FanGraphs Baseball

Baseball Racism: The Irish in 1880

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 21:30:33 +0000

Professional baseball is one of the purest meritocracies in the American job market: if someone possesses baseball talent, odds are that they will be tendered a job offer. But baseball reflects American society, and like all other sectors of American society, baseball has a history of discrimination which it still has to deal with. In [...]

Solving The Rays’ Rotation Crunch

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 21:00:36 +0000

Alternate post title: Wade Davis, The Reliever I’ll admit it: when Andrew Friedman said at the beginning of the off-season that the Rays didn’t need to trade a starter, I called bull. It’s no secret that the Rays have a glut of major-league-ready starting pitching, with seven starters who could theoretically be in the opening [...]

Rangers Extend Cruz Through Arbitration Years

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 20:04:45 +0000

With how good Nelson Cruz has been for the Rangers over the last few seasons, it can be easy to forget just how tumultuous his road to the majors was. It wasn’t too long ago, however, that Cruz was the definition of the “Quad-A” player, crushing Triple-A pitching but stymied against pitching in the major [...]

Braves Carlos Perez Struggles With Command

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 19:00:24 +0000

After gaining significant helium during the 2010 off-season, prospect followers expected young left-hander Carlos Perez to firmly establish himself as the best of the next wave of young Braves pitchers. With Randall Delgado, Arodys Vizcaino, Julio Teheran and Mike Minor in the midst of breaking through at the Major League level, along with prospect fallout [...]

Best Value Players At Each Position 1992-2011, Part 2

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 18:00:55 +0000

Last week, in Part 1, I set out my criteria for “best value players” and selected the pitcher, catcher, first baseman, and second baseman that, in my view, best met those criteria in the twenty seasons from 1992 to 2011. Today, in Part 2, I select the “best value players” at shortstop, third base, left [...]

How Much Risk Is Worth Additional Upside?

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 17:26:52 +0000

Keith Law’s list of the Top 100 prospects in baseball came out today, though you have to be an ESPN Insider subscriber in order to see the rankings. Since the content is behind a paywall, I’m not going to give away too many of the rankings, but there were a few things on the list [...]

What Is Sabermetrics? And Which Teams Use It?

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 16:00:40 +0000

Sabermetrics is more than just statistics.

Offseason Notes for February 9th

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 15:59:25 +0000

Table of Contents Here’s the table of contents for today’s edition of Offseason Notes. 1. Various Farm Rankings 2. Projecting: ZiPS for Texas 3. Video: Mike Olt in AFL Rising Stars Game Various Farm Rankings With many prospect lists having already been completed, or at least nearing completion, a few sites/publications have released farm, or [...]

The State of Sabermetrics in the College Game

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 15:30:15 +0000

Wednesday was Media Day at Stanford University. Some of the most successful coaches in the college game were gathered in Palo Alto to introduce their teams and take questions about the upcoming season. While there were little snippets of saber-awareness throughout, the overall feeling was perhaps more old-school than the professional game. Up first was [...]

Testing Projections for 2011

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 15:15:19 +0000

Each year, baseball fans and commentators across the nation make bold predictions about what they expect in the coming year. They frequently make outlandish claims like “Adam Dunn is going to hit 50 home runs in Comerica Park!” or “This is the year that Joe Mauer finally hits .400!” but such predictions are far more [...]

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