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45th Issue.
NFL Draft is inching closer and ESPN released a cool draft day tool, that leads us off. Discovered a few new metrics, one is NFL snap-weight age, and another is a raw value metric for judging the best MLB pitches. Baseball also is seeing a fastball velocity surge, and FanGraphs incorporated a Statcast metric.
This Week's Lineup
ESPN NFL Draft Day Tool
Distributions, baby! It estimates the chance each player will be selected at each pick number, which also lets us know the chance each player will still be on the board at each pick number.
NFL 2021 Snap-Weighted Age
Didn't know this was a thing. Football Outsiders calculates a team's age not by just averaging the ages of the players on the roster, but by weighting the age of each player by the number of snaps he played in the regular season. Brady is old. Lions are young.
Baseball’s Early Fastball Velocity Surge
Starting pitchers are throwing fastballs at historic velocities so far. Relievers are still ahead of them too, as is expected. The standard starter is averaging 93.8 mph, whereas the standard reliever is averaging 93.9.
Who Has the ‘Most Valuable’ Pitches?
Raw value (RV) is calculated by assigning value to all the different outcomes a pitch has instead of waiting for the conclusion of the at-bat. Basically, pitchers get a boost for forcing hitters into bad decisions and dinged for allowing positive results. White Sox should have performed better last year.
Statcast OAA Is Now Available on FanGraphs
Noteworthy. The MLB Statcast fielding metric Outs Above Average (OAA) is now available on player pages in the “Advanced Fielding” section and on the leaderboards.
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Unexpected Points Added is curated and maintained by Patrick Hayes.
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