Noted stoic Epictetus famously said, “Freedom is the only worthy goal in life. It is won by disregarding things that lie beyond our control.” If we accept this to be true, then St. Louis Cardinals prospect Sandy Alcantara might need to disregard small balls of cork wrapped in yarn and cowhide.

Alcantara was called up from AA to join the big-league club on Friday, bypassing AAA completely.

For the purposes of this article, we’re going to assume control is referring not to a pitcher’s ability to not walk batters, but by his ability to throw the ball somewhere that, by the end of the exchange, it ends up in his catcher’s mitt, be it as a ball or a strike.

By this definition, in 125.1 innings pitched for Springfield this year, Alcantara has controlled next to nothing. He has thrown 20 wild pitches and hit 15 batsmen, all with a repertoire that includes a fastball which, according to Eric Longenhagen, “sits 95-97 and will touch 101 with plus movement.”

This comes out to Alcantara being expected to either hit someone or throw the ball to the backstop once every 3.58 innings. For this study, let’s call this his “Craziness Per Inning Pitched” or CPIP. I know it would be better phrased as innings pitched per craziness, but IPPC isn’t an acronym that rolls off the tongue.

Here is a list of (as far as I can tell with my inexperienced play indexing) the lowest single-season CPIPs of all time (minimum 50 IP).

1. 2011 Daniel Cabrera: 3.4
2. 1995 Toby Barland: 4.35
3. 2000 Hector Carrasco: 4.37
4. 2000 Matt Clement: 5.26
5. 2010 A.J. Burnett: 5.32

As you can see, Alcantara, with his 3.58 CPIP would slide right in at second lowest all-time. However, the top three on my list were all used primarily as relievers, where you can get away with a little more wildness. Only four of Alcantara’s 125.1 innings have come out of the bullpen this season. Among starters, his CPIP would rank as the lowest all-time.

Now, obviously, these are all major-league seasons, and Alcantara’s was in AA, but still, a player being expected to throw a ball that ends up somewhere other than in his catcher’s mitt once every 3 1/2 innings is some special craziness at any level. You could probably even make the argument that, due to increased competition and pressure, a prospect who is suddenly vaulted two levels higher should expect to see an increase in wildness.

With the Cardinals promoting fellow pitching prospect Jack Flaherty as well, it does seem likely that Alcantara will be pitching in relief for the Cardinals, but Cabrera’s record is still within reach if he can just allow himself to control a little less.

Is your name Christian Yelich? If not, please stop hitting ground balls. Right now. Please. Thank you.

Christian Yelich is the only MLB player to log 2400 PAs over the course of 2014-2017, hit 55% or more ground balls and log a wOBA of .340 or higher in a single-season. And he’s done it in all four seasons.

How does he do it? He combines a league-average line-drive rate (22%) with a .270 batting average on ground balls and a 10%+ walk rate.

Sure, Jean Segura (3yr+ GB 55.9%) did it last year, but he dropped his GB rate to 53% and had a HR/FB excursion up in the 13%+ range that year.

You might point out that during the same year, Jonathan Villar managed a .356 wOBA, but he needed an even-better-than-Yelich .316 average on ground balls with a 20% HR/FB ratio and an 11%+ walk rate. We’re talking about the definition of outlier seasons.

After a quick back-and-forth with another FanGraphs reader/commenter, John Autin, in the recently published Justin Turner piece by Travis Sawchik I started wondering what sort of wOBA does each type of player carry based on the percentage of ground balls that player hits on average. But for starters, I had to understand how many players carried ground-ball rates in what ranges.

More than half of the qualified player seasons in the last four years have come from players who averaged 40-50% GB. Of those, 65 (16%) resulted in players contributing less than a .290 wOBA. FanGraphs’ own wOBA rule of thumb page considers these seasons “awful.” This includes seasons you might remember such as “Albert Pujols’ season in progress (2017),” “Every Billy Hamilton season ever,” and “most seasons from Alcides Escobar.”

To provide a little more context, let’s view these player seasons on a 100% graph. Players who have averaged greater than 40% ground-ball rates have a 4-in-10 or better chance of producing a below-average season by wOBA standards (.310-.319 bin and lower).

The “Great” (.370+) seasons lodged in the 50% bin are from Eric Hosmer (2017), DJ LeMahieu (2016) and Ryan Braun (2016). Braun needed an outlier HR/FB (~29%) season, LeMahieu is one of the ten deadliest line-drive hitters in all of baseball, and Eric Hosmer, well, he’s straddling the line 5/6th of the way through the season. There just aren’t that many great hitters carrying a GB rate between 50-55%. You’re going to either need to hit a TON of line drives to make up for all those ground balls, or pound three out of ten FBs for a HR. Otherwise you’re looking at a very average offensive season a quarter of the time, and well below average another 50% of the time.

What I’ve learned is that 30-40% GBs is the sweet spot, and only a quarter of MLB player seasons from 2014 have been recorded by players in this bin. Freddie Freeman, the king of line drives, has lived in the 30-35% GB range over this time period. He’s joined by players like Lucas Duda (putting up three above-average seasons), Kris Bryant, Matt Carpenter and Brandon Belt.

Interestingly enough, Ian Kinsler might want to rethink his approach. Along with a high infield fly rate, he’s just not doing enough damage with the HR to put up high wOBAs. The exception being his 2016 and 2011 seasons. Being that he’s an above-average line-drive hitter, he could benefit from shifting his focus a little more that way as he ages through his last few seasons. Or I suppose he could benefit from a more hitter-friendly home park as he enters free agency this year.

Now that we have the table set, I’d like to share a short list of players that are putting up terrific wOBAs, but could benefit from putting even more balls in the air. Of course there’s Christian Yelich, but let’s let him do what he’s doing. And while we’re at it, we won’t recommend any changes for Joey Votto.

• Adam Jones (.335 wOBA, 45% GB)
• George Springer (.370 wOBA, 47% GB)
• Yasiel Puig (.365 wOBA, 49% GB)
• Yasmany Grandal (.350 wOBA 44% GB)
• Xander Bogaerts (.340 wOBA 47% GB)
• Jose Abreu (.370 wOBA 46% GB)
• Domingo Santana (.360 wOBA 47% GB)

One thing I’ve noticed, and this isn’t a new revelation to me, is that Cuban players like Puig, Grandal, and Abreu all hit a very high number of ground balls, even while enjoying quite a bit of success. But if they ever decide to make the anti-ground-ball leap, they may find an MVP trophy or two. Ditto for George Springer. Let’s get him ripping air balls and see how high he can fly.

And maybe there are a couple of careers to save as well, a la Yonder Alonso or Justin Turner? Here are the low-flying 2017 players who could use the #turneradjustment

• Kole Calhoun (.311 wOBA, 42% GB 3yr+ Avg, 44% 2017)
• Danny Valencia (.313 wOBA, 47% GB 3yr+ Avg, 47% 2017)
• Kendrys Morales (.316 wOBA, 47% GB 3yr+ Avg, 51% 2017)

Looking team by team, at the approaches employed by their players who gathered at least 400 PAs minimum in any given year, and also have accumulated 1000 PAs over the last four years, we can pick out some trends as well. I was a little surprised to see the Mets at the top of the list, but the A’s, Tigers, Reds and Blue Jays didn’t surprise me as “put it in the air” types of teams. You’ve got some of the poster children for the air-ball revolution on those teams such as: Donaldson, J.D. Martinez, Jose Bautista, and Yonder Alonso. Those teams also feature some of the game’s deadliest line-drive hitters in: Nicholas Castellanos, Joey Votto, Miguel Cabrera, and Daniel Murphy (from his Mets years).

On the flip side, we see the Marlins, led by aforementioned ground-ball expert Christian Yelich, pound-it-into-the-ground Dee Gordon, and Ichiro Suzuki, as well as a team-wide approach by Ozuna, Realmuto, Hechavarria, and Martin Prado to hit ground balls and line drives. Prado is the only one other than Yelich to do it well.

The White Sox were led by Adam Eaton (54% GB), Avisail Garcia (52%), Alexei Ramirez (49%), Yolmer Sanchez (48%), Melky Cabrera (47%), and Jose Abreu (46%). Tim Anderson is the latest, though he doesn’t factor into the analysis yet, to pound out 52% ground balls like it’s his job and turn in awful wOBA seasons (.315 and .274 in progress).

The MLB playoffs had not changed its format for the past 13 years. This season, however, we will see a “minor” change taking place during the World Series. The home-field advantage will belong to the team with the best regular-season record, thus ending the already established tradition of it pertaining to the league that won the All-Star Game in July. As this is not a mind-blowing change, I’m here to propose something much more interesting that will probably never happen, but still.

What if after each round of the postseason, from the wild-card games to the league championships, the players of each losing team entered a pool from which the winning teams could draft some of them for the next round of the playoffs?

First of all, we must recognise that we hate when a player gets injured and misses playing time. Were it in our hands, we’d put our favourite players on the field for the 162 games, make them bat first, get as many plate appearances as possible, and see their numbers grow during the summer and into the autumn with pleasure. Even more, how frustrating it is when one of our favourite players, or just one of the best players of the game (hello, Mike Trout!) is stuck on a franchise that never ever makes it to the postseason, or that every time it does it seems to not be able to advance past the first round?

On top of this, there is the seeding and the way we watch underdogs trying to beat the odds and outplay the best teams of the regular season on a yearly basis, which in all honestly is nothing crazy given how much of a lottery the game becomes once we reach October. Wouldn’t it be great to do something to even the field a little and make the “bad” teams get more on par with the “good” teams during the playoffs?

Enter the Losers-Turned-Into-Winners Draft! Let’s explain the basics and then run some historical simulations based on them.

The idea behind this system is pretty simple. As things are nowadays, the best team from each division of the American and National Leagues automatically makes the playoffs, followed by two wild-card teams that can come from any of the divisions and are determined by their record during the regular season. We can therefore assume that the two wild-card teams from each league, which have a round of the postseason exclusively dedicated to them, are the two worst teams from each side of the bracket. Once a winner is named, that team advances to the Divisional Series and faces the best-seeded divisional champion. Seeds number two and three also go against each other, and after that the Championship Series of each league comes to fruition to determine who will face who in the World Series.

What I propose is to take advantage of the seeds assigned to each team at the start of the postseason, and play a two-round draft after each round of the playoffs is finalised, with the picking order going from worst-to-best remaining seeds. Each team would be able to pick two players, no restrictions applied to their position (so they can pick two batters, two pitchers, or a combination of both), and players from all losing teams would be available at the draft for any team, no matter the league they play for. Once a draft is completed, the players left unselected are removed from the pool, so players not selected during the draft held after the wild-card round are no longer available for the draft held after the Divisional Series, and so on.

This system would solve some of the problems fans need to deal with during each season, and most of all would make the playoffs as exciting and competitive as they could get. Every star player would get far more chances to win the World Series (who is going to pass on Kershaw if the Dodgers fall at any point?) during his career, players wouldn’t mind re-signing long-term deals with the franchises they’ve always played for as they would “only” need to reach the postseason in order to have a shot at the title from multiple angles and not only depending on the success of their team, low-seeded teams (supposedly worse than the rest of the field) would have influxes of talent as long as they progress as they would pick first in those drafts, and fans would have even more events to get excited about during an already exciting time. Don’t fool yourself, this is a win-win master plan!

Let’s take a look at how the 2016 MLB postseason could have changed had this draft-system being in place. To not make this too confusing, we will leave the results of each round as they were without taking into account the players taken by each team after each round’s draft. We would comment on how those picks could have affected the outcome of the playoffs, though.

The wild-card round made Toronto face Baltimore for a place in the AL Divisional Series against Texas. In the National League, San Francisco had to play against New York to stay alive. After those two games were played, the Blue Jays and the Giants made it to the second round. What would this have meant in our loser-draft system? Given the regular-season results, San Francisco (.537 W-L%) would have picked first and Toronto (.549 W-L%) second in a draft with a pool made out of the rosters of both the Mets and Orioles. Without much thinking applied to player valuations, these would have been the best-WAR players available per Baseball-Reference.com:

1. Manny Machado, 3B (BAL): 6.7 WAR
2. Noah Syndergaard, P (NYM): 5.3 WAR
3. Zach Britton, P (BAL): 4.3 WAR
4. Kevin Gausman, P (BAL): 4.2 WAR
5. Chris Tillman, P (BAL): 4.1 WAR
6. Jacob deGrom, P (NYM): 3.8 WAR
7. Bartolo Colon, P (NYM): 3.4 WAR
8. Chris Davis, 1B (BAL): 3.0 WAR
9. Yoenis Céspedes, LF (NYM): 2.9 WAR
10. Asdrúbal Cabrera, SS (NYM): 2.7 WAR

With a rotation already featuring Cueto, Bumgarner and Samardzija, among others, San Francisco could have added Manny Machado to replace Conor Gillaspie (1.1 WAR). Toronto may have followed that selection with that of Syndergaard (back up north!) in order to improve their rotation for the Divisional Series, and the last two picks could have gone either way with top-notch players on the board (San Francisco could have gone Yoenis’ way to move from Angel Pagan, and Toronto with Chris Davis to replace Justin Smoak at first). If that is not an improvement, you tell me what is.

Moving onto the Divisional Round, the Dodgers, Cubs, Indians and Blue Jays defeated the Nationals, Giants, Red Sox and Rangers, respectively. In this case, both Machado and Céspedes would become available again, and enter the draft pool for the remaining four teams. This again goes in favour of star players, as they would keep moving onto later rounds if they’re still good enough as to keep being selected round after round, and we all want to watch the best players competing for the highest stakes. These are the second round’s best available players, again per Baseball-Reference.com WAR (keep in mind all players from New York and Baltimore, barring those selected by San Francisco – now eliminated from contention – are no longer available):

1. Mookie Betts, RF (BOS): 9.5 WAR
2. Manny Machado, 3B (BAL/SFG): 6.7 WAR
3. Adrian Beltre, 3B (TEX): 6.5 WAR
4. Max Scherzer, P (WSN): 6.2 WAR
5. Dustin Pedroia, 2B (BOS): 5.7 WAR
6. Johnny Cueto, P (SFG): 5.6 WAR
7. Tanner Roark, P (WSN): 5.5 WAR
8. Jackie Bradley, CF (BOS): 5.3 WAR
9. Rick Porcello, P (BOS): 5.1 WAR
10. David Ortiz, 1B/DH (BOS): 5.1 WAR
11. Madison Bumgarner, P (SFG): 5 WAR
12. Cole Hamels, P (TEX): 5 WAR
13. Buster Posey, C (SFG): 4.6 WAR
14. Daniel Murphy, 2B (WSN): 4.6 WAR
15. Brandon Crawford, SS (SFG): 4.5 WAR

By this point, and looking at the regular-season results, the seeding for the draft would make teams pick in the following order: Toronto (.549 W-L%), Los Angeles (.562), Cleveland (.584) and Chicago (.640). Judging by the wild-card draft picks already made by the Blue Jays and the rest of their roster, we may infer their first pick would be Mookie Betts to replace Michael Saunders in left field. Los Angeles would probably look to improve their offense with their first pick, which could have been Dustin Pedroia in order to remove Utley from the lineup. Cleveland, given their not-so-great pitching staff, would have selected Scherzer in a hurry, and Chicago may have closed the first round of selections with that of Buster Posey to get aging David Ross out from behind the plate.

With pretty much every roster spot already stacked for every team, the second round would become some sort of a best-available-pick affair. I’m betting on Toronto getting Manny Machado and finding a spot for him, taking advantage of the designated-hitter slot in the lineup. The Dodgers could improve their pitching rotation with the addition of Johnny Cueto. Cleveland’s outfield would welcome the addition of Jackie Bradley more than anything. And finally the Cubs would close this round by going the pitching route and picking Madison Bumgarner.

Without taking those additions into account and respecting what happened in real-world MLB, after the Divisional Round finished the two teams making the World Series for the 2016 season were the Chicago Cubs and the Cleveland Indians, which means every player from Toronto’s and Los Angeles’ rosters (including those being picked in the first two drafts) become available in the final postseason draft event. Let’s take a look at the best players on the board by their regular-season WAR:

1. Mookie Betts, RF (BOS/TOR): 9.5 WAR
2. Josh Donaldson, 3B (TOR): 7.5 WAR
3. Manny Machado, 3B (BAL/SFG/TOR): 6.7 WAR
4. Corey Seager, 3B (LAD): 6.1 WAR
5. Dustin Pedroia, 2B (BOS/LAD): 5.7 WAR
6. Johnny Cueto, P (SFG/LAD): 5.6 WAR
7. Clayton Kershaw, P (LAD): 5.6 WAR
8. Noah Syndergaard, P (NYM/TOR): 5.3 WAR
9. Justin Turner, 3B (LAD): 5.1 WAR
10. Aaron Sanchez, P (TOR): 4.9 WAR
11. J.A. Happ, P (TOR): 4.5 WAR
12. Edwin Encarnación, 1B/DH (TOR): 3.7 WAR
13. Marco Estrada, P (TOR): 3.5 WAR
14. Joc Pederson, CF (LAD): 3.4 WAR
15. Kevin Pillar, CF (TOR): 3.4 WAR

As can be seen, five of the best 15 players available come from teams already out of contention, with Manny Machado being the only one having made it through the first two postseason drafts by going from Baltimore to San Francisco to Toronto, which proves his value among his peers. The Blue Jays, both from their original roster and their picks, provide nine of the 15 players, while the Dodgers only add four original men and two acquired through the draft.

In terms of what Chicago and Cleveland could do in order to create the best possible rosters with the World Series in mind, multiple approaches could be taken by them. Both teams made the finals without playing in the wild card, so they only have two draftees each between their players – not that they need much more. As Cleveland finished the season with a worse record, the Indians would pick first, and they’d probably take Clayton Kershaw because you just simply don’t pass on the best pitcher of his era. Chicago’s pitching is already stacked, so they would probably look at the outfield and bring Mookie Betts in. Jose Ramirez had a great season for Cleveland in 2016, and it would be hard for the Indians to leave Donaldson on the board, although they may look at the outfield options and pick someone like Pillar or Pederson to get Lonnie Chisenhall out of the lineup. Let’s go Joc Pederson here. Finally, Chicago would close the draft by taking Johnny Cueto, as they don’t even have holes to fill in their offense at this point.

And with this third and final couple of draft rounds, the postseason would end in a World Series win for the Cubs over the Indians in a series that would feature two incredibly great teams that through the course of the playoffs would have added the names of Betts, Scherzer, Cueto, Kershaw, Bradley, Bumgarner, Posey and Pederson to their rosters. Are you telling me those eight players wouldn’t make the final meetings of the season much more exciting than they could ever be? While I haven’t applied much thought to each selection and I’ve based them mostly on each player’s WAR or flagrant team needs, the process could turn into a really tough war between teams at the time of picking players not only for their benefit but also to block other franchises from taking them, and improving spots where they may lack a player of certain quality, be it in their hitting lineup or in their pitching rotation.

This winners-draft-losers type of draft will probably (definitely) never happen. There would be much trouble implementing it and a lot of collateral implications that make it impossible to be a real thing. But hey, at least we can dream of a parallel world where Mike Trout could reach the World Series each and every seas– oh, yes, I forgot he plays for the Angels…

Carson had an interesting article about finding contact hitters who can elevate. That makes a lot of sense, especially if the ball is really juiced, because that new environment means that more FBs are going out even though they are not totally crushed. A couple months ago I already correlated power and contact together with walks, and had pretty decent correlations with performance. Power and contact together is definitely a good thing. However, when it comes to low-minors players, often the power is not present yet, so it can make sense to look at the batted-ball profile instead when evaluating potential for growth.

Now, that is not a hard rule, and you could actually say that a strong ground-ball hitter like Daniel Murphy when he was young has actually more potential for growth than a weak FB hitter when he actually learns to elevate, and he and others have shown that it is possible to make that change even in the late 20s, but we also know that sustainable swing changes are quite hard to attain (there are the Murphys and Donaldsons but also guys like Jason Heyward who tinker with the swing every year and make it worse because muscle memory gets confused), and it is probably a safer bet that a young minor leaguer (17-19-year-olds especially) can add some muscle and make some of the FBs go over the wall.

Instead of FBs, however, I have tried a new stat. Instead of FB% I have used a stat I called “effective off the ground percentage.” I used off the ground percentage because line drives are just as good as FBs (actually better) and everything off the ground is good unless it is a pop-up. Basically it is 100 minus GB% minus PU% (IFFB*FB/100). I think that is important because pop-ups are a terrible result and we do know that extreme FB hitters like Schimpf, Story, or Odor tend to have elevated pop-up rates. Overall, there is a small but not super significant positive correlation between FB% and IFFB% (0.3 Pearsson), but at the extreme top end of launch angle, the pop-ups do get higher.

That means, obviously, a hitter who can get the ball off the ground while avoiding pop-ups (like Trout or Votto) is a big asset. Still, the overall correlation of wRC+ and effective off the ground percentage is not huge, although it is better than just FB% (0.23, vs 0.17 Pearsson).

The effect gets stronger at the extreme ends; for example, the top-20 in effective off the ground percentage is at a 117 wRC+ and the bottom 20 just at 99. However, of course power still plays a big role, as do strikeouts. Launch angle does help, but there are limits to that; it is not a magic pill. The most important things are still the big three — power, contact, and plate discipline. But a bad batted-ball profile can make the other peripherals play down. There is an effect of diminishing returns. Getting balls in the air is good, but it is mostly an issue when it gets extreme. If you have 6-degree LA/50% grounders, that is bad, but once you get past average (10 degrees, 45% grounders) there is not that much of a gain by further increasing LA.

I don’t believe in that “steeper swings lead to more Ks” thing, but higher LA can have a cost of BABIP and sometimes pop-ups. So I’m not sure a Hoskins / Jay Bruce / Cody Bellinger FB profile is that much better than a normal 40% FB profile. In the end, there is a threshold when LA can’t be further increased.

The FB revolution is mostly helping the guys who had extreme grounder profiles; in the end, it is probably best to have a slightly above-average LA of like 12 degrees, and have an off the ground percentage of 60+%, but extreme FB profiles probably only make sense for extreme power guys.

Carson’s article had Rhys Hoskins in it, but also Willians Astudillo, who probably won’t become a star. I think it is good to look for prospects who don’t hit on the ground too much, but I’m OK if my prospect hits like 45% grounders since many prospects tend to improve that a little in the majors, and I don’t think looking for extreme off the ground profiles brings that much of an extra advantage.

However, when a guy hits a ton of grounders, it is a red flag, especially if it comes with K issues. If you can’t make contact better, make your contact count with hard-hit fly balls. Moncada has that problem somewhat, and needs to improve that.

However, what is also bad is pop-ups with no power. J.P. Crawford, for example, has good off the ground rates (almost 60%) but also insane pop-up rates. He is starting to develop some pop, but unless it gets better, he probably might be a low-BABIP guy. He probably might be better off with a more conservative batted-ball profile of like 45% grounders and a little less pop-ups, so that his BABIP gets better. His off the ground rate is 60% but his effective off the ground rate is actually slightly under 50%, which means he is not getting the benefit of staying off the ground, but is paying the costs.

Of course, his plate discipline and contact profile would still work with average power, but the batted-ball profile definitely is not ideal.

By Dr. Gregory Wood and David Marmor

Among the sabermetric community, the baseball postseason has the reputation of being random. In the past 20 years from 1996-2015, the predicted winner — i.e. the team with the best season record — won the World Series only four times. This raises the question as to what specific skills and performances of a team during a season have a meaningful, if any, correlation with postseason success. This study analyzed data from every playoff team from 1996-2015 to search for significant relationships that could be used to predict postseason wins.

The first method that I used was looking for linear correlations between regular-season statistics and various measures of postseason success. If some statistics were more correlated to playoff success, they could be used to predict a team’s playoff performance.

The most obvious place to start was regular-season wins. As I had expected, there was very little correlation between regular-season wins and postseason wins.

In the graph below, every playoff team’s regular-season wins has been plotted compared to their playoff wins. The data has an extremely low correlation coefficient and is not a good fit with the trend line. The correlation coefficient was 0.007, which is far below the usual significance level of 0.6 or higher. It appears that regular-season record is not a significant factor in post-season success. This explains why postseason success is considered random.

The goal was to find another statistic that had a significantly stronger correlation to playoff success. I studied many other statistics including runs, runs allowed, ERA, hits and hits allowed, home runs and home runs allowed, walks and walks allowed, strikeouts and strikeouts allowed, slugging percentage, and on-base percentage.

For each one I plotted the correlation chart and found the coefficient of correlation assuming a linear correlation. However the R-squared term was always very small no matter what I tried. This was true even with statistics that are vital to regular-season success, like ERA, OBP, runs and runs allowed.

I looked at both the actual totals as well as the totals adjusted for that year’s league average. That way I could account for the fact that the total runs scored has varied quite a bit over the 20 years.

I also tried defining playoff success in three different ways: playoff wins, playoff series won, and playoff winning percentage. However, I got similar results no matter which method I used. None of them had correlations that were significant either way. The statistic that correlated best to playoff wins was run differential, but even it was too weak a correlation to be meaningful.

The R-squared is still very small, so run differential is not a good predictor of post-season success. This method seems to suggest that the playoffs are in fact random. However, while each statistic individually was not strongly tied to playoff success, maybe combinations of them were.

To find combinations that might be meaningful, I tried using linear modeling. I used a computer program to find the best-fit line between playoff success and the regular-season statistics I was using. The model adjusted the weight given to the different factors to try and find results that were closest to what actually happened by minimizing its chi-squared term. The advantage of this method was that it could combine several factors at once. That way it could determine if there were certain factors that were important in playoff play.

The program was designed to run thousands of simulations at a time to try and improve on its previous best result by minimizing its error compared to the actual results. For each run I selected which statistics would be used. I could give the simulation different starting assumptions and set ranges for how much weight each category could be given. When the initial conditions were changed, the simulation would return different results. However, it was never able to find a result that was statistically significant. The best coefficient of correlation I found was 0.063, far below the level that implies correlation.

It seems that the sabermetric community is correct. Playoff performance is random and not predictable by regular-season performance. Therefore, teams should attempt to build the best regular-season team they can and hope to then get lucky in the playoffs, as opposed to trying to plan specifically for the playoffs.

Appendix

With Jarrod Dyson set to be a free agent, and Leonys Martin both ineffective and DFA’d twice, there has been some uncertainty among Seattle Mariners fans regarding who will patrol center field for the team in 2018. Luckily for Mariners fans, they have an internal option who is potentially an above-average player already playing for their favorite team: Guillermo Heredia.

At 26, Heredia is a bit old to just be emerging. Though unlike other players his age, his late arrival to the major leagues has nothing to do with his ability. Heredia defected from Cuba in January of 2015, just a few weeks before his 24^th birthday. Before defecting, Baseball America ranked Heredia as the 11^th best prospect in Cuba. He was signed by the Mariners in February 2016, after sitting out the entire 2015 season.

Heredia, considered by most to be a glove-first prospect, started the year hot with the bat in AA Jackson, hitting .293/.405/.376 in 260 plate appearances while living up to his defensive reputation. Heredia walked more times (36) than he struck out (32) and earned a promotion to AAA Tacoma after just 58 games. Heredia’s 35 AAA games—where he hit .312/.378/.414—were split by a cup of coffee when the major league club. In AAA, Heredia improved his strikeout rate to 9.6%, while his walk rate fell to 7.5%, but his combination of solid on-base skills and great defense earned him a call up to the majors for good on August 22^nd.

Heredia made the most of his cup of coffee, hitting a solid .250/.349/.315, drawing 12 walks against just 15 strikeouts in a small sample of 107 plate appearances. Thanks to his strong on-base skills, and stellar defense, Heredia managed 0.4 WAR in just 45 games — with most of his playing time coming as a late-inning defensive replacement.

Despite his stellar defensive reputation, Heredia was relegated to corner outfield for all but one game of 2016 due to Leonys Martin’s stellar defense in center. Still, Heredia managed to make an impression. Heredia passed the eye test, and scored positively in both UZR/150 (+7.2) and DRS (+3). But what stood out most was his throwing arm. This throw made me a believer that among his many pretty good skills, he had at least one that was elite:

Petit out after challenge

He made an equally impressive throw this season to get George Springer trying to go from first to third, an out that proved pivotal in the Mariners securing a series win against the Astros:

Heredia nabs Springer at third

In just 705 innings in the outfield this season, Heredia has four outfield assists and +2.3 rating in the ARM component of UZR. His arm is an asset, and potentially one of the better throwing arms in the league.

Heredia’s scores in the range component of UZR were positive in 2016, and have been negative in 2017, for a total of -2.9 in 705 innings across three outfield positions. DRS is more favorable, giving him a +7 score across all three outfield positions, and exactly even at -1 in 251 innings in center. There’s no doubt he has the speed to play there, though his route efficiency is in question. Still, Heredia has nabbed 19 out-of-zone plays in center this season, and can outrun plenty of his poor jumps. Across all three outfield positions, he has scored +0.0 UZR, and +0.3 UZR/150. Even the most pessimistic evaluation of his defense would likely call him slightly below average in center.

If you’re someone that does hold the pessimistic outlook on his defense, then his bat would have to justify his playing time. The good news is Heredia now has a little more than two-thirds of a full season’s worth of plate appearances, and has steadily improved.

Heredia is hitting .271/.344/.368 (97 wRC+) in 450 career plate appearances, with a solid 14.5% strikeout rate, and decent 6.1% walk rate. He’s not riding an unsustainably high BABIP, either — his BABIP sits at .310, perfectly reasonable for someone with well above-average speed like Heredia.

In 34 games in the second half of 2017, Heredia has found a little more power: his first half ISO was just .091; it currently sits at .137 in the second half. Nine of his extra-base hits came in 208 plate appearances before the break, while 12 (11 doubles, 1 home run) have come after.

Even more encouraging is the fact that Heredia isn’t just a pull, or slap, hitter. Heredia’s career numbers split by where the ball is hit show that he can be effective hitting to any part of the field.

(Since walks aren’t put into play, this split is just AVG/SLG)

Pull: .333/.571
Center: .308/.342
Opposite: .323/.376

Essentially, Heredia only has power on his pull side, but can get on base hitting the ball in any direction.

There is one elephant in the room, though: despite his outstanding speed, Heredia just can’t steal bases. Perhaps he can learn how to get better jumps as he gains experience. It’s important to note that he missed his entire age-24 season trying to become eligible to sign with a team. But so far, Heredia has shown that he’s probably best utilizing his speed once the ball is put in play, rather than trying to advance via the steal. Between the minors and majors, Heredia has seven steals and has been caught 11 times.

Heredia can be an effective baserunner outside of when the ball is being pitched, though. He’s turned numerous singles into doubles by hustling out of the box, and shown that he can take two bases on a wild pitch If the catcher is lollygagging, as he did against Boston earlier this year:

Gamel scores on a wild pitch, ties the game

What the Mariners have in Heredia is a raw, speedy athlete with an absolute cannon for an arm, above-average on-base skills, and below-average, but developing, power. Heredia might never hit more than 10 home runs in a season. He might never steal more than 10 bases, either. But he’s amassed 1.2 WAR and posted a .344 OBP while playing at the very minimum passable defense in center field, with the upside for better.

He’s not Jarrod Dyson with the glove. He’s not Andrew McCutchen at the plate. What he is, though, is a competent offensive and defensive player with untapped potential. Even if he never improves, he looks capable of giving Seattle a 2-win center fielder going forward. Even a slight improvement could turn him into an above-average player, and one who is under team control for five more years.

I went over the starters version of dScore here, so I’m not going to re-visit that here. I’ll just jump right in with the list!

Risers/Fallers

Danny Salazar (+16) – dScore never gave up on him, despite him being absolute trash early on this year. He came back and dominated, launching him up the ranks even farther in the process. Current status: injured. Again.

Sonny Gray (newly ranked) – If there were any doubts about the Gray the Yankees dealt for, he’s actually surpassed his dScore from his fantastic 2015 season. He’s legit (again).

Alex Wood (-8) – Looks like the shoulder issues took a bit of a toll on his stuff, but dScore certainly isn’t out on him.

Dallas Keuchel (-8) – Keuchel’s stuff isn’t the issue. He’s still a buy for me.

Lance McCullers (-11) – Poor Astros. Maybe not too poor though; their aces have gotten hammered but haven’t fallen far at all. McCullers is going to bounce back.

The Studs

Some light flip-flopping at the top, with Kluber taking over at #1 from Scherzer. The Klubot’s been SO unconscious. Everyone else is pretty much the usual suspects.

The Young Breakouts (re-visited)

Zack Godley (11) – He’s keeping on keeping on. He barely moved since last month’s update, and I’m all-in on him being a stud going forward.

Luis Castillo (9) – He’s certainly done nothing to minimize the hype. In fact, he’s added a purely disgusting sinker to his arsenal and it’s raising the value of everything he throws. Also, from a quick glance at the Pitchf/x leaderboards, two things stand out to me. He seems to have two pitches that line up pretty closely to two top-end pitches: his four-seamer has a near clone in Luis Severino’s, and his changeup is incredibly similar to Danny Salazar’s. That’s a nasty combo.

James Paxton (15) 

The Test Case

Buck Farmer (20) – Okay, so to be honest when he showed up on this list, I absolutely thought it was a total whiff. By ERA he’s been a waste, but he’s really living on truly elite in-zone contact management, swinging strikes, K/BB, and hard-hit minimization. His pitch profile is middling (not bad, but not great either), so I really don’t think he’s going to stay this high much longer. He’s certainly doing enough to earn this spot right now, and I’d expect him to not run a 6+ ERA for much longer.

The Loaded Teams

Yankees – Luis Severino (12), Sonny Gray (17), Masahiro Tanaka (25) / Some teams have guys higher up, but the Yankees are loaded up and down.

Astros – Dallas Keuchel (14), Lance McCullers (19), Brad Peacock (18), Charlie Morton (23) / Similar to the Yankees. Morton and Peacock are having simply phenomenal years.

The Dropouts

Rich Hill (39)

Trevor Cahill (35)

Marcus Stroman (28)

Poor Rich Hill. Lost his perfect game, then lost the game, then lost his spot in the top 25. Cahill’s regressed to #DumpsterFireTrevor since his trade to the Royals. Stroman really didn’t fall that far…and his slider is still a work of art.

The Just Missed

Jordan Montgomery (26) – Too bad the Yankees couldn’t send down Sabathia instead. This kid is good.

Aaron Nola (27) – #Ace

Carlos Martinez (29) – Martinez simply teases ace upside, but frankly I think you can pretty much lump him and Chris Archer (30) in the same group — high strikeouts, too many baserunners and sub-ace starts to move into the top tier.

Dinelson Lamet (32) – He’s absolutely got the stuff. He could stand to work on his batted-ball control though.

Jimmy Nelson (34) – dScore buys his changes. He finished at #148 last year. I’ll call him a #2/3 going forward.

Notes from Farther Down

Jose Berrios is all the way down to 47. His last month cost him 19 spots, but frankly it could be much worse: Sean Manaea lost 39 spots, down to 87. Manaea really looks lost out there. I don’t want to point at the shoulder injury he had earlier this year since his performance really didn’t drop off after that…but I’m wondering if he’s suffering from some fatigue that’s not helped by that. He’s pretty much stopped throwing his toxic backfoot slider to righties, and that’s cost him his strikeouts. Michael Wacha is another Gray-like Phoenix: he’s up to 52 on the list, once again outperforming his 2015 year. I’m cautiously buying him as a #3 with upside. And finally, buzz round: Mike Clevinger (33), Alex Meyer (36), Robbie Ray (38), Rafael Montero (41), and Jacob Faria (43) are already ranked quite highly, and outside of Montero and maybe Meyer I could see all of them bumping up even higher. Clevinger’s really only consistency away from being a legitimate stud.

My next update will be the end-of-season update, so I think I’m going to do a larger ranking than just the top 25; maybe all the way down to 100. Enjoy the last month-plus!

The Twins are one of two teams in baseball competing for a wild-card spot without a qualified hitter inside the top 50 on FanGraphs’ WAR leaderboard. Venturing out beyond this window unveils two players the average baseball guru would guess are Thad Levine and Co.’s most valuable assets: Miguel Sano (injured; 2.5 fWAR) and Brian Dozier (2.7 fWAR). If “Thad Levine and Co.” was the name of an ’80s band — which I can’t confirm or deny — Eddie Rosario would be the rhythm guitarist capable of beautiful harmonies; forgotten, but essential to the end product.

Anytime a player of Rosario’s level comes into relevancy, the radar in my mind starts to tick, hoping to decipher what changed to bring about better results. Naturally, venturing to other outlets helps to answer that question quickly, leaving me satisfied and with one less idea for a future column. Other times, unsatisfied by the results of searching, a new narrative will linger in my mind long enough to expand such thoughts into a column. That’s exactly what took place with my thoughts on Rosario’s recent breakout.

If you’re looking for a deep dive into some of the finer aspects of Rosario’s changes, SB Nation’s Twinkie Town — unrelated to the apocalypse-proof snack — has what you’re looking for. I, however, was stuck on one general concept from a Star Tribune post at the end of April. In an attempt to not rob the outlet of its quote, I’ll paraphrase by citing that Rosario was looking to go up the middle and the other way more, in an effort to help him find comfort at the plate.

The midpoint of that sentence — “… go up the middle and the other way…” — is something I’ve heard so much in baseball circles that I’ve become numb to the concept. Most of the time when I see those words in citation of a change in approach, it’s backed up by said player’s batted-ball distribution. For Rosario, that was initially the case, but then something odd happened.

La Velle E. Neal III’s column for the Tribune — 80-grade name — was written at the end of April and jives with the barebones comparison of Rosario’s batted-ball distribution between 2016 and the first month of action in 2017.

2016 – Pull 36.1% / Middle 39.8% / Oppo 24.1%

2017 – Pull 26.9% / Middle 44.8% / Oppo 28.4%

Whether this created an intersection of adjustment and improvement, in a purely statistical sense, I would be skeptical. Rosario had a wRC+ of 86 in his full season of work from 2016 and April brought with it a discouraging 72 wRC+. He was pushing balls to the middle of the field more, but this dampened production wasn’t intended.

Even more spiteful of any theory linking Rosario’s batted-ball distribution the other way and casual success is breaking down the outfielder’s changes over time in relation to performance. Keep in mind the love for Rosario was spurred off the starting block recently, as the average fantasy owner got tired of struggling vets, and searched for the hot hand (Rob Arthur say what?!).

April 2017 – Pull 26.9% / Middle 44.8% / Oppo 28.4% / wRC+ 72 / 18.6% K

May 2017 – Pull 33.9% / Middle 38.5% / Oppo 27.7% / wRC+ 108 / 18.6% K

June 2017 – Pull 36.7% / Middle 38.3% / Oppo 25.0% / wRC+ 126 / 22.4% K

July 2017 – Pull 36.8% / Middle 35.3% / Oppo 27.9% / wRC+ 126 / 18.5% K

August 2017 – Pull 54.1% / Middle 29.7% / Oppo 16.2% / wRC+ 155 / 15.6% K

Total 2017 – Pull 38.0% / Middle 37.1% / Oppo 24.9% / wRC+ 118 / 18.7% K

Weird indeed. That statement about Rosario going the other way, and that concept leading to results, is a theory that just took a wrench to the gut in the form of this progression in 2017. A progressive tendency to pull the ball, met with better wRC+ numbers, and a fluctuating strikeout rate that — in the aggregate — is substantially lower than 2016.

Intuition took over as I began to formulate ideas on what exactly happened in this particular case of the missing culprit of success. One stuck, and to my dismay, it’s not as groundbreaking as I had hoped.

Seeing Rosario’s strikeout rate plummet this much, I theorized that staying up the middle, or to the other way, doesn’t always mean actually doing so in a way that results in tangible batted-ball changes. It’s all about the approach itself. By Rosario telling himself to approach the ball with anticipation of hitting it to the left-center gap, he was effectively saying see the ball deeper into the zone. This may have helped his ability to recognize pitches and judge the break on an offspeed pitch better, along with a plethora of other nuances that sum to cuts in his swing and miss tendencies of years prior.

But my theory wasn’t enough to inspire confidence in claim, so I went to an individual that I admired the presentation of at Boston’s Saberseminar, and subsequently connected with on the network that is Twitter: Dan Blewett, host of the Dear Baseball Gods podcast and pitching guru.

I asked him whether it made sense that when Rosario says he is going the other way, it may actually be a larger complex of changes taking place. His response was what I wanted to hear…

“Hitters who are dead-pull commit earlier to pitches, because they have to get their barrel farther out in front of the plate in the same amount of reaction time. This limits pull-hitters to only a small grouping of pitches that they can both hit hard and keep fair.

By taking an opposite-field approach to the plate, Rosario is watching pitches in deeper, and thus keeping his barrel in the hitting zone longer. For someone who was an extreme pull-hitter, ‘opposite field’ is somewhat relative, and lining balls up the middle with authority is a sign that his new approach is working, even if it’s not producing true opposite-field hits.

He’s making himself a vastly tougher out, and it’s a sign that he’s growing as a player.”

– Dan Blewett

The interesting thing about Rosario is that he wasn’t much of a dead-pull hitter last year, but still realized that his production lacked punch with the approach he carried. This concept of him staying toward the middle of the field and the other way is a roundabout way of saying what Dan Blewett points out above — Rosario is making himself a vastly tougher out, and growing as a player. He’s not going the other way more, but that middle/oppo approach allows him to see the ball deeper — fewer strikeouts — and recognize which pitches he can pull productively without creating the dead-pull approach that Blewett implies is futile for most.

It’ll be interesting to see what happens going forward with Rosario’s approach, as he has gotten pull-happy in the month of August, but has been unbelievably productive in the process. With hitting’s mental side as important as its mechanical side, I continue to think his April tweaks to take a left-center approach primed him for development as an asset, even as his batted-ball distribution changes like the weather.

Hearing that a player is trying to go up the middle, or the other way, is too general of a statement to capture all that a player is doing. Next time I hear those four words — going the other way — I’ll be a lot more inquisitive as to what else may actually be happening in the player’s approach. Cycles of adjustments are guaranteed in baseball; player analysis is catching those adjustments and hammering out the what and why.

A version of this post can be found on my site, BigThreeSports.com (to be published 8/27/2017).

I also tweet baseball… pretty much all the time — @LanceBrozdow

Rhys Hoskins is getting a lot of digi-ink recently. You may have read about him being only the third player ever to have eight dingers in his first 15 games. Or maybe the first player to have 19 RBI in those same games. Or how he’s walking nearly as much as he’s striking out. Or how he’s doing it with a BABIP flirting with the Mendoza line. Or how he’s done it all despite having only 64 plate appearances and after starting out 0-for-12. All these things are worth talking about.

None of those reasons acknowledge Hoskins in the context of the current Phillies lineup, though. Maybe it’s because the team is the clear-cut worst in the majors this year. Or how they’ve been so terrible the last few years that it mirrors their futility in the 90s. Or how they stand in such stark contrast to the organization’s great run from just a few short years ago. All of these things are worth not talking about.

But the way the this year’s team persists makes it important to look at Hoskins in their construct.

These numbers back up everything about Hoskins at the start of this piece. They also tell us a couple of other things about the rest of the current Phillies core, whose average age is 25. (Jorge Alfaro is excluded because he’s only played in nine games this year.)

Nick Williams has probably been the second-most exciting bat in the Phillies lineup this season, but his BABIP and K% also make him the biggest wild card moving forward. Cesar Hernandez is a worthwhile hitter who provides value in a few ways. Odubel Herrera goes through stretches that are equal parts brilliance and frustration. Freddy Galvis is a defense-first shortstop who isn’t a total black hole at the plate. And Maikel Franco may be genuinely concerning at this point, which could be why JP Crawford is seeing time at third base in AAA.

As members of the second-worst offense in baseball, do they provide a single reason to get excited when watching them? They can be compelling on a given night, but no one in that group has a game-altering skill that urges you to tune in or stick with them through a whole contest.

It’s more than not having a standout skill, though, and goes beyond being bad. It’s that this Phillies team’s greatest flaw often seems to be that they can handily beat themselves. How each individual performs at the plate can provide one example.

Galvis is the eighth-easiest out in baseball when he’s down in the count. Nick Williams would be up there if had enough at-bats to qualify. Odubel Herrera is in the top 50. Maikel Franco is 74th, but his overall game hasn’t struck fear into anyone in a couple years. Cesar Hernandez is quietly one of the better second basemen in the league, but he doesn’t offer nearly the offensive upside as Hoskins.

That likely makes Hoskins the best of the Phillies core at avoiding outs when behind in the count, and what contributes to him already being the team’s best hitter. Consider his crazy low BABIP and ability to walk and it gets easier to buy into. Yes, the sample size is small. But it’s also yielded results very similar to what his minor-league profile says to expect.

Hoskins isn’t just making outs at a lower rate than his teammates when down in the count. He’s shown himself to be adept at causing damage in such situations. That’s when he’s hit half of his eight home runs, meaning he doesn’t make it about just shortening up or taking a pitch. He simply doesn’t give a flip if he’s behind. He appears calm at all times. Combined with true talent, that is what makes for perhaps the most dangerous type of player.

Now, add that distinction to a lineup of other serviceable players where one or two of them grow. Add a pitcher or two to Aaron Nola, who’s becoming an ace. Think of other help coming from the minors. Things are looking much better for the Phillies, even if they come with conditions.

Rhys Hoskins has been excellent, but that’s not all. He’s clarifying Philadelphia’s path out of the basement, and possibly back to relevance, rather quickly.

AL Comeback Player of the Year: There’s a case for many players who could potentially receive this award. For me personally, I would have to pick either Mike Moustakas, who has seen a resurgence after being plagued by injuries last season, or Ervin Santana, who has been the ace of the Twins’ staff and may help carry them to a playoff appearance.

NL Comeback Player of the Year: From a pitching standpoint, Zack Greinke would be a good choice, as he has pitched like the $206-million ace that Arizona thought he might be. Others such as Ryan Zimmerman and Michael Conforto should also be up for consideration.

AL Manager of the Year: This one is a bit tougher, because there are so many managers who have their teams performing beyond expectations for this season. If I could only pick one at the moment, it would be Mike Scioscia. Even with Mike Trout missing significant time due to injury and the rest of the roster mostly depleted of talent, it’s incredible to see that the Angels are just a couple games out of a Wild Card spot.

NL Manager of the Year: While Bud Black has the Rockies performing at their peak, I believe Torey Lovullo has to be the front-runner for this award, considering where the Diamondbacks were last season and how he has been able to unleash the maximum potential out of some players that the baseball community had previously written off, while overcoming injury woes that haunted the team last season.

AL Rookie of the Year: Aaron Judge. I know that he hasn’t been able to buy a hit since the All-Star break, but he has still out-performed other rookies above and beyond, and still has a good chance to break Mark McGwire’s record for most home runs by a rookie (48).

NL Rookie of the Year: Cody Bellinger. Just like with Judge, Cody Bellinger burst onto the scene and was crushing baseballs at an outrageous pace, much like Gary Sanchez did in 2016. Bellinger has out-performed other NL rookies, so this award should be his for the taking.

AL Cy Young: Chris Sale. So far, the Red Sox have been more than satisfied by the results of the trade they made last offseason. Their intimidating left-hander has been shutting down lineups just as Dave Dombrowski had hoped. An argument could also be made for Corey Kluber, but because he missed some time this season due to injury, I believe Sale should have no problem getting his first Cy Young, especially if he wins the pitching triple crown.

NL Cy Young: Despite both of these pitchers suffering from injuries, it would be hard to give the Cy Young to someone other than Clayton Kershaw or Max Scherzer. It’s hard to decide between the two of them at the moment, but the choice will probably be much more clear after the conclusion of the season.

AL MVP: If you had asked me this question before the All-Star break, I would have definitely picked Aaron Judge. However, due to his recent struggles, I would have to give this award to Jose Altuve. Altuve stands at the moment with an amazing .358 average while also leading in stolen bases. Altuve is often under-appreciated due to his small stature, but he has led the big leagues in hits since his arrival, and this season is his best opportunity to win a well-deserved MVP, especially since Trout also missed significant time with a thumb injury.

NL MVP: The answer out of many people’s mouths at the moment would be Giancarlo Stanton. However, despite the torrid pace at which he is hitting home runs, I believe someone like Nolan Arenado or Paul Goldschmidt is more deserving. I was also considering Bryce Harper before his injury, which could potentially sideline him for the season. If not for Kris Bryant, Nolan Arenado would have won the MVP last season, and now that both him and Goldschmidt have put their teams in positions to make deep playoff runs, it’s time in 2017 that all of these overlooked players finally get their well-deserved recognition.