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The scouting report on Kenta Maeda never suggested he was overpowering. He was never expected to post extreme strikeout totals, and while his above-average 24% strikeout rate is somewhat surprising, it’s only part of the reason the 28-year-old Japanese rookie has been one of the 20 or 25 best pitchers in baseball this season.

The other part is the part that makes more sense for Maeda and less sense to the rest of us. It’s still difficult to suss out what exactly goes into the skill of generating soft contact, or how much of it is a skill at all, but thus far, Maeda’s been among the best at it. Given how little we’ve seen him work, Maeda’s a relatively mysterious pitcher. Soft contact is a mysterious skill. That’s two mysteries, and playing detective is fun.

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Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by sabermetric nobleman 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.

Surprise Meeting of the Corey Kluber Society
The Purpose of This Post
The purpose of this post is to announce an impromptu meeting — in this case, at 7:10pm ET tonight (Tuesday) — of the Corey Kluber Society.

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A few days ago, I shared KATOH’s thoughts on the college players who were drafted (and not drafted) in this year’s amateur draft. There were hundreds of them. Many of the players with very good projections went in the first round, including Nick Senzel, A.J. Puk and Cody Sedlock. But the player with the very best KATOH projection fell all the way to the 10th round. The end of the 10th round. That player is Dakota Mekkes, whom the Cubs drafted with the 314th-overall pick out of Michigan State.

Mekkes was straight up filthy this past season. Pitching in the Big 10, Mekkes struck out a remarkable 96 batters in just 57 innings without surrendering a single home run. The catch is that he pitched exclusively in relief — though he wasn’t used like a typical reliever, and actually pitched more like a starter in some cases. Mekkes averaged over two innings per appearance in relief, and frequently threw many more than that. Most notably, he tossed six shutout innings in an extra-inning game against Maryland. Unlike most college relievers, he wasn’t a one-inning guy, which helps explain why KATOH likes him more than most relievers.

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We have an understanding, right? Neither the Phillies nor Braves were supposed to be good, and neither the Phillies nor Braves are actually good. Winning now was never part of the plan, so in a sense it kind of doesn’t matter what happens on the field. Not on the team level, because the teams were always going to lose. So there’s no point in being too critical, or in laughing too much. Criticism should be reserved for failures. Failing requires the intent to succeed.

I don’t want to sit around and talk about the Phillies and Braves every day. It’s not particularly interesting that they’re bad. That being said, I do at least want to take the chance to even things out. Toward the end of April, I wrote about how the Braves offense was a total disaster. And it was a total disaster, as you remember. They hit two homers on opening day, then they hit one homer over their next 19 games. They didn’t get their team slugging percentage into the .300s until the middle of May. It was inconceivable how poorly the Braves were hitting, and it’s not like they’ve since turned into an offensive juggernaut. But as you look at the numbers today, there has been a shift. The Braves offense ranks low. The Phillies offense is worse.

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Ben and Sam banter about Santos Saldivar and discuss Tim Lincecum’s comeback, two player demotions, and the decline of the Tampa Bay Rays.

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Sunday morning, I was talking with Craig Edwards and some others in the lobby of a New York hotel. Craig, who as you probably know runs the Cardinals’ site Viva El Birdos in addition to his work for FanGraphs, lamented Trevor Rosenthal’s “shaky” performance this season. After checking in on Rosenthal and the Cardinals’ bullpen, it is even more clear than it already was that Craig is a kind man, for I would use other words to describe Rosenthal’s performance. It might be time for manager Mike Matheny to make a change at the top of the Cardinals’ bullpen.

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One of the realities of the earlier part of the season is that we notice things we might not otherwise notice. A hot streak or a slump to begin the year stands out more than a hot streak or a slump in the middle of August, because at the beginning, everything starts fresh. This is one of the reasons why people tend to overreact to early results. The numbers make it look like they’re the only results, as new seasons stand out from prior ones. As others like to remind, players streak all the time, and we typically just accept it if we even notice at all.

So if it’s easier to notice a streak at the beginning, it follows that it’s harder to notice a streak in the middle. Which means when a streak in the middle does get noticed, that means something. We’ve all noticed James Shields‘ streak. James Shields’ streak is one of the very ugliest starting-pitching streaks on recent record. It is, very genuinely, just about unbelievable.

This could be a whole post of fun facts. The numbers are that extraordinary. I’ll try to limit myself, because the fun facts aren’t the point. But, all right: over his last four starts, Shields has allowed a total of 32 runs. Jake Arrieta has allowed a total of 32 runs over his last 30 starts, covering more than 200 innings. Shields, since his last game with San Diego, has yielded a 1.441 OPS. Barry Bonds, in 2004 — when he walked more than 200 times — finished with a 1.411 OPS. James Shields has strung together four starts of turning the opposition into prime Barry Bonds. This is James Shields, of the James Shields Trade.

It’s been impossible not to notice. Even the worst pitchers don’t bottom out like this, and this has become a serious problem for a team that’s trying to make the playoffs. Shields, of course, isn’t this bad — position players pitching aren’t this bad — but maybe the most troubling thing is this isn’t just a four-start slump. It’s been a horrible, unimaginable four starts, sure, but Shields hasn’t been quite right for some time.

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Recently, within this site’s electronic pages, the author facilitated a crowdsourcing effort with a view towards reproducing the broadcaster rankings which appeared here roughly four years ago. More recently, that same author published the updated results for television broadcasts here and for radio here.

The service which the author has failed to render, however, is to present all the results from that endeavor in one easily digestible form. The purpose of this post is to right that vile wrong.

Below, the reader will find two tables. The first contains the complete rankings for the league’s 62 distinct television and radio broadcast teams. The second features only the highest-ranked broadcast for each major-league club.

As in every other case, it’s important to stress here that the results of this exercise aren’t intended to represent the objective quality or skill of the relevant announcers, but rather to provide a clue as to which broadcast teams are likely to appeal most (or least) to the readers of this site. Note, furthermore, that the overall ratings which appear below are not mere averages of the charisma and analysis scores which accompany them, but a distinct category for which respondents submitted scores independently.

Those dozen caveats having been stated explicitly — and many more implied — here are the results of the 2016 broadcaster rankings.

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