After a promising start to the season, the Red Sox pitching staff is starting to again resemble the disaster that sank the 2015 season. Over the last two weeks, the starting rotation has put up a 6.89 ERA, as David Price‘s disappointing debut season in Boston has continued, Steven Wright’s knuckleball-magic has started to show signs of wearing off, and Clay Buchholz and Eduardo Rodriguez just took turns throwing batting practice. The Red Sox continue to hit well enough to stay in contention, but with the pitching staff imploding once again, even the team’s manager is admitting that it’s “obvious” that the pitching needs upgrading. Despite a thin supply of available arms, it seems pretty clear that Dave Dombrowski is going to be among the most active executives in scouring the market for a starting pitcher over the next month.

But as the team looks to load up for a playoff push, there’s a case to be made that the Red Sox biggest move this summer should be to add another bat to the line-up instead.

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It still seems like something of a mystery, how Bartolo Colon gets away with doing what he does. I mean, yeah, he throws a lot of fastballs, but they’re different types of fastballs. He’s also got impeccable command, and he understands the art of pitching to the point where he’s literally out there using the wind to his advantage. That all makes sense. But it’s still hard to fathom that a 43-year-old who pipes an 89-mph heater right down the middle on seemingly every pitch is now on year five of a career resurgence after effectively being out of the league at age 33.

Aroldis Chapman? Aroldis Chapman’s easy. Wanna know how Aroldis Chapman does what he does? Well, you see, he throws a baseball 103 mph. That’s it! Throw a baseball 103 mph one time and I can almost guarantee you that you will pitch in the big leagues. Chapman can do that, and he can do other stuff, too.

On the surface, there’s almost nothing similar about these guys. Colon’s 43 and he throws right-handed. Chapman’s 28 and he throws left-handed. Colon’s a starter, short and stocky. Chapman, a reliever, tall and lanky. From 2010 to -15, Colon struck out 17% of his batters and walked just 4%. Chapman over that same time struck out 43% and walked 12%. Polar opposites, these two.

The one thing at which Chapman has ever been below average is the walks; when he got in trouble, it’s because he wasn’t putting the ball over the plate. Putting the ball over the plate just so happens to be Colon’s biggest strength. It also just so happens to be the area where Chapman’s changed this year — he’s turned himself into a flamethrowing Bartolo Colon.

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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.

Most Highly Rated Game
Seattle at Houston | 20:10 ET
Walker (82.0 IP, 91 xFIP-) vs. Keuchel (107.0 IP, 84 xFIP-)
On Opening Day, Houston possessed a 68% probability of qualifying for the postseason in some form. Following a poor start, that figure had dropped to 18% by May 23rd. Now, after a much less poor interval, the Astros’ playoff odds are above 50% again. Is this like or not like Sisyphus rolling a boulder up a hill for all eternity?

The author will take his answer off the air.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Houston or Seattle Radio.

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Baseball fans’ brains are littered with obscure names and trivia. We all know names like Wally Pipp, Fred Merkle, and Johnny Vander Meer for their rather absurd places in baseball history. Five of those baseball names that may or may not be stuck in your brain for trivial reasons are: Freddy Garcia, Jamie Moyer, Gil Meche, Joel Pineiro, and Ryan Franklin. If that quintet is meaningful to you, it’s because every single game of the 2003 Mariners season was started by one of those pitchers.

In the modern era of five-man rotations, that team was the only one ever to get through an entire season without once turning to a sixth starter. It’s a trivial feat, but one that I find myself wondering year after year whether it will ever be repeated. Now that we’re halfway through the 2016 season, it’s time to assess the situation and determine whether or not this will be year of the second immaculate five-man rotation.

One-in-five teams have already used 10 or more starters this season and only two teams are left standing in my personal race to a perfect five-starter season: the Cubs and the Cardinals. Can either team match the 2003 Mariners?

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Sam and Craig talk to Russell Carleton and Kate Morrison about their recent series covering the complexion of MLB’s front offices.

Podcast (effectively-wild): Play in new window | Download

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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.

Most Highly Rated Game
Detroit at Cleveland | 19:10 ET
Norris (11.0 IP, 92 xFIP-) vs. Salazar (93.1 IP, 87 xFIP-)
The deeply flawed game NERD scores created by the author are, by definition, flawed deeply. That said, they do include at least one element that isn’t entirely senseless — namely that, as the season wears on, they’re influenced more significantly by the team scores and less by the starting-pitcher scores. And the team scores themselves are influenced more significantly by postseason odds and less by performance-related factors. This is relevant today because (a) Cleveland currently possesses the league’s highest team score (tied with Baltimore) and (b) just over 50% of the season’s games have been played. It’s likely, in other words, that their games will be well-acquitted here for the time being. Which appears to have some sense to it: they’re a strong club in the thick of a division race. In conclusion, this has been a paragraph of no importance.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Detroit Radio.

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Episode 664
Lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen is the guest on this edition of the pod, during which he discusses this year’s top international free agents, reviews the top international free agents of 2011 to provide context for what one might expect out of such players, and discusses the relative inflexibility of the 20-80 scouting scale and why it’s actually a good thing.

This episode of the program either is or isn’t sponsored by SeatGeek, which site removes both the work and also the hassle from the process of shopping for tickets.

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 09 min play time.)

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

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.

Most Highly Rated Game
Colorado at Los Angeles NL | 16:10 ET
Gray (76.1 IP, 82 xFIP-) vs. McCarthy (Season Debut)
Brandon McCarthy produced excellent fielding-independent numbers during his first four starts for the Dodgers, creating considerable optimism for his fifth one. Today marks the occasion of that fifth start — nearly a year and a half removed from his most recent appearance. The reason for the delay? Not, as one probably assumes, a grant-funded sabbatical to perform research abroad. No, rather: a procedure to reconstruct his UCL and the laborious rehabilitation which follows it. He’s touched 93 mph during his rehab starts according to J.P. Hoornstra of Inside SoCal — which, that probably places his average fastball velocity at something a bit, but not significantly, lower than what he was exhibiting before the injury.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Los Angeles NL Television.

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