Back in January, before all of this happened, I found myself wondering about baseball players who had simply disappeared. Players often fade from our memory, but thanks to the archival work of organizations like SABR and the Hall of Fame, and websites like Baseball-Reference and Retrosheet, rarely are they ever lost entirely. Baseball is comfortingly recurrent, comfortably concrete — to have a player go missing, their status unknown, struck me as likely to be a uniquely destabilizing and impactful event.

Of course, a lot of things have changed since January. We now find ourselves in a situation wherein Major League Baseball itself is suspended in a state of uncertainty, and many minor league teams are unsure whether they’ll continue to exist next year at all. I abandoned my search for the missing of baseball history in the face of the Astros cheating scandal, which at that point seemed much more pressing; now, when baseball is missing and we are missing baseball, it seems like the right time to pick it back up. 

Many of the stories that I found were comedies; some were tragedies. Some were political, some were trivial, and some were, ostensibly, romantic. All of them, I think, are worth exploring. Without baseball games to attend, now seems as good a time as any to reflect on our relationship with the sport, its stories, and the people who play it.

The story that follows is the earliest that I found, coming from late 1892 in St. Joseph, Missouri, the town that was once the jumping-off point for the Wild West, and that has hosted professional baseball since 1886. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m pleased to announce that FanGraphs now has KBO player stats going back to 2002!

Currently, these stats are available on player pages and include full season stat lines. They will be updated nightly to reflect the previous day’s games.

We’ve integrated a new section into our player search specifically designated for international players. Any player you search for who has played in the KBO will show up in the International section as well as in the Major or Minor League sections if they have MLB-affiliated playing time. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about KBO season excitement and answer listener emails about MLB precedents for Warwick Saupold’s KBO complete game, whether MLB fandom would work if teams didn’t play games in their “home” cities, the ethics of time travel in Tommy John surgery rehab and if and when it makes sense to sacrifice life expectancy for greater achievement, Johnny Sturm and other players who’ve qualified for the batting title in their lone MLB season, how Ben and Sam are continuing to challenge themselves as writers and thinkers now that sabermetrics has gone mainstream, Bryan LaHair and the lowest-career-WAR All-Stars, and whether Joey Votto (or any other player) can foul off pitches until they get one they like, plus a Stat Blast about official scorers and “home cooking.”

Audio intro: Field Music, "Something Familiar"
Audio outro: Ages and Ages, "Divisionary (Do the Right Thing)"

Link to story about Spud Johnson
Link to Slate story on sabermetrics and humility
Link to list of lowest-career-WAR All-Stars
Link to Stat Blast song covers thread
Link to Ben Scruton’s Stat Blast song cover
Link to fouls/swing rate data
Link to order The MVP Machine

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This is the second in a series of baseball-themed lessons we’re calling FanGraphs Prep. In light of so many parents suddenly having their school-aged kids learning from home, we hope is that these units offer a thoughtfully designed, baseball-themed supplement to the school work your student might already be doing. The first unit, on constructing a team’s Hall of Fame, can be found here.

Overview: A one-week unit centered on the Pythagorean Theorem and Pythagorean Expectation.

The Pythagorean Theorem is a fundamental principle in geometry that describes the relationship between the three sides of a right triangle. In baseball, the Pythagorean Expectation describes the relationship between runs and wins.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify and apply the Pythagorean Theorem
• Identify and apply the Pythagorean Expectation
• Explain the relationship between runs and wins
• Evaluate various example problems and apply mathematical reasoning to solve them

Target Grade-Level: 9-10

Read the rest of this entry »

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The start of the KBO season this week has been a joyous occasion for me. The opening night broadcast reminded me of what I’d lost: the crack of the bat, the delightful feeling of not knowing what will happen next, and the thrill of a sudden defensive gem in an otherwise stately-paced game.

But it wasn’t enough. I wanted more. I’ve been vocal about my desire to see Dixon Machado play; shortstop defense is my favorite flavor of baseball, and he’s a wizard with the glove. The Lotte Giants weren’t scheduled for any English language games all week. Something had to give.

Luckily, if you’re willing to hunt around a bit, the English programming schedule is no barrier. The KBO broadcasts all of their games in Korean on Twitch, and so I set out to watch the Giants take on the KT Wiz and enjoy a game that was both very like what I know and utterly foreign.

My initial impression, after fast-forwarding through the pregame show, was one of emptiness:

But of course, that’s simply baseball’s new reality. I’d encountered it already in the opening broadcast, and in the time of COVID-19, it isn’t strange to see empty spaces designed to seat thousands. It was comforting, almost, a reminder that I wasn’t watching to see what was different. It’s all different. Life’s all different. I was watching to see what was the same, to see the central thread of baseball with different trappings. Read the rest of this entry »

If we didn’t know it was real, Joe Mauer’s career with the Minnesota Twins might strike us as being more like a fairy tale than an actual story. That is, until August 19, 2013. That was when Mets first baseman Ike Davis hit a foul tip that hit Mauer square in his helmet.

The moribund Twins, coming off a 69-93 season, had the first overall draft pick in 2001 for the second time in franchise history. The first time the Twins had the No. 1 pick, they drafted Tim Belcher, who didn’t sign when the team wouldn’t pay the going rate for a top selection. Minnesota also failed to sign their second round pick, Bill Swift; none of the players they actually did sign ever played a game in the majors. Read the rest of this entry »

Asher Wojciechowski has had a weird career. The 31-year-old Orioles right-hander has been with eight different organizations in 10 professional seasons. Moreover, this is his second stint with Baltimore in less than two years, with a pair of teams sandwiched in between. All told, Wojciechowski has worked 161 innings over 47 big-league appearances, with a 5.76 ERA and a 5.13 FIP.

He was a supplemental first-round pick in 2010. But while the Toronto Blue Jays liked the Citadel product enough to draft him 41st overall, they didn’t like him enough to let him be. The following spring, Wojciechowski was asked to change his identity.

“At the time, their philosophy was sinkers at the bottom of the zone, and sliders and cutters off of that,” Wojciechowski explained. “Everything was bottom of the zone or below. I’d never pitched like that. In college, I’d been a four-seam/slider guy, a swing-and-miss guy. The Blue Jays tried to turn me into a sinkerballer.”

That happened a month into the season. Following a bad outing, Wojciechowski was asked to sit down with his pitching coach and Toronto’s pitching coordinator.

“They were like, ‘Hey, we’re thinking about dropping your arm slot and having you throw two-seamers, start really sinking the ball,’” Wojciechowski recalled. “I figured, ‘All right, they did this with Roy Halladay and it worked tremendously with him; I guess they’re trying that with me, too.’ Being in my first [full] season of pro ball, I wasn’t going to say no.” Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, I noted how in roughly eight seasons, Mike Trout had already put up one of the best 10-year WAR figures in baseball history. Trout’s remarkable run requires more superlatives than my brain can muster, so let’s just agree that Mike Trout is really, really good. WAR combines the offensive and defensive components of the game, but it should not be shocking that Trout’s offensive numbers alone are fantastic. His career batting line of .305/.419/.581 has produced a 172 wRC+ and over his eight-plus seasons in the majors, Trout has been 511 runs better on offense than the average player. While Trout’s 70-plus WAR thus far puts him in rare company over a 10-year period, putting up more than 500 runs above average is even rarer.

Dating back to the start of 1900 season, 22 players have put up 128 10-year periods that resulted in a WAR at the end of that stretch of 70 or greater. During that same time period, only 16 players have combined to make 99 10-year periods over which the player was at least 500 runs above average on offense. In the last 50 years, only Barry Bonds, Albert Pujols, Jeff Bagwell, and Frank Thomas have reached that mark. With two more solid seasons from Trout, only Bonds will have put up a better offensive decade than the one the Angels center fielder will finish in 2021. With even modest production, Trout is likely to be the major league leader in offensive runs above average for another half-dozen years on top of the two years he’s already produced.

Read the rest of this entry »

This is the latest installment of a series in which the FanGraphs staff rounds up the latest developments regarding the COVID-19 virus’ effect on baseball.

Cleveland Tells Players to Prepare For Season To Start July 1

Speaking to players and other members of their organization via Zoom, officials with the Cleveland Indians provided a target date of July 1 for the start of MLB’s regular season, according to a report by The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal. According to the story, that July start date would follow a three-week “Spring Training” period beginning around June 10. Both of these dates are “fully expected to change,” but are supposed to act as placeholders for members of the organization as they plan for what this season could have in store.

While this is just one team, these dates mirror those communicated in a somewhat controversial tweet sent by former major league infielder Trevor Plouffe on Monday. Because it was sent by a former nine-year big league veteran, the tweet gained some steam, even getting corroborated by Plouffe’s former teammate Phil Hughes. Meanwhile, some established MLB reporters such as The Athletic’s Keith Law disputed the reports, saying no date has been proposed. Read the rest of this entry »