One of the beauties of baseball as an analytical pursuit is that there’s a record kept of pretty much everything. What we’ve all been familiar with from our young ages are the records of results, or statistics, like dingers or ERA. What we’ve only more recently gained access to, though, are records of processes, the factors that to some extent determine or respond to the results. Considering the processes opens up a whole new layer of potential analysis, as you can see not just what happened, but why it happened, and what has or hasn’t been done about it.

Myself, I like to look at how players get pitched. I’m still getting used to the fact that I can look at this at all, and I think it’s fascinating to basically see evidence of the scouting reports. It’s readily evident that, say, pitchers don’t want to throw Josh Hamilton fastballs in the zone, because they don’t need to. It’s readily evident, as well, that pitchers are perfectly happy to be aggressive with Ben Revere, because, why not? Certain guys get pitched in certain ways, and there’s a broad spread between the extremes. And more often than not, scouting reports and approaches will hold consistent from year to year. Weaknesses tend to stay weaknesses, and strengths tend to stay strengths.

So given the consistency of this kind of data, it’s interesting to look at the cases where the numbers change. If the changes are big enough, it stands to reason the changes aren’t accidental. This all builds to the question: who’s been pitched the most differently in 2014, relative to 2013? This isn’t something we could’ve easily played with in 2004. In 2014, the information’s out there for anyone.

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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
Pittsburgh at Cincinnati | 19:10 ET
Vance Worley (104.1 IP, 96 xFIP-, 1.2 WAR) faces Mike Leake (207.1 IP, 95 xFIP-, 1.8 WAR). The NL Central represents the only division currently in which a second-plus club features odds of winning that division above 5%. Here, by way of illustration, are Pittsburgh’s odds right now, per the methodology used at FanGraphs: 20%. And also the first-place Cardinals’ odds: 80%. Starting for the Pittsburghers is Worley, who possesses, among other virtues, the capacity to delight Jeff Sullivan.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Cincinnati Radio?

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Sponsored by the Ford Motor Company.

Last night, Derek Jeter played his final game at Yankee Stadium, and his career will come to a close this Sunday in Boston, putting an official end to the era of the Yankees Core Four: Mariano Rivera, Andy Pettitte, and Jorge Posada have already sailed off into the metaphorical sunset. And certainly, this particular Yankee dynasty will go down as the premier team of their time.

Over the last 20 years, since those four debuted together in 1995, the Yankees have won 1,897 games, and have a chance to push that to 1,900 total wins with a strong finish this weekend. This mark is easily the best of any team during the Core Four’s reign, 63 wins ahead of the second place Braves and more than 100 wins. This is the group that returned the Yankees to their historical place atop baseball’s landscape, and re-established the franchise’s legacy for a new generation.

And what a legacy it is. This isn’t the Yankees first 20 year stretch of dominance, of course, and the end of the Core Four era allows us to look back at some of the other dominant runs the Yankees have had throughout their history.

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Derek Jeter’s final game at Yankee Stadium ended like a Disney movie. That’s not an insult; moments like this are one of the reasons why we love baseball.

You don’t have to like Jeter or the Yankees to enjoy that moment. There is perhaps no better way for Jeter to leave Yankee Stadium than with a game-winning, opposite-field single.

As his career comes to a close, nearly everyone who covers baseball has weighed in on Jeter’s legacy, and unfortunately, part of that legacy is his status as a poster boy for disagreements between the traditional media and the statistically inclined crowd, especially regarding his defensive value. Jeter’s poor ratings at shortstop have made him the subject of numerous articles on defensive performance, and that has created the perception that Jeter has been a poor defender; a notion which Jeff did a nice job of debunking earlier this year.

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Ben and Sam banter about the most famous players, then talk about the relative value of top prospects and elite executives.

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Episode 488
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 edition of FanGraphs Audio — during which episode he provides a memorable account, for example, of a recent bath.

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 47 min play time.)

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Maybe, when you were younger, you observed a pitcher triple in the wild. These days they’re mostly found in captivity, and they spend a lot of time sleeping and they don’t like to breed.

Looking over the history of baseball, two trends emerge, related to one another. Pitcher triples are going away. Relative to a century ago, a pitcher triple now is almost ten times less likely. It’s half as likely as it was in the 70s and 80s. Pitchers, overall, are getting worse at hitting, relative to the rest of the league, because pitchers are more specialized than ever. They’re also taking fewer chances on the basepaths, as measured by the ratio of doubles to triples. Some of that last bit could additionally be explained by recent emphasis on defense and differently-aligned ballparks, but it’s clear that pitchers are getting worse, and they’re getting more conservative. So it’s not like anyone should expect a pitcher-triple rebound.

Let’s bring this back to current events. Through last season, the lowest pitcher-triple total in a year was three, first achieved in 1991, and achieved again in 2010. Last year, there were ten pitcher triples, the highest total since 2005. And this year? As of Friday, September 19, there had been zero pitcher triples. As of dinner time on the west coast on Saturday, September 20, there had been zero pitcher triples. There have since been three pitcher triples. All of the year’s pitcher triples have come in the last five days, off the bats of Andrew Cashner, Jake Arrieta, and Clayton Kershaw. Arrieta and Kershaw both delivered on Wednesday. Let us reflect, as humans do.

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Clayton Kershaw is the best pitcher in baseball, and I’m not even going to waste your time backing that up with evidence. It’s true. You know this to be true. We’ll accept that and move on. There’s no shortage of reasons why Kershaw is so good, but a pretty good shorthand is that there are four things a pitcher can do that are of the utmost importance, and he’s great at all of them. He gets strikeouts (first in K%), limits walks (seventh in BB%), avoids the longball (third in HR/9), and keeps the ball on the ground (14th in GB%). If you can do all that, the rest of it doesn’t really matter.

It helps, of course, that has three dominant pitches. His fastball ranks second in baseball in our pitch values. His slider is the best. His curveball is fifth-best. This is completely unfair, and that’s part of the reason his walk rates are so low. Since he’s got three pitches that are basically unhittable, he has little reason to nibble around the corners. Only three pitchers have a higher Zone%; only three pitchers have a higher first-pitch strike percentage. (Unsurprisingly, Phil Hughes leads both lists.)

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With the sixth-overall pick of this year’s amateur draft, the Seattle Mariners selected 18-year-old Alex Jackson out of Rancho Bernardo [CA] High School. Their second selection, which came 74th-overall, was 18-year-old Gareth Morgan out of North Toronto Collegiate [high school] in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Tom McNamara, as one would expect, is bullish on both. The Mariners’ director of amateur scouting went the collegiate route with the club’s top pick in four of his first five drafts – Taijuan Walker, in 2010, was the exception – but he couldn’t pass up Jackson’s potential. Ditto Morgan’s, despite McNamara’s admission that the Canadian outfielder is a relatively unpolished project.

Jackson was also drafted as an outfielder, but it wasn’t his primary position in high school. The 6-foot-2, 215-lb. slugger was a catcher, but Seattle appears to be set behind the plate for a good long while with 2012 first-round pick Mike Zunino. And while McNamara didn’t say it so many words, he seemingly suggested Jackson could be in the big leagues sooner than some might think.

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McNamara on scouting Alex Jackson: “We saw him for three years. It’s not like we just stumbled across him this spring. He played for the Area Code team in California — Long Beach. We saw him at the Under Armour All-Star, at Wrigley. We saw him at the Perfect Game All-Star at Petco Park. We were tracking him for a few years.

“The scout responsible for signing him was Gary Patchett. Our West Coast supervisor is Jeremy Booth. Our national crosscheckers are Butch Baccala and Mark Lummus. Other guys on our staff saw him as he traveled across the country. I saw him.

“These guys all play on a summer team, and also break off and play in showcases with the best players. We’re seeing high school hitters face the best high school pitchers for the following year, and with wood bats. Those are things you’re not going to see in the spring most of the time. We saw at Alex as an advanced high school player. I’ve had other teams tell me they had Alex No. 1 on their list.” Read the rest of this entry »