What follows represents an attempt by the author to utilize the projections available at the site to identify the five major-league hitters whose wOBA projections have most improved since the beginning of the season.

For every batter, what I’ve done is first to calculate his preseason (PRE) wOBA projection, averaging together Steamer and ZiPS forecasts where both are available. What I’ve done next is to calculate every hitter’s rest-of-season (ROS) wOBA projection (again, using both Steamer and ZiPS when available). I’ve then found the difference in wOBA between the preseason and rest-of-season projection.

When I attempted a similar exercise last month (with WAR, in that case), I used updated end-of-season projections instead of rest-of-season ones. The advantage of the latter (and why I’m using it here) is that it provides the closest available thing to an estimate of any given player’s current true-talent level — which, reason dictates, is what one requires to best identify those players who have most improved.

Only those hitters have been considered who both (a) are currently on a major-league roster and (b) weren’t accidentally omitted by the author, who is a moron. Note that Projection denotes a composite Steamer and ZiPS projection. PRE denotes the player’s preseason projection; ROS, the rest-of-season projection. Plate-appearances estimates for both PRE and ROS projections are taken from relevant batter’s depth-chart projection. Data is current as of Monday.

5. Devin Mesoraco, C, Cincinnati (Profile)
Projection (PRE): 413 PA, .247/.308/.413 (.274 BABIP), .313 wOBA, 96 wRC+
Projection (ROS): 240 PA, .260/.320/.438 (.288 BABIP), .330 wOBA, 107 wRC+

Notes
In 160-plus career starts for the club, Mesoraco has served as Cincinnati’s cleanup hitter just three times. In five starts since last Monday, Mesoraco has also served as Cincinnati’s cleanup hitter three times. In part, the loss of Jay Bruce and then (upon Bruce’s return) Joey Votto has facilitated the move. In part, it’s Mesoraco’s own production which has suggested to manager Bryan Price that his catcher ought to occupy one of the most important spots (both symbolically and actually) in the Reds lineup. Notably, Mesoraco’s plate-discipline projections haven’t improved at all. Rather, it’s his early BABIP and power-on-contact figures which have led to his more encouraging forecasts.

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This post is a bit of an experiment. During the day, while working on various writing topics and filtering through different ideas, I’ll often come up with something that isn’t quite worthy of a full 1,000 word post, but is interesting enough to share on its own. A lot of times, these things just end up on Twitter, but sometimes, they just don’t go anywhere.

Instead of just leaving these in the back room, I’m going to start putting them up just as stand-alone, low-commentary posts and see if there’s enough interest in the data points as conversation generators to continue posting them. If it turns out that you guys don’t like them, I won’t keep doing them, so critical feedback is certainly welcome, but perhaps there’s room on FanGraphs for posts that aren’t quite fully fleshed ideas, but instead just interesting statistical nuggets. We’ll see, I guess.

If you go to the site’s Playoff Odds page, you’ll see some pretty staggering numbers for the teams at the top. Our model currently forecasts the Tigers to have a 94% chance of reaching the postseason, for instance, both Bay Area teams are strong favorites to reach at least the Wild Card game as well. These numbers are surprisingly high given that we’re still in May, and there’s fourth months of baseball left to play. A lot can happen in four months.

But to illustrate why those numbers are so high, it helps to take a look at the projected final records in graph form, because there are some huge gaps between the teams at the top and the teams in the middle or bottom.

Here’s the American League first.

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Something wacky happened in Tampa Bay on Wednesday night. When something wacky happens in baseball, @cantpredictball is usually on the case. I’ll let them (him? her?) begin the storytelling:

The A’s had one hit tonight. They won 3-2.

— YCPB (@cantpredictball) May 22, 2014

You don’t need me, or cantpredictball, to tell you that’s rare. According to the Baseball-Reference Play Index, teams that get one-hit have won just 62 baseball games in 100 years. That’s just the ninth time it’s happened in the last decade. Oakland had never done it in its 45-year tenure as a franchise.

What’s funny about the game, besides the Athletics being victorious with one hit, is that if you look at the win expectancy chart, you really can’t even tell when that hit came. Go ahead, see if you can tell:
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Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by viscount of the internet Rob Neyer, and expanded at the request of nobody, NERD scores represent an attempt to summarize in one number (and on a scale of 0-10) the likely aesthetic appeal or watchability, for the learned fan, of a player or team or game. Read more about the components of and formulae for NERD scores here.

Most Highly Rated Game
Boston at Atlanta | 19:10 ET
Jon Lester (67.0 IP, 74 xFIP-, 2.2 WAR) faces Aaron Harang (59.2 IP, 86 xFIP-, 1.7 WAR). The former has recorded a strikeout rate (27.8%) this season approximately a third higher than his already totally competent career mark. The latter — according to Wikipedia, at least — was brutally murdered by a gang of criminals and subsequently revived by the malevolent mega-corporation Omni Consumer Products (OCP) as a superhuman cyborg baseball pitcher.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Atlanta Radio.

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Each weekday during the minor-league season, FanGraphs is providing a status update on multiple rookie-eligible players. Note that Age denotes the relevant prospect’s baseball age (i.e. as of July 1st of the current year); Top-15, the prospect’s place on Marc Hulet’s preseason organizational list; and Top-100, that same prospect’s rank on Hulet’s overall top-100 list.

Summary
This converted reliever has shown some positives and negatives in his first year as a professional starter.

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A little over over a quarter of the 2014 season is in the books, and the sample sizes are creeping toward a representative level. Over the past couple of weeks, we have been taking somewhat deeper looks at some of this season’s more noteworthy players and performances to date. “Noteworthy” doesn’t always mean “best”, though it does in most cases. Today, we’ll take a look at the first quarter performance of Troy Tulowitzki, who has torn the National League limb from limb in the early going. Though he’s played at an All Star level for years now, he has taken things to a whole new level in 2014. Is this at all sustainable? Are the improvements in his offensive game real, or is this small sample size theater? How much does Coors Field have to do with all of this?

Troy Tulowitzki was selected with the seventh overall pick in the memorable 2005 draft. I will always have the order of a good chunk of that first round firmly embedded in my memory bank – One, Justin Upton, two, Alex Gordon, three, Jeff Clement, four, Ryan Zimmerman, five, Ryan Braun, six, Ricky Romero, seven, Tulo. Andrew McCutchen went 11th, Jay Bruce went 12th, Jacoby Ellsbury went 23rd, Matt Garza went 25th, Colby Rasmus went 28th……pretty good first round. I was a member of the Brewers’ front office then and remember that first round unfolding. For us, it was a very tough call between Braun and Tulowitzki. Though you really couldn’t go wrong with that coin flip, I’m pretty sure that most parties would agree that Tulowitzki has turned out to be the very best player among that group. Impact offense and defense, and still playing shortstop at age 29, with no position shift anywhere on the horizon.

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Ben and Sam discuss whether the Astros’ analytical approach has become (or could become) a PR problem.

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Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by viscount of the internet Rob Neyer, and expanded at the request of nobody, NERD scores represent an attempt to summarize in one number (and on a scale of 0-10) the likely aesthetic appeal or watchability, for the learned fan, of a player or team or game. Read more about the components of and formulae for NERD scores here.

Most Highly Rated Game
New York AL at St. Louis | 16:15 ET
Chase Whitley (9.0 IP, 95 xFIP-, 0.3 WAR) faces Michael Wacha (60.1 IP, 81 xFIP-, 1.3 WAR). With regard to the latter, former and beloved contributor to these pages Mike Axisa — who, it should be said, knows from freaky — makes the following internet observation:

2013 Wacha vs. 2014 Wacha is kinda freaky: http://t.co/eHS1ODw1eM

— Mike Axisa (@mikeaxisa) May 25, 2014

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: St. Louis Radio.

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Episode 451
Dayn Perry is a contributor to CBS Sports’ Eye on Baseball and the author of three books — one of them not very miserable. He’s also the guest on this regrettable edition of FanGraphs Audio.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 1 hr 19 min play time.)

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