Every franchise is looking for that player who seems to come out of nowhere to be a major contributor in their lineup. Players like José Bautista, who went from 1.8 WAR in 2009 to 6.5 WAR in 2010, or Justin Turner, who jumped from 0.5 WAR in 2013 to 3.4 WAR in 2014. The cost for acquiring these players was affordable because they were no longer prospects and most of the league had written them off as potential everyday players.

If a team had the ability to identify which players are most likely to exceed industry expectations, they would have a significant advantage over their competition. That is why I decided to create a model that tries to identify potential breakout performers.

Methodology

The first thing I needed to do was to define what constitutes a breakout performance. I thought of several different definitions, but I decided to define a breakout performance as any player that exceeded their career high WAR in a single season by at least 2.0 WAR. So if a player had recorded a season of 0.0 WAR, they would need to have at least a 2.0 WAR season. If a player had recorded a season of 1.0 WAR, they would need to have at least a 3.0 WAR season and so on and so forth. Read the rest of this entry »

MLB’s Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) is set to expire on December 1st. Unfortunately with all of the disagreements over issues including rule changes, profit sharing, and minor league living conditions, it’s possible that we could see a work stoppage similar to the one we saw in 1994.

The MLBPA’s website says the purpose of the CBA “is to set forth their agreement on certain terms and conditions of employment of all Major League Baseball Players for the duration of this Agreement.” This is vital to the league and many other major U.S. sports because it sets fair and ethical rules for players and teams to abide by. However, owners have historically dominated negotiations and kept the lion’s share of profits. In recent years, players have been much more open to speaking out, and there has been significant pushback in the media. If there aren’t substantial changes made by December, it would not be surprising to see another lockout or strike.

If there is no new CBA by December 1st, MLB rules say major league play will stop until it is renewed and there will be no moves allowed by any club. This will play a significant role this offseason regardless of whether the CBA gets renewed or not, as the potential scare of a delayed CBA may force teams to rush moves or wait longer on them. Read the rest of this entry »

What’s 0/573?

Baseball Savant knows, but they also know it’s useless information. This is precisely why they do not display it. And it’s a shame that they don’t display it.

If they did, it would show that David Fletcher is in the zeroth Percentile for Barrels.

For a quick refresher, Barrels are “a batted ball with the perfect combination of exit velocity and launch angle.” To qualify, a ball must be hit at least 98 mph. For that exit velocity, a launch angle of between 26-30 degrees is required. For every single mph increase, the range of acceptable launch angle degrees increases by two or three, up until 116 mph. At that level, any ball hit between 8-50 launch degrees is considered Barreled.

Fletcher didn’t do that once in 2021. Instead, he mustered eight “close calls” among his 573 batted ball events. Read the rest of this entry »

One piece from FanGraphs this season has stayed with me more than any other article on the website. In early September, Kevin Goldstein wrote a piece called The Rays’ Unique Ability To Mitigate Risk.

For most of the piece, Goldstein examined why the Rays pitch effectively even though they use so many relief pitchers. Most of the time, a team that cycles though relief pitchers in bunches is a bad one, like the Baltimore Orioles this year. But the Rays, as they often do, defy common practice.

I actually did not remember that part of Goldstein’s article; I only remembered it when I re-read it before writing this. What stuck with me was a short section at the beginning in which he explained why the Rays score so many runs.

Goldstein’s question was how does a team that has no high-priced free agent slugger, like Bryce Harper or Manny Machado, or no home-grown young stud, like Juan Soto or Fernando Tatis Jr., score so many runs? (You will see in a moment why I am ignoring the Rays’ young phenom Wander Franco.) Read the rest of this entry »

October 4, 1972: Yankees righty Larry Gowell hits a double off of Milwaukee Brewers pitcher Jim Lonborg. The American League Brewers played that game in an American League park in the Bronx, with no designated hitter on either side.

October 3, 2021: Dodgers righty Andre Jackson hits for himself, in relief, grounding out against Milwaukee Brewers pitcher Daniel Norris. The National League Brewers played that game in a National League park in Los Angeles, with no designated hitter on either side.

Gowell started his game and went five innings. In the third he led off, got his double, and advanced on a 6-3 groundout before being stranded at third base. In the bottom of the inning, he gave up a sac fly to John Briggs. That proved to be the only run, tagging Gowell with the loss.

Jackson was in relief of Phil Bickford, himself in relief of Walker Buehler. When a reliever hits for himself, rarely is the game competitive: here, Jackson had already pitched two innings with a nice lead. Immediately before Jackson’s spot in the batting order came up, outfielder Matt Beaty drove in catcher Will Smith, utility man Chris Taylor, and himself. Dodgers skipper Dave Roberts surely saw the score in LA, the score in San Francisco, and Jackson’s roster status for the playoffs, and let him hit and finish out the ninth. (Jackson collected a save for his three-inning effort, the first of his career.)

Gowell probably wasn’t the last AL pitcher to bat before the DH. The Angels and Royals had night games on the same day with pitcher at-bats in the Pacific and Central time zones. If baseball should adopt the designated hitter rule for the National League effective next year, Jackson will probably be the last NL pitcher to bat under these rules. The Reds’ Reiver Sanmartin collected three at-bats before being lifted for a pinch-hitter on the same day, but two of those came to start and end the fifth inning in his game against the Pirates. The Giants’ Logan Webb collected three at-bats too, but his day as a batter ended after a home run in the fifth. All those games began around the same time, so Jackson’s appearance in the eighth inning was a bit later on. Read the rest of this entry »

In 2018, the Tampa Bay Rays introduced the Opener, a novel concept in which a relief pitcher started a game with the purpose of shutting down an offense in the first few innings. The Opener would then hand the ball to a bulk pitcher, who went three-to-four innings before giving way to the usual bullpen corps.

When the Rays introduced the Opener strategy, many in baseball thought it was blasphemy. Starting pitchers have roles and this is the way the pitcher order has been for generations. How dare the Rays upset the natural order of roles, titles, and statistics?

When analysts looked at the Rays roster, however, they quickly understood what the team was doing. By not recognizing a “pitching rotation,” the Rays were looking a level deeper. They were stacking pitchers on a per-game basis, with the intent to win each game and hence build enough wins to make the playoffs. Once it was understood, the Opener was applauded and eventually copied throughout the league.

Besides being a sly way to neutralize lineups, the Opener represented the “Rays Way” amidst financial necessity. The team could not afford a typical major league rotation of four or five quality starters. Relief pitchers are cheaper and easier to find. They couldn’t find five aces, so they built ace performances using multiple relievers, with the additional bonus of paying them less. If you can’t find a hundred-million-dollar starter, build one. Read the rest of this entry »

As the Red Sox move on to the American League Championship Series, the team may not have the talent to contend with teams like the Astros. Some could say the same thing about the Rays, but the Red Sox were fortunate Tampa Bay’s staff was shot after injuries plagued them throughout the season. The Red Sox have All-Stars talents like Rafael Devers, Xander Bogarts, and J.D. Martinez, but they need better role players who provide depth in October if they are truly going to contend each year. Successful teams don’t often undergo a complete rebuild, instead choosing to go through mini-rebuilds and focus on positions of need. This avoids 70-win seasons, ​​something Boston sports fans have not been accustomed to in the last two decades. It is no mystery that they need pitching help, but a more overlooked position of need is at catcher, which could help improve the staff as well.

Boston’s primary catcher and recent hero, Christian Vázquez, has had many memorable moments, none more important than his walk-off home run on Sunday. Despite this, it may be time for the Red Sox to part ways with their veteran. At age 31, Vázquez has shown signs of aging this season, and the Red Sox know this too. In the Wild Card game against the Yankees, the biggest game of the year, the Red Sox turned to backup Kevin Plawecki to get the job done behind the dish. Similarly on Sunday, Plawecki got the start while Vazquez came in to pinch-hit. The Red Sox need to start planning for their long-term future, which means seriously considering their better and younger options at catcher. Read the rest of this entry »

It shouldn’t come as any great surprise to a typical baseball fan that Dominican players play an outsized role in Major League Baseball today. In fact, the Dominican Republic, which has a population roughly just 3.3% that of the United States, supplies MLB with upwards of 10% of its players. Major League Baseball and baseball fans are better off because of this. After all, who wants to live in a baseball world without Nelson Cruz or Fernando Tatis Jr., for instance?

With this point in mind, the following takes a look at players from the Dominican Republic. More specifically, where in the D.R. players were born and when they made their way to MLB. What follows will be split into three brief sections: a description of the data utilized, some insights into the growth of the D.R.’s influence in MLB, and finally some map-based depictions of the players’ provinces of birth within the Dominican Republic. Read the rest of this entry »

Imagine you are coaching third base. Your team is at bat with a runner on third and one out. There is a flyball caught in marginally shallow left field. You think your runner has about a 50/50 chance of scoring if you send him. Do you send him?

Many of you would probably say no. This is a risky call. There is a 50% chance the runner would be out, which would be a huge momentum killer. Furthermore, if he gets caught and your team loses by a run, you are going to be the person blamed by the media.

My hypothesis is that third base coaches are leaving runs on the table. Over the past four seasons, third base runners scored 98% of the time when sent in sac fly situations, suggesting that coaches are sending them only when they have a very high degree of confidence of success. I hypothesize they won’t send runners unless they feel they have at least an 80% chance of scoring, but my analysis says they should be sent even with much lower chances. Read the rest of this entry »

Quantifying catcher framing was a huge step for the analytical community in trying to understand the position more fully. It has allowed evaluators to have more accurate numbers on what a catcher is adding to the team. It has seemingly also brought more organizational focus to framing at the expense of blocking across the league, as can be seen in the increased prevalence of catching from a knee.

Perhaps all this work will be moot if robo-umpires are ever implemented, but teams clearly see marginal advantages to be gained by research and development on this topic for now. With this in mind, the quantification of a catcher’s ability to frame is only the first step in the journey. Next we should be looking to find what makes a catcher good or bad at framing in order to improve player development practices. Finding this from a statistical perspective is tricky, as we don’t really have easily accessible data on what the catcher is doing behind the plate other than the video of it happening. This may not be the case on the team side as markerless motion capture is a developing technology in this space which can record more data, but publicly, we just have video. Instead of sitting down and trying to watch thousands of pitches like surely many coaches have done, I’ll try my hand with OpenCV and Tensorflow. Read the rest of this entry »