Empty stadiums are hardly the weirdest thing about baseball in 2020. There’s the shortened season, the universal DH, the runner on second base in extra innings; if you’re looking for ways the game has changed, there’s no shortage. Today, however, I’d like to talk about those empty stadiums, and their effect on home field advantage. A quick warning: this is going to be an article full of dry tables and plenty of math. I think it’ll be worth it, though.

One question looms over everything else when it comes to home field advantage: what percentage of games does the home team win? Over a very long horizon, everything else is just noise. In 2019, for example, home teams won 52.9% of the games they played. In 2018, that number stood at 52.5%. Long-term home field advantage bounces around between 52% and 54%. It’s good to play at home.

How about this year? To look at 2020 data, we need to do a little manual work. So far this year, four teams have played “home” games in opposing stadiums: the Marlins, Blue Jays, Yankees, and Cardinals. The Orioles also played part of a suspended home game in Washington against the Nationals. In all forthcoming analysis, I’ve removed those games from both the home and away datasets used in this article. It’s never exactly clear what home field advantage is measuring — rest, comfort, the crowd, umpiring, or some mixture — so games with nominal home teams playing in away stadiums are best ignored for these purposes.

With that caveat out of the way and those games excluded, home teams have won 50.6% of their games through Monday, August 17. At the broadest possible resolution, home teams are winning a lower percentage of their games this year. Maybe the crowd really is king.

That’s wildly insufficient for our purposes, however. One of the key tenets of baseball analysis is that merely looking at wins and losses is usually insufficient unless your sample size is enormous. Normally, I’d suggest using Pythagorean expectation here to guess a record. That doesn’t work when looking at only home games, however, because home teams skip the ninth inning when ahead. In 2019, for example, home teams were outscored on the year. This year, they’re scoring slightly more runs than their opponents. We’ll need something more granular than Pythagorean record to find a result. Read the rest of this entry »

Dayton Moore’s roots remain true. The Kansas City Royals GM broke into professional baseball as a scout — this with the Atlanta Braves in 1994 — and to this day, talent evaluation is as much a part of his M.O. as anything. That doesn’t mean there hasn’t been an evolution. Much as Moore’s job title and employer have changed (each in 2006), the scouting world has changed as well. Moore recognizes that, and to his credit has refused stay stuck in the past. A combination of old school and new school, Moore prefers to think of himself as neither. In his own mind, the 53-year-old front office executive considers himself to be in school.

———

David Laurila: You have a background in scouting. That’s a part of the game you’ve always championed.

Dayton Moore: “Scouts have always been the backbone of an organization. It’s a legacy in our game. I’ve always felt that area scouts and minor league managers are the most important part of every organization, because of their connectivity with the players. Every player in this game is here because of the vision of a scout. The scout then turned that vision over to player development, and it was up to the minor league manager to improve upon that vision.

“Of course, the front office and the instructors — the coaches and roving instructors — are involved in that process. But again, every player’s story begins with the vision of the scout.”

Laurila: What you tell me about some of your early scouting experiences?

Moore: “When I started as an area scout, we did tryout camps all over the country. Part of our responsibility was to run those camps in rural America, and in urban America. We spent most of our time in those areas, because there weren’t as many structured leagues there. Legion baseball, Babe Ruth baseball, and Little League baseball, were all well-formed in suburbia. Read the rest of this entry »

While a shortened season might make this year’s version of our Trade Value Series an unusual one, with the deadline looming, we are not about to break with tradition. For a more detailed introduction to this year’s exercise, as well as a look at those players who fell just short of the top 50, be sure to read the Introduction and Honorable Mentions piece, which can be found in the widget above.

For those who have been reading the Trade Value Series the last few seasons, the format should look familiar. For every player, you’ll see a table with the player’s projected five-year WAR from 2021-2025, courtesy of Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections. The table will also include the player’s guaranteed money, if any, the year through which the team has contractual control of the player, last year’s rank, and then projections, contract status, and age for each individual season through 2025, if the player is under contract or team control for those seasons. Last year’s rank includes a link to the relevant 2019 post. Thanks are due to Sean Dolinar for creating the tables in these posts. At the bottom of the page, there will be an updated grid showing all the players who have been ranked up to this point.

With that out of the way, let’s continue with the rankings.

After 2020, Blake Snell is owed $39 million over the next three season before he heads to free agency. That might be a little bit more than what Luis Castillo and Lucas Giolito will earn in arbitration, but not significantly so. The 2018 Cy Young award winner had an unusual 2019 that has dimmed his trade value some. He got off to a great start, then dropped a piece of granite on his toe in April and struggled slightly after returning from the injured list, though his 3.56 FIP was still solid. He had loose bodies removed from his elbow in July and pitched in six games in September and October, totaling 10.1 quality innings. On the year, Snell’s FIP was a very good 3.32; given his .343 BABIP, his 4.29 ERA seems to be mostly the result of bad luck. Snell has slowly ramped up his innings as 2020 has gotten underway, and he’s pitched very well so far. While the elbow issues are concerning, his pitching the last few years has been very good and he’s off to a promising start. That keeps his value just ahead of similarly controlled pitchers like Giolito and Castillo, but it is a close call. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m wading into the gaming and streaming space with Yeoman’s Work, a lo-fi, multimedia presentation that follows my pursuit of a championship in the baseball simulator, Diamond Mind Baseball, paired with single-camera footage from my baseball video archives. Below is Episode 4, which features my series against Bryan Nelson and the last place Des Moines Drillers. In this episode, I play with my newly-acquired bullpen, including two-way player Michael Lorenzen, and start a two-month tightrope walk in pursuit of a playoff spot.

Video archive footage and discussion this week starts with Dustin May’s second-ever pro outing, and also includes chronological open-side footage of Trent Grisham and Vladimir Guerrero Jr., along with my brief thoughts on their progression.

Both DMB’s gameplay and most of my video archive are very quiet, low-sensory experiences without music or much crowd noise, and I think this will appeal to those of you who enjoy Baseball Sounds, as they are front and center in the footage. If this tone appeals to you, my “musical influences” in this department (i.e. the non-FanGraphs Twitch streams I watch on my own time) are Kenji Egashira’s and Luis Scott-Vargas’ live Magic: The Gathering content, Kate Stark’s PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds streams, and Kathleen De Vere’s pirate radio show, Brave New Faves. Read the rest of this entry »

Off in the land of Out Of The Park Baseball 21, the doldrums of August have set in. The trade deadline is over — new acquisitions Brandon Belt and Jeff Samardzija are hardly the most exciting additions imaginable, but they’ve both given the team what we need, competent production at two weak points. Meanwhile, the Pittsburgh Pirates maintain a shaky grasp on first place; they’re two games ahead of the Brewers now, with every other team in the division at least 10 games in our wake.

Normally, the big news of the week would be Christian Yelich’s imminent return. A month and a half without an MVP candidate was a long road, but the team has done admirably, grinding out an 18-18 record. Take this year’s Brewers team and subtract Yelich, and a .500 clip would be hard to achieve. With Yelich in the fold by this weekend (assuming rehab goes smoothly), the division is ours for the taking again.

Unfortunately, “best player returns” doesn’t make for interesting reading. Did you know that Yelich is good? I did, and I bet you did too. Luckily, there’s a bigger mystery to dive into. While Yelich is the team’s best player, Josh Hader has the highest OOTP rating on the team, thanks to a setting that rates every player relative to their positional peers. On the 20-80 scale, he’s an 80 reliever, thanks to his unbelievable stuff grade:
Read the rest of this entry »

I’m going to show you all something. It’s grotesque and upsetting, but I need us to be up to speed on this before we move forward. I promise it will be worth it. My apologies if you’re recovering from a long night or are in the middle of eating.

Man.

This isn’t the full list of hitters who played for the 2019 Orioles. Jonathan Villar was the team’s second baseman, and he accumulated 4.0 WAR while holding a 107 wRC+, but Baltimore dumped him in a cost-cutting move. Then there was Trey Mancini, owner of a 132 wRC+ and 3.6 WAR last year, but he is missing this season while undergoing chemotherapy treatment for colon cancer (he’s reportedly progressing well). With those two in the fold, the 2019 Orioles were still the third-worst position player group in baseball. Without them, these were the players who remained. This is a very bad group of hitters.

Now, let me show you a very good group of hitters: Read the rest of this entry »

2:09	Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks, and welcome to a slightly delayed edition of my weekly chat. I just walked in the door having pried a nearly-4-year-old away from water balloons on the playground and will need a few minutes to get settled

2:13

Jay Jaffe: I’m back, with a bit of housekeeping… here’s today’s story on Mookie Betts’ progress towards Cooperstown https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/mookie-betts-is-building-a-case-for-co… and here’s yesterday’s story about the Yankees’ mounting injury concerns https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/with-injuries-to-stanton-judge-and-lem…

2:13	Jay Jaffe: and now, on with the show

2:17

Jay Jaffe: I’m not sure anyone knows enough to say that’s a necessity. He apparently has carpal tunnel neuritis but I have yet to see anybody offer a timeline for recovery. Obviously, the team shouldn’t push him to pitch if he’s not healthy, but if waiting a month and ramping up allows him to be ready to contribute in the postseason (assuming the Nationals make it; right now they’re tied for the eighth and final seed with the Mets), then that’s a reasonable course of action.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s a lousy time to be the Red Sox these days, running an American League-worst 6-16 record while allowing over six runs per game. Chris Sale and Eduardo Rodriguez are out for the year, Rafael Devers and J.D. Martinez aren’t generating anything close to their usual firepower while much of the lineup wheezes, and 3,000 miles away, Mookie Betts is off to an MVP-caliber start with his new team, the Dodgers.

On Monday, Betts continued his early-season rampage, homering for the fifth time in five games. This time it was a leadoff shot against the Mariners’ Justin Dunn:

That was the 21st leadoff home run of Betts’ career, a total that’s tied for seventh since 2014, his first year in the majors; George Springer leads with 36. It was Betts’ ninth homer of the season, which would have tied him for the National League lead with Fernando Tatis Jr. if the Padres prodigy hadn’t hit two against the Rangers (the second of which broke the Internet and the game’s insufferable unwritten rules). The 27-year-old right fielder is hitting .319/.374/.681 with 1.6 WAR, tied with Brandon Lowe for third in the majors behind Tatis and Mike Yastrzemski (both 1.8).

Last Thursday, while his former team was losing so badly to the Rays that they used both catcher Kevin Plawecki and infielder Jose Peraza on the mound, Betts homered three times against the Padres. It wasn’t just any three-homer game, either — and not just because his first homer, off Chris Paddack, came on a pitch off the plate and away (a rarity Ben Clemens broke down on Friday). It was the sixth three-homer game of Betts’ career, which tied the major league record:

There are some prodigious home run hitters on that list; four of the 17 players above hit at least 600 in their careers, while two more are in the 500s and three in the 400s. Betts, on the other hand, is still two homers shy of 150, and yet there he is at the top alongside Sosa (609 homers in 18 seasons) and Mize (359 homers in 15 seasons, a total suppressed by his losing three prime seasons to World War II). He’s been helped a bit by playing in a homer-heavy era, and by Fenway Park as well, in that he’s the only player with three three-homer games there, as many as Nomar Garciaparra and Ted Williams put together. Read the rest of this entry »

While a shortened season might make this year’s version of our Trade Value Series an unusual one, with the deadline looming, we are not about to break with tradition. For a more detailed introduction to this year’s exercise, as well as a look at those players who fell just short of the top 50, be sure to read the Introduction and Honorable Mentions piece, which can be found in the widget above, along with the other installments in the Series.

For those who have been reading the Trade Value Series the last few seasons, the format should look familiar. For every player, you’ll see a table with the player’s projected five-year WAR from 2021-2025, courtesy of Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections. The table will also include the player’s guaranteed money, if any, the year through which the team has contractual control of the player, last year’s rank, and then projections, contract status, and age for each individual season through 2025, if the player is under contract or team control for those seasons. Last year’s rank includes a link to the relevant 2019 post. Thanks are due to Sean Dolinar for creating the tables in these posts. At the bottom of the page, there will be an updated grid showing all the players who have been ranked up to this point.

With that out of the way, let’s get to the next 10 spots on this year’s list.

After ranking 39th on this list last year, Jeff McNeil finished the 2019 season with the same hot bat he started it with on the way to a 4.6 WAR campaign. Given roughly a season and a half of big league plate appearances, McNeil has a stellar 139 wRC+, and his 7.3 wins pro-rate to roughly five wins per 600 plate appearances. Those results might urge for moving him up rather than down, but there likely wouldn’t be significant interest in McNeil’s skillset if he were offered in trade. He isn’t great anywhere defensively, though he is versatile and has experience at second base, third base, and both corner outfield spots. He has average to slightly above average power, but he does make a ton of mostly-medium hard contact. He also needs those hits to continue to fall, and might be more vulnerable to increased shifting. A player with that power profile who relies on solid contact to get on base and who is without a true position probably won’t inspire teams to trade away a bunch of their prospects to acquire him, but McNeil gets results.

Maybe he is undervalued by the industry as a whole. He’s making the minimum through next year, likely won’t earn big salaries in arbitration, and won’t be a free agent until after the 2024 season. Those arbitration years all come in McNeil’s 30s, limiting his upside. McNeil hits and plays multiple positions well enough to make him a desirable player, but continued questions about his future production have driven his trade value below some less-accomplished players.

Coming off a solid, 2.7 WAR 2018, the Twins and Max Kepler agreed to a contract extension that guarantees the outfielder $35 million for five years, with a $10 million team option on the 2024 season, just $9 million more than the $1 million buyout for that year would be. In 2019, Kepler had the breakout season many had been expecting for years, nearly doubling his home run total from 20 in 2018 to 36 in 2019. The increase in power saw his wRC+ go from average to 121, and his WAR totaled 4.4 on the year. Kepler is a good outfield defender. He draws walks and doesn’t strike out much. Even if his 2024 option is exercised, he will earn just under $32 million over the next four seasons.

Kepler had some support to be even higher on this list. The concerns that held him back were mostly age-related given his type of production. At 27 years old, it’s possible that his defense has already peaked, and since his fly ball swing produces a lot of outs, his low batting average will suppress some of the value of his good walk rate. His breakout produced a good batting line, but not a great one. The last year of his contract and the option season both occur in Kepler’s 30s. He’s a good player and a very good value, which is why he’s on this list, but Kepler’s skills are more solid than spectacular and the pandemic might have wiped out most of what would have been his best season. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about MLB’s BABIP bouncing back from its unusually low early level, the Tigers calling up a trio of top prospects in an attempted playoff push, and Cardinals rookie Roel Ramirez’s unprecedented debut, then answer a listener email with a Stat Blast about the longest regular-season and postseason team vs. team losing streaks (inspired by Cleveland’s current 20-game streak against Detroit). Then they draft their favorite small-sample player seasons so far, focusing on strange stat lines, surprising breakouts, and unlikely comebacks (plus a postscript on Fernando Tatis Jr.’s unwritten-rules-violating grand slam).

Audio intro: The Orange Peels, "So Far"
Audio outro: Lukas Nelson & Promise of the Real, "Surprise"

Link to video of Ramirez’s debut
Link to Robert Au’s Stat Blast Song cover
Link to Adam Ott’s team vs. team streak research
Link to MLB.com article on team vs. team streaks
Link to Andy McCullough on Hosmer
Link to Ben Clemens on Santana
Link to Tony Wolfe on Bundy
Link to Dan Szymborski on Bauer
Link to Ben on foreign substance use
Link to article about Yastrzemski’s surge
Link to article about Tatis’s 3-0 grand slam
Link to list of 3-0 grand slams

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