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On Monday night in Baltimore, Rick Porcello allowed two earned runs in a complete-game victory, striking out seven batters without a walk. That outing lowered his season ERA to 3.08, topped in the American League only by Masahiro Tanaka and Chris Sale. It raised his innings total to 210.2, topped in the AL only by Sale and Porcello’s teammate, David Price. It improved his pitcher record to 21-4 — which, I don’t need to tell you how poor of an evaluating tool pitcher record is, but there’s a part of me that refuses not to be at least a little impressed by 21-4.

Porcello, over the last month or so, has gone from fringe Cy Young candidate to a legitimate possibility. Sale is the only AL pitcher with a higher RA9-WAR and FIP-WAR than Porcello. The argument is right there if you want to make it. Sure, you could probably make the argument that Porcello’s ERA is more a product of good fortune than performance by pointing to his .260 batting average on balls in play, which is 42 points lower than his career mark. But then also you’ve got to consider that his career mark’s probably unfairly inflated by his being a ground-ball pitcher in front of Detroit’s defense for so many years, and that the BABIPs of his strongest Cy Young competitors are similarly depressed.

So you could make the case that Porcello’s numbers point more to good fortune than performance, or you could make the case that Porcello has made some legitimately compelling strides in the way he pitches.

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Episode 683
Dave Cameron is the managing editor of FanGraphs. During this edition of FanGraphs Audio, he discusses the recent dismissal of Arizona front-office member De Jon Watson and what hand Watson likely had and didn’t have in some of the club’s curious decisions; addresses the recent but unsurprising suspension of San Diego general manager A.J. Preller; and speculates wildly about what discoveries Statcast might have facilitated during baseball’s last dramatic increase in power numbers.

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 39 min play time.)

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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
St. Louis at Colorado| 15:10 ET
Weaver (33.2 IP, 70 xFIP-) vs. Marquez (5.1 IP, 118 xFIP-)
In Marcel Proust biopic Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, a frenzied crowd chants “two men enter, one man leaves” before a gladiatorial duel that pits Mel Gibson against a developmentally disabled giant. Following wins by San Francisco and St. Louis last night — plus a loss by the Mets — the current National League wild-card situation bears some similarity to that post-apocalyptic mise-en-scène. Except, instead of perspiring Australians, the competitors are the three aforementioned clubs. And instead of two of them, there’s three. And also Tina Turner’s not there.

Here are the current standings and probabilities per this site’s methodology:

Less urgent but still notable is the pitching matchup here. St. Louis right-hander Luke Weaver has produced the highest strikeout rate (tied with Rich Hill) among all starters to record 20 or more innings over the last month. German Marquez, meanwhile, is scheduled to make his first major-league start. Owner of a plus fastball, he produced decidedly above-average strikeout and walk numbers as just a 21-year-old in the high minors.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: St. Louis Radio.

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On Monday night, Ken Rosenthal wrote something of a plea to his fellow BBWAA members; stop looking for reasons to give the MVP award to anyone besides Mike Trout.

My fear is that in 20 years people are going to say, “Trout led the majors in combined OPS-plus from 2012 to ’16 and won only one MVP in those five seasons? What the heck were the writers thinking?”

Shame on us if, instead of celebrating Mike Trout, we keep looking for the next best thing.

It’s a good piece, and given Rosenthal’s standing in the baseball writing community, it could have some influence on the 30 voters who have AL MVP ballots this year. And if you’ve read FanGraphs for the last few years, you probably know that most of us writing here agree with his stance; the idea that Trout is somehow less valuable because his teammates stink is not an argument that I give much credence to.

But I also have been doing this long enough to realize that a good number of people are entrenched on this issue, believing that production on a losing team is not valuable; we’ve all heard some version of “The Angels could have finished in last without him” trope. The (unfortunate) reality is that this idea isn’t going away any time soon, and it’s likely that a bunch of AL MVP voters will continue with the tradition of voting for the best player on a playoff team.

So here’s what I would like to add to Ken’s plea to our BBWAA brethren; if you’re going to argue that Trout cannot be more valuable than one of Mookie Betts, Josh Donaldson, or Manny Machado, because his teammates didn’t let him turn his production into value, then extend that belief throughout your ballot. Own the idea of value being exclusively created by team wins and playoff appearances, and apply it to every place on the ballot, not just the top spot.

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Ben and Sam banter about Padres GM A.J. Preller’s suspension, then discuss whether each of 2016’s non-playoff teams should consider its season a success or a failure.

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Last year’s Blue Jays didn’t win the World Series. They probably could’ve, though — they were absolutely good enough. They certainly gave the Royals fits. And the Blue Jays appealed to me in particular because I’m a little bit of a contrarian, and the Blue Jays could hit the crap out of the ball. Every October, we hear about the importance of pitching. And, you know, the Blue Jays had pitching. But what the Blue Jays really had was hitting. I liked them because they were an offensive juggernaut, and even in the playoffs they showed flashes of that ability.

The Blue Jays this year aren’t all that different. Much of the personnel is the same. But if we’re looking for a comparison to last year’s Jays, the closest comp isn’t this year’s Jays. Rather, it’s this year’s Red Sox. Like hitting? Like trying to argue ever so slightly against narratives? The Red Sox’s lineup is about as productive, and it stands to be the team’s strength as it tries to win another title.

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As I mentioned in yesterday’s post about Michael Fulmer, I’ve been chosen as a voter for this season’s American League Rookie of the Year Award. And while I don’t yet know how I’m going to vote — and while I’m not supposed to tell you how I’m going to vote — I am supposed to supply content to FanGraphs.com, and there’s nothing wrong with going over my thought processes in the public sphere. I already have to go through this stuff anyway. Might as well get some articles out of it, so that I can further consider reader responses.

Most years, this vote would be seemingly easy, at least as first place goes. Fulmer’s been up most of the season, and he’s got a low ERA to show for it. Low ERAs aren’t as common now as they were a couple years back. But there’s an increasingly legitimate contender, who goes by the name of Gary Sanchez. Sanchez wasn’t supposed to get to this point. He’d made one single appearance before the month of August. But — well, you know. You know all about Gary Sanchez. Has he done enough to deserve some hardware?

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The National League Cy Young race is an incredibly competitive one, and as Dave Cameron (who has a vote this year) broke down a few weeks ago, much of the differences between the candidates deals with run prevention in a team sense (RA/9-WAR and ERA) versus run prevention in a component sense (FIP, WAR). As a result, there has been considerable discussion on the concept of weak contact, and last week I looked at the role of the Cubs defense in the Chicago pitchers’ low BABIPs. Taking a small step further, let’s use the Statcast to look at weak and strong contact to determine if the Cy Young candidates in the National League have been helping out their defenses.

To whittle down the candidates, I found the pitchers who are among the National League’s top 10 both by WAR and RA/9-WAR — and then added Jose Fernandez, who just missed the second list. This is a list of those pitchers and their respective ERA, FIP and WAR marks.

As you can see, the NL pitchers ranked first and second in ERA only rank sixth and seventh in FIP, which has led to discussions, particularly with regard to Kyle Hendricks, about how to evaluate such discrepancies when discussing a pitcher’s Cy Young candidacy. To examine the type of contact a pitcher is generating, ee can start with a simple look at average exit velocity. Here are the pitchers’ average exit-velocity numbers and MLB ranks, per Baseball Savant.

While the evidence isn’t overwhelming, there is some reason to think that a pitcher has some, if not a lot, of influence over exit velocity, with the bulk of the influence coming from the batter. Those arguing for Kyle Hendricks for the Cy Young would likely say there is a considerable effect and point to the very good exit-velocity numbers and very low BABIP he’s conceded as evidence. That said, Clayton Kershaw has an even better average exit velocity and his BABIP isn’t quite as low as Hendricks’. Which pitcher gets more credit?

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