It seems like top up-the-middle prospects like Francisco Lindor don’t come around very often. It seems like you can’t get enough shortstop prospects, especially if you run the Cubs. It seems like a building team like the Indians shouldn’t trade their top prospect. It seems like a team like that should hold on to their prospects like they were precious baubles to be hoarded in dark places.

Maybe all of that is wrong. Maybe the Indians should trade Francisco Lindor.

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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
Oakland at Seattle | 22:10 ET
Jason Hammel (162.1 IP, 98 xFIP-, 1.5 WAR) faces James Paxton (53.0 IP, 88 xFIP-, 0.9 WAR). No club besides Washington currently possesses a higher projected rest-of-season winning percentage than Oakland — a statement, that, which seems unlikely for a team that is 3-11 over its last four series, the latter two of which series featured solidly below-average opponents (the Astros and White Sox). Only the Angels, though, have produced a better platonic record according to BaseRuns, which metric removes the influence of chaining. Tonight they face one of their primary rivals for the second wild-card spot in the American League.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Oakland Radio.

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Rusney Castillo is set to make his Major League debut in mere days after signing a record contract for a Cuban defector. Cuban players are the most interesting to project, since the public tends to have about as much information as teams do to process and make a decision on their futures. I started writing this article before Rusney Castillo signed with the Red Sox, with the goal of figuring out how his bat will play in the big leagues. Going forward I will also be contributing in a modest fashion to the robust scouting team that Kiley McDaniel has assembled, with my motivation and experience still focusing on hitters.

As such, this article is a bit of a hybrid between a concise scouting report and my usual shenanigans breaking down available videos. I promise to both you the readers and Kiley I will follow protocol more consistent with the rest of the team in the future. Check out his report on Castillo as well as Dave Cameron’s article for their more distinguished viewpoints. Kiley has a lot more contacts than I do in the scouting world, so treat this as only my take rather than a more informed opinion. Without further ado, let’s look at his tools before getting into the nitty gritty of his swing.

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Rob Kaminsky had a killer curveball coming into the 2013 draft. By the completion of the current campaign he’d enhanced his arsenal by greatly improving his two-seam circle change. His next goal is to recapture command of the pitch that made him a first-round pick.

When St. Louis selected Kaminsky 28th overall, his calling card was a bender that Baseball America called “No. 1 among high schoolers.” Hard and nasty, it complemented a fastball that flirted with the mid-90s. According to scouting director Dan Kantrovitz, the Cardinals thought Kaminsky’s one-two punch wasn’t enough.

“When we were scouting Rob as an amateur, [area scout] Sean Moran told me Rob would have three pitches in the future with plus command,” Kantrovitz said. “He [also] said that because of how dominating he was at the high school level, he rarely had opportunities to work on his changeup and would need to focus on that in pro ball. Sean was spot-on. Our pitching coaches did an excellent job of bringing Rob along this year and really getting that changeup to be a legitimate weapon for him.”

The new weapon was legit. Pitching for Low-A Peoria, the 19-year-old southpaw surrendered just 71 hits in 100.2 innings. He won 8 of 10 decisions and logged a 1.88 ERA. Only two batters left the yard against him.

Much like an on-again-off-again relationship, Kaminsky’s signature pitch did leave him from time to time. Developmentally, it was part and parcel of what the marriage counselor… er, player development staff had in mind. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben and Sam talk to 2014 St. Paul Saints pitcher Andy Johnson about what life is like in the independent leagues.

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I wrote something like this before, in the beginning of May of this season. During an arbitrary stretch between April 19 and May 14, Mike Trout struck out in 31% of his plate appearances, posting a .722 OPS. I identified the strikeouts as something to pay attention to, and then from May 15 through the All-Star break, Trout struck out in 20% of his plate appearances, posting a 1.111 OPS. So. Obviously, Trout adjusted to whatever needed to be adjusted to, or alternatively, the randomness swung in the other direction. For a while, it was easy to forget that Trout had ever slumped.

But now we’re back! Having learned nothing from the first go-round, I’m here to tell you to worry just a little bit about Mike Trout’s strikeouts. Since the All-Star break, Trout’s whiffed nearly 30% of the time, and he’s managed an OPS under .800. He’s still been a good player. He’s still been a terrifying player. He’s still, as of this moment, the almost certain winner of the American League’s Most Valuable Player award. But we’re obligated by social contract to write about Trout at any opportunity, and there are signs pitchers are finally trying to take advantage of his vulnerabilities. You know the ones. You’ve thought about them for hours.

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When Jose Fernandez blew out his elbow in May, the baseball world wept, rightfully so. It didn’t matter if you were a Marlins fan or not, it only mattered that one of the brightest young stars in baseball was gone, just one of a billion (probably) pitchers to learn that pitching is really, really unhealthy. It wasn’t fair, in the same way that it wasn’t fair when Matt Harvey went down, or when Stephen Strasburg was injured before that. Never love a pitcher. They’ll just let you down.

If it was sad for baseball, it was all but certain doom for the Marlins. They had Giancarlo Stanton, sure, and a few interesting young players, but they also had little rotation depth, an infield that was supposedly going to be duct-taped together by guys who sort of looked like they might have once been Casey McGehee, Rafael Furcal, Garrett Jones and Jeff Baker, and two tough competitors in the NL East. Even with Fernandez, it was going to be a tough run to the playoffs. Without him? Impossible.

As expected, the Marlins are not going to make the playoffs. As completely unexpected, the Marlins have not only not collapsed without Fernandez, they’ve hung in there all season long. A win last night over Milwaukee would have put them at .500, on a four-game win streak and 3.5 games out of the second wild card. You can certainly make the argument that being the second wild card is barely “making the playoffs,” and many have. Of course, the Marlins have won two championships and have yet to win a division title. Considering how they’ve stuck around, did Fernandez’ injury cost Miami the playoffs?

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When Jake Peavy came into the league, almost 85% of his pitches were either a fastball or slider. Now? “I throw just about every pitch in the book at this point,” the 33-year-old pitcher said. It’s all part of evolution — not only due to changes in his stuff and his mechanics, but also due to changes on the league level.

Even in the last seven years, for which we have reliable PITCHf/x data, league-wide trends are apparent. The low strike is getting called more, pitchers are throwing more two-seamers down in the zone, and all pitches are moving downward (all pitches 2007 on the left, 2014 on the right).

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With the Marlins hanging around the periphery of the Wild Card race, there’s a strong chance that Giancarlo Stanton is going to win the NL MVP award. He’s the classic traditional candidate, leading the league in home runs and runs batted in, and the Marlins small gap from the Wild Card leaders will allow people to talk themselves into his performance having come in games that mattered. With all of the other top candidates requiring the rejection of some long held ideal, Stanton looks like a pretty easy choice for someone who likes the way that MVPs have traditionally been selected.

This may actually be bad news for the Marlins, however. An MVP trophy would be nice recognition for the franchise’s best player, but it would also increase his asking price in arbitration, and Stanton is already in a position where he has significant leverage. The Marlins have thus far eschewed trade requests for their right fielder, hopeful that they can convince him to sign a long-term deal to stay in Miami, but an MVP trophy might make a tough road even more difficult. Let’s look at the kinds of numbers Stanton may very well ask for to pass up the chance to hit free agency after the 2016 season.

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There are a number of reasons that the Seattle Mariners find themselves in a heated race for a playoff spot as the 2014 season winds down. Felix Hernandez for one, and Robinson Cano and Hisashi Iwakuma, for two and three. And Kyle Seager, for four. They upgraded both their outfield defense and the back of their rotation from awful to fairly solid, both massive upgrades. On top of it all, their bullpen has by far the best ERA in the major leagues at 2.41, effectively shortening games to six or seven innings. In 2013, the Mariner pen, with many of the same pitchers in place, was not very good. This leads one to a number of questions regarding reliever performance. How does bullpen performance correlate with winning? What have similar frontrunning pens of the past few years had in common? Do high-end pens stay on top for very long? Read the rest of this entry »