Clayton Kershaw is having one of those all-time seasons, the kind of season that causes you to reflect on Pedro Martinez and some of his own all-time seasons. Kershaw is running a 1.70 ERA, and a big chunk of that is due to one brief start in the middle of May. The last time Kershaw left a game with an ERA more than 2 was June 29, and while we all recognize that ERA leaves out unearned runs, including Kershaw’s unearned runs lifts his runs-allowed average all the way up to 1.75, because his unearned-runs total is 1. Kershaw’s been a human sort of perfect. Even though he missed the whole month of April, he’s almost a shoo-in for the NL Cy Young, and he’ll get a lot of attention for the league most valuable player. Clayton Kershaw has stepped it up a level, from already having been Clayton Kershaw before.

Let’s think about what makes a great starting pitcher. I mean, in the most general terms. You want a guy to have at least reasonable stuff. Unless the stuff is extremely overpowering, then it’s important to mix up speeds and it’s important to hit locations. One thinks of a lot of ace pitchers as being able to spot the baseball where they want, and absolutely, great pitchers know how to pitch around edges. Kershaw’s no exception. His command this year has been better than ever. What you don’t think of ace pitchers as doing is hurling the ball down the middle very often. That’s the danger zone, the area where you find the bulk of the meatballs. Turns out Kershaw’s not afraid of going down the pipe. Turns out Kershaw doesn’t really get hurt there very much.

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For much of the past two seasons, “enigma” has been an optimal word to describe Rangers pitching prospect Cody Buckel. Formerly a performance prospect extraordinaire who dominated the A-ball levels as a teenager, he suddenly lost all sense of the strike zone in 2013, walking 35 batters in 10 2/3 innings. It’s one thing to see a pitcher totally “lose it” in this fashion, but it’s another for that pitcher to be one who originally was lauded for his exceptional polish.

With Buckel entering the 2014 season still at just 21 years of age, a second-round pedigree, and a past history of dominance, the Rangers weren’t ready to cut bait just yet. A look at his statistics this past year reveal a pitcher who wobbled through a slightly less disgraceful year than his 2013—a 5.73 ERA in 59 2/3 High-A innings, mostly in relief, a disgusting (if much improved) 19.9% walk rate, and a solid 26% strikeout rate. Instead of being essentially unplayable, Buckel is now just bad.

Or is he?

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Ben and Sam banter about September call-ups and game length, then discuss whether MLB and its owners are acting in the long-term interests of the sport.

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Hey there everybody, and welcome to the second part of the year’s fifth edition of The Worst Of The Best. Here’s a link to the complete series archive, for you to print out and turn into a volume for your coffee table. And here’s a link to the first part, from several hours ago. This is the right place for you to be, if you’re fixing to see a bunch of bad missed swings. This is decidedly the wrong place for you to be, if you’re hankering for a bunch of sweet dingers. If it’s neither of those things that you seek, well what am I supposed to do, I’m not a mind-reader. Just say what you’re thinking for God’s sake and don’t make a guessing game of your preferences. There are more important things than communication, but most of them, like breathing, are automatic.

So, wild swings, month of August, PITCHf/x, distance from the center of the strike zone. All the usual stuff. Clearly checked swings are excluded, and so are swing attempts during hit-and-runs. Hits-and-run? Regular readers presumably skip right over this paragraph because it never introduces anything new. One of these days I’ll throw in a little twist and then we’ll see who benefits from skimming. I’m just kidding, I’m forever stuck in my ways. Still to come is a top-five list and a next-five list. Also, there are two bonus entries, which I couldn’t include in the countdown but which I also couldn’t ignore. There are basically three sorts of events that could qualify a play for a bonus entry. Here come two of them. By the way, congratulations, you’re not dead, and you have a computer! How great is life?

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Scouting Explained: Introduction, Hitting Pt 1 Pt 2 Pt 3 Pt 4 Pt 5 Pt 6

When I started here just last month, I promised I would write a comprehensive series of articles explaining every part of the 20-80 scouting scale. This is the beginning of that series.

Background

The invention of the scale is credited to Branch Rickey and whether he intended it or not, it mirrors various scientific scales. 50 is major league average, then each 10 point increment represents a standard deviation better or worse than average. In a normal distribution, three standard deviations in either direction should include 99.7% of your sample, so that’s why the scale is 20 to 80 rather than 0 and 100. That said, the distribution of tools isn’t a normal curve for every tool, but is somewhere close to that for most.

The Basics

You’ve probably heard people call athletic hitters a “five-tool prospect.” While that is an overused and misunderstood term, they are referring to the 20-80 scouting scale. The five tools for position players are 1) Hitting 2) Power 3) Running 4) Fielding and 5) Throwing. The general use of the “five-tool” term is when all five are at least average (which is more rare than you’d think) and I generally only use it when all five are above average. It’s a shockingly small list of players over the history of baseball that have five plus tools, but if you ask around, scouts will tell you Bo Knows.

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Most pitchers are bad hitters, as we all know. Most pitchers look so out of place at the plate that it is a great source of both comedy and debate. Why should we continue this charade? Why should this paean to a by-gone era, propped up under a pretense of “strategy,” continue to degrade the quality of the game we all love?

That debate is better left until another day in another setting with well-established ground rules and adult supervision. Today, we can just look at the impact of pitchers hitting, specifically on their impact on the Wild Card chase.

On Tuesday night, Clayton Kershaw made more than his typical contribution to the Dodgers’ cause. Sure, he pitched brilliantly and shut down an otherwise powerful offense. But Kershaw worked his way on base against Doug Fister in the fifth inning and then “helped his own cause” by dashing from first to third on a bounding single to center field. Read the rest of this entry »

By at least one stat, Giants rookie second baseman Joe Panik is top-two at his position in the National League. Look at his numbers coming up, and this seems about what you might expect. It turns out that, while he’s had to adjust to the big leagues, much of his current success can be attributed to not changing.

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Sparks of enthusiasm are once again kindling among Chicago Cubs’ loyalists, as the long-awaited influx of position-player talent onto their major league roster has begun in earnest. The club is far from a finished product, and a loaded minor league system is no guarantee of major league success — just ask some of the teams I’ll discuss below. It’s an exciting time on the North Side, however, and this is before Kris Bryant — arguably the best of the lot — has been penciled into the big-league lineup. How does this group match up with some other recent talent infusions? Read the rest of this entry »

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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
Detroit at Cleveland | 19:05 ET
Max Scherzer (187.2 IP, 78 xFIP-, 4.8 WAR) faces Trevor Bauer (124.0 IP, 107 xFIP-, 1.5 WAR). The American League’s Central division remains a source of no little intrigue. Following Cleveland’s victory over Detroit yesterday, for example — in conjunction with a Kansas City win, as well — the Tigers and Royals now feature nearly identical odds both of winning the division and also qualifying for the ALDS. Cleveland, not so much — although, with their curiously suspended game likely to result in another win, they’re not entirely negligible, either, as a playoff contender.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Cleveland or Detroit Radio.

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