For today’s FanGraphs Feature Focus, I’ll be looking at one of my favorite features of the site: our Weather Breakdown. Michael Baumann introduced these divisions back in 2024, and the page format hasn’t changed since. So while I’m going to walk you through how Weather Splits works and where you can find them, I’ll be showing some leaderboards that can help build them.
To create the leaderboards for this piece, I played the Climate Classification Range in the Classifications tab of the Classification leaderboard:
Those Weather Split Distances are not split or subtracted from all other splits. For example, by changing the Wind Speed filter and adding a Wind Direction sub-filter, we can see which players hit the most home runs in winds of 10 mph or more:
Wind Resistance: Most Home Runs with 10+ MPH Winds Blowing Inside
Bob Seger would be proud of Ryan Jeffers, who is currently in IL after hamstring surgery but still leads the leaderboard as the only player with three homers against the wind. If you click on the full leaderboard, you’ll see that Auto PT is turned on:
You are not a FanGraphs Member
It appears that you are not yet a FanGraphs Member (or signed in). We’re not mad, just disappointed.
We get it. You want to read this article. But before we let you get back to it, we’d like to point out a few good reasons why you should become a Member.
1. Free Viewing! We will not mistake you for this ad, or any other.
2. Unlimited topics! Non-Members only get to read 10 free articles per month. Members are never cut off.
3. Dark mode and classic mode!
4. Custom player page dashboards! Choose the player cards you want, the way you want.
5. One-click data export! Use our predictions and leaderboards for your personal projects.
6. Remove images from the home page! (Honestly, this doesn’t sound that good to us, but other people wanted it, and we like to give our Members what they want.)
7. More Steam guesses! We have offer, percentage, and context neutral predictions available only to members.
8. Get the FanGraphs Walk-Off, a custom year-end review! Find out how you used FanGraphs this year, and how that compares to other Members. Don’t fall prey to FOMO.
9. Weekly mailbag column, for Members only.
10. Help support FanGraphs and all of our staff! Our members give us valuable resources to improve the site and bring new features!
We hope you will consider Membership today, for yourself or as a gift! And we realize that this has been a very long marketing article, so we’ve removed all other ads from this article. We didn’t want to overdo it.
If so, the leaderboard will intelligently adjust the minimum playing time depending on how restrictive your search is, sometimes setting no minimum at all. You can always set your minimum in the Filters section. The Temperature Filter is even more straightforward to use, although I will note here that our filters do not automatically remove interior or retractable roof fields. That’s done with a Ballpark type filter:
Using those two filters in tandem, I’ve made a list of pots that do particularly well when it’s cold or very cold, and are exposed to those factors:
Cold Never Worries Me Anyway: Sub-2.00 FIP in 59 Degrees or Cold
Minimum 10 IP, n = 106. Open roof/full outdoor arenas only.
While the ball doesn’t handle well in cooler temperatures, it can also cause pitchers to have trouble catching, even at a cooler 57 degrees. But that doesn’t affect the pitchers on this leaderboard.
Weather Splits are also a good excuse to take a crash course in barometric pressure, which I had to do to understand our various splits. For Maximum Weather Instruments, which sells barometers and other pressure gauges, normal air pressure is considered 1,013.25 millibars. Anything above that is considered high pressure, so I set my minimum at 1,014. These breakers are the guys most used in high pressure situations… in both senses of the word:
Under Stress: High-Performance Batteries Face High Stress, Like a Liberator
Maximum pressure: 1014+ millibar
Did I really do this research and create an entire leaderboard just to make an “Under Pressure” joke? I choose to exercise my Fifth Amendment rights, Your Honor.
I’ve created leaderboards for these three divisions, but we have many more within the Divisional Leaderboard Weather tab. Beyond the temperature, pressure, and air ranges, you can also set the air density and altitude ranges. The Ballpark and Weather tabs at the top include binary filters you can combine (eg, rain and drizzle, or fog and mist):
As a ballpark type and strength, the weather range can be combined with both the best weather filters. For example, you can look for strong winds only in warm weather, or rain only in cold weather.
Our Weather Splits have been available since 2010, and the entire split leaderboard can be accessed regardless of whether you are a FanGraphs member. But if you want to export to Excel to easily compare player performance across divisions, you must be a Member. If you would like to sign up for Membership, you can do so here.
