Maybe I should rephrase my question:

When I mentioned tossing fastballs down the middle, I didn't mean to suggest that he wasn't a finesse pitcher, nor that he doesn't work the corners well.

What I mean is: hitters have consistently posted a very high BABIP against him over three (short) seasons in the majors. This season in particular, he has failed to strand runners to an abnormal degree.

So, the couple of mistakes that cost him games against the Dodgers and Pirates may or may not be the sort of mistakes that all pitchers make. Sure, accidents happen, but if a pitcher has a tendency to throw pitches that get hit hard and find holes when the game is on the line, then maybe Minor's BABIP/ERA won't normalize and he'll just continue to lose games.

By the same token, I recently tossed Javy Guerra in a league. He kept blowing saves and lost the closer role for the time being. Now, his peripherals are great and suggest an easy rebound. But, after watching all of his appearances, only one conclusion was possible: Javy has been pitching shakily, inconsistently, and nervously for the majority of this season.

Sometimes, the intangibles matter. So, with Minor, while it's great that he's great when he's going good, I still have to wonder why he consistently lets hitters make good contact and fails to strand as many runners as his K rate would suggest.

Any update on this?

I have watched at least part of most of his starts. When he is going good, he can hit the outside corner in his sleep. Like all pitchers, he has made a few mistakes that have cost him (in the game against the Dodgers if I can recall at least 1-2 of the runs he let up were on consecutive bloop singles in the first inning).

He did get lit up against Colorado (at Coors) and Pittsburgh (no real excuse but a mistake to Pedro Alvarez cost him greatly).

To answer your question, no he does not chuck fastballs down the middle, he is the exact opposite. He can locate with the best pitchers in the league when he is on. I would definitely give him some time as he only threw 120 big league innings before this year.

I'm not sure if this is an appropriate place for a general discussion of a player's fantasy worth, but here goes.

I have Minor (in two of my three leagues, hooray) and am having so much trouble benching him this week, because every time I go to do it, I end up back here staring at his sparkling peripherals.

I haven't been able to watch many (any?) of his starts this season. But it seems like the story is old (albeit, told only by three seasons of small samples): he has a great K/BB, a mid 3's xFIP/SIERA, but hitters keep finding holes and runners score. Is there some explanation for this?

I'm a person who hates calling BABIP luck. So, I guess what I'm asking is: is he getting unlucky, or does it look like he consistently chuck fastballs down the middle when the going gets tough?

If the stats really are conveying the full picture, then I'll ride this out.

Yeah, after reading a little more about ZiPS, it seems like it doesn't account for injury stints, or other qualitative factors that would affect playing time. Is this correct?

Does anyone know of any site that does update this information daily? If so, I could apply it to the ZiPS projection.

Thanks for your help!

It's under the "Advanced" tab.

http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=bat&lg=all&qual=y&type=1&season=2012&month=0&season1=2012&ind=0&team=0&rost=0&age=0&players=0

can someone help point me in the right direction for hitters BABIP on hitters

His projections will be updated every day he doesn't play, not all at once, if that makes sense.

I've seen this asked a couple of times, but haven't seen a reply, and can't find the information. When are the ZiPS projections updated?

I went to see the Matt Kemp update due to his injury, but seems like it hasn't been updated to account for his 15-Day DL stint.

If this has already been posted, I apologize. Please point me in the right direction.

Many thanks in advance!

Something similar to Pitchf/x except for hitters. Instead of just showing the location or movement of certain pitches show a hitter's "hot zones" and how affective they are against pitches in that area.

these splits are available for batter but not pitchers on fangraphs. i think it would be interesting to see these splits for pitchers. Baseball reference has these splits for pitchers but they don't give the batted ball break down. it would also be interesting to see what % of a pitchers fly balls are opposite field or what % of of a pitchers ground balls are pulled.

I'd do it. Lotta upside here considering it's a keeper league.

Keep Montero.

Rizzo is way better than Brown. Outside of SBs and OF eligibility, Rizzo is better on all counts.

I would. There is a real chance that one of the two could end up being better than Lowrie. It is small chance that both could end up being better than Lowrie. It would somewhat depend on who you had to drop to makeup for the 2 for 1 deal.

Does anyone know where I can find a list with the number of games in which a player hit multiple home runs? The recent power surge by Josh Hamilton has had me wondering about whether hitting more than one home run in a game is a repeatable skill independent of just being able to hit a lot of home runs.

Yes but it is an OPS league so guys like Reynolds, Dunn, and Bruce have a lot more value in OPS versus AVG because they hit for power and draw walks. Like Reynolds for example never hits above .220 which is horrible. However his OPS is right around .800 which isn't elite but is above league average.

How much more value does Reyes have than Altuve going forward?

From what I've seen of the mobile app (iOS), it seems to serve a different purpose than what I come to the site for. Perhaps the current app should be renamed FanGraphs Live and a new app created called FanGraphs Stats that focuses on delivering the features of the website: player stat profiles, customized dashboard with same settings as website (requires login on mobile app), player comparisons etc.

-cmd

Whether it used to be a feature or not, it would be VERY useful. I'm not new to baseball stats, but I've only recently found FanGraphs and there's many of the abbreviations with which I'm not familiar. The mouseover glossary items on the abbreviations would be extremely helpful.

If not that, at least a single page that has all stats listed alphabetically with a short explanation of the stat and how it may be used analytically... perhaps a formula.

That's an interesting idea for a study and I'm surprised I couldn't find a formal one via google. I did find a thread on it http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/archive/index.php/t-516065.html">here and one poster claims to have done the math through the retrosheet event files. Here are his findings:

"Stealing Overall (1990-2010):
Stolen Bases: 62196
Caught Stealing: 27240
Stolen Base percentage: 69.5%

Stealing on Pitch-out (1990-2010):
Stolen Bases: 1124
Caught Stealing: 1510
Stolen Base Percentage: 42.7%

Pitchout Stats:
Total Pitchouts (1990-2010): 19405
Total Runners Going on Pitchouts: 2634
Runners Going Percentage: 13.6%"

So, yes, the pitch-out does give the defense an advantage at throwing out the runner, at about 28%, but pitch-outs are only called while the runner is going 13% of the time. So, how effective is that, really?

I can verify the poster's findings later.

I think you almost have to make this deal.

Look at your potential .260 and below hitters.
Montero
Reynolds
Teixeria
Bruce
Upton
Stubbs
Dunn

I would think that you have enough Bats and Mike Morse should be a bump when he comes back.

Good Luck.

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I made this trade in reverse last year (Reyes for Dunn) and sure regretted it. I'm hoping it turns itself around this year but who knows for sure.
This trade certainly shouldn't hurt you with all that power you have though. I find it to be a fair deal.

Has there been a measurement on the success or failure rate of a pitch out?

Super - thank you.

http://www.bbprojectionproject.com/

Hi,

Quick favor if I may - Does anyone know if the historic ZIPS projections are available online? I have failed to find them on BTF.

I'd be interested in any credible projections system that normalized data is available fro going back to at least 3 years.

I have the PECOTA projections but would love something to compare them to.

Cheers

JB

I'm in an extremely active 12 team mixed roto 5x5 OPS league mid stakes. People are always power hungry in this league and it has the most trade value.

I was offered Jose Reyes for Adam Dunn straight up. I'm wondering if I should take this. Reyes could be on a down year and he is an injury risk. Dunns power is for real but he is still horrible against lefties. Here is my lineup.

C: Jesus Montero
1B: Prince Fielder
2B: Brandon Phillips
2B/SS: Jose Altuve
SS: Asdrubal. Cabrera
3B: Mark Reynolds
1B/3B : Mark Teixeria
OF: Matt Kemp
OF: Jay Bruce
OF: B.J. Upton
OF: Drew Stubbs
OF: Tony Campana / Stream spot
Util: Adam Dunn

DL: Michael Morse

I have a lot of power on this team and I'm leading the league in Home Runs. I'm somewhat short on speed as I'm in 8th place in steals. Do I take this and lose 20-25 home runs?

Link below to my team and league. Any advice / help is appreciated and I'll be glad to give input back.

http://games.espn.go.com/flb/clubhouse?leagueId=110025&teamId=3&seasonId=2012

Nevermind. I need only look at Pedro Alvarez's page and see that his values are negative in everything besides fastballs to see that it is for the batter. Feel free to delete the topic haha.

I'm extremely sorry if the site has this already (I just may be dumb and I'm missing it), but I can't seem to find if or where Fangraphs has stats on how good or bad a select batter is against a certain pitch. I know how the pitch values work on the pitcher pages, but for the pitch values on a batters page, are those values how well they hit the pitch or the value of the pitch they see? Once again I apologize.

In general the save rule is pretty messed up. In general, saves (and those who earn them) are something very overrated. You can earn a save if you pitch the ninth inning leading by 3 runs or less or if the tying run is on the on-deck circle. In other words, if it is 4-0, and two runners on base...you can earn a save. The other weird oddity of the save rule is that you can earn a save if you are a relief pitcher who pitches the final 3 innings of the game regardless of the difference.
For example,

http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/ARI/ARI200708200.shtml

Ok, I understand what you're saying. But, isn't it strange? I feel like the qualifications of a "blown save" are flawed. You have to pitch in the 9th to get a save, so shouldn't you have to pitch in the 9th to get a blown save? If nothing else, it supports the melt downs v. Shut downs theory.

When Sale came into the game, the score was 3-0. This means he would have gotten the save if he had finished the game, which is why he got the blown save.

In the 5/8/12 White Sox game Chris Sale entered in the 8th and allowed two inherited runners to score and one earned run to score. He finished the inning and the score was tied 3-3. Can someone please explain to me how this is a blown save since he was in a non-save situation? I understand that in save situations it doesn't matter whether the runners were inherited or not, but even in the 8th? Seems wrong, right? Thanks!

I would love it if Fangraphs released the HOR/VER measurments of pitch types at Texas leaguers, or something similar in a sortable, downloadable format.

Holy what, I would never leave the house.

"Stuff" is basically movement and velocity of a pitcher's repertoire. Usually the guy with better "stuff" will strike more hitters out, though it can be used in a groundball or pop-up connotation.

As far as stats to use, K% and Contact% are probably the best indicators, though GB% and IF/FB% can also indicate good stuff if they are at extreme values. It then comes down to knowing average velocities and movement for each type of pitch, which is available at texasleaguers.com. This site has the averages, but the horizontal movement is not split between lefties and righties, so it's stuck in the middle.