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
Milwaukee at Cincinnati | 19:10 ET
Anderson (89.1 IP, 100 xFIP-) vs. Castillo (5.0 IP, 120 xFIP-)
The author’s haphazardly constructed algorithm has identified today’s Brewers-Reds game as the day’s most promising — in no small part due to the presence of young right-hander Luis Castillo. Castillo hasn’t pitched a sufficient quantity of innings to receive a proper NERD score. At my discretion, however, he’s received a nearly perfect mark due to his debut performance, during which he recorded an average fastball velocity of 98.3 mph, a figure that would place him first among all qualifiers by that measure. He would appear to have some capacity either for thrilling or delighting or both thrilling and delighting.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Milwaukee Radio.

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Over at Baseball Savant, another Statcast leaderboard has been rolled out. This one relates to speed. They are calling it Sprint Speed, and the definition is as follows:

Sprint Speed is Statcast’s foot speed metric, defined as “feet per second in a player’s fastest one-second window.” The Major League average on a “max effort” play is 27 ft/sec, and the max effort range is roughly from 23 ft/sec (poor) to 30 ft/sec (elite). A player must have at least 10 max effort runs to qualify for this leaderboard.

While Sprint Speed has been used for a while, we didn’t have leaderboards until now. Mike Petriello over at MLB.com has a full article on the rollout which I would recommend. Among the highlights: Sprint Speed correlates well from year to year; it doesn’t require a large sample to become reflective of true talent (Petriello compares speed to fastball velocity); and it might be useful when attempting to identify injuries that could be slowing players down.

So, we know that the metric can tell us who is fast and who is not. That’s helpful. I wondered if it might also be able tell us anything about any other statistics.

Before trying to predict the future or look at past years, I thought it might be useful to compare speed to the stats we have and see how they compare. While the leaderboard over at Statcast features nearly 350 names (every player who’s produced 10 or more max-speed data points), those sample sizes might be a bit too small when looking at other statistics. As a result, I narrowed the sample for this study down to the 166 players who were qualified at the end of Monday’s games.

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Maybe the Astros are the best team in baseball, and maybe they’re not. There are lots of good teams, and the differences are all fairly slim. At least, we can say the Astros have the best record out of anyone in baseball, and they deserve to stand where they’re standing. They’re easily clear of the rest of their own division, and while they’ve experienced a handful of significant or semi-significant injuries, they’ve chugged right along. The Astros were supposed to be good. So far, the Astros have been great. Projections can miss in one of two directions.

One of the things we knew was that the Astros were going to hit. During the winter, they were lauded for their offensive depth, and the Astros have an easy MLB lead in wRC+. But now I have a fun fact for you. It’s even more telling than that one. The Astros, as a team, lead baseball in home runs. They also have baseball’s lowest team strikeout rate. In the 19 full seasons since baseball moved to a 30-team landscape, no offense has led in both categories. The Astros are trying to be the first, which is downright impressive.

Read that again. Home runs? Sure. Everyone hits home runs. Marwin Gonzalez hits home runs. The Astros might as well be leading. But, strikeouts? Yeah. It’s not that there was zero warning. Reality is just following what could’ve reasonably been expected.

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Episode 752
Managing editor Dave Cameron recently underwent surgery to repair his ACL. In this episode, the host of FanGraphs Audio uses Cameron’s personal misfortune as an entree into a conversation about baseball’s actual disabled list. This offseason, the 15-day DL was replaced by the 10-day variety. Certain clubs (the Dodgers) have used the rule change to their advantage. Others (the Mets) haven’t. Also, were Cameron to create a DL system from whole cloth, how would he do it? The guest holds forth on that and much, much, much, much, much more.

A reminder: FanGraphs’ Ad Free Membership exists. Click here to learn more about it and share some of your disposable income with FanGraphs.

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 43 min play time.)

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In this, The Year of Higher Launch Angles and Homer and Strikeout Spikes, most of the game’s marquee offensive players have joined the party. Mike Trout was Mike Trout when healthy, Bryce Harper is back, while Cody Bellinger, Aaron Judge, Miguel Sano, and others are leading the youth brigade. In the meantime, though, has anyone seen Manny Machado?

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About a month ago, the Angels lost Mike Trout to injury. He’s still a few weeks away from returning. Trout’s absence was supposed to be crippling, and indeed, it probably should’ve been crippling. But one of the best active fun facts around is that, since Trout was sidelined, the Angels have played better. Now, that isn’t something I suggest you over-interpret. It doesn’t mean anything much. It doesn’t mean Trout isn’t the most valuable player in the world. It’s just a random curiosity. And, good for the Angels! What they’ve pulled off has been deeply impressive.

At this point, the Angels are very much a wild-card contender. Trout’s coming back soon. So there’s reason to look up and down the roster in an attempt to identify areas for improvement. There are still various areas of concern, but one’s eyes are drawn to Albert Pujols. Pujols, right now, has a 2017 WAR of -1.0. That’s tied for the second-lowest mark in the game. Pujols, through that lens, has been a major problem, and few of his regular numbers are any good. However, the Angels themselves have pushed back. They’ve publicly disagreed with the idea that Pujols hasn’t been useful.

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Are you suffering from fatigue related to talk of the home-run surge, the prospect of a juiced ball, and the idea of an air-ball revolution? No? Excellent.

As you’re probably aware, home runs keep flying out of major-league stadiums — and, if anything, are doing so at an ever faster rate, as Jeff Sullivan documented earlier this month.

Rob Arthur, Mitchel Lichtman, and Ben Lindbergh have led the charge to examine the ball’s role in these matters, their most recent work appearing at The Ringer earlier this month. It’s a must-read piece. They make a compelling case that the ball is different — and playing differently. Though, as Dave noted last month, Dr. Alan Nathan suggests it’s not an “open-and-shut” case.

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Mound visits have long been a part of the game. They happen for a variety of reasons, but with one constant: whether it’s the catcher or the pitching coach who jogs to the hill, the ensuing confab delays the action. And while the delay is typically short of duration — the home plate umpire does his best to ensure that — the idiom “straw that broke the camel’s back” exists for a reason. In the opinion of more and more people, enough is enough when it comes to repeated trips to the mound.

Pace of play is an increasingly important issue for MLB, and some — commissioner Rob Manfred among them — have suggested limiting, if not entirely eliminating, mound visits. Fans would certainly be on board with such a change, but what about the people who be directly affected?

With the help of colleague Eno Sarris, I asked a cross section of players — mostly pitchers and catchers — the following question: “Just how important are mound visits, and how much would limiting, or even doing away with them, impact the game?”

———

Larry Andersen, Philadelphia Phillies broadcaster: “I don’t know if you can get rid of them. If you have a starting staff like the Phillies had five years ago, with Cliff Lee, Roy Halladay, Cole Hamels, and the like, then you don’t need the mound visits. Those guys were experienced veterans who knew how to slow the game down and make adjustments on the fly. But if you have a staff like we do now — a lot of these guys are young and don’t know how to slow things down. They need to be led a little bit. They need to be helped out. They need to be given a break.

“It’s hard to say that mound visits shouldn’t be allowed, but there are also times where… we had one recently where a pitching coach went out to the mound with two outs in the ninth inning when we brought up a pinch-hitter. It was a four-run game, and there was no one on. I mean, is that really necessary? There are coaches going out simply to give relievers more time. I don’t know where you draw the line, but I’d certainly like to see a line drawn.”

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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
St. Louis at Arizona | 21:40 ET
Martinez (100.1 IP, 80 xFIP-) vs. Walker (63.0 IP, 94 xFIP-)
The author’s haphazardly constructed algorithm has identified this game as today’s most compelling due largely to the quality of the probable starters. Cardinals right-hander Carlos Martinez is in the midst of his best season by whatever metric — FIP- or xFIP- or ERA- — one cares to utilize. In a not unrelated development, he’s produced what would amount to the highest strikeout rate of his career by some margin. Taijuan Walker, for his part, has recorded strikeout and walk rates commensurate with his established levels. While having traditionally underperformed his expected FIPs, however, he’s now outperforming that same metric with the D-backs.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: St. Louis Radio.

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