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What’s Wrong with the Cubs?
It’s June 1st. The Cubs are supposed to be running away with the NL Central right now, like the Astros and Nationals are doing in their divisions. Instead, the defending champs are 25-27, in third...
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Kyle Schwarber Is Not Bad at Baseball
For a guy with just 484 plate appearances, a 104 career wRC+, and 1.4 WAR, Kyle Schwarber gets talked about an awful lot. There are a lot of good reasons for that talk. He was part of a rejuvenation...
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Zack Greinke’s Pitch Mix Now Led by Plurality, Not Majority
PITTSBURGH – That Zack Greinke is reinventing himself, that he remains effective even as his velocity leaves him, that he has bounced back while pitching in front of a better defensive cast this season...
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The Astros Have Been Completely Unstoppable
I think every article about this year’s Astros is supposed to begin in the same way, so, who am I to defy convention? Let’s just embed this and move on: We don’t need to review the feature. We don’t...
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Park Factors and Other Early-Season Statcast Fun
Baseball has long been a game of tradition, and one rightful criticism of our “national pastime” has been its tendency to be slow to change. One of the most welcome enhancements of some fans’ enjoyment...
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Chris Tillman Ain’t Right
Joey Votto might have the most discerning eye in all of baseball, and this season he’s somehow made his own approach something even closer to perfect. Votto has swung at just 19% of pitches out of the...
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The Fringe Five: Baseball’s Most Compelling Fringe Prospects
Fringe Five Scoreboards: 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013. The Fringe Five is a weekly regular-season exercise, introduced a few years ago by the present author, wherein that same author utilizes regressed...
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Tampa Bay’s Attendance Problem
This is Michael Lortz’ first piece as part of his June residency at FanGraphs. Lortz covers the Tampa Bay baseball market for the appropriately named Tampa Bay Baseball Market and has previously...
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Pitch Talks in Seattle on Monday Night
This coming Monday, Jeff Sullivan and I will be joining a talented group for a Pitch Talks show in Seattle. Jeff will be joined by current Lookout Landing editor (and FanGraphs first resident) Kate...
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Jose Quintana’s Lost Home-Run Suppression
After the White Sox traded Chris Sale, rumors flew that Jose Quintana would be on the move soon, as well. Quintana has been quite good for Chicago, but the club had no designs on contending in 2017....
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The Rockies Are Still in an Enviable Position
The Rockies have lost five of their last eight games, a stretch that began last Thursday with a walk-off, extra-inning loss in Philadelphia. They’ve also lost sole possession of first place in the...
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Rays Prospect Brock Burke Rides a Driveline to Hot Rod Dominance
Brock Burke is on a roll. The 20-year-old southpaw has made nine starts for the Bowling Green Hot Rods, and he hasn’t allowed more than one earned run in any of them. His record is an unblemished 5-0,...
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Effectively Wild Episode 1066: Too Many Mascots
Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about teams and players of particular interest (including the Astros, Marwin Gonzalez, and Aaron Hicks), Scott Boras vs. Theo Epstein, the brawl battle between...
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NERD Game Scores for June 3, 2017
Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by sabermetric forefather Rob Neyer, and expanded at the request of nobody, NERD scores represent an attempt to summarize in one number (and on a...
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The Best of FanGraphs: May 29-June 2, 2017
Each week, we publish north of 100 posts on our various blogs. With this post, we hope to highlight 10 to 15 of them. You can read more on it here. The links below are color coded — green for...
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Sunday Notes: Acta’s Analytics, Banister’s Fire, Phillips’ Folly, Porcello Up...
Manny Acta was managing the Cleveland Indians when I first interviewed him, in 2010. He’s now the third base coach for the Seattle Mariners, and while many things change over the course of seven years,...
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NERD Game Scores for June 4, 2017
Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by sabermetric forefather Rob Neyer, and expanded at the request of nobody, NERD scores represent an attempt to summarize in one number (and on a...
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FanGraphs’ 2017 Mock Draft
What follows is my best guess for the first round of the 2017 amateur draft. I’ll update it the day of the draft itself (June 12), perhaps several times. Players have been assigned to teams based on...
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The Jeff Mathis Factor
PITTSBURGH — To begin this post, I would like to remind the audience of a series of fortunate events detailed back in February, a timeline of transactions that appears to be quite consequential as...
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