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
San Francisco at Washington | 11:05 ET
Bumgarner (108.1 IP, 82 xFIP-) vs. Strasburg (57.1 IP, 90 xFIP-)
Roughly 240 years ago on this date, American colonists declared independence from the tyranny of British rule — an event to which the Washington Nationals pay homage each July 4th (i.e. today) by declaring independence from the tyranny of afternoon and night baseball. Fortunately for all involved, the latter event generates much less in the way of bloodshed and political turmoil. Also fortunate, is this: that this year’s edition of the ante-meridian game features starting pitchers Madison Bumgarner and Stephen Strasburg, each of whom possess objectively compelling traits according both to the methodology laboriously crafted by the author and also just everybody’s normal judgment.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: San Francisco Radio or Television.

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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
Tampa Bay at New York AL | 19:05 ET
Archer (109.0 IP, 61 xFIP-) vs. Tanaka (53.1 IP, 79 xFIP-)
To the degree that the reader is a human person, that same reader likely holds the opinion that the process of updating one’s resume is among the most tedious activities one is compelled to endure. Indeed, Greek mythology reveals to us that, when Zeus condemned Sisyphus for the latter’s hubris, he gave Sisyphus the option either of rolling a boulder uphill for all eternity or re-writing his cover letter to better reflect his passion for streamlining workflow. The choice was easy.

The advantage of working primarily as a Major League Baseball Pitcher is that one’s performance, whether positive or negative, is recorded by a number of well-known media outlets. As such, one isn’t compelled to dedicate much time or effort in the resume department. In fact, the present media outlet reveals that Chris Archer is currently among the most likely candidates to be recognized at year’s end as the American’s League’s top pitcher. One finds, for example, that he’s produced the third-best park-adjusted xFIP among all qualifiers, and also the fourth-best pitcher WAR. This game against the division-leading Yankees represents an opportunity to make his case even more strongly.

Readersí Preferred Broadcast: Tampa Bay 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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Carlos Carrasco’s Wednesday night ended with a smile, but few others were smiling, as Joey Butler broke up a would-be no-hitter in the ninth with two outs and two strikes. Throw in the fact that Butler’s liner just barely sailed over Jason Kipnis and you could argue Carrasco came as close as you can come to a no-hitter without pulling it off. Still, it was rather obviously the performance of a lifetime — Carrasco struck out Rays hitters 13 times, and he missed a full 30 bats. The line-drive hit came on pitch no. 124; Carrasco’s previous season high was 114.

A performance like Carrasco’s is interesting on its own. Yet in this case, it’s even more interesting in context. Carrasco dominated the Rays on July 1, just missing a no-hitter. Carrasco got knocked around by a very similar Rays lineup on June 19, getting pulled with a 10-hitter. The Rays, in other words, got to go up against Carlos Carrasco twice in two weeks, and the first time around, they got the better of him. But it turned out that didn’t give them an advantage. In the second game against the same team, Carrasco simply pitched like someone else.

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USA Baseball’s Tournament of Stars is an annual event held in Cary, N.C., that serves as a tryout for the 18U national team trials roster. Six teams that include more than 100 players compete in a tournament-style showcase over six days, and USA Baseball selects 40 players for the trial roster who then compete for 20 spots on the team that will go to the World Baseball Softball Confederation 18U World Cup, set for Aug. 28-Sept. 6 in Japan.

For scouts, TOS represents the No. 2 stop on the high-school summer showcase circuit after PG National, and it’s a prime opportunity for evaluators to watch many of the nation’s best draft-eligible high-school players do battle against each other while hitting with a wood bat. Often, showcase performance factors heavily into a prep prospect’s evaluation and helps put relatively unknown players on the map. This was the case for Cardinals first-rounder Nick Plummer, whose outstanding play on the summer circuit carried more weight since he played in a Michigan high-school league that starts the count at 1-1, thus complicating the evaluation. Another recent example is Manny Machado, who emerged from relative obscurity and turned heads at the 2010 TOS and East Coast Pro showcases. He became a high-level follow for Florida area scouts entering the spring, and you know the rest.

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Many of my recent articles in this space have centered upon assessment of batted ball quality for hitters. In this day of StatCast and Hit f(x), discussion of such information has intensified in the public realm, and with it has come much misunderstanding. There is a whole lot more to batted ball quality than authority itself. The Mariners hit the ball much harder than the Cardinals, but aren’t nearly their equal as an offensive ballclub, for instance. Today, let’s examine the relationship between hitters’ contact score and their OPS+, based on their K and BB rates relative to the league. Read the rest of this entry »

If a person came up to you and made the claim that Josh Donaldson was the best player in baseball, you would actually have to refute his or her case with legitimate evidence. If someone said Rajai Davis was the best player in the league, you could just roll you eyes and get on with your day, but Josh Donaldson is close enough to the top of the list that a counter-argument is required. Is he a better player than Mike Trout, Andrew McCutchen, Paul Goldschmidt, or even Bryce Harper? Probably not, but he’s worth considering.

He’s worth considering, in large part, because he’s a great hitter. Donaldson ranks 18th in wRC+ since 2013 (min. 500 PA) at 140. An average defensive third baseman with a 140 wRC+ is something like a 6 WAR player over a full season. But, as I’m sure you know, Donaldson is not an average defensive third baseman. He’s one of the very best.

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By striking out 12 St. Louis Cardinals hitters on Tuesday night, Chris Sale of the Chicago White Sox tied Pedro Martinez’s record for striking out at least ten hitters in eight games in a row. The feat is an impressive one, requiring a consistent level of performance for more than a month. Only four pitchers have had such a streak last more than five games, per Baseball Reference’s Play Index (Much of the data throughout this piece comes the Play Index).

During the streak, Sale has an ERA of 1.80 and a 1.27 FIP while striking out 42.5% of hitters. Counting only strikeouts during the streak, Sale’s 97 Ks would be tied for ninth with Sonny Gray for strikeouts for the entire season in the American League. WIthin Sale’s current streak is a five-game span where Sale struck out at least 12 hitters every game which is also tied with Pedro Martinez (as well as Randy Johnson) for the longest streak in history. As it stands, Sale’s 141 strikeouts and 35% K-rate are number one in baseball. Although unlikely, Sale has an outside shot at becoming the first pitcher to achieve 300 strikeouts since 2002 when both Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling achieved that mark for the Arizona Diamondbacks. Read the rest of this entry »

The Fringe Five is a weekly regular-season exercise, introduced a couple years ago by the present author, wherein that same author utilizes regressed stats, scouting reports, and also his own fallible intuition to identify and/or continue monitoring the most compelling fringe prospects in all of baseball.

Central to the exercise, of course, is a definition of the word fringe, a term which possesses different connotations for different sorts of readers. For the purposes of the column this year, a fringe prospect (and therefore one eligible for inclusion in the Five) is any rookie-eligible player at High-A or above both (a) absent from the most current iteration of Kiley McDaniel’s top-200 prospect list and (b) not currently playing in the majors. Players appearing on any of McDaniel’s updated prospect lists or, otherwise, selected in the first round of the current season’s amateur draft will also be excluded from eligibility.

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