Morning Mound Visit: sabermetrics news - 1/4/20

FanGraphs | Tony Wolfe: Jason Castro signed with the Angels for one year and $6.85 million, and while his framing has been good his bat was a non-factor. Yet he may have made some offensive improvements and other teams who need a catcher might have worse options still.

Bill James Online | Dave Fleming: People may think the team of the decade is the Giants, or the Red Sox even, but I appreciate this piece taking the stance that it’s actually the Royals. By bucking the statistical trends and being a mostly anonymous group, they won two straight pennants and six thrilling playoff series on singles, stolen bases, defense, snd the bullpen.

Tangotiger Blog | Tom Tango: There are several embedded posts, this one just being the latest, on Layered wOBA, which basically determines the “how” and “why” of a hit based on exit velocity and launch angle, which can be converted to runs: Andrelton Simmons is worth -7 runs by exit velocity, and -18 by launch angle, as one example.