Episode 747
Lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen is the guest on this edition of the pod. Since his most recent appearance on the program, he’s been many places, if not technically everywhere, including Cincinnati and Louisville and Cincinnati again and Reading and Lehigh Valley and Fayetteville and so on. Discussed on the pod: Phillies prospects Dylan Cozens, Rhys Hoskins, and Cam Perkins; other Phillies prospects Scott Kingery and Andrew Pullin; likely first-rounders Adam Haseley (of Virginia) and Brendan McKay (of Louisville); plus no fewer than one (1) player from the NCAA Regional in Fayetteville.

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Audio after the jump. (Approximately 1 hr 8 min play time.)

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Not very long ago, Sam Dyson was a revelation. He was acquired quietly, but deliberately, and he played a major role in turning around what had been an unstable 2015 Rangers bullpen. Down the stretch in 2015, and then again throughout the year in 2016, Dyson pitched like one of the more valuable relievers around, providing the Rangers the luxury of riding his sinker to one- and two-run victorious margins. When one would try to explain the Rangers’ success, you’d have to talk about the relievers, and you couldn’t talk about all of them without talking about one of them in particular.

Not very long ago, Sam Dyson was designated for assignment. The Rangers ran out of patience, and although Dyson’s going to get another opportunity, it won’t be with Texas. The team won’t be getting much back. By WPA, already, Dyson has been worth what he was a season ago, only this time with a minus sign in front of it. At -3.45, Dyson owns the lowest WPA in the game. He’s been worse even than Francisco Rodriguez. WPA usually is not a very good analytical tool. It doesn’t always reflect the true totality of a player’s worth. Yet it’s sure had Dyson figured out.

The weird thing is how little has changed. I know that Dyson’s going to be moved any minute now, but the industry doesn’t know all that much more than we do. When it comes to trying to see Sam Dyson’s future, it’s simply a whole lot of guesswork.

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Much of the focus in this still young season has been on higher launch angles, the three true outcomes, and a handful of newly minted sluggers who have quickly made an impact on the game. This week, let’s take a look at the players who have done the most damage on contact this year, analyze how they’ve done it, and assess what might lie in store for them. First, we’ll look at the AL.

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This is now the third consecutive year in which I’ve written a post about the potential misuse of defensive metrics early in the season. We all want as large a sample size as possible to gather data and make sure what we are looking at is real. That is especially true with defensive statistics, which are reliable, but take longer than other stats to become so.

While the reminder is still a useful one, this year’s edition is a bit different. Past years have necessitated the publication of two posts on UZR outliers. This year, due to the lack of outliers at the moment, one post will be sufficient.

First, let’s begin with an excerpt from the UZR primer by Mitchel Lichtman:

Most of you are familiar with OPS, on base percentage plus slugging average. That is a very reliable metric even after one season of performance, or around 600 PA. In fact, the year-to-year correlation of OPS for full-time players, somewhat of a proxy for reliability, is almost .7. UZR, in contrast, depending on the position, has a year-to-year correlation of around .5. So a year of OPS data is roughly equivalent to a year and half to two years of UZR.

Last season, I identified 10 players whose defensive numbers one-third of the way into the season didn’t line up with their career numbers: six who were underperforming and four who were overperforming. The players in the table below were all at least six runs worse than their three-year averages from previous seasons. If they had kept that pace, they would have lost two WAR in one season just from defense alone. None of those six players kept that pace, and all improved their numbers over the course of the season.

The next table depicts the guys who appeared to be overperforming early on. If these players were to keep pace with their early-season exploits, the rest-of-season column would be double the one-third column. Brandon Crawford actually came fairly close to reaching that mark; nobody else did, however, as the other three put up worse numbers over the last two-thirds of the season than they had in its first third.

Just like with the underperfomers, all four of overperformers had recorded defensive marks six runs off their established levels. Replicating those figures over the rest of the season would have meant a two-win gain on defense alone. Again, no one accomplished that particular feat.

A funny thing happened when I ran the numbers for this season. There weren’t any outliers of a magnitude similar to last season or the season before. It’s possible you missed the announcement at the end of April, but there have been some changes made to UZR to help improve the metric.

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This is Michael Lortz’ second piece as part of his June residency at FanGraphs. Lortz covers the Tampa Bay baseball market for the appropriately named Tampa Bay Baseball Market and has previously published work in the Community pages, as well. You can find him on Twitter, as well. Read the work of all our residents here.

According to the old stereotype, Florida is an elephant graveyard where everyone’s retired grandparents go to spend their final years. They drive slow, play bingo on Wednesdays, and clog the roads on the way to their early-bird specials.

The reality, as is frequently the case, is much more complicated.

As I mentioned in my first article, Tampa Bay is a growing region. Not only economically, but also in population. Earlier this year, the Tampa Bay Business Journal reported that the region of Tampa-St Petersburg-Clearwater is expected to top 3 million people by the end of 2017. According to the US census, approximately 330,000 people in Tampa Bay are over 65, or 11% of the population. A significant portion, but far from the majority.

Transplants are a large segment of the Tampa Bay population. In 2014, the New York Times published an article depicting where the population of each state came from. According to the Times, only 36% of Florida residents were natives, 8% were from New York, and 8% were from other Northeast states. We can probably safely assume many of the urban parts of Florida have a higher percentage of non-native Floridians. Which means Tampa Bay may have a higher percentage of transplants than other parts of Florida.

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Corbin Burnes is carving up hitters. Recently promoted to Milwaukee’s Double-A affiliate, the Biloxi Shuckers, the 22-year-old right-hander boasts a 0.99 ERA, and he’s allowed just 37 hits in 63-and-two-thirds innings. The bulk of that dominance has come with the high-A Carolina Mudcats, with whom he spent the months of April and May.

Drafted by the Brewers last June out of St. Mary’s (California) College, Burnes is looking every bit a steal as a fourth-round selection. Plus stuff is a big reason, as is a take-no-prisoners attitude. Unlike a lot of young pitchers, Burnes doesn’t shy away from the power-pitcher label.

“I definitely consider myself a power pitcher,” Burnes told me before making what is thus far his lone Double-A start (which was truncated by weather). “I’ve got a power fastball and a pretty hard slider. The goal for us is to get a guy out in three pitches or less, but I’m not trying to feed the middle of the plate and let them hit it. For the most part, I’m out there trying to miss bats.”

He’s been missing a fair number of them. In 99.1 professional innings, the confident right-hander has punched out 101 batters. And when he has induced contact, he hasn’t been burdened by barrels. Burnes’s batting-average against as a pro is a flyweight .178.

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Andrew McCutchen’s time as a Pirate was always likely to end in one of two ways: either by way of trade or departure as a free agent. Several years ago, a significant portion of the fan base — and perhaps a significant portion of the clubhouse — would have liked to have seen another contract extension for the 2013 NL MVP, but that was always unlikely. The club had little interest in guaranteeing a player entering his 30s a nine-figure contact, and McCutchen seemed uninterested in taking another below-market deal.

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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
San Diego at Arizona | 21:40 ET
Lamet (10.0 IP, 75 xFIP-) vs. Ray (69.0 IP, 84 xFIP-)
Beethoven’s third — known as the Heroic Symphony — marked the beginning of his “creative middle-period,” according to a source familiar with the situation. As for what Dinelson Lamet’s third will mark, this is uncertain. His first two have been excellent, however. Over 10.0 innings, the 24-year-old right-hander has recorded nearly a 40% strikeout rate, sitting at roughly 96 mph with his fastball.

Here’s an example of not his fastball, but his slider, with which pitch he’s recorded a swing and miss 20% of the time:

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Arizona Radio.

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