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
Detroit at Kansas City | 20:10 ET
Justin Verlander (190.2 IP, 112 xFIP-, 2.7 WAR) faces Jason Vargas (179.2 IP, 104 xFIP-, 2.7 WAR). In the event that one were interested in consuming a game between two clubs separated by almost nothing at the top of their respective division and with similar odds of winning that same division, then one would be — perhaps already is, without the aid of this brief paragraph — interested in consuming this particular game, so far as it fits the aforementioned criteria. Those with less interest in high-leverage baseball should consider directing their attention to almost every other game tonight.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Detroit Radio.

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When our other prospect writers submit scouting reports, I will provide a short background and industry consensus tool grades. There are two reasons for this: 1) giving context to account for the writer seeing a bad outing (never threw his changeup, coming back from injury, etc.) and 2) not making him go on about the player’s background or speculate about what may have happened in other outings.

The writer still grades the tools based on what they saw, I’m just letting the reader know what he would’ve seen in many other games from this season, particularly with young players that may be fatigued late in the season. The grades are presented as present/future on the 20-80 scouting scale and very shortly I’ll publish a series going into more depth explaining these grades.   –Kiley

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Ben and Sam talk to Nate Silver about baseball analysis and the first six months of FiveThirtyEight.

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There was a time last season that Zack Greinke was batting over .400. At that time, no other pitcher in baseball was batting over .300. So people had some fun with that, because it’s fun when a pitcher is helping himself. It pretty much never lasts. Greinke didn’t keep batting over .400. This year he’s down near .200. He’s a pitcher, and pitchers are bad hitters, and single-season pitcher hitting statistics are limited by miniature sample sizes. No longer do we think of Greinke as a guy who’s going to break records. But all the while, as Greinke’s numbers have bounced around, he’s genuinely improved. And he’s improved to the point where, now, Greinke might be a half-decent hitter, and I don’t mean relative to pitchers this time.

Since the start of the 2012 season, Greinke’s come up 173 times. There are 107 pitchers who have come up at least 50 times during that window. Greinke leads the sample in wRC+, by 27 points. He’s the only pitcher in there with an OBP over .300. He’s one of four pitchers with an ISO over .100, and the next-best OBP in that group is .243. Some people thought of Carlos Zambrano as a good-hitting pitcher, and he had a 57 wRC+, with 24 times as many strikeouts as walks. Yovani Gallardo gets similar treatment, and he has a 41 wRC+, with 12 times as many strikeouts as walks. Travis Wood? 47 wRC+, 22 times as many strikeouts as walks. Mike Leake? 57 wRC+, 12 times as many strikeouts as walks. Those considered “good-hitting pitchers” tend to be pitchers capable of hitting home runs. Greinke adds unlikely elements of discipline and bat control.

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For years, people have been writing “nothing good ever comes out of Cliff Lee trades” articles. I’m sure somewhere along the line, I wrote one too, and that’s mostly because, well, nothing really had. Justin Smoak was probably the best player to come out of any of those deals, and he isn’t any good. Jason Donald, Jason Knapp and Lou Marson didn’t amount to anything, nor has Blake Beavan. I don’t want to talk about Josh Lueke. Among Ruben Amaro’s many missteps, the 2009 deal that shipped off Lee to Seattle for the massive return of Tyson Gillies, Phillippe Aumont and J.C. Ramirez probably doesn’t get enough press.

For most of the last five-plus years — yes, really, it’s been that long — Carlos Carrasco was lumped in with those failures, too. In parts of four seasons with Cleveland (2009-11, ’13) he’d put up a 5.29 ERA and 4.48 FIP in 238.1 innings. He’s been DFA’d at least once, lost all of 2012 to Tommy John surgery, and served multiple suspensions for head hunting. While he won the fifth starter job out of camp this year, he was also sent to the bullpen in favor of Zach McAllister after four lousy starts.

At the time, his career ERA stood at 5.43. He had mediocre strikeout numbers, and the inexplicable combination of “gets both groundballs and home runs.” We’ve been writing stories about him here since at least 2008, and all we’d seen in that time was disappointment and absence. There was really little reason to think any of that was going to change. After all, it had already been five years of struggle since the trade.

Carrasco moved back into the rotation in August. Since then, he’s made eight starts. He’s allowed seven earned runs, and since four of them came in one game, that means he’s made seven starts allowing zero or one earned run, including Wednesday’s two-hit — neither of which left the infield — shutout of Houston. He’s got a 59/7 K/BB in that time. Is this finally the Carrasco Cleveland had waited so long to see? Let’s find out.

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Ken Rosenthal has an NL MVP vote this year, and the other day, he wrote about his thought process in regards to pitchers winning the award. He’d prefer to vote for a position player, but isn’t entirely against pitchers-as-MVPs, and he noted that a dominant starter who works deep into games doesn’t just affect the team on the day they pitch, as is commonly cited. Quoting from his column:

The one pro-Kershaw argument I do like – the one I recall making for Pedro Martinez in 1999 and 2000 – is that a dominant starting pitcher affects three games out of five. Kershaw averages more than 7 1/3 innings per start. Dodgers manager Don Mattingly can empty his bullpen the day before Kershaw pitches and manage a fully rested group the day after.

This does seem to be a potentially real benefit created by Kershaw that is not being accounted for anywhere in his own stat-line. While there is a lot of talk about players “making their teammates better”, this would be one actual place where it could exist, with a starting pitcher allowing his manager to reallocate his bullpen usage to the days around Kershaw, increasing their chances of winning on those days as well. This is the kind of thing that we wouldn’t capture by just looking at Kershaw’s performance.

But is it true? Rob Neyer was smart enough to realize that we should be able to find some data to test this theory, and so I bugged Jeff Zimmerman about it, and he was nice enough to query out the Dodgers’ bullpen usage on days before and after Kershaw pitched this season. Here are the results.

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One of the biggest stories of the season’s second half has been the historic decline of the Oakland Athletics. They are flirting with accomplishing the extremely difficult feat of having the best record in baseball at the All Star break, and then missing the playoffs. Winning the final two games of their pivotal series with the Seattle Mariners this past weekend has sharply decreased the likelihood of that worst case scenario, but the collapse has been stark nonetheless. It’s convenient to tie the A’s second half results to the departure of Yoenis Cespedes in the Jon Lester trade, but the reality is a bit more complicated than that. There are many factors in play, but arguably the foremost among them has been the precipitous fall of two of their key offensive players – Derek Norris and Brandon Moss. Read the rest of this entry »

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 Pittsburgh | 19:05 ET
Brandon Workman (82.0 IP, 112 xFIP-, 0.7 WAR) faces Gerrit Cole (117.0 IP, 96 xFIP-, 1.2 WAR). While French theologian John Calvin — and any other number of determinists, religious or otherwise — would likely argue that the outcomes of the various playoff races have been decided already, the editors of FanGraphs are capable only of speaking in probabilities. So far as Pittsburgh’s probability of qualifying for the divisional series is concerned, “almost exactly 50%” is the best answer available to us at the moment. Of greater certainty — one bordering on 100%, in this case — is that Cuban emigre Rusney Castillo will make his second start for Boston tonight in center field.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Boston Radio or Television.

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