Pitching Grips

Welcome to the latest FanGraphs Changelog , where we update you on some of the recent improvements we’ve made to the site as we work to build a better FanGraphs. First, here are some important updates we’ve already announced over the past month, in case you missed them: We added three new tools to the FanGraphs Lab, rolling out the Paired Pitches tool, the Power Rankings Board , and the Baseball Simulator . We also added Home Field Advantage to the Baseball Simulator. Lastly, we added ABS strike zone, arm angle, and spin rate related stats to our player pages and leaderboards. We’ve worked hard to get our tools updated for the new strike zone and the ABS challenge system. In addition to the new plate discipline metrics added to player page season stats and leaderboards, those stats were also added to the game logs and spark graphs cards. To see how successful players have been when they make ABS challenges, we added an ABS Challenges leaderboard . We also made a s...

Last week, we released a baseball simulator in the FanGraphs Lab . This week, we’re adding home field advantage to the simulator. You can toggle HFA on and off using a new menu option: The chosen home field advantage will then be applied to whatever simulation you run. But how do we calculate home field advantage in this simulated environment? Let’s go over it. You’re probably familiar with home field advantage being expressed in terms of winning percentage. From 2000-2010, the home team’s winning percentage hovered around 54%. In the next decade, it declined to around 53%. In recent years, it has fallen to the 52-53% range. Since our simulation works at a plate appearance-level, however, we couldn’t look at game outcomes to measure home field advantage. Instead, we used PA-level data to infer how much playing at home affects the rate of each outcome in our simulator. We took data from 2022-2025, the universal DH era, and used it to fit three different models of home field ad...

Junfu Han-USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images Dan Petry faced 644 different batters across the 1979-1991 seasons, and while he certainly doesn’t remember them all, his level of recollection is impressive. Now 67, the former All-Star right-hander proved as much when he became the latest pitcher-turned-broadcast analyst to tackle one my a matchup-focused career quizzes. As did David Cone , Mark Grant , Mark Gubicza , and Jeff Montgomery — those pieces can be found here , here , here , and here — “Peaches” reached into his personal memory bank to take a stab at answering my questions, and to provide entertaining anecdotes while doing so. Our conversation took place at Fenway Park this past weekend. I began by asking him which batter he faced the most times. “It would have to be somebody in the American League East,” replied Petry, who played the bulk of his career with the Detroit Tigers and is now Dan Dickerson’s primary partner in the team’s radio booth. “I’ll say Robin Yount .” I...

Gary A. Vasquez-Imagn Images What-ifs are a central part of being a baseball fan. We love to consider how differently things might’ve turned out if a star player hadn’t gotten hurt, or if a team had signed one free agent instead of another. Some what-ifs are the stuff of legend, like the fabled night in the late 1940s when, during a drunken dinner with Tom Yawkey at Toots Shor’s Midtown Manhattan joint, Yankees owner Dan Topping nearly traded Joe DiMaggio to the Red Sox for Ted Williams . Others aren’t revealed until decades later, like when Barry Bonds said on the Opening Night Netflix broadcast last month that he would’ve played for the Yankees instead of the Giants if George Steinbrenner hadn’t given him a take-it-or-leave-it offer . We all have our own personal picks, too. Here are a few of mine: What if the New York City newspapers hadn’t gone on strike in 1978 ? What if Eric Gregg hadn’t been the home plate umpire for Livan Hernandez ...

John Jones-Imagn Images The Mets’ 2026 season began with such promise. With a remade roster after last year’s disappointing 83-79 finish — new looks in the infield and outfield , a new Opening Day starter to lead their staff, and infusions of youth both in the lineup and in the rotation — they kicked things off by beating up reigning NL Cy Young winner Paul Skenes and won three out of their first four games. Though April 7, they were 7-4, including a pair of walk-off wins. They haven’t won since, and already owner Steve Cohen is pleading with fans to stay the course. First, the Mets dropped the final five games of their second homestand against the Diamondbacks and Athletics, getting shut out twice and scoring more than two runs just once; meanwhile, they gave up seven or more runs three times. Then they flew to Los Angeles to face the two-time defending champion Dodgers, and while they did get a seven-inning, one-run gem from rookie Nolan McLean opposite Yoshin...