FanGraphs Baseball

12:01

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks! Welcome to my first chat of June — it’s lovely here in Brooklyn and I wish I could take this outside. I … probably could except I’m not sure how strong the wifi is in the back yard. Hmmm.

12:03

Jay Jaffe: Anyway, yesterday I wrote about the myriad issues that have led to the Tigers bottoming out. At 23-38, they’re still tied for the majors’ worst record, but last night they did win 10-9, scoring more than 6 runs for the first time since May 3 and at least 10 runs for the first time since April 16. The Jaffe Reverse Jinx strikes again!

12:03

Jay Jaffe: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-tigers-have-collapsed-but-not-because-…

12:09

Jay Jaffe: whoa whoa whoa, that’s a bit too lofty, I think. We’ve seen Cole and Schlittler pitch like aces, and Rodón’s been reasonably close at his peak but right now is dealing with significant command issues that make it very difficult to imagine him getting back to his 2021–22 form. Warren has taken a big step forward, and I like Weathers but don’t see him as having the stuff to be more than a mid-rotation guy.

Read the rest of this entry »

As promised last Thursday, the first Feature Focus of this week highlights a Member-exclusive feature of FanGraphs: dashboard customization. The dashboard is the collection of cards you see when you first open a player page, as well as the first stats table.

The default dashboard view for non-Members includes the Quick Look, RosterResource and News cards, with different stats tables depending on whether the player is a hitter:

Read the rest of this entry »

“You can’t win the pennant in the first month of the season, but you can lose it.” We’ve heard that axiom a million times, but by God the Chicago Cubs were out to prove it wrong. By close of business on May 8, the Cubbies were 27-12, having just wrapped up their second discrete 10-game winning streak of the season.

Our preseason playoff odds had the Cubs, Pirates, and Brewers in a close three-way fight for the NL Central, all with odds between 24.3% and 35.6%. The Reds and Cardinals were in the single digits, but by no means without hope. Chicago’s odds of winning the division peaked on May 7 at 63.4% — a mighty statement in a division expected to be competitive.

But shouldn’t it have been higher? The Braves got off to just as hot a start, and their odds for winning the division have been in the 80s since the last week of April. The Yankees’ division-winning odds peaked around the same time as Chicago’s, but about 20 points higher. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Fernando Tatis Jr.’s first home run of the season, injuries to Munetaka Murakami and Craig Kimbrel, a crotch-related suspension precedent, the mystery of Julio Rodriguez’s defense, Roki Sasaki’s surge, the phenomenon of National Anthem standoffs, Carmen Mlodzinski’s brief relief revolt, whether Victor Wembanyama would be a good pitcher, Aaron Ashby’s weirdly winning ways, (1:04:19) whether the Brewers have somehow solved clutch hitting, and the possibility of a Craig Breslow “interpreter.”

Audio intro: Cory Brent, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: Nate Emerson, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to Tatis HR
Link to Tatis HR website
Link to Kimbrel injury news
Link to MLBTR on Murakami
Link to Murakami injury play
Link to BP on Gonzalez
Link to Elly injury news
Link to Pérez injury news
Link to gracilis muscle wiki
Link to Papelbon article 1
Link to Papelbon article 2
Link to Papelbon article 3
Link to Julio’s defense at Savant
Link to Julio’s defense at FG
Link to May leaders in pitcher WAR
Link to Wrobleski spreadies article
Link to standoff ejections article
Link to standoff ejections article
Link to Mlodzinski article 1
Link to Mlodzinski article 2
Link to Mlodzinski article 3
Link to team SP WAR
Link to team RP WAR
Link to Pirates pitcher WAR leaders
Link to Jaso EW wiki
Link to Jaso on EW
Link to Wemby baseball photo post
Link to Wemby baseball photo
Link to Shelob wiki
Link to Wemby’s Yankee Stadium visit
Link to Wemby’s first pitch video
Link to Wemby height article 1
Link to Wemby height article 2
Link to pitcher win leaders
Link to Ashby’s game log
Link to single-season RP leaders
Link to Face obit
Link to Sheehan on clutch
Link to Episode 2263 wiki
Link to Brewers clutch data
Link to 2026 tOPS+ w/RISP
Link to Brooklyn clutch streak
Link to New York clutch streak
Link to Philly clutch streak
Link to Gumbel distribution wiki
Link to Clay Davenport’s adjusted standings
Link to BaseRuns standings page
Link to Dan S. on the Brewers
Link to Brewers wOBA w/RISP
Link to Brewers wOBA w/no RISP
Link to Brewers xWOBA w/RISP
Link to Brewers xWOBA w/no RISP
Link to Brewers wOBA w/RISP at home
Link to Brewers wOBA w/RISP on the road
Link to Brewers BABIP w/RISP
Link to Brewers BABIP w/no RISP
Link to Brewers Whiff% w/RISP
Link to Brewers Whiff% w/no RISP
Link to Brewers Pull% w/RISP
Link to Brewers Pull% w/no RISP
Link to Super Saiyan wiki
Link to Marmol on Brewers sign-stealing
Link to Brewers sign-stealing rumor
Link to “man in white” story 1
Link to “man in white” story 2
Link to “man in white” story 3
EW sign-stealing history episode
Link to Healey on Breslow
Link to “anger translator” sketch
Link to Brown trade news
Link to Yankees scoring stat 1
Link to Yankees scoring stat 2
Link to Mlodzinski update 1
Link to Mlodzinski update 2

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As the calendar turns to June, the playoff picture is tight in both leagues. There are 11 teams in the NL with records over .500, which should make for an exciting Wild Card race this summer. The AL is nearly as competitive, though for the opposite reason, as more than half of the clubs in the junior circuit have losing records.

Our power rankings use a modified Elo rating system. If you’re familiar with chess rankings, you’ll know that Elo is an elegant ranking format that measures teams’ relative strength and is very reactive to recent performance. To avoid overweighting recent results during the season, we weigh each team’s raw Elo rank using our coin flip playoff odds. (Specifically, we regress the playoff odds by 50% and weigh those against the raw Elo ranking, increasing in weight as the season progresses to a maximum of 25%.) The weighted Elo ranks are then displayed as “Power Score” in the tables below. As the best and worst teams sort themselves out between now and October, they’ll filter to the top and bottom of the rankings, while the exercise remains reactive to hot streaks and cold snaps. If you’re looking for a visual representation of the ups and downs of your team throughout the season, look no further than the brand new Power Rankings Board in the FanGraphs Lab.

First up are the full rankings, presented in a sortable table. Below that, I’ve grouped the teams into tiers with comments on a handful of clubs. You’ll notice that the official ordinal rankings don’t always match the tiers — there are times where I take editorial liberties when grouping teams together — but generally, the ordering is consistent. One thing to note: The playoff odds listed in the tables below are our standard Depth Charts odds, not the coin flip odds that are used in the ranking formula. Read the rest of this entry »

In early February, just before camps opened, the Tigers added both Framber Valdez and Justin Verlander to their rotation. After a rather underwhelming winter full of speculation as to whether they would trade two-time Cy Young winner Tarik Skubal, a pending free agent, the moves kept them in win-now mode, making them the favorites in the AL Central. Yet injuries to Skubal, Verlander, and several position players have hamstrung Detroit, and after playing .500 ball through the end of April, the team crashed and burned in May, losing eight series in a row while going 6-22 due to an utterly inept offense. At this point, the Tigers have dug themselves a big enough hole that trading Skubal may be a necessity.

This past week was particularly bleak. First, the Tigers dropped two out of three at home to the Angels, the only AL team who had a worse record than them. After Thursday’s 7-1 defeat, the two were both 22-35, and the Tigers followed that by getting swept by the White Sox over the weekend. On Friday night, after Troy Melton and Will Vest held Chicago to one run through eight innings, Kyle Finnegan allowed the tying run in the ninth. And then, once the Tigers retook the lead with a run in the top of the 10th, Drew Anderson served up a walk-off two-run homer to Miguel Vargas. It was Detroit’s seventh walk-off loss this season, the most in the majors. On Saturday, the Tigers were trounced, 7-1, and then on Sunday, when manager A.J. Hinch pulled starter Keider Montero after he’d thrown six scoreless innings on just 65 pitches, Anderson came in and served up a game-tying solo shot to Colson Montgomery, then yielded three more singles and the go-ahead run. The Tigers lost 2-1, for their 21st loss in 25 games. They’re now 5-13 in one-run games — the most losses of any team in that context — and, at 22-38, are tied with the Rockies for the majors’ worst record.

This is just about the last thing anyone expected of the Tigers. Led by Skubal, they claimed back-to-back Wild Card berths in 2024 and ’25, surging over the final two months of the former season to snag a playoff spot, then spending most of last year in first place, though they faded late and lost the division title on the final day. Both times, they won their Wild Card Series before being bounced in a five-game Division Series, including last year’s squeaker against the Mariners, which took until the 15th inning of Game 5 to decide. Read the rest of this entry »

Josh Bell has hit 200 home runs since reaching the majors in 2016, with 198 of them coming in the regular season and the other two coming in October. Which of them is the most memorable? I asked the Minnesota Twins first baseman/DH that question prior to a recent game at Fenway Park.

“The first one [on July 9, 2016] is probably my favorite,” replied Bell, who spent his first five seasons with the Pittsburgh Pirates. “The grand slam. It was my second day in the big leagues, and I’d gotten a hit the night before, pinch-hitting, so I was batting 1.000. Bases loaded, Adam Warren [on the mound], a Cubs-Pirates rivalry game at PNC on a Saturday night. The place was packed. The ball leaves my bat and I know that it’s gone. My parents were there, too — I gave them the ball — so that one was definitely special. It’s something I’ll never forget.”

A first home run, be it a grand slam or a solo shot, is going to be a favorite for most players. But there will be others that stand out as well, and in Bell’s case, a few of them are Statcast outliers. We’ll get to those in a moment. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to the latest installment of FanGraphs Changelog, where we update you on some of the recent improvements we’ve made to the site as we work to build a better FanGraphs.

First, a few things you might know about already:

• We updated the Baseball Simulator to include a bunch more features, including historical players and park and weather factors.
• We launched the RosterResource Roster Grid.

App Updates!

We’ve added The Board to the FanGraphs mobile app, which can be download here: App Store (iOS) or Play Store (Android).

In adding prospects to the app, we’ve outgrown the bottom tab bar, so you can now select between a few preset tab bar configurations; Members can fully customize the tab bar. To customize the tabs, go to the More Menu and select “Customize Tabs.” As a reminder, all features in the app can be found within the More Menu.

We’ve also implemented a new Member feature that allows users to set their default player page view options, while also allowing for temporary changes:

One of the challenges of fitting a data-intensive website into a mobile app is figuring out how to allow users to view the ever-growing number of tables they want to see. For example, I might have default tables that I typically look at for a given player (in the image above, it’s the Standard table), but today I need to see that player’s wRC+, WAR and Win Probably Added to settle a debate with a friend. Using the Temporary view option, I can temporarily enable the tables to see those stats. The next time I use the app, however, it will reset to the default view that I’m used to.

We’ve also implemented push notifications for both Android and iOS. After enabling notifications at the OS level, you can find the main controls for the notifications in the More Menu under “Notifications.” There you can choose to follow updates based on a scoring change in a selected team’s game, see when that team’s game goes final, or both:

If you are using iOS, you can enable Live Activities within the Scores tab to follow a live updating Win Expectancy Graph on your lock screen. Note that iOS limits Live Activities to five at a time:

You can also get a notification when we publish a new article, or follow a writer by tapping the subscribe (bell) button on their byline. Note that co- and tri-bylines are considered distinct from individual authors:

You can also now submit feedback directly in the app to report a bug or request new features:

RosterResource Contracts on Player Pages

Last month, Jon Becker added player contract details to the RosterResource Payroll pages. We’ve now integrated that feature into the player pages. If you go to a player page, find the RosterResource section on the side bar, and click Contract History, you can find the contract history for the player contracts we have tracked since 2020, when we integrated RosterResource into FanGraphs:

We’ve also upgraded the Closer Depth Charts to include more information about a given appearance, including how many innings the pitcher pitched, which innings they pitched, the number of batters they faced, and the leverage when they entered the game:

Legacy Team Usage Lineup/Def

We’ve moved the two player usage tools — Batting Lineups and Defensive Lineups — from the team pages into RosterResource:

These offer different views than the Lineup Tracker, showing the batting and defensive lineups vertically. The “row banding” allows you to see usage streaks more easily.

Flair

We’ve continued expanding our customization options for Members. We wanted to do a black header to go with our Dark Mode, which might have been inspired by some of the recent City Connect uniforms. But unlike the City Connects, the header and theme is totally up to you, the FanGraphs Member!

If you have any questions, please leave them in the comments below, and if you have any suggestions for site features, please be sure to let us know. And lastly, a thank you to our Members! Membership is the best way to support our staff, and ensure that we can continue to grow and improve the site. We couldn’t do any of this without you!

Hello. While on paternity leave, I kept a journal about baseball and my daughter, who is not named Derek Jr., but who will henceforth be referred to as Derek Jr. This is the third installment of that series. You can read all of the entries here.

April 19
So we have this app on our phones where we track baby things. At our first doctor’s visit, the only things the pediatrician specifically told us to do were to feed Derek Jr. every three hours and to keep an eye on how many times a day she was peeing. That’s enough to make sure she’s not hungry or dehydrated. But several people recommended this app, and now we’re neck deep in it.

We track when Derek Jr. pees. We track when she poops. We track when she boths. We track when and what and how much and how long we feed her. A few days ago, we started tracking her sleep too. You wouldn’t believe what other information the app wants; it has a color palette to choose from for each time your baby goes to the bathroom. I am not sure I like all this. (To be clear, I am very sure that I don’t like the part where the app wants to know what color the baby’s poop is. That’s between her and her god, the Diaper Genie.) We’re new parents. All we do is think about the baby and, specifically, worry about the baby. Now we can feed our anxiety with something that presents itself as hard data. The app has totals and averages and graphs and charts. It all looks very certain and official. It could very reasonably be called inFantGraphs. Read the rest of this entry »

Mike Stanley was C.J. Nitkowsk’s biggest nemesis. In seven career plate appearances versus the now-Atlanta Braves broadcaster, Stanley homered twice, hammered a double, and walked four times. That added up to a 4.333 OPS. Of the 592 batters Nitkowski faced over 10 big-league seasons, no one was more injurious to his stat sheet.

Somewhat surprisingly, the pair of gophers — one at Tiger Stadium in 1996, the other at Fenway Park in 2000 — aren’t what the southpaw most remembers about his matchups with the slugging catcher/first baseman. What stands out is the two-bagger.

“I have a story about Mike Stanley,” explained Nitkowski, who made 336 MLB appearances, 213 of them with Detroit, while pitching for eight teams from 1995-2005. “As a kid who grew up in New York and was a Yankees fan, I always knew who he was. He was a Yankee when I was in high school. When I got drafted and went down to Orlando for my first spring training [with the Cincinnati Reds in 1995] — I went early to get out of the cold — I was working out with Chad Mottola, who is now the hitting coach for the Rays. He was my first roommate in professional baseball.

“Chad lived down there,” continued Nitkowski. “Mike Stanley happened to live in the same neighborhood, and they worked out together once in awhile, so I met him. I was 21 or 22 years old, so it was a big deal. You meet a big-leaguer and are trying to play it cool — you’re a professional now — but it was Mike Stanley. That’s cool. I thought it was kind of a big deal. I got to know him a little bit.”

Fast forward to August 12, 2000. Stanley was playing for the Oakland Athletics, while Nitkowski was pitching in relief for the Tigers. A request was made in the dugout during the sixth inning. Read the rest of this entry »