Existentialist Base Ball

Every once in a while I get a question about the reason d’etre for this site — why? I don’t write a ton of personal stuff here, and even the beer stuff is starting to get funneled towards BeerGraphs — which should launch any week now.

The answer is not sexy. I started this site for my family. They aren’t into twitter, they don’t facebook that much, and I didn’t want to send them emails all the time. So I wrap up my writing here as often as I can, and that’s why, so there.

But the hope is also that as I get paid better to do the writing I do, I can write a little bit less, and start writing some extra stuff here. So it won’t always be a wrap-up site.

For now, let’s wrap some shit up.

I’ve been going to the ballpark now for a couple of weeks, and access is great. Talking to the players produces stories with great velocity, and adding stats to their responses ‘fills them out’ in a way I like. I talked to Sean Doolittle about making one pitch work for him, and I was able to compare his release points to other pitchers’ release points, and also find a ‘pitch’ comp for him. I talked to the Mets hitting coach about Lucas Duda, and he pointed me to some changes Duda made to his pre-pitch movement. That was tough to back up with stats, but I did find some pictures that seemed to back the coach. This week, I talked to Rockies’ pitcher Jhoulys Chacin on ground balls and his curve ball, and one thing he said was definitely backed up by the numbers. And then Brandon Crawford told me part of his excellence on defense was because he was comfortable with his starting pitchers, who he’d been behind his whole career. And the numbers added some spice to that assertion, too.

Speaking of the Giants, I broke down Buster Posey vs Derek Jeter just for fun. Not because I’m a huge Jeter fan boy, but because they were both young stars that found success immediately and became cornerstones at important defensive positions up the middle. The post allowed me to talk about catcher defense, catcher aging, and a lot of different interesting issues.

I hope I don’t get in trouble uttering the words ‘fantasy baseball’ around the players. I did with Dexter Fowler and he was cool about it. We’ll see how it goes the next time that slips out of my mouth.

I had some fun with images too, this week, as we actually have some baseball to capture. Jose Fernandez is the hot young pitcher in Florida, and some have questioned his changeup, his third pitch. Well, this is his third pitch. It looks great. Chris Tillman threw a curveball — his second pitch — and it meant a lot to me today for some reason.

Over at Getting Blanked, I found the prospects that people can’t agree on last week, and then this week I summed up the closer research again, because some advancement has been made. Turn out, velocity and strikeouts are the best harbingers of closer changes.

Oh and Jon Miller and K&K talked FanGraphs on the KNBR wrapup! Awesome sauce.

New Season Base Ball

It’s the new season and yet it’s just another season. That sounds wrong. It’s a new season, and so you get all the ups that come with it. But it’s also life, being cyclical. In that honor I had two beers — one that I had enjoyed before, and one that I had never had before.

The first emphasized the cyclical nature of sport well. Stone‘s Enjoy By 4/1/13 has a date on it even. You’re supposed to reach for the next one once the expiration date has passed. But man, it benefits from fresh hops. Hops is a preservative, and it dies out. By making you drink it fresh, Stone is making sure you get the right taste. It’s the same kind of idea behind the limited release of Pliny the Younger by Russian River. You can get Enjoy By easier though, and if you spot it, buy it and drink it.

The second beer was new, a fresh beginning. I don’t love Deschutes‘ beers, but their seasonal stout Black Butte XXIV is good enough, though pricy, and I loved their Obsidian Stout — on nitro cask at my local, so full of park effects. Their Red Chair NWPA does not need park effects to be enjoyed. It reminds me of another great IPA — Lagunitas Sucks. If you can get your hands on a Red Chair, do. It’s not even a big-hops triple-IPA monster. It’s fresh, it’s clean, it’s sweet, and it’s just bitter enough to make the package work.

I’ve been hard at work since we last hung out.

After sitting behind home plate for three innings of a spring game, I had plenty of reasons to be skeptical of the stats that the game had provided. So I wrote them up — mostly about how Jarrod Parker was approaching that game, and maybe his bad results weren’t such a big deal. Of course, Parker had a bad debut against the Mariners tonight. Just one game.

Then I was looking at Domonic Brown because I had drafted him way too many times and wanted to see if the cheap outfielder with power and speed could do anything at the plate this year, finally. Turns out his swing is like night and day from last year. That makes me like him more this year, because what he was doing last year was not working.

My first day at the ballpark did not go swimmingly. I was a rookie and I showed it. I didn’t do my best. But thankfully Sean Doolittle was gracious enough to talk to me for a while about pitching and how he mostly just uses one pitch — but makes it work. Makes me want to find a way to quantify deception. Just how useful is something like the glove waggle Ryan Dempster does? It has to show somewhere.

My friend in marketing asked me about fan stereotypes. I asked my coworkers, and my coworker in marketing told me about Google Correlate, where you can find search terms correlated with your search term. In other words. Atlanta Braves fans want to know about crawdads. I might not have helped my original friend out much, but it was fun.

On the fantasy side, I showed my sleepers, found pitchers that can elicit pop-ups, made my 10 Bold Predictions, talked about why young guys are often a bad bet in yearly leagues… and made what was perhaps a dud of an April Fool’s post. Win some, lose some.

Happy new season!

Season Get Here Already Base Ball

Hopefully this comes across the right way — I wrote the best piece of my baseball writing career this week, and I’m pretty proud of it. I can do better, and it’s not changing anyone’s life, but I do think it’s a blueprint that I’ll follow in the upcoming year as I interview baseball players. Not all of them will be as cool as Joey Votto, who talked with me for a long time about the science of hitting for power and average. Some will pants me. Some have already given me the million-mile stare. It’s okay! If I turn one of these out every once in a while, it’s okay. You might recognize the approach as the same I took with Ryan Vogelsong, Sergio Romo, George Kontos and Brandon Belt at San Francisco Giants’ Media Day.

The Brewers signed Carlos Gomez to an extension and I like it. Looks like one of those things that should work out even if the player regresses from his peak performance. In other words, should Carlos Gomez not show the same power that he showed last year, the deal will be fine. If he continues to mash the ball and play great defense in center, the deal will be great .

We finally got the redesign done at RotoGraphs, so now all your draft resources for fantasy baseball are easy to find. If you’re looking for a list of ‘my sleepers,’ this is so far my best list. Next week I’ll do some bold predictions that will also have my sleepers on it. And then I’ll probably do a list of players that ended up on the most of my teams. If you want a one-stop shopping, easy fantasy baseball strategy read, I did a ‘draft kit’ piece for Sports on Earth that was on MLB.com for a bit, which is fun because I edited for MLB.com once upon a time. I also used my Votto research to find good bets for power and batting average at Getting Blanked this week.

A friend sent me a picture of old-timey baseball guys in high socks. But, other than the underwear ads in the back, the most interesting thing was the call for civility because ladies were present. Someone found the full text of the billboard and posted it in the comments section. That was a fun little interlude.

Speaking of interludes, I chat about baseball on FanGraphs every Thursday at noon. Come on by!

Raising Arizona Base Ball

Sorry it’s been so long. This time of the year is when fantasy freaks don’t return your phone calls — they’re drafting dude, drafting. Pretty much non stop.

When not drafting (and, really, with slow e-mail drafts I’m *always* drafting), I managed to write some pieces.

I thought the Dodgers were crazy to start Hanley Ramirez at shortstop and an actual shortstop (Luis Cruz) at third base. But when I looked into the defensive numbers, it wasn’t actually so crazy. It kind of works, and it has the ancillary benefit of coddling their malcontent star, to put it cynically.

After talking to Sergio Romo and finding out he idolized Greg Maddux, I went into the numbers and actually found similarities between the Giants’ reliever and the Braves’ Hall of Fame starter. At least I now know why Romo doesn’t have platoon splits — his arsenal is better described as sinker/slider than fastball/slider, and the former can neutralize opposite-handed batters, while the latter has platoon problems.

The Mariners are hitting the tar out of the ball (is there tar in a baseball somewhere?). They’ve bought some new players that have some power. Their fences are coming in. I still don’t quite believe their power surge is going to head North with them.

I had a little fun with the fact that the Mets released a cap that is to be used for postgame interviews. Really. What’s next?

We redesigned the fantasy page at FanGraphs, and now you have all sorts of goodies sitting right there at www.fangraphs.com/fantasy. Our rankings came out and I gathered them all in one place for you. Our depth charts are almost finished, and they are in one place. Hopefully this is a big step towards making FanGraphs a premier fantasy baseball site.

On the fantasy tip, I also wrote this light, easy, all-in-one fantasy baseball draft kit for Sports on Earth. If you don’t want to read hours and hours of fantasy baseball, this could be the kit for you. I also recapped relevant research on hitting the edge of the strike zone, and using strikeouts *minus* walks instead of divided by.

This week it’s Arizona again, hopefully with some player interviews.

Finally Spring Base Ball

It may not feel like spring where you are, but in Northern California, Arizona (at least now that the snow is gone) and Florida, spring is here and baseball is being played. It even looks like major league baseball for the first three innings, before the minor leaguers get on the pitch.

Last week, I added another stats-based interview: I talked to George Kontos of the Giants about platoon splits on his pitches and his development. What he told me about Tommy John surgery surprised me. He found more than health in the surgery and its aftermath.

Then I took a look at closers in general and Bruce Rondon in Detroit specifically. They’re usually a bad free agent bet, so the current plan in Tiger town is probably the best one. Even if Rondon sometimes can’t hit the broad side of a barn.

Over at Getting Blanked, I recapped the research that my guys at RotoGraphs did on finding a link between batted ball data and expected home runs per fly ball. Basically, if your guy hit the ball 15 feet further on average last season, he can be expected to retain some of that power surge this year. Especially if he’s young. Good news for some interesting players.

I love the guys at Pitchfork. So I wrote a review of pitcher Trevor Bauer‘s rap… in true Pitchfork style. One of the commenters gave me a swift kick in the groin.

At RotoGraphs, we’re working through the depth charts while I work on a re-design behind the scenes. I’m covering the bullpens, one division at a time, for RotoWorld. I’m off to Arizona this weekend for a draft in a fantasy league that has been playing the game longer than I have, which should be a lot of fun, and I’ll duck into a game or two to see if I can talk to some players. And the beer website now has over 20 writers, a CTO working on the website design, and early access to numbers from untappd… so it’s all happening!

Prep Work Base Ball

February is prep month for fantasy baseball heads. March is when you draft, so in February you gather all your projections and read up on your sleepers. To that end, you might enjoy FanGraphs+, which has quick writeups on every fantasy-relevant player in baseball (among other things). Or the auction values in this leaderboard, which are now free. You could check out our mock draft and our mock auction at RotoGraphs. We’re now discussing depth charts for every team, too. And I’m working on bringing more tools to RotoGraphs in the near future, so hopefully you’re all set.

I added some prognostication about the Blue Jays closer — I kind of like Sergio Santos, who will be much cheaper than his competition — and the Astros shortstop — but you’ll need to be in a deep league to care about that one. And I started back up again at Getting Blanked, the baseball blog on Canada’s The Score, and I pointed to some great RotoGraphs research on home runs per fly ball. Turns out some power surges are more believable than others. At RotoWorld, I’m running through the divisions to look at each bullpen in the league, and the AL West was up first.

But really I might be most proud of my interviewing this week. Sure, the one with Barry Zito didn’t turn out well, but I did manage to bring nascent style — combining advanced stats with the reactions from the players to those numbers — to some interesting pieces on Ryan Vogelsong (about overperforming his advanced stats) and Brandon Belt (about his turning point last season). I’m also glad Vogelsong didn’t run my underwear up the flag pole for asking him such a nerdy question. Gives me hope that I’ll be able to do this all season, especially now since I’ve got entry to any clubhouse in major league baseball.

The Pliny Pilgrimage

Maybe there’s no doubt. Once you’ve traveled over two hours specifically for one beer, and waited in line on Tuesday morning for that same beer, maybe then you can anoint that brewery the king. The title previously held by Ballast Point (and the home brew mart in particular), might have been stolen by Russian River.

Because I made the Pliny Pilgrimage.

Once a year, Russian River releases Pliny the Younger — only from the keg. And in limited release. So limited that people in my neck of the woods — the south bay — wait in line for hours without knowing if the keg will last to their part of the line. We wanted certainty, so we drove north to Santa Rosa on a Tuesday morning to test our livers and our wives. I’d heard so much about the beer, there was no way I was passing up that open seat in the car.

Pliny the Younger is a triple IPA! There aren’t a ton of triple IPAs out there. It’s not even a category on Beer Advocate — see the Younger listed with the Imperial IPAs. But it’s not so hoppy that your face will cave in due to bitterness. In fact, it reminded me a lot of one of my favorite beers, the Firestone Walker Double Jack. The Younger was smooth, well-balanced, sweet and hoppy, great from mouthfeel to aftertaste. Any IPA fan should make the trek once in their lives. You can’t get a growler any more, but you can drink as much as you’d like there.

But of course, to be the king, you can’t just make one great beer. Even if it’s one so great that people travel from far and wide to get it at the source. You have to make many, many great beers. And yes, Russian River fits the bill. Check out our sampler:

Yes please.

On the sampler list was Blind Pig — one of the most influential beers of all time, and one of the first California IPAs — Pliny the Younger and Pliny the Elder, as well as their decent Row 2/ Hill 56 pale ale. Janet’s Brown Ale was an okay brown which would actually stay on par with the Moose Drools of the world if it wasn’t on a sampler with so many heavy hitters. The OVL stout was a nitro stout, which could have used a tiny bit of sweetness, but was also very drinkable. And then you had the ‘Tions — Erudition (a solid saison), Damnation (belgian strong), Perdition (I don’t love Biere du Gardes, but this one blows Hermitage’s out of the water), Redemption (Belgian Pale), Rejection (Belgian Dark, very good, kind of felt like a Belgian black lager), Sanctification (an excellent non-barrel aged 100% Brett Saison), and Consecration (Barrel-aged American Wild). There might have been some other beers, but this was quite a list. I immediately wanted more Sanctification and Consecration, and made sure to buy some on the way out. I also lugged home as many Pliny the Elders and Blind Pigs as I could reasonably walk past my wife in the living room. The worst beer on the list — the Redemption? — was something you’d be happy to find in your average craft beer pub. Almost everything I’ve had from Russian River is amazing. You can’t drink those beers right now — some might be available at your local craft store — but do you see the lacing on those beers? Every. Single. Beer.

Sure, Ballast Point has more stouts, and may win on that level. And AleSmith’s Speedway Stout was not replicated anywhere at the brewery in Santa Rosa. I need to know more about Bell’s and Founders. DogFish Head has some excellent beers.

But that sampler blew me away. Almost more than the Pliny the Younger, which was worth the trip, by itself.

[Thanks very much to Rob, Adrian, and Jeff for inviting me along]

Big Project Base Ball

Phew. It took most of the night last night and much of the last month and a half, but I just finished my biggest project of the offseason: FanGraphs+. It’s a $5 annual of sorts, in which we research topics that are useful to fantasy baseball players, and then break down 1100+ players in short ‘player caps’ that help fantasy players get a quick sense of how useful a player can be in the coming season. We’ll have auction values and more, and it’s also a way to support the site. I need a nap.

Between that, and the crazy travel month that was January, my posting has been light. I had a thing about ideal players and how Brandon Phillips does so many things wrong, but is still a great player. It’s taken me a while to admit that you can provide value even if you don’t walk all the time, but it’s still hard for me sometimes. I shudder when I see a 5% walk rate.

Oh and this one is fun for everyone: Bat flips! Apparently they’re all over Japanese baseball. There’s a link in there with like five minutes of straight bat flips, including one that would start a brawl immediately if an American player attempted it.

Freewheel Beer And the Cask

Cask beers have a different mouthfeel. That’s the industry way of saying it. Another way of saying its that cask beers are smoother, creamier, and maybe a little sweeter than their traditional counterparts. And you could add that the waterfall effect you get after a pour — see the picture on the left of their Hybrid IPA — is a fun addition to the experience.

Today’s casks are plastic for the most part, so it’s not about some interaction with the wooden casks of yore. What’s happening is that all of the CO2 in the beer is produced by natural fermentation processes while the beer is casked. There’s no forcing CO2 into the beer at the end. And there’s no end — the beer continues to change as it sits in the cask. And that means, perhaps, that the beer is more ‘organic,’ that the tastes develop over time in the cask, and that it has a bit of age to it. Or that it has a different mouthfeel.

Casks and hand pumps seem to work best with IPAs and stouts, in my experience. Or maybe it’s just that I don’t love English style beers.

Freewheel Brewing is a new craft brewpub in Menlo Park, and they produce all English-style beers on the cask and hand pump — Golden (Lager), Bitter, Amber, IPA, and a Stout. Good stuff, despite my predilections.

The Stout and the IPA were great and really played up due to park effects: their brewing process and hand pump delivery produced a nice smooth, rich consistency that I’ll enjoy again. The IPA was a hybrid English/American, so it was a mellow drinkable beer that won’t make my wife roll her eyes at the hoppiness.

But it was hard to separate those beers from the whole context — those brewers and the clean, sustainable brewery they showed us, and the delivery method, fresh out of the cask and off the hand pump — and it would be rude to call them just a home park and try to separate out the beer too far from their context to get at the true talent of the beer, wouldn’t it be? Good people, good beer.

[A bonus! Two different lists of the 20 Most Influential Beers. I think each has something to add, though getting Hodgson’s on there in the second one makes a lot of sense.]

Base Ball King

Just a moment to recognize the dignity of the non-violent approach Martin Luther King espoused. Not many have taken up the mantle to bring those ideas into our government today. Just look at our policies, domestic and international — there need to be more Ghandis and Kings in our world.

Change is almost impossible, though. The Hall of Fame voters looked at a ballot full of some of the best players of all time and decided none of them were worthy. Even with voters that haven’t covered baseball in years, and voters that are admitting to voting based on suspicion alone, and with issues on the battle that have never been there before — even then, leadership says no change is needed in the voting process. So no change is what we’ll get.

The Cardinals have been successful and haven’t changed their approach much. That has led to wins, but also the fourth-oldest debut age since 2000. Why are their debuts old? Probably because of their draft slot, but maybe also because of their draft philosophy.

Finally, I took baseball nerdery to the streets this week. First, I thought about concerts from the perspective of a sabermetric baseball nerd. If you’ve ever thought there should be a wTOI+ metric (weight toilet points above average), that post is for you.

But if you’ve ever enjoyed a beer, you might like part two of that piece, where I created a sabermetric-style stat for beer — Beers Above Replacement, or BAR. This will lead to BAR/$ and more sabeermetric analysis for sure. In further posts I hope to refine it, but the idea that there are replacement beers and then general tiers above them fits the BAR metric well. You have your zero-to-two win beers and players, which offer value but aren’t average major league beers. Then you have your two-to-four win ‘pleasant’ beers. Four-to-six win beers are all-stars. And when you put an all-star on cask, or on tap at a great bar, or on a hot day — then you get to the singular performances, the ten-win Mike Trout type seasons. I’ll keep working on it.