Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by viscount of the internet 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
Kansas City at Chicago NL | 14:20 ET
Ventura (54.1 IP, 94 xFIP-) vs. Wada (10.0 IP, 64 xFIP-)
This past Wednesday in the electronic pages, contributor Jeff Zimmerman examined the relationship between pitcher velocity and a number of batted-ball types. One revelation from that post: that, as velocity declines, a pitcher is likely to concede more home runs per batted ball. Or, rendered into the form of the graph, this:

The discovery is both (a) not shocking but also (b) of some assistance to understanding the relationship between the gap (whether positive or negative) which certain pitchers exhibit between their expected FIP (xFIP) and ERA numbers. While xFIP relies on the supposition that home-run allowance will regress to a league-average rate, what Zimmerman’s work suggests is that pitchers who feature higher than average fastball velocities are likely to outperform their xFIPs; those who feature lower than average velocities, to underperform them. Of some relevance, is this, to Cubs starter Tsuyoshi Wada, who (a) is a candidate to produce impressive fielding-independent numbers, but also (b) sits at only about 89 mph.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Chicago NL Television.

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Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by viscount of the internet 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
Los Angeles NL at St. Louis | 19:15 ET
Frias (28.2 IP, 102 xFIP-) vs. Wacha (57.2 IP, 107 xFIP-)
Dodgers right-hander Carlos Frias suffered the slings and arrows less of outrageous fortune during his most recent start and more of the San Diego Padres batsmen (box). Facing 25 hitters, Frias recorded zero strikeouts, conceded two walks, and allowed 10 runs on 12 hits. One, in his most generous mood, might note that the Padres recorded hits on nearly half their balls in play against Frias. That same one, however, would find it difficult to ignore how Frias exhibited little feel for his release point over the duration of four mostly unpleasant innings. Despite those innings, Frias still owns slightly above-average fielding-independent numbers as a starter — plus also a swinging-strike rate and average fastball velocity that place him roughly 1.0 and 1.5 standard deviations, respectively, above the starting-pitcher mean.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: St. Louis Radio.

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Episode 565
Craig Edwards has contributed and/or still contributes to SB Nation Cardinals blog Viva El Birdos and Yankees blog Pinstripe Alley. He now definitely contributes every day to FanGraphs. He makes his inaugural appearance here on FanGraphs Audio.

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 54 min play time.)

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Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by viscount of the internet 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
Pittsburgh at San Diego | 22:10 ET
Liriano (53.2 IP, 80 xFIP-) vs. Shields (62.1 IP, 74 xFIP-)
Despite all his success in the majors over a decade-long career, San Diego right-hander James Shields has never produced a strikeout rate greater than 23.6% — which mark he recorded in 2012 while still with Tampa Bay. Last year, with Kansas City, he posted excellent numbers, both of the fielding-independent and also just normal run-prevention varieties. His 19.2% strikeout rate, however, was actually slightly below the major-league average figure. Over 10 starts and 62.1 innings this season, however, Shields has exhibited a different level of success in this regard. Regard, his current strikeout rate: 31.5%. Regard, his current swinging-strike rate, also: an unambiguously career-best mark of 15.0%. Among the possible explanations one is able to produce by means of brief and haphazard research: Shields’ curveball is generating an unprecedented rate of swings and misses — about 20 of them for every 100 curves thrown — and he’s utilizing the pitch more often.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: San Diego Television.

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The Fringe Five is a weekly regular-season exercise, introduced a couple years ago by the present author, wherein that same author utilizes regressed stats, scouting reports, and also his own fallible intuition to identify and/or continue monitoring the most compelling fringe prospects in all of baseball.

Central to the exercise, of course, is a definition of the word fringe, a term which possesses different connotations for different sorts of readers. For the purposes of the column this year, a fringe prospect (and therefore one eligible for inclusion in the Five) is any rookie-eligible player at High-A or above both (a) absent from the most current iteration of Kiley McDaniel’s top-200 prospect list and (b) not currently playing in the majors. Players appearing on any of McDaniel’s updated prospect lists or, otherwise, selected in the first round of the current season’s amateur draft will also be excluded from eligibility.

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Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by viscount of the internet 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 Games
Boston (Rodriguez) at Texas (Martinez) | 20:05 ET
Detroit (Farmer) at Los Angeles AL (Wilson) | 22:05 ET
Tonight offers two games featuring some manner of notable debut. Scheduled to start for the Red Sox in Texas — and to record his first major-league appearance in the process — is left-hander Eduardo Rodriguez. Acquired from Baltimore at last year’s trade deadline, Rodriguez was ranked second among Boston prospects by Kiley McDaniel this offseason and 23rd among all prospects. So far this season, he’s parlayed his plus fastball into strikeout and walk rates of 23.2% and 3.7%, respectively, for Triple-A Pawtucket.

Detroit right-hander Buck Farmer has produced a nearly identical strikeout rate against those same International League batters perhaps by means of his plus fastball but certainly by way of an impressive changeup such as the one featured in the footage below. The 24-year-old Farmer, for whom today represents his season debut in the majors, was ranked third among Tigers prospects by Kiley McDaniel this offseason. He’s also appeared on multiple occasions within the author’s Fringe Five column this year.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Texas Radio and Detroit Radio.

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Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by viscount of the internet 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 Tampa Bay | 13:10 ET
Hernandez (61.2 IP, 68 xFIP-) vs. Archer (60.0 IP, 69 xFIP-)
It is perhaps not one of the world’s great injustices, but still a small- or medium-sized injustice, that one is compelled to observe half of Seattle right-hander Felix Hernandez’s starts by means of Safeco’s center-field broadcast camera. The angle of that camera, one finds, distorts the magnitude of any horizontal break a pitch might feature moving in towards a right-handed batter or away from a left-handed one. As a result, it’s difficult to distinguish between anything a left-handed pitcher is throwing — or, alternatively, to fully appreciate a great right-handed changeup. Felix Hernandez possesses exactly the latter of those things. Fortunately, the Tampa Bay camera is one of the greats — as is Tampa Bay’s starter tonight, it seems.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Tampa Bay Radio.

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On multiple occasions since the middle of March, the author has published here a statistical report designed to serve as a nearly responsible shorthand for people who, like the author, have enthusiasm for collegiate baseball, if not actually expert knowledge of it. These posts have served as a means by which one might broadly detect which players have produced the most excellent performances of the college season.

What follows is another edition of that same thing, updated to account for the completion of every conference’s regular season.

As in the original edition of this same thing, what I’ve done is utilize principles introduced by Chris Mitchell on forecasting future major-league performance with minor-league stats.

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Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by viscount of the internet 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
Atlanta at Los Angeles | 22:10 ET
Teheran (50.2 IP, 104 xFIP-) vs. Kershaw (58.1 IP, 60 xFIP-)
With regard to all the sorts of numbers that both (a) become reliable in smaller samples and also (b) most directly inform run prevention, Dodgers left-hander Clayton Kershaw has produced almost an exact replica this year of his monstrous 2014 season. With regard to how many runs he’s actually conceded, however, the differences are unfortunately less subtle.

Regard, by way of illustration, this table:

Strikeout rate, walk rate, ground-ball rate, and also fastball velocity (denoted as FBv): all are rough approximations this year of what they were last. Indeed, the first three of those metrics conspire to produce the very best park-adjusted xFIP among all qualifiers this season so far. Kershaw, however, has conceded both hits (as denoted by BABIP) and home runs (HR/FB) in unusually large quantities — which has led to all the run-allowing. It’s probably premature to describe Kershaw’s misfortunes at this point as “Job-like.” Perhaps they’re more similar to the misfortunes of one who left his wallet at the restaurant and now must go all the way back there to recover it.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Los Angeles NL Television.

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