“Have you ever heard of a submariner throwing a riseball?”

Athletics Media Relations and Broadcasting Coordinator Zak Basch almost had a crazy look in his eye as he asked. But as soon as I understood what he was asking, there were two intense people in that Oakland dugout, contemplating insane things. Because it’s almost an impossible idea, the riseball released from a submarine angle. They physics of releasing the ball down under makes it almost impossible to get backspin on the ball, and backspin is what gives fastballs “rise” — backspin helps the ball drop less than you’d expect, given gravity.

That’s why, when you ask current submariners, they mostly just shake their head. “I’ve heard stories of this myth before,” laughed Javier Lopez of the Giants. He struggled to name any active low-slot pitchers that have ever thrown a riseball on purpose.

But it’s not impossible. Basch, a former pitcher for the University of Nevada (Reno) himself once threw one in game action, and it only took a couple dozen failed attempts to get there. Just to get an idea of how difficult it is to get backspin on the ball from that angle, Basch modeled the delivery and spin for a traditional submarine fastball and then how you might throw a rising fastball.

Read the rest of this entry »

Kiley initially rolled this feature out a few weeks ago, but with signing day’s arrival, we wanted to make this more prominent on the site today, so we’re re-running the initial post. The board has since been updated many times and is current with the latest information.

The July 2 Board is both sortable and able to be sorted.

Today we’re unveiling the sortable board for the July 2nd international signing period. This works mostly like the sortable draft board (which is also still accessible by means of a tab at the top of the page) with some different columns, for obvious reasons. The top-41 players are ranked based on my preference from seeing these players and talking to scouts about them, not in order of industry consensus or projected bonus, though you can sort by bonus if that’s what you’re looking for. The other players listed are not ranked, just sorted based on expected bonus, so long as I think they’ll get $300,000 (the most that the teams in the penalty can offer) or more. You can also check the international article archives for more info on many of the players listed here.

The projected bonus represents what I think the player will get, not what I think they’re worth, and the projected team is listed if I’m over 50% sure that will be where the player lands (with many of the projected teams having been certain for months or even a year). Many of the higher-profile players without a team listed are still working out for teams in the last month and are far from signing. I’ll add tool grades and reports for more players next week, but these 69 players should quench your thirst for July 2 knowledge, though I’m sure a couple guys omitted from the board will get bigger bonuses than expected.

These are the top players that are currently subject to the international bonus pools, which reset next Thursday on July 2, so older Cuban free agents (there aren’t any notable ones eligible to sign at this time) won’t appear here. Five other notable Cuban players absent here are one status email from MLB away from being added to the list. RHP Vladimir Gutierrez, CF Yusnier Diaz and RHP Norge Ruiz are the best of that group and all project to get multiple millions in a signing bonus, but are all expected to fall under $10 million, at least right now. CF Randy Arozarena and SS Alfredo Rodriguez are also in this group and are more six figure to low seven figure type prospects.

Team-Focused Update

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
San Francisco at Miami | 12:10 ET
Cain (Season Debut) vs. Fernandez (Season Debut)
With few exceptions, three conditions must exist for a game — a game of any sort — to hold any sort of appeal for spectators, irrespective of what other variables might be present.

Three conditions, as follow:

1. The players must (mostly) follow the rules; and
2. The players must give the impression that they’re trying to win; and
3. There must exist some consequence to the result, such that victory produces a positive outcome; defeat, an undesirable one.

For today’s Marlins game, like most other Marlins games, no more than one and a half of those criteria are likely to be met — and yet it would be difficult for a reasonable party to argue that this afternoon’s contest possesses anything less than great appeal for spectators. The reason: today represents the return of Miami right-hander Jose Fernandez from the elbow injury that afflicted him last May.

Whatever the severity of that injury, it would appear as though this version of Fernandez bears considerable resemblance to that previous, ecstatic one. He produced strikeout and walk rates of 33.7% and 6.1%, respectively, over five starts and 24.2 innings between High- and Double-A as part of his rehab, sitting at 94-96 mph, it would appear, during the last of those.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: San Francisco Radio or Television.

Read the rest of this entry »

Let the record show that I am all about Omar Infante starting the All-Star Game. As Grantland’s Bill Barnwell recently stated at the beginning of his fantastic article regarding below-replacement players who’d received MVP votes: “Baseball has a rich historical tapestry of stupidity.” May anarchy reign. Whatever.

Inspired by Barnwell’s spirit of inquiry, I wanted to discover which All-Stars finished their season with negative WAR — a destiny, it should be noted, that neither Steamer nor ZiPS project Infante to fulfill (barely). Read the rest of this entry »

The San Francisco Giants began the season with what appeared to be an adequate, but perhaps underwhelming, infield. Buster Posey was the star at catcher and Brandon Belt seemed like a solid young first baseman. Brandon Crawford looked to be a decent glove-first shortstop while not much was expected from Joe Panik at second — and even less than that was expected from Casey McGehee at third base. McGehee could not quite catch fire the way he had done in Miami the previous season and has since been replaced by the previously unknown Matt Duffy. Nearly halfway through the first half of the Major League Baseball season, however, the Giants’ quintet of infielders has been the best in all of baseball.

Buster Posey has been right in line with his very high expectations, and Brandon Belt has been solidly aboveaverage as expected, but Panik, Crawford, and Duffy have vastly exceeded expectations in 2015. The group as a whole was projected for 12.4 wins before the season according to the FanGraphs Depth Chart projections. Those players have already accumulated nearly 13 wins and have more than half of the season to go. That number is the best in MLB this season.

Read the rest of this entry »

Chris Heston was listed on only two of the six major preseason prospect reports. John Sickels listed him in his “Others” section at the end of his top-20 list, and FanGraphs’ own Kiley McDaniel placed Heston 14th on his list. Kiley called him an “inventory starter” but did allow for some potential as well. Here was his final sentence on Heston:

Heston may be one of the small percentage of potential #5 starters that turns into more, but we’ll need to see how he performs his second time through the league.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s safe to say that the first half of 2015 hasn’t gone the way the Padres would have hoped. After making a number of surprisingly aggressive moves over the winter, the organization expected to contend for a playoff spot, but after another loss last night, the team now stands at just 37-42. Entering July at five games under .500 puts them closer to rebuilding teams like the Braves and Diamondbacks, and they’re only barely ahead of the Reds, who are widely expected to start moving some of their best players as the trade deadline draws near.

Over the next month, General Manager A.J. Preller and his staff will have to make some tough decisions. For instance, Justin Upton is a free agent at the end of the year, and a return to San Diego seems unlikely, so if the Padres don’t trade Upton before August 1st, they risk letting him leave for nothing more than a single draft pick as compensation. In a trade market with few sellers, and even those who are selling lacking impact hitters to sell, Upton could fetch a nice return, perhaps bringing back a decent approximation of what Preller sent to Atlanta to get Upton in the first place.

But despite the fact that we currently estimate their odds of making the playoffs at less than 10%, I don’t think the Padres should sell Upton, or any of their other players who would be attractive chips on the trade market. Even with the odds stacked against them, I think the Padres should keep this group together and hope for the best.

Read the rest on Just a Bit Outside.

Kendall Graveman pitches to contact with a sinker and a cutter. He throws the former better than half the time and the latter nearly a quarter of the time. Working down and skirting sweet spots is his thing. Punch-outs aren’t. The rookie righty has a worm-killing 47.4% ground-ball rate, but fans a paltry 5.66 batters per nine innings.

Obtained by the A’s as part of last winter’s Josh Donaldson package, Graveman is inducing plenty of outs. The 24-year-old Mississippi State product has allowed just 12 runs over his last eight starts. The stingy outings were preceded by a month-long stint in Triple-A following five mixed-bag performances to begin the season.

Graveman discussed his repertoire and approach, including how TrackMan data has influenced each, when Oakland visited Fenway Park in early June. Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to one of those posts that’s basically just a bunch of words around one table. The function of the words is to try to explain what the table is saying, but if you don’t need that interpretation, you can just look at the numbers and be on your merry way. Look at the time you can save. It’s like you made your day longer!

I wrote this post once already, when the season was roughly a quarter over. Now the season’s roughly two quarters over, so I thought it could be useful to issue an update on the data. The question being answered, to some extent: which teams have most benefited from favorable strike zones? Which teams have been hurt, meanwhile, by unfavorable strike zones? It might seem like a complicated thing to dig into, but it’s really quite easy, and you could do it yourself in a matter of minutes using numbers we have on our leaderboards.

Read the rest of this entry »