The State of FanGraphs 2024
Hi everyone!
It’s been almost two years since we talked about how FanGraphs is doing, and with Opening Day fast approaching, I thought it would be a good time to give you an update on where the site stands now.
FanGraphs currently has 13 full-time employees, along with a terrific group of part-time contributors. Here’s a quick recap of some of the improvements we’ve made to the site and the new features we’ve recently launched:
- Launched a mobile app
- Expanded our editorial staff and added new voices to the site
- Launched new leaderboards
- Incorporated Negro Leagues data into the site
- Redesigned our projection boards
- Added postseason leaderboards and incorporated full historical postseason data
- Revamped The Board
- Added the rankings grid to the leaderboards
- Launched new RosterResource features, including the closer depth chart and the MiLB power rankings
- Launched new fantasy rankings
- Integrated Stuff+ and PitchingBot pitch modeling into the site
- Added spring training data to the leaderboards and player pages
- Launched the Cy Young Award Predictor
- Incorporated weather splits into the splits tool
- New Playoff Odds Systems
- Revamped the blogroll
- Many incremental changes to existing site features and tools
Over the next few weeks, the FanGraphs staff is going to be highlighting some of the most useful (and possibly lesser known) features of the site. Even avid users of FanGraphs sometimes don’t know all of the cool tools and data we have, and we hope that showcasing all of the ways we can help you better understand and analyze baseball will make the decision to become a Member an easy one.
I’m very excited about the future of FanGraphs. In addition to all of the excellent analysis you’ve come to rely on, we have a lot planned for this season, including a very long and still growing to-do list of things we’d like to bring you. Being a Member not only helps us develop new site features and hire new voices, it also comes with Member-exclusive benefits, like ad free browsing, dark and classic site modes, and one-click data exports.
FanGraphs does not have outside investors. We are funded almost entirely by Membership and advertising. Becoming a Member is the best way to support FanGraphs, a fact that the past year has made more obvious than ever. I’m sure it’s not news to you that online media had one of its worst years ever in 2023. Much of this was due to a drastic decrease in advertising revenue. In the first quarter of 2023, our advertising revenue was down about 50% year over year.
Fortunately, we were able to offset much of that loss through Member support, largely treading water as a site. But with advertising rates tanking, I spent much of the year learning more about the digital ad space and finding ways to improve our dwindling ad revenue, which still makes up nearly 50% of our revenue overall. While I won’t go into all of those details, I think some of what I learned about advertising and its relationship with publishers is important to know as a consumer of digital media.
When you see ads on FanGraphs, they are almost completely programmatic. We did one direct campaign with Topps right around Opening Day last year, but most of the time we do not work with companies directly. As a medium-sized publisher, it’s hard for us to command enough eyeballs or ad spend for major advertisers to work with us in that capacity. FanGraphs would be a rounding error for an S&P 500 company’s ad budget, and marketing teams probably aren’t going to set up a direct sales connection with us. Instead, each ad slot is bid on in real time based on a number of factors.
This is the mechanism that funds not just FanGraphs, but much of journalism and the internet as a whole. It’s the underbelly of digital media.
When a company wants to place an ad, they do it through a Demand Side Platform, or DSP. The big players in this game are Google, The Trade Desk, Amazon, and Microsoft. As an advertiser, you can target your ads based on various criteria; the advertiser pays the DSP for this service.
Those ads are then run through an ad exchange, which we access through a Supply Side Platform, or SSP. We have direct relationships with a number of SSPs that put our inventory up for auction and then return bids based on that inventory. Each SSP takes some percentage of the advertising revenue for providing this service.
On our end, we use various technologies like Google Ad Manager, Prebid, Amazon Publishing Platform, Assertive Yield, Connatix Video, identity providers, ad block mitigation, and ad quality services to facilitate getting ads on the site. All of these cost money upfront or take a percentage of ad revenue. There are companies that can manage all of this for you and give you a turnkey solution; as you might imagine, those management companies take some additional percentage of publisher advertising revenue as well.
Ad blocking mitigation is a particularly interesting wrinkle in that the company that owns the ad block browser plugin also sells the solution to the plugin and takes a percentage of advertising revenue. And then there are the ad quality services that make sure our readers aren’t served malicious ads, again for a fee.
You may see a pattern developing here. At each step along the way, however much the advertiser is spending to place an ad, the publisher’s cut of it is significantly reduced. Programmatic advertising was a $109 billion business in 2022, but a 2023 study showed that only 65% of ad dollars go into a publisher’s pocket, and that might be the best-case scenario. If you do the math, that’s just over $38 billion not going to publishers.
(If you want to read more on advertising and journalism, I’d recommend this thorough overview of how the policy and regulatory environment has impacted journalism, much of which is about advertising.)
This is why Membership is the best way to support us. As opposed to supporting the site through advertising, which as you can see is an incredibly convoluted and money-syphoning system, the money path for Membership is transparent. When you’re a FanGraphs Member, you are directly supporting the site — we receive 97% of your Membership fee (we still have to pay transaction fees). And if you’re an advertiser, consider contacting me directly (ads@fangraphs.com), so that we might receive 100% of your advertising dollars.
As always, thank you so much for your support. As we navigate a constantly shifting advertising landscape, Membership is essential to not only sustaining the site, but helping it grow. When you become a Member, you’re making the future of FanGraphs possible.
David Appelman is the creator of FanGraphs.
Thank you, David, and I am so sorry that the state of digital media and advertising is what it is. I am proud to be a member and appreciate all of the work of the fine folks here at Fangraphs!
I love being a member and everyone else should do so!
My FanGraphs membership is one of the few subscriptions I have that I never consider canceling! Hopefully this article inspires a few more people to take the plunge.
I would so much rather support content directly than through the confusing morass of the digital advertising model.
I love Fangraphs. Most of your tweaks are nice. Some are …IMO, a waste of space, talent, money and subscriber renewal/loyalty. Stay OUT OF POLITICS.
I expected the negatives. I ask, why? Why does a Fangraph reader want political views from the sports writer? Sincerely. Why the negatives to the request that Fangraphs stay out of politics
It’s the people who get some weird satisfaction out of seeing baumann twist any and every baseball topic into a discussion about his world view.
It’s ok and normal to have preferences for different writing styles; it’s good when publishers have writers with different approaches. I’m not a huge Baumann fan, and frankly, I was disgusted earlier when FG hired a former Astros employee to be a writer over literally anyone else who’d worked hard to BE a writer…I let my sub lapse over that one. We all have our lines.
But we’re living in a society here, and ultimately, I’m better off in one where different folks have access to what they want, and where I can make sure I don’t end up in an echo chamber. Folks like the writers here and most of the community are why I feel more interested to learn and listen, even if I end up rejecting the premise. That’s a good thing, and I’m glad I’m back subscribing again (please don’t hire anymore astros, thx)
I mean…Kevin Goldstein was an OG prospect writer?
And he’s listed in the Astros report as being literally one of the only guys in either the FO or locker room to say “Jesus Christ, this is fucking cheating?”
(I think McCann was the other one)
Where was that reported? There’s nothing about Goldstein or McCann in the commissioner’s “banging scheme” report, and pretty much all the references to Goldstein and this scandal which I can find online point to him emailing the Astro’s scouts about pointing cameras at the opposition dugouts.
This!
I almost cancelled my Fangraphs subscription based on political discussion here. I love baseball and Fangraphs and have even offered to pay for others to enjoy this site.
Its not my site, Fangraphs authors are free to inject any topics they want, just as I am free to cancel my membership and go elsewhere.
I mean, it’s a baseball website. Stick to baseball. What if they had writers who wrote pro-life and pro-Trump articles…would you be here? Just stick to baseball, it shouldn’t be that hard.
They also don’t write pro-abortion and anti-Trump articles, so that’s a bit of a strawman argument. You might infer those views from a general pro-labor / anti-owner tilt on the site but I think that’s basically the extent of the political wading they really go in.
And even then the basic gist is something like “what’s happening to the A’s is the owner’s fault and that’s bad.” Or “owners are making bad-faith public statements in their negotiations with players to avoid play stoppages.” I don’t really think those are super fiery political takes, and they’re certainly not poorly reasoned or unfair opinions.
Maybe you get some from Baumann but like, just skip his articles. Basically none of the other writers delve really into their political views.
If you could point to or link any instances where they discuss horse-race electoral politics which you allude to then maybe this type of claim could be taken more seriously.
What political discussion??? I’ve never seen a remotely political Fangraphs article (discounting the fact that all topics are inherently political in some way). What on earth are you referring to? Can you point to a single article about Biden, Trump, Democrats, Republicans, SCOTUS, Congress, the President, or anything else like that?
Honestly? Baumann’s writing drives me bananas. I do my best not to click on it unless it’s on a topic that I think I would really enjoy commenting on.
But I’m a huge fan of Dan, Eric (despite the timeliness), Ben, and Davy, and probably others that I’m forgetting. And Fangraphs hosts Jay and probably the most important developments in quantitative Hall of Fame analyses so that’s neat too. The BOARD is phenomenal, even if it doesn’t include Rule 5 timeline (hint, hint). So I’m more than happy to subscribe. I get more than my money’s worth.
I’m glad I’m not the only one. He thinks he’s so much more clever than he actually is. I picture him giggling, shaking his head in amazed disbelief at his own wit and patting himself on the back while he’s writing.
Jesus, it’s one thing to not like the guy’s writing, but do you need to drag him like this on the very site he writes for? I’m glad there’s not a public forum where people talk about what they think of my job performance.
I just want to add something here in favor of Michael Baumann. Of course everyone’s entitled to an opinion, but I want to say that I love the creativity and humor of his writing and will generally read his articles regardless of topic.
I subscribe too, so consider that a vote in favor of keeping him on staff 🙂
Here to support Baumann too. I enjoy the personality and point of view that he brings. I wonder if opinions of his writing skew based on age? I only know of one other Fangraphs reader IRL, and like me, he’s in his 30s and he loves Baumann too. For both of us, Baumann is a must read regardless of topic. I don’t even like college baseball, yet I read all of those articles lol.
I also don’t understand the folks who are harping on keeping politics out of baseball….literally politics is in everything. Every facet of our lives and as a writer, if you ignore the powers that affect and change baseball for the good or bad, you’re not doing your job. To me that’s censorship to willfully not share your point of view (as it relates to baseball) Every writer lives in a unique time in history, and ignoring that is just silly. We should be able to look back in 30 years on Fangraphs articles written in the 2020’s and get a recollection of what life was like.
Yeah, that’s the part that drives me nuts. Don’t talk about politics? Do you understand what politics is? Politics is in LITERALLY EVERYTHING. Everything has a political power dynamic to it in SOME way.
The Astros hate-train continuing STILL is ridiculous. And I’m far from an Astros fan. But MULTIPLE players from MULTIPLE other teams have publicly stated that their team was doing the EXACT SAME type of cheating at the same time. The Astros were just the team that got caught with their hand in the cookie jar. If you think your favorite team isn’t currently cheating, trying to cheat, or trying to get around the rules currently set in place in some way (and hasn’t been doing so for years) when a championship or multiple championships could lead to BILLIONS more in revenue for the franchise, then you’re delusional or a small child.
Is it so wrong that a man loves hockey?
The problem is that comprehensive baseball journalism necessarily dives into politics. Baseball is a part of the economy and baseball is part of the culture. Both of those things are key elements of politics. Fangraphs could not do it’s full scope of baseball journalism without wading into political spheres. If you want to be upset at someone for things converging into politics, maybe take it to the politicians who are encouraged and deadset on making everything political.
I dunno…what do labor stoppages and billionaires extorting billions of taxpayer dollars from cities have to do with politics????
Indeed, unlike those pesky FG writers, certainly, team owners NEVER bring politics into baseball. And certainly neither do the players.
😀
Remember when MLB, Dave Roberts, and others were chiming in about the Georgia voting bill that got the All Star game pulled from Atlanta but was a complete misrepresentation of the actual bill? Baseball sites need to stick to baseball.
If Major League Baseball (MLB) takes an action based on politics, Fangraphs should write about it because that is baseball coverage.
When George Bush owned a baseball team while his dad was president, was that keeping politics out of baseball? When teams have pride night, and when players protest pride night, is that keeping politics out of baseball? When teams visit the white house after winning the World Series, is that keeping politics out of baseball?
Fangraphs does not create the politics-baseball relationship. It always exists. If you want comprehensive baseball coverage, politics will necessarily be a part of it. If you don’t want comprehensive baseball coverage, you can skip those articles. But please do not blame writers for writing about the thing they are paid to write about. Blame the people bringing politics into the thing (politicians themselves, mostly, but also owners and players and league employees and fans) or blame the nature of politics.
I switched from Coke to Pepsi because of that.
You’re a ******* hero
Look man, you’re utue one who took a hard swerve in “POLITICS” without explaining anything. Most of us were probably expecting you to say something about which tweaks you thought were worthwhile or a waste.
Instead we got shouted at in all caps.
There’s a list of 17 tweaks in the article, care to discuss any of them?
Is ad revenue in journalism a hot-button issue? Or asking for membership? I’m super confused by your comment.
If I try to be generous, As noted, it’s a continuation from an earlier, pandemic-era thread, so it might feel a little out of place for folks who “weren’t there” (though I think he did link it).
But I think it’s more reflective of the FG community, which, for good and maybe not so good sometimes, feels empowered as part of the site’s content to a degree and therefore likes to know what’s going on (sometimes creeping into entitled “stop/start doing more X”). I hesitate to use a “shareholder” analogy, preferring to think of us as season ticket holders and we’re getting an update on the team’s plans as part of a new season.
Dude, 98% of fangraphs articles have absolutely zero to do with politics. If 2% of articles happen to be say players should get a larger slice of the pie or cities shouldn’t give owners subsidies why is that so offensive to you? You don’t have to agree with every author’s opinion. It’s okay. Maybe post a counter argument in the comments section.
Do you have this same standard for every company you spend $60 a year with? Ensure every employee shares your world view before you spend a dollar? Sounds exhausting (and impossible).
What “Stay out of politics” really means is “stop posting opinions I disagree with.” I have never, ever seen a “stay out of politics” screed on an article where the commenter agreed wholeheartedly with the writer.
I don’t like service time manipulation, but e.g., when a writer harps on about service time manipulation with a 45 FV prospect who’s played a month in AAA, I tend to not think very highly of that author’s critical thinking skills.
Just as a data point if we’re still really talking about Baumann here, I certainly don’t post any screeds about it, but I am in near-100% agreement with his political views and still wish he’d (a) think a lot harder about them and (b) write them into way fewer articles. The reflexive cheap shots and Twitter-brained hot takes are frankly just boring a lot of the time.
Honestly, I just don’t think he’s that funny, and I don’t think he has the technical chops of the other writers I love reading (Dan, Jay, Ben, Davy, Esteban, Eric, Tess, etc).
But I also don’t want anyone to get fired, not that I have that kind of pull anyway. In my ideal world someone would offer him more money to write somewhere else.
I look at this site nearly everyday and I’d be hard pressed to cite examples of what you’re claiming. I think this is probably more a projection of your mindset which respectfully does not appear to be grounded in reality. I know it’s a difficult step to take but perhaps you should look at the feedback as an opportunity to pull back and see this site with a pair of fresh eyes for what is… a top notch baseball site.
For what it’s worth, we don’t have any politics policy or site editorial stance, whether for or against X or Y or Z.
Clearly you need such controls, to protect folks like Robert and tomerafan from being exposed to reality’s well known liberal bias!
Not sure why I’m getting thrown in here. My comments are substantively different, and I’m an unaffiliated voter currently campaigning for Democratic candidates.
Cheers – the “not NOT about politics” thing below had me a bit thrown.
I can understand that. I lean left of center, but I find sometimes that labor views here (and in other baseball parts of the internet) dismiss the owners’ points out-of-hand rather than engaging with them. And I think that’s a bit unfair. That’s not to say the owners are always or often right, but rather than you have to consider the totality of the argument at hand.
The anti-capitalist sentiment (which is an argument against an economic system rather than a political view) is what really gets me. Taking a profoundly anti-capitalist viewpoint is going to alienate about half of your audience, statistically speaking. But more than that, it makes me question as a reader whether the author is really engaging in critical thought around their own work or whether they’re simply dismissing engagement with the things they disagree with. Because if a write will dismiss engagement with the things they disagree with, then how can I trust them to engage in the underlying statistical data that they might find uncomfortable or non-intuitive?
Damn you and your nuanced viewpoints. You know there’s no place for that on the Internet.
I would just point out that there’s very little that’s “capitalist” about the MLB, which is explicitly a cartel, economically speaking.
Fair enough
I mean, I’m not a liberal/progressive (though I’m also not a conservative).
What it comes down to is that writers here are given the freedom to present their voices and be who they are. And some are naturally going to be more politically minded than others!
We’re not NOT a book club.
And Dan, your writing is impeccable.
It isn’t, Meg’s editing is just tricking you!
Maybe you should support him by becoming a member.
I need Fangraphs’ writers to take some hard collective stances!
C’MON FANGRAPHS TAKE A STAND!
Look, love the visual language but just 30%?
What Meg said.
Love the original comment but gotta push back a little on this piling on. Jason B’s Wes Anderson critique was on point — 30% feels just about right. The tweeness is extreme enough that it is impossible not to find annoying, yet decrease it by much more than 30% and there wouldn’t be enough of the aesthetic left to qualify as an aesthetic. And god help me, I like Anderson flicks on the whole (if certainly not across the board).
See, I like Whit Stillman, who I have at the “30% too twee” mark, but find that Anderson has largely crossed the line into schtick at this point.
i thought Asteroid City was long-form Weird Al satire until my wife pointed out Anderson’s name on the movie poster
That sandwich is the only fast food I still consume at this point. So good. All these other joints trying to sell a spicy chicken sandwich and it’s just slathered in some kind of gross sauce. Should go straight to jail for that.
I don’t like that underappreciated stuff. It seems like trying to build consensus or affirmation, or worse, politicking. Just say Willem is awesome if you think he’s awesome. I think he’s awesome.
It was a, uh, joke post.
But yes, he’s pretty awesome.
I just renewed but I agree. Can’t we just relax and breathe, read about baseball and nothing else? You shouldn’t have been downvoted so much.
Could you be implored to share some of the articles which contain a sufficient enough amount of political discussion to garner this level of disdain?
My team’s owner is trying to get one billion public dollars from my city or state for a new stadium. That’s political.
But tourism!! Who would ever go to Vegas without a 100-loss A’s team there?! 😀
I’ve never seen a remotely political Fangraphs article (discounting the fact that all topics are inherently political in some way). What on earth are you referring to? Can you point to a single article about Biden, Trump, Democrats, Republicans, SCOTUS, Congress, the President, or anything else like that?
One thing I’ve been curious about– does becoming a member, but *not* logging in provide any sort of benefit to the site? i.e., if I like FG enough to support it, but am agnostic about not seeing ads, does my purchasing a membership, but not logging in so that I’m still served ads generate additional revenue for FG? Or is it so marginal that I might as well just log-in so you can track that data?
Preface: I don’t work for Fangraphs, but run a moderately successful set of ad-supported baseball websites.
Yes, you not logging in and thus seeing and loading ads does generate additional revenue for Fangraphs. With that said, if I use similar ad rates that I get, each “page” you visit is worth about $0.01.
Essentially, a non-paid user needs to load up Fangraphs pages about 500 times a month to be “worth” the same as a yearly subscriber. And that’s assuming that the non-paid user isn’t using an ad-blocker.
Fangraphs rates are *probably* a little better than what I get because of a higher viewership, but even if they’re getting double what I get (which feels unlikely), you’re still talking about one additional penny per visit. It’s marginal. But it’s also not nothing.
Hopefully that helps at least put some context to it all.
So, what I’m hearing is…I’m costing FG money by becoming a member!
Here’s the fun thing about this: No one really knows. Ad rates fluctuate at incredible rates. One day to the next they’ll be twice as much and for no real reason at all from the website’s behalf. And we don’t really know what is going to happen to the ad rates over time. At least with a subscription you know “hey, I’ve got XYZ dollars to work with”. Maybe “addollars dot pennies” works out to be more, but it might also work out to be far less than imagined for reasons entirely out of the control of the people running the site. This business kind of sucks from a business standpoint.
Thanks for asking! We want you to use your Membership. We have some fun membership features planned and we wouldn’t want you to miss out.
I’ve been a paid member since you started, and I appreciate all the work you do.
If it helps (even just about a dime a day) to not log in, then I have no problem with my absent-mindedness sending a few more dollars FG’s way each year.
And it’s easy enough to log in when I want to use any of the premium features.
From the outsider perspective the site makes no sense. I can’t imagine how fangraphs pulls off what it does with such little revenue. The launch list up top is so impressive. Just wow.
Money well spent. Between this site and The Athletic, I feel like great content is worth paying for.
Those are the only sites I still pay for. I’ve cycled through others but they really have all you need.
Ha I do the same thing. Those are my go to memberships. I wish I had the free time and I’d be at baseball America and prospectus too but just can’t read it all. Eric and klaw fulfill my prospecting desires.
Just renewed my membership. Appreciate the reminder.
It boggles my mind that this site does not have more members. My experience as a baseball fan would be sharply diminished without the site, and there must be thousands of others in the same position.
Do we know how many members it has?
Could be because they don’t hide anything substantive behind a paywall? I’m guessing they’ve done a cost / benefits analysis and determined that would actually be detrimental, but my guess would be a lot of folks probably won’t throw their money into the ring until something they specifically want is being kept from them.
This. Being a member helps the site financially, but ultimately doesn’t really have more available to a user than what free users see. If FG decided to go the route of putting the Board, prospect lists, etc into a members only section of the site, the numbers may change.
Being able to download the leaderboards is behind the paywall, now
Very proud to be a Fangraphs member. It’s incredible to look at the list above and realize all of those impressive upgrades have been made in a short amount of time. The site really is always continually evolving for the better.
I’m sure you have a full to-do list but if you’re looking for more ideas:
Main blockers on that front are incorporating minor league park factors…which would be a gamechanger for minor league wRC+, as well.
I agree that would be very, very useful.
I’ve seen them on BA and MILB.com – incorporating them is definitely the next step in minor league stats.
I think StatCorner had MiLB park factors and splits back in the day.
BA is the only place I’m aware of that has them now. I’d settle for just the park factors themselves, that would be a HUGE help.
They did! Their version of OPS+ was on a lower scale for whatever reason, but it was really good to have as a reference point.
Adding more MiLB data would be huge. As far as I can tell, there are few sources (namely ProspectsLive) where you can pull minor league Statcast data.
I’m just thrilled we started getting AAA max EV. But yeah, anything more than can be done in the MILB stats space would be amazing.
Side note: I’d also love to see stuff+ be added to the player pages (vs. having to go find it in the leaderboards.
I second minor league L/R splits. All I can find are single-season splits on Baseball Reference, and it’s impossible to find a player’s cumulative career minor league L/R splits anywhere online.
Single-season L/R hitting splits are also on Savant. Go to a player’s page and then select “Splits” and then below that will be “MLB” and “Minors”. I can’t find career minor league L/R splits anywhere as well.
Good to know they’re there too.
Hi David- I work in the advertising industry so I appreciated that background and the challenges you face as a medium sized publisher. I’ve also been a member for years since I use the site so much. Have you considered putting ads on the podcasts? Particularly sleeper and the bust? Partnering with blue wire networks or some other podcast network to help gain incremental revenue.
Good point – I don’t mind a 30-second spot or two here and there to support this site and its writers
Another advertising question, has FanGraphs considered allowing people to sponsor a player’s page like BBR uses to do?
Everyone reply with who you would sponsor. I’m a Nats sicko torn between Matt Chico and Shairon Martis.
I am laying an early claim to Tony Batista
That’s what Defector does. They only have ads on their podcast, and it generates like 15% of their total revenue. I don’t listen to any FG podcasts so it wouldn’t affect me, but I think that idea makes a lot of sense.
I went through some mental health stuff from 2021-2023 (still lingering as well) that led to me watching baseball very seldomly or not at all (as was the case for most of 2023) as I simply lost interest in a lot of things I once loved. I let my membership lapse as I didn’t check the site at all for months on end, but I will at least turn my ad blocker off for this site and recommend membership to everyone that I can.
David – thanks for taking the time to write this. I’d like to share my feedback as a user and former member. I hope you consider these comments as meant to be productive rather than inflammatory.
The team here has done TREMENDOUS work on the data end of the site. This place is the data underbelly of understanding baseball, and the work shines through.
The team here is also full of tremendous writers, knowledgeable minds, and some unique insights. That has value.
So why did I let my membership lapse? Because I don’t think Fangraphs is listening to its customers as to what they want. And withholding membership dollars is the only tool that I, and many others, have to hope the site listens.
The underlying content here at Fangraphs is world-class. The presentation of that content, however, isn’t listening to large portions of the readership. My suggestion to you as a consumer is that you poll your audience for the types of content they are interested in, and the methods of receiving that content that they prefer, and the tone of that content, and then consider whether any tweaks are warranted to better reach your audience.
This isn’t just about political skew. (It’s not NOT about that, but it’s far from being about that.) Fangraphs once led our understanding and development of advanced statistical thinking in baseball. Many articles now are just data sets of explaining or seeking to predict performance, rather than engaging in critical study of the underlying data sets themselves. There are probably a hundred posts a year explaining a player’s performance in terms of modern analytical data. There’s virtually zero posted intellectual curiosity about whether the evolution in utilizing those analytics has reached peak-point or whether methods should continue to evolve.
In addition, while Eric’s and Tess’s work remains truly best-in-class from a quality standpoint, the publicly posted comments and suggestions about ways to present that work (and the timelines on which it is valuable) seem to have been ignored.
I’m writing this because I care. I’m writing it because I want Fangraphs to endure, and I’d be thrilled to be a member again. But I’ll continue to freeload until the site shows that it’s listening to its customers . If the site is going to continue to bang its head on the walls and say “we need new members but we’re not willing to consider the format or timing of the content we build on this incredible data,” then I’ll stay on the sidelines.
Complaints about the prospect coverage timeline might be the whiniest comments I see on this site. I can only imagine the time and effort that goes in to the ranking, grading, and extensive writeups of over 1,000 prospects, plus briefs on hundreds more prospects of note. For a team of two people, it’s remarkable they’re able to turn out consistently high-quality work at all.
I praised the quality of the work (and will continue to do so). The timeliness and format have raised questions from many. As have the large gaps in posting updates, coverage, etc. Or even basic expectations on a schedule.
I used to devour prospect coverage here before my annual spring training trip, and the minor league baseball season (as I catch a lot of games). Can’t do that anymore, and it diminishes the value.
Either way, I can’t wrap my head around negative feedback of the customer experience. My experience is what it is. Your mileage may vary, and that makes the world great.
While I do think the people commenting on the timelines are often lacking a little empathy and understanding, it does seem like some simple comms around timelines would prevent a lot of those rather annoying comments. I know Eric doesn’t really dive into the comments sections (or even Twitter I think), but this could be something that comes from the like the Meg level. Just a thought.
I would rather they only do the top 20 or only 40s and above, or whatever it would take to have them all done by, or shortly after, opening day.
David – what would be the added cost of membership, or how many additional member sign ups would be needed to support another prospect analyst to accomplish this? I love Eric and Tess’s analysis – but it indeed seems crazy that there are only two people to manage this, especially given the quick turn-around time it takes. Obviously a third person would have to mesh well with how Eric and Tess currently deliver analysis – and a third person wouldn’t come for free; just curious if this is actually feasible and what the cost and ROI would look like. I’m only going to speak for myself here – and regardless of when the content comes out, I’m going to read and enjoy it AND pay my membership dues – but I agree with dl80 in that some of the content coming out past opening day is past the point of optimal usefulness for me.
I don’t know if I can give a hard membership number or price increase, since there are competing priorities.
We would like to add another full time prospect writer at some point, hopefully sooner than later. The quality of coverage that Eric and Co. produces takes a lot of time and work. It’s definitely a tradeoff, and it seems in some reader’s minds it’s the wrong tradeoff.
Just so we’re talking about the same thing, here’s the completed dates of all prospect lists by year since we’ve had a full time person dedicated to prospect coverage. It’s definitely drifted, but they’ve never really been completed before the season starts.
July 9th – 2023
July 11th – 2022
July 7th – 2021
June 6th – 2020
May 30th – 2019
May 29th – 2018
April 26th – 2017
April 20th – 2016 (No Top 100)
April 6th – 2015
Thank you for the reference point….
Perhaps a consideration to what an earlier member suggested where a compromise is struck where Eric, Tess (and TBD analyst) focus on each team’s believed TOP20 guys and then circle back around mid-season to make any further adjustments to that initial list while touching on a few other guys that popped up along the way would work?
Again, I’m going to enjoy the content regardless – and I realize I’m just one person and my own needs may differ greatly from the needs of others.
As in politics, David, you are never going to satisfy 100% of the people 100% of the time!
I don’t envy you guys – but I DO thank you all!
Whining about people whining lol. The culture in the comments stinks and has for years. An academic endeavor welcomes questions about process and reader needs. Here, you either say “great job” or you get killed by the yes men. There are plenty of legitimate concerns with practices and the idea that things can’t be improved is idiotic. If things couldn’t improve then why would an article like this even be needed. Now, if we can just make it so I dont have to read another damn Baumann cutesy, unfunny title.
Unless a (non-?)member runs baseball media focus groups, withholding subscription fee from a site one professes to enjoy because one claims the site is non-responsive to member feedback is a bit rich. Or whiny. You’re choice.
There are plenty of good ideas and criticisms that are given thumbs up and taken up by the staff. There are also many that are derided because people don’t like them. Just because some of the ideas you like (or wrote) are pushed down doesn’t mean people hate input, they just think that input is bad.
It’s a ton of effort and good work. But if my goal is to know more about every farm system before Opening Day, I can listen to Baseball America prospect podcasts (30-45 min each) on all 30 teams, read 30 lists on BA/MLB Pipeline. The quality of those might be 95% of what FG does but ultimately it has more utility.
But the timeline in which they are released renders them useless. By the time the prospect lists are out, they are outdated already! I’d much rather see lower quality lists that come out some time prior to June.
What? The “Research” tag in the blogroll contains multiple examples of this in the last few months — Davy Andrews’ “Doomed Search for a Perfect Way To Interpret Exit Velocity Data” and “Catchers Can’t Catch a Break Anymore” are exactly the kind of analyses you’re talking about.
Ben wrote multiple articles last month digging into whether xwOBA systematically underrated a certain type of hitter!
Davy Andrews is a gem and the work there is phenomenal. But most of what I see under the “Research” tab is “Writer X analyzes a statistical data point and talks about relevant players” rather than continuing to advance the discussion on the data and methods.
When was the last time fWAR was updated or seriously questioned? We haven’t learned anything in recent years that helps improve the formula? Defensive value and positioning is the same in the pre-shift-era, the shift-era, and the pitch clock era? Have we accounted for pre-and post-pitch clock implementation when considering player value? And so forth and so on. Fangraphs used to lead in calling these questions.
We changed the fielding portion of WAR in 2022 to incorporate Statcast’s Range component, largely in response to how defensive positioning made UZR a less precise measure in that regard: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/a-fangraphs-war-fielding-update/
We’ve also done a lot of work on the effect of the rule changes, including: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/clock-stock-and-two-smoking-seconds/
https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-giants-and-the-anti-shift/
https://blogs.fangraphs.com/shift-banned-try-a-partial-ted-instead/
https://fantasy.fangraphs.com/early-results-of-the-shift-alterations/
https://blogs.fangraphs.com/how-have-the-new-rules-changed-the-game/
The “Research” category also includes, just from this offseason, deep dives on Horizontal Approach Angle, the value of pulled fly balls, the best use of the sweeper, and umpire accuracy, not to mention the depth research referenced in a comment above.
Your experience of the site is your own, but in case this work was overlooked, I thought I’d bring it to your attention.
Thanks Meg. I did indeed miss a couple of those the first time around.
(I appreciate the reference back to the 2022 post-shift period, and my comment could have been worded a bit better, but I was using pitch clock era as the primary example as noted in the next sentence.)
And I’ll add the reliance on the clearly incorrect belief that $/WAR is completely linear.
Yes. Huge one. Fangraphs used to challenge the dominant paradigm. Now it largely accepts the existing paradigm. And I guess I should stop wanting it to be something different but my user experience is shaped by what was as much as it is shaped by what is.
While I love fangraphs as it is and find it incredibly fun to read, I do feel there is something to this. When I started reading Fangraphs regularly in 2013ish, it felt like regular readers were getting analysis that was legitimately better than the analysis of many FOs across baseball. I felt like I knew things that GMs and managers didn’t.
Now, it feels like the industry has caught up and surpassed publicly available analytics, in large part by leveraging tremendous amounts of proprietary data. I don’t know that this is a case of Fangraphs just espousing the dominant paradigm; I think Fangraphs BECAME the dominant paradigm in baseball. And some teams are behind, some are ahead, some are just zigging or zagging.
That leads to articles where authors try to use public stats to understand drivers of decisions that seem foolish at first glance: why did the Rays choose to bump Springs to the rotation? Etc
I’m not sure it’s going to be possible for public-side analytics to jump ahead of the multi-billion-dollar enterprise that is team analytics now. But there are topics where I do feel like it pokes through, especially a lot of the recent pitch shape work.
All of this to say- I think Fangraphs’ place in the baseball ecosystem has shifted as much out of necessity as out of intention.
I, for one, don’t understand why we don’t have a Dave Cameron type being far ahead of the Mariners’ FO, or a Jeff Sullivan finding interesting undervalued players that the Rays should look into!
The comment section is way ahead of the writing staff on this one!
Get over yourself, beginning with the fantasy that you speak for “large portions of the readership.”
I didn’t say most or majority. I think large is fair. The number of lapsed members (which is a data point posted here previously) seems to bear that out. People canceled memberships in 2020-21 and didn’t return. That’s data (what this site is about!) that validates the premise.
Dear God, a full-on “Correlation implies Causation” argument by someone kvetching about the mathematical standards of the site slipping.
Correlation doesn’t imply causation, obviously. But you’re just building strawmen all over, and that’s cool. Irrelevant, but cool.
The entire concept of membership thing was initially pitched as a capital injection to get them through the cratered traffic resulting from the 2020 stoppage…which would seem to be a pretty damn big data point in explaining the dropoff following that season.
Of course, given that you’re going off about fWAR not having been updated recently and not accounting for positioning, despite the fact that they made the switch to RAA two years ago to address that precise issue…maybe I shouldn’t be surprised.
Absolutely false. Membership has been around since I think 2016.
As noted to Meg – I appreciate the reference back to the 2022 post-shift period, and my comment could have been worded a bit better, but I was using pitch clock era as the primary example as noted in the next sentence. I mentioned three periods of baseball and you’re focused on two. It seems at this point that you’re parsing my comments looking for single words or phrases to criticize rather than the overall point. And, again, that’s cool if that’s your perspective. But I’m not a writer with an editor. I’m a commentor grabbing a water break.
Also membership went from $25 to $60 a year in the same time period.
I’m pretty sure that if they created a site that alleviated all of the concerns you’ve concocted in your fever dreams, they’d lose more members than they’d gain.
More than that I’m convinced you are just a troll and literally nothing they could do would be enough. Complaining is just too valuable for you to give it up.
I’m sorry that you read my critiques and my sharing of my user experience as “complaining.”
Also, this is like the 10th time you’ve called me a troll in the last four years. I must be playing a really, really, really long trolling game…
I’m well aware of the many times I’ve called you a troll. I firmly believe it. I don’t think you often engage honestly in discussion and I think you often make comments purely to stir the poop pot.
I may be a dick, but at least I’m generally being sincere!
Yes! You are one of many people I often don’t agree with, and you can be mean, but you don’t seem to ever try to poison comments sections.
tomerafan does. He’s pivoted a bit in this one to try to play nice, but it’s his M.O. and has been for years. He rarely if ever adds anything that isn’t antagonistic.
This surprises me, and I’ll try harder to express my opinions without being antagonistic. But I’d also note that you never seem to express problems with my comments on *baseball*, and only with my comments on *Fangraphs* or *economic issues*. So I’d also ask you to consider your own perspective and whether you’re ready antagonism into things that you simply disagree with.
(I did have one day during COVID where I was absolutely antagonistic in expressing my opinions, and I’ve apologized for that. Early COVID days were rough on the psyche. I stand by my observations and opinions while absolutely realizing I could have expressed them better. And if you’re going to judge any one person by their worst day on a comment board, then so be it.)
Our Member retention is actually quite good and the vast majority of people who signed up to help us through the pandemic are still Members to this day.
Just to clarify, we’ve been very fortunate to see steady membership growth, both in terms of the raw number of members and our membership revenue, since our initial push in 2020 in response to the pandemic. Our renewal rate is around 80%, which is pretty standard across digital media.
Hey! You’re not a member. I’m sure you can be comped a membership. 🙂
I need to have the ads turned on. 🙁
Oh, I am so sorry. But also impressed!
I suspect it’s a vocal minority, but to your original point, I would be curious to see some polling on some of these questions.
Surely nothing else happened in the world during 2020-21 that led to many folks lapsing their subscriptions to a baseball site.
Came here to write almost the exact same comment. I don’t share any of the criticisms/claims that were made, and neither do any of the many people I know who frequent Fangraphs. Main Character Syndrome.
If I may make a suggestion, Baseball Prospectus might have more of what you’re looking for in the way of direct research. But if you’re not looking for another subscription in your portfolio, you could also just snooze FanGraphs until Alex Chamberlain comes up with his next Approach Angle Above Average. Else, look up the annual SABR research nominees.
Also, fwiw, Eric Longenhagen has explicitly said (on a recent Effectively Wild) that he never reads the comments. I don’t blame him, I think prospects writing is much more divisive than your average baseball article because of how much of it comes off as personal and values judgment.
Well he could show up for his weekly chat to answer questions more than 5 times a year. If not EL have Tess do it.
You’re going to eat downvotes all day for this, but I agree entirely. I supported throughout the pandemic, but by the time the price increase came around last year, I asked myself if I was happy and felt heard, and the answer was no. So I voted with my wallet.
The timeliness of prospect content (and staffing–they need more people to support that killer work!) was my main sticking point, but we only get 2 chats with Eric per year at this point, at the draft and t100 time, despite the “chat schedule” on the homepage saying weekly. I loved the chats as a way to catch a quick blurb on some pop up guy between formal updates. The content is top tier, the timing is bottom tier. And it feels like more resources are being poured into snarky article titles than addressing real issues.
I pivoted to a BP sub this year because they had their prospect writeups done by mid-Feb, and their content is engaging. It’s just a ghost town in their comments section, unfortunately. They don’t have an equivalent of sabtrombone.
Fortunately, my self-worth is not correlated with upvotes or downvotes. But I agree with your comments (and also pivoted to a BP subscription). On prospects, the content is absolutely top-tier. Absolutely. But the timing of nature of it diminishes the value significantly.
Again, my personal experience is that the value I get from learning about prospects is HEAVILY front-loaded from March to June. Between spring training trips (where I love looking for Eric’s underground favorites on the backfields) to minor league games (which I love taking in during work travel before the kids’ school year is out) and fantasy baseball drafts…
Unfortunately for me, the site’s resistance to feedback on the prospect work is symptomatic/indicative of my broader user experience. Commenters are CONSTANTLY posting about how they engage with prospect content, and how and when it could or should be valuable, but the only changes I can perceive have been LESS chats (the opposite of what users request) and the “proximity to the majors” blurbs… leaving some users with the feeling that the site doesn’t care about how or when we value the work product. I mean, it’s no secret, and it gets snarked out in literally every single top prospect list within the first couple of comments.
If I showed so much disregard for how my own clients/customers view the timing of my product and work and tried to only trumpet the high quality, I’d be out of business pretty quickly. Which isn’t what I want for Fangraphs!!! But like you said, my only tool is the vote from my wallet. And these comments.
Do you have an example of what you mean? I always like to know I’m running things that people will find interesting. Do you mean things like https://blogs.fangraphs.com/yes-hitter-xstats-are-useful/ ?
Starting from a fanboy perspective who enjoys your work… if we were reading writing samples and voting on front page content, I’d take more stuff like that every day of the week. It’s unique content and advanced analytical thought that I can’t get anywhere else. And it asks questions to try to validate or improve our view… rather than scraping a dataset presenting observations.
While I would encourage you to stay a member, I’m not sure why this got so many down votes. These seem like well meaning, constructive critiques. I don’t necessarily agree with all of them, but nothing here seems out of bounds to me.
That’s always been the nature of the FanGraphs comments section. I recently got a blast out of revisiting the 2016 Red Sox prospect list when I got downvoted to hell for questioning Dan Farnsworth saying that Rafael Devers had a lower floor than Benintendi, Moncada, and Anderson Espinoza when Devers clearly had the highest floor in that group.
Some people take any criticism as an affront, no matter how legitimate that criticism may be.
Eh – Devers’ “floor” entering 2016 was “Outgrows 3B and never improves his approach enough to unlock his power.”
In what way is Eric and Tess’s work not being presented on a timeline to be valuable? I would contend that their prospect reports that are released during the season and incorporate new information are substantially more valuable than the many other reports that are released in the spring all using months old data and looks. Especially with teenagers and players young in their career the looks from the next couple months will be massively more informative than last year.
Some have made the point that if a DSL player is not top-200 quality (a rare occurrence), they should maybe be in a compendium or subsequent list when we have stateside looks…
But I think we’re looking at the timeline differently. I’d rather have Eric’s insight into top-20’s/30’s and picks to click, interesting names to look at, etc. before opening day and save the deeper dive content for summer, or something like that. Instead, I have deep dives on some teams and none of his insight at all into others. And there’s such sporadic engagement… chats, mailbags, etc. Like, there are certainly guys in spring training that are POPPING right now. I’d love to know that before my next Florida trip so I know who to look for. I’d love to know before the minor league season opens next month.
None of this is a criticism of Eric and Tess’s quality. In fact, it’s an ENDORSEMENT of it. It’s such high quality that a lot of people are really bummed to not have it in a way that augments their baseball experience in the spring and early summer.
This is my position as well. I think it’s okay to have full writeups on FV40+ prospects only, and I think it’s okay to publish a preliminary list in January and then publish a “revision list” around spring training.
This is my one actual complaint.
So let it be written, So let it be done!
I wish more people would couch their feedback this way, because I think this is usually where people are coming from with these comments (i.e. they love the product and want it more / faster). Unfortunately the comments / feedback typically don’t come off that way (to my eye at least).
I also think it’s important to note that this isn’t an easy problem to fix. I sub to / follow multiple outlets that cover prospects and there are challenges inherent with however you do this. Adding more scouts / writers often results in more uneven grading / reporting across prospects. Reducing the depth of the reports obviously impacts some readers here more than others, but I’m sure many would push back against compromising on this to get lists out quicker. I would imagine not adding actual tool grades would make this a lot easier, but that is my FAVORITE thing about Eric’s reports. I only say this to say that I think it’s a complicated problem to fix and I think we all need to keep in mind that Eric and Tess are human beings who, to my understanding, are often burning the candle at both ends to get us this content in an even somewhat timely fashion.
I wasn’t the one who made the original comment, but I suspect most folks are looking for these before the season so they can use them to prep for their dynasty drafts, FYPDs, etc. (these are fantasy baseball terms for anyone not in that sphere). I play in those circles, but to your point, I don’t necessarily find the lists less useful, their just useful in a different way (i.e. I utilize them more for in-season pickups and trading than pre-season draft prep). I would love to see all of the lists published before the season, but I don’t find them really any less useful because many of them get released during the year. As you point out, they often include updated in-season observations and data that I find extremely helpful.
I wager a large percentage use these reports for fantasy sports and player acquisition time is in the winter through drafts. The old timeline had 50% of the league done by the new year, now its maybe 5 teams. right now. A detailed report when I dont need it has 0 value in that context. I’m not sure how many people here care about Cleveland’s 50th best prospect for reason beyond fantasy sports.
I wouldn’t say FG isn’t listening, but a lot of the innovative writers at this site were hired by major league teams a few years ago and I imagine it was and has been tough to find/hire writers that are doing independent research. Hell, I bet a lot of those people you wish to see here are going to Driveline amd Tread and the like because they’re doing a ton of innovating themselves.
It really is amazing how many writers have been poached from the site (not all of them for MLB jobs). It speaks to the quality of the writing we’ve been lucky enough to enjoy over the years. I’m sure there are many more coming behind them though, this space always seems to generate amazing new talent.
I mostly agree with you, especially about prospect list timeliness. I’ve also felt just a general decline in authors (especially the new ones) having genuine interest in interacting in the comments. Some get very defensive (no pun intended) about people pointing out typos or errors, some literally never even read the comments, and some ignore valid and interesting theoretical/analytical questions that might lead to interesting further research.
I’ve also felt that too many of the new writers are too cute by half with overloading their articles with random cultural or historical references (not politics). I can only handle so many references to Chekov, the Wire, and impressionism in an article about Juan Soto. I can get that kind of silly randomness from Reddit.
Those are the main reasons I’ve stopped being a member, though I don’t block ads, for what it’s worth.
And I’m actually far left politically, so none of the political stuff bothers me. In fact, the anti- plutocracy, pro-union stuff is some of my favorite.
Honestly, given the cesspool that is most comments sections (yes, sometimes even Fangraphs), I can’t blame any writer who doesn’t want to delve into that. I guess you could say that’s part of their job, but I def don’t blame them for wanting to sit that out.
I’ll agree here on the point of writer interaction. The guys that also do the chats are the best to deal with and keep up reader interest because many of the questions and comments will get answered. The less a writer has interest in interacting with the reader (ie customer), the less enthused the masses will be over the ROI of the membership. If they cannot be bothered, find some that are willing to provide more engaging customer service.
I was a member back when I visited the site regularly. Honestly, the quality of the articles has gone down significantly. I don’t mind an occasionally elaborate title or pop culture references in the body, but the fluff to content ratio is far too heavy on the former these days.
That being said, Longenhagen’s work remains superb, so I guess I really should resume my membership just to pay for that.
As a reader since forever ago (holy crap NotGraphs was 10 years ago?!) I firmly think this is a rose-colored glasses view. Fangraphs suffers from the SNL curse – the top talent will be poached, but FG keeps churning that talent out. People will complain it used to be better, usually aligning to a time frame in their life they look at with nostalgia in general. It’s easy to point to great previous works, but forget some of that was spread over 3-5 years and expect that over 2 months now because memory condenses things.
Articles today are as good as they have ever been, IMO. And I’m sure you think my view is all kool-aid, and that’s fine too! I look forward to someone else in 2029 complaining about how FG has fallen from grace from the golden years of 2022-2024.
Becoming a member of this site was possibly the easiest business transaction of my life.
I will say that the ads are so big that it’s tough to read articles on a small screen. Almost impossible at times, since the header doesn’t collapse.
A yearly ad-free membership is about $0.23 per day if you use the site only on weekdays.
I did not have that experience *at all* when I used the site before becoming a member a few months ago
My membership lapsed for a bit, and the ads were punishingly obtrusive.
But, y’know…my membership had lapsed!
Again, this was not my experience pre-membership. Not trying to say it wasn’t yours – maybe I am just far more used to navigating around/ignoring ads?
To expound on this, I just opened an article in a tab on my phone signed out. I have a 5″ vertical size of my screen. The bottom inch of the screen was a video ad (which I could close out of immediately to reclaim the space). The top ~3/4 of an inch was the header. The rest in between (~3.25 inches) was article. Every so often in the article there would be an ad that would take up – if I also include the whitespace buffer around it – about 2 inches. But I could just scroll past them.
Are they annoying? I could see how they would be. Though for me it’s just the price of being on the internet. Not trying to say that other people might not be excessively annoyed by it – different people have different reactions to things like this. From my perspective, I have definitely been on sites that are a lot worse with their ads, though, so the ones here I just worked around almost subconsciously.
I do have an SE2020, in fairness.
Thank you David and the entire staff. I think it was Jeff Sullivan who called Fangraphs the last great place on the internet. I couldn’t agree more. Proud to have a membership.
I’m doing my part!
Membership has definitely been worth it for me. Always love the content, and the ability to hide photos so it isn’t quite so obvious I’m looking at baseball news/stats at work is great.
Fangraphs is the only paid online publication I subscribe to. Thank you all for your hard work and dedication. Cheers!
Absolutely love Fangraphs. No other place to post this so here are some random thoughts and suggestions:
*Add a message board. Would drive lots of traffic and potentially give authors ideas for articles.
*Add more statcast stats (EV50, catcher framing, etc)
*Add ‘leagues averages’ option for all stat sections on the player pages
*Maybe charge teams (something? more?) for the job postings that the site frequently posts. This is an insanely attractive audience for that type of job board posting and they can and should be willing to pay for it.
*This is perhaps controversial, but maybe considering dropping the individual prospect writeups for 35+ and 40 grade prospects (only writeups for 40+) as a means to speed up the prospect coverage. The prospect coverage is fantastic but hardly any 35+ or 40 grade prospects actually make it and I have to believe the shear number of 35+/40 guys really slows down the process.
Keep up the great work. Love you guys!
I’d love a message board.
Most comment sections on the internet are awful cesspools, but I think the FG community is pretty nice. I’d enjoy being able to connect with other fangraphs members outside of the context of a particular article. Individual team message boards, perhaps.
Maybe if limited to members only it would be manageable.
Message board for members only (to post). That would drastically reduce the need for moderation.
This is a tiny thing, and maybe the FG team is too humble for it, but the Contact page could be expanded into a full-on Masthead page listing the staff and their job titles. Maybe how long they’ve been here. (I was totally gobsmacked the other day when Dan said he’s nearing the 6 year mark.) Brag on yourselves a lil bit!
Would love to see 90th percentile EV on player pages!
EV50 and EV95 would be phenomenal.
I’m just super skeptical of Max EV. The Manny Machado thing where he hits one ball of 118 MPH or whatever and I think, “that must be a machine error.” But the idea of Max EV is great.
What happened to community research board? I found those quite interesting and helpful for the authors.
I wrote a couple pieces there and would love to see it back. Also…nobody’s mentioned it but…NotGraphs
This was a good reminder to re-sub. Hooray for Apples and our community!
Edit: I forgot how much I love Dark Mode.
Dark mode rules. My eyes are so thankful
🤯 How did I not know dark mode was a thing until now? You have changed my life.
Holy shit! I had no idea, just went dark. Yay!!!
Nice Top 100 Prospects List
I was expecting bad news but this is more “doing okay” news, which is actually good news these days.
Thanks for the incredible support everyone! Our Members and comments like these make this all worth doing.
come on, buy a membership buddy
10/10. wonderful hahah
Is there any chance at all that community research articles will come back? That’s largely been the lost feature that has kept me from wanting to subscribe.
BRING BACK NOTGRAPHS
Haha, notgraphs is fun too. That might be enough to get me to sub. But community research was a really fun part of the site that just vanished with no explanation.
I’m still waiting for a follow-up to this classic: Dangerous Experiment: A Roster of 25 Adam Dunns | NotGraphs Baseball (fangraphs.com)
It might be a while. But in the meantime, the spiritual successor came out almost three years ago. You can read it here:
Dangerous Experiment: A Universe of 776 Shohei Ohtanis
Oh my lord, how did I miss this? Thank you for posting!
Banknotes Harper for life!
Absolutely love the site, very glad to support it.
Thank you to David and the entire FG’s team
ah an intersection of what i like to do (read about baseball and baseball stats) and what i do to make money (adtech). Happy to be a member not to have to see the ads though..
Even though I lost my rooting team – Oakland Athletics – and have no reason to follow baseball my membership is well worth the money.
There is no reason to follow baseball except it’s baseball.
It isn’t the game that I grew up with. All hitter’s trying to pull everything in the air to the point that the shift was banned. A parade of max effort relievers to the point that they put a bogus runner on 2B in extra innings. The routine TJS possibly from max effort pitching. The reduced BIP means defense is de-emphasized. Universal DH means pitchers aren’t using their athleticism nearly as much.
The trend toward specialists in the name of improving the quality of play could easily lead to “hitter” becoming a position. Why let Jeremy Peña bat when Yordan Alvarez is so much better at it. Wouldn’t the quality of play be better with NFL rules? Juan Soto would hit and be comparable to Patrick Mahomes. Josh Rojas would be comparable to Nick Bosa. Myles Straw should always pinch run and be like Tyreek Hill.
That I enjoy FanGraphs with no team and declining enjoyment of the actual product is a testament to FanGraphs
I agree with a whole lot of this…although I would say that one of the more insidious parts of the shift is that it also turned hard like drives over the pitchers head into routine outs.
It would be interesting to see if people pull more against opposite hand pitching – it does make intuitive sense, between the extra instant of visibility and the in-railing action from an opposite side fastball.
I like baseball – and FanGraphs – more than any single baseball team.
I knew this comment section was going to devolve, so may I make two or three suggestions / hopefully constructive critiques since I am almost guaranteed to raise the level of conversation.
1) Can you have Jake try writing about something other than the power rankings? I know why you commission it because it drives clicks, it probably goes viral on social media, and it gets people like me commenting on it multiple times because I hate it so much. But it’s not really a power ranking in any real sense, it’s just a worse version of BaseRuns. Or maybe he should still write about it, but tell him to use a rolling average weighted by opponent’s team quality of or something, and / or incorporate the projections…
2) There are a lot of reasons I have been given why The Board doesn’t have Rule 5 timelines, and none of them make any sense to me unless you promised Jason that you wouldn’t pipe information in from Roster Resource. Having The Rule 5 timelines / options on The Board would take it over the top. You have no idea how useful it would be to be able to filter prospects whose Rule 5 is coming up, or to see how many options they have left, etc because it’s super obvious that it is a major factor in which prospects get traded. Flipping back between The Board and Roster Resource is a lot more work than it needs to be.
I’m a huge fan of Fangraphs and it’s probably the single website I visit the most, even more than my email inbox, so I have basically zero reason to cancel my membership but I think these would be really good…
Second the Rule 5 comment
Third
I followed baseball for nearly fifty years before I found FanGraphs a decade back. Now I can’t imagine following baseball without it. Thanks so much for the thoughtful work and indispensable resources.
This is a wonderful site! Thank you. 🙂
I’m always happy to support the site and look forward to renewing my membership.
I’m still grieving Fangraphs Audio. Over a year now since Dylan left and the pod went dormant. Perhaps I just need to move on, but what I wouldn’t give to get just one more “that’s Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass…”
I’m here to echo the sentiments of gratitude for all you and your team have done for us fans. I’m happy to continue to support Fangraphs and its writers and technicians via membership, as I have been for some years now.
Thank you!
David, I have Good Business Advice to avoid the injustice of my paying money in exchange for goods and services::
— You can save a lot of money by not paying your writers. Not paying writers is a big part of the industry, and Szymborski’s probably set for life, anyway.
— Even Google sometimes takes money from advertisers like Bestbuy48231.txv which will fix your computer’s problems and are clearly not scammers and even if they are, that’s not your problem.
— Adjust free agent projections based on input from their agents. Financial input. Direct financial input.
— All AI stories, all the time.
— Just sell to a profit-maximizer, which as near as I can tell has never gone wrong in any way for any media entity.
I know you’ve been doing this your way for a while and have weird preferences so I’m a member. But, you need to know you have other great options like those above.
Given your handle and the content in this post, I’m reading this is Kenny Mayne’s voice and it is enhancing the experience significantly.
DO NOT LISTEN TO THIS MAN, I HAVE SOUP TO BUY
And chili (of the Cincinnati variety).
I imagine feeding 15 cats must cost a fortune.
Happy to renew every year! Keep on keeping on!
I would love to be able to know how to build lists. I’ve tried several times but have not been completely successful.
FG Membership is a year-in, year-out, no-brainer subscription. Thanks for everything you guys do!
I’m not really on the internet relative to my generation, and Fangraphs is the only website I visit daily (unless you count Worldle and Wheretaken, which I still sometimes miss). I follow all the different sectors of the site. You will never not have my membership money.
One thing that I sorely miss, though, is Fangraphs Audio. I asked in chats a couple times about this coming back and always received the “hopefully soon!” response. It was a great listen and was significantly different from EW so that I never felt like they intruded on one another.
Again, you are not losing my money over this, but I would imagine it could be a revenue driver by bringing people to the site/memberships, and you can have an ad or two in there.
We’re still trying to figure out how to do it again well. We don’t want to do it just to *do it*.
I appreciate the response, Dan, and love the update. I look forward to the product whenever it is ready.
Just want to echo the positive sentiments mentioned by many already. Probably the site I visit the most on the internet and for good reason. My wife likes to joke when she sees me on my phone, “are you on fangraphics again?”
One minor recommendation, I know you all don’t have limitless resources and some enhancements we would like to see may not be possible (or would be very difficult), but I do think have some kind of feedback mechanism (like a survey or poll or something) maybe 1-2 times a year would go a long way in aligning site resources and plans with user feedback. I’m sure many here would love to provide their feedback and my guess would be this would help you all out a lot. Just a thought, keep up the great work!
Dear Fangraphs,
Love you.
Sincerely,
Oaktown Steve
Thanks for all you do! Proud to be a member!
I have a hard time choosing between Fangraphs and Baseball HQ, so I feed my fantasy habit by subscribing to both. Keep up the great work!
Thanks for this valuable peek behind the curtain, David! I love my Fangraphs membership and feel great supporting a site I’ve read for years. Several other sites have affiliate partnerships where a site gets a cut of a transaction if someone purchases a product via a site’s affiliate link. I’m wondering if Fangraphs has considered affiliate links as a revenue sources, like perhaps for MLB.tv subscriptions or Stathead subscriptions or other products people might want to engage with as a companion to Fangraphs? I know I’d re-route my purchasing decisions through a Fangraphs affiliate link if it was an option.
This is a great idea, assuming it isn’t done in an intrusive way.
I would definitely do this.
Very happy to support Fangraphs and the wonderful content you provide.
I auto-renew every year. You guys have an amazing product for baseball lovers. So happy to support it every year. Keep it going!
I just renewed for a year and hope it keeps on keeping on!!
Love this website, and will always be a member. If I get some eff-you money in the future, I’ll donate a bunch here. Simply the best.
Very happy to continue to be a member supporting this excellent site.
I was hoping to read about the return of The Hardball Times, but alas…
While I understand the pain of running a small site, the specific ads that are served on Fangraphs are the most intrusive I have ever encountered in the modern internet. I ad block out of safety more than convenience on this site. Happy to pay if the ads can get toned down to become just moderately aggressive.
I have to (or strongly prefer to) read the site at work without signing in. It’s becoming almost unreadable that way.
I hate the ads that basically cut the content screen in half, forcing me to zoom in just to read the articles or look at the stat pages, and when I zoom in I can’t scroll around to find the relevant info I need. It’s made this site damn near impossible to navigate, and if I had an extra $5 a month to spare right now (I don’t for reasons I’d rather not get into with a bunch of strangers online), I’d pay to get the ad-free membership.
Buy a membership – make them go away……
5 bucks a month. It’s worth it. Just do it.
Thanks for everything you all do!
Thanks for the update. Every one of my dollars is beyond well-earned.
Proud member, if you frequent this site and don’t pay to be a member, you are stealing… IMO there shouldn’t be an option. Pay these guys or go away.,
If this ain’t the best website on the internet, then my name ain’t Nathan Arizona!
(Did I leave out the “baseball” qualifier intentionally? Does a frog bump his ass a hoppin’?)
Been using this site on almost a daily basis for years, been a member for years. Any thoughts to offering a tiered membership or ways those who want to can pay more?
I’ve been an auto-renewing member since August of 2019. Really, is there a better deal on the internet? $25 for a year? You can spend more on a fancy pizza. I am more than happy to pay for this. It’s top-notch journalism in every sense of the word. It is THE place for the best stats, analysis, and fantasy insight. I couldn’t imagine a world without Fangraphs. Thank you, David, and your consistently excellent staff that keeps getting hired away by actual MLB teams! Hey, MLB, can we keep a few of these writers, please?
It costs quite a bit more than that now (though I am still more than happy to pay the new amount, personally)
It is all worth it! This site is THE BEST.
Hey – just wanted to say, thanks for taking down Saruman.
Ah, I get that a lot. That’s my cousin, Treebeard. We look a lot alike.
Happy to be a member. I love this site.
Membership is the way to go. Rock on David!
For me, personally, the membership wouldn’t be worth it in terms of I-receive-this-benefit-that-for-this-money-compared-to-being-a-freeloader, since I don’t use the actual membership features almost at all (I guess no ads is a thing, but the ads didn’t bother me – apparently unlike lots of other people, based on other comments).
Having said that… the real value for me is just to support the site and all the people who work here. The free features are worth well more than the membership cost to me, so I want to pay to keep them around. And I’m fortunate enough to be in a good financial situation so I can do so, and hopefully help enable those features for people who can’t afford it.
For sure, $5/month is a small price to pay for a site with so much to offer.
Even if it weren’t for all the journalism and analysis, the access to pitching, batting, and roster data is worth supporting.
Thanks Appleman. Longtime FG, err, fan. Subscribed since it was offered, and Adblock whitelisted. Thanks for the heads-up, and great site 🙏🏽
I became a member last year and will never go back to being non paying. Fangraphs is too essential to how I enjoy baseball. Pay for what you love and want to exist in the world.
I would love to be a full time member, but the main functionality I enjoyed last season (legacy leaderboards) has been replaced. If there was a way to have data extracted as seamlessly as it was before, then I would sign up tomorrow.
The legacy leaderboards still exist.
I was under the impression they were going away once the 2024 season begins.
I just come to ask how many subscriptions I need to buy for you to bring back NotGraphs?
I have taken endlessly from this site for years and given nothing in that time. It’s long overdue that I become a member (I do support Effectively Wild). Just signed up.
I don’t understand why you don’t monetize the fangraphs database. There’s are hundreds, thousands of users that dig through it every day .
Why not make access fee-based? I’m sure some people would stop using it but the site is used by so many people, most of whom likely don’t pay, that I think you are leaving money on the table
You are trying to monetize the site by selling access to articles (my opinion) when the unique value of the site is the database.
I think you underestimate the depth to which fWAR and the data underlying it have penetrated the MLB fanbase. You have accomplished the first step which is created a tool that everyone loves and made it easily searchable. Now you should one reap the rewards.
In agreement here. The database, customization ability, forecasting and article write ups are all amazing and worth more than you think!
The one thing that I will re-iterate from a prior post is that I would like to see more of the writers directly interact with posters, at the very minimum acknowledge some of the open questions that are posed.
Another thought on doing a tiered membership – or, potentially making a “members only” incentive is allowing only those with a membership to have their chat questions and comments posted. I think it’s fair to ask and expect that your paid members are being taken care of first and foremost.
Dave – It might also be worthwhile noting that several of the non-member comments were around the “annoying” ad pop ups. I don’t think these commenters realize that those ads go away with a paid subscription. Speaking for myself, when I first came across this amazing website, I too had pause on spending on a membership because I didn’t want to deal with the ads. It wasn’t until one of your State of the Union addresses looking for membership where you first educated me that my membership dues get rid of them did I sign up.
Im happing buying the cow, and even if I disagree with the writers here a lot, i appreciate the content. But you also need to ditch the reddit-tier upvote/downvote system. The same thing happens, where you get downvoted for simply having a controversial take. It’s baloney.
I’ll somewhat agree here in that I’m not a fan of the “down” vote. I often “up” vote comments where my thoughts are aligned – or where I want to nod my head and give a thank you to the commenter. But wherever I disagree with a poster or writer – and there are plenty of times where I don’t agree – I simply move on with my day. I’m so grateful that we live in a democratic society where we should be allowed to share our opinions – whether we agree with those opinions or not – and stress open communication and dialogue. I don’t feel right hiding behind my computer screen and down voting someone simply because our ideas don’t align.
That said, this is a BASEBALL website and our disagreeing opinions, in my opinion, should be kept to BASEBALL.
David – any thoughts on keeping the “up” vote and removing the “down” vote, while also retaining the comment flag as a means to report “aggressive” comments between posters for fangraphs to review and take action on if you deem necessary?
Hard disagree. Unsure why people get so, so very worked up about their upvotes and downvotes. If you have an opinion – popular or unpopular – just state it. Those votes – whether up or down – should have 0.000000000000% impact on your day or your quality of life. -375 feedback? Hey look, the sun’s still shining outside, my cat is still doing something cute and thinks I’m awesome, and the Jays-Orioles are heading to the bottom of the 6th.
I love what youre doing here! one question though is would it be possible to get the pitch modeling incorporated to the player pages?
You can add it to your custom dashboard currently. It will be fully on the player pages at some point.
oh awesome didnt realize that thanks!!
Yeah, glad to support the site.
Appreciate this site more every day…thank you for all that you guys do. You can count on me to be a member!
Worth my subscription every single month. Love y’all’s work – my enjoyment of the game is genuinely enhanced by everything the team here does. Here’s to another great summer!
Thank you for the explanation, I had no idea how incredibly convoluted the ad process is. Happy to support Fangraphs through membership. Membership has its privileges! Wait, maybe ads do work?
You guys should consider acquiring Sim League Baseball from WhatIfSports. This site is for baseball nerds, so getting an extra revenue stream like Simulation Baseball Leagues would be the perfect condiment to this site.
This is a mistake putting out content like this(imo). No one wants to read about how hard you work or your struggles in life.
Life is tough, we know, figure it out!!
And put out baseball content!!
Btw, big fan of the site!! Lol.