Sadly, for those of us currently residing in the Badger State, Dark Overlord David Appelman has as yet to announce a Wisconsin-centric event like the one that just occurred this past weekend in New York City. (Although, to be clear, I didn’t actually ask him — i.e. the Dark Overlord — to his face or anything. Guy is scary.)

However, still flush with the joys of the New York event, I was excited yesterday to come across what appears to be a totally acceptable alternative.

Sponsored by Miller Park Drunk (@millerparkdrunk), the event — known, for too many obvious reasons, as the Pants Party — takes place at Milwaukee’s Miller Park on August 29th, starting at 11:00 am and going until Carlos Gomez adopts a skill-appropriate approach at the plate. Or till the game is over. Either one.

So far as I can tell, the Pants Party is an event fully dedicated to the exploration of The Good Times. Brats will be served, adult sodas will be (responsibly!) imbibed, and baseball will be watched.

Details about, and tickets for, the event are available here, the meat-tastic menu is available here, and a rousing post about the merits of the Pants Party — written special for MPD by Wezen Ball’s Larry Granville Granillo — is available here.

Note: on account of I, Carson Cistulli, have had no in arranging this event — have actually only known of its existence for 24 hours or so — neither I nor FanGraphs assume any responsibility for your decision to attend. So if it’s just a weird cult gathering or something — well, don’t blame me.

During the Media portion at this past weekend’s Live Event, one topic addressed by the panel members was the relevance of the traditional game report.

On this subject, the Boston Herald’s Michael Silverman said something to the effect of: “This is our first year at the Herald without proper game repots. We figured that our time and resources were better spent elsewhere — analyzing the game, etc.”

Allow me, first, to echo vigorously Silverman’s comment. I’ve said it before, will say it again, and will probably have it inscribed on my tomb at Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, France, after I die: “The traditional, pyramid-style game report is a Snooze Fest of gigantic proportions.”

*Although, owing to the location of my tomb, the inscription will read more like the following: “Le rapport de match traditionnel du modèle-pyramide est un Snooze Fest des proportions colossales.”

But allow me to offer, secondly, a revolutionary thought: what if, instead of being written “pretty soon after the game” by a “paid reporter” who “watched the whole game attentively” — what if, instead of all that, a game report was written three days after a game by a bespectacled fellow who drank, like, three beers during said game and is generally prone to forming irrational attachment to fringe players?

Well, in that case, it would probably very much resemble the following.

The Game I’m Talking About
It happened this past Sunday night, August 8th, between the Connecticut Tigers and Brooklyn Cyclones of the short-season New York-Penn League. The latter team is a New York Mets affiliate; the former, shockingly, is affiliated with the Tigers.

Connecticut won 6-3. I mean, just in case that sort of info is important to you.

Why I Went There in the First Place
The answer to this question is a little bit of the “N’doy” variety, but still fair. Anyway, here are three reasons:

1. Because I was in New York already. (Live Event in the hizouse.)

2. Because minor league games are cheaper, and generally more accessible, than their major league counterparts.

3. Because it gave/gives me the opportunity to front like a prospect maven. (Which, if you’re gonna front, fronting like a prospect maven probably isn’t the worst. Fronting like a doctor? That’s pretty bad.)

What the Weather Was Like
Silly good. Sunday was a hot day in New York — and humid. But on account of MCU Park is right by the frigging ocean, there was this great breeze.

Pop quiz: How many baseball stadia are right by the ocean? San Francisco’s AT&T and San Diego’s Petco Parks are the only two I can think of. (The latter is on San Francisco Bay, but whatever.) As for minor league stadiums — fuggedaboutit.

What the Crowd Was Like
The box score says that 8,047 were in attendance — this, in a stadium with an official listed capacity of 7,501.

If this is true, then I’m forced to assume that the one or two thousand empty seats around the park were occupied by the Ghosts of New York Baseball Past. And they all paid.

What the Crowd Was Also Like
Like all the tweets from Sh*t My Dad Says being read aloud, simultaneously, over and over.

Read the rest of this entry »

Note: If you’re curious about the significance of this post’s title, fast forward to the fourth-to-last bullet.

As you might’ve heard, FanGraphs brought its act to New York this past Saturday with a view towards letting smart baseball people say smart baseball things.

“How’d it go?” maybe you’re asking.

Well, actually, kinda even better than this author could’ve imagined.

With the exception of some French Canadians who kept loudly chanting Jonah Keri’s name — that, and the seven or ten bareknuckled fights in which I personally engaged with Patrick Sullivan of Baseball Analysts — the Event (and the congregation afterwards at Amity Hall) were about as frigging convivial as one could imagine.

In what follows, I reduce all of the nuance and personality of the Event to a few shallow observations and badly strained insights.

In other words: Enjoy!

• Discovery: Mitchel Lichtman (creator of UZR, contributor to The Book blog) is not a prick. How do I know? Well, for one, those were the first words out of his mouth on the Stats panel. “Just to clarify,” he said, grabbing the microphone by its stand, “I am not a prick.”

Duly noted, Mr. Lichtman.

Here’s another way you could find out that Mr. Lichtman isn’t a prick: by talking to him and, while talking to him, to avoid statements that demonstrate a lack of clear thinking. So far as I can tell — and he said as much on the Stats panel — baseball very much represents for Lichtman an opportunity to practice thinking, to practice asking questions, to practice being curious.

• This last point was echoed by other panelists, both explicity and implicity: baseball, they might agree, is an excellent medium for practicing critical thinking.

Let’s also be clear, however: that’s not the only thing for which baseball’s good.

• Question: Is sabermetrics — and the wider net that it’s continually casting — producing a generation of young men (and — gasp! — even some women) with more highly developed faculties of reason? with a stronger understanding of randomness? with a better idea of how to separate signal from noise?

• ESPN radio announcer Jon “Boog” Sciambi is our greatest ally*. Before I say why exactly, I’d like just to talk about his voice for a second. Here’s what it (i.e. his voice) sounds like: like it’s covered in an entire barrel of delicious forest honey. Here’s what I wish it (i.e. still his voice) would do: read me stories at night so I could fall asleep more easily.

*By “our,” I mean either (a) those who care about discussing baseball in thoughtful, even tones, or (b) people of Italian descent. You decide which!

With that out of the way, let me tell you another thing: Sciambi is committed to searching for the capital-T truth, and is dedicated to filling his broadcast full of that search. This doesn’t necessarily mean rattling off xFIPs and BABIP, mind you — it has to play to a general audience — but Sciambi made it clear that he makes it a priority to work at his smartest.

• At a post-Event lunch, the question was posed: “What’s harder to predict, the stock market or baseball players’ futures?” The answer? The stock market, hands down.

“The stock market” someone added — maybe it was Tommy Bennett, maybe our Dark Overlord himself — “is more like projecting the future performance of all high school baseball players.” Which, that would be harder.

• During the Media panel, moderator Jonah Keri began one of his questions for the group by positing the existence of purely hypothetical Boston-area sports columnist with the totally made-up name of Shman Shmaughnessy.

It’s still a mystery upon whom exactly this character could be based.

• Also on the Media panel, both New York Magazine’s Will Leitch and the Wall Street Journal’s David Biderman mentioned — offhandedly, if nothing else — mentioned the importance of the headline to generating page views.

“Unfortunately, it’s important,” Biderman said.

I second Biderman’s sentiments on this matter. It’s frustrating to imagine that a well-written post or article would go unread (or less read, at least) merely because it lacked a provocative title. I don’t know, and won’t pretend to know, how greatly the numbers fluctuate given the “quality” of a title. My immediate reaction is this, though: there’s no use wringing one’s hands over the matter. If a good title gets eyes on good writing, so be it. My other reaction is this: good writing gets read.

• Observation: saber-oriented Yankee fans, just like all other kinds of Yankee fans, are disgustingly confident.

• The truth comes out: after long being suspected of such bias, Dave Cameron finally admitted — via a tearful, handwritten confession at the end of the Live Event — to hating all teams except the Mariners and to using FanGraphs as his vehicle for promoting Mariner fandom.

Video available soon. Scout’s honor.

• To echo Cameron’s sentiments from earlier today, but to do it with French words, the esprit de corps of the afterparty was terrifically gratifying, humbling. Essentially, all my interactions were with enthusiastic and curious people. That’s really the most I could ever ask of life.

This edition of One Night Only is so funny you’ll probably forget to laugh.

(NERD scores listed beside pitchers’ names.)

Friday, August 06
St. Louis (Adam Wainwright, 8) at Florida (Ricky Nolasco, 9) | 7:05pm ET
• I’ll let people who’re smarter than me and care more about it debate the relative merits of trading away Ryan Ludwick. The immediate benefit of the trade, however, is that we all get more Jon Jay and Allen Craig in our respective lives. Jay’s .416 BABIP and regressed wOBA of .326 (courtesy of StatCorner) suggest that — shockingly! — his .366/.415/.553 line is unsustainable. Craig’s 48 plate appearance this season haven’t been super impressive, but at Triple-A the last two seasons, he’s been like the Prince of baseball — i.e. a producer of hits — slashing .322/.380/.551 in 842 PA.
• My memory isn’t so good, but I don’t recall Nolasco’s NERD being so high even this time last month. What’s happened in that time? Well, I asked the internet that question, and here was its answer: 4 GS, 27.1 IP, 30 K, 5 BB. That’s about a 2.50 FIP, probably. Also, Nolasco has an excellent strike rate of about 69.5% over that time.
• If I had my druthers: Adam Wainwright would throw the curveball to end all curveballs.

Los Angeles Americans (Jered Weaver, 8) at Detroit (Justin Verlander, 8) | 7:05pm ET
• Per Total Zone, Peter Bourjos was worth +76 runs in 360 games started in center field from 2006 to 2009.
• Per Erik Manning’s trick knee, Peter Bourjos is gonna be a star.
• If I had my druthers: Peter Bourjos, Peter Bourjos, Peter Bourjos. (Those are the lyrics to a song.)

Texas (Cliff Lee, 8) at Oakland (Dallas Braden, 6) | 10:05pm ET
• Perhaps it’s because the Texas farm system is so incredibly deep, or perhaps it’s because he was originally a 17th round draft pick, but Mitch Moreland appears to have received less attention than his performance would otherwise merit. If Gaby Sanchez (9/2/1983) and Logan Morrison (8/25/1987) were the oldest and youngest of three brothers, Moreland (9/6/1985) would be the middle brother. Like those two, he plays first base. And, like those two, his game is more predicated on excellent contact skills than power. Last year, his stikeout rate hovered around 13% between High-A and Double-A. This year, in 410 Triple-A plate appearances, it came in at 15.4%.
• Cliff Lee is, in the parlance of our ancestors, bodacious. As our Full-Time Employee noted a couple days ago: “Cliff Lee has completed at least eight innings in nine consecutive starts, throwing the full nine innings in six of those. In 18 starts, he’s only failed to finish the 7th inning once.”
• If I had my druthers: We would always, all of us, use the parlance of our ancestors.

Saturday, August 07
Boston (John Lackey, 3) at New York Americans (CC Sabathia, 3) | 4:05pm ET
• Have you ever watched a baseball game surrounded by the hardcorest of the hardcore baseballing nerds? Not in a sexy/gross way, but more like a hey-we’re-all-friends way? I ask, because that’s the the sort of thing that’ll be happening today in New York City, after the Live Event. (Note: Only ticketed Live Event-ers will be given the very secret location of the viewing spot).
• Ken Tremendous tweets: “Ryan Kalish will hit .538 for his career. 20 years. .538. Book it.”
• If I had my druthers: Ken Tremendous would also tweet: “Carson Cistulli is America’s sweetheart.”

Colorado (Jorge de la Rosa, 9) at Pittsburgh (Ross Ohlendorf, 2) | 7:05pm ET
• With a roster full of prospects — or, if not prospect-prospects, at least interesting young players — on their side, the Pirates have been one of the more compelling teams for the baseballing nerd. This past trade deadline, GM Neal Huntington made the team even cooler, sending away Octavio Dotel, Bobby Crosby, and some Donruss ’87 Rated Rookie card for more interesting young players (like my man Chris Snyder over here). But don’t take my word for it! Jack Frigging Moore wrote about it real hard this past Monday.
• I’m a Nerd and So Can You isn’t the title of Ross Ohlendorf’s forthcoming book. But Matt Klaassen wouldn’t surprised if it were.
• If I had my druthers: Ross Ohlendorf would’ve actually already written a book.

Sunday, August 08
New York Nationals (R.A. Dickey, 6) at Philadelphia (Roy Halladay, 10) | 1:35pm ET
• A guy goes away for a week and then, when he gets back, Domonic Brown all of a sudden has over 30 major league plate appearances. Sheesh, what gives? Anyway, he entered the season as the top prospect in the Philly system per Baseball America and Marc Hulet. Minor League Splits has his MLE line at .270/.321/.454 between Double- and Triple-A this season.
• Back in March, Tom Tango suggested how the differential between strikeouts and walks actually reveals more about a pitcher’s control over the strike zone than the ratio. Well, this year, Roy Halladay is striking about 7 more K than BB for every 9 innings he pitches (7.99 K/9, 1.06 BB/9). That marks the best differential of his career.
• If I had my druthers: When his pitching career is over, R.A. Dickey would fight cancer with this much intensity:

Cincinnati (Travis Wood, 7) at Chicago Nationals (Thomas Diamond, N/A) | 2:20pm ET
• In his major league debut — this past Tuesday versus Milwaukee — Diamond posted a line that looked almost identical to this: 6.0 IP, 27 TBF, 10 K, 3 BB, 3 GB on 14 BIP. Really, with the exception of all those strikeouts, it’s exactly the line you’d expect from Diamond, who (per First Inning) recorded 104 K, 46 BB, and a 33% GB rate through 108.1 Triple-A innings. (Our man Joe Pawl wrote about Diamond more in depth a couple days ago.)
• For his part, Wood has posted only a 28.7% groundball rate through his first. His minor league numbers suggest something at least closer to the mid-30% area, but that’s still extreme-flyball territory. Long story mostly short: with Wood and Diamond pitching — and a high of 89 degrees expected in Chicago — I’d take the over on whatever the line is for home runs in this game.
• If I had my druthers: Young men, the whole land over, would somehow make the surnames Diamond and Wood into a dirty joke type of thing.

This past March, consummate Midwesterner (and contributor to like seven different websites) Erik Manning celebrated prospect Peter Bourjos via both the written and spoken word.

By his own admission, Manning’s enthusiasm for Bourjos is/was slightly irrational — which is to say that, even though Bourjos was definitely a prospect before the season began, there appeared to be no reason for the extent of Manning’s zeal.

But what if we took Manning’s excitement seriously? What if Manning’s seemingly inflated opinion of Bourjos — an opinion based on a combination of quantitative analysis, visual evidence, and je ne sais quoi — was actually grounded in something more significant than a hunch?

In his book Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, Malcolm Gladwelll explores rapid cognition — i.e. the human capacity to draw eerily accurate and/or nuanced conclusions from limited information and narrow windows of experience.

The extent of Manning’s experience “with” Bourjos is limited, for sure: some advanced metrics and a couple of Cedar Rapids Kernels games. But his feelings about Bourjos are somehow stronger than other people with similar experience. What is Manning seeing that others aren’t?

Now that Bourjos has been promoted to the majors, I asked Manning to reassess his feeling on the young Angel. Here’s what happened:

Cistulli: Mr. Manning, I’ve invited you to this electronic space to revisit some comments you made in re a certain Angels’ prospect.

The prospect? Peter Bourjos. The comments? Something to the effect of, “Me likey.”

Anyway, Bourjos — or, as you would almost definitely say, Bourjjjjjjjos — made his debut Tuesday night. And, as our own Dave Cameron noted yesterday, he made it in center field, moving Gold Glover Torii Hunter over to right.

I’m curious about your initial thoughts on Bourjos’s promotion, moving Hunter over, etc.

Manning: I liked the promotion. The Angels needed to probably shake things up, and this is one of way of doing that. Their outfield defense of Rivera/Hunter/Abreu is pretty dismal and Bourjos is a superb defender in center field. The scouts rave about his defense, and the numbers back it up. According to his Total Zone numbers on Minor League Splits, Bourjjjjjjos (as I like to call him) has been worth +76 runs in 360 games started in center field from ‘06-’09. Dude can go get the ball.

Cistulli: I’m no stranger to being drawn irrationally to a player with little in the way of an MLB resume (see: Lewis, Colby), so I understand how it feels. When we talked in March or whenever, you were all about the Bourjos. Obviously, the scouting reports were strong. Baseball America had him second within the organization. Resident Prospect Maven Marc Hulet had him fourth.

But that doesn’t entirely explain your enthusiasm. I mean, why not Hank Conger? Why not, I don’t know, Ben Revere? What about Bourjos specifically elicits that enthusiasm?

Manning: I live in Cedar Rapids, IA — home of corn, boredom and the Cedar Rapids Kernels, the low-A affiliate of the Angels. I went to see a game or two in 2007 when the Cardinals’ low-A team was playing them (the Cardinals are my favorite team, in case the readers didn’t know that already) and I came away really impressed with the speed and athleticism of Bourjos; he just sort of stuck out. I’m not a scout by any stretch of the imagination, but he just seemed to have a lot of raw, natural ability. There’s the local rooting interest and first hand experience of seeing him play early in his career, and then it’s just his totally off the wall defensive numbers. Stat-heads and some teams have started to come around more on the value of fielding a good defense, but I think it’s still a skill that is sort of undersold.

Lastly, I think I just like saying Peter Bourjjjjjjos.

Cistulli: You say that you’re not a scout by any stretch. And I understand what you’re saying: I think it’s best to err on the side of humility in every matter, baseballing analysis notwithstanding.

That said, I just read Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink. His central thesis — which is pretty well substantiated by capital-S Science — is that humans can come to eerily accurate and nuanced conclusions about an object/situation/etc. in mere seconds.

You may not be the scoutiest of the scouts, no, but you’re not a novice at watching baseball, either. Here’s what that suggests to me: that your impressions — however irrational seeming — are probably worth a damn.

I wonder, have there been other prospects about whom you had a similar feeling? Who? Did they pan out?

Manning: They might not be worth much of a damn, because I also came away impressed with Nick Stavinoha, who is on the Memphis-St. Louis shuttle right now. He can’t play defense well, he doesn’t draw walks or hit for power, but he hits for a decent batting average, and he looks the part, but when I saw him he was spraying liners all over the park. The truth is he was old for the league and was basically Billy Madison throwing dodge balls at hapless grade schoolers.

But on the positive, Jon Jay has become the Cardinals starting RF for better or worse, and while it seemed most scouts were down on him for his quirky hitting mechanics, he’s turned out to be better than expected. I could seeing him have a David DeJesus-like career, or at least I can hope for one.

Cistulli: Pop quiz: What does Nick Stavinoha look like?

Manning: Nick Stavinoha looks like Aaron Miles, after he ate the Super Mushroom. Now he’s going to kick some Koopa Troopa butt!!! Both are terrible major league players whom the Cardinals have given too much playing time.

Cistulli: Correct. All of it.

Now, last thing. Bourjos has shown — superficially, at least — a power surge this season, hitting 13 homers in 454 Triple-A plate appearances after hitting only 6 homers in 504 Double-A appearances last year. I also understand that the PCL has some homer-friendly park, so I pose the question to you and your trick knee or whatever: Is the power surge for real?

Bonus question: What sort of line would Bourjos put up in a complete MLB season?

Manning: I think his power spike is pretty artificial, but not completely crazy. Just glancing at StatCorner’s park factors, Salt Lake has a 109 HR factor for right-handed batters, whereas Arkansas, where he played last year in Double-A, has a 78 HR park factor. So he’s gone through two very different hitting environments over the past two seasons. From what I gather, he’ll never be a big HR threat, but he’s not Juan Pierre, either. He should be able to hit 10, maybe 15 homers in a good year.

I think with his speed and defense, he doesn’t have to hit a lot of homers to be valuable. He should be able to leg out triples and hit enough doubles to have a respectable enough slugging percentage. He does have some strikeout issues, so it’s unclear how high of a batting average he’ll hit for. I might be optimistic, but I would guess an average line for Bourjos during his cost-controlled years would be something like a .275/.325/.435, which doesn’t sound great, but for a center fielder who will be +10, +15 defense, that’s a 3 – 3.5 WAR player. At the league minimum, I think teams would take that.

Last week, the wife and I moved — via Penske-brand truck — from Portland, OR to Madison, WI, leaving little time to watch and/or read about and/or write about baseball. Turns out, the experience provided an opportunity to think about baseball in ways I hadn’t anticipated. I’ll probably bloviate all over this theme in the next week or so.

This past Saturday night — my first as a Citizen of Madison, Wisconsin — I had the pleasure of sharing the Good Times with both my wife and also FanGraphs contributor Jack Moore on the lakeside Terrace of the University of Wisconsin’s Memorial Union.

Based on this and previous visits to the Terrace, I’ll submit to the readership this assertion: that the aforementioned Terrace is among the most excellent public spaces in the Continential 48. I’ll submit this other one, too: that the excellence of the Union Terrace teaches us something about the aesthetics of our fandom.

As for the first point — i.e. the excellence of the Terrace — don’t take my word for it. The A.V. Club’s Jason Albert wrote the following last spring:

If the terrace hasn’t already been named the No. 1 place in the country to have a beer, then it should. It’s a combination of lake views and breezes, live music, beer, Babcock ice cream, and folks from all walks of life doing everything from dealing cards to playing quarters. That’s all good stuff no matter how you cut it.

While I’m not convinced that “dealing cards” and “playing quarters” represents the full gamut of possible activities in which one can engage at the Terrace — like, I think “reading a book” or “writing a FanGraphs post” are probably outside of that particular spectrum — the point remains: the Terrace is excellent. It’s an excellent space, right on the shores of Madison’s Lake Mendota, offers beer and brats at affordable prices, and is absolutely teeming with happy people. In fact, it’s this last detail — the sheer number of people invested in the experience — that I believe gives the Terrace its charm.

So far as I can tell, the Union Terrace — as a public space — is unrivaled in this country. Mind you, I haven’t been everywhere in the US of Frigging A, but I’ve been to a whole bunch of places*. And, really, the only thing that compares to the Terrace is — conveniently, for the sake of this post, this site — the giddy, expectant feel of the crowd at a ballgame.

*For example: Reno, Chicago, Fargo, Minnesota, Buffalo, Toronto, Winslow, Sarasota, Wichita, Tulsa, Ottawa, Oklahoma, Tampa, Panama, Mattawa, La Paloma, Bangor, Baltimore, Salvador, Amarillo, Tocapillo, Baranquilla, and Perdilla.

Although, as JP Sartre once suggested, hell is other people, the truth of that statement (i.e. “hell is other people”) is largely dependent on context. In traffic, sure, hell is other people. In a line at the DMV or the supermarket, hell is also other people. On this beautiful series of tubes we call the interwebs? Yes, hell is frequently other people here, as well.

But hell isn’t always other people. Having spent a couple of springs in the cavernous and mostly empty confines of Portland’s PGE Park, watching the Padres’ Triple-A Beavers, I’ll attest vigorously to this fact. This season, for example, the Beavers are drawing fewer than 4,000 fans a game — in a stadium with a capacity of almost 20,000. Mind you, it’s not terrible: I, personally, was still able to observe the likes of Buster Posey and Chris Carter this past spring, which is pretty cool. Still, the joy of the game is mitigated, as there are simply too few people witnessing the action.

Put another way: if a tree falls in the woods and no one’s around to hear it, it still very probably makes a sound. A baseball game that’s played with no one around to watch it, though — that’s a different proposition.

It’s unlikely that any of us enters a ballpark and takes a seat with the express purpose of becoming BFFs with every last person at said park. These are the same people who will, after all, slow our exit from the ballpark after the conclusion of the game, who will snag a foul ball down the line even though the home team’s left fielder very well could’ve made a play on it.

It’s a group capable of despicable acts, in other words.

That said, the experience we know as “going to the baseball game” is impossible without other people. In fact, it’s an experience whose joy is largely dependent on the presence of those same other people. When the game is tied in the bottom of the ninth, it’s the expectant gasps and sighs from the crowd that heightens the pleasure of the event. When the home team hits a walk-off home run, it’s the crowd’s hysterical cheering that reminds each of us that we’ve witnessed something great and unique.

Cynics, overzealous undergraduates, Germans: many of them will suggest that crowds and the “group mentality” is/are dangerous — evil, in fact. Nor is this completely a trifling matter. From what I know of Red Star Belgrade’s Ultras, for example, or of the teenage girls at our nation’s malls, groups can be brainless, frightening.

But what we learn from the Union Terrace is the same thing we learn from the very best of our spectator sports — namely, that crowds have benefits, that hell isn’t always other people. Why is this so? Why are crowds so able to heighten our experience of an event or space? What constitutes an ideal-sized crowd? Those are questions probably best left answered by the discipline of urban planning.

In the meantime, it’s very clear to me that the Terrace, like a well-attended ballgame, is pleasant because of the crowds.

Episode Forty-One
In which the panel has some unfinished business.

Headlines
Live from New York: It’s Baseball Nerds
Trade Value, Schmade Value: Some Qs and As
… and other lyrical acrobatics!

Featuring
Dave Cameron, Full-Time Employee
Joe Pawl, Real-Live New Yorker
Bryan Smith, Prospect Maven Deluxe

Finally, you can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio on the flip-flop.

Read the rest of this entry »

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This edition of One Night Only features hella special effects.

You’re welcome in advance, is what I mean by that.

Friday, July 23 | Cincinnati at Houston | 8:05pm ET
Starting Pitchers
The Pantone 185s: Travis Wood (NERD: 7)
26.2 IP, 7.76 K/9, 3.04 BB/9, .161 BABIP, 34.3% GB, 6.5% HR/FB, 4.21 xFIP

Space Team: Bud Norris (9)
68.0 IP, 9.66 K/9, 4.37 BB/9, .377 BABIP, 41.3% GB, 9.7% HR/FB, 4.00 xFIP

Why Travis Wood Is Worth Your Time
• In only the third start of his career — July 10th at Philadelphia — he flirted with perfection. (Maybe he flirted with some other things, too. All we know about is the perfection.)
• He followed that performance up with another fine start, home versus Colorado on July 18th: 6.0 IP, 26 TBF, 6 K, 4 BB, 7 GB on 15 BIP (46.7%). Not dominant, but certainly good.
• He’s just a tiny little super guy. (By which I mean to say, he’s only 23 years old.)

Why Bud Norris Is Worth Your Time
• His xFIP (4.00) is far below his ERA (6.09). In other words: Regression in the hizouse, players!
• Per StatCorner’s nerd scouting system, Norris’s slider rates above average in swing-and-misses (70 on the 20-80 scale), zone percentage (60), and ground balls (75). Also, he throws it 35% of the time. So watch it now, ‘fore his arm falls off.
• Those are two pretty good reasons, actually.

A Startling Discovery
The Reds are only 1.5 games out of first.

That Same Startling Discovery Written in Comic Sans
The Reds are only 1.5 games out of first.

Batter Bullets
• Michael Bourn (10) and Drew Stubbs (9) both did quite well via Baserunning NERD. Bourn attempts a stolen base a full quarter of the time he’s on first or second without a runner ahead of him. He takes the extra base on a hit two-thirds of the time (where league average is around 40%).
• One word: Joey Votto. Boom, stats: .305/.413/.574, .424 wOBA, 163 wRC+, 4.1 WAR.

If I Had My Druthers
• Travis Wood would once again flirt with perfection.
• This time, Perfection would be like, “You wanna come up to my place for a cup of coffee?”
• Travis Wood would be like, “Awww yeah. Cup of coffee.”

My advice to you, one layabout to another: don’t ever go to work again.

My other advice: start today.

Thursday, July 22 | Colorado at Florida | 12:10pm ET
Starting Pitchers
Rockies: Jorge de la Rosa (NERD: 8)
30.2 IP, 9.39 K/9, 5.58 BB/9, .315 BABIP, 52.4% GB, 22.7% HR/FB, 4.17 xFIP

Los Marlins: Josh Johnson (10)
128.0 IP, 9.14 K/9, 1.97 BB/9, .285 BABIP, 49.0% GB, 3.6% HR/FB, 3.01 xFIP

A Mostly Irreverent Note on Jorge de la Rosa
If I’m correct, they changed their player search function ahead of this season, but traditionally it’s been impossible to search for players whose names are shorter than three letters in Yahoo’s fantasy baseball platform*. Hence, it’s been tres difficile — because of the two two-letter words — to search for de la Rosa. Another player whom this has affected: Fu-Te Ni. And also: Chin-lung Hu. (Racism, innit?) Off the top of my head, de la Rosa’s the best of the group, however.

*It returns the following: “Your search query must be at least 3 characters. (Error #163)”

A Slightly More Substantive Note on Jorge de la Rosa
He crapped the bed last time out — at Cincinnati on July 17. Line: 19 TBF, 0 K, 5 BB, 5 GB on 13 BIP (38.5%). That resulted in 3 HR and 7 R (6 ER) in just 3.1 IP.

Unlike the previous outing, in which de la Rosa conceded 7 R (5 ER) in 4.1 IP but generally did his part (6 K, 1 BB, 22 TBF), this wasn’t explained away by bad luck.

A Completely Obvious Note on Josh Johnson
While ranking Johnson No. 9 overall in his recent Trade Value series, Full-Time Employee Dave Cameron wrote of Johnson: “If you haven’t seen him pitch, you’re missing out. The fastball has both velocity and movement, the slider is a knockout, and the change-up plays up because of how hard he throws it.”

Hear Cameron now, and believe him now, too: Josh Johnson is the goods.

Batter Bullets
• Gaby Sanchez appears to be a major leaguer. His nerd line on the season: .301/.367/.462, .367 wOBA, 128 wRC+. Question: Is his .340 BABIP helping matters? Answer: Yes, and it’s more than possible that he’s just a league-average hitter, but he’s got the sort of high-contact, line drive approach — like a Michael Young, maybe — that can be pleasant to watch.
• Carlos Gonzalez’s plate “discipline” has been the subject of some interesting work around these electronic pages of late. Dave Goleblahski recently looked at said work and even coerced Resident Cyborg Dave Allen into producing this swing contour thing:

Cool, right? Anyway, if you want a hint as to what the deal is with CarGo, here’s his walk rate: 4.4%. Now here’s his strikeout rate: 24.3%. Connect the dots, America.

If I Had My Druthers
• Sources would reveal that the “rosa” of Jorge de la Rosa’s surname is actually the selfsame one as in Seal’s 1994 smash-hit single “Kiss from a Rose.”
• Either Seal or de la Rosa or someone would explain why and/or how there’s a kiss from said “rosa” — and how it got on that grave and whether it’s still there or not.
• Heidi Klum.

If you’re a more or less normal, sensitive American male like myself, you were shocked and/or awed by the revelation — courtesy of R.J. Frigging Anderson’s article of last week in re Jay Bruce — that Baseball-Reference is currently in the business of keeping a stat called XBT%, or Extra Base Taken Percentage. What this stat tells all of us normal, sensitive American male-types is the — and I quote — “percentage of times the runner advanced more than one base on a single or more than two bases on a double, when possible.” In other words, the stat seeks to represent the frequency with which a player takes an extra base. Also, in other words: it’s awesome.

And not only that, but B-R also records Stolen Base Opportunities (SBOs) — i.e. “the plate appearances through which a runner was on first or second with the next base open.” I feel no shame in not having formerly realized this — I mean, I’m a pretty important guy with a lot on my figurative plate — but I give thanks and praise now for having discovered it when I did.

In any case, here’s why I bring up all this junk: if one were in the business of attempting to adjudge the aesthetic pleasure provided by certain players, then one would very likely be curious about the baserunning skills of those players. As I, Carson Cistulli, am such a “one,” then it follows logically that I would be interested in such a thing.

Though baserunning is, admittedly, a rather minor part of a player’s overall contribution, it’s also a contribution which is rather easy to isolate. In what follows, I’ve attempted to do just that.

So, what makes an interesting baserunner? Well, I’m sure we could have all sorts of fist fights about that (and might soon at the FanGraphs Live Event). In this case, however, I allowed my enthusiasm to guide me unapologetically.

Much like with pitcher NERD, I utilized z-scores (i.e. standard deviations from the mean) to arrive at baserunning NERD (rNERD). In this case, I used a sample of players who’ve recorded at least 100 plate appearances. For each player, I found the sum of three different z-scores: XBT%, SBO% (that is, stolen base attempts as a percentage of opportunities), and stolen base success rate (SB%).

From there, all I did was cap the lowest possible SB% z-score at -1.1 (to mirror the highest z-score) and then add a constant (in this case, 4.91) to put all the scores on a 0-10 scale.

Using this method, here are the Top 25 baserunners (from a sample of 350 qualified players):

I like this list, because there are very few surprises. I mean, Michael Bourn, B.J. Upton, Rajai Davis: we know those are fast guys. The pleasure from such an exercise, however, frequently comes from the players who surprise us. In this case, Kyle Blanks has to be that guy. Surprisingly, Blanks is among the league leaders in taking the extra base. Why that is exactly — maybe batting ahead of lefties, or something? — is unclear, but it makes for something to think about when Blanks makes his retun to the field in August sometime.

As for the 25 laggards, here they are:

I don’t know that there are too many surprises here. Mostly, it’s a list of first basemen and catchers, which is probably to be expected. The presence of Mitch Maier might be of some concern to Royal fans — although, truth be told, they have enough on their plates. Nick Swisher, like Maier, has been seen roaming centerfield more recently than not. He’s never been a speed demon, but it’s surprising to see him on this list.

If you’re interested in seeing the full spreadsheet of 350 baserunners, it’s available just by clicking here.