Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by sabermetric nobleman 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
Baltimore at Boston | 19:10 ET
Gausman (152.0 IP, 87 xFIP-) vs. Porcello (193.2 IP, 91 xFIP-)
Were one inclined to facilitate a yelling match between a group of Boston-area residents — ideally, for the purposes of this experiment, men aged 18 to 65 — one means by which to accomplish that might be to ask them whether they regard Rick Porcello or David Price as the ace of the Red Sox. “Porcello’s got more wins,” one might declare. “But Price has better stuff,” another would almost certainly ejaculate. Is that third one, over in the corner, exhibiting signs of a heart attack? No, that’s just how people in Boston look and act. An entire people on the verge of cardiac arrest: this is an adequate characterization of Boston.

Porcello, who’s got a lower FIP-based WAR but higher RA-based WAR than Price, is scheduled to start this particular, urgent game.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Baltimore Television.

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Episode 681
Lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen is the guest on this edition of the pod, during which he discusses Matt Bowman, park effects, and assessing a prospect’s ability to benefit (or not) from information; attempts to identify those skills which might allow a pitcher, like Mike Leake or (nearly) Rick Porcello, to bypass the minor leagues entirely; and explores an anxious moment from his own sporting youth.

This episode of the program either is or isn’t sponsored by SeatGeek, which site removes both the work and also the hassle from the process of shopping for tickets.

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 1 hr 08 min play time.)

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Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by sabermetric nobleman 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
Baltimore at Boston | 19:10 ET
Bundy (94.1 IP, 106 xFIP-) vs. Pomeranz (158.2 IP, 89 xFIP-)
Over the past week or so, this space has been reserved almost exclusively for Baltimore games or Boston games or Toronto games or Baltimore-Toronto games or Boston-Toronto games or, as is the case today, Baltimore-Boston games. Because the AL East is currently home to a giant competitive rumpus, is why. By the coin-flip methodology of calculating postseason odds — which seems to best represent how the human mind conceives of these things — all three of the aforementioned teams possess better than a 10% probability of winning the division. Even the dumb Yankees, by that same methodolgy, possess greater odds than the second-place club in three other divisions. So this Orioles-Red Sox contest is most highly rated it. This is the end of the explanation for why.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Baltimore Television.

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Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by sabermetric nobleman 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
Baltimore at Boston | 19:10 ET
Miley (146.0 IP, 100 xFIP-) vs. Price (197.2 IP, 80 xFIP-)
What one finds here is very nearly the closest thing to an ideal scenario at this point in the season: a pair of clubs separated by merely two games at the top of their division and two starters with their own relative merits. David Price has produced some of the best fielding-independent numbers in the majors. As for Wade Miley, whatever his shortcomings wherein “run prevention” is concerned, he at least works quickly. Regard: his 17.8-second pace between pitches is the quickest such figure among all qualifiers. (While Price’s 25.3 mark is the slowest.)

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Baltimore Television.

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Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by sabermetric nobleman 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
Boston at Toronto | 13:07 ET
Buchholz (117.1 IP, 122 xFIP-) vs. Sanchez (169.1 IP, 85 xFIP-)
The implications of this game, like the two before it in the series, are clear: a victory improves the winner’s probability of claiming the division by a not insubstantial amount. How not insubstantial? Regard the following table. It documents Boston and Toronto’s odds of winning the division (Div%) before the beginning of the series, after the Red Sox’ game-one victory, and after the Blue Jays’ win last night.

The figures in the two rightmost columns document the change in probability for each club following the relevant event. Because the two clubs are differently situated with regard to wild-card qualification (or complete absence from the postseason altogether), the differences in their divisional probabilities haven’t been entirely reciprocal. Regardless, each game has been worth approximately 10 points. This remains the case for tonight, as well, naturally.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Toronto Radio.

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Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by sabermetric nobleman 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
Boston at Toronto | 13:05 ET
Rodriguez (82.0 IP, 114 xFIP-) vs. Happ (164.1 IP, 95 xFIP-)
This encounter between Boston and Toronto appears as the day’s most highly rated for all the same reasons it appeared as yesterday’s most highly rated — and will appear as tomorrow’s, most likely, as well. Despite Boston’s 13-3 victory yesterday, the consequences of the game are considerable. The probability of either club winning the division or merely qualifying for a wild-card spot or doing neither — in every case, it remains substantive. As banal as this paragraph has been, that’s as riveting as this game could possibly be.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Toronto Radio.

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Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by sabermetric nobleman 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
Boston at Toronto | 19:07 ET
Porcello (186.2 IP, 92 xFIP-) vs. Estrada (49.1 IP, 107 xFIP-)
If one is inclined to choose a game, even a game in September, for the quality of the pitching matchup it offers, then tonight’s encounter between Clayton Kershaw and Jose Fernandez is very clearly the crème of that particular crème — and, as any number of billboards along rural state highways in this country are inclined to remind the public, this is a free country. In the event, however, that one is more inclined towards the sort of conflict which is the staple of narrative structure, then the conflict created by the Blue Jays’ and Red Sox’ nearly equal and definitely opposite designs on the AL East title offers a strong example of that sort of pleasure, as well.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Toronto Radio.

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The Fringe Five is a weekly regular-season exercise, introduced a few 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 who (a) received a future value grade of 45 or less from Dan Farnsworth during the course of his organizational lists and who (b) was omitted from the preseason prospect lists produced by Baseball America, Baseball Prospectus, MLB.com’s Jonathan Mayo, and John Sickels, and also who (c) is currently absent from a major-league roster. Players appearing on a midseason list or, otherwise, selected in the first round of the current season’s amateur draft will also be excluded from eligibility.

In the final analysis, the basic idea is this: to recognize those prospects who are perhaps receiving less notoriety than their talents or performance might otherwise warrant.

Greg Allen, OF, Cleveland (Profile)
Much like it’s impossible not to think of elephants once the subject of elephants has been broached, it’s nearly impossible to avoid comparing Greg Allen to Mookie Betts once the possibility of a comparison between Greg Allen and Mookie Betts has been suggested. The comparison doesn’t make much sense, of course. Allen is a 23-year-old who’s only recently earned a promotion to Double-A. Betts, meanwhile, is a 23-year-old who’s also a legitimate MVP candidate. The notion that the one resembles the other is absurd. Even after accounting for the similarly elite contact skills and plate discipline, one should avoid saying their names in the same sentence. Or the distinct resemblance in terms of footspeed and athleticism and defensive value — that sort of observation is the province of fools.

Whatever the case, here’s what Allen did over his final week of play: record a 3:3 walk-to-strikeout ratio in 23 plate appearances while also hitting two triples and a home run. With his appearance here today, he finishes second by some margin on the arbitrarily calculated Scoreboard found below.

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Oakland right-hander Jharel Cotton made his major-league debut on Wednesday. The results were positive: over 6.1 innings, Cotton conceded just a lone run on two hits — the product, that run, of a homer by the Angels’ C.J. Cron. The process, while entirely adequate, was also slightly less positive: over those 6.1 innings and against those same 22 batters, Cotton recorded just three strikeouts.

In a sense, this start was the opposite of the sort which have defined much of Cotton’s season in the Pacific Coast League this year. Despite producing the best strikeout- and walk-rate differential (K-BB%) among all 57 Triple-A qualifiers in 2016, Cotton also recorded a 4.31 ERA — which, it turns out, is only the 35th-best ERA at Triple-A and even pretty middling among just PCL starters, too. The home runs were a problem for Cotton. Sequencing was a problem for Cotton. Controlling the strike zone wasn’t.

Apart from the runs he allowed and the runs he might have been expected to allow — whatever the discrepancy there — Cotton exhibited one quality yesterday that he’s exhibited all of this season and all of last season and maybe always since he was just a small child. An excellent changeup, is what. Lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen, among others, has described it as a plus-plus pitch — and it’s the presence of that pitch that has largely been credited with allowing Cotton to experience such great success as a professional despite a rather diminutive frame.

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