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
Cleveland at Minnesota | 20:10 ET
T.J. House (45.0 IP, 89 xFIP-, 0.0 WAR) faces Kris Johnson (8.1 IP, 103 xFIP-, -0.1 WAR). The former, in his rookie season, has recorded both a park-adjusted xFIP (89 xFIP-) and strike rate (65.9%) nearly a standard deviation above the mean produced by those pitchers to have recorded 20-plus innings as a starter. While his low-ish arm slot (pictured below) isn’t ideal for neutralizing right-handed batters, he’s done so well enough over nine appearances (including eight starts) to record fielding-independent numbers superior to league average.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Cleveland 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.

Pierce Johnson, RHP, Chicago Cubs (Profile)
Level: Class-A/Double-A   Age: 23   Top-15: 6th   Top-100: 77th
Line: 54.1 IP, 35-46 BB-K, 32 H, 3.48 ERA

The Chicago Cubs organization has one of the stronger minor league systems in baseball — but that’s on the strength of its hitting prospects.

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Ben and Sam banter about unwritten rules, then discuss the Angels-Padres trade, Oakland’s ingeniousness, and a few other subjects.

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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
Los Angeles NL at St. Louis | 20:05 ET
Clayton Kershaw (96.1 IP, 46 xFIP-, 3.7 WAR) faces Carlos Martinez (63.0 IP, 100 xFIP-, 0.4 WAR). One will recognize the former as the pitcher to have produced the entirely best park-adjusted xFIP among all starters this season — a figure, his 46 xFIP-, that would represent the best such mark by a qualified starter since 2002 (i.e. as far back as that particular metric is available). Kershaw’s start at St. Louis’s Busch appears likely to be one of only two opportunities this whole season to observe the left-hander pitching in front of a straight-on center-field camera.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: St. Louis Radio.

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Daniel Nava spent a month in Triple-A Pawtucket earlier this season. Whether he merited the temporary demotion is a matter of opinion. Regardless of any stated reasons, the Red Sox outfielder was sent down partly as punishment for not appeasing the BABiP gods.

Not long before Nava got the bad news, I discussed his sudden propensity to hit into bad luck with Red Sox beat writer Jason Mastrodonato. At the time, Nava had a line-drive rate a shade under 25% and a ground-ball rate just over 42%. His batting average was well south of the Mendoza line. Mastronato – a stat-savvy scribe – agreed with me that it probably wouldn’t be fair to send Nava down. The switch-hitter was coming off a year in which he hit .303/.385/.445. A reversal of fortune seemed imminent.

Shortly thereafter, Nava had a two-hit game, upping his BA to .149 BA and his BABiP to .167. His next 98 plate appearances came in a PawSox uniform.

The 31-year-old has been back in Boston since late May – platooning with lefty-killer Jonny Gomes – and has seen his numbers slowly climb. Notable is the fact his BABiP has risen over .120 points despite a line-rate nearly identical to when he was sent down.

Nava isn’t a numbers guy — he professes to not look at his stats – nor is he one to complain. While many players would take vocal umbrage at a demotion, the humble outfielder has kept his mouth shut and his chin held high. But he is willing to admit it was frustrating to go through a stretch where nothing was falling.

“I was very aware that my numbers weren’t completely representative of how well I was hitting the ball,” Nava told me on Friday. “I knew [the bad luck] was going to end eventually, it was just a matter of when. I never got to find out before getting sent down, but that’s part of the game. At the end of the day, I also knew I wasn’t hitting as well as I could.” Read the rest of this entry »

Each week, we publish north of 100 posts on our various blogs. With this post, we hope to highlight 10 to 15 of them. You can read more on it here. The links below are color coded — green for FanGraphs, brown for RotoGraphs, purple for NotGraphs, dark red for The Hardball Times and blue for Community.

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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
Seattle at Los Angeles AL | 21:05 ET
Felix Hernandez (144.1 IP, 63 xFIP-, 5.2 WAR) faces Garrett Richards (123.1 IP, 83 xFIP-, 3.2 WAR). After years of exhibiting very excellent armspeed and reasonable control in the minor and then major leagues, the latter has produced a laudable season to date, recording strikeout and walk and ground-ball rates all on the ideal side of average. Richards’ Angels and the opposing Seattlers both currently possess better than 15% odds of qualifying for the divisional series.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Seattle Radio.

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Just the other day, we went through the first half of the season’s strike-iest called balls, which were more or less called balls on pitches taken right down the middle. Those are always interesting to observe and analyze, but that idea also has a natural follow-up, which is what we’ll review here. Below, the first half of the season’s ball-iest called strikes, which are called strikes on pitches absolutely not taken right down the middle. Umpire mistakes are always frustrating for about half of the observers, and on the larger scale umpire mistakes are frustrating for everybody, but the purpose of these posts isn’t to lead you to your individual boiling points; rather, this is just about identifying and reflecting on curiosities. What you see below is weird! Never a bad time to look at weird.

I’m changing things up just a little bit. Instead of calculating distance from the center of the strike zone, I’ve calculated distance from the nearest point of the strike zone. I’ve also gone with Brooks Baseball’s corrected PITCHf/x pitch locations, instead of the raw PITCHf/x pitch locations, because I am taking this way too seriously. The top five? Four left-handed batters, as you’d expect. But one righty. One most unfortunate righty. Here now are the ball-iest called strikes of 2014.

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Episode 463
Mike Petriello is the founder of Dodgers Digest (née Mike Scioscia’s Tragic Illness) and a contributor to FanGraphs. He’s also the guest on this edition of the podcast, during which he summarizes the Brady Aiken situation from start to (nearly) finish.

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 35 min play time.)

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This is the fourth season in five in which we’ve experienced — or for some, endured — a retirement tour. First was Bobby Cox in 2010, and then Chipper Jones, Mariano Rivera and Derek Jeter have all been feted by their peers around the game. That begs the question, who’s next?

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