Last week, writing for JABO, I examined a huge difference between the American League and the National League. The NL, for the most part, has played out about as expected, to this point. There aren’t many tremendous surprises. In the AL, though, things have gone insane, with a strongly inverse relationship between team performance and preseason projected team performance. You could say the AL is somewhat upside-down, given what we thought it would be, and that’s fun! That’s weird! Who doesn’t like weird baseball?

Toward the bottom, I embedded the following plot of information from 2014:

For one season of data, that’s team winning percentage over the first two months, and then team winning percentage over the remaining four months. A year ago, there was hardly any relationship, but I wanted to look at more. That’s what this is about. Here, we’ll examine 10 years, instead of just one.

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Ben and Sam banter about Pat Venditte, then revisit three winter blockbusters involving NL West teams.

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The normal caveats apply. What follows represents a series of educated guesses. Crazy rumors were flying all over the board last night and early today. This may or may not prove I’m an idiot and/or this whole process is stupid. I opted to leave the embedded videos out of this mock, but for video on every player mentioned, tool grades and all kinds of other info, see the Sortable Draft Board.

1. D’Backs – Dansby Swanson, SS, Vanderbilt

I’m told this will be the pick, but there was discussion of Tyler Stephenson, Garrett Whitley and Tyler Jay as recently as yesterday.

2. Astros – Alex Bregman, SS, LSU

This one is still a toss-up between Bregman and Rodgers, with an outside shot of a target from 5 going here to save money to pay Daz Cameron at 37.

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We all know, entering the season, that the WAR leaderboards in the early part of the year reveal less about the players contained within them than those same WAR leaderboards at the end of the year. That knowledge doesn’t stop me, personally, from compulsively looking at the leaderboards just as soon as the season begins. Remember Freddy Galvis? He was tied for the National League lead among shortstops with 0.9 WAR — and “on pace” for a great season at the end of April. A month of replacement-level production has placed him considerably lower among major-league shortstops. What about Devon Travis? At the end of April, his 1.4 WAR was sixth in all of baseball. Unfortunately, an injury slowed him down and he has been unable to add to his impressive April totals.

Now that we have reached the second week of June, the leaderboards begin to look a little more familiar. Mike Trout, Josh Donaldson, and Paul Goldschmidt have continued great runs of production. Bryce Harper has emerged and Jason Kipnis has returned to form after a poor 2014 season. There are still surprises at this point, though. The production of Harper and Kipnis was not expected to reach these levels, Joc Pederson has been far more impressive than anyone could have expected, and Dee Gordon is still slapping and running his way into the top ten. We will see more changes as the season wears on, providing a more accurate depiction of player value as more games are played. However, since we are all looking at the leaderboards now, it might be worthwhile to point out a few anomalies in WAR totals due to the small sample sizes we have with defensive statistics.

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A little over a month ago, Owen Watson wrote a piece here entitled “Chris Archer and His Elite Slider, and in the piece, he noted that Archer had ramped up the usage of his off-speed stuff this year, throwing it 40% of the time in the first month of the season. In that piece, Watson also noted that Archer was throwing his slider harder than he had in previous years. A few paragraphs from his piece:
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The A’s and Red Sox are both last-place teams so perhaps you weren’t riveted to your screen Friday night when the two met for the first of a three-game set in Boston. If not, you missed the major-league debut of a 29-year-old relief pitcher. Your life is undoubtedly sadder now. But have no fear because you’ve stumbled upon this here article which will fill you in on said 29-year-old relief pitcher. Settle in for some fun!

We’re not in the habit here at FanGraphs (or, really, anywhere else) of cataloguing the debuts of old relievers, but this one is odd enough to be special. Pat Venditte threw his first major-league pitch Friday night left-handed. It was to Brock Holt the first batter he faced. Then, after Holt grounded out to first base, he threw the first pitch to Hanley Ramirez, the second batter he faced, right-handed. That’s because Pat Venditte is a switch pitcher.

We can start off with this:

That’s the last switch-pitcher, Greg Harris. So, you know, this stuff isn’t easy. Unlike Harris, Venditte has been switch-pitching his whole life so he can actually throw it to the catcher with both arms! But actually, he’s even better than that.

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As most baseball fans are by now aware, a fan at Friday night’s game between the Oakland A’s and Boston Red Sox was seriously injured after being struck in the head when a fragment of a broken bat flew into the stands. Although initial reports suggested the woman had suffered “life-threatening” injuries, it fortunately now appears that she is expected to survive the incident.

Nevertheless, the severity of Friday’s accident has brought renewed calls for Major League Baseball to take greater steps to help protect fans from similar injuries in the future. Although broken bats and foul balls at MLB games have only resulted in one documented fan fatality in history, a recent study estimated that approximately 1,750 fans are injured by foul balls alone each year.

As a result, various observers are calling on MLB to require that teams install more extensive netting to protect fans sitting close to the field from flying objects. At the same time, others have urged a more cautious approach, suggesting that additional netting will detract from the fan experience, and that ticket buyers can rationally weigh the pros and cons of sitting in exposed seats.

While there are reasonable arguments to be made on both sides of the issue, all too often these debates overlook an important legal reason that helps explain why MLB hasn’t done more to protect its fans from these sorts of injuries. Under what is known as the “Baseball Rule,” courts have historically held that professional baseball teams are not legally liable for any injuries fans that may sustain after being hit by a foul ball or broken bat.

Until this rule changes, there will be little financial motive for MLB to install additional netting to protect fans sitting in the closest proximity to the field.

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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
Houston at Chicago AL | 20:10 ET
McCullers (24.0 IP, 71 xFIP-) vs. Sale (66.0 IP, 71 xFIP-)
Houston right-hander Lance McCullers entered the 2015 season as a pitcher who, despite the possession of conspicuous talent, also possessed a career walk rate of nearly 12% over roughly 230 professional innings. That none of those innings had been recorded above High-A suggested that the 21-year-old would benefit from further development. Indeed, while evaluating the Astros prospects, Kiley McDaniel estimated McCullers would assume a regular major-league role only in 2017. McCullers has not only assumed a role with the Astros two years earlier than that, he’s produced merely a 6.1% walk rate while so doing — which is to say, almost precisely half his cumulative minor-league figure. Is this proof that miracles exist? Perhaps, but only if — as gravel-throated American comedian Kyle Kinane suggests in the following video — only if the threshold for what constitutes a miracle is duly lowered.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Houston Radio.

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The bar is fairly low for an offensive catcher — the position has been 11% below league average since Brian McCann entered the league — and so even when the Yankee backstop hasn’t been at his best with his bat, he’s been good. Still, last year wasn’t his best year, and he noticed something he didn’t like, so he “got with Kevin Long” as he told me. Now McCann is back at career production levels, thanks to eliminating something he’s done his whole career: popping it up.

Maybe it’s unfair to call it a problem, but McCann has popped the ball up fairly regularly over the course of his career. Of the 533 qualified batters that have played since 2006, McCann has the 186th-worst pop-up rate (4.1%), which is a bit worse than the league average over that time period (3.5%).

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