Episode 718
Managing editor Dave Cameron is the guest on this edition of the pod, during which he discusses the relationship of college baseball to the professional game; attempts to explain Washington’s logic for signing Matt Wieters; and experiences a brief, on-air existential crisis.

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Audio after the jump. (Approximately 40 min play time.)

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Over the last couple years, the author has published a periodic statistical report designed to serve as a mostly responsible shorthand for people who, like the author, possess more enthusiasm for collegiate baseball than expert knowledge of it. Those reports integrated concepts central to much of the analysis found at FanGraphs — regarding sample size and regression, for example — to provide something not unlike a “true talent” leaderboard for hitters and pitchers in select conferences.

What follows represents the first such report for the 2017 college campaign, which began last Friday.

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

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Episode 717
Dayn Perry is a contributor to CBS Sports’ Eye on Baseball and the author of three books — one of them not very miserable. He’s also the garbage interlocutor on this edition of FanGraphs Audio.

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Audio after the jump. (Approximately 1 hr 5 min play time.)

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Episode 716
Managing editor Dave Cameron is the guest on this edition of the pod, during which he plays (almost willingly) the Over/Under Game for 2017. This is similar to — although not exactly the same as — the game played with Eric Longenhagen last week.

Here’s how this particular version is played:

• Contestant A introduces a specific metric for 2017. (Example: Adam Eaton’s UZR in center field for the Nationals.)
• Contestant A proposes a precise figure for that metric. (Example: +8.0 runs).
• Contestant B chooses the over or under.

Each Cameron and the host submit five over/under proposals in this episode, for a total of 10 overall. Click here to see the results.

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Audio after the jump. (Approximately 52 min play time.)

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Episode 715
The prolific Travis Sawchik is a former beat reporter for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and author of the book Big Data Baseball. He’s recently become a full-time employee of FanGraphs.com. He’s also the guest on this edition of the program, during which he discusses methods for adding intellectual diversity (as well as all the other kinds of diversity) to baseball front offices

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Audio after the jump. (Approximately 1 hr 12 min play time.)

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Episode 714
Lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen is the guest on this edition of the pod, which also represents the inaugural edition of the Over/Under Prospect Game.

Here’s how to play:

• Contestant A nominates a rookie-eligible player.
• Contestant A also sets an over/under figure for that player’s WAR in 2017.
• Contestant B chooses the over or under.

For this inaugural edition, both Longenhagen and the idiot host have nominated five players, for a total of 10 overall. Click here to see the results.

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Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

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Audio after the jump. (Approximately 1 hr 38 min play time.)

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Each week, we publish north of 100 posts on our various blogs. With this post, we hope to highlight 10 to 15 of them. You can read more on it here. The links below are color coded — green for FanGraphs, brown for RotoGraphs, dark red for The Hardball Times and blue for Community Research.

MONDAY
A Champion’s Outfield: Where Line Drives Go to Die by Casey Boguslaw
Coincidentally, it’s just a few miles north of where fun goes to die.

Maybe the Rockies Are Contenders in 2017 by Dave Cameron
Everyone knows the Rockies aren’t contenders. What this post presupposes is…

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After having typically appeared in the very famous pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have been released at FanGraphs the past few years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Cincinnati Reds. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Other Projections: Arizona / Atlanta / Baltimore / Boston / Chicago AL / Chicago NL / Cleveland / Colorado / Detroit / Houston / Kansas City / Los Angeles AL / Los Angeles NL / Miami / Milwaukee / Minnesota / New York AL / Oakland / Philadelphia / Pittsburgh / St. Louis / San Diego / San Francisco / Seattle / Tampa Bay / Texas / Toronto / Washington.

Batters
Cincinnati produced the worst BaseRuns record in the majors last year, tied with a very rebuilding Philadelphia team. The club’s field players weren’t really the problem, however, recording just a few wins less than a league-average unit.

The projections here reflect the general competence of the club’s position players. After Joey Votto (592 PA, 4.6 zWAR), who unsuprisingly receives the top wins forecast in the organization, there exists a collection of reasonably useful pieces. The front office probably deserves credit, in fact, for some of its discoveries. Adam Duvall (549, 1.9), Scott Schebler (564, 1.7), and Eugenio Suarez (608, 2.3) all profile as roughly league-average types, for example, despite having appeared on zero top-100 lists collectively as prospects.

This isn’t to suggest that there’s no room for improvement among the batting types here, but rather that “average” is probably not an unreasonable outcome for this group.

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