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A frequently asked question this spring in FanGraphs chats, and presumably around water coolers inside and outside the Beltway, concerned which Bryce Harper we would see in 2017.

Would we see the 2015, Ted Williams-like, Griffey Jr.-in-his-prime, Hall-of-Fame-trajectory version? Or would we see something closer to the perplexing, if still productive, 2016 version. (Harper must have been restricted by nagging injuries last season, right?)

So far it seems like the answer is more likely the former, but perhaps it is neither. Instead of settling for somewhere between those outcomes, perhaps what Harper has really set out to do is to exceed the extremely high bar he set in 2015.

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

How are they calculated? Haphazardly, is how. An explanation of the components and formulae which produce these NERD scores is available here. All objections to the numbers here are probably justified, on account of how this entire endeavor is absurd.

Most Highly Rated Game
Colorado at Minnesota | 19:10 ET
Chatwood (48.0 IP, 92 xFIP-) vs. Berrios (7.2 IP, 136 xFIP-)
The Mysteries are a series of episodes from the life of Jesus of Nazareth on which Catholic people meditate while praying with a set of rosary beads. Twins right-hander Jose Berrios is a different sort of mystery — one who features impressive physical tools and an excellent minor-league track record but who has nevertheless had trouble preventing runs at the major-league level. His season debut was superficially promising (he allowed just one run in 7.2 innings) but troubling in other ways (he struck out only four of 27 batters and allowed a lot of fly balls). His opponent, Tyler Chatwood, has recorded one of the league’s lowest strike percentages but has compensated for it — from an aesthetic point of view — with one of the majors’ quickest paces.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Colorado or Minnesota Radio.

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Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about a mid-start adjustment by Clayton Kershaw and answer listener emails about what constitutes a “jam,” pitchers who’ve allowed the most first career hits, how to analyze player problems and improvements, team abbreviations, hitters who homer and bunt, left-handed infielders, whether bats could be causing the home-run surge, and more.

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As a FanGraphs reader, you’re presumably familiar with the TTO acronym. Just in case you’re not, TTO stands for Three True Outcomes, and said three true outcomes are walks, strikeouts, and homers. They’re the outcomes least likely to lie to you; they’re the outcomes that tell you the most about the individuals involved. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that there are more strikeouts now than ever before. You also know that home-run rates have taken off. So this plot should fit with what you’d figure. Viewing over an entire century of baseball, you see league-wide TTO% taking flight.

This season, a third of all plate appearances have ended with either a walk, a strikeout, or a homer. As recently as 1992, it was more like a quarter of all plate appearances. It was a fifth of all plate appearances in 1946. The image there speaks for itself, so I suppose I don’t need to address it any longer. The trends are up, is the point. There’s no sign of this pattern changing course.

Recently, the Effectively Wild podcast received a listener email, asking how high is too high. That is, how high could TTO% go before the game just feels all weird and broken? I didn’t have a good answer. I’m unconvinced the average fan cares about this as much as analysts do. We’re the ones who need stuff to write about, while the average fan just wants to know if a given team is winning or losing. Here’s one thing I can say: The future might look like the Rays. Nobody else TTOs quite like the Rays do.

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Episode 741
Over the past few years, a number of players have benefited from a change in swing mechanics or approach. Josh Donaldson and J.D. Martinez most famously. Yonder Alonso and Aaron Altherr more recently. Now that the means exist to recognize adjustments more quickly, is it also possible to anticipate breakout performances before they actually occur? This is the question that managing editor Dave Cameron nearly answers on this edition of the pod.

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Audio after the jump. (Approximately 39 min play time.)

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Theory: Players have gotten better than ever at hitting pitches down in the zone. I don’t think this counts as a controversial theory anymore, and it goes hand in hand with what’s been casually termed the fly-ball revolution. Anecdotally, it seems like there are more and more hitters trying to hit the ball in the air. Generally speaking, this is achieved by swinging with more of an uppercut, and, generally speaking, players with uppercuts are more productive down in the zone, instead of up.

Theory: This is one of the reasons why there’s been an emphasis on higher-spin fastballs. Those are the tougher-to-hit fastballs, fastballs you mostly want to be elevated. This past offseason, I put forth the idea that the cure to the home-run spike could involve more fastballs up. If pitchers just focused somewhere else, then hitters wouldn’t so often be able to elevate the pitches at their knees. To summarize, simply: It seems like there would be a pitcher response to the hitter response. It seems like there should be more high fastballs.

But, are there more high fastballs? Turns out this is really easy to check. And the answer is, well, basically, no.

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A couple of weeks ago, I looked at the 10 pitching prospects who had most improved their KATOH+ projections over the season’s first few weeks. Now that we have a more meaningful sample of games to analyze and a new Baseball America top-100 list baked in, I’m repeating that exercise. It’s still early in the season, but not too early to start identifying players who are performing better than they have in the past. A reminder: a player’s KATOH forecast denotes his projected WAR total over the first six seasons of his major-league career. I performed a similar exercise for hitters yesterday.

To ensure I am writing up actual prospects rather than fringey ones, I set a minimum KATOH+ projection of 4.0 WAR this time around. I still listed the five most-improved lesser prospects at the bottom.

Luiz Gohara, LHP, Atlanta (Profile)
Preseason KATOH+ Projection: 2.9
Current KATOH+ Projection: 5.6

Gohara was utterly filthy in High-A this year. He struck out 27%, walked 7%, and didn’t concede a single homer over seven starts, likely due to his 57% ground-ball rate. That performance earned him a promotion to Double-A. Unfortunately, he injured his arm in his first start.

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Over the course of the last week, the Dodgers placed four players on the disabled list, most in baseball. Andrew Toles, with his torn ACL, would have gone on the DL in any other year, and that might also be true for Adam Liberatore and his strained hamstring. But Kenta Maeda (tightness in hamstring) and Brandon McCarthy (sore left shoulder) are dealing with less debilitating issues. They might not have been placed on the DL if not for the flexibility allowed by the new 10-day option. But has that flexibility really created an explosion in DL usage? What ramifications would that have on the game?

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I first became acquainted with Charlie Morton while covering the Pittsburgh Pirates as a newspaperman and while conducting research for my non-fiction work Big Data Baseball.

Morton was the first major-league player I encountered who exhibited a real interest in analytics. He developed an appreciation of numbers from his father, Chip, an accountant and former Penn State basketball player. As Morton struggled with inconsistency early in his major-league career — he posted a 6.15 ERA with the Braves as a rookie in 2008 — he turned to PITCHf/x information to better understand his stuff and performance beyond a traditional box score. He found PITCHf/x data and fielding-independent numbers kept him sane. He found advanced statistics and PITCHf/x provided a better baselines of performance to study. His father dove into the data, too, and they often had phone calls discussing the quality of his stuff, the velocity, and horizontal and vertical movement, etc.

Earlier in his career with the Pirates — and with the help of Jim Benedict and Ray Searage — Morton had dropped his arm slot and and adopted the two-seamer as his primary pitch. His new, and present, delivery reminded many of Roy Halladay. The Pirates had Morton watch video of Halladay. And at times, Morton’s stuff — his darting sinker and bending curveball — also resembled former Philadelphia and Toronto ace’s. In Pittsburgh, during the good times, he earned nicknames like “Electric Stuff” and “Ground Chuck.” He posted a 62.9% ground-ball rate in 2013 to go along with a 3.26 ERA and 3.60 FIP. He earned a three-year contract extension after the 2013 season.

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