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Let’s take a little stroll down the walk leaderboard, shall we? It’s not the most exciting leaderboard on the site, but every board can tell you something. In first we’ve got Joc Pederson. Hell of a rookie season underway. After that we’ve got Bryce Harper. Looks like he’s finally turning that corner. Carlos Santana, Kris Bryant, Matt Holliday — disciplined hitters, all of them. Alex Avila and Jose Bautista are no strangers to the free pass. And then there’s Carlos Peguero. Yes, that Carlos Peguero. If you don’t know him, you’re interested. If you do know him, you’re speechless.

For reference, before this year, Peguero had been in the majors for parts of four seasons. Spent the bulk of that time with the Mariners. He drew eight unintentional walks, in more than 200 trips to the plate. In this year’s early going, he’s batted about a third as much. Still a very small slice of playing time. He’s drawn a dozen unintentional walks. When seen before, Peguero gave off the impression he was clueless. Now he’s having excellent at-bats against Felix Hernandez and Sonny Gray. Also, he is impossibly strong.

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Ben and Sam banter about trees on the field and Kevin Gregg, then discuss the punishments for a few hypothetical crimes.

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The number of innings a team’s bullpen throws over the course of the season has less to do with the performance of the bullpen than the performance of the starters. Teams with starters pitching deep into games rely less on relievers, leaving the bullpen well-rested and allowing the manager to leverage a team’s best relievers in more important situations. A great bullpen might cause a manager to pull his starter at the first sign of trouble, creating more innings for the bullpen, but for the most part, the starter will pitch as many innings as possible and the rest is left for the bullpen. Once the relievers are called upon, it is the manager’s job to divvy out appearances and prevent overuse. So far this season, the Boston and Tampa Bay rotations have put their bullpens in trouble and St. Louis also appear to be in danger of wearing out their core arms — points which I’ll address momentarily.

First, let’s consider performance. In unsurprising fashion, the Kansas City Royals’ bullpen has produced the lowest ERA among all major-league bullpens in 2015. Their relief corps was a featured strength as the team made it to the World Series last year. From 2012 to 2014, the Royals bullpen WAR of 17.7 is more than two wins greater than the second-place Atlanta Braves, and the bullpen is off to a great start in 2015 (even if their 3.35 FIP does not quite match their sterling 1.56 ERA). The graph below shows every bullpen’s ERA and FIP, sorted by the former.

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Things are not going particular well in Colorado, and I’m not just talking about the fact that it snowed in May. The state’s baseball team has lost nine straight games, and new GM Jeff Bridich isn’t particularly pleased with the results he’s seen as of late.

“We have a good collection of players,” said Bridich, the first-year GM whose team is 11-17 and last in the National League West. “And at this point, meaning the last two weeks of the season, they’ve added up to a bad team. I don’t think there’s any other way you can look at it. That’s not saying anything shocking. The players know that.

“There are bad stretches that befall every team in a season, or most every team in a season. This is where we see what type of resolve our players have — if they take a look around that clubhouse and deal with reality as adults and say, ‘We’re going to make some changes and do things necessary to start winning games.

…

“I continue to believe in our guys, but when you have to make changes like we did with Tyler Matzek [who was sent down to Triple-A Albuquerque over the weekend], when it’s in the best interest of the team and the player, you go ahead and give somebody else an opportunity,” Bridich said.

Unfortunately for Bridich and the Rockies, swapping out every underperforming player is logistically impossible. They’re not going to bench Carlos Gonzalez, but he’s been their worst player this season, putting up -0.6 WAR in his first 101 plate appearances. They could start taking some playing time from Justin Morneau and give it to Wilin Rosario, but that doesn’t seem like an obvious upgrade, and Morneau was pretty good for the Rockies last year, so that would seem like an overreaction to a slow start. And if the team had better pitchers than Jorge de la Rosa or Kyle Kendrick hanging around, they wouldn’t have spent some of their free agent money to sign those guys in the first place; this is not an organization overflowing with quality arms.

So yes, the Rockies can do things like demote Tyler Matzek or swap out Daniel Descalso for a different utility infielder, but moving the deck chairs around isn’t going to stop the ship from sinking. While Bridich is right that the team does have some good players, they just don’t have enough of them, and when the team’s two highest profile players aren’t performing like superstars, the rest of the roster gets exposed. And that’s what has happened early on; Troy Tulowitzki and Carlos Gonzalez have been mediocre and terrible respectively, and there just isn’t enough around them to pick up the slack.

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Dillon Gee will miss at least the next couple of weeks with a torn groin, but the Mets aren’t likely to suffer too much in his absence. That’s because they have uber-prospect Noah Syndergaard in the fold, who will step in and replace Gee in the rotation. Syndergaard, 22, will make his major-league debut tonight against the Cubs and figures to hold down a spot in the Mets rotation for the foreseeable future. And if you believe the Steamer projections, Syndergaard might actually provide the Mets with a sizable upgrade over Gee.

Before his call up, Syndergaard was one of the very best pitching prospects in the minors. He placed 19th in our preseason top-200 list and was easily the highest rated prospect on the Mets. Other outlets gave him even higher praise, with Baseball Prospectus, MLB.com and Baseball America ranking him 9th, 10th and 11th, respectively.

Given his stuff, it’s not hard to see why he rated so highly. Syndergaard has a sizzling fastball that sits in the mid-to-high 90’s. He complements it with a curveball and changeup that are both average pitches right now, according to Kiley McDaniel, who anticipates both ticking up to above-average (55) in the near future.

Unsurprisingly, Syndergaard checks all of the boxes statistically, as well. My KATOH system, which considers his 2014 stats, absolutely adored the 6-foot-5 righty heading into the year. His projection of 11.5 WAR through age-28 was the 6th highest of any prospect. He ranked second among pitchers, trailing only Julio Urias.

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This is the third in a series of articles on the emergence of batted-ball data into the baseball mainstream. Today, we’re going to focus much less on the exit velocity of batted balls, and more upon the direction in which they are hit. While a pulled baseball offers the ultimate potential upside, it also carries with it risk, of the potentially career-swallowing variety. 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
New York NL at Chicago NL | 20:05 ET
Syndergaard (N/A) vs. Arrieta (37.0 IP, 74 xFIP-)
This contest represents the major-league debut of Mets right-hander Noah Syndergaard, a young and giant Dutch-American who was ranked first overall among Mets prospects this past offseason by Kiley McDaniel and 19th overall among every prospect by that same Kiley McDaniel. The 22-year-old Syndergaard features a promising combination of physical tools and performance. Here, for example, is his average fastball velocity (according to PITCHf/x) over the course of two appearances in the annual Futures Game: 96.54 mph. And here, also, are his strikeout and walk rates over 29.2 innings this season at Triple-A Las Vegas: 30.1% and 7.1%, respectively. Syndergaard receives the promotion as a result of an injury to Dillon Gee, although there are likely multiple possible scenarios in which he never returns to the minors.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Chicago NL or New York NL Television.

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Kris Bryant finally did it. After not hitting a home run in 19 games following his call up, he went out on Saturday in Milwaukee and clubbed a Kyle Lohse slider 389 feet out to left-center. The homer was the one number conspicuously missing from his season statistics, but it was always coming: the 23-year-old put up famous power numbers in the minor leagues, he’s been hitting inside fastballs to the warning track in right-center, and there was nothing telling us anything was wrong. Part of his power drought was surely his ongoing adjustment to major league pitching, something all rookies have to contend with. However, his treatment by pitchers so far shows just how unique Bryant might be, and puts him in a rare class of hitters.

Unsurprisingly, there was something special about the home run Bryant hit, beyond it being the first of many in his career. Let’s take a look at it, slowed down at impact, with a bit of an effect on the ball to make it more visible:

There are a few things to note: it was a slider, it was on the first pitch of the at-bat, and it was over the outer third of the plate. It caught more of the strike zone than Lohse wanted, but it wasn’t the worst hanging slider anyone has seen. This serves first and foremost as a reminder that Kris Bryant is very talented at hitting baseballs. It also informs us of the approach we’ve seen pitchers use when attacking Bryant so far in his young career, and the adjustments he needs to make in order to be successful at this level.

Lost in the frenzy over a big power prospect not hitting home runs is the fact that hitting for power requires getting good pitches to hit (unless you’re Vladimir Guerrero). Usually, a hitter doesn’t view a first-pitch slider on the outer third of the plate to be a great candidate for a home run to left-center field, but this is where Bryant currently finds himself.

To begin to illustrate that point, let’s start with a list. Here are the names of players since the year 2000 with at least 17 walks in their first 21 career games:

• Kosuke Fukudome (18)
• Carlos Santana (17)
• Adam Dunn (17)
• Andy LaRoche (17)
• Kris Bryant (17)

That’s it – five players. Not all of these hitters lit the world on fire, but they were/are known as high OBP/power guys (with the exception of Andy LaRoche). The bottom line is that this happens very rarely, and Bryant is being treated in a unique way usually reserved for a certain type of hitter.

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