann on the Braves’ pitching test in 2020
Link to Rob Arthur on postseason fastball velocity
Link to Jay on Arozarena
Link to Dan’s World Series preview
Link to FanGraphs playoff coverage

 iTunes Feed (Please rate and review us!)
 Sponsor Us on Patreon
 Facebook Group
 Effectively Wild Wiki
 Twitter Account
 Get Our Merch!
 Email Us: podcast@fangraphs.com

Podcast (effectively-wild): Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS