Last week, I walked through the KATOH projections for each of the college players taken in the first round of this year’s amateur draft. The first round is obviously the most important one, as it produces the largest share of the game’s productive players. Nonetheless, the proceeding rounds also generate their fair share of quality major leaguers. So, today, I’m going to take a look at some of the hitters selected in rounds two through eight who rated favorably according to my KATOH system.

David Thompson, 3B, New York Mets
Draft Round: 4th
KATOH Projection: 5.7 WAR

After mediocre freshman and sophomore seasons at Miami, David Thompson broke out in a big way in 2015. The third baseman smashed 19 homers and 18 doubles in 64 games on his way to a .333/.445/.658 showing in the ACC. Thompson’s breakout likely had something to do with his finally being healthy. Originally a two-sport star at Miami, Thompson opted to give up on his football career following a litany of injuries. Between undergoing four surgeries, while also trying to play both baseball and football, it’s easy to see why he only managed an .800 OPS as an underclassman. It’s pretty rare for a player to run an ISO north of .300 while striking out in fewer than 10% of his trips to the plate, especially in the ACC, which happens to be one of the best college conferences in the country.

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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
Cleveland at Chicago NL | 20:05 ET
Bauer (74.0, 107 xFIP-) vs. Arrieta (77.0 IP, 69 xFIP-)
Chicago and Cleveland, between them, have debuted four noteworthy young players this season — of which three are famous and one is less famous. Kris Bryant, Addison Russell, and Francisco Lindor were ranked 1st, 3rd, and 14th, respectively, among all prospects by Kiley McDaniel this offseason. The former two have produced roughly four wins in roughly 400 plate appearances for the Cubs; Lindor, for his part, recorded his first major-league appearance this past weekend. Omitted from McDaniel’s preseason top-200 list (as well as every other preseason-type of list), but noteworthy nonetheless, is third baseman Giovanny Urshela. The 23-year-old Urshela lacks the tools of the three aforementioned players, but has exhibited average power and above-average contact skills as a minor leaguer — in addition to possessing a strong defensive reputation. He’s probably not the reason one ought to watch this game between the Cubs and Indians tonight. That said, in the event that one is consuming this game among a crowd of friends or even awkward acquaintances, one is now equipped to bore his companions with certain passing comments about Giovanny Urshela.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Chicago Television.

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We’re all moving forward on the baseball calendar. Pitchers and catchers? Way back there. Spring training games? Opening Day? Well behind us. And we’ve just recently seen the completion of the amateur draft, so now we look ahead again. The next specific date is that of the All-Star Game, followed by the non-waiver trade deadline. However, while the trade deadline comes after the exhibition, we’ve just entered trading season. Unofficially, it kicked off with the Mark Trumbo deal. More officially, it always lurks on this side of the draft.

Trading season is relevant to everyone. If your favorite team is sitting pretty, maybe this is where it makes the move that puts it over the top. If your favorite team is stuck in the middle, maybe this is where it makes the move that makes all the difference. And if your favorite team blows, maybe this is where it makes the move that sheds salary or directly benefits the future. For everyone, trade talk fills the time between games. For some, trade talk is also a welcome distraction.

This time of year, there’s always chatter about who’s most in need of what. I thought, for purposes of this post, I might try to make it mathematical. I looked at every certain and fringe contender, position by position, and tried to identify the positions of greatest need as trade season heats up. I wound up selecting five positions, because I think five is a good number, and a better number than four or six. Why do I think that? That would be a different article.

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Episode 572
Kiley McDaniel is both (a) the lead prospect analyst for FanGraphs and also (b) the guest on this particular edition of FanGraphs Audio — during which edition he discusses some early-round selections in baseball’s amateur draft, the particular futures of some collegiate second baseman, and also baseball-player makeup versus regular-person makeup.

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 1 hr 1 min play time.)

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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
Seattle at Houston | 14:10 ET
Elias (58.0 IP, 108 xFIP-) vs. McCullers (31.0 IP, 71 xFIP-)
While the major-league debuts of Byron Buxton and Francisco Lindor are entirely notable, it’s also true that watching an entire game merely to the end of observing a single position player ultimately provides a poor return on one’s leisure investment. Consider: a single batter records, on average, only four or five plate appearances per game. Defensively, a shortstop (like Lindor) makes about four or five plays per game, while a center fielder (such as Buxton) makes fewer than three usually. As such, neither Buxton nor Lindor are likely to feature prominently in more than 10 of the roughly 75 total plate appearances that compose a nine-inning contest — less than 15% of the whole event, in other words. What reason dictates, instead, is that the viewer ought to watch the young and talented Lance McCullers pitch for the young and talented Houston Astros while monitoring the Cleveland and Minnesota games for the relevant at-bats within them.

This is merely one application of what might or might not be called hedonic arithmetic.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Seattle Radio.

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I was at Progressive Field earlier this week to see the Indians host the Mariners. A stone’s throw away, the Cavaliers were playing Golden State in the NBA finals. The latter series has the city captivated and on the precipice of euphoria. When the basketball game got out on Tuesday night, hordes of fans below my hotel window chanted “Let’s go Cavs!” and blew air horns to celebrate a win. A brass band played somewhere down on the street. It sounded like Mardi Gras, and it was only Game 3.

“They’re going to blow the roof off this place if they win,” Indians outfielder Nick Swisher told me. “People love their sports around here, and it’s been a long, long time since there’s been a championship.”

Fifty-one years, to be exact. The Browns won the NFL title in 1964, and since that time it’s been a multi-sport combination of heartbreak and non-contenders. According to Swisher, who grew up in Ohio, “That’s why you see so many people coming out to support the Cavs.”

Meanwhile, with no basketball game as competition, the official attendance at Progressive Field on Wednesday night was 12,305. The number of fans who actually showed up was probably closer to seven or eight thousand. On the season, the Indians have drawn an average of 16,836, with only the cloudy-future Rays spinning fewer turnstiles. Cleveland was also second from the bottom last year, and in 2013 they ranked just one spot higher despite 92 wins and a Wild Card berth. 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
Cleveland at Detroit | 16:08 ET
Carrasco (68.1 IP, 72 xFIP-) vs. Verlander (Season Debut)
This game marks the return of Justin Verlander from a triceps injury that’s prevented him from appearing over the first two-and-a-half months of the season. Of some interest is what he’s able to exhibit by way of arm speed. After recording an average fastball velocity of 94.3 mph in 2012, he produced a figure exactly 1 mph less than that in 2013 and then another 1 mph less than that in 2014. His capacity to prevent runs has declined at a corresponding rate. Regard, by way of example, his xFIP- marks over each of the last three seasons, all in samples of 200-plus innings: 80, 92, 111. Decidedly upward, is the trend one identifies. During his second rehab start with Triple-A Toledo, Verlander’s fastball topped out at 94 mph while sitting in the low-90s, according to MLive.com’s Brendan Savage — figures which suggest that he’s returned, probably, to the 2014 edition of himself, but also probably not to the more dominant version which preceded it. In conclusion, all life is like a fleeting shadow and/or passing mist.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Cleveland Radio.

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Each week, we publish north of 100 posts on our various blogs. With this post, we hope to highlight 10 to 15 of them. You can read more on it here. The links below are color coded — green for FanGraphs, brown for RotoGraphs, dark red for The Hardball Times, orange for TechGraphs and blue for Community Research.
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Ben and Sam banter about Pat Venditte and Zack Cozart, then answer emails about batter-pitcher matchups, when to congratulate players, double Delino DeShieldses, and more.

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Pitching is an enigmatic thing. There are so many aspects to it that it can be difficult to get them straight in one’s head. A thing we all know about it, though, is the faster you throw the better you are. This is what makes Nathan Eovaldi so fascinating and yet so curious. Eovaldi has the fastest average fastball velocity of any starting pitcher in baseball at 95.8 mph. He started against the Nationals on Wednesday and hit 99 mph with his fastball in the third inning. Dude throws hard. And yet, outside of that, he’s not really anything special as a pitcher. In total value Eovaldi is Wade Miley. Miley has an impressive beard, but to paraphrase a great person, an impressive beard does not an impressive season make. The most valuable pitcher in baseball so far is Corey Kluber at 3.0 WAR. Kluber’s average fastball is 93.5 mph, 2.3 mph slower than Eovaldi’s. So clearly fastball velocity isn’t everything.

But why not? The quicker a pitch, the shorter the batter’s reaction time, and we’re talking about removing hundredths of a second. A 95 mph fastball will reach home plate in 0.4 seconds so removing those small fractions of a second you’d think would be problematic for the hitter. And they are problematic. The thing is, they’re not the whole story.

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