FanGraphs Baseball

On Optics and Doing the Right Thing

April 5, 2021

I come here not to bury MLB, and not really to praise it, but to wonder what else it could have done. On Friday, the league announced that it would be pulling this summer’s All-Star Game from Atlanta in the wake of Georgia’s Republican-controlled legislature passing a law that would, among other things, impose burdensome new ID requirements on voters, limit absentee voting, and give the legislature wide latitude to intervene on state and county election boards. It was a move both correct and frustratingly limited, a multi-billion-dollar enterprise both doing the least and also the most it realistically could in the moment.

Argue if you’d like that MLB’s decision is as much about optics as doing the right thing. (You’d be correct.) Feel free to think that, regardless of the reasoning, a good decision remains a good decision. (You’d once again be right.) MLB had no choice here; holding a marquee, vote-driven event in a state where voting itself is under attack would be tone deaf and wrong. Nor should a league set to celebrate the life and career of Henry Aaron at the Midsummer Classic do so in a state whose new voter law disproportionately affects Black voters. That’s how you look both stupid and wrong, and for as much as MLB has been both in the past, stepping in this particular mess was a mistake easily avoided.

The Braves, meanwhile, put out a statement saying they were “deeply disappointed” in MLB’s decision, claiming that by moving the game, it was robbing the team of a chance to “use this event as a platform to enhance the discussion.” Before we examine the league’s actions further, it’s perhaps worth digging into that particular nugget of PR babble for a second. How exactly does an All-Star Game lead to a “discussion” about voter suppression? What is there even to discuss? Were the Braves planning on turning the home run derby into a TED talk about whether it’s bad when a state decides to make it harder for people of color to exercise their rights? The whole thing reads rather callously coming from a team that abandoned a perfectly functional stadium in a majority-Black city for a brand-new one, built at great expense to local taxpayers in one of Atlanta’s white suburbs, and yet claims that Atlanta is “our city.” It’s worth mentioning that the Braves didn’t make a statement about SB 202, as this Jim Crow-aping bill is called, when it was conceived, debated or passed. It all suggests that fans in Atlanta and Georgia can count on their baseball team speaking out only when it is directly impacted. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat – 4/5/21

by Ben Clemens

April 5, 2021

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Radio Broadcast Crowdsourcing Results, Part 3: 10-1

by Ben Clemens

April 5, 2021

In January, we at FanGraphs put out a call for radio broadcast ratings. Over the past few days, we’ve released a compilation of those rankings, as well as selected commentary from each team’s responses. This is the last installment of that compilation.

As a refresher, our survey asked for scores in four areas. If you’d like a thorough explanation of them, you can read the introductory article, but I’ll also recap them briefly here. If you’d like to see the rest of our results, those can be found here and here.

The “Analysis” score covers the frequency and quality of a broadcast team’s discussion of baseball. This isn’t limited to statistical analysis, and many of the booths that scored best excelled at explaining technical details of playing. This score represents how much listeners feel they learn about baseball by listening.

“Charisma” covers the amount of enjoyment voters derive from listening to the broadcasters fill space, which takes on many forms. The booths that scored best on charisma varied wildly, from former players recounting stories of their glory days to unintentional comedy and playful banter between long-term broadcast partners. Read the rest of this entry »

Berríos and Burnes Dazzle in Rare Double No-Hit Bid

by Jay Jaffe

April 5, 2021

For fans of dominant pitching, Saturday evening’s Twins-Brewers contest set a high bar for the season. At American Family Field (ugh), Minnesota’s José Berríos and Milwaukee’s Corbin Burnes both turned in electrifying performances, each pitching six complete innings of no-hit ball and reaching double digits in strikeouts. At one point, the pair combined to strike out 10 batters in a row. Burnes carried his no-hit bid deeper into the game, getting one out in the seventh before serving up a solo homer to Byron Buxton and departing. Berríos, meanwhile, became the latest pitcher to be removed with his no-hitter intact. Twins reliever Tyler Duffey finally gave up a hit to Omar Narváez in the eighth, but Minnesota held on to win 2-0.

The two 26-year-old righties offered contrasting styles for their dominance. Berríos, the more established of the pair, averaged 95.3 mph with his four-seam fastball and went as high as 96.9 mph, but racked up strikeouts largely by getting hitters to chase low curveballs. Burnes, the harder thrower and the better hurler last year — his 2.4 WAR tied for sixth among all starters — overpowered hitters with a befuddling cutter that averaged 96.3 mph (3.2 mph faster than last season, when only Dustin May outdid him) and reached 97.9 mph. He paired that with a sinker that averaged 98.0 mph and maxed out at 98.8.

The tone for the matchup was set on the first batter of the game. Burnes, whose 36.7% strikeout rate last year was the majors’ fourth-highest among pitchers with at least 50 innings, struck out Twins leadoff hitter Luis Arraez swinging at a 97.6 mph cutter in the middle of the zone — no small matter given how tough he is to punch out. Last year, Arraez had the majors’ fourth-lowest swinging-strike rate among batters with at least 100 PA last year (3.5%) and the third-lowest strikeout rate (9.1%).

That was the only batter Burnes struck out in a 10-pitch first. Berríos notched his first strikeout by getting Christian Yelich to chase a low curveball to close the first inning, which started the two pitchers’ streak. Burnes returned to strike out Max Kepler, Miguel Sanó, and Jake Cave in the second, with Berríos doing the same to Keston Hiura, Jackie Bradley Jr., and Lorenzo Cain. Then Burnes mowed down Ryan Jeffers, Andrelton Simmons, and Berríos himself, batting under National League rules. The stretch of 10 straight strikeouts finally came to an end when Narváez, who would do double duty in his spoiler role, grounded to third base to start the third inning.

Berríos went on to strike out the side (Kolten Wong, Travis Shaw, and Yelich again) in the fourth. No batter reached base for either side until the fifth inning, when Burnes hit Cave and Berríos hit Hiura in their respective halves. Still, neither team had a hit (or a walk) through six innings, with a 103-mph third-inning flyout by Orlando Arcia to the deepest part of center field the only batted ball with an expected batting average higher than .240 (it was .790). Here’s the highlight reel from the first six innings:

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Kevin Goldstein FanGraphs Chat – 4/5/2021

by Kevin Goldstein

April 5, 2021