Archive for Meta Analysis

Tumult and turnover has plagued bullpens far earlier than they did last season. Already, just shy of the four-week mark, we’ve seen closers relieved of duties in Washington and Philadelphia due to poor performance, lost to injury in Los Angeles (AL) and Baltimore, and in Texas, we’ve seen volatility due to some combination of the two. Oakland continues to confound us with a bullpen-by-committee and up and down the closer grid, last year’s elite and upper tier closers struggle.

Here in the Chacon Zone, we search for those widely available middle relievers toiling away in waiver wire obscurity, who may prove more productive than less talented pitchers benefiting from ninth inning opportunity. Luckily for save punters and deep leaguers, there are plenty to discuss.

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Last week, I discussed the American League starting pitchers that have improved their Z-Contact% the most. Let’s now check in on the pitchers whose Z-Contact% has risen the most.

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Earlier this year, I developed the newest incarnation of my xHR/FB ratio, this time taking advantage of the Splits Leaderboard sent from the heavens. When researching the components of the equation, I calculated a 0.229 correlation between Fly Ball Pull% and HR/FB rate. That’s no surprise, as most batters have far greater pull power than power to any other part of the field. So then it follows that a batter who suddenly pulls their fly balls at a significantly higher rate could enjoy a power breakout. Let’s take a gander at the fantasy relevant hitters that have seen the largest gains in Fly Ball Pull% versus last year.

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Creating Launch Angle from Batted Ball Data

While going over the minor league groundball leaderboard yesterday, this group of hitters intrigued me.

Those last five hitters are known for their power and mainly hit line drives or flyballs. I need to run a quick study to find out.

I took all MLB hitters from 2015 and 2016 and compared their corrected launch angle (from StatCast) to their groundball numbers (from Baseball Info Solutions). Here’s the graph (min 100 balls in play).

Note: Ryan Schimpf is the outlier with a 26-degree launch angle.

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What do we do to analyze players this early in the season? Focus on the underlying metrics that stabilize quickest and try to spot early changes. While our sample size stabilization points don’t include any advanced metrics, I would bet that the plate discipline metrics, including Z-Contact%, would sit on the low end in terms of how many plate appearances or batters faced they require to reach the calculated stabilization points. So let’s dive into the American League starting pitchers that have improved their Z-Contact% most from last year. Is there anything more illustrative of the quality of a pitcher’s stuff than making a batter miss a pitch in the strike zone?

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 Note: Do to a calculation error involving popups, the values initially report were off by a small bit. Everything is corrected now.

Our Dark Overlord continues to install enhancements to FanGraphs. One item which he has sneaked in over the weekend in Swinging Strike (must add to custom dashboard) and Groundball Rates for minor league pitchers (example). With the data now available to query, it’s time to find the league specific baselines and compare some highly touted prospects. Today, I will just concentrate just on the batted ball data.

Anytime new data becomes available, the baselines values are the starting point for an analysis so comparisons can be made. First, here are the overall league ground ball rates from 2016.

There is some funkiness going on in Rookie Ball and the Majors but the general trend is for ground ball rates to drop as the level approached the majors. Generally, the numbers are steady. With the league averages out of the way, I will move onto pitchers.

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I have been breaking down the prospect Hit grade over the past few weeks. Now it’s time to find what’s usable for projections. One aspect I continue to find is that a plate discipline component seems to not be incorporated into the Hit grades. For this reason, I created a minor league Plate Discipline grade and used it with existing data to hopefully better map out a hitter’s future potential.

To start with, I used Walk Rate (BB%-IBB%) minus Strikeout Rate (K%) as a measure of minor league plate discipline. I grouped the values by the low minors (any A ball) or the upper minors (AA and AAA). Then, I gave the players a 50 grade for each level’s average plate discipline and a 60 for one standard deviation from the median. Here are the results:

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The New Standard Velocity

Fantasy owners are going to need to understand how velocities are now being reported. MLB Advanced Media is now reporting only StatCast collected velocities, not Pitchf/x. These StatCast values are calibrated five feet closer to the pitcher than the old values and therefore will be a small bit faster. All broadcasts and I am pretty sure all stadium values will use these new higher values as well. The big question is that with almost 10 years of Pitchf/x information already collected, what adjustment needs to be made?

Dave Cameron noticed that reported velocities were up 1 mph. I went and dug a bit further and with the help of Jared Cross (Steamer’s creator), we came up with the increase closer to 0.77 mph. This morning MLB.com’s Tom Tango released an explanation and had the difference in the same range depending on initial pitch speed.

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A couple of weeks ago, I examined the prospect Hit tool grade and how it provides useless information as it is currently being distributed. It’s time to dive back in. First, I am going to answer a couple questions which have come up on the topic and then get into my recommended changes.

Are there any systematic differences between Baseball America’s grades and those from MLB.com?

This study was easy. I grouped all players who had grades from both sources in the same season and I found the average differences.  The following table contain the averaged difference of the Baseball America grade minus the MLB.com grade for the 154 matched pairs.

The final differences are small with Baseball American being higher on power while MLB.com is higher on Speed and Defense.

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This past weekend, a collection of fantasy baseball veteran nerds gathered in New York City for our annual Tout Wars auction and after-party fun. It’s always one of the best weekends of the year, and this year I got to hang out with fellow RotoGraphers Paul Sporer, Jeff Zimmerman, Al Melchior, and Justin Mason. We represented! Oh, and dare I forget my AL-Only league competitor and representer of every fantasy baseball site on the Internet, Jason Collette.

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