Few things are more frustrating than watching your team ground into a double play. This is FanGraphs, so you know what’s next: quantification. Who has hurt their team the most by grounding into double plays so far this season?*

*Although wOBA doesn’t include this, stats like RE24 and WPA/LI do (along with many other things). This posts isolates the run value of just the GiDPs.

John Walsh and others have written on this before, and I don’t have anything to add methodologically — I’m going with my own simple method using the Baseball-Reference table found here. To get the runs above and below average, we need to take into account not just rate, but opportunities (runner on first with less than two outs).

The rankings are based on runs above and below average. The linear weight run value of a GiDP varies from source to source, but for simplicity I’ll use .35, as listed in The Book (p 141), which is close to other values I’ve seen (for other issues, see this discussion). The 2010 league GiDP rate is 11% (as it is most seasons). To get the number of double plays above or below average, I’ve used a simple formula tweaked so that minus is “bad,” which is intuitive: player opportunities times league rate [11%] minus player GiDPs. I round this to a whole number, then multiply times 0.35 to see about how many runs a player has cost/gained his team below/above average. Enough boring methodology, let’s check out the hitters who have hurt their teams the most with the GiDP so far in 2010, ranked by runs below/above average.

[The numbers are GiDPS-opps, percentage grounded into, rounded number of GiDPS below average, and runs below average]

Three-way tie for third worst:

Wilson Valdez, 8-25, 32%, 5 below average, -1.75 runs
Carlos Lee, 9-38, 24%, 5 below average, -1.75 runs
Michael Cuddyer, 12-64, 19%, 5 below average, -1.75 runs

Valdez is a replacement-level scrub, so that isn’t that interesting, other than to see his amazing efforts in so little playing time. El Caballo has found yet another way to kill the Astros this season, even for him. Michael Cuddyer has been below average for his career, although 19% is his worst season in a while. He gets so far down the list because he hits fifth on the Twins batting order most nights, right behind two players currently sporting near-.400 and .500 on-base percentages (Joe Mauer and Justin Morneau, respectively), so he gets plenty of chances.

There is also a three-way tie for second worst:

Pablo Sandoval, 12-54, 22%, 6 below average, -2.1 runs
Ivan Rodriguez, 10-32, 31%, 6 below average, -2.1 runs
Joe Mauer, 12-53, 23%, 6 below average, -2.1 runs

Kung Fu Panda isn’t hitting up to his usual standard so far this season, and that’s also true of his double play rate, as, perhaps a bit surprisingly, he hasn’t been that bad in previous seasons. We’ll have to see how things develop. Pudge Rodriguez, on the other hand, was a GiDP machine even in his pre-Zombie seasons. Fellow catcher Joe Mauer has a bit of a reputation for grounding into double plays, and while he has been slightly worse than average for his career, in 2009 he was actually a bit better than average. It is probably magnified because because he primarily hits third for the Twins, and as discussed in The Book, the third spot in the order sees the most double play situations, on average. Mauer is also interesting because, despite being a lefty (who tend to be better at avoiding the DP, more discussion of this on Friday), he might be more suspectible because he likes to go the other way, and also hits the ball on the ground at an above average rate. He’s still a great hitter, of course.

The worst so far in 2010:

Billy Butler, 13-53, 25%, 7 below average, -2.45 runs

After beginning to fulfill expectations at the plate in 2009 with a .369 wOBA, Butler is hitting even better in 2010: .337/.391/.483, .382 wOBA. But the double play has been an issue for Butler in the major leagues. Being a right-handed hitter has something to do with it, as does his, um, “speed.” Like Mauer, he also hits a lot of balls on the ground. Hitting third for the first part of the season and now fourth (in both cases usually behind David DeJesus‘ .374 OBP) probably has something to do with it.

In the case of good hitters like Mauer, Butler, and others who have a problem with the DP, is it worth moving them out of the middle of the order? This is one thing I’ll briefly discuss in Friday’s post, which will also list 2010’s best at avoiding the GiDP as well as some other trends.

John Ely, acquired from the White Sox in the Juan Pierre deal this offseason, has been a helpful addition to a Dodgers’ rotation dealing with an injury to Vicente Padilla. Although Ely’s ERA probably will not be under three at the end of the year — his BABIP is 0.274, he has yet to allow a HR in spite of his slightly below average GB%, and I don’t think he can maintain that 1.57 BB/9 rate (in the minors he never posted one below two) — his performance has been very encouraging, capped by last night’s no-run seven-inning start. (For a fantasy breakdown of Ely check out David Golebiewski’s recent piece.)

Ely’s fastball averages just 87 mph and the pitch is far from overwhelming, causing just 3% swinging strikes (whiffs per pitch). But he can get it in and around the zone enough to avoid walks and get ahead in the count. While the average pitcher goes with a slider or curve with two strikes to finish off an at-bat Ely goes to his change. Even against RHBs he throws the change 20% of the time in two-strike counts (against LHBs 45%).

And the results are very good, the pitch has a 28% swinging strike rate (whiffs per pitch). Part of the success of his changeup against lefties is its location; he keeps it perfectly located on the outer half of the plate, where the results are best. Here are the locations of his changeups to LHBs from the catcher’s perspective.

Pitchers whose best pitch is a changeup tend to have small-to-no-to-reverse platoon splits and his minor league numbers bear this out (4.08 FIP against LHBs and 3.97 against RHBs). In his 46 MLB innings so far (very small sample) he has posted a ridiculous reverse platoon split of 0.96 FIP against LHBs and 2.80 against RHBs.

As I said at the beginning, regression is coming for Ely, but, all the same, the Dodgers could do a lot worse for a starter after Clayton Kershaw, Chad Billingsley, and Hiroki Kuroda.

In the comments to yesterday’s post about catchers good enough to DH, someone suggested a related idea. How about DHs who hit like catchers? The idea would have been a bit more robust earlier in the year, when a number of DHs were hitting like sissies. In that post, I noted three DHs who weren’t producing, but since then two, David Ortiz and Travis Hafner, have turned it around, while Eric Chavez hit the DL with bulging discs in his neck and gave way to Jack Cust…who is hitting like a sissy.

Cust isn’t the worst of the lot, of course. He’s picked up just 52 PA since being recalled in late May, so we’ll forgive him for the tepid start. We can’t say the same for Adam Lind and Hideki Matsui, each of whom has a below average wOBA. If that sounds unacceptable coming from a player whose sole job is to hit the baseball, well, it is. Some players might have a hard time adjusting to playing just half a game. Some might find themselves penciled in as DH because of a nagging injury. Lind and Matsui, however, are full-time DHs, and have been for the past two years. Lind started 92 of his 147 games at DH last season, while Matsui played a half game every time.

Matsui’s hot start to the season has kept him afloat through the first two months. In his first 55 PA he hit .327/.400/.612 and generally made Yankees fans hate the front office for letting him leave in favor of Nick Johnson. Since then he’s hit .200/.374/.323. That brings his wOBA down to .313, which just doesn’t fit the profile of a DH. He ranks between Russell Martin (.315 wOBA) and Jason Kendall (.309 wOBA). That’s just not a good place for a DH. Angels fans can rest assured that Matsui will come around. Last year he hit .194/.234/.361 from April 30 through May 24. For the rest of the season he hit .288/.384/.542.

Adam Lind has crashed this year after breaking out last season. His .296 wOBA ranks last among DHs with at least 150 PA, and is right near the bottom of the list of DHs with 100 PA. Just about everything has gone wrong for Lind this season. His ISO has gone from .257 to .171; his BB% has dropped by nearly a full percentage point; his K% has risen from 18.7 to 26.3; he’s hitting line drives 18.2 percent of the time, compared to two percentage points higher last year; his BABIP is more than 60 points lower; his HR/FB ratio is 8 percentage points lower; he’s swinging at more pitches, especially pitches outside the zone, and making less contact. His wOBA puts him right below Matt Wieters, though more than 10 points above the next lowest, Bengie Molina.

Jason Kubel currently has a .332 wOBA, though that’s rising. After a painfully slow start, which hit a low point on May 23 when his OPS hit .645, Kubel has rebounded. He’s 8 for his last 34 with three homers, three doubles, and four walks. Still, many a catcher ranks above him in wOBA. In fact, 20 catchers with more than 100 PA have a better wOBA, out of 32 total. Kubel might rank ahead of Kurt Suzuki, but he’s behind Yorvit Torrealba and Ivan Rodriguez. Chances are that won’t last.

Finally, it would be tough to assemble a post of limp-hitting DHs and leave off Ken Griffey Jr.. There’s no reason to spend time chronicling his poor season, since others have spilled many words on the topic. Still, if I’m doing a post about DHs who don’t deserve the spot, it would be downright irresponsible to leave off Griffey. Every single catcher with more than 100 PA has a higher wOBA than Griffey’s .216. He has said that he’ll know when it’s time to retire. Isn’t hitting worse than every catcher in the league a sign?

This post would have been much longer had it come a month earlier. It seemed like most AL teams were employing sub-optimal solutions at DH. There were Ortiz and Hafner, former sluggers struggling to hit in April. There was Nick Johnson, whose only value came via the walk. There was Chavez, trying to come back from years of injuries. Pat Burrell was hitting even worse than last season. Most of the teams gave their DHs time to turn it around. Some did. Others have been set aside in favor of better options. How long, then, will the Angels stick with Matsui and the Blue Jays with Lind?

We want to welcome a new writer to the fold today – Pat Andriola has joined the team, and will be contributing daily in this slot.

Ryan Howard certainly has not produced as Phillies fans would like this year, amassing only 0.2 WAR while the Philadelphia offense has found itself struggling over the last few weeks. However, Howard, who is thirty years old and turning thirty-one this November, is not hitting as a typical “declining slugger” is expected to. Because Howard is a homer-hitting first baseman with a large build, as he declines we should project an increase in strikeouts (K %) and a decrease in power (SLG) and ability to make contact (Contact %), along with more of a reliance on eye (BB %) to maintain offensive value.

Instead, we find ourselves looking at a player who is seemingly attempting to change his game midway through a fantastic career. Here are Ryan Howard’s relevant statistics, along with the difference from last season:

K %: 25.6% (-4.6)
SLG: .454 (-.117)
Contact %: 69.7% (+2.6)
Z-Contact %: 85.6% (+7.3)
BB %: 7.6% (-3.1)

While all of the numbers are surprising, maybe none is as shocking as Howard’s walk numbers for the year. Considering his lack of power, which was predicted by most of the projection systems preseason (although not at this current rate), Ryan should be looking to generate offense via the walk, which we all remember from the David Justice experiment in Moneyball is one skill that sticks for aging players. A drop of 3.1% is huge, and is a good amount less than half of his 2007 rate. We can see below how serious the walk decline has been, with the blue line being the major league average walk rate, and the green line being Howard:

Thanks to a BABIP that’s .10 points above his career average, Howard’s OBP has stayed afloat at .338, although his ISO of .174 is a drastic career low.

We also tend to see aging sluggers swing and miss more often, a result of declining bat speed. However, Howard has actually been making contact more often this season, and his contact in pitches in the zone has seen a significant jump. But most shocking has been Howard’s decrease in strikeouts, which currently sits over 10% less than what it was in 2007. Against lefties, Howard has struck out 32.1% of the time in 2010, compared to a career rate of 39.1% against southpaws.

Nothing is concrete, and sample size issues abound. However, while Ryan Howard’s new strategy may be appealing to those who hate strikeouts, his overall performance has been down. He’s produced a wRC+ of just 108, a full thirty-one points below his career average. With the decrease in power/walks/strikeouts and increase in contact, Howard is looking more like Shane Victorino than his usual self. If Howard is making a conscious adjustment, he may want to revert to his old ways. While the strikeouts and lack of power are a scary thought for an aging slugger, they are typically inevitable (ignoring those aided by illegal substances), and can be mitigated by a solid walk rate. At the least, the Phillies have 125 million reasons to hope to see the old Ryan Howard.

Join us at noon for our weekly stroll through the land of baseball Q&A.

Today we work our way through the rest of the college baseball postseason bracket. I began this run through the 64 teams yesterday. A copy of the bracket can be found at Baseball America.

Gainesville Regional: #1 Florida, #2 Florida Atlantic, #3 Oregon State, #4 Bethune-Cookman.
Best 2010 Draft Prospect: One of 2 closers: Kevin Chapman, lhp, Florida or Kevin Rhoderick, rhp, Oregon State.

If you haven’t heard of Chapman, he’s the Gators lefty closer rising up draft boards with every 95 mph moving fastball he throws. Left-handed hitters, according to my friends at College Splits, have amassed a ridiculous .263 OPS against him this season. Rhoderick’s big velocity has been more consistent in his three years at OSU, and Pat Casey will turn him loose for as much as three innings to try and grab wins this weekend. I think they can beat a solid FAU team in the opener, but beating Florida twice is a whole different matter. You need a lot of pitching to move through regional weekend, and the Gators might have the nation’s deepest staff. The pick: Florida.

Norwich Regional: #1 Florida State, #2 Connecticut, #3 Oregon, #4 Central Connecticut.
Best 2010 Draft Prospect: Tyler Holt, of, Florida State.

You will notice this is the one regional in which the #1 seed is not hosting, as the NCAA looks to expand college baseball’s popularity to new regions. So these four will play in Connecticut, where a very likable Huskies team will play underdog in their own ballpark. I’d be remiss not to point your attention to UConn 2B Pierre LePage, who struck out in last weekend’s Big East Tournament. It was news, because it was just the third time he’d done so in more than 250 plate appearances this season. They open their weekend against an amazing story — the Oregon Ducks, who made the tournament in the program’s second year of existence. They did so because of legendary coach George Horton’s ability to recruit pitchers (3.28 team ERA), namely ace Tyler Anderson (101 K’s in 95 IP). Florida State will await the winner, with their usual blend of great hitters and an enigmatic pitching staff. This has the makings to be the weekend’s most entertaining regional. The pick: Connecticut.

Louisville Regional: #1 Louisville, #2 Vanderbilt, #3 Illinois State, #4 Saint Louis.
Best 2010 Draft Prospect: Couldn’t decide, so I turned to Baseball America and John Manuel. To quote the Twitter: “Thomas Royse, rhp, Louisville, No. 182 on our top 200.”

This is really what the college baseball postseason is about. You have a veteran, well-coached Louisville team, against a young, uber-talented Vanderbilt squad. Throw in a potential Cinderella story like Illinois State, and you understand why this weekend is fun. However, I don’t want to paint the perception that Louisville isn’t talented, or Vanderbilt well coached. Quite the opposite. The host Cardinals have a slew of big league prospects on both sides of the ball. They have five double-digit home run guys, and more than one really good pitching prospect: Royse, Koch, Holland, Zych. Vanderbilt is a team that has played well a year earlier than expected, but have at least the regional’s two best players: sophomore RHP Sonny Gray and SS Jason Esposito. The pick: Louisville.

Fayetteville Regional: #1 Arkansas, #2 Washington State, #3 Kansas State, #4 Grambling.
Best 2010 Draft Prospect: Zack Cox, 3B/2B, Arkansas.

This is an interesting regional, because Arkansas is the most talented by a significant margin, but both Cougars teams are battle-tested and very interesting. Kansas State lost a lot of talent a year ago, but has found success by preaching to their hitters to get on base (team .427 OBP) and to take chances on the bases (114/149 in 56 games). Washington State is a team that keeps the ball in the park, and defends the baseball well. It’s not often to see a team that doesn’t beat themselves in college baseball, but that’s the kind of program Donnie Marbut has built. However, Arkansas should win this regional. They’ll get both offensive and pitching contributions from Brett Eibner, and Drew Smyly is a worthy ace. The pick: Arkansas.

Myrtle Beach Regional: #1 Coastal Carolina, #2 College of Charleston, #3 N.C. State, #4 Stony Brook.
Best 2010 Draft Prospect: Cody Wheeler, lhp, Coastal Carolina.

If the Columbia, South Carolina regional is this draft’s most prospect-laden, then just 3 hours east is the least prospect-laden. Coastal Carolina is a fantastic baseball team, capable of home runs (99 in 58 games), steals (146), a pitching staff that can strike you out (479 K’s in 522 IP) and keeps the ball in the park (27 home runs allowed). But they are doing so with fringe prospects, like Wheeler or shortstop Scott Woodward, who has a .504 OBP and is 48-for-54 on the bases. They should roll through this regional, as Charleston and N.C. State can both hit (both team OPS above .930) but neither can pitch (team ERA above five). The pick: Coastal Carolina.

Fort Worth Regional: #1 Texas Christian, #2 Baylor, #3 Arizona, #4 Lamar.
Best 2010 Draft Prospect: Steven Maxwell, rhp, TCU.

The Horned Frogs program has evolved from a Mountain West Conference powerhouse into a national title contender; few teams in the nation are as talented and well-balanced in both offense and pitching. There isn’t an arm on that staff that coach Jim Schlossnagle can’t trust, and it’s buoyed by the three starters: junior Steven Maxwell, sophomore Kyle Winkler and freshman Matt Purke. The latter is the nation’s best left-handed arm and a 2011 top-ten pick. Baylor has a similar amount of depth, but their pitchers are extremely inconsistent. The 2010 draft will see rhp Craig Fritsch and closer Brooks Pinckard in the top ten rounds, but both have their warts. This has been an overachieving year for Arizona because of a good freshman class. I doubt they are ready to shock the world. The pick: TCU.

Atlanta Regional: #1 Georgia Tech, #2 Alabama, #3 Elon, #4 Mercer.
Best 2010 Draft Prospect: Deck McGuire, rhp, Georgia Tech.

Alabama comes in playing very well, but the question will be whether they have the bats to keep pace with some powerful offenses in Georgia Tech and Elon. Like many of these regionals, the big decision is whether Alabama tosses ace Jimmy Nelson at the Phoenix, or whether he holds him to try to set up a more favorable match-up against McGuire and the Yellow Jackets. This is the deepest staff that Tech has had in awhile, though, and it matches with a lineup that includes seven double-digit home run guys. The pick: Georgia Tech.

Norman Regional: #1 Oklahoma, #2 California, #3 North Carolina, #4 Oral Roberts.
Best 2010 Draft Prospect: Matt Harvey, rhp, North Carolina.

Our final regional shows the respect the committee had for the big conferences, as this includes the eighth Pac-10 team I have talked about in two days, and a UNC team that really backed its way into a postseason berth. For what it’s worth, I do think the Tar Heels are the better of the two teams, and the first mound match-up will be intriguing. We should see Harvey against Cal’s Justin Jones, where Harvey will be pitching for a spot in the first half of the first round. The question, for me, is whether North Carolina can match the depth of an Oklahoma team that goes ten, twelve deep in the bullpen. I don’t love the Sooners starters, but with a good bullpen and a powerful offense, winning a regional at home should certainly be in the cards.

First a correction/retraction. In my most recent FanGraphs post on Junichi Tazawa, I re-ran a snippet from a post I published on NPB Tracker over a year ago, discussing the young righty’s time in Japan’s Industrial Leagues. One observant reader caught the improbability of this quote: “in his last appearance [Tazawa] didn’t allow any runs, but was nicked for 7 hits in 2 innings”. I did a little digging and couldn’t find any evidence of such appearance, so it looks like I was mistaken on that specific item. The Japanese site Draft Reports, however, has Tazawa’s pitching lines from 2008, and in general he was more hittable in relief appearances made after several starts (duh). So I’ll stand by the observation that Tazawa wore down after heavy workloads in Japan, but admit that I backed it up with incorrect data.

I brought up the submariner Shunsuke Watanabe in our chat last week, and here’s a little more on him: video of an appearance against Yomiuri in a 2009 pre-WBC warm-up match and velocity data from over the last year or so. With a fastball that maxes out at 80mph, Watanabe is perhaps the softest throwing starter in Japan. At the other end of the low arm slot scale is Yakult closer Chang Yong Lim. Some of you might remember Lim from last year’s WBC, when he closed for Korea and surrendered the eventual game-winning hit to Ichiro. Lim isn’t a submariner, but throws from a side-arm slot and runs his fastball into the mid-90’s. Here’s some video and velocity data.

How is the ‘Fat Ichiro’, Ryoji Nakata doing? Not well — .231/.268/.359 slash line through 42 farm team plate appearances. Nakata is perhaps a victim of NPB’s single-level minor league system — he’s behind two other first base prospects who are performing much better.

Matt Murton has taken to Japanese baseball like a fish to water so far, sporting a healthy .351/.400/.529 line as of May 31 Jeff Fiorentino, on the other hand, has struggled to a .235/325/.324 line.

Yu Darvish is striking more guys out this year, 95 in 86 innings pitched so far. Overall he’s in the midst of a frustrating season with a pedestrian 4-4 record despite a 1.67 era, while his Nippon Ham Fighters languish in last place. Darvish has surrendered seven unearned runs in his 11 starts this season, which is surprising given that Ham’s fielders won seven Gold Gloves last season, winning every position except pitcher and one outfield spot.

In 2009, only 41 pitchers managed to compile 10.0 runs above replacement in relief. Chicago White Sox left hander Matt Thornton, through the first two months of the season, is one of six pitchers to have accomplished this feat in 2010. Thornton has a spectacular 10.95 strikeout/walk differential (SO-BB), which is fifth in the major leagues among pitchers with at least 10 innings pitched. Thanks to this utter dominance, Thornton is running a spectacular 1.59 ERA, 1.07 FIP, and 2.09 xFIP through the first two months of the season.

This emergence, remarkably enough, comes with Thornton at the ripe old age of 33. Thornton struggled in his first two seasons with Seattle, particularly in 2005 when he posted a -0.9 WAR season. The Mariners then traded him to the Chicago White Sox for Joe Borchard. Thornton blossomed in Chicago, putting up two straight 1.0 WAR seasons. Thornton leaned heavily on his mid-90s fastball and rode an 8.00+ K/9 to a 3.70 FIP.

Over the last three seasons, however, Thornton has emerged as one of the most dominant pitchers in the game. He’s consistently recorded well over a strikeout per inning and has severely reduced his walk rate. Over his last 162.3 innings, Thornton has recorded a whopping 4.5 WAR.

The apparent cause of this success is his blazing fastball. Thornton is extremely reliant on the number one, using it a whopping 90.6% of the time – over 3% more than the next highest qualified reliever. Hitters have had an extremely difficult time with it. The 17.4% whiff rate is nearly three times the league average, and even when hitters do manage to make contact, it’s much more likely to wind up as a foul ball (24.6%) as opposed to in play (12.8%). Even when it’s in play, hitters haven’t been doing much with it. As the final nail in the coffin, hitters can’t simply take and expect a ball – Thornton’s fastball has a 70% strike rate, about 6 points above the league average. As such, Thornton’s fastball has been worth over 10 runs according to pitch type linear weights, the most valuable pitch to any reliever in baseball, eclipsing Carlos Marmol’s slider by over a run.

It appears that a huge part of Thornton’s development as a pitcher has been figuring out how good his fastball really is. There’s a direct relationship between how often Thornton throws his fastball and how successful he has been over the course of his career.

I don’t need to tell this audience that correlation doesn’t imply causation, but personally, I doubt that a lower FIP has caused Thornton to throw his fastball more often. Thornton’s fastball is a fantastic pitch, and his secondary stuff, although good, is dependent on his fastball, as he allows his slider to be put in play at an above average rate. Until batters show that they can consistently make good contact against his fastball, he needs to keep going to it. If he can keep drawing whiffs on it as he has this season, he will undoubtedly continue to thrive.

Last week, as part of his Thursday Throneberries, Rob Neyer wrote — in re the Why We Watch post that I’d submitted to these electronic pages — he wrote that “the only thing missing [from said post]… is a points system that would let us put a number on each game.” That is, Neyer was curious if it might be possible to assign points to each game on a particular day in order to tell which might be most appealing to the sabermetrically inclined viewer.

Neyer’s challenge put a bee in my proverbial bonnet. And when you put a bee like that in Carson Cistulli’s bonnet — proverbial or otherwise — he’s not gonna stop until that bee is either dead or, if not dead, at least captured and successfully rehabilitated.

Which is why I’ve spent every waking minute of the last five or so days — and some of the sleeping minutes, too — working on the problem.

A few minutes of consideration reveal two facts:

1. It’s a big-ish task, this, to devise a points system for every possible aspect (pitching, hitting, uniform design, stadium, broadcast team, etc.) that might contribute to the viewing experience.

2. Despite the verity of point 1, it seems as though we can say with some certainty that pitching matchups — because the pitchers are constantly playing — go the greatest way towards making a game either compelling or not. Therefore, that’s where I’ve elected to start.

So the question I posed to my own brain is: what makes a starting pitcher interesting to the baseball nerd? And also: of the things that might make a pitcher interesting, which of them are easily measured? And finally: what ought one call a stat designed to address these urgent questions?

The last question is the easiest to answer. Were I to construct a stat designed to appeal to the baseball nerd, I’d call that stat NERD. What would/does it stand for? Hard to say, but it just feels so right.

Now, as for the first two questions there, let’s take a look at some possible answers.

Components of Pitcher NERD
• Pitcher Ability (xFIP)
At the center of the baseball nerd’s quest is the desire to understand, quite simply, who is good at baseball and who is less good. While, as Tommy Bennett rightly notes, metrics that evaluate process (as opposed to outcome) aren’t flawless, Expected FIP (xFIP) is both pretty damn sweet and pretty freaking accessible.

• Strikeouts (SwStrk%)
Swinging strikes correlate very highly to strikeouts — are, in fact, more predictive of future K rate than K rate itself. Also, they’re awesome to watch. Yes, strikeouts are a part of xFIP, but there’s a pleasure to the strikeout that ought to be recognized. It represents a pitcher’s total pwn-ing of his opponent. Consider: despite having absolutely no ties to San Francisco or its environs, I consider it a great privilege to watch Tim Lincecum throw his change-up. Yeah, the crazy wind-up is pretty sweet, but his change-up — which gets whiffs about 25% of the time — is what really gets the party started.

• Strike Throwing (Strike% of Total Pitches Thrown)
It’s nice to watch a pitcher who throws a lot of strikes — even those not of the swing-and-miss variety. Phrased differently, it can be super boring to watch a pitcher who doesn’t throw strikes. Consider Rich Harden of 2009. He had a swinging-strike rate of about 16% in 2009, but he only threw about a league average number of strikes. That’s enough to make him less watchable. (And, of course, he’s much harder to tolerate this season, now that he’s getting about half the swing-and-misses.)

• Luck (ERA-xFIP)
It’s a fact: nerds like watching regression happen. Scientists are efforting day and night to figure out why — to no avail as of yet. Anyway, it’s a fact.

A Note on Weighting the Components
Though each of the components listed above probably all contribute to making a pitcher interesting, that’s not to say that each of them ought to be weighted equally. Value luck too heavily and Charlie Morton is the most interesting player in the world. Do the same to swinging strikes and Brandon Morrow makes his way to the top of the charts.

As the goal of this exercise is not to uncover an objective truth — like, for example, how many runs a player has produced or how much he might be worth on the open market — but rather to address questions of an aesthetic nature, I’ve allowed myself to abide by intuition in assigning weights to the components in consideration.

Here’s how I’ve opted to go about it.

Calculating NERD
To calculate NERD, I found each pitcher’s z-score (standard deviations from the mean) for cats 1-3. I multiplied the xFIP score by 2, divided both the swinging strike and strike percentage scores by 2, and then added Luck to the total.

In re that last part, about luck, a couple notes: I opted only to add bad luck to the overall equation. A pitcher who’s overperforming his xFIP is less interesting to me (and to baseball nerds, in general, I’m guessing) than one who’s underperforming it. If a pitcher’s ERA-xFIP is less than 0 (i.e. lucky), I just counted as 0. In other words, I only real care about pitchers who will seem to be improving.

Also: I capped the Luck “bonus” at 2. Otherwise, seriously, Charlie Morton is the highest-ranked pitcher.

Adding a constant (in this case, 4.69) gives all 150 or so pitchers (with 20+ IP) a score between 0 and 10, with average exactly at 5. I had to round the top two guys down to 10 and the bottom three guys guy up to 0, but that’s it.

The Final Equation
Looks like this:

(xFIPz * 2) + (SwStrk%z / 2) + (Strike%z / 2) + Luck + 4.69.

Results
Here are the current top 20 starters (with 20+ IP) by NERD:

Here are the bottom 20:

Discussion
Bill James once suggested that, if a stat never surprises you, it’s probably worthless. This is an idea I embraced while attempting to fine tune NERD. Which is to say, I wanted it to be occasionally surprising.

For example, one might wonder how Randy Wells ranks higher than the very talented Tim Lincecum. Well, in addition to actually being quite good so far this season, Wells’ ERA is almost a full point above his xFIP. With time, the former is likely to crawl back down towards the latter. When it does, Wells will very likely not occupy his current spot. Still, in the meantime, it’s worth wondering when we’ll see Wells’ luck turn for the better.

Future Considerations
Pitcher NERD is definitely not complete. Undoubtedly, it makes sense to consider at least a couple-few more components. Components such as (though not limited to):

• Player Age/Experience
Rookies are exciting. Young players, generally, are exciting. It makes sense to factor something like player age or service time into the equation.

• Repertoire
My good friend Leo writes, “Should a guy like Justin Verlander be higher because he throws 100 MPH? That’s fun to watch.” The same friend also would like see Ubaldo Jimenez further up the charts. And who can blame him: watching Jimenez pitch is fun.

• Fat Heads
Vincente Padilla has one. That should count against him somehow.

If you’re interested in fooling around with the weights, by all means utilize this spreadsheet that I’ve uploaded to Google Docs. It also includes data for 2009, which saw Javier Vazquez, Ricky Nolasco, Roy Halladay, Tom Gorzelanny (!), and Tim Lincecum finish in the top five.

Atlanta

Best positional player: Tony Gwynn Jr. (2000: Round 33, Pick 1,000)

Best pitcher: Scott Downs (1994: Round 12, Pick 342). Of course this isn’t the most famous non-sign in Braves history as far as left-handed pitchers go. Some guy named Randy Johnson was drafted but not signed too, he’s just no longer active.

Honorable mention: Mark Hendrickson (1992, 1994: Rounds 13 and 32, Picks 369 and 902). Yes, they drafted him twice, no he never signed. In fact, he was drafted by a team every year between 1992 and 1997. He was too busy playing basketball to care.

Florida

Best positional player: Adam LaRoche (1998, 1999: Rounds 18, 42, Picks 550, 1,254). Like Atlanta with Hendrickson, the Marlins drafted LaRoche twice and failed to sign him either time. Naturally he wound up with Atlanta.

Best pitcher: Cliff Lee (1997: Round 8, Pick 246). Yep, they too tried tasting the Lee fruit and were denied.

Honorable mention: Bob Howry (1993: Round 45, Pick 1,269). Not because Howry is anything special, but because the Marlins’ draft history is pretty boring.

New York

They actually deserve their own list:

Mark Grudzielanek (1989: Round 17, Pick 450)
A.J. Burnett (1995: Round 8, Pick 217)
Aaron Rowand (1995: Round 40, Pick 1,113)
David DeJesus (1997: Round 43, Pick 1,281)
Garrett Atkins (1997: Round 10, Pick 300)
Jeremy Guthrie (1997: Round 15, Pick 450)

Philadelphia

Best positional player: J.D. Drew (1997: Round 1, Pick 2). Oh come on, you knew it was coming. Drew didn’t sign and then re-entered the draft to be selected by the Cardinals a year later.

Best pitcher: Joe Saunders (1999: Round 5, Pick 156)

Honorable mention: Brad Ziegler (2003: Round 20, Pick 595). He actually did sign with the Phillies on June 17, 2003. They released him on March 28, 2004.

2010 draft connection: Brandon Workman is projected to go in the first round. The Phils nabbed Workman with their third round pick in 2007 but let him scamper away to the University of Texas. Keith Law’s latest mock draft has him going to the Rays at 31 and his scouting report suggests he could be a number two starter some day.

Washington
Best positional player: Russell Martin (2000: Round 35, Pick 1,035). The Expos’ 2000 draft was a thing of beauty and actually produced each of their three representatives here.

Best pitcher: Wes Littleton (2000: Round 7, Pick 195). No, really, there are no other choices.

Honorable mention: Jason Bay (2000: Round 22, Pick 645). This before trading Bay to the New York Mets for Lou Collier in 2002. The Mets would then trade Bay months later for Jason Middlebrook and Steve Reeds.

You know who else the Expos drafted in 2000? Fred Lewis, Jeff Karstens, Grady Sizemore, Shawn Hill, and Cliff Lee. None of them were as good as Justin Wayne though.