Used to be the hipster thing was to talk about pitch-framing, or pitch-receiving, and how it’s more important than it’s been given credit for. That was all well and fun, but people have a pretty good idea now, as the concept has gone borderline mainstream. And it turns out we don’t actually know that much about the effects, since it’s not as simple as calculating the difference between a ball and a strike. Of course, all else being equal, a good receiver is more valuable than a bad one, but we don’t know how much more valuable. The new hipster thing is to talk about receiving realistically. To distrust the idea of a guy being worth something like 50 runs above average. I live in Portland so you can trust me on my evaluation of hipster things.

Over the rest of this post, not everything is figured out. You could argue that very little is figured out, and so much more research could be done. Research by people with more time and way better technical skills. But I’ve decided to mess around with some numbers, and I’ll try to make this as reader-friendly as possible. I’m not going to lay out for you the true effects of good or bad pitch-receiving. Hopefully this’ll just make you think a little, before you think about something else.

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Vance Worley just got clobbered again, this time by the Braves. There’s no set and certain point at which a start turns into an official clobbering, but looking through Worley’s 2013 game log, I’d say this was the fifth or sixth time he’s been clobbered, in ten games. That’s an ugly ratio, and to make matters worse, recall that Worley was Minnesota’s opening-day starter. The Twins’ de facto ace owns an ERA over 7, with 82 hits allowed in just under 49 innings. His strikeouts are way down and on Wednesday he was chased by a double that followed an Evan Gattis grand slam. Two seasons ago, Worley finished third in the voting for the National League Rookie of the Year.

On May 17, Worley allowed one run in a start against the Red Sox, and he credited his improvement to mechanical tweaks he’d made in recent side sessions. He finished that start with three walks and a strikeout. At the end of April, following a rough appearance, Worley said he was throwing the way he wanted to be throwing. His pitches were fine, and his movement was normal. The results just weren’t present, for him. They still aren’t, and the only consolation for Minnesota is that Ben Revere has been bad, too.

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Is there an ideal ground ball rate for hitters? Should they be thinking about how many grounders they hit? Armed with some spreadsheets and a couple conversations with some Royals’ hitters, let’s see what we can discover.

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All winter, there were rumors that the Dodgers were open to trading Andre Ethier. All winter, the Dodgers declared that there was nothing to those rumors, and that they weren’t having second thoughts about the five year, $85 million contract they gave him last June. When spring training rolled around and Cuban import Yasiel Puig became The Hot New Thing, those rumors picked up again, since the Dodgers will need to open up a corner outfield spot for Puig at some point in the not too distant future.

But, LA remained patient and optioned the 22-year-old Puig to Double-A, giving him some experience against professional pitchers without throwing him immediately into the fire. They also gave Ethier a chance to play most everyday, and while they were unlikely to admit it publicly, they likely hoped that he could get off to a strong enough start to re-establish some trade value after his power fell off in the second half last year.

Today, though, manager-of-the-moment Don Mattingly sent a pretty clear signal that he is not Andre Ethier’s biggest fan, and you can probably start the clocking ticking on both of their exits from Dodger Land.

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Just a couple of years ago, Jacoby Ellsbury came out of nowhere of have one of the best seasons by a position player in years. He hit .321/.376/.552 (149 wRC+) with 32 home runs while playing center field that impressed both the Gold Glove voters and various fielding metrics. Although Ellsbury had been a first-round draft pick by the Red Sox in 2005 and had been a very good prospect in his minor-league days, it is unlikely many saw 2011 coming. While Ellsbury was amazingly fast — he stole 70 bases in 2009, one of only three players to steal 70 or more in a single season since 2000 — and had good contact skills, he had not shown anything close to that sort of power. In fact, he had never hit double digits in home runs in any major or minor league season prior to 2011.

It would have been unfair to expect Ellsbury to repeat his 2011 performance, but even so, he has been disappointing since then. His 2012 was derailed by an early shoulder injury and he ended up playing only 74 games while hitting just .271/.313/.370 (83 wRC+). Ellsbury is off to an even worse start this year at .242/.307/355 (72 wRC+), and while 212 plate appearances are not many, they are not nothing, at this point, either. The Red Sox are obviously in contention, and are arguably the favorites to win the East at this point. The divisional and playoff races look to be very tight, so contenders have to make every decision count. Figuring out what Ellsbury can offer or if they need to lessen his role is obviously a big decision for them. It is not that Ellsbury has to repeat his 2011 performance — far from it. He does not need to be a superstar for the Red Sox to have a chance. The questions are whether or not Ellsbury is going to keep flat-lining and how long Boston should wait to find out. The Sox are competing even with him hitting horribly now, but that is not something they want to live with if they do not have to do so.

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Table of Contents
Here’s the table of contents for today’s edition of the Daily Notes.

1. Featured Game: St. Louis at San Diego, 22:10pm ET
2. Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

Featured Game: St. Louis at San Diego, 22:10pm ET
Regarding This Game, What a Reasonable Person Might Say
An entirely reasonable person could say, with regard to tonight’s Cardinals-Padres game, that it is not, strictly speaking, the most watchable of today’s scheduled games — because, for example, Mets right-hander Matt Harvey is facing the Reds this afternoon, or because, for other example, Justin Verlander faces Cleveland tonight, which club is 1.5 games ahead of Verlander’s Detroiters.

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The Fringe Five is a weekly exercise (introduced last month) wherein the author utilizes regressed stats, scouting reports, and also his own heart to identify and/or continue monitoring the most compelling fringe prospects in all of baseball.

Central to this exercise, of course, is a working definition of fringe. Currently, for the purposes of this column, it’s any prospect who was absent from all of three notable preseason top-100 prospect lists. (A slightly more robust meditation on the idea of fringe can be found here.)

Three players retain their place this week among the Five: Mets infield prospect Wilmer Flores, recently promoted (to Triple-A, that is) Marlins left-handed prospect Brian Flynn, and Cardinals Double-A outfielder Mike O’Neill. Departing from the Five are promising Cleveland pitcher Danny Salazar — largely because shoulder soreness might be an issue — and Cubs infield prospect Ronald Torreyes, who did nothing in particular to lose his spot except fail to amuse the author completely.

Replacing the pair are two New York pitching prospects: the Mets’ Rafael Montero and the Yankees’ Jose Ramirez — about which pair the reader can learn more below.

All those points having been made, here are this week’s Fringe Five.

Wilmer Flores, 2B/3B, New York NL (Profile)
The salient points regarding Wilmer Flores remain unchanged since last week’s edition of the Fringe Five — remain unchanged, in fact, since the series’ inaugural dispatch in April. Flores is still just 21; he still controls the strike zone; and his primary offensive indicators (regressed home-run and walk and strikeout rates) remain roughly equal to those currently being posted by both Jurickson Profar and Oscar Taveras in the Pacific Coast League. Here’s his line over the past week: 20 PA, 1 HR, 1 BB, 3 K.

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Jose Ramirez’s live arm was on display against Kevin Gausman this past Friday. The New York Yankees’ minor-leaguer consistently unleashed 94 mph to 95 mph four-seam fastballs against the Bowie Baysox from his low three-quarter arm slot. The pitch touched 97 mph, but Ramirez’s low release point kept it on the same plane on which it was released. It did, however, feature arm-side run.

Ramirez complemented his four seamer with an 81 mph to 84 mph changeup that featured significant vertical drop and slight fade as it neared the plate. The right-hander commanded the pitch well down in the zone and it was his go-to out pitch when he was ahead in the count. But his arm speed slows down noticeably during his delivering when compared to his fastball.

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Marcus Stroman is back, and he’s back big — at least to the degree a 5-foot-9 pitcher can be described as big. His first performance of the 2013 season certainly was. The 22-year-old Toronto Blue Jays prospect threw five scoreless innings, with six strikeouts, for Double-A New Hampshire on Sunday.

Drafted 22nd-overall last year out of Duke, the right-hander saw his season start late due to a 50-game suspension incurred last August. Before going afoul of Minor League Baseball’s drug program, he made 15 appearances between two levels.

Stroman talked about what he brings to the mound — including his cutter-slider and his non-max-effort delivery — prior to Monday’s game in Portland, Maine.

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