How Shortened Seasons Affect Future Projections

It’s interesting, surprising, and a bit discouraging.  Go read the article and give Fangraphs some traffic.  Click on an ad while you’re there.

Sunday Notes: The D-Backs’ Run Production Coordinator Has a Good Backstory

Drew Hedman’s title with the Arizona Diamondbacks is Major League Run Production Coordinator. The 33-year-old Pomona College graduate was promoted to that position in January 2019 after spending the previous 12 months as a pro scout. His backstory is interesting, in part because he bypassed business school along the way.

Hedman played four seasons in the Red Sox organization, and while he topped out in Double-A, that alone qualifies an accomplishment. A total of 1,521 players were selected in the 2009 draft, and only three of them went later than Hedman. As a 50th-round pick, the writing was on the wall by the time the ink dried on his first contract. Not that he didn’t give pro ball the old college try.

“I certainly knew the odds weren’t in my favor, but with that being said, I always tried to be stubborn enough to think I’d be the exception,” Hedman told me. “I did everything I could to put myself in the best possible position to make it. Obviously it didn’t happen.”

Staying in the game beyond his playing days was a goal even before his release. The question was, in which capacity? A front office role made sense — Hedman has a B.A. in Politics, Philosophy and Economics, with a focus in Economics — but his alma mater wasn’t yet the baseball breeding ground it’s become. Over a dozen Pomona alums have gone on to work for MLB teams since Guy Stevens, who now runs the Kansas City Royals’ R&D department — broke the ice in 2013. Hedman was cut loose in spring training that same year.

Now trying to figure out what a “Run Production Coordinator” does…..

Assessing Reliever Value in a Shorter Season

Trying to predict how a reliever will perform from one season to the next can be a pretty frustrating exercise. Some amount of uncertainty surrounds all players, but being a pitcher makes things a little more difficult and being a pitcher who is often asked to throw with max effort with little to no rest complicates further still. And even after we move past those factors, we’re faced with a smaller sample of outcomes for bullpen arms. A 60-inning season is a complete season for a reliever, considerably fewer innings than a starter throws and many fewer batters faced than the number of times most starting position players come to the plate. Trying to predict reliever performance in half a season is even more difficult; attempting to put a value on relievers in a potentially condensed, shorter season becomes quite challenging.

Consider that last season, there were 158 qualified relievers with at least 48 innings pitched. Ken Giles produced 1.9 WAR, ranking 10th in baseball among his bullpen brethren. Brett Martin ranked 60th among relievers with a 0.8 WAR and Matt Albers ranked 130th as a replacement-level reliever. Now, let’s cut those seasons in half. Giles still ranks 10th with just under a win, but he’s now closer to Matt Albers in half a season than he was to Brett Martin in a full season. It is considerably harder to tell, in terms of results, the difference between a good and bad reliever under those constraints. This is further complicated by the fact that the smaller the sample size, the less likely that the results will match the actual performance.

I separated pitchers into three groups from last season: pitchers with at least 100 innings, qualified relievers, and pitchers with at least 20, but less than 40, innings on the season. Then I ran some correlations between WPA, which shows how the actual results on the field mattered to the team, and ERA, FIP, and WAR, to show some measures of performance.

With starting pitchers, we see a good relationship between all three metrics (i.e. the better or worse a pitcher pitched, the better or worse the result was for the team). When we drop the innings requirement down and look at relievers, the relationship gets weaker (i.e. the results vary more, with the pitcher’s performance showing a little more randomness). When we drop the innings requirement down further, we see the relationship grow even weaker. That last set is most representative of the number of innings we might see from relievers in a shortened season.

Once you’ve figured this out, can you teach me how to win big at roulette?

Sunday Notes: Keston Hiura Can Hit, But The Book He’d Write Would Be Boring

The first time I interviewed Keston Hiura was over the phone. This was a few months after he’d been taken ninth overall by the Milwaukee Brewers in the 2017 draft. Kiura was playing for the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers, and he called at the assigned time from a Midwest League ballpark after batting practice. I don’t recall which ballpark.

I was in Lowell, Massachusetts at a New York-Penn League game that had already started. It was loud at LeLacheur Park, so I talked to Hiura from the relative quiet of a stairwell down the left-field line. The interview went well. I found the former UC Irvine Anteater to be both forthcoming and articulate.

The second time I interviewed Kiura was at the Brewers spring training complex, four weeks ago. Standing face-to-face — closer than the six-foot distance now deemed necessary — I accused him of being boring.

Truth be told, the pertinent ground had already been covered. In our earlier long-distance conversation we’d gone over the toe tap into a high leg kick, the inside-out swing with a high finish, the way he kept both hands on the bat. For good measure, we’d touched on his patience-paired-with-aggression approach.

For those who want to hear about unpaid bets from the 1980s, players who spent a year playing baseball in Japan, and the manager we hate this most.

Sunday Notes: MacKenzie Gore is a Power Pitcher Who Doesn’t Hunt Punchouts

What will possibly be the last of these for quite some time:

MacKenzie Gore struck me as a straightforward sort when I talked to him in San Diego Padres camp last Sunday. Polite but not loquacious, the 21-year-old southpaw perfunctorily answered each of my inquiries about his repertoire and approach. This is something he’s used to doing. As baseball’s top pitching prospect, Gore gets more than his fair share of media attention.

I didn’t walk into the conversation expecting to glean a boatload of fresh insight. I’m familiar with the scouting reports — all glowing — and as a FanGraphs reader you likely are as well. Even so, an opportunity to hear directly from the horse’s mouth wasn’t something I wanted to pass up.

A look at some numbers before we get to his words. In 20 starts last year between high-A Lake Elsinore (this in the hitter-friendly Cal League) and Double-A Amarillo, Gore logged a 1.69 ERA and won nine of 11 decisions. Moreover — this is the eye-popping part — he had 135 strikeouts, and allowed just 56 hits, in 101 innings.

“I’m a guy who attacks the zone with his fastball,” Gore told me. “I’m going out there looking to throw a lot of innings, so I’m trying to get people out early. I’m trying to throw the least amount of pitches possible.”

Spring Training Stats Only Almost Mean Nothing

All winter long we wait for spring to arrive so that baseball may begin again. And then once it starts and our precious stat columns begin being filled in Florida and Arizona, we spend most of the preseason assuring each other that none of it matters: The success is a mirage, achieved against a lower caliber of pitching, and the struggles are the result of experimentation and readjustments.

No need to panic. No need to celebrate. Let’s all just sit here in the sun and be happy that baseball has returned, while making sure to maintain an appropriate emotional response to afternoons full of practice games. Stat farming, percentage calculating, theory formulating, tantrum throwing, sadness having; that’s all for the regular season, as the nightly pace of baseball wears us down to the nub.

Here in spring training, we’re safe from such things. Unless! We cross that arbitrary threshold that we’ll say is right about now. Context is important in the preseason, if nothing else is, and in the case of two veterans, their spring performance has made the regular season in front of them a little more interesting.

Let’s just say it: Chris Davis looks amazing. And to echo what’s probably being said in his own head, who even cares why? Davis has to muscle his way out of a deep, deep hole into which the Orioles threw a base salary of $23 million last season as part of his seven-year, $161 million deal that will see him make over $1 million a year through 2037.

In certain regards, the same points could be made about minor league statistics, at least in the sense that their meaning is far different than it is at the MLB level.

Sunday Notes: Dodgers Prospect Kody Hoese is Calm, Cool, and Collects Hits

Kody Hoese exploded last season at Tulane. In a breakout junior campaign that saw him shoot up draft charts, the right-handed-hitting third baseman slashed a preposterous .391/.486/.779, bashing 23 home runs along the way. Duly impressed, the Los Angeles Dodgers selected Hoese with the 25th pick of the first round.

He proceeded to acclimate well to pro ball. The numbers weren’t nearly as loud as they were with the Green Wave, but his .299/.380/.483 line between rookie-level Arizona and the low-A Great Lakes Loons was more than adequate. In terms of getting his feet wet, Hoese did just fine.

Asking Hoese about the sudden-rise path he took from Tulane to top-shelf prospect unearthed no great revelations. The 22-year-old Griffith, Indiana native feels that he simply matured and grew into having a more-advanced approach at the plate. “There weren’t really any mechanical changes, or anything like that.”

Hoese’s setup and stroke are anything but complicated. He presents with a “little-lower-hands slot” and a simple load where he “kind of gets into [his] back side, and then strides.” He tries to stay balanced — “centered through my body, upright” — with minimal head movement. His primary objectives are a consistent swing path and focusing on driving the ball up the middle and to the opposite-field gap.

For discussion of all those stories that we’ve otherwise missed…..

Sunday Notes: MLB Executives Weigh in on the Implications of MiLB Contraction

Almost inexplicably, the proposed contraction of 42 minor league teams has largely become second-page news. Baseball’s biggest story just a few short months ago, a potentially cataclysmic alteration of the game’s landscape has found itself overshadowed by cheating scandals, managerial mayhem, and the controversial trade of a superstar by a deep-pocketed team. In arguably one of the most-tumultuous off-seasons ever, a hugely-important issue lies almost dormant within the news cycle.

Here at FanGraphs, we’re doing our best not to let that happen. My colleague Craig Edwards is taking an in-depth look at the situation — expect those articles in the coming days — and what you’re seeing here serves as a lead-in to his efforts. My own opinions aren’t included. What follows are the thoughts of a handful of high-ranking MLB executives, the bulk of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity.

In the opinion of one GM, lawsuits are likely, if not inevitable. Speaking on the record would thus be an invitation to trouble. Another pointed out that the ongoing discussions are at the league level, and independent of individual teams. For that reason, offering a public opinion wouldn’t be in his best interest.

With no exception, each executive expressed that his organization’s bottom line is to optimize player development, regardless of the structure of the minor leagues. An American League GM put it this way:

“I don’t think [contraction] would change our operations that much in terms of what we’re focused on internally. We want to put the best resources in front of our players, and whether we have 10 minor league teams, five minor league teams, or somewhere in between, we’re going to do the same thing.”

Come for the serious consideration of a major topic- stay for the Greg Maddux stories and notes on player-pitcher records.